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Melancholia

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Looking out onto the trees, I'm overwhelmed by their profound sadness.  I believe that their wisdom, rising as it does from the earth, knows more than I know. Sadness reminds me that I still love and that I still care.  We have all been hurt, and as a consequence made ourselves into pseudo-Stoics, believing in our pretense, the pretense that we do not care.  Resolved to be with that illusion -- that familiar nonchalance, that strange, violent numbness necessary in the face of what seems impossible to bear -- we unleash our anger.  Rage. Vitriol.  The "government."  The ineptness of "others." The conspiracy that justifies the "police state." Frankly, I'm not here to pass judgment.  I am here to witness the frailty of those sinews that link bone to flesh. When we are in good health, we are eternal.  When the stock market is on the rise, we are secure.  When my lover smiles, we are in love.  Until we aren't.  We find ourselves exposed, w
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A Cada Dia Que Passa

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I am taking this opportunity to say, I LOVE LEARNING LANGUAGES!!! I am having so  much fun at this. I get to spend my days studying grammar, writing and talking to myself in Portuguese, attempting and failing and attempting again to make sense of these new sounds, testing myself, pushing the envelope. And also avoiding it: Eduardo can attest, I have had moments of utter despair, resignation, desperation, self-pity, frustration. And also  moments of illumination, excitement, connection, laughter, and delight. This is one of those :-) It all seems soooo obvious now: since at least 2013 when I traveled in France (no, since 2012 when I expressed the wish to be in France; no, 2005 when I wanted to go international to train in Alexander Technique; no, since COLLEGE when I couldn't study abroad because I'd already spent my "off-site" year at the college I transferred in from; no, HIGH SCHOOL when I was too scared to take the leap to study abroad!!) –– I have been wanting f
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nothing doing

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Our favorite coffee shop, the one we can walk to along enchanted roads of rock walls and serene rows of couve (the cabbage that feeds everyone, horses/cows/chickens/people), has as its back wall a large window that overlooks the garden of a man named Avelino.  As we sipped our cafezinhos , we watched Avelino wield his enchada (hoe) with a peaceful and purposeful dexterity.  We walked down, expressed admiration, asked if we count enter.  Avelino quietly and respectfully walked us through the immaculate rows of vegetables.  Here, the summer onions.  There, young lettuces.  At the corner, the chicken coop, his hatchery.  And, here, with some bemusement, the incorrigible snails that lay claim to some of the bounty.  We weren't much inclined to ask him what he "did" because it was obvious.  Avelino pointed up to his house, up a slope some fifty feet, the purchase of his children, he said.  Pride to be sure, for the success of his children.  But that wasn't what principal
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