“Andre Gide dizia que nessa vida, o diabo é que, dos cem caminhos a gente tem que escolher um, e ficar com a nostalgia dos outros noventa e nove.” “Andre Gide said that in this life, the hell of it is that we must choose one, from the one hundred ways, and we stay with the nostalgia of all the other ninety-nine ones.” Brazilian poet Affonso Romano de Sant’anna I found the quote and the handwritten story in a small notebook. Nostalgia hit hard but did not stay for long... long enough though for tears... then the notion that what is not told, nor said is what remains.
Diamantina, six in the morning of March 30, 2006 The mountains and the stones. Uneasily perched on the concrete ledge, by my hotel window, in the Tijuco hotel that Niemeyer built in ultra-modern, in this colonial city of diamonds. The perfect square shadows aligned with the perfect curved lines of this baroque town.
It was in another hotel, identical to this one, in another colonial town, where I had sex, had? Exactly when I turned eighteen. Sex as entire sex, the de-virginating kind. Same as the entire room I asked Santa Claus when I was seven… in the lullaby, dear Santa this Christmas I want an entire room, an entire living room, an entire kitchen, an entire tea service… I was precocious and believed at seven, that I wanted an entire something, after all. When I was eight I flunked piano school because the teacher informed my mother I could not make sense of fractions... At fifty-seven, I still cannot make sense of fractions, as they are taught, and I still want entires. There are not many displayed, not many more. Only glimpses and deeply felt imaginations, dreams that do not wish to quit... One by one, I watch them wake up, a cough, a noisy scooter, the church bell rings four times, the sun not yet out from behind the blue mountains, the scent of tapioca cheese puffs, one more tray already in the oven, in the hotel kitchen, directly under my room. The gas lit streetlights muted, as the people dressed in uniforms go by, and walk on to work, the clerks to sales, to the stores that sell paperclips for words and numbers, sewing notions, silk paper, string and glue for kites… the most beautiful girls to school, or they are passing by on the way to the factory that opens with a whistle and a puff of smoke from the brick stack, down by the valley. An early stop for church and morning prayer, long black shiny hair now covered and protected by black lace veil…
Seven identical windows, all of them divided equally into six rectangles painted respectively in green and in beige, with frames in white eggshell. Another streetlamp turns off. A very old looking lady opens the door, turns the key on to the large black padlock and cracks the iron gate open, with some difficulty. Newly painted
glimpse of a veranda and a grape vine a white column a vase with white roses a small roof in orange inside a fountain? a tiled Portuguese floor discolored rose and beige
Two windows painted brown with twelve smokey glass panes, nine of them in dark green and three in the same color as the glass another wooden door. The Dona Senhora closes the window with some difficulty A leather suitcase spills open on the sidewalk construction debris bits of cement and brick overflowing a leather suitcase waits for some garbage man. It’s been two days now at the Rua Macau do Meio 234 and the suitcase is still here.
Musical town of serenades and weekly concerts with wind driven instruments played from all the colonial balconies and iron ore verandas, the maestro down by the plaza conducting the ones above and the ones down below, smack in the center, on main street. A town of sandstone and of precious stones, emeralds, crystals and diamonds, all for extraction.
Then the tin tin tin tin of tiny music distracts us lures us up the winding streets where a suspended bridge unites two colonial houses Tentative tiny fingers playing dao dao dao dao tchin tchin tchin tchin a pause and tiny voices trying to understand what is best to play as the choice for the next note to be played Tiny art and a tiny piano made out of tiny fingers…
Step by tentative step we wonder inside invading the space to find the twins at the piano, black hair braided tied with red lace, early morning lesson at the musical academy and the Blue Danube in this town of diamonds.
Enchantment of love in nostalgia not ever forgotten, the entire?
From where else then, we begin?... Is it really what is not told, nor said or done what remains? Or is it what is said that then is ever so slightly changed?
Such an interesting piece, Erica, with the interweaving of poetry and prose. And there's that word again -- the one in the chant meant to ask the ants to leave: tchin tchin tchin tchin. The piano tutorial video made my eyes cross a little. I would have to spend time with that - probably more than I spent on fractions. Neither makes sense to me!
These lovely photos of this time in your journey. Beautiful!
Beautiful! I love the story and the setting.