Clarke and I

This is the last blog entry from Sri Lanka.

By far not the last chapter in the Clarke chronicles but rather a well-deserved respite from the battles until after the New Year. With the support of several media companies I am confident we will be able to return to the negotiation table with the UK and NY agents cooing with eagerness. The signs are there and the die is cast. One way or another we will make a Clarke film. Not so much because I’ve decided so but because Clarke deserves it.  

I spent most of the day literally sneaking around Sir Arthur’s mansion. It wasn’t that we were banned from the place as much as I didn’t want to provoke a war I wasn’t prepared to finish. And besides, It’s not a war until war is declared and for all I can tell we might be back in Colombo before spring to finish what we started.  

One thing can be said for the Israeli approach: you quickly become best friends with the tuk-tuk drivers, fortune tellers, Cobra tamers, monkey gypsies, mango peddlers, and gate watchers that populate every neighborhood in Colombo and beyond. You get a first hand sense of the vibe and pulse of the area and a reliable litmus test of the climate ahead. In a district of the city where satellite dishes tower over every fence like proud mechanical palm trees it was reassuring to know that everyone knew and loved Arthur C. Clarke and saluted our brave attempts to reach him.  

After it became clear that we would get no more face time with Clarke, I took the afternoon off to write and fax dear Archie a personal telegram. I am hopeful that at least this piece of correspondence will get to him and that we will hear back. After all, stranger things have happened.  

Finally, we drove up to the front of the old Parliament house and waited by the cannon battery for the sun to set and for Clarke’s red Mercedes-Benz to roll up to its usual contemplation point where, we were told, Clarke likes to watch the ocean and chase the single wave that was his life as it breaks on the sand dunes below.  

It was good to be here. As bitter as the road may have seemed, for every nay-sayer there was always a yes-sayer that pushed us onward, a greeter for every dissenter, and a free thinker for every penny pusher. As Clarke himself put it in his little known fourth law: for every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.  

The blog lives. Pictures will flow. Movies will be made. Moons will be conquered. That much I can be sure of.