3rd. day

Houses, cottages, tents, barracks are sort of sentinel and shelter for animal comfort and as animated species have developed, so have we. However, in our ineffable silence there is communication amongst the minimum atom of our structure and when the wind is strong, we welcome the news from far away parts of this world and the others.
Our wisdom is not bigger because technologies have transformed some of us in earth ships and some insane constructions are called palaces. Our energy contains the energy of the world. Women, men, dogs , cats that wonder on our roofs, insects that burden all warm bodies, cold blood lisids, ants, roaches mice and rats, birds, hundreds of birds. When the wind blows from the Sahara, oh god, have we heard about palaces, but may be later I’ll come back and tell how much emptiness fill most part of those gilded places.

Ghosts are the best story tellers, they are all over, but only few entities can hear them and decode the wisdom in their tales.
We can. It is grand my experience with ghosts, what I have heard and seen through their eyes, how much humans owe the ghosts and don’t accept this fact. It is not a fact to them if it is not accepted but it is a fact, anyway.

It is a winter muddy day. In this country we have developed some sort of allergy to rain. All animals look discouraged and men stop working as soon as a drop of rain appears over their boots. Dogs hide, cats roll almost as hermetically as hedge hogs and the houses breathe the cold air that closes our porus, wave away the dust of the hot days and we regret our incapacity of dancing with the nature, like the trees do.

The old man passed with the yellow dog. I know he is from Holland as I heard him grasp Verdoma when he stepped over a hole in the street flood of his walk.
I like dogs and this old man is ok too. He comes in the grounds, sits in front of the pines and sings in a low deep voice some song in a dialect that I suppose is from Indonesia.
Lots of dutch people left their country to retire here in south Portugal. They are near to the sea like at home and people are soft and tender as only seafront people can be.
But this particular man called upon my attention amongst the thousands of foreigners that live here. He looks sad, his loneliness being softned by the permanent presence of the dog, escapes through the involvement with which he says Good day to the others, as if he cares, longing for someone across the street to care for him too.
May be the dog will resolve my curiosity when sometime he escapes from the owner and lays down over my terrace for his forbidden sun bathing away from home.

This has been a long winter day. Apart from the dutch man I saw no more humans around
The builders left the site in vans like cattle. Youngsters laughed out loud as the rain had given them a day off. Older men were upset concerned with the rainy day to be discounted over their salary as if their bellies’ implacable watch would stop anytime it rains.
The site owner passed around a grey look over the empty development, Ah this terrible rain, and speeded home in a desperate need to forget the useless character of water.

The night was stormy and beautiful. All kinds of life and death appeared to swing in the air as the wind blew through an exciting orange lightning. Thunder sounded far away in the sea as if the sound and light were one body tied apart from the elements.
After two-three hours struggle the body got together in a rainbow embrace and dawn came out pinkie like a little girl’s face.
And I fell asleep. Closed my inexistent eyes and dreamt of a miniature of me on top of an oak, full of laughter and peace.

2nd day

People don’t know that houses have a memory, like a superior human brain or a computer disc.
I discovered mine when the last tile was adjusted over my roof. At the beginning it was like waking up and suddenly having conscience of my existence beyond the rough materials of my body.
I started by assimilating the beauty of silence, the birds songs and then I found the talkative humans and their noisy devices that at some time completely annul the rest of the environment. Brick layers, carpenters, electricians, the foreman, the cement helpers and so many other men led my acquaintance to the humans. Step by step they achieved to give me the shape initially shown on a piece of paper that defined my contours, my colours, my iron intestines and my fragile skin.
Most part of those men were immigrants either from Brasil or Eastern countries. Apart from the Portuguese foreman and the two fat Russians that were driven home everyday, the rest of the crew remained on the site. In summer covered with mosquitoes in winter covered with wet rags.
For what I understood later, the ones camping on the building site had left the families on their home countries and they would go and visit the local prostitutes on Saturday. The most ardent had to go twice a week.
Their food was mostly grilled chicken, tinned fish, rice and loads of beer or cheap wine as the frugal salaries posted home every month meant a better life for their families. Some of them had «pão com chouriço» bread with sausage.
I heard all kinds of small and big talk, understood all languages but without feeling really, as if the universality of my inexistent ears had made me another kind of a god spectator.
This was probably designated by the other wholly mighty so that my emotions would not excrete any liquids over the weak web of my walls.
- Enough cement, enough. Five millimetre iron, forget the project. Those guys have to move quicker; have to sell this wreck before winter.
Well, can’t name it all. In the evenings, after the lights would go off I could sometimes hear small António sobbed in tears as his arms were aching due to the amount of cement buckets he was forced to serve the others, or Mikail, a young g.p. in Kiev who missed his job and his young family.
Leonid had a local girl friend and would fall asleep with a UE passport in one eye and his Ukrainian bride in the other.
Ricardo would sleep right away and wake up in the middle of the dark. With my silent inexistent eyes I could see him stealing from the others, eating their food, packing their best Tshirts in his bag but the day I saw him stealing from his employer a complete box full of taps and tools, I suppose I had the first glimpse of what humans may call feelings. Disliked the attitude and later I saw I was right as little António was sent away and called «ladrão *».
Before that, he was beaten by the two fat Russians as if the act of beating was duet. And he left.
Ricardo stayed with his posture of good boy, singing all day those tender Brazilian ballads and serving with bonhomie his holiness the foreman.