its easy to play the Winn way.

 …
tell that to John Coltrane.

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"They knew too much magic. We sold them because they made too much trouble. "
Dahomean village elders, explaining to an anthropologist why ancestors had sold members of their family into slavery.

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"History is a form of sentimentality. Like the content of television shows, television is abstract. Its a joke. History is a joke. Television and history are the centres of nothing. They are auras, like hair, available for styling 24 hours a day."
Richard Hell, from the Void.
…………………
tell that to Benazir Bhutto.

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Nabokov, to whom you could tell anything –
Bertini s clothes and sculptures, made, recognisably, out of condoms, like a particularly memorable Pop Art Marilyn.
Irina. The orange, the Ukrainain, Tolstoi would have a field day, ‘Talamh’, a book by a 17 year old boy named Preto, or black, in Portuguese, no right or wrong – 

on a sidenote, it is endearing that 2 prominent Portuguese authors have the simplest of names – Pessoa, person; or Coelho, rabbit.

The kitten !! saved from abandonment on the mean Porto streets, who we have named Captain Awesome Jeebus The Great The First The Noise Porto Geezer (Shakira)

Allende. Zola.the puppeteer with the violinist, the strings of the violin the strings of the puppet, do you play or do you dance?
do you sit up and take notice?
stop that now and pay attention.

i wonder what the guy who sits next to me on the terrasa writes, he is too white, a wealthy life out of the sun, but then things are not so bronzed and pale, union, onion, Punk Unity, one love two tone, or sexual union between consenting adults, wax crayons, childrens pictures, idiocracy

the gulls flying over the Ribeira looked amazing tonight, their white underbellies lit up by the floodlights, and then it looked like a flock of blacker birds danced with them, broke ranks, touched wing – but it was still just the gulls, circling out of the light –
this view was tremendous and kept me rooted on the spot for a long time but i have not yet found the words to do it justice – you can write a poem about it and tell me how you did it – 

At Miragaia – there are bugs everywhere I want to lie down – evil weevils, yuk – 
At Miragaia – I start thinking i m better off alone again… but I make myself stop and take a second to re-realise that people are capable of caring….

SATURDAY 16th JUNE.

i slept on the beach last night, in the rain. i got wet. i dried off in the heat of noon but i still got a touch of the sun on my face. my legs were like faulty wiring today. my stomach still feels like its just one big ball of dough after the pizza night the other night. met the others on the Ribeira, no Om, disappeared, spent the afternoon trying to get something to smoke, young lass who brought us on the metro to Combatentes, unsuccessful mission. 
making craft from junk, cutting birds out of fabric and stuffing them, the polished hay that looked like bronze wire, i must ask Claira to show me who to make the notebook covers with ribbon, buying sketchign pencils, wallets from tetrapak, origami everything, and where to sleep tonight? we ve used miragaia too much and its too smelly – 
but we go there anyway, in the absence of better ideas, and i sleep deep before morning –

SUNDAY 17th JUNE.

Sunday brunch – coffee and pastry in a little caff nearby – then i d like to learn a new skill – do some juggling – write a  piece of street theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, about the prejudice we all experience, living life the way that we do – teach someone a song on tin whistle, apply guitar – make sense of it all – email Red – cycle along the coastline with the wind in my hair –
 supermakret queue theatre – 
the Plough, the Ladle, the Great Bear, the Running Fox, Orion s beltloop –
the things we do when travelling, because of lack of water, of shelter, bathrooms, the things we do when people are looking – when people are always looking – 
the lady in pink with the black hat, who whistled at me through her teeth, suggestive, like a man – 

we find Om, he has hurt his foot badly and cannot walk but it is probably a sprain and not a break – still it is swollen badly – he borrows my bicycle to wheel back to Alegria – the others go inside – but i cant handle any more indoors – so i stay outside the door, in the praça – repair a few things on my bike but do not manage to fix the juggling club – give the kids 1.8 trillion euro – then run, from the increasing rain, into the supermarket – 
where to be, at sunset, you know i like the way the world is, after the rain, the Glistening – but its a pain when all the seats are wet and you  just want to sit down – my bicycle saddle is my seat – 
the light is leaching from the buildings – the darkness seeping in from the sides – the plug of the sun, pulled – 

i am a mirror no i am a mirror
you dont understand what a mirror does?
it confronts you with reality –