Picos Gemeos

I could peacefully observe the red flower on the windowsill from where I lay on the leather couch, the trees of Clapton beyond it, and I thought of a tiny black dot speck on its side as perhaps a flea, but it wasn’t, it was something else, a fleck of dust, and so I meditated on it, on the flower's beauty, its aliveness, of how it was like so many beautiful young people I know, fresh to the world. I was unaware that only a few centimetres away, in the soil of that flower pot, lay a dead bird.

It was a weekend I'd spent in Clapton in East London, dogsitting Jack for friends – Jack Bowie, as I like to call him due to his heterochromia iridis. A dog who kept coming up to me on the couch, hoping I'd rub him with my toes. A dog that needed at least four walks a day, who I gifted with a long walk on the Saturday, past Clapton station, towards the River Lea, then up the towpath until Springfield Park.

It was there, watching the barges slowly move north, that I rememberd K. and mine's adventure on the narrowboat last year, how we had moored in this very area around September 2018, just before we went on holiday to Palermo, Sicily. As Jack and I took the towpath towards the park, we fell into pace with a boat carrying three people and a dog. The dog noticed Jack and got angsty, wanted to run to him but was stumped by the water in between them. It barked and its owners stopped their conversation to look at me. “Frankie!” they shouted at him, trying to call his attention back to them. Jack was nonplussed.

Further up the towpath, by the Anchor and Hope, we came face-to-face with a working class couple with many children in tow and a snappy little dog. The husband told the wife to pick up the dog but I said there was no need, Jack was friendly. They promptly put the snappy dog back down and it scuttled towards Jack for friendly sniffs.

“What a lovely dog,” the mother said, puffing at a cigarette. The children were quiet, the husband smiled. “What’s his breed?”

“We don’t know, he was found in a bin.”

“A bin? As a puppy?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, look at his eyes,” she pointed out to the children. Further ahead, a young cyclist had stopped and watched our interaction with benevolent patience. I wished the family a lovely day and nodded a hello at the cyclist. Jack was my ticket into the world of pleasantries.

When back in the flat, I spent most of my time on the leather couch with a slim volume on Buddhism by Steve Hagen for company. When I took breaks, I put mindfulness into action. Watched my thoughts, watched the now. The now was made up of seagulls flying above the flat, of bird songs, of sunshine interspersed with bouts of raining, of the brazilian guy, Mauricio, also staying in the flat (a friend of Jack's guardians who lives in São Paulo and was visiting London for the week), who K had correctly described the night before as a "gentle giant". So gentle in fact that he eased my life story out of me in just half an hour of conversation.

Mauricio wanted to leave a gift for Jack's guardians, who were away in Sitges in Spain and would only return when he was already flying back to Brazil. I suggested a walk to the local organic supermarket so he could buy chocolates and flowers for them. On the way back, we stopped at the Clapton Heart for fish, chips and a pint of lager. He didn't know the Clapton Heart was once the most dangerous pub in London, the beating heart of Murder Mile. Gentrification had now wiped that all away and left in its trail a bartender with flowy silver hair, glasses and gym-made muscles. A bartender who turned out to be Brazilian and took Mauricio's breath away.