the one thing necessary...

The deep, the fundamental and permanent needs of mankind. Beauty, meaning, truth? But we get on by, most of the time. Listen, first things first (Auden). Could kill for a cinnamon roll. Actually, Emmanuel made some last night but pesky old Fudge, the most sleepy-headed dog in the world, the Kashmiri of the animal kingdom, forced me to share my slice with her. Ho hum. Second things second, then. Muslims don't like dogs, especially black eyed ones...

~~~

I spend an inordinate amount of time watching children's programmes. You think to yourself: there must be millions and millions of hours of tapes, re-runs, youtube clips, digitally stored bites of data, 'out there'. There's something truly horrific about day-time television. You imagine yourself slumped in front of a television on an unending Tuesday afternoon, watching all of these wasted moments flash before your eyes, the volume turned down. Suddenly you feel sorry for God.

~~~

There's something about the brilliant, dazzling light of Argentina-or from what you see on the screen, anyway. That's all you have: a literary reference to 'Cuban blue', a song for Argentina and Wales, a scrap of a poem for darkest Peru, a newspaper clipping on Colombia kept in Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics. But that light, it makes you think of the life you haven't lived. To dream much, and to long for a place that is at once both utterly strange and deeply familiar at the same time.

Thirty years have passed since the war, the skirmish off dark waters that was orchestrated, you could sense, for the one summer day in which the flags and beer could be brought out. The warm glow of beauty, meaning, truth. Brought back from the messy shores, where only mythical beasts really live and where the place-names are unpronounceable. The high skies, the dragon-clouds, a moment when our lips were dry and 60-over one-day matches marked the pace of life; Sri Lanka still an exotic country in those days. Never look back...

But here he was, the man who shot the Argy down. Return to the straits, locate the time of day under southern skies (Drummer Hodge) when it happened. Find the man you killed, because after that was when you died. The high-drama of forgetting. Good soldiers kill and forget (or are forgotten).

"What do you want?" asks the sexy BBC presenter (you imagine that driving around with her under the lush light would have been enough but no...)

"I want closure".

Of course, the dog was lying. He wanted to relive it, the moment of truth, meaning, and beauty. This was it, the one thing necessary to our lives, so how could you let that go, how could time move on? He took delight, the ex-army man, the ex-man, in being shown the clock from the blown up vehicle, shattered to a stop at the exact moment when the Argy was hit. This was the medal, the treasure I've been looking for all my life, you imagined him thinking to himself.

He breaks down, tears streaming from his eyes. I've come for the names. I'm growing old and I want to go home. I kill for nothing. I'm growing old and I don't know here home is...

~~~

The one book, you say? I think it would be, A, a photo album of my family; this would be the one necessary book, the one necessary object on my desert island.

(Just realized, by a staggering coincidence the book you mention also happens to be by an Argentinian!)