Bloomberg TV dispenses figures, charts, graphs, without pause, from the moment I arrive, and all night (a 24-hour data passion): I know this in advance, I know this from experience. But I won't stick around, I know that too. A hotel room two minutes from Zurich airport. Blood pressure: 186/95, and rising. Flight paths not quite drowned out by automatic shower, TV glare, lamp buzz, satellite drone.
Wash down aspirin, to thin the blood, with two Martinis, one Marlboro. Do not feel aspirin do anything because there is no physical pain, but it saves you, serves you, discretely. The nightcaps are quite heavy, still. TV, to quell it: Bloomberg, Sky News.
On a table, under wan discs of light, this morning's WSJ, one Nokia, a sprawl of memos, appointments, personal notes. My scrawl: fluid, assured, busy. Scramble, vaguely happy, damn eyes dilated, down dire, cold corridors ("air-conditioned," flowing flu) into a cavernous mirrored lift, my face multiplied, quite harsh and contorted. The swift stomach-swallowing descent cut off by smooth termination; a dizzying shift, seen off with swagger, very smooth, and just, and good.
Five fat, sterile men in the lobby, devoured by deep padded chairs, leather cases, US broadsheets; hideous husks marooned and neutered, on dangerous marble floors. This is the route to the bar. In minutes, across a marble slab, lit by stainless steel neo-Lalique lamps, a sly, blonde, dry girl hands over one great gleaming glass of Courvoisier.
...
There's a bit of a love affair in a drab corner (light lower) - it chimes. Outside Zurich, it chimes. Is incomprehensible: too tender, too animal. Outside Zurich, from the slow ice of international flights, the low light of hotel bars, and Bloomberg TV (data passion, endless) I internalise rules, tactics, strategy, distance
....
I am an analyst; I collect, quantify, chew up, shred, swallow, spew out market indices, interest rates, corporate mergers, infrastructure projects, pipeline routes, the Federal Reserve, and the Lisbon Agenda. Intersections and intrigues at Konstantinovsky Palace, St. Petersburg. EUROPE: the corridors of this labyrinth; "capital", in torrents. The price of Brent Crude and lure of Caspian oil. Oligarchs, still, control armies.
I make patterns out of this: tipping points, terminations, ellipses, and so on. Drink Alsace cognac, Burgundy wine, Jamaican rum, Pilsen beers. Keep receipts, send them to companies. Via these beautiful angels I aid other beautiful angels: my think tanks, my private investors, my stock market gamblers.