Poetry and capoeira

I once stared into the eyes of a Bosnian man and he asked me
What do you See?
My eyes did all the speaking
Because I sensed the history books
Folding open spitting down what might have happened
But I could see in his eyes
(And I told him this with mine)
That there is no way I could understand.
So I said nothing.

Nov. 10, 2007


I hope to write more soon. I have been finding more peace with prose right now, and I haven't been reading enough inspiring poetry that makes me want to write like I used to. I miss that in my life. I also miss my bike. And clothes dryers.

On Friday I went to a capoeira class in Zagreb. It was funny because at home it's hard enough to follow directions when half of it is in Portuguese. On Friday, everything was in either Croatian or Portuguese, the moves were different and they all wore shoes. My arms absolutely kill. They don't sing, but play a lot of instruments. I felt like an alien with my bare feet and hairy armpits. But I am so glad I went.

My friend Helena, she's from Serbia but is doing volunteer work in Zagreb (met her at Food Not Bombs), brought me with her. She knows of a few groups in Belgrade, so I might possibly do that. Tonight I went on a long walk with Grace, a friend on the program, around Zagreb, after lunch, and the leaves were falling and the sun was setting and it felt so good to breathe in deep.

I need to breathe in deeply more often here. The weekends, when I have the most time to breathe, have been quite hard for me to get through. They seem somewhat stagnant, like in-between excitement. And usually when time comes for the weekend I am so tired that all I want to do is sleep in and read and work all day long. But I have been going out dancing a lot, which has been great. There is a club right near by called Boogaloo which plays a ton of 80's dance music.