moments from salvador

today i was in a public square in salvador, bahia, a large state of brazil in the atlantic coast. we watched half the soccer game on a large screen after a huge drum concert. it rained and people raised umbrellas and people behind those people got angry and yelled and threw crushed beer cans at them. some of the people holding umbrellas became people behind people holding umbrellas and got angry and, holding their umbrellas in one hand, threw crushed beer cans at the people holding umbrellas in front of them.

we couldn’t see so after the first half we left, soaking in the rain and dancing our way out because the drums played for half time. swimming through the people a line of three men hit me in the chest. they were dancing, it seemed. but then i felt hands in my pockets. many hands. i grasped those hands and pulled them out and danced away. we watched the rest of the game inside and dry, drinking tea. brazil lost.

after the game we ate and after we ate we watched some capoeira in the public square. i saw a woman that i was put on a blind date with six years ago in Washington, DC watching too. i said hello to her and she sort of remembered me but sort of not really. we’d had coffee in DC and i remember it being pleasant enough, but we were in different places in life and so i said thanks and didn’t call her back. then i saw here in brazil six years later. she’s on vacation here until august. she didn’t seem interested in talking to me.

after i said hi the two men in the jogo, the capoeria circle, started really fighting. traditionally, capoeira is a dance-fight, the line between smiling and violence hazy. in this match the line was broken and the men, the most flexible muscular men i’ve ever seen, began kneeing each other in the face and roundhouse kicking each other’s necks. the musicians stopped playing and the circle broke up and the men were bleeding.

we left and took a walk to the coast where there is a huge elevator that brings people from the upper city to the lower city. in the 16th century, when the city was founded, portugal’s colonial style was to build a political center uptown and a economic center downtown near the port. we took the elevator and found everything was closed, including a market where there’s supposedly a secret holding cell that was used for slaves in the 16th century.  that was closed too. we came back and i got on the computer and i’ve been on the computer for an hour and that’s too long but what is a person supposed to do when a part of themselves exists on the internet and the internet feels like home and that person feels like being at home and the internet is everywhere even in the lobby of that person’s hostel in salvador, bahia, a state of brazil on the atlantic coast?

go on the internet, of course, and tell the internet about a few moments from salvador.