Brodja-Miseri in Buracas do Casmilo
A play in seven acts, day 2
Buracas do Casmilo, a limestone cave system in the Portuguese interior. The day after Praia do Osso da Baleia, the air still thick with it.
Act IV: Waiting for Brodja-Miseri
The script asked for a state of Brodja-Miseri *. There was one flaw: none of the six knew what the word meant. We waited several hours for it to set in. It never came. The collective went solo, and the experiment failed lamentably. Only a month later did the word return, in a dream where it sounded self-evident and everyone already knew it. On waking, it was gone again.
* Brodja-Miseri = the faint vertigo of being six and one at the same time. The word, it turned out, had been there from the start, spelled out in the opening letters of who we were.
Act V: Six Throws, Six Portraits
While six separate sheets of paper were painted, another process unfolded. Over each drawing a rope was held, dropped, and photographed where it landed. Six sheets, six throws, six photographs. The rope was lifted away; the drawings remain, but the brief crossing of the rope lives on only in the images. A month later, their true nature surfaced: six portraits, one of each member of the group.
Act VI: Intermission: a smaller drama
At the mouth of the cave, a tiny crab spider sat motionless over a bee she had caught. The bee was already dead, slowly drained while work continued nearby. Her patience was rewarded, which was more than could be said for the six wanderers inside.
Act VII: The Magic Carpet Ride
A final sheet of cardboard had been painted. A last gesture stepped in: daisies were picked at the mouth of the cave and fixed to the board with wet acrylic, before the rope fell onto it one final time. Once dry, the board was carried to the edge of the cave. Earlier that day, paper aeroplanes had been filmed flying into the depths; now it was the cardboard's turn. Launched into the void, the flying carpet went down like one more paper aeroplane, until it came to rest on the rocks below.
Deepest thanks to the wanderers for the work made together and apart, and for the shared photographs that sustained this story.