“The curve of the river is where the breeze comes freshest. You can hear the leaves find voice before each gust arrives, like an invisible wave reaching upstream, downstream. On this bank is the small shore, because the arm of water hooks around us here, an embrace. The far bank is the long shore: from here you can see it’s slow progress.

“I come to think. Sometimes I come here not to think. The place seems not to mind the face I put on, at any rate whatever face I brought is put away soon enough. So long as you’re quiet, the small sounds work their way into you and fill you up, so the burden you decided to drag along with you that day is rained-on, then water-logged, then sinks into the slowness of the current.

uma palavra balançou
na ponta da língua
falada, calada, falada, calada
batuque rítmo de coração

será que este por do sol
seja à medida do seu nascer?
o menino enraizado só
(arvore-gurí, criança-flor)
se sente o peso diferente
nas almas dos seus pés;
de cima, entretanto
sol é sol

até o día em que sangue dispara
com tamanho desejo, o corpo canal
com gritos do mar e da morte
falado, calado, falado, calado
uma gota de sal como vinho
da ponta da língua traçada
doçura na linha ereta
boca garganta ventre

When you travel to a tourist destination, you see what you pay for, and what those who are selling rest wish you to see: in the case of Gulf coast Florida, there are miles of sand, comfortable and maintenance-free accommodations, food at the end of a short walk and at the sliding edge of your credit card, and night clubs or golf courses or day spas or ships or shops… That’s why they are here, so you can be here, too. It is a perfectly Disney establishment, where the name is here employed as an adjective. The world is peaceful, there are no cares, and all that is asked of you (for these few days) is that you… descontrair (couldn’t find a better word than the Portuguese, meaning to “un-contract”).

It doesn’t matter the palette, where colors live, the brush can explore; where the brush explores, the canvas blooms; where paint dries, the globe is tasted, interpreted, and offered to whomever would receive it.

So, tonight we are in the southern States, in easy reach of some of the tastier kitchen paints. Tonight’s menu:

Caribbean black beans, cooked with garlic slices, rock salt and rough-ground pepper; accented with spicy Italian sausage, the flavor “lightened” with sliced sour oranges (a variety of kumquat) which I picked this evening from the tree out back, and “greened” with fresh cilantro, in the soup and as a garnish. Long-grain rice cooked with peppercorn and bay. As side dishes, fresh sliced yellow bell pepper; a fruit plate of papaya, banana pieces and bosc pear sprinkled with fresh lemon juice; and an accent plate of half-ripened green mango (sweet-tart, not soupy). A small glass of yesterday’s Beaujolais, and grapefruit juice mixed with Perrier.

When I was close to my daughter’s age, I would often stop in at the school library at lunch time, to take out books. There were a few favorites. One was Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein: the story of a boy (very close to my age, so I imagined) living in the colonies on Mars, with his pet, unlike any pet found on Earth. It was an adventure that could have, but did not, take place on Earth, and I was able to read and reread that tale without losing either my sense of wonder or my ability to live the story as I sat comfortably on our living room couch. If you were to find the card from the back of that book (we filled out our names and checkout date on cards, no computers in libraries back then), you would see my name scratched in ever improving cursive, over and over again, with few readers able to get their moniker in edgewise.

… and it is not as though there weren’t months and years ahead. The difficult events of our lives are like stones dropped into a bed-sheet, the whole of its white expanse falls, by weight and momentum, and gathers together into a knot of cloth. That night cloth is gathered together in our clenched fist, wound into knots that were not in its nature, tied in a twist of fabric until day breaks… or fingers loosen… or heart at least unwinds.

The land around my house – “my” land – would say much about the hand that keeps it: overgrown, a feral lawn, become host for a multitude of insects and insects that prey on insects, for weeds with flowers and weeds with leaves and grasses with heavy heads full of seed. The tamed range is filled with Cawdor wood, and every glance outside is a reminder of my failure as a suburban land steward.

In 1985, I spent several months living on the island of Java, in Yogyakarta, having traveled there with a partner in the evening of our intimacy. I sat out nights with our mutual friend Muller, a Sumatran who was studying at the University, on the grass mats of Jalan Malioboro, smoking Kretek cigarettes and drinking sugary tea, and spooning up repeat servings of gudeg, a simple local dish perhaps, but with friendship and smoke and inconsequential conversations – I can’t recall even how much was spoken in Indonesian, or English, or not spoken at all – the long evenings were excellent.

tech • nol • o • gy | tek’näl?j? |

noun (pl. -gies)

ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Greek tekhnologia ‘systematic treatment,’ from tekhn? ‘art, craft’ + -logia ‘knowledge’, originally in reference to grammar. In the mid-1800s applied to industry and industrial works. Finally, circa 1964, ‘High Technology’ was coined for the overtures of the digital age.

Like most words, its meaning has followed the pursuits of those who use it, mirrored the world in which it is uttered, and dissolved its connotations from one web of meaning into another, gently pulling its associations along with it.

My daughter Isabela – less formally, more naturally Bela; though she is capable of carrying her more regal name, when called upon by the drama of the moment to do so – has traveled to Florida with her mother and brother, to be with her Brazilian grandparents and uncle and aunt for a few days. Ah, yes, and to meet the newest cousin, little Lucas, Luquinho perhaps, born a year ago in a country far from the familial home.