beyond the horizon

when I was 12, and everything started to change. my body, my face, my voice, my penis, my moods. specially my moods. my mother started to send me to spend the summer in her hometown. Belmonte a little village, forgotten in south of the state of Bahia. where almost every one was a relative, maybe a distant one, but even if not, was someone who knew some relative. she felt I were safe from the temptations of the big city and the dangers of summer holidays.
I was so happy, for knowing that Belmonte meant exactly the oposite: freedom!
nobody cared about a bunch of pre-adolescent freaks hunting for adventure, trying to calm down their hormones, and besides for sure after lunch, uncles, aunts and all grown-ups went to bed, trying to avvoid the heat or maybe doing something even better...

I spent all those afternoons trying to discover and to experiment all those changes... the heat helped. and there were a lot of hidden places, walking by the river, getting into the woods, litlle golden creeks, going to the distant beach, all this recalls me a very special sweet scent of hot sand, sea, the river jequitionha, crab meat, chili, cowshit, sweat and sex.

by the end of the afternoon, going to my aunt's ice-cream shop and listen to her, dreaming of the movies with Charles Bronson. after sunset, shower, dinner and than going to the main square, to see and to be seen.I never felt like an dumb pre adolescent idiot, full of acnes and inconvenient hard-ons, just felt the most normal person of this world. Belmonte was like paradise... in those nights, going around the St Sebastian Square, listening to the local kind-of-radio-station, dreaming of holding hands, stealing kisses, maybe even a little further in one of endless dark little lanes. I dreamt of being a famous surfist, far away in Hawaii, so far away, beyond the horizon. these days seem so far, 1976, 1977, 1978. but still if I close my eyes, I can feel the sweet scent of those days in my nostrils.

1999, I went to Hawaii. I there I was beyond the horizon. still thinking about those days in that so little town, where I had the best days of a so hard lifetime. Belmonte was Hawaii. Hawaii was Belmonte. Also there, back in 99, I had the most wonderful experience of those days. I learned so much about so many things I was still so afraid of.





I may say I feel really lucky to have had both experiences. so far from each other and still so close.


last year I came back to Belmonte after my last visit in 1978. the scent is till the same.



fotos:
anonymous, Belmonte, carnival of 1978. Me and my little cousin, Maria Aparecida.

Michael Kroell, Maui, Hawaii, 1999.