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Published: November 17th 2007
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One capricious afternoon, while walking the streets of Lisbon I started “collecting” pictures of Portuguese shopkeepers and soon thereafter these inevitable 12 fictional impressions pervaded my mind. (Kindly note the intrinsic connection between each story the corresponding picture)
PORTUGUESE SHOPKEEPERS -
ONE DOZEN ESOTERIC SECRETS
Ivone Patrocinio Furtado
Ivone indulges in feeding poisoned breadcrumbs to city pigeon in the piazza, right outside Santo Antonio do Penedo church.
She only uses homemade bread, a wholesome multigrain with lots of caraway seeds, she learned to bake from an old family recipe.
Vasco Teixeira Coutinho
In early teen-hood, Vasco received bi-weekly piano lessons, in the placid afternoons of his summer vacations, while most of the locals in the small coastal town where napping.
During these harmonic hours, his attention was diverted, rhythmically, between the piano keys and the white starchy lace of his voluptuous tutor's bra - lightly visible in the openings between the stretched buttons of her black dress.
Often now a day, on his walk home after his shop-closing time, he taps the same melodies with his walking stick, right over the black and white paved sidewalk.
Pedro Henriques Ribeiro
Pedro has an extensive
and outstanding collection of pencil drawings of insects in copulation rituals.
Some times, he copies prudently chosen parts of these drawings on high-grade tracing paper (130g weight) and post them, incognito, on billboards in public places. Mostly Metro stations.
Teresa Quelha Francisco
Teresa loves jigsaw puzzles. She loves the hypnotic state her mind gets into while she search for the little colorful interlocking pieces.
Time cease to exist, as her concentration reaches high levels of control over the rising thoughts. Periodically, totally immersed in her puzzles, she receives flashes of memories from future events.
Rogerio Ribeiro Carvalho
R.R Carvalho has a soft spot for American musicals from the first half of the 20's century. Mystical foreign sounds he heard on allied radio, during blackout nights in an imaginary war.
Now and then, late at night, when Francesca Camilla Silva- his mistress of 35 years, sleeps deeply, snoring softly, he slides out of bed and dances slowly in the living room, by himself, nude, to the sounds of Jean Kelley, Fred Astaire, or Nat King Cole.
One night, feeling fresh and whimsical, he did a Josephine Baker number, complete with a few bananas tied around his wriggling
waist.
Carmen Dolores Fonseca
Carmen Dolores Fonseca short changes customers, a few coins at a time, and saves the money for a large-flat-screen-wall-mount TV
She is an avid American Football fan. Largely due to her fascination with men in tight pants and wide shoulder pads. Out of football season she watches matadors and hockey players with slightly less enthusiasm.
Carlos Parente Almeida
Mr. Almeida likes chewing gum. That by itself is certainly within the good and respectful citizen image his peers share, collectively, of him.
Surprisingly Carlos "little secret" is that he deposits his used gum in concealed places and watches for angry frustrated expressions on the faces of the people who get "infected" by his sticky morsels.
Arminda Isabel Silva
Isabel, (she prefers her friends to use middle name) has very sensitive hands and acute ability to fix things. She also likes suspense novels, preferably of historical genre.
A few years ago, she learned bookbinding from a self-taught correspondence school.
Of late, she loves to borrow library books of identical publishers printed with similar fonts, and with surgical precision to exchanges pages of key plot-turn-points between them.
Jose & Fernando Paiva
Jose clandestinely subscribes Fernando, his younger brother, to thousands of Internet sites that specialized in spam mailing.
Fernando often hides Jose’s car keys when the latter is late for dentist appointments.
Armando Duarte Martinho
A.D. Martinho belongs to the Freemasons. He is also a high-ranking Shriner and holds a middle management position in the Rosicrucian Order.
He has applications for memberships, backed by numerous recommendations, filed with half a dozen other Fraternities and Brotherhoods.
Armando collects secret recordings of public meetings in theses organizations
Armando collection will be auctioned, according to his notarized last will and testament, after he passes away.
Albino Leonor Mesquita
Mr. Mesquita, known in the bohemian circles of underground art as “Spray Can Leo”, specializes in graffiti art.
His avant-garde and unique designs decorate buses, subway train- carts and freeway overpasses.
Works inspired by Albino Leonor art have traveled as far as Tokyo, inked into the young skin of a visiting Japanese Hip-Hop dancers.
Galhardo Ferrao Galeto
When he was 25 he saw an alien. At 31 he met three members of an occult that believe werewolves are an incarnation of saints. A year later he requested to be removed
from their mailing list since the writing in their bi-monthly glossy newsletter proved to be of questionable quality.
Galhardo does not, personally, believe in ghosts, but accepts the possibility of beings from parallel universes sharing his condominium, though not his garden shade.
And two very important questions :
Would you consider werewolves cooler then vampires?
Do you ever fantasize of becoming ether of the two?
Zeev
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