i landed in são paulo and *boy* does time move different

time in europe is always slipping away. always chasing always being chased. i did not float but rush. it was winter when i left. i got used to the cold and could bare my smoke breaks in a hoodie and scarf, no coat. i got pale in the face and ate more bread than rice. 

i landed in sāo paulo and the sun made me laugh. i lounge about and let myself really look at the clouds. i let my eyes loosen from their socket and wander with the winds shaping them.

in europe, i felt like i needed to write everything down. i developed tendonitis of my right wrist but i kept writing anyway. i was afraid i’d be nothing if no one could bare witness to my world. i was afraid no one would take me if they did not take my product first. but here : is a peace knowing that if i am the only one baring witness to this existence, that is enough. da is. 

here reminds me of mexico, one of the happiest times in my life. when we would bike to different properties and farms and pick fruit off trees and run from the alligators in the river we bathed in and have no where to be except for dinner at tia’s. and that reminds me of summers in annandale. barefoot in the woods feet gripping branches turned bridges over running water … ripping mangos apart with our teeth and sucking on the core as we walked down mountain biking trails … lush. green. grand. we got those mangos from the guy with the knife posted up in the parking lot with his pickup truck. his apples aren’t that good, but he always lets us sample them knowing we only get mangos. he’s still there when we walk home. 

i’m a summer baby. i was born in the middle of summer, so my first taste of life and love was late summer. when time loosens and opens and sinks under heat. when i could play and scatter time as seeds that need not take root… growing trees is planting seeds and returning and returning and watering and watering and again and again.

all i want to do is play. the western europe i passed through was not so playful. there was no time. michelle spit those same words about riley in one exasperated breath somewhere in a zone 2 south london neighborhood dubbed grand theft auto. on a street named marcus garvey. all he wants to do is play. play is different for mothers. it becomes a sacrifice. time in london was so tense. it stretched her house thin. 

but my last night there, it stopped for us. it stopped and opened for us to dance in the garden and smoke in the kitchen and watch hours of top boy in her front room. she woke me up at 4am. it’s time to go. and i left for one last secret day in amsterdam before chasing the sun. 

time in amsterdam made me cry. i’d smoke to hold onto it just a little bit. time kept rushing it did not pool i had no still time to wade through. 

amsterdam, the netherlands, is quite regulated. everything works. people don’t break little laws. people do as they’re told. and it works. poor people are not on the verge of death in the same way other poor people are… but it was hard for me to play and make noise. i don’t know. it’s not my place.

it makes me a little sad because i adore some people there. some beings. some waters and pulses. people are not so different wherever i go. i mostly go to cities. children play. people walk and take the bus. lovers hold hands. mothers clean. fathers take liberties… i always meet my people in the pocket. i always find myself in the cut. i am when i am, you know?

it’s no wonder i didn’t write anything real in europe. my eyes were always squinting since they could not bare that overwhelming pulse. a breath would be a floodgate. how is it that there is always something to do? how is it that there is no time to lie down or sit or wander or be bored.  how is it that there was is no where to get lost. and it was not my place to say : it doesn’t have to be this way.

—

i’m alone again. that ceaseless mantra marches in time with my peddles pushing me through my last bike ride along the canals. i didn’t cry that night i said goodbye. but i felt it swelling inside. just not enough to leak out my eyes. my cup’s walls are quite high. i hate saying goodbyes. and i can only shit talk the places that i love. 

i fell in love with so many people. i was touched in mind heart and spirit that i did not know were possible… but that night i was alone again. i left that home. is this what travelling is? saying hello and goodbye and hello and goodbye and to say hello is to say goodbye.

that night i was alone again i biked through a park. 

is this the lonely heart of the warrior? the heart that’s so tender it would leak if a fly rested upon it? the heart that can be visited but ultimately floats on ocean as its own island…

i don’t know. i think of warriors as masculine. as soft in their masculinity. 

here in brazil i feel softer and more masculine. masculinity is soft. i think of michelle and what she says about west indian moms. i thnk of michelle and what she does as a west indian mom. i think of my own mommy. i think about how hard they are. hard as in clarity; hard like the diamond of the diamond sutra. how they have to take responsibility. how they have to be clear in that. i think about how it lets their husbands be soft. i think about men who grew up as show pigs, who could just be. who have no bio on their dating app profile. who carry the crying baby when their wife disciplined their kid. who hardens their kid to bare the weighty rule of the world. i think of masculinity and long hair. 

 i leaned hard into femme in europe. my greatest armor. my most practiced weapon. 

——

there’s a million and two things i could say about my little stint in europe. i have two journals and a shin high stack of index cards on the matter. most were filled in the orange-walled coffeeshop in muiderport. but i can’t stomach all those words and they only show me how scared i was. how fast i was going. how hungry i became.

for two weeks, i declouded my mind. clear skies ahead! i didn’t know i could love life so much.  i didn’t know how voracious i could be when i wasn’t dulling ambition to open my senses. if i could build structure of logic to hone passions…

i have never before wanted to live. i have never before thought to care for my body. but now there are things i want to do with my fragile short life. there will be a time for me to give my life for something. i hope it’s a choice, but it rarely is. when that time comes, i’d like to know exactly what i’m giving up, exactly what life i should martyr, more so than the cause… i can’t do anything when i’m dead.

aida taught me the first person that cares about you is you. no one is with you when you shit. i carry that truth with me. we are not rewarded for our suffering but the truth we carry through our suffering. in this sense, perhaps suffering hones truths. it gives it weight and precision. solidifying this truth felt like a step from childhood. practicing this truth feels like the hand of god.

i’d like to be a grandma one day. the makings of a matriarch… means i first have to be a mom. this seems a lot harder and more elusive to me. will i be hard like all those mothers i know? who had to take responsibility when no one else would. who had to be hard and clear and decisive to forge a hard path in a hard place in a hard time. 

——

Europe was not so romantic. it was certainly erotic.

In 2025, romance is in and relationships are out. we said what we said.

romance is dead. yall don’t care for each other anymore. that’s the heart of that situation-ship. not really. not more than narrative.

—

it was also my first thought when i woke up on the red-eye from rome to sāo paulo: i’m alone again. 

it’s a shock to remember how much i miss it. it’s been a long time since i got to play with another. really play.  i prefer to play alone. because when i’m alone i’m not really alone. in fact i feel less alone because the trees come alive and tell me things and the scents of winds teach me things and the world pulses. but i loose that sense in the presence of people that suck me into their world instead of trying to be closer in our shared one.

i miss it. i missed myself when i get to play.

the first day in sāo paulo all i did was play and look at the clouds and get lost and cook and eat and clean. my grandma says that gods are hiding in corners and are revealed when we clean. cleaning is playing when theirs not a nag or a belt behind it.

—

my first days here are romantic. i lounge about my room and make music and write and cook and clean and then i walk and go to the grocery store where the nice girl that checks me out helps me learn Portuguese and count my money. i let myself get caught in the rain. i wear chonclas everywhere. i get lost. i look back.

i do everything naked windows open sun falling in the morning. i listen to bosa nova and michelle’s mp3 files of Jamaican drum and base that once boomed in 90’s peckham and now booms here. 

would i be satisfied living like this forever? isn’t it funny how every time i’m satisfied i think of how i can keep it. but satisfaction arises, it can be learned and practiced and honed but it is never the same. and the only thirst that can not be quenched is the fear of not having water. (khalil gibran) if you have water and you are thirsty drink. if you have water and someone is thirsty give them water. but if you are afraid of not having water you can never have enough. you will always be thirsty.