FIRST LIGHT
In the mountains and rainforests of Teresopolis. A shouldered pack, up the hill and the thrill when tarmac road finds wooded trail. The dappled canopy and the instant impact of becoming part of a kingdom of old things, life unseen and leaf litter. The polite, trilling birdsong. Nature unlimited. Huge trees, ferns, bromeliads and a river running through it. The call of the Bellbird in a distant valley. The sharpness of the mind in the morning, how uncrowded by worry it is. How empty the trails were, how untouched was the earth.
AFTERNOON DELIGHT
Carnival nerves. The best possible time must be had at the world’s biggest party. Is there a bloco here? Is there a bloco there? The sweat drenching my eyes. I myself am raining. Everyone’s flesh shining. The fleeting coldness of the first sips of Brahma. The over-too-soon kisses from glittering strangers. Jesus, it is hot. Chasing the ultimate party, chasing youth. I can still do this. Just.
DUSK
Crossing on the public ferry from Rio to Niterói. Gliding on the smooth waters. Looking back at Rio and loving it and fearing it. A quiet apartment in a new neighbourhood. Walking to the plaza. An old plaza with a second-hand bookshop and big trees for shade, an old disused tram line. Vagrants and music, cheap beer. Smoking cigarettes with the sun on my face. Walking two minutes to a huge cinema and watching films with six, maybe seven other people. Feeling guilty that this ease was my life. Being conscious that I was and never could be Brazilian, but there might be a little home for me here in this corner, across the Guanabara bay.
MOONRISE
A beach near Rio de Janeiro and the sound of low moaning and chanting. Peering over the sides I glimpse the old world: a small Candomblé ceremony, perhaps ten adherents, have chosen a small patch of sand to chant their African Bantu and Yoruba rhythms, rhythms transported across the ocean by slaves and still relevant today. A circle of women in crinoline skirts, candlelight, swaying and then a central performer entering a trance centre-sand. No blue-screen from phones, no one filming. The sheer 19th centuryness of it all. Behind this the enormous modernist Niterói art centre looms like a beached UFO. These two sights cannot be from the same age, the same society. I was in a museum with exhibits of disconnected things, things that have no relevance to each other.
DARK NIGHT
Being robbed. The quick way they appeared from the shadows and ripped our shirts. How happy and smiling we were before. How nice the caipirinhas tasted, how well we played football in heavy sand on tired legs. Then their screaming and hollering and tearing at the bags like wild beasts, the contents strewn like entrails. The awful home-made gun that looked worse than a real one. The way they ran off in different directions, rabid and unorganised: a rabble, not a victorious army. What you would give to rewind and not be in that space, at that moment. To have my laptop again. To have a passport in a foreign country. But also the feeling of relying on friends and they relying on you in the aftermath. And the knowledge that it will be alright soon, it must be so.
faroverthewater. 
Leave a comment