Picos Gemeos

I set myself up in the reception area this morning, determined to get through all my pending financial work (updating an Excel sheet with all our expenses) as well as Livejournal reading.

A little before lunch time, my MacBook laptop crashed. Attempts to reboot on the safe mode failed. The green, pixelated screen, according to Mac forums perused via my iPhone, inform that I probably lost my graphs board.

Fuck.

The nearest Mac technician is 3 hours away in São Paulo.

During Bashō’s lifetime, Japan's Edo period (17^th century), haikus were sometimes given as a thank you gift to those who hosted you.

Today, we give a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, or help wash the dishes. Or we unintentionally leave behind cat fleas.

When will I see my friends again? When will I stay with Lila or Bia in São Paulo, when will I sit in a London park with a box of fish and chips on my lap, a can of cool, wet lager propped against my leg?

When will I hand them those haikus?

I wake up at 6.30am and drink some water while still in bed. I then meditate for 20 minutes before preparing breakfast for my mother and I.

During mornings I work on a translation project with a friend in São Paulo – I translate psychiatric case studies from English to Portuguese which she then revises. Goes on until lunchtime.

After a short nap, I tackle any housework: dirty laundry and untidy rooms. If I have energy, I go for a run or practice Ashtanga yoga.

After an evening shower and a light meal, I settle down with Netflix and the cats.

My father and his wife have decided to leave the UK. They are both appalled by the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. My dad will fly to Brasil this week and his wife will travel to China and stay with her mother.

My brother needs to pick up my dad at São Paulo’s International Airport and then remain in isolation for 7 days. We don’t want to take any risks of bringing the virus to my mom or the rest of us.

Then it’s a matter of sitting tight and waiting to see how things unfold in the UK.

Coronavirus, Brexit, the Far Right, World War III, asteroids, artificial intelligence, the death of culture...

Meanwhile, here I am, in the moutains in the southern tip of the state of Minas Gerais in Brasil, staring at trees as the rain pours down. My kittens have spent the past five hours sleeping on my bed.

Tomorrow I shave my head and buy a return bus ticket to São Paulo for the weekend. A couple of weeks ago São Paulo was under water after a couple of very heavy days of rain.

May there be sunshine this weekend! May there be peace.

Currently reading the memoirs of two astonishing women.

One of them is Carolina Maria de Jesus, a paper picker from one of São Paulo’s favelas whose diary, Dumping Room, was discovered by a journalist and became a phenomenon in 1961 – turning her into the biggest Brazilian publishing sensation of her time.

The other is Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, which is also a publishing sensation if I’m not mistaken.

Both books about women who placed high value on education and achieved things beyond their imagination. Both books about women who constantly sought their own strength when faced with life’s challenges.

Bia’s flat in São Paulo has a floor-to-ceiling view of ugly skyscrapers and the Minhocão (Big Worm) – an elevated highway built in the late 60s that destroyed this part of the city. Nowadays, it’s closed for traffic on weekends and used by runners and cyclists.

I enjoy breakfasts with her while staring out of her window.

Late afternoon, we go for a walk in the Minhocão. I buy us some coconuts for the water and we briefly stop to watch a circle of lesbians playing samba.

Then we dance for a few hours at Desmanche, a brazilian music queer night.

Once a month I take a two-hour bus to São Paulo, to spend the weekend with friends. I arrive Friday morning and return Monday lunch time. I always return rejuvenated.

My friend Bia has kindly given me a copy of her flat’s key. I let myself in and relax until she returns from work. Sometimes we cook dinner; sometimes we go out.

Saturdays, we sit outside bars drinking beer and eating pasteis or we go to the cinema.

On Sundays, we go dancing at a queer club that plays Brazilian music. Last time, three boys asked me for a kiss.

Friday night in São Paulo, drinks and nibbles with friends at trendy restaurant Muquifo.

One of the beautiful waiters – a slim, curly brown haired man with nail varnish – walks past us. “He just eye fucked you,” laughs Vince.

He eye fucks me some more. I reciprocate with smiles.

“Are you going to leave your phone number?” Vince asks. “Let’s find some paper.”

I scratch my name and number on a napkin then fold it in four. The waiter smiles shyly when I gently touch his shoulder on the way out, say goodbye and hand him the napkin.

He never calls.

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.