Herzog's obscene jungle

"Martin Luther said something very beautiful when he was asked once, 'What would you do if tomorrow the world would disappear?' He said, 'I would plant an apple tree.'"

-Werner Herzog

Still haven't seen Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo."
Still am haunted by the Frames song inspired by it.

It's always a "long way to the house of Fitzcarraldo."
We're always "pulling stuff up mountains."

Now a book,
"Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo,"
releases journals from Herzog and team's time living/filming in the Amazon jungle.

Excerpts in Harper's as

"The jungle is obscene":

“The jungle is obscene. Everything about it is sinful, for which reason the sin does not stand out as sin.”

...

“This morning I woke up to terror such as I have never experienced before: I was entirely stripped of feeling. Everything was gone; it was as if I had lost something that had been entrusted to me the previous evening, something I was supposed to take special care of overnight. I was in the position of someone who has been assigned to guard an entire sleeping army, but suddenly finds himself mysteriously blinded, deaf, and effaced. Everything was gone. I was completely empty, without pain, without longing, without love, without warmth and friendship, without anger, without hate. Nothing, nothing was there anymore, and I was left like a suit of armor with no knight inside. It took a long time before I even felt alarmed.”
.

"I would gladly do without the..bread for baking, but please restore my lack of faith! I did not see God today. According to the statistics, 98 percent of all existing species are beetles and insects of various sorts, so where are we on the scale of God's favorites?"