the beetroot hair dye complex.

 i do have more to type up, from last month, i promise, but i dont have my notebook with me. honest.
so you ll have to labour with my memory to glean anything of interest from what i m about to write.

so theres 2 situations i must discuss with you.

1. it is a rainy day in the city, a rainy june day, the man who runs the bookstore is never bored, its true, but today he feels a certain restlesness in his bones, maybe his fingertips twitch a little over the keyboard as he researches books and places his orders. 
a girl comes in from the dampness, the flow of water down the street releases her from its current for long enough for her to swing her body through the bookshop door, she has been outside looking through the window earlier, fighting the flow, drooling at books, but the man at the counter could never know that. 

her passage around the shop is a dance, she wants to look at the english language books, not being able to read portuguese yet, but is scared to miss something on the other shelves that could prove interesting, and anyway, life after bookshop is only rain and the shelter of a tree that has kindly kept her dry for the past three hours, if not the bench that she wanted to sit on, there is no rush to run back to that.

the man who runs the bookstore does not know there is a bicycle locked up outside on which the girl has placed all her life, rolled up in colourful plastic bags and silk, a red sleeping mat, a all-weather sleeping bag, juggling clubs, that she keeps looking out the door to check on; he thinks she is about to leave each time, and is only relieved each time she comes back.

they get to talking; she wants a book in the window, she asks in abysmal portuguese, he replies in english, he has been waiting forever to speak english to her, he does not know why she should even attempt such dire portuguese. and together they go to the window to remove a Saramago novel from its plastic perch. a good choice: The History of the Siege of Lisbon. no-one mentions Pessoa.
she pays and leaves; he sighs, it is nearly closing time.

later, he is running to the supermarket, to grab some milk, something small, domestic. he is not so much thinking about Lisbon as he is about the experience of being under siege, history may be largely illusory if it is not allowed to have its human element. he sees the girl digging in the rubbish bin outside the shop for food. and understands: she has spent her last bit of money on a book and will go hungry if she cannot fish something out of the bin.

the man who runs the bookstore approves: it is good that people still have their priorities.

2. i am sitting under the bridge, the main bridge in Porto that spans the Douro and connects the Ribeira of the north bank with Vila Nova da Gaia on the southside. midday: the sun is warm. i sit only centimetres above the reach of the waves, and when the numerous boats go by the water teases me and threatens to soak my hems, but it is bluffing, and i am still dry.

i take my guitar out of its case, start some blues, a three chord simplicity. there is a splash in the water in front of me, not a particularly big one, but something must have fell from the bridge. unperturbed, i play on.
its only when the crowd begins to congregate that i realise that there is a bigger picture to the unassuming splash: someone has jumped from the bridge, and they have not resurfaced.
and i played on.

one day, two days later, i m still thinking about this. in the morning i leave the flat where i am staying and go for a wander round the city. somehow i end up on the Ribeira with a large bottle of port wine. i open the bottle, pour the first glass into the water below me, an offering to the spirits, a drink with the departed, a conversation in another world –

i m sorry i continued playing guitar after you went under the water. but mate, your splash was so small, i never would have imagined that there was the weight of a human being behind it.
life is heavy. the fall towards the next stage can be a light one.
with an entry into the water like that, a splash so small, you should have been a professional diver.
i could not be comforted in real life, a drink after death will not solve everything.
no. 
 

tomorrow i leave Porto for a while, finally, i go south along the coast to find a sheltered cove for a few days. the boys will stay in Porto, that is another story, Om has broken his foot and cannot go anywhere, we have been in Porto now a month looking after him, he is a terrible patient, tempermental and demanding, still, this is where i choose to be.

and C is pregnant. nearly 2 months now. she has gone home to her parents in Alicante where she has work for a month. Oz is nervous and happy. they re dealing with it well, although she wants to go back to London, but Oz knows that, in London, the old ways are dangerous and drug-addled for him, and wants to bring up the baby somewhere else. but the flat is in London, rent-free, they can stay there comfortably until they have worked out the next part of the mission. 

i still havent solved much of the puzzle inside me. spent most of yesterday trying to dye my hair with beetroot. left it in for 2 hours and it came out as a pale tint. am considering heading to the Algarve to busk and make money from the tourists, we will see what happens.

Brightest, from Portugal, from the road, from the back of a bicycle, from the promise of the south of France, from the girl who fits inside a girl, from the First Breath to the Last Breath –