Sunday Morning Coming On

 

Sunday has come.  Clear blue skies are the ceiling of this world today.  A soft breeze stirs the greenery of the plants out on the back deck. Currently I sit at the keyboard with the window to that deck open. My fingers tap away at the keys. I wait for the strains of songs of the faithful to waft my way.  Soon the congregants of the Evangelical Baptists situated across the courtyard will start singing all those hymns I know so well, only they will be sung in Portuguese.   

As I sit here, I can hear the washing machine spinning wildly.  Soon I must take a break to hang laundry. Today will remain bright, sunny and warm enough to dry just about anything. (Short break taken).  First load of laundry on the line.  Second load is ten minutes into its one-hour cycle. Within the hour all my clothes lines and drying racks will be full of sheets, pillowcases, socks and undergarments.  Some track pants too.

 

Haven’t posted much in the past three weeks.  Thanks, and a tip of the hat to Covid-19 for my absence at the keyboard.  As I noted on Facebook Covid hit me like a freight train, like a really, really…really bad flu.   About the most I could muster to do during the vast majority of my illness was watch dystopian television series on the streaming services or play Simon’s Cat on the iPad. Today, I still have the slightest tinge of body aches but there are no other active symptoms. I am sure a little time out in the sun soaking up warmth with help.

 

A couple of nights ago I posted some pictures from my walk around the one block that is the rectangle in which my apartment building exists. Yeah, you caught me, I am just a rube from the country.  I am amazed at how much I can find in the way of food and services in a very small area. As I have described it my world is way more compact now, maybe 10 square blocks.  In that area I can everything from garden supplies to groceries to leather repair.  Back in Michigan Saturday shopping trips would involve four stores and probably 20 miles of driving. Here it is a twenty-minute walk with usually two stops at different grocery stores.

 

(short break, again.)

 

Having atum(tuna) sandwiches for lunch. Had to jog (not really) down to the nearest small grocery and gets some bread.  Basically, bread is good just on the day you purchase it. As long as I was at the mini-Auchan, I picked up some chips.  Weird fact, chips here are not salted very heavily at all unless you buy the American brands at twice the price of the Portuguese brands. French fries in restaurants are not really salted. It is almost as if the foods we salt the Portuguese don’t and the ones we don’t, they drench in salt.

 

While at the store I saw a group of newbie visitors from ‘Murica.  How could I tell?  Well, hairstyles, clothing and the fact that each of the lot were carrying about two gallons of water in shrink wrapped sets of bottles under their arms.  Also, they were staring at the take away food options in total bewilderment.  Finally, the size of the Coke bottles seemed to amuse them.  As per my usual I struck up a conversation. They are here for a nine-day trip and they are driving down to the Algarve.  More power to them.  My hope is that they are from a highly congested city say L.A. or NYC because the traffic getting out of Lisbon is insane. 

 

Spent the early hours on Friday rearranging my airline tickets back to the US.  I tried to do it online with Air Canada but some glitch would not let me pick up the seats I wanted.  I turned on my US phone line and dialed into the backdoor number for AC.  Turns out the fare I wanted had just sold out and then repopulated at twice the price.  Don’t you just hate that?  Well, all was not lost.  As long as I was willing to add an extra leg onto the trip, I could get the same price only slightly increasing the cost of my original fare.  So, on the same day I will be in Lisbon, Montreal, Toronto and Detroit.  

 

Just as I am finishing up, the Baptists are singing a song I know.  I actually used a search engine to figure out what the song was.  Why because I only remembered one lyric.  It is the only place I know that uses the word diadem and the lyric is, “Bring forth the royal diadem…”. Yup, an old timey hymn entitled “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name”.  

And who knew Kris Kristofferson did a music video for Sunday Morning Coming Down?

Plague Poem

Faded grey light remains

Above faded and worn buildings

Standing silent in a city turbulent with renewal and change

 

One by one apartment lights blink on.

 

A sunny Sunday has now passed into twilight

At peak afternoon heat

Streets stood empty; sidewalks stayed clear.

Seems everyone ran down to the water’s edge.

Trams were packed as people rushed to feel 

The cooling breeze at the river, at the ocean on a hot, hot, day.

 

They crammed together shoulder to shoulder, ignoring reality

This new plague still rattles the elder’s bones, stretches tired sinews

Shakes the afflicted first with cold then burns them with heat from deep inside.

 

A simple journey carries with it the threat of life changing illness or death

Will the unmasked man three back coughing spread the malady to all about?

Did the person singing along at the concert unknowingly

Breathe malicious microbes on all those within the sound of her voice?

 

To a mere mortal the truth of transmission is unknowable.

 

Life is filled with vagaries, and 

Buffeted by cascading systems failing, and is

Never promised, never assured.

 

Now black of night is what remains

Apartment lights against a black sky are beacons of survival, of hope.

DOG, I wonder

Old, In the Way, Cantankerous

SUPPORT JAY TODD’S BIRTHDAY FUNDRAISER FOR AGNOSTIC, DYSLEXIC INSOMNIACS.  WE NEED TO LET THESE PEOPLE GET OVER STAYING AWAKE ALL NIGHT WONDERING IF THERE IS A DOG.  THEY NEED SOME SLEEP

 

My birthday is coming up on Thursday.  I will turn 67 years old.  Damn, how quickly the movie flashes by.

 

Meta, ( Antichrist #1), is bugging me to support a charity for my birthday.  I have in the past. I will not do it this year. Meta’s constant begging for a charity button trouble’s me.  Seems like FB does this to rack up a large dollar figure of charitable giving processed through their app as a talking point to offset all the stories about the evil spying they do on us and the manipulation by algorithms of the darker things in our world. I don’t need to support them.

 

Note I have nothing against people using birthday fundraisers as they serve a good purpose. What bugs me is Facebook/Meta’s insistent ads and charity suggestions. From the suggestions they give me, it appears their analytics really haven’t been tracking me all that well.  Again, I don’t mean to disparage anyone who has used the give button. Hey if you want to give to a charity to honor me, donate to research on autism, particularly on integrating the autistic into the work force.

 

What I would prefer instead is that on April 20^th, you tell me a short story about a point in our lives that I may have forgotten. It does not need to be cringe inducing embarrassing but it could be.  Think about it, it could be from work, from socializing, from school, etc.  Just know that at 67 I probably have forgotten some highly funny stuff from over the years stuff that each and every one of you remembers, possibly because you were sober and I wasn’t. If it is too tawdry well just message it to me.

 

Looking forward to see if anyone remembers anything of note.

Obliterated by Covid 19

Obliterated, this week was obliterated.  On Sunday night I attended a woman’s concert who closed out her set by singing repeatedly, “I am going to die”.  By mid-Monday evening I was wondering if that musical interlude had been foreshadowing.  I had started retching and then I collapsed. There, laying limp and mostly immobile on the cold tile of my bathroom floor the awareness of just how miserable Covid-19 could be hit me like a freight train.

 

My symptoms have included violent chills, drenching sweats, palpitations, monster headaches, muscle aches, wracking coughs and the loss of my sense of smell. My sleep pattern was totally shot.  I don’t think I really slept for most of Monday through Wednesday.  I got a few hours in here and there before the chills or sweating would wake me.  Once awakened the headache made sure I did not go back to sleep.  Tylenol and cough suppressant, these were my tools and eventually they did help. I did have some nasal congestion but it never moved into my lungs.

 

Thank goodness I was fully vaxed and boosted.  Yesterday and today, I have had some “limited” energy.  Coming and wanning in waves those caloric values let me take care of some laundry and dishes.  I have even taken a short walk up and down the block to prove my legs could still carry my far too portly weight.  

 

Out for a walk I saw the neighborhood streets were closed off.  There is a 15-story mobile crane at work. In Lisboa there is so much construction.  Lots of people in yellow vests, lots of bags with broken bricks inside.  Many, many cranes are standing everywhere. However, most of the cranes you see are ground mounted affairs.  But this one is huge and I am amazed they could get the vehicle through the streets of this city.

 

Oh well, having hung a load of laundry out to dry and emptied the dishwasher my energy is flagging.  Talk to you all later. 

Lisbon Lives in April

Lisbon lives in April.  The brilliant green of new leaves fills the center of the avenues and boulevards.  Verdant shoots and sprigs of new foliage contrast with the pastel yellows, pinks and dusty almost olive colors buildings.  

 

With spring coming on, the outdoor cafes take the portable heaters inside.  Cafe seats along the broad sidewalks lining thoroughfares are packed at both the lunch and dinner hours. Plates of pork, or mussels, or grilled octopus are set before a hungry public.  With each plate there is a wine glass filled well. Be it a fine dining restaurant or a snack bar serving a seafood sopa you will find the umbrellas are up and people are talking, drinking and eating.

 

Easter weekend in the non-touristic areas of the city felt like someone had spirited away the population through some kind of magic. Stores were closed and people were simply gone.  People went to the beach perhaps.  Perhaps they went to the family’s quinta in some rural region. Walking the streets looking at the emerging blossoms and the architecture of old gates and doorways was as fine as fine could be.

 

Now mind you in the touristic areas the madness has begun.  Easter break/spring break and the spots Rick Steves asserts are must sees are packed. Lots of people vying to get on the streetcars to Belem to see the monuments and the monastery, had that look.  You know the look.  It translates into something like this, “If I take one more subway ride the wrong direction, or if I get off one stop too early or too late again, I am going to lose it.” In shorts and ball caps they try to take it all in within seven days. 

 

Of course, there are the people who refuse to be pressured to check sights to be seen off a list.  On Friday night these folks were crowded onto the Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara. At this miradouro, a plaza cantilevered over the edge of one of Lisbon’s hills providing a spectacular nighttime view, the music was loud, the drinks were flowing and people gazed longingly, or maybe wistfully, down into  the valley of central Lisbon.  Principe Real and the traversas, stone pathways down the sides of the hill leading from the overlook to the main squares were jammed with people. Warm enough that short sleeves were fine, people blissfully gazed off scanning up and down the width and breadth of Lisbon.

 

And the birds.  Oh the birds.  Our neighborhood is currently filled with noisy cackling swifts. 

 

On Easter Sunday

Sunday, March 23, 2008

 

Another Easter Sunday has passed. No matter how many years may fly by I will always long to be at my Grandmother’s South Carolina homestead.  Her farm was just down the road a piece from Calabash and a stone’s throw from Ocean Drive. 

 

Up until I was 18, I spent the weekend of Easter traveling to or from the Palmetto state to be at my father’s mother’s farm. Longs, South Carolina was always warmer than New Jersey. Invariably you could wear short sleeves at Easter the low country. The flowers were always a month ahead of those in my little town but the place was different. 

 

I don’t know what made it different.   Was the time spent with my cousins and their exotic southern accents? Was it the fact that television programs weren’t really the same? On Saturday night all that aired on the tube at my Grandmother’s house was gospel quartets. 

 

Maybe I felt it was different because my Grandmother would slip a dollar bill into my hand that I would invariably spend at Stuckey’s on the ride home. No matter what it was, the experience of Easter in Horry County was such an ingrained part of my childhood and tied so inextricably to this day, that I cannot ever let the day go without thinking about it.

 

My childrens’ memories will be different. They will, in the mists held within reflecting imperfectly their childhoods, have snow covered sidewalks and balloons adorning the inside of pyramid shaped Lutheran church. One or two of the hymns will be the same but the rest of the experience will be totally different. Still, what they know of Easter will be their childhood memories-lamb chops and asparagus, Easter egg hunts in the living room and not out at the edge of the fields (with eggs taken from Miss Effie’s chicken coop).

 

When I was standing in a bookstore reading titles, I saw one that caught my attention. It was something like 30 things you need to know now. One of the 30 things was that you could not by your own actions really impact on the behavior of your children. I don’t really agree in total, but I understand what the author meant. Genetics really means a great deal in the formation of personality. 

 

Right out of the box both of my children were different, really different. But some things that I have done I am sure have moderated some bad traits and encouraged a few good ones in the boys. Some things have had no effect that I can discern. Still, just as my parents love of the 500-mile road that rolled across the Mid-Atlantic states down to the Carolinas has impacted my love of travel, I am sure that my somewhat dogmatic (there is right and there is wrong) values have found their way into at least one of the boys’ heads. Enough of this, the evening wanes.

 

I have decided that when I am writing for this blog I will try and make sure that there is something more than my writing involved. It could be a link to a website I like, or an image or an audio clip. Today I went with the image and an audio clip. Night fall here in the western fringe of the Eastern Time zone has an austere beauty. On a cold day the shades of blue as the evening descends are just transcendent. When I lived on the east coast the sky very often seemed fire filled as the day ended. I had one friend who works in the Environmental Quality division of the government tell me that was because of pollution. Well anyway I digress. So, here is a shot of the western sky on a cool evening Easter Sunday 2008.

Looking for My Beautiful Reward

It is Good Friday.

(In that it is Easter Weekend Here is an old Easter Post that Facebook won't let me share in its original form).

It is Good Friday. 

Today is one of the two days that together with Easter are the nexus of the Christian church calendar and belief structure. On a day somewhere in history according to church doctrine a being both man and God was killed in a barbaric manner. The death was a real death according to the precepts of faith of an individual pure in heart, spirit, and soul, well pure in everyway. The act of this death of described as that of a “lamb willingly led to the slaughter” purports to have borne away the burden of all our sins, our failings, our misdeeds and those things we wish would never be examined in the light. We, as I look about this world, need to have our sins borne away. Our hands and hearts are stained with dark dark things. 

In my little town I was raised a Baptist. At age 13 or so I was washed in the sanctified and holy waters by an act of full immersion by Rev. Martin. I professed the articles of faith of this sect. On a number of occasions as the years rolled on I responded to altar calls because there was a deep shade and obscurity of truth I felt within me, call these acts pleas for balm for a troubled soul. On those nights when Billy Graham preached on TV I watched voluntarily as he talked about the clash between sin and goodness and the need for spiritual cleansing. Somehow those words spoke in a stentorian tone touched me. 

But it didn’t stop me. In those dark and little rooms beneath the sanctuary of that country church I do believe I may have copped a feel or two during youth group activities. And as I have said before I hope God has forgiven me for blowing that doobie with my cousin in the bathroom beneath the sanctuary. Oh how we inhaled deeply during the start of the Sunday school weekly assembly. I will forever remember the pot smoke that was streaked with the light from the stained glass windows as we got upstairs for the end of the assembly. I will also remember the distinct feeling 150 eyes were staring at me. You would have thought they would have vented that room to the outside of the building. 

But I digress. I do believe there is good. I do believe there is evil. I do believe good must be brought to the point of supremacy over evil. Are the teachings of the Christian church completely correct on all points? Can we simply listen to a preacher and find our way to God? Well, no. How could a person who is as fallible a mortal as we are, lead us into holiness? We humans err in all our efforts of trying to define and refine the meaning of the divine. But we must try the darkness cannot be allowed to prevail. As Paul said in Philippians 2:12 we can’t give up for we must“…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” 

I do believe we as a species need absolution. I do believe there is a transcendent beauty in the depiction of the Easter resurrection and the promise of absolution it offers. If you find your way to holiness through this path, that is wonderful. If your route is different I do not judge you or condemn you. My only hope is that you seek holiness, that you seek redemption, and that you seek the truth. I am still looking and I doubt I will ever stop.

Let the Shackles Drop

Making mistakes, having poor judgment, and doing things we know we shouldn’t in the heat of the moment are a natural part of the human condition. Why then are we so hard on ourselves?

 

****

 

Turning toward our mistakes with forgiveness rather than judgment or blame contributes significantly toward feeling peace in our heart. It is like bringing a soothing balm to painful parts of ourselves that we have long rejected.

 

—Mark Coleman

 

Last night I dreamt I was trying to apologize to someone I had harmed long ago.  My dream mea culpa was to a person I injured in real life and was sincere.  My offering of contrite redress did not go well. Each action I took trying to repair the long-ago injury only made matters worse.  We did not bridge the chasm between us. Instead of soothing one person’s injury, I ended up hurting two additional people. As I woke, I felt disquieted and dispirited.

 

For a short time, I remain 66 years old.  In my slightly more than six and a half decades on this orb I have caused many harms. Some of the harms I think were quite grievous. Most of my wrongs I inflicted were from negligence, immaturity and/or ignorance. Still, some of the maltreatment others received at my hands was intentional, usually because I thought I was justifiably avenging a wrong I had suffered. Of course, there were some injuries I instigated because I am human and hard baked into my DNA is the capacity for unwarranted cruelty.

 

Thinking back on these wrongs, my stomach churns a little. Usually, I shudder and shake it off.  More likely than not it is some odd bit of stimuli, say like when a hit song from 1976 plays on my speakers that gives rise to the angsty moment.  I hear an old Al Stewart tune and up from the floorboards seeps a caustic and crushing comment I made in a bar 40 years ago. When the words replay in my head, I feel dirty. 

 

Normally I can put the memory into a mental box and once there let it fade again because I know time is a river that moves in only one direction and that direction is away from the event.  Aware of this, I can accept there is no way I can return to that moment and assuage the wound I caused.  If that ploy doesn’t work to bury the guilt my mind also drags up the rationalization of the injured having probably have moved and not even remembering the event.  The last fallback to drive the disquiet away is thinking the injured person probably dished out there a fair share of pain to others over the years and on balance it doesn’t matter because morally we are even.

 

But there are a couple of people that when they cross my mind the rationalizations don’t work. I know in my heart of hearts I hurt them so very badly. Mere words and the passage of time will never make what I did or what I said better. The ugly splotch on life’s living room wall can never really be papered over.

 

The anguish I feel about these actions is one of the big two things that should they cross my mind when I am in bed waiting for sleep will keep me up for hours.  Of course, the other main sleep disrupter is when I start thinking about what comes after we open the dark door.  Is it nothing? Is it reward or punishment?  Is it a movement up or down the scale of being on the road to enlightenment.

 

These folks the ones I hurt but can’t shake are not people I have current connections with.  I don’t even know where they are or if they still “are”.  People are starting to leave this life at a regular clip now and the chances to offer amends if it were right to do so are fading fast.  A.A. says that one should make, “a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” The next step says we should make direct amends where is it possible to do so when making the amends won’t hurt the already injured person or injure others. The moral evaluation of who we have harmed and would they, or others, be hurt by an attempted amends can be very, very tricky. 

 

And what do you do when you know not where, or if, a person you injured is?  I went to a Buddhist celebration of life once.  We all wrote down a positive message to the deceased and I believe at the end of the day this bits of writing were gathered together and burned.  Maybe I should write the wrong down on small sheet of paper. Below it I should write out the sincerest words of apology and regret. When I am done, I should ultimately crumple it up, set the paper on fire and let both the wrong and the words of amends to pass from this world. 

 

Maybe I am just more angsty that most people. Or maybe I have been more of a bastard in this life that most people.  (I do note I was a lawyer and I know the scale of bastardly-ness has an extreme far end.) Or maybe it was my Baptist upbringing with its emphasis on sin and forgiveness that wired my brain to go back again and again to both real and perceived wrongs I wrought. Whatever the source of my internal disquiet when I came across the article by Mr. Coleman, I found it refreshing.

 

If we can understand that not a single person gets through this life without harming another in some way or form, we can stop torturing ourselves and move toward forgiving ourselves. When we do our hearts are free to be open to the moment and we can with acceptance and understanding move toward the next right choice. I doubt I am done with my bad dreams, they seem to be hard wired into me.  But I can move forward with love, compassion and acceptance.  Maybe I will write those wrongs and amends down and burn them. Maybe that physical act will let my mental shackles drop.

 

Lisboa, Living a Bigger Smaller Life

4 April 2023

 

Headed down to the market today to pick up some smoked salmon for breakfast. Without thinking about anything except how quickly the trees were greening up I found myself humming U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name”.  I don’t know the lyrics so in my head I was singing ‘hum hum hum where the streets have no name.’ What a great hook.

 

So, as I am heading down the hill, I am ruminating about an article someone posted somewhere, (I got the story second hand from FNS-the ultimately reliable Francie News Service), slamming Lisboa as a tourist stop.  Apparently according to the story, the author of the piece found the city dirty, graffiti filled, small and with little in the way of cultural attractions.  Damn that was cold. 

 

Having lived here for a bit of time now the city has shrunk a little bit for me.  As I have explored Lisboa outside of the metro, I have discovered that places I thought were miles apart are actually just a twenty-minute walk away from each other.  Neighborhoods which seemed so distant abut each other. But that does not mean the city is small for you can travel different continents and worlds in the space of a few blocks here. No Lisboa is not New York, London or Tokyo but it is a real honest to God city, with diverse people and diverse neighborhoods spread about over many miles.

 

As to the writer’s other complaints, remember they were Lisboa is dirty, graffiti filled and lacking in cultural enticements.  There are some spots that don’t get the cleaning they need, but by and on the large the street sweepers and sanitation people do a fine job keeping things free of detritus.  Graffiti is everywhere but while some of the graffiti is the usual tagging and filth talking, a great deal of the spray-painted displays are works of art. Not every talented painter gets to use a canvas. 

 

And culturally lacking, really?  The Gulbenkian, the modern art museum at the Belem Cultural Center, the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga which is filled with fine art, two botanical gardens of note, a zoo, several symphonies and a spate of independent art galleries.  Trust me I am not going down this path to resolve any cognitive dissonance I have about getting a place here.  Lisboa is not perfect.  However, it is not the hellhole the poster on whatever website depicted.  The poster didn’t do his due diligence.

 

But that does not have anything to do with the title of the piece you say?  Ah, but it does.  

 

As I did my grocery rounds today, as I do most mornings at about 8 am (I want to get in early to pick up the warm fresh bread), I realized that my world has shrunk to fit in about an 8-10 square block area.  The mercado selling fish, meat and vegetables, the grocery store selling the rest of my needed comestibles, the department store, the coffee bean seller, the self-serve clothes dryers, the hardware store, the parks with their fountains, all of my life is within that area, no more than 15 minutes’ walk in any direction.  In addition, four blocks away are Rembrandts and ancient art from the Muslim world I can see for free on Sundays.  A few blocks in a sort of sidewise direction is a great botanical garden also free on Sundays.  A mere 40–50-minute  train ride away using my 20 euro a month pass and I am in a beach town.

I have no car.  I have a rolling insulated grocery cart. I have an apartment and not a house.  It isn’t the prettiest city, nor is it a perfect city, but it a pretty good one.  My life isn’t large and filled with excess, but it doesn’t need to be.