12 – Aveneida Marginale
Paradise: Population 2. Aveneida Marginale 69, October 1973
After the Sergio Mendes song “Pretty World” Paradise Population: 2
Which also confused people since our place was 77 Marginale, Punta Vermelha, Lorenco Marques.
And here is #69 between #66 and #79. Which was the last house on the strip
The almost Labyrinthine path from our Casa de Magia to the beach reminds me of my life. Marginal…
From the sundeck, the pristine crystalline galaxy of sand that lapped against the silvery Indian ocean always appeared deceptively close. You know…just some hedge, bush and some palm trees and then o playa…
Give me a break… It was as a far a way a place as trying to get in to that Xanthian mind of yours. Getting in to your pants was easy – getting out I would have had to be a fukken genius. But then you always thought the Genie was in my underpants: “If I rub this, here, will the Genie pop out and grant me three wishes?” You had to. You, like your other self, had no pants of your own. Strange coincidence.
The tall pink gate in the vine creeper’d wall masonry of 150 years of keeping the boumbos out.
And after the gate? the garden of our spirits… It seems like some lush verdant series of bushes in 2 apparent rows. The path led to a jungle, and the jungle to the sea – which is the most mutable garden of all.
From down here, the “bushes” turn out to be trees and there are secret alcoves amongst them, branching away as they do on the same path and then just terminating like the lines on the palm of my hand…forcing a return to the path. Unless the tranquility was lure enough to keep one there.
Pomar do Sol – Orchard of the Sun
A small clearing of grass that looks like swiss mountain alfalfa. Transported here to this oven of a paradiso tropicale. Being the only cool place in summer where for some unknown reason all the trees stopped growing around it.
In A Circle
If the trees revere this spot so, then surely so must we…
Portale – Mons Passionale
At the end of the path stand two rocks, almost like pillars – our “Sentinales”. Like a doorway. The previous owner must have had something on his mind to have laid out in a circle 7 big rocks. We put our big four poster bed in the middle of the circle to sleep on in the hot summer nights. One could hear the earth breathe at night, and even with the beach so close, the sound of the waves was muffled by the trees.
And finally the scrubby shrubby grubby dune plants and then… LA PLAAAYAAAAAAA!!!
A golden white ribbon of eternity.
As if the beginning of time had started here – and then remained frozen
Endless paradise
Endless Joy
Endless
Endless
And to think that Paradise was at the edge of a corrupt city in a corrupt time.
Our [fondly named] 77 Sunset Strip. For treasons too perditionary to relate.
“ Whats Better than 69?…. 77 – You Get 8 More”
A corrupt time with all the wealth being redistributed into the pockets of the crafty and vociferous. The Independent press was liberated from the land lords to trumpet the benefits of chasing out the Portuguese colonialists and RENAMO became a fact. And liberation by these bandidos, ever ambitious to prove that black were every bit as good as white people when it came to fucking up a country.
We could never tell good from bad. And so bad we were. A democracy distributing the churches wealth. To make people respect the laws of god could do no worse. While we were hanging out at swinger parties, sex and politics. Amazing that all the couples we were swinging with, were of such strong political conviction. There must be a moral in that.
After balling one anothers spouses, we could still sit around and argue. About Tricky Dicky, John Vorster, General Franco, Joaquim Chissano, Harold Wilson, Mao Tse Tong and Brezhnev et al…and watch the Yanqui carpet-bombing the Vietnamese country side, and Wishing, wishing, that they would come and save us by doing the same thing here to the Renamo bandidos…who were about to put an end to our carpet bonking by forcing us to flee for our lives.
Listening to Del Shannon “My Little Run-a-Way” as you ran away with me – thank heaven – but just imagine the romance of us as run –a -ways
As I walk along I wonder
what could go wrong with our love
a love that was so strong
and as I still walk on
I think of the things we’ve done together
while our hearts were young
And at the end of the argument: we could never be amongst those who could not speak the Castillian language. The dispossessed, as old as they were dead. 20? 25? 30? Who cares? They were deader.
And for proof that we live in a Democracy now: In those days, If you awoke to a knock on the door at the early morning hours – would you think that it was the Milk Man????
And we, lost in the light of a magic simplicity. learned to look on our past as an irrational night, our incestuous public conjugations as a Passion Play.
And looked at our Life as the answer to Everything. A love so bright and pure…
Some morning in the vast wash of time:
On our vast white bed, I watch the sun streaming through the broad window, to wash your dusky, olive skin in gold. Your exhausted, and freshly loved body spread like a golden starfish washed up on the beach of white linen by the surf of our love. The polished mahogany sprawl of your mane reminds me of the young schoolgirl I loved then, to the woman I love now. And I know that you will always be here with me.
I recall, My Lovely, that I felt that looking at your supine sculpture, as if my heart could leap out of my mouth – in some last sacrifice to you.
There in tomorrows light
Your hair streams as dark as night
Just passed
And I dreamed then I could live forever
As I have now all these years later
With the memory
Gold in the promise of
Dreams you made come true.
“This house we keep is a reflection of our devotion to each other”: I told you…
“I never want to leave you, and I never will”, you said, Conchita.
And I must admit that the promise you made me then…you have stood by
But revolution was coming to our country And we had to away, before…
I said to you then: “And I know that I can never die. Not with out seeing you again. Even for a fleeting glance. Afterward, yes. But not until then. For I know you will be with me to the end of my days…”
