A new day!

07.12.07

It is all so seamless - so familiar - I just stared down the hallway at Dona Marcia´s (where our group stayed last year), and it is as if I´d been waking up to stare at the same spot the last 353 days. I am in awe, and yet the moments when I am seeing something again for the first time fade almost as soon as they begin - fleeting pangs of memory replaced by the real thing. Some of it, I know, is because Meghan (Axis Mundi´s director) and I are walking and talking - seeing O Largo de Pelhourinho under bluish street lights I retraced a version of my scattered and many steps up that hill and, again, my smile must have looked like a veil to great secrets.

A bit in contrast, at times my memory has reconstructed itself from so many happy moments that keep popping up (like a carnival shoot-em-out game) until I am walking in a corridor of all the festas and shows and lazy nights we had ever experienced.

I´m writing with all the sounds that belong to Dona Marcia´s street - Rua Direita do Santo Antônio (#135, I think) - there is no lull, just life.

And there, I heard him (was waiting for him) - "Bras Gas....Bras Gas" - a voice I could pick amongst voices, a deep baritone laced with copper bells. He is the propane deliveryman, and he is like clockwork every morning.

... And Naoul is here. He doesn´t live with Dona Marcia now, but Meghan says he visits at night and I so look forward to seeing him.