Everything is staged:

CONQUEST OF THE USELESS
 (excerpts) by Werner Herzog for recitation

 THE WOODS

 

 FOREST INTRO, BUGS AND GOD

 A still day. Sultry.

Inactivity piled on inactivity, clouds staring down from the sky, pregnant with rain;

fever reigns, insects taking on massive proportions. 

Tonight I had first the feeling and now the certainty that I’m caught in a twilit prehistoric age, without speech or time.

This forest is obscene. 

Tumors form on the trees.  Roots writhe in the air.  These woods revel in debauched lewdness.

Everything about it is sinful, for which reason the sin does not stand out as sin.

The voices in the woods are silent; nothing is stirring, and a languid, immobile anger hovers over everything. 

The laundry on the line refuses to dry. 

What would happen if the forest wilted like a bouquet of flowers?

As part of a conspiracy, a fly suddenly descends on me, its stomach taut and iridescent.

I did not see God today.  

According to the statistics, 85 percent of all existing species are beetles and insects of various sorts.

So where are we on the scale of God’s favorites?

The frogs, thousands of them, suddenly pause, as if they were following an invisible conductor, and start up again all at the same time.  Their conversations come and go in curious waves.  

Something must be said about the majestic mystery of the forest.