After a Long Day

 

After a long, very hot day
When quiet silences install and
The world seems to fade away
Pushed by shadows that fall
Softly delaying crafted gestures

 

Draw the curtains
Turn on the lights

 

In the dark everything makes sense
Love, waiting, past and

                                    present

Colour Me…

 

The importance of colours in the process of acquiring is usually imperceptible. Though, I had fully conscience of it while I was organizing the armoire where I keep around twenty straw summer baskets and the drawer where boys’ ties sleep for most of the year. Owing to climate and lifestyle, it can be months without one seeing day or night-light. I have to say that ties beat baskets in number and colourfulness. Largely.

 

During this colour awareness period I discovered a sort of quiz in an old magazine under the title: What is your true colour? I never had wondered about my true colour, but I automatically guessed it could be green. In reality, I love blue and black (Don’t we all?), but my safe, comfort colours include green or red (meaning happy mood) and brown or black (usually suiting a more serious me).

 

I followed the steps to find my true colour and got a surprise. It’s really easy: write down your date of birth and add numbers together treating each as a single digit until you arrive at a number between 1 and 9, the same process to discover your “lucky number”.

 

Basically, if you are:

 

9

You are gold, approachable, talented, perfectionist and an expert in hiding your true emotions…

 

7

Your colour is violet and you are creative, drawn to feel that you don’t fit – especially when your creativity is suppressed. (Diver Andy)

 

6

Indigo is deep, mysterious, optimistic and equipped with a finely tuned sixth sense.

 

5

Blue means maternal, caring, imaginative, stubborn and communicative.

 

4

If you are green, you like company but need to escape when feeling trapped. You believe in order and like to plan ahead. You cling to emotions and possessions. (Diver Ti)

 

3

Yellow is fun, acidly witty and meticulous. A reader and potential writer or journalist.

 

2

Orange people are sociable and relaxed, although you know when to take things seriously and people can find you difficult to deal with. When you feel down, food becomes your emotional crutch. (Diver Paul and Chanda)

 

1

Like your colour red, you are passionate and want to experience everything new, but have a relatively short attention span. You are direct and honest. Bottling up your emotions leaves you prone to illness. (Diver JP)

 

8

Finally, my number and colour: rose. Besides the surprise of being sort of pink, I wasn’t surprised at all with my main trace being “the perfect hostess”. But what really impressed me was the following passage: “Rose people often move away from where they were born and, although they may go back to visit, never live there again. In fact, you believe everyone is connected on same level. You prefer to let others take the limelight, even when it really belongs to you…”

 

That’s it about my true colour. I also liked (suspecting that it’s not far from the truth) the duality of changing from patient and understanding to “erupt like a volcano”. But really impressive is the distance thing. If I tell that I was born in a place where I stayed for about one month and left to never return, even if I was pretty close for a couple of occasions, you might understand why I picked this subject. So, if you have to, colour me… rose.

Just Weekly

 

I started writing this blog on a daily basis. In 2007 I changed to four a week posts and that’s how it has been until now. At this stage I feel like I can say whatever I feel like saying with just a weekly post, starting today.

 

Writing weekly brings a few advantages to me, namely time to organize or complete things I’ve been postponing. It also avoids stopping for good and losing what I learned in terms of writing.

 

Becoming more synthetic is going to be a challenge and I’ll have to select subjects with more care. Such challenges give me a sort of positive excitement and that feels good.

 

Besides this weekly posts, I intend to write when I have a genuine tale from the sea to tell, in an attempt to be truthful to my initial purposes.

Sunglasses Urgently Needed

 

Men like to stare. It’s in their nature. I can’t find a better explanation. When a discreet look turns into staring, politeness goes on holidays and an awkward situation is created.

 

I think men have two staring processes: 1) The quick general check up. 2) The aimed look.

 

Days ago I was caught by surprise while walking my dogs. A man coming from the opposite direction frontally looked into my eyes. I think I never had the experience of having a completely strange looking deep into my eyes and that upset me.

 

At the same time, I was surprised to feel so exposed until I realized that I had forgotten my sunglasses. I never leave the house without them, mainly to protect me from dust. Wearing contact lenses turns eyes sensitive to dust and light.

 

I never thought about other kind of exterior aggressions. I never thought of wearing sunglasses to protect me from eye to eye contacts, but now I think I found another good reason for not forgetting them in the future.

Mornings Without Sun

 

 

 

 

 

Mornings are instants
Forever lost, forever written

 

Mornings are words
Never asked, never told

 

 

                   Eyes diluted in the mist

Writing Pause

 

I’ve been writing a book. I am sure that I’ll finish it and maybe write some more, but I felt like stopping for a while. The reason making me stop is puzzlement. I don’t know if writer puzzlement exists, but I am sure simple human puzzlement is common.

 

I was writing under the impression that a polluted and smelly river was a bad thing from any possible point of view. I needed information, so I started to read a local blog and discovered a few disturbing aspects: 1) Local people don’t seem to bother that much. 2) They get offended if a stranger points at the river condition and the fetid stench, being stranger any person who doesn’t live there. It’s like they are saying: “If you don’t smell it, you are not allowed to touch the subject.”

 

As a person and as someone trying to write, I’ve just discovered that my truth never is absolute. I am sure this puzzlement is a learning process that will change the way I write and maybe the way I live. For now, I absolutely need this assessment pause.

About Being Yellow and Red

 

 

 Round and round it goes

      Yellow that’s how it is

 

The centre explodes in red

The colour exists to please

 

       It gives, gently it gives

     Again, again and again

 

          Fragility in the wind

          Flower until the end

 

                                   It can seem pointlessly happy            But when closed for the night

                                         It can seem utterly boring            Tomorrow is a different story

 

 

Photographer Eyes

 

Shortly after we started a newsletter with a small space to photographers and their stories, I noticed that an important newspaper had the same idea. Well, it’s not a new thing and, besides, we all imitate someone else’s these days.

 

A couple of weeks ago they published an amazing picture. The moment I saw it I understood what a photographer really is: a person who wants other people to see things the way he sees them. I knew it because I recognized the need to make people look through my own eyes. It’s a familiar feeling.

 

That doesn’t mean I am a photographer. To be a photographer requires a few skills I don’t have, at least for now. Anyway, that extraordinary picture wasn’t very different from the best picture I would have taken if the person driving the car where I was had just stopped when I asked.

 

This would be my best picture ever: I was in a car leaving the Kruger Park, so I had a camera with me. The weather was very dry and hot. I saw the man from a reasonable distance, distance enough to stop and shoot if I was heard. That man was sitting on a tiny metal bar part of the sugar cane irrigation system, high above the ground, rubbing soap on his half naked body as if he was comfortably showering at home.

 

A good picture results from the combination of opportunity, eyes, camera and skills. That particular day I learned that sometimes a photographer also needs the support and good will of other people.

 

                                                                                                     In memoriam Ricardo Rangel.

These Silent Waters

Saying Without Words

 

 

Dizer Sem Palavras

 

Foram tantas as noites
Em que te disse adeus
Sem quaisquer palavras

 

Foram tantas as vezes

Em que disseste bom-dia
Sem ter de ser dito

 

E hoje que sei o valor

Do que não pode ser comprado ou vendido
Talvez amar faça mais sentido.