5

‘Traffic lights change, conversations change; same place, different rhythms.’

Each recordable, observable; each evading swipes at systematic order, the coordinates on larger social maps.

. . .Bracketed off from my surroundings, I face its myriad rhythms; striving for coherence, a whole, to contain, preserve what evaporates, resumes before me.

From this vantage point I yearn to drape a beautiful and intricately woven blanket over all the messy pieces. To gather, on the basis of observation and extrapolation, the collisions of chance, necessity, and of dreams; to transcribe the purposeful poetry of everyday life and plot the well trodden paths through the structure of the dense urban fabric. But each line, each sentence that I write, chasing the convolutions of those protagonists are only those that I can pin down, and they expose my findings to a rationality whose efforts of acquisition will always be too little too late, laboured afterthoughts, pale simplifications of their true objects. . .

 

Journal entry – November 17th, Olinda

I take a day trip to Itamaraca, and on the return journey I notice a cemetery on a hill. All the little tombs like buildings made it look as though it was a kind of mini-town up there, but scaled down and much closer than it looked. But the real difference was not that they weren’t actually houses, it was more how well painted and finished they all were compared to the houses of the real town nearby. Why should these people only when departed, be housed in such refinement, when while living, remain condemned to rough hewn redbrick shacks?