Portuguese everyday humour

The Portuguese seem to primarily laugh at the other. This cannot be proven without field research first, but let’s imagine that my assumption is lucky enough to be true. (It is).

If the other is present during the moment of delivery, that should be equivalent to unloading a negative charge on that same other. It might be compensated by redirecting laughter at another one, if not on the moment itself then at least later. Still, there will be a negative charge to be dealt with. The negative charge of laughing at someone’s shortcomings or differences, and the negative charge of being the object of laughter. This doesn’t bode well for the national psyche.

On the other hand---and that one must be always the hand that is still free --- groups or tribes seem to be defined by what is different in other groups. “We don’t talk as loudly as;” “Theirs is a drinking culture;” “They’re lazy.” And, truth be told, we cannot fully ascertain what we’re like without being exposed to what is different from what surrounds us, which is our normal. By the way, that’s a great argument to add an article 31 to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: It’s mandatory that everyone visits every country in the world for a minimum period of ninety days. One month to adjust. One month to understand. One month to have fun.

On the first foot, as I’ve no free hands left by now, a group will feel more closely knit if it can differentiate itself from other groups, and groups and their dynamics are a part of human evolution.

While on the other foot, we all now must evolve from our tribal past in order to become a planetary civilization, otherwise humanity is screwed. And that’s why I’m trying to change my humour from making fun of the other to self-deprecating humour.

As you noticed, I stupidly used all my limbs to hold an argument on each. I thus fell on my butt. And it hurts.

The Portuguese: Aspects of nature and their nature

The Portuguese…

Some time ago I found by accident a complete course in Human Behavioural Biology on YouTube. The lecturer is an eminent scientist at Stanford University, Robert Sapolsky. Halfway through his course (which is poorly filmed and lacking sound quality but, hey, I'm thankful nonetheless), he established that human behaviour depends on every little thing from genetic makeup to what we ate a couple of hours ago. So instead of upholding reductionist causes to explain certain behaviours, he's from the school of "It's due to everything, babe!"

Before we proceed, a confession: I adore Sapolsky’s brain, knowledge, humour, and I even find him fluffy and adorable! I wish he was a teddy bear I grew up with... I’d be so much smarter by now! I mean, I’d be finally smart.

Of this time of mine back into a more rural Portugal, during hikes and biking trips I started paying more attention to how nature was like. And it is very gnarly.

Gnarly trees, gnarly vegetation, and therefore gnarly people.

Some have their edges sharp, or thorny, and will cut you at the slightest pressure. Others are more huggable. And a few are a nice place to lean on while sitting under their shade. Yet the majority is compact, thick, designed to bear fruit, to resist a prolonged absence of water, with the least amount of energy being spent on other activities than the bare essential to survive. Inside their defensive barrier, it looks peaceful. But if we examine the roots, they’re twisted, deep, and resilient.

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LISBON

Eduardo Lourenço is perhaps Portugal’s most distinguished literary critic. Pessoa is “an exception, being a great writer,” he said the other afternoon. “But he had a way of being that is distinctly Portuguese.” He paused to find the right words. “It has to do with everything and nothing — that we Portuguese can have everything, but still feel we have nothing.”

Portugal, he explained, had discovered half the world by the 16th century but still felt itself a failure for having not discovered the rest. The national mind-set, Mr. Lourenço said, is “a combination of megalomania and humility.”

“Also Pessoa was a loner,” he went on, “one of the great poets to express absolute loneliness — some of his poems are so sad they are difficult to read, which is very Portuguese. Listen to fado.” He was referring to the music that here connotes “saudade,” a nearly untranslatable word meaning homesickness but also something more, something, he suggested, like paradise lost.

in Michael Kimmelman's article for the NYT, Portugal Holds on to Words Few Can Grasp.

Que se funde em Agosto

Inspirado na proposta de José Saramago

de emergência da grande Hispania.

Ela entrou de leve na varanda,
sentou-se na cadeira
em movimento lento e ondulante
como a sua cabeleira.
E a ele, sem querer, deu-lhe perfil.

Emergindo da estática biografia
de Hemingway, daquele sexo,
religião, estágio, amizade,
progresso, rompimento,
sorte de não ser interrompido
nu ou no acto criativo,
amor que melhora a escrita,
literatura despida,
imaginação acicatada, 
colaboração, ciúme,
memória e mais memória,
escrita no Café,
Fitzgerald, Dostoiévski
Pound, Stein, Baroja,
touros, pesca, caça, boxe,
whysky, champagne, vinho,
Espanha, França, Itália,
Quénia, Tanzânia,
América de Cima de Cuba,
memória electroconvulsada
e suicídio.
Queria dizer-se: Ainda atordoado,
ele ergueu e repousou a vista
na estética biologia
cujo movimento o havia espertado.

Aquela silhueta,
desenrolando-se interessante,
bem ossada.

E porque olhos lhe tatuavam a pele,
ela retribuiu-lhe a mirada.
Nenhum olhar ali era de baba.

Neste cinema primordial
de voyeur e voyeuse,
frame após frame,
o genital motor liquefez-se.

De correlação era o convite.
“Posso entrar-te?” inquiriu.
E ela, “Entra.”

No mar provocado
por cabelo castanho puro castelhano
e negra melena de herança sarracena,
fundiram-se o suelo de Espanha
e o solo deste reino.