Sleepwalk

I used to think that Nick Drake’s songs were only appropriate on drab fall/winter nights, but as my Itunes rambled through the library, I realized they are also perfect for lazy Lisbon summer afternoons. You should try it some time. When the sun hits that midday malaise and the tram rumbles down the tiny rua, the tattered Portuguese flag flows lazily in the wind, and the faded green flat across the street recalls all sorts of ephemeral images rife with melancholic reminiscences of a youth of aimless summers in rural Minnesota; the soft vocals and hollow tones, yet genius attack of Drake’s guitar and the meandering Wurlitzer bring some sort of meaning and design to these final vestiges of the mind’s seemingly random selection of the long-term memory: throwing gummi bears at cop cars when I was 7, throwing an apple at Darlene Haag’s mouth when she was spouting off about some stupid trash, closing my eyes while biking into things. Its all sort of an old-skool Country Time lemonade commercial with scattered events coming back sporadically.

Anyway, the tram almost killed me yesterday. I don’t walk the streets with an Ipod because I need all my faculties in order to not die here. So to better understand this you should know that the tram actually runs somewhat quietly on a two way street the size of about one car. The sidewalk fits about two people and sometimes barely one. As I was walking up the hill to my flat, another person was walking down it to go to the city center. I was stepping off the curb to let the other person pass when I felt something behind me and looked back with one foot heading to the street where the tracks are; and about a foot behind me the tram was zooming up the hill. Defying some feat of gravity I somehow pulled my whole body back on the sidewalk as it flew past me. I usually tend to look before I step into the street but I didn’t for some reason this time and nearly got squashed. Now I look every time. The cars fly down this street as well going 40 or 50 miles an hour around corners that are completely blind and I am amazed I haven’t seen a crash yet. When the tram comes up the hill the cars have to back all the way up the hill to let it pass and they usually go the same speed in reverse. Its all fairly baffling to me so far.

I’ve been pretty sick with a cold all week and not being able to sleep because I can’t breathe I haven’t been able to get any better. There were some pills some former resident left behind in the medicine cabinet that are for “gripe e constipação”. I wasn’t about to take one of these as, though I have some flu-like symptoms, I certainly didn’t like the other half of the remedy which I assumed would open my bowels as well. Then in class today my teacher ask me what I had and I said “o gripe” and pointed to my head and throat. And she replied “ahh…constipado”, and I was like…”uh, no”. Like didn’t she just see my point to my head and not my intestines? Well anyway as you probably already guessed (I was a bit slower on the uptake from no sleep), constipado refers to a constipation of the nasal cavity. So I took the pills at home and so far I haven’t crapped myself.

I guess I should also speak a little bit about my flatmates from time to time. I’ll speak first of the most compelling figure of the lot, Duncan. He is an artist (of the painted sort) and has been living here for quite a long time but has not yet picked up any Portuguese. He got hit by a car on the same street where I almost was hit by the tram. He is sort of vampiric and therefore I mostly see him at night after we’ve both had a few drinks and he usually looks blurry like the photo here. Whenever I try reading wine labels to learn about the grapes used, place of origin, winemaker, etc. he tends to do a quicker translation for me stating “it says shut up and drink it!” He seems to be very fond of Hunter S. Thompson and Keith Richards and has many travel stories that show he more than just studies their biographies and work, but also puts some of this knowledge into practice. Right now he is working on a painting that is a one-eyed dog and his owner. When I asked him if the viewer can only see one eye, or if the dog actually only has one eye, he told me that the dog only has one eye, but you can’t see that its missing because all of his hair covers the missing eye. And so I of course asked if anyone else knew that he only had one eye then. He told me, “the owner knows, and I know, and of course the dog knows, but it doesn’t bother him.” The picture below is not the dog he painted but instead the bitch of a dog that keeps me up every night barking at god knows what from his balcony. If anyone comes to visit me please bring a gun. I am sure customs will be fine with it once you explain the purpose. After the dog gets it, I’m going to the main plaza to shoot all these crazy kamikaze pigeons as well. One shouldn’t have to constantly duck rats with wings every time he goes to the park.