"The jungle revels in debauched lewdness"

Excerpts from the journals of Werner Herzog, written while he was in the Amazonian jungle filming Fitzcarraldo:

Across the table comes a strange primeval insect, with a thin, lancelike, excessively long proboscis and feelers on both sides. I cannot make out any eyes. It is dragging a dead insect of the same species, and it disappears through the cracks in the bark floor. Then caterpillars crawl toward me from all directions, brainless but unstoppable...

The Chinese wok was filled with a jellylike, almost transparent mass, sticky and tough, and in its midst was a broken-off lizard tail, as if the poisonous bite of some nasty creature had melted the lizard into a tough, gluey mass. I set the wok to soak overnight, but even with scouring powder and a wooden stick for scraping
I cannot get the disgusting stuff out. Tumors form on the trees. Roots writhe in the air. The jungle revels in debauched lewdness...

Segundo gave me a big insect, quite unusual. I heard it had been caught in Shivankoreni and nailed to a board. It has a bulge on its head like that of a crocodile, and allegedly its bite is lethal, as Segundo reveals in a whisper.During the rubber era there were many more of them, and the only way to prevent certain death was allegedly to make love to a woman right away, but a hundred years ago, when there were so many woodsmen but hardly any women, a silent understanding developed that in such a situation a woman would be lent out by her husband, and thus quite a few men who were bitten managed to survive.

Via Harper's Magazine, June 2009.

Werner Herzog makes interesting movies. His journals about the making of Fitzcarraldo are now available as a book: Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo. It should be a very interesting read.