Moonlight sonata.

 My wife's oldest cousin passed away last week. We weren't very close, but I don't think he was sick with anything. He had a heart attack playing tennis on a Saturday afternoon. He was 51.

When I was younger, I often wondered if people knew that the day they died was going to be their last day alive. As in you wake up in the morning and you get a feeling that was the last time you did that.

I don't think my wife's cousin woke up last Saturday and knew that was that. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that we don't know, really. We wake up as if it were any other day, because it might as well be. Whether in my wife's cousin's case, or when you have an accident, you don't really know your number is up. Maybe if you're sick in hospital or something, or if you're really old. Otherwise, I don't think you know. (Unless, of course, you commit suicide.)

One of the things that have made me come to this conclusion is watching videos of attacks on the street. Just this morning I saw one. This guy walks up behind a police officer. In a split second, he's tried to stab the police officer, and his partner has turned around to come to his rescue, and next thing you know, they have shot the guy dead. There you have it. I don't think the guy knew one minute before two minutes later he would no longer be alive.

I've read about the spike in brain activity a couple of minutes after your heart stops beating in cases of heart failure. I wonder what my wife's cousin saw in his mind's eye. He must have felt the pain - I've read heart attacks are very painful. But after he lost consciousness, did he slip straight into a dreamlike state? Or is it more like when you fall asleep and you're not really conscious or aware of anything at all - not until later when you start dreaming?

I hope I die when I'm very old. I want to see my children grow, and I want to see my grandchildren. My great grandchildren if I can.

Weather diaries.

I miss writing. I miss producing, even though I have been working so incredibly hard. I've got a new computer, so I should be able to write more and produce more. Not that there was something fundamentally wrong with the old computer. It was just old. It had stopped updating. It's still going, but it's quite slow. It's a nightmare every time it needs to be restarted. It takes forever. It got to a point where I had to uninstall Skype, because it took so long to start. It stopped responding. At least this one is brand new. A world of possibilities before me. I hope lots of interesting things come out of our newly established relationship. I certainly do miss writing.

Song for someone.

Today marks the 38th anniversary of the day I came out of my mother's womb. It was the early hours of a Sunday, 19 September 1976, and my parents were at a restaurant, where they had been dancing all night. When my mother's water broke, she was rushed to hospital by her cousin, because my father was in a state, and he didn't go see her - or me - until Sunday afternoon.

I had existed - first as a handful of cells, then as a foetus, then as a baby - since mid December 1975, which is about 40 weeks before I naturally came out of my mother's womb. During this time, my mother read The Continent, by Brazilian writer Érico Veríssimo, and, like many people who have also read it, fell in love with the manly and rugged-looking Captain Rodrigo Severo Cambará, a sort of Gaúcho Heathcliff. I was named after him.

The Policy Of Truth.

In 1983, construction workers found a decomposing human head whilst digging in a peat bog in Cheshire. Identified as a middle-aged female, the police soon linked the head to Malika Reyn-Bardt, missing since 1960. Her husband, Peter Reyn-Bardt, in prison on different charges, when faced with the discovery, confessed to murdering her and burying her in the bogs. He was duly convicted and sentenced based on his confession, though shortly after his trial the head was radiocarbon dated to actually be 2,000 years old, and not that of his missing wife.

Family life.

So, I've started blogging again, roughly a year after I deleted every single post here since 2004. Since before I even got married. That was part of the trouble I was going through in my divorce.

So, it's 2014 and I'm divorced. Been divorced for a year now. Had a serious relationship during this time, but this, too, has ended, unfortunately. 'Unfortunately' because I was very fond of her. Still am. But the relationship seems to be dead beyond any sort of recovery. Just like my marriage.

In many ways, I've become a different person in all this time. I've lost 40 kilos, which is almost twice my daughter's weight. I've become much closer to my daughter, who's soon to turn 6. I've lived alone, which is something I'd never really done before. There are still many things to change, to improve, and to learn. But I've been doing the rounds.

I've also been trying to investigate my family history further. I've found that I have distant relatives in the countryside. One of them is actually a successful male model in Milan. He actually looks like one of my cousins on my mother's side, ironically. 'Ironically' because he's from my father's side. Another is a beautiful young girl who seems to be a trader here in São Paulo. Neither of them knows me nor that we're related. I don't think they know each other either.

I've also found I seem to have a lot of family in Spain, especially in the Valencia area. Their last names are spelt 'Escales' rather than 'Oscalis' or 'Eskeles', and many of them seem to be related. I found all this out last January, visiting the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv with my ex-girlfriend. I did find a wealth of information on both my parents' families, as well as my ex-wife's family.

It will be very interesting to teach my daughter all this and where she came from, and what her ancestry and cultural heritage is.