Siri in Isolation

I’m prostrate on a mat in the floor of my guest/exercise room following the instructions given by my personal trainer, Enivaldo, who hasn’t been to my house for over four months.     We now meet via Messenger on the screen of my iPad Mini tied with Therabands to an old tripod. “ Um, dois, três, quatro …” he counts, as I work my way through sit-ups and weight exercises. “ Bom, ótimo ,” he continues, to keep me motivated. When it’s time for the calmer stretches my relaxing eye catches the snug grey socks on my feet. I have never noticed there’s an ‘L’ and an ‘R’ woven into the toes, by mere chance pulled onto the correct feet, but I immediately remember buying them on Kensington High Street in London last October.   33 Collingham Gardens It was the day I caught massive rain on my long walk through familiar neighborhoods – if you can call them that after a fifty-three-year interval. I had found the corner house, 33A Collingham Gardens, where I lived for several months in a c...

These are the sounds in my garden: Carnival music floating down through the trees from Rocinha , the favela spilling across the hilltop above us, Oswaldo sweeping hundreds of fallen dry jackfruit leaves into big mounds, the plop of the tennis ball that Zaffy drops at my feet for me to throw, followed by the slurping wet sound of her drinking water from her bowl, and the dry slap of Victor’s feet as he walks his daily forty minutes around the pool in the bright sun. Large yellow butterflies flutter soundlessly in the breeze, while dogs bark in the distance. Today most nature sounds, birds, monkeys, are dwarfed by the loud amplifiers above. Still my foot automatically moves up and down to the samba rhythms that transmit the determined joie-de vivre in that busy and crowded community.   View of the Thames and St. Paul's Cathedral, London I’ve brought out a blue ceramic teapot found on a trip to Denmark to brew a special “Director’s Blend” bought on a solo trip to London this past Octo...