Brazil

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I've been back a full day. Even though the gardens of Casa Bella are in bloom, the roses in full flush, the Passionflower vine tangling with the fragrant clematis, each of them so heavy and prolific they threaten to pull down the fence on the north border, I've the itch to go away again: May Go Be With You.
In my mind it's back to Brazil.

Sao Paulo is a massive megagigaurbanopolis of a city with tireless people and an air of
frenetic exhaustion.
The Paulistas pride themselves on their fierce work ethic, in contrast to those silly Cariocas (inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro). The Cariocas are this: constant singing and dancing and merriment; parades, laughter languid sex, generalized nakedness and poetic lassitude, bright mischievous twinkling in their eyes; poverty and robbery; laughing hearts the thump of which leads to deeply vibrant human places of the spirit where sadness and confusion are held in abeyance as long as possible, as long as the music lasts.

I found one beautiful uninhabited park in Sao Paulo, the Trianon, just off famous
Paulista Avenue. Paulista Avenue was once the place where the rubber barons lived in
their thick stately mansions, scaled down from European versions, yet none the less impressive.

In the Trianon park, even the shadows were shades and
nuances of green: emerald, peridot, shamrock, seagreen, limegreen, lost green (the faraway, longgone goodbye green of my high school sweetheart's eyes); Juno green (the mean thick dangerous hue of envy).

It was the deepest I have ever been surrounded in green, almost surreal,: I was aswim in it. Nor could I recognize one tree, leaf or root.

There was a building in the park, the color of mustard with oxblood trim.

It was beautiful.

It was one of the loveliest buildings I had seen in all of Sao Paulo.

It was the men's room of the public loo, which had
somehow survived the civic architectural destruction of old Sao Paulo, when the
city fathers decided that the ancient order of architecture must be swept away. The architects
leavened the old colonial past, leaving an occasional gem in the wake.

There was also a statue of the god Pan in the park, playing his flute and kicking up a leg to scare away the pigeons, thinking:
"Oh we are so overdue
for a raffling Q
so here's two:
1) What's the capitol of Brazil?
2) Name a street on a hill.


Well I went back and looked at the picture, and instead Pan is seated, pensive, lost in the stilled thoughtfulness where activity is completely negated by contemplation..
and his mind is as still as his substance, quite concrete,...
while all around him, nature is transforming, and one single color may become a kaleidoscope.

The dancing Pan: I remember now, I met him in Paris. You will too, in the next entry, which involves a pretty, well -spoken Gypsy, the Point Neuf, and a magical gold ring...

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Photos

Pan
Okay so he wasn't kicking pigeons.