Neighbourhood.

I like the weather to reflect my state of mind. Current mood: The Crow. I live in a part of São Paulo called Pinheiros. Pinheiros is named after a river that's no longer a river (it's now a sort of malevolently glittering toxic sludge), which was itself named after some pine trees (pinheiros) that are no longer there. Sans river and sans pine trees, Pinheiros is today recognisable as a petrified forest of condos and office blocks that crowd out the horizon, animated at street level by a thrumming vascular system of dusty roads along whose edges jostle an interchangeable parade of botecos and bakeries, hardware stores, pharmacies, take-out joints, jack-hammering building sites and hip new restaurants. It also has a reputation for being one of the city’s safest and most pleasant neighbourhoods, and this fact alone might be reason enough for me to like living here – but it’s not really that which does it.

Here’s four reasons why I like living in Pinheiros:

1. I like the way that the waiters and chefs at the sushi restaurant on the corner of Rua dos Pinheiros and Rua Franisco Leitão sit around playing long, serious games of poker and smoking all afternoon.

2. I like the way that the old Japanese guy in the straw-hat arrives at the café on the corner of Rua Artur de Azevedo and Rua Doutor Virgilio every morning at 9am, settles his dog under his chair and orders his first beer of the day. 

3. I like the way the tailor and locksmith whose shops are next-door to each other on the corner of Rua Joaquin Antunes and Rua Artur de Azevedo while away the long hours without any customers chatting in the doorways of their respective shops. (Consider, from this, how climate might predetermine temperament; historically, it’s always been too cold for Nordic races to have their doors thrown open, so we coalesced around the nucleus of mead hall, castle or family house, giving rise to our supposed taciturnity and coldness while on the other side of the world from Dickens' shopkeepers shivering in their mufflers, these tailors and locksmiths stood watching the world pass by, becoming incorrigibly relaxed.)

4. I like the fact that there’s a concrete yard below our bedroom window which used to be vacant, but which is now used by the seamstresses in the building opposite for their breaks; at regular intervals throughout the day they pour out of the doorway in their smocks and flop down in the shade along the white walls, talking and laughing with their bright, piercing laughs that sound like the parrots which roost in the big tree out front.