Lisboa on Monday: Thoughts on a Brownie from the Pastelaria

 

As he was digging deep into his pocket, the cashier quizzically examined him.  From the cut of the clothing and the size of the man there was no way he could be a local.

His glasses weren’t a current style, his clothing was both too large and two loose. If any question remained as to his place of origin his braces nailed his foreignness. Nobody in Portugal wears suspenders but a waiter. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to suss out this man was no waiter.

 

“Um brownie, take away, por favor“, he said as he tapped on the display case window pointing to the brownie he wanted to order. Smiling at him, “Ah, sim, sim,” rolled off her tongue. Leaning in with her plastic gloved hand, she grabbed the brownie and dropped it into a brown paper saco.  At what seemed like a speed of sound to his ear, with a blurring of vocal sounds only the Portuguese can accomplish, the garçonete (waitress-was that the right term?) was asking for payment.  “Dois euros vinte,” or two euros twenty, was her request. The digital readout of 2.20 on the cash register saved him from another moment of awkwardness.

 

Continuing to search the depths of his trouser pockets and his fingers extending and contracting within, he came up with a credit card for payment.  Always the air miles card. Trips back and forth across the Atlantic just keep getting more expensive and every air mile counts. Pulling out the card, he tapped the portable card reader. Four green dots blinked showing the transaction was processed, He was handed a small white receipt which had choggled out from the machine.  The receipt went in one trouser pocket  the credit card in the other.  Accepting the brown bag with his guaranteed sugar buzz within, the ‘Murican said “Obrigado,” twisted his shoulders, stretched a little-almost imperceptibly, and headed out to the street. As he had been warned by his elders long ago his body had become many years older than his spirit.

 

Out the door he turned left heading down the cream colored calçadas toward the corner of 5 Outubro and Rua Pedro Nunes and his apartmento.  Thinking about the pastry in the bag brought him guilt.  A brownie was not really a Portuguese treat.  That chocolate goo was as invasive as all the expats flooding this city and the country. By buying it he took a step away from assimilation. So many other local choices existed many drenched or stuffed with chocolate. Still, every now and then a taste of home softened the jangly edges of the man’s soul. Having uprooted his life to move to a different continent, with a different language, with different concepts of how life should be lived wasn’t proving to be completely easy. Objectively emigration wasn’t hard but it wasn’t easy either.

 

He reached his final turn toward home. Late May and the jacarandas with lovely little pale purple blossoms made 5 Outubro’s center look like the living incarnation of the promise of spring. Stopping and scanning the street both ways he took the beauty of those trees in.  Watching the cars speeding by, all so tiny by American standards, the realization that had come to him time and time again washed over him.  For him this smaller life was a better life.  From the leather repair shop to the fresh fruit stand to the flower stand and to each and every café and kebab place, life here was conducted on a much smaller but much more personal basis. Relationships mattered here.  Quality of life mattered here.  Time does not matter here.

 

Reaching his door his plan was in place.  In five minute’s, time he would be on his balcony with a cup of decaf and the brownie.  He would be watching the world pass by.  For now, that was just about perfection.

Gordon Lightfoot, A Note of Mine from 2014

When I posted last week I knew I had written about Gordon Lightfoot before.  Thing was I just wasn't sure where it was. Turned out it was in a blog that FB will not let me post links to. Here is and edited version of that older post. The photo is the cover shot from Gord's Gold II.

One must reflect at times about what really matters. What do I keep? What don’t I need? In thinking about life and its pleasures I am drawn to think about what would it is I would miss if I were to be shunted off to a cosmic waiting room filled with only a leather couch and lined with faded 1960s basement rec-room paneling.   Sitting there in a space devoid of magazines or piped in Muzak what would I ache for. One thing I would truly miss is the music of Gordon Lightfoot.

Before I came to Michigan in the 1970s all I knew of the man’s work could be found in the contents of one album. Well, there were two additional songs of this Canadian minstrel I heard on the radio. The first radio song was “If You Could Read My Mind” and the second was “Black Day in July”. The album was called “The Summer Side of Life.”

I knew the first song because well it was all over the radio every day each day in June 1971. It had been a spring hit but it just wouldn’t go away that summer. When aired it was often coupled with the Moody Blues “Question”. While “Question” was deep and agitating “If You Could Read My Mind” was the song for the loser, the loner, and the wistful. It worked for my 15 year old self on so many levels. Thinks zits, glasses and no self-confidence. "If You. Could Read My Mind,"  was a song of love lost I could relate to even though I had never had a real love.

“Black Day in July” was a topical song about the Detroit Riots in the summer of 1967. Gene Shay played it every so often on his folk program on WMMR in Philadelphia, a show I tuned in to hear religiously. In the early 1970s I listened to a great deal of protest music. “Black Day in July” was a protest song and it seemed to have a connection to an older tradition of folk protest songs. “Black Day in July was much like “Joe Hill” and “Wreck at Los Gatos”. I love the Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” but “Black Day in July” seemed more intent on getting the feeling right as opposed to the facts. I think that sense of feel is often what makes great folk songs.

My brother Jerry was drifting in and out of my life as he went to college, as he went to Vietnam, as he drifted between jobs.  One day he brought a copy of “The Summer Side of Life” home with him. I played it to death. The track listening on the first side is just stellar: 1. 10 Degrees of Getting Colder 2. Miguel 3. Go My Way 4. Summer Side of Life 5. Cotton Jenny 6. Talking In Your Sleep

Nary a weak tune in this batch. I loved all six songs and pretty much had the lyrics memorized in a short time, two weeks maximum. From the heartbroken bar musician to the outlaw to the cuckold every song on "The Summer Side of Life" had a beautiful melody and a strong lyric. While it is not so much my default tune to hum now “10 Degrees and Getting Colder” held that spot for several years. "He was standing by the highway, with a sign that just read 'Mother' when he heard the truck a coming half a mile away.  He held the sign up higher so no decent should could miss it. It was ten degrees and getting colder down by Boulder Dam that day."

There is a warmth to Gordon Lightfoot’s voice that spreads as you listen to it almost through your entire being. Hazily I can remember sitting in dorm room snuggling with a young lass with long hair her face illuminated by those odd blue lights of Pioneer Stereo receivers. On that winter night we were drinking some cheap red wine. Ah, on a night like that Gordon Lightfoot provided a warm atmosphere to fill my cold room in Mayo Hall where the windows never quite closed. Hell no, I will never give up Gordon Lightfoot. 

Here is one of those great songs from Gord that you may not have heard.  Christian Island is a small rocky dot in Georgian Bay.  I camped there one night. The melody is quite hummable.