Yellow flower

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Yellow flower

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This is the first of a pair of flowers that was found just over by the highway.

It reminds one of the underwear worn by prostitutes in brothels in Westerns doesn`t it? Or perhaps seen in the Moulin Rouge?

Those extraordinarily baroque bloomers, stockings, bodices, petticoats and corsets, with ruffles in satin and silk, then lace.

 So many layers, ribbons clips, buttons to be undone. 

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Amore

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Amore

These sweets are better than the real thing- not so tart. There are black ones too, but I thought the red photographed better. 

I take a long time to chose the sweets which hamg in a row in a local shop. It sells a weird assortment of undesirable goods- ugly ceramics, hideous plastic flowers, readily destructible cookware. 

How they decided to sell sweets is beyond me. But there is a row of about twenty packets and although the shop has very narrow aisles and is tightly stacked with  the aforementioned rubbish and God knows what else, and I feel quite claustrophobic and irritable, I cannot help but take a good deal of time deciding what to chose.

I swing from one choice to another then  another then back again: licorice balls, or amores or banana candies or sweets in the form of eyeballs or teeth (yes teeth!)...

Paying in the shop taked an eternity because for a good many customers the function of shopping and specifically visiting this awful shop is mainly social and they try to engage the saleswoman  (who in fact isn't friendly in the least) in dialogue. For some reason it takes them ages to get their payment cards from their purses and put them in the machines and they must narrate each action in detail. It takes forever for them to discuss whether a bag is necessary, and a further eon to put their purchases in the bag.

Anyway, eventually I've paid and escaped from this vile shop, and though wearing my COVID mask, I'm too overwhelmed by relief and happiness to wait until I get home and, tearing a corner, of the plastic packet, I sneak one of the sweeties under my mask and into my mouth and dream.

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Getting lost: some notes: part 3

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Log

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9. Worst places for getting lost (not in order): Marrakesh, Venice, London, Tunis, Lecce and Istanbul. The souk in Aleppo deserves special mention.. You could go completely insane there. Flatness, high walls a lack of reference points, and an absence of straight roads are common factors.

Excessive sameness is confusing, as in the endless whiteness of Lecce or when I once tried to find a friend's  house in Wandsworth while only having a general notion of where it was, to wonder up and down God knows how many streets of 1930s semi-detached houses.  

But disharmony can be as confusing as sameness. The visual cacophony of Sao Paolo makes it utterly baffling, such that it can give you a headache, and is rarely alleviated by nature (usually  Brazil's aesthetic savior).  London is hard because there are so many streets which appear to be straight but which, in fact, bend so that you walk under the impression that you are, say, going north, but really are curving a constant but subtle northwest. This can drive you a bit crazy.

10. Grid plan. Yes it's easy, but there is that very strange thing where you get out of the metro and you walk a few blocks in the wrong direction...

10. Relief. But one is never lost forever. At least not in the city. In the woods, however, I did at moments feverishly imagine that I might be lost forever, my emaciated corpse discovered by dogs in in a bush only 20 metres from the path as the newspaper headline breathlessly exclaims. But to find the path, to become unlost,  is as mysterious for me at least as being lost, akin to picking the right key from a ring of keys and silly me....then! Hey presto the door opens. Relief is conditioned with amazement. 

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Getting lost: some notes: part 2

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Leaving a forest

Getting lost: some notes: part 2

6. When I ask for directions people are invariably very pleased to give them. Giving directions is a way of giving advice and this,of course, is an extremely popular human activity. I think it gives them tremendous pleasure to see how lost I am and thus confirm how they aren't lost at all and what fine people they are. They love how attentively I listen, how important their every word is. They love to detail exactly which junction one should turn left at (the one after the garage...) by which point I glaze over and start to become lost in the instructions themselves,  quickly confusing one corner, garage, set of traffic lights, corner shop, sharp bend, estate agent, big tree etc with another. Sometimes the direction giver is so overwhelmed by the desire to help that they offer a second option, or you could take the second left......and, needless to say, this is utterly disastrous.

 They also love to use you being lost as a vehicle for other conversation and find out where you are from. This seems very popular in Brazil and can be charming. 

7. There is that weird thing where certain cultures consider it shameful not to be able to help, and thus in response to where is the bus station will reply, straight on turn left, or a vague, but enthusiastically stated over there, all the while beaming at you, despite not having the least idea where your intended destination lies. And thus you find yourself wondering into some huge slum. I've heard this is common in the Far East but in Peru this happened to me, in Santa Cruz, twice. 

8. You can't miss it. A fatal expression

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Getting lost: some notes: part 1

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Spreading Tree

 

Although I have been to the woods many times I can still, bizzarely, get lost. I got lost about two months ago. I have very little instinct for direction. I can even get lost in Manhattan with its absurdly straightforward grid plan. I guess some of these things will become less familiar thanks to google maps.

Getting lost: some notes: part 1

1. There`s always this weird point when you realise I am lost. It comes as as a revelation, sometimes gradual (shouldn't we be there by now?) or sudden (isn't that the river?). Or that horribly perplexing Venetian experience: O God, we're back at the square!

2. There must be a moment just before where you are lost where you weren't lost. So are there a daze moments  where you are sleepwalking. 

3. Retrace your steps. This is extraordinarily depressing. It means accepting that you've wasted time and energy and there is moreover no easy way ahead, no short cut. Also it means seeing everything from the a 180 degree turn and this is, in itself, confusing.

4. Getting lost is much easier when you are in a place without a thing high above to refer to. Marrakesh is like this, there is no tower or hill and the network of tiny streets is quite extraordinary. In additional, all the buildings are painted a similar dirty peach colour.

5. Some say that men are too proud to ask for help when they get lost, and that women do not mind. Perhaps women don`t labour under the societal expectation that, as a gender they shouldn't get lost and therefore feel no shame in asking for help? Certainly, I dislike asking directions. Partly this is, indeed, pride, and the issue is exacerbated by the fact that I am hopeless at following instructions of any sort except possible food recipes. 

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Bouncing balls

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Bouncing balls

I suppose with the increased use of cards fewer of us leave the shop with change and consequently are far less likely to insert coins into these excellent machines to receive, from a metal, shuttered orifice,  our bouncing balls. 

This is a pity as these bouncing balls are superb. They are in a wide range of stunning colours and patterns: striped or marbleized or even weird faces or skulls. Most have a smooth surface, but others are lightly mottled.

 And they have the loveliest smell, a rubber-plastic chemical scent so divine that the first thing I do on getting mine is to hold it against my nostril and inhale. For those moments I feel utterly at peace with the universe.

And...they really do bounce extremely well, reaching phenomenal heights and then bouncing repeatedly with hysterical unpredictability over and over so you have to be careful about bouncing them outside the shop as, for sure, they will bounce onto the road and you`ll feel compelled to run after them, perhaps (alas!) into the bumper of an oncoming car.

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Vargem Grande, evening

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Vargem Grande, evening

There are some smallholdings and houses. Boggy fields with bits of rubbish strewn here and there. Soft hills in the background. 

There is a stables here. Two children rode past on bareback. They were laughing. The kids here seem to be jolly without that air of menace that British children sometime bring.

It's a pity the evenings aren't longer here, it's such a kind time of day.

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