Lima (before or after the jungle) - addendum/throwback

The clock has stopped dead and it is as if a crack has been prised open and quick-dry concrete poured in. Now the sky is stuck, the earth static and the old fumbling steadiness has been replaced by utter sludge, that part-forgotten latent inner pulse always hanging back in the wings.  An inkling of torpor: the water lily pads lay flat and the lichen has grown still in brown clungy water. There have developed greenfly and dandelion stalks and midges jerkily shifting and dive-bombing and wisps of other things in the air. The ground has become hard, determined, set in itself, a fixture for the foreseeable, while the interplay of light and shadow in the leaves and the edges of them is also more noticeable and entrenched. In the opening shafts of lights you can readily see the midges and you can see some sort of golden twitchy haze and some far off buildings as if hung in flour or smoke. There has grown a golden, persistent, stubborn light firing up the tufty green, a light ballooned up with the sky, partly-trodden green speckled with daisies but not very many.  This is probably how deserts start off.