LATE-NIGHT POOL

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

00:28 Cocooning

To satisfy the winter need for cocooning and to adjust to the cold somber days, I at last tried something I had in mind since I first moved into this apartment: a sort of makeshift tent around two of the edges of my tatami platform. It took me half an hour and virtually no money to build it, and it can be removed in a minute (I'm proud, yes). I thought I'd have it for a day or two but it so far lasted a week - and I've been sleeping better since then...
The transparency is sort of sensuous or mysterious, and the cloth walls move a little when I walk around, as if they were breathing. Nice.
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Wednesday, February 11, 2004

13:42 Very hungry caterpillar

He now wasn't hungry anymore – he really had had enough – and he was no longer small – he had become a big, fat caterpillar

While we talked about shopping, saving, eating and reading, Carola suggested I read Eric Carle's book Very Hungry Caterpillar (Rupsje Nooitgenoeg, in Dutch).
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Tuesday, February 10, 2004

14:35 remember

"Well, in our country", said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

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Saturday, February 07, 2004

00:08 Claudio, Edivaldo, Rosa
Memorable memory evening in The Hague. Claudio Poles – a friend who works at the Brazilian embassy – invited me for a dance performance and to spend the night at his place. I met Claudio in Brasil a few years ago through Flávio, our common friend and my regular host in São Paulo. Claudio now lives in The Hague and we meet every now and then, in Amsterdam or somewhere else, for a bite, a film or occasionally going out together.

This has been my second time visiting his home. In the previous visit I was introduced to a virtually empty three-story family house with nothing but chandeliers, fireplaces and big mirrors; none of his furniture had arrived yet, and I crashed in a makeshift sleeping bag out in the second floor corridor. This time I arrived to see a fully furnished, elegant house, and was given the cozy attic room, where I slept like a baby.

In spite of all the contrasts in the way we live, we both realize that the more we talk (and if you know Brazilians you know how much we talk) the more we find connections in our past lives in Brasil. Last night, while I got tour of the house I saw on the wall of the living room a striking painting showing the tall buildings of Avenida Paulista (a very dear street of São Paulo and my last address in the city). I went very quickly from noticing the painting, to commenting on how nice it looked, to thinking I recognized the style of the drawing, to reading the artist's signature, to recognizing the name of Edivaldo Araujo, and saying out loud 'oh I know this Edivaldo – he lived in the Copan building, didn't he?'. All in a few seconds.

It turns out I'd once been to this painter's place in the late Eighties, in my art school days, brought there by a favourite art history teacher called Rosa Guz. I don't precisely remember the context of that visit; I think she thought I might like meeting him since I was developing what she considered pollock-like textures in my paintings (!), and he was working on marble-like textures and trompe l'oeil murals. We arrived in his apartment, which I remember was on a very high floor (24th, recalls Claudio), and Edivaldo was outside his window, barefoot, scrubbing the tiled brise-soleil with water and soap (a chilling slippery step away from falling down). He then came back in and we had coffee and looked at some of his work. That's pretty much all I remember – I'm not sure there was any further contact. I later heard he was very ill and then that he died around 1990. Claudio, on the other hand, had been a good friend of Edivaldo throughout the years but doesn't recall having met Rosa, who took me there. Claudio asks me if she was from the state of Mato Grosso. I don't know. He asks me if her nickname of Rosinha. I don't know that either – maybe? I knew she came from a Jewish Egyptian family and describe her to him. Claudio wonders if she would be the model of another painting by Edivaldo, one of a nude woman with long dark wavy hair. The hair matches my description. We talk about the nose. The nose is not very clear in the frontal view of the portrait. I remember she was working on a thesis connecting the work of Lewis Carroll with that of Gaudi.

I'be been wanting to have some news from Rosa Guz for a while now without any success. During one of my trips to Brasil and went back to my old art school and asked for some information about her. They hadn't any record of her in their files, which I thought was very sad. Rosa was a memorable teacher. I hope to come across some news of her, eventually.
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