here: 2010-03-14

Rua Agusta towards the train station.

Last night it was raining, and

the streets were slick and glowing with the

sheen of a polished bone.

I hear a voice on a megaphone and see a crowd.

“Communist Rally!”

I sprint into the mayhem.

An enormous crowd is dancing and is acting much peppier than I had envisioned the Portugese Communist party would be.

There are flags and clothes in bright Brazilian green, Caribbean blue, Cinnamon, Canary.

On a massive platform two women lead the group in a bobbing, cartoonish dance.

They are too colorful and they shake their hips way too much to be the Communists, but nonetheless,

I am feeling pulled into what may be a photographic binge.

My friend in Marrakech was quite vulgar about photography:

“photographically penetrate the souks”

“forcibly entering the Jemma al fna with my camera”

“thrust my lens into the Medina”

I may have started the vulgarity, saying that I was on photographic binges/ benders/ trips, thus likening the process to a drugged state, and thus, encouraging other crude metaphoric depictions.

I am entering the train, and I can still hear the crowd being prompted to be a crowd.

I hear myself telling my friends that the sports rally was actually my personal 'welcome to Lisboa kick-off event.'

I am saying,

"My contra primo organizes these things for me wherever I go."

They are asking, sounding Austrian,

“What means contra primo?”

I am shaking my head and responding,

“No-no. Clandestino.”

Now I am seeing from the train what I like to photograph.

Pipes

Shanties

Lean-tos

Crumbling, dilapidated, warped, degraded, hazardous walls, and structures

Rusted, oxidized machinery; the rotting refuse of the industrial economy

I disconnect the function from the thing, and find shapes, colors, patterns, textures.

I am seeking a particular image:

today I want that precise moment when the degradation and

decay of structure, of form,

begins to effuse a new vitality.

At Sintra, then:

See?

Two of us are scaling the walls of the Moorish castle.

We are engaged in an act that may be illegal, and

likely fatal.

We have avoided paying five Euros each and try a feeble high five while clinging to the crumbling masonry fifty feet above the ground.

Atop the rampart, one of us is now singing/intoning:

"America, fuck yeah!"

We see a crew shooting a documentary.

"Nice light for whipping out your camera, thrusting a lens into the city at twilight,"

I comment.

We take the train back to Lisbon, and later
in the night, we walk, following the yellow trolley cars up the hill and
into some local bar playing some sort of Latin music.

“Move your hips like this,”

my dance partner whines.

“Why can’t you dance like him,”

she stops and points. Some guy in a black tanktop, moving his hips.

“Fixe,”

I say. This means, “cool,” in Portuguese.

"Why are you talking about fish?"

Again with that nasal whine.

And now I am running down the hill, following
the tracks of the yellow trolley cars, and
my Moroccan shoes are bursting open and
my right foot feels the warmth that the
streets have recieved from the day.