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.

A marriage wrought in blood

Hamza bin Laden, the son of the late al-Qaida leader, has married the daughter of

Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker in the 9/11 terror attacks, according to his family.

in The Guardian, 2018/08/05

Blessed be your marriage, Hamza!

When your offspring learns of the deeds

Of their grandparents and despise you

For your symbolic marriage.

Blessed be your mind, Hamza!

When it wakes from nightmares

Where you were covered in ashes

And your innocence too.

Blessed be your afterlife, Hamza!

When in the flames of your Hell

You realise you were obsolete

When thinking of the Whole.

Blessed be your Allah, Hamza!

When He reveals to you that

The teachings of Bahá'u'lláh

Were The Path you left behind.

El&la

Ele tinha a lógica do seu lado &
Ela tinha a graça—meio-caminho andado.
Tinha o olho cansado de saltar de língua &
Tinha a loucura que dizia que era boa na cama.
Tinha procurado muito por ela &
Tinha a cada “Muito bom dia!” um pretendente.

Lá se entretinha com a leitura e a pesquisa &
"Singin’: La, la, la, la, la-la-la, la!"

Ele perguntava se a menina dançava &
Ela tinha os pés cansados de tanto baile.
Lembrava-lhe a canção do Chico Buarque &
De embarque e barco, velejava desde moça.
Faltava-lhe o sentido do comércio &
Transaccionava mesmo sem valor ou bolsa.

&h!  Limitado &
Imitada.

Mother, courage...

Though as the years passed Mama did indeed stay the same (...).
She had seen Mama at the time the way a child sees an adult, but now
the roles were reversed: Marketa was the adult and (...) Mama appeared to her
small and defenseless as a child. (...) Mama had relinquished the marshall's
baton of her motherhood and gone into a different world. 

in Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

My first day of work in Lisbon was memorable. After all, memories with a negative stamp to them seem to linger crispier than others in our brains, surely as one of our evolved survival tools. 

I got late to work after missing an earlier train. The alarm clock had rung at the right time. I did get up and got ready also on time. What delayed me was crashing an old Renault 4L against a tree at low speed while fetching for a lighter. And then, minutes later, halfway to the train station, the clutch cable of an old Mini Morris snapped by itself---I know! It does seem I was in an old car competition of sorts. 

The two cars belonged to my mother’s new companion, and he wasn’t happy about it. Not even after I paid for the mechanic. 

At the time, my mother was pressing me to leave the childhood nest, after her new companion moved in. And that was all understandable and fine. I also wanted to move out. I just hadn’t b€€n abl€ to back th€n. Then Sofia came into my life, and I went to live with her and Bernardo, her four-year-old.

Going back to the farm a few days later to pick up my scant possessions, I was received with such hostility that I stopped talking to my mother gradually, and then not at all for almost a decade.

Then I met my wife, with whom I married just to satisfy her world-view. Indeed, my dears, marriage is an outdated institution, although I still think monogamy to be as good as democracy: Imperfect, but we haven’t figured out a better system yet.  And Ruxandra insisted for me to re-establish communication with my mother, which I did. We met in Lisbon, we cried a little, we hugged, and we kept in contact sporadically. I mean, I did. Ruxandra talked to her frequently. 

Two decades after that, I find myself living with my mother again as a temporary arrangement until I find a new home. And with this new daily contact I came to the realisation that my mother was stuck in time. She didn’t evolve as a person. Sometimes I can’t even avoid being paternalistic towards her as I’m forced to be grandpaternalistic instead. Not only that, but she is already receding “into a different world,” as Kundera puts it. 

However, I didn’t see that happening to José Saramago, a person devoted to the intellectual life. And my mother was married to someone also devoted to the life of the intellect. What happened was that she has devoted herself exclusively to the material aspects of life: Feeding, and clothing her children; cleaning after them; feeding the farm animals; keeping the farm wild vegetation in check. And her emotional landscape is more ridden with rancour, unsolved issues with people she met, than with happy memories. At various times, she’s proven to be mean, vindictive, jealous, and envious. Other times, her ignorance of the world around her is painful to witness. To top it all, and as a consequence of having lived with a buffoon for decades, she makes up stories about other people she has no clue about. Yet she suffers when she cannot participate in a conversation as she lacks the codes to decipher it: Ignorance is only bliss when we’re surrounded by ignorance alone. “A different world,” is where she’s living already. 

Perhaps some of us will also get to experience first-hand that slow transformation from parent into frail child who progressively begins to inhabit a world of his own creation. And in those cases it’s probably better to subtract the negation from those famous lines of Dylan Thomas’ poem to come up with this instead: (...) go gentle into that good night.

I saved a life, but did I save a life?

To readjust my finances, I sold my apartment in Lisbon and went to live in a farm with my mother, sister, and youngest niece. This is a temporary move while hunting for a new den in which I can settle my pillows.

The new arrangement involves a thirty minutes walk to and from the train station that I gladly embraced, missing as I was those walks which owning a dog entail.

One night, around 2 A.M., I was returning to the farm on a bicycle. The headlight began to flicker on this barely lit stretch of road. The batteries were running out but yet I could made out something lying on the other side of the road. It was apparently a drunken man whose lights went out on his way back from a nearby brothel.

As I checked my phone and noticed its batteries were running out as well, I heard the roar of a speeding car approaching. There is a blind road curve just before that spot where the man was lying. I started to wave frantically at the driver to come to a halt. The car braked, swerved, and was able to stop only a bit past the unconscious body.

“Man! If you weren't here I would have rammed that poor bastard!... Thank you! Thank you!” said the driver as he came out of the car, his eyes wide open at the realisation of what could have had happened to him, and to the drunken man.

The driver backed his car to lit the fallen man, and also to protect the latter from another speeding car, an ambulance was called, and I excused myself and proceeded home. My curiosity wasn't enough to beat my fatigue, and my priority had reverted to hug my pillows.

The following day I realised that the train had arrived late due to some impromptu tracks maintenance. And that I wouldn’t be there at all that night had I managed better my finances.

So I didn’t save any life. A series of coincidences did. And I cannot even know if the man was better off dead, as there's something already slightly defunct about passing out drunk and alone on the middle of a road after a night in a brothel.

How lucky was that poor drunken bastard?

Bazofu

Você é mais bazofu com o chapéu.

Rui, na pausa da limpeza de janelas

Tenho que ir a Cabo Verde, talvez até a cada ilhéu,
essa terra que perdida no mar lançou Cesária ao céu. 
Tenho que ir dançar a Cabo Verde, abanar a anca,
sentir o morno na face, e a morna que nos balança. 
Tenho que ir a esse arquipélago que era inabitado,
que viu Francis Drake ou Charles Darwin atracado,
que viu escravo atrás de escravo acorrentado,
que vê a maior esperança de vida de toda a África;
algo há que está dando certo por meio de tanto errado. 

Poets & Patterns

I’m not keen on talking about one’s own métier. But then again who should talk about it?

Patterns come to our senses without invitation. They’re made of particles of scattered information that once collected make a pattern discernible. The validity of a such a pattern might not be ascertained by the collector. It’s time and flow of information that will do it or undo it. 

Poets are collectors. Poets are recipients. Poets are absorbers, sponges. Poets suffer if there's no light to be consumed. And will then become poets of the mortified kind.

Patterns are not the poet’s fault.

A poem is but a temporary vault.

AGCT, AGCT, AGCT, AGCT:

Alphabetic Guardians of Comedy and Tragedy.

In defence of a crush

Isn't it true that, if I kiss your foot, you will limp not to hurt my kiss?

Nichita Stănescu

“If you start with a crush it might lead to a crash,” I was once told, and that assessment sounds true and solid to its very core.

However:

A crush is a fragile winged creature akin to the ephemeral mayfly. As it’s a single one, it will not reproduce. But it'll produce a show of life during its lifespan.

The lovers’ butterflies are altogether other creatures and imply laying eggs in each other’s stomach, nurturing caterpillars, admiring the chrysalis, and waiting for the full spectacle.

A crush starts as a nymph or naiad in freshwater. Freshwater is water that looks fresh for the one who has the crush. Water is his crush, his thirst. 

When it reaches adulthood, a crush is called an imago. I suspect because it produces images that might have not been seen before. 

A crush comes to existence of its own volition. No one’s to blame. No one should be ashamed.

Though laughable, a crush has sufficient wing force to influence the length of airwaves, thus changing  how words come to sound.

A crush was chilli to a writer such as Hemingway. He called it being in love, but most probably they were crushes, and still his writing benefited from them. Thus Hemingway arguably crushed crushes to turn them into chilli powder for later use. Or he might have used only fresh crushes. We'll never know.

A crush is a Stănescu’s kiss. Either you limp or it dies. As it’s impossible to sustain such a funny way of walking for long... 

N253

Talvez, talvez a companhia da esteva

entrando narina dentro constantemente;

ou talvez, talvez as curvas, o sobe

e o desce da ene-duzentos e cinquenta

e três; ou talvez o ronronar da moto;

ou talvez, talvez o azulão e o caiado

cobrindo toda a vila de Santa Susana,

a tal que viu sua ponte submersa;

ou talvez ter sido a vez primeira

entre Alcácer do Sal e Montemor-o-Novo

assim, sim, de peito aberto;

ou talvez, talvez a estrada deserta,

essa magnífica ene-duzentos e cinquenta

e três; talvez as vacas, ou o rebanho

ovino, e as encostas gentis de vinho;

talvez, de vez em quando, a rocha cortante,

cortada para facilitar a estrada;

ou talvez o sobral imaginariamente infinito,

ou a ponte no fundo do monte,

ou a indicação para a gruta,
ou ser Julho e Julho ser augusto,

ou os campos queimados de labuta

tanto quanto de sol; ou

talvez, talvez tudo isso, e o almoço

de enguia sendo digerido na esguia

e angulosa ene-duzentos e cinquenta

e três. E talvez no final de tanta recta,

pousando a motocicleta, e sentindo

em repouso o coração apertado.

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.