Rio de Janeiro 19/04/16

Driving down Avenida Brasil under a heavy grey sky at about 60 km/h sometimes 80km/h but never at 90km per hour because the speed limit is 90 and I wouldn’t risk getting a ticket but also because the traffic doesn’t allow me; there are cars and trucks old and new since the government reduced the taxes on new purchased vehicles because that’s how they think they could solve the economy by encouraging people to keep buying stuff expensive stuff that they think they need but they are actually forced to think they need them without occurring to them (the government) that the very economic system they are trying to keep up with is the very economic system that is screwing up the lives of 98% of the world’s population, some people would say even 99% of the people in the planet. This highway that surrounds the city of Rio is probably the ugliest landscape there is in the world (which is under a certain economic system that screws up people’s lives bla bla bla).  I’m listening to the radio kinda paying attention kinda don’t, it’s more like a soundscape to the drive and Villa Lobos’ Amazonas – Bailado indígena brasileiro that he wrote in 1917-19 starts playing.

Suddenly it seems like all the vehicles were static watching the landscape fly by. It lasts a few seconds. While in this trance it occurs to me that all of us and all the objects, carnality, the cruelty of colonization, Latin American literature, anthropofagy, Bahia, inflation, sense-perception, ceviche with Pisco Sour, Molly Bloom, the USA military economy, Avenida Brasil, the 3% growth rate per year, History, histories, the experimental exercise of freedom, Gibraltar’s point, deadlines, dead ends and endless reopening have lasted that split of a second where I could listen to the whole Villa Lobos’ piano piece for ever.

Oslo 21/01/11

Despite the cold, I’m standing on the roof of the opera house just before the sun set. The “flat iceberg” with elongated white lines sits on the fjord with an astounding view of the sea and of the city. It’s twilight zone: everything seems magical, blessed by the reddish, bluish hues that the snow reflects back in green. I notice there is this thing in the water I can’t really make out what it is. I walk down the slope towards it. On a closer look, I see an animal skin lying on the edge just where this thing is swimming towards; a huge, fat, grey-now-dark-blue, dirty skin. A woman comes out of the freezing water, dresses her naked body with this skin and swims back into the ocean as a seal.

La Habana 05/05/15

I’m uncomfortable with the limited options for adjectives in the language I write in and in the language I speak. They are different. And they are different from the one I am writing in now.  I don’t master either. Despite that, if I use “precarious”, I fear being unethical because I am observing this landscape, this socialscape from a pretty privileged point of view: my hotel is crappy, but is liveable; I’m a tourist with access to restaurants, they’re not great, but there are options to choose from. The hassling is unbearable but I can put on my headphones and pretend it’s not about my skin. I don’t know what “precarious” means anymore by being here…if I use “sad” I fear failing my history class…if I use “beautiful” I’m lying…if I use “ugly” I’m lying too…if I use “interesting” I fear being cynical…When I see the entire Habana Vieja undergoing renovations I can’t say “promising” because I am not a foreign investor buying state property and foreseeing a golden oasis for the capital market in the coming years. I just won’t say anything. Or write.

London 09/08/11

(walk down Portobello Road to the sound of reggae with headphones)

Meu boi bonito,

Boi alegria,

Dá um adeus

Pra toda família!

Ôh…é bumba,

Folga meu boi!

            Ôh…é bumba,

Folga meu boi!

..The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in

Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin

Engines stop running, but I have no fear

‘Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river

London sketch

Istanbul 21/09/15

Bosphorous: a body of water that splits Europe and Asia inside the city. I heard that at a specific spot in the water and at a specific time – it happens once every 78 years - one is able to see the sun and the moon side by side, night and day as the same; it’s a place that gravity feels different and if you were to brush the air with your fingers there would be as a result this emerald green crystal rain falling on your shoulders, which shouldn’t touch the water otherwise the earth would fall off its axis and the universe would end. Old people say that. I’ve never seen it.

Toronto 17/07/09

I went for a smoke in the backyard of the place I was staying in quite late at night. It was pretty agreeable despite the -8 degree weather. Suddenly, I saw a white beam of light shoot out in the sky and thought “these outdoor events are going crazy with their lighting design”. But then another yellowish beam shot across and above it, and another green, blue, purple… at this amazingly high speed. I stepped out even more to get a clearer view of the sky and there it was: the Northern Lights. It seems that it is extremely rare for such a phenomenon to happen in this latitude. Some weird confluence of temperature and humidity levels made it happen…The native peoples believe that a child born under the Northern Lights is cursed for life. No one can take that scale, I suppose. It crushes the human bones and turn them into exoskeleton… I started to wonder if I were the only person seeing it. I saw the Northern Lights in my pajamas but my narcissistic ego remained intact.

The Vatican 06/06/06

I took a train from Venice - where I was working - to Rome, ended up in a party. Today – a bit hung over – I managed to see a mess delivered by the Pope on Saint Peter’s square. After that, I spent about six hours going through the Vatican Museum. It is indeed a quite heavenly experience going through the whole trajectory and arriving at the Sistine Chapel. What a grand narrative. The narrative, I would say, which the West has been trying to emulate for about 500 years, especially Hollywood. Nudity, cruelty, violence, closure. Impressive. My friends in the party the night before told me to watch for young lads hanging out at the exit of the museum throwing pick-up lines at you because locals do know that one leaves the Vatican particularly charged.

São Paulo 23/09/13

Reading Group discussion in the aftermath of the street riots of June 2013. Notes:

As if we could ignore dichotomies and not think in terms of US/THEM, HERE/THERE, IN/OUT. Affection perhaps could disengage dichotomies and bring contradiction. Contradiction brings malleability to discourse, which, by definition, stands on shaky grounds prone to earthquakes. In contradiction there’s “ours”: hours reading and talking and being together; babies are born. From late capitalism and lack of sleep to the explosion of the five senses into communism (Marx); from perspectivism to Macunaíma, Casa Grande Senzala, ideologies and symptoms. Sunglasses and transluciferation. A contradiction: the original as the translated version of its own translation.

Reykjavik 31/12/13

In the tub with Walter Benjamin, Haroldo de Campos, Gayatri Spivak and Paul Beatriz Preciado.