Confinement VII

Inside, looking outside, the apartment looks at itself. Windows face windows. To Southeast, a neighbor’s garden offers a wider view.

Views of Confinement VI

Down the road, towards South, we can see a little triangle of river. Here, highly enhanced, Tejo’s small bit is signaled by an arrow on the left.

Poring rain in the morning some patches of sun in the afternoon, so I was able to sketch this in the same balcony as yesterday.

Views of Confinement V

This strange apartment building, just in front of us, that looks like a stranded project for Algarve, belongs to an insurance company. Sewing its incongruent relation with the street fabric, it shows a faux aqueduct, a reminder of happier post-modern times. Not long ago (a year or so) with the pretext of major conservation works, all the tenants had to move. The company even pays new rents in new locations. For some months, it was inhabited by two security guards. Now, not even by them. In these troubled times, a little group of homeless men found shelter in the lower passageways. They roam the parking machines for lost change and seat contemplative in the nearby Jardim das Amoreiras slurping packages of red wine. The building politely ignores them as we all do. This enormous empty white carcass that was waiting probably for a renaissance surfing the booming tourism economy, possess now a ghost-like quality, an inverse metaphor of our confinement times.

Confinement views IV

Easter Sunday. Sun is back.

Dismayed cars longing for past vacations.

A man in a mask asks a question to his dog that it will never be able to answer:

“What did I just tell you?… What did I just tell you, huh?”

 

 

 

Confinement Views III

Still Saturday 11. A view from another window.

The clumsily elegant palace in the picture is nowadays an office building — locked now. Few people stayed in the apartment building in front. The infamous Airbnb apartment right on our face, where so many stag and bachelorette parties gathered not long ago, is now mercifully quiet. A solitary man heads to Jardim das Amoreiras. No haste at all.

Stay-at-home views II

This morning. A different view from the same balcony. Indifferent ficus watching placid street.

Vistas do Fica-em-casa, Stay-at-home Views I

The first of my stay-at-home views:

Today, a few moments of sun… But soon after I started this sketch, dense clouds obscured the sky from the West.

Few minutes after it was finished, it cleared again…

April!