My hand, wrist (including the watch I bought in Quito) and legs

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My hand, wrist (including the watch I bought in Quito) and legs

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Words: Across the wire, book cover

Book cover for a collection of verses produced by residents of Cyndi Taylor Krier Correctional Juvenile Treatment Center, Texas, which uses a photo of mine. I didn`t do the graphics.

The Center aims: "To promote the rehabilitation and well-being of offenders and their families by redirecting behavior with an emphasis placed on individual responsibility and the protection and safety of the community".

I wish them every success with this publication and in their work.

Pelotas: a celebration in photos

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Pelotas is a fine place to spend a few days if you love architecture, specifically of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The place is in a reasonable state, with some buildings well resored. There is some of the usual Brazillian grafitti and negligence, but it isn't too bad, and it feels generally safe to wander about. The splendid Guarani Theatre (above) has fine sculptures.

The city is founded round a central square and grids deriving from it, on a sight slope.

 

The building of most obvious interest to foreigners, because of its unusualness for Brasil is the Anglican Church, (pictured above) one of three I saw in the Pelotas and Rio Grande and just over100 years old, and recently, rather nicely restored.  The custodian is very pleasant about showing one around. 

 

The central square contains a fountain and a monuments, including this relief celebrating Garribaldi, and an old fellow selling sweets. (below).

There is a rather grand central market featuring this unusual clock tower:

 

The city contains a large number of residential buildings, some in pretentious- or glorious -19th centrury eclectic styles, others are more modest but similarly containing charming details, art noveau or deco, or various combinations thereof:

 

 

 

 

Charming old paving tiles:

I stayed at the abominable Rex Hotel, which is very centrally located, dilapidated, run by sour-faced hags and a fine place for mosquito-hunting, if that is your bag.

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Well, that is a selection of pictures for you: there are many other buildings both modest and grand that I haven't shown.

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The moon

Dedicated to Larissa, nightwalker

Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song

After great cathedral gong;

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains

All that man is,

All mere complexities,

The fury and the mire of human veins

Y. B. Yeats, from Byzantium

Windows

Light on the curtains: three photos

Seeds

A sort of tribute to Victorian photography.

Eight recent photos from Itacorubi, Florianópolis

Next, I shall try to get photos of some of the people round here.

Flowerstalk

The stalk is about an inch long. I found it near the bus stop.

That lime green colour is charming. I should like to have a room one day large enough to allow such a bright shade without it becoming overpowering.

Some say the British are afraid of colour but it isn't true. They often use very strong colours to decorate rooms.

The contents of a box 2; Ten paper clips

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The contents of a box 2

The photo above contains, from top left, clockwise:

1. Liquorice box, top and base (Paris, 2002)
2. Safety pin (probably British, c. 2000)
3. Orange plastic covered paper clip (probably British, c. 2000)
4. Screw eye (probably British, c. 2000)
5. Saftey pin (probably British, c. 2000)
6. Safety pin (probably British, c. 2000)
7. Two Clip-frame clips (London, 2003)

Ten paper clips

The items "speak" more loudly when placed beside other similar items.

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Buenos Aires: some photos, some thoughts.

Perhaps it was the time of year -the Christmas week always being an odd time to visit places- but I found Buenos Aires a strangely unenjoyable place.

Architecturally, it's a grid plan, and the grid is pursued with a heartlessness- extending relentlessly for miles- in a way that I've only seen before in mid-western US cities: the effect on the walker is quite alarmingly tedious. The city turns away from the seafront, moreover, and is fairly flat so one feels bored, as if stuck in the middle of the sort of huge, worthy, but dull nineteenth century "classic" novel used to torture sixth form pupils in the better schools everywhere.



There is a good lot of grand but somehow joyless 19th century and equally doctrinaire modernist architecture. I felt at times, indeed, that the place was a composite of the dullest parts of Barcelona, New York or Paris. As so often is the case with 19th century building, the individual details (carvings, scrolls, ironwork, sculptures) detail are better than the sum of the parts- hence, Buenos Aires' cemetery cities are more delightful than the streets surrounding them (Recoleta comparing well to the best of the London seven, but less happily to leafier , more generously spaced Pere Lachaise, Paris). *



I visited a modern art museum, and although there was a permanent collection of Latin American pre-war modernism- Botero, Kahlo, Cavalcanti- the main draw of the place, supposedly, was a show of late Warhol, and this seems to confirm the lack of individuality of Buenos Aires - for it is as if every city must have a large white museum of modern art and in it a Warhol collection, an obligatory genuflection to that least lovable US artist.

Also bizarre, to me, were glimpses of Argentineans dressing with hilarious accuracy in English styles (or more precisely, given that they were generally Ralph Lauren clothes, American interpretations of them). And it was not just the clothing, but the way women had a horsey masculinity, and the men a cultivated insouciance (with jackets deliberately crumpled, I’m sure) that was so amazingly English: indeed so uncannily did their faces resemble faces I'd seen in Kensington or Fulham that I had to go up close to listen to confirm that they were indeed Argentineans- they even had the same craggy, excentric faces of the British patrician classes. I saw such types crossing on the ferry and in Palermo, very self-satisfied and grumpy looking.



In other aspects, the place has a gloomy air- the closed shops (including Harrods!), the old, battered cars, and grilled meat meat meat- that least imaginative of diets- everywhere (it convincing me of the value of vegetarianism for at least it inspires the imagination, and reinforces the truism that good cuisine comes not from an abundance of available good natural produce, but the opposite- its scarcity- so that cooks are forced to think imaginatively about how to make the few available things as tasty as possible).

The decline was particularly apparent around La Boca, where women walk up and down the filthy streets with their unwashed brats past smashed cars and bunches of shirtless men playing loud ugly music; youths shout at strangers and flinging fireworks at the hapless tourists who are effectively confined to a few metres of "tango heritage" restaurants. There is some wonderful graffiti among all this, however.



I regret to be so negative about Buenos Aires- I know that Portenos have not had an easy last half-century- and I'd emphasize how pleasant they were to deal with.

*The comparasion of cemeteries deserves a blog to itself- if readers know of one, please let me know.

Eden

Remnants

The rate of demolition in this area of Florianopolis is so rapid that soon all the original buildings will have gone and there will only be the sort of faceless condominiums you can see being constructed in the distance in both these images.

I ought, then, to hurry and record more of these old houses. They aren't of first grade architectural quality, but they do have personality.

Being a foreigner here makes me feel impotant to do anything to stop this process of destruction.

A Broken Votive Head

The wax has a leathery texture; it feels almost greasy, slightly warm. It cannot be repaired.

The head was bought in Rio in an old baroque church in the centre. It is a votive head: Ironical that now it is the head itself that needs a cure. It was bought along with a votive baby, a hand and a man’s head. The hand and the man’s head too have suffered irreparable fractures.

If we see art as there to sustain forever what in nature decays then the image of a broken sculpture is more shocking perhaps than that of a real wound.

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I recall here a book: “Warszawa 1945”, a catalogue of images showing the German destruction of Warsaw during the war. The effect of this systematic vandalism seems somehow more alarming than images of dead people: even buildings are mortal! Likewise, in the UK, the destruction of the country house- excellently catalogued here - http://lh.matthewbeckett.com/index.html - is painful.