It is not my Sock Joao.

 

Nope, not my sock.  But I was kind 

enough to knock it down to the 

basement apartment.  The guy on andar 3

can knock on their door if he really

wants it.

Tuesday morning arrives in Lisboa. Bright sun today and the sky is clear.  A slight breeze brings smells through my apartment’s French windows from the snack bars and coffee shops scattered along the street below. When I move to my balcony table I see people starting to move. Young men in blue suits and women in blousy pants with backpacks are trickling off to work.  The morning has begun, and I want to see what this day holds.

Coffee time is over and I carry my cup into the kitchen. In the process of moving yesterday's dishes out of the dishwasher and into the cupboards, I think that if I don't start writing soon, my thoughts, my energy, and my focus will all drift away. Energy and ideas will fly from my mind with the speed of the parakeets abandoning Rua Pedro Nunes in the twilight. I stop for a moment and think of those wild spiraling birds flashing by in the near darkness to some unknown point of evening rest (I guess). So, to juice my mind I pick up my iPhone and pick a playlist; the time is now to hear the weekly Chill playlist for Jay Todd. Music makes kitchen chores easier and faster.

The first song up is Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones. And with that song’s soft but insightful words in my ears I realizedwhat I would like to write. I want to craft poetic prose whose soul lies just beyond the easily accessible. Prose that if you dig for it you will find joyfully delightful.  I want my words to flow off the page into a small number of people’s brains giving them joy or making them think or evoking true feelings. Ultimately, I hope to create stories that evoke emotion, inspire thought, and leave an impression for more than just a moment.

I mean there are papers I read that thrill me that never get into my Apple News feed, nor will they ever. The things I read aren’t about some actor’s secret illness hidden for twenty years. They aren't about a game of political chess that screws upreal people living real lives on the margins in America. The things I love most come to me through newsletters and mailing lists. As I pour over them they open rabbit holes into seams of cascading poems, songs, essays about life and all that it entails. In my reading I wrap myself in the words of folks just off center enough to be considered out of step but not subject to institutionalization.

As I read their paragraphs quickly, my thoughts bubble wildly and fire off in a hundred directions. Reading a short Simon Blackburn article on an esoteric philosophical debate or ingesting a sideways collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s thoughts on humanity’s propensity for destruction tucked in among some essays in a collection most will skip reminds me of the joy inwell-written but off-center works. And then there is a visceral feeling of loss when I hear a Tom Waits song like The Fall of Troy. Yeah, I want to write something that good.

Too bad I don’t have the tools. The truth is, I have a lot of words, big and small, and four letter words.  But what I lack arethe mechanics. Verb and noun agreement, yeah I could do better. Dangling pieces of sentences, participles, prepositions and gerunds all get me running. I think I lack these tools partly due to spending too much time stoned in my freshman and sophomore years of high school. 

Another part of the reason I don’t have the tools is because I believe the rigor of writing was lost on teachers in the era of the "new journalism" prevailing when I came through high school. Diagramming sentences, constructing paragraphs that were basically logical syllogisms, you know a premise, followed by a second premise, and then a conclusion fell by the wayside in those years. In 1970-1974 good writing consisted of word salad blasted out on a page in different fonts with italics and scribbled drawings tucked in amidst the text, e.g., Breakfast of Champions. Writing during the 1970s was distinctly unconventional and unstructured and a generation of public school students suffered because of it.

I still have a chance with these programs that promise to clean up grammar and clarify poorly constructed paragraphs and sentences.  In the next few years, maybe I'll write that novella. Five chapters will follow someone's journey from a small farm town in America to a large foreign capital. Dedication and time are all I lack. Giggles here.

Here is The Fall of Troy. It is one of Loren’s favorites. 

 

Rainy Saturday Lisboa, Sunny Friday Setubal

It's a bit before 9 in the morning and the rain has been steadily falling for about two to two and a half hours. Thepavement, the cobblestones and the calçadas (the polished stones) of the sidewalk are thoroughly wet. As a result, the city has moved into a slow space. This is the moment where time and motion are reduced to the speed of a ball bearing dropped through the most viscous of liquids. 

Looking up and down the street from my balcony not a person is moving. I can’t hear tires zinging past on wet roads as I would in an American city. One thing about America, the weather in all but the most severe cases is irrelevant to carrying out the activities of daily life. All in all, the slowness of the city in the rain has become an accepted part of life for us. Itdoesn't happen that often in the warmer months and so it is a break from the ususal, a time to recharge.

[Took a break here. Had to get the morning coffee pots going.  Always brew Francie’s first. Have to grind the Costa Rican beans, make sure the carafe is clean, and then get the whole water in the pot thing in motion.  Then I make myself a pot of the cheap stuff from the preground blend from our local supermercado, Pingo. Yes, I am drinking glorified dirty brown water, but decades of morning coffee rituals from back when I drank two pots of high test are not easily abandoned.]

Got to bed early last night. Awoke up early today. I heard the first thunder peal and realized I still had laundry on the line. There was a reason I left the clothing out last night but more on that below. I jumped up, opened the kitchen window and peeled the mildly damp jeans, undies and socks from the line. I took the load into our small dining room, put the dehumidifier on laundry and closed the room. I will check back in a few hours. If all works according to plan the clothing will be dry and the dehumidifier tank will need emptying.

Normally I would have had the laundry out on the line by ten on any given day and back in before dinner. Yesterday did not turn out as planned however. Francie planned to travel with some friends to Setubal and then to the Troia Peninsula for a day’s adventure. Being unsure of where the train platform was, and whether our monthly passes covered the journey, I rode up to the Sete Rios train station with her. I wanted to see if these issues could be easily sorted. We found the platform easily and her pass covered the trip.

Before we headed out, and it was early for us when we left the house, I started the wash. Our Bosch washer on the ecocycle takes three hours. I figured I could take Francie up to the station, grab a coffee, and have a pastry. I would still have plenty of time to get home and hang the laundry. 

Unfortunately Francie's group trip fell apart. Covid had touched one traveller's husband and with that the whole thing was ended by people dropping out. This is not a gripe. These people made wise and responsible choices. Covid still sucks. 

However, as far as we knew we had not been exposed to the virus. And there we were at the station and the train to Setubal would pull in within ten minutes. What does a flexible, active, and serendipity-oriented retiree do? Well he says, “What the heck? Let us go to Setubal.” Off we headed. (Note: I might have used a term a bit more profane than heck.)

I had been to Setubal before with my family in tow. It was Sunday or Monday because the mercado was closed. Also, it was misty and raining (at times). We wandered around, tried a local dish of note, choco frito, fried cuttlefish typicallyserved with potato chips or fries, salad, and a lemon wedge. It was okay but not a favorite. The thing I remember most from that visit was a group of bizarre statues set up in a park as part of a temporary installation. Also, the area around the train station was torn up and made getting around difficult.

Street repairs are done. The mercado was open. The mercado was great. Lots of vendors selling meats, vegetables, and of course seafood. There was a station where you could get an oyster and a shot of liquor for two dollars. The art in the entrance was just beautiful as were the azulejos on the back wall. Walked around the market for a bit and then got a coffee. I note the Setubal market is a real market and not the cleaned-up tourist affair that is the Porto market.

We decided to have a couple of galaos, think latte served in a glass cup and cheaper. We sat out in a lovely park, a park we had seen before on our last visit. However, after our coffees were done we walked to the end of the park and to the public beach. It was a lovely walk and the beach was nice. Apparently in high tourist season they have plenty of kiosks and wagons serving everything from caipirinhas (mojito with Brazilian cane liquor) to oysters on the half shell.

By the time we finished at the beach we were both peckish. What would a trip to a seaside town be without a stop for seafood? We consulted Google Maps, found a place with a 4.6 rating on more than a thousand reviews. It had only two $$s next to the entry. Both good and cheap, my favorites. I had seafood stew. Francie had three small, mild, grilled whitefish. Both meals were good. The lunch beer was tasty too but it made the ride back on the crowded train lessenjoyable. We wanted to sleep. Everyone else wanted to talk on their phones. Such is life.

After our exploring we took the Fertargus train back. Got home about four. I immediately hung the laundry out to dry but there was not enough daylight left to get the job done. I was so tired I just left the laundry out and headed to bed about ten thirty. And that brings us back to the beginning, me taking the laundry off the line in the early morning hours.

I am not sure what I thought of Setubal after my first visit. Maybe "meh". But after this second visit I recommend taking the train down to see the beach, walk the market, eat seafood stew, and enjoy the park while exploring the area. This is if you have time.

Watching the World

When you stand at the edge of the upper deck of the Miradouro De Sao Pedro De Alcantara you see the red roofs of old Lisboa mixing in with the bright, shining and new. You see the old buildings colored with green, pink and yellow pastels mixing in with chrome and glass things that popularity has brought to the city. The glitzy hotels, the Hard Rock Café, these are below you wedged in among the shops that still sell Gingina or tins of sardines or cork products of all descriptions. 

 

If you look across this valley, across this beating heart of Lisboa, you will see St. George’s Castle. It hasn’t always been called St. George’s. Pieces remain from the 6th century, when it was first fortified by the Romans and they obviously did not call it St. George’s. Eventually then they were replaced by Visgoths. Then came the Moors who used it as a royal Moorish residence. And then Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques, captured the castelo in 1147 during the reconquista. Chances are that nobody before Alfonso Henriques thought naming the ramparts St. George’s made sense.

 

Looking down to the lower level of the miradouro you see busts of Greek and Roman heroes and gods. Here baking under the Iberian sun are Minerva and Ulysses. If you listen as the day draws down to sunset, you can hear leaves rustling in the trees filling this park. The evening breeze coming as it does most every night moves them. You can also hear the large beautiful white fountain running behind you as you scan the horizon in front of you. 

 

The setting of the sun casts a warm, golden light on the scene. You really don’t have to listen hard to hear the sound of parakeets chirping, sounding to all the world like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. You can also hear conversations from the people around you and on the deck below. A majority of these conversation fragments are in Portuguese, spoken fast and indecipherable to anglophones. The smells of sausages cooking at the various pop-up market stalls assembled here waft through the air. As the sun prepared to drop below the horizon and the crowds gathered to watch the sunset, this view of the city was exactly what he needed to restore his soul.

The obvious song to insert here is Saturday in the Park by Chicago but that just doesn't work for me.  I viscerally resist that song, don't know why.  Maybe something happened in another life that made that song not palatable to me.  Anyway I am inserting a Jimmie Dale Gilmore song because I can.

(What follows is part of the narrative that wraps around these interstitial pieces)

 

He came to this place and this moment at the tail end of his life. Cancer twice, heart disease, deteriorating vision, and hearing loss had all plagued him. Still, he had worked the drill for years in the legal factory. Like a child who had been promised there would be cake at the end of dinner he had expectations for his retirement.  As his work calendar moved toward the last few months he truly believed he had earned a beautiful reward.

When all his friends bought houses or lots in God’s Waiting Room he knew he had to find somewhere different. His people were southern, some of his people were so far to the right he could not see their position from where he stood.,But he was long gone from them and their values. Florida was the embodiment of everything he was not. He wanted a place that would not shake him daily because he was surrounded by hate and racist vitriol. 

 

Twenty years before he retired, he wanted to live out the end of his life in the Pacific Northwest. But the money he made would never get him a decent house up there. Ten years before retirement he dreamed of Asheville, NC. But as the world he believed in shattered, and red and blue sides were taken, he knew he was on the wrong side of most of North Carolina. This was clearly true as he read the headlines from the state. Despite the island of delicious food, laughter, art and intellectualism that is Asheville, he could not move to NC. Put simply, he didn’t like his choices because the north was too cold, the east and the west were too expensive and the south was too Trump.

One Particular Fountain

Often I walk the streets of this ancient city to see new things, new places and new spaces.  I am serious about Lisboa being an ancient place.  According to the Wiki on the city Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in the world, and certainly the oldest in Western Europe. Lisboa predates other modern European capitals such as London, Paris and Rome by centuries. Julius Caesar made it a municipium called Felicitas Julia, adding to the name Olissipo.  The origins of the word Olissipo are murky; it may come from the Phoenician word for the Targus river. 

 One day I walked my neighborhood in a grid and came upon a new fountain. The font was tucked away in the shade of a courtyard next to a large four or five story building. In the middle of the fountain was a kiln.  A posting by the fountain says that the kiln, and maybe it is just an oven, was a remnant of an old brick factory that used to be located at that site.  

The fountain and the pool surrounding it are expansive and stretch for some distance, about half a city block.  Located in a shady place (something at a premium in Lisboa), the fountain is a bit of an urban oasis. Alongside the fountain are statuary of people, almost life sized. Near the edge of the fountain are tables and chairs hard fixed into the grounds.  Given the fountain is part of the Caixa Geral de Depositos complex (the largest financial institution in Portugal according to Wiki) my guess is that the tables and chairs are for people to enjoy breaks from the office, be it lunch or otherwise. This is just one of many squares with fountains in the city.  Interesting note the oldest still functioning fountain here dates from the 13^th century.

 There was a song, or maybe an album title, from Elvis Costello called All This Needless Beauty.  Instead of Needless the word might have been Useless.  This city is a center of needless beauty and nowhere is that more on display than in its fountain squares. Lisbon is filled with little courtyard spaces of fountains and trees. As often as not there is a small coffee shop or kiosk adjacent. 

In a hard-edged capitalistic world run according to the harsh principles of the free market, these places would not exist.  In America these spaces after debates had been held and commissions appointed would have been deemed irrelevant and redundant and sold on the sly, out of the public eye, on the cheap to a developer.  Up would pop a five-story building with “retail” on the ground floor. The retail would sit empty for years until a variance was given to turn the spaces into market priced rentals.

 

A good guess as to reasons why these spaces still exist in this corner of Iberia would bring two factors to the fore, i.e., weather and history.  Lisboa is for the majority of the year warm, lacking in in rain but often very humid. Back 85 years ago, back before the metro and wide ownership of automobiles, back before the wide adoption of air conditioning in commercial spaces, a day in an office, factory or walking to or from a job was a sweaty thing. Cooling oases were needed. Courtyards with trees and fountains were necessary. 

 

The Romans who one held this land knew the benefits of courtyards, trees and fountain.  You can find courtyards designed 2,000 years ago all over what was the Roman world surprisingly similar to the little pocket parks of Lisboa and the smaller cities that fill this country. According to a Wiki post Rome in the 3rd century CE had 1,423 drinking fountains. Today Rome has 50 monumental fountains and more than 2,000 fountains overall. While Roman courtyards were smaller the principles used there are the same as those used in Lisbon’s squares.

 

Until I began to write this and began to research the history of Roman courtyard use I had never heard of the courtyard effect. The gist of the concept is during the dark hours cooler night air sinks into the courtyard and flows into the surrounding rooms thus cooling them.   The rooms and surfaces are cooled until about noon the next day. Until noon the courtyard provides storage of cold air and cold air exchange with surrounding rooms. At noon, when the sun strikes the courtyard floor the temperature of air inside the courtyard increases gradually, causing the hot air to move up. This draws air from surrounding rooms into the courtyard, resulting in cooling for the rooms. Finally,  as the courtyard and the surrounding rooms get warmer, all the cool air leaks out, preparing the system for a new cycle in the next day. 

 

When you throw trees and fountains into the mix the cooling of the courtyard is enhanced. Trees in a courtyard give off cooling oxygen and facilitate the air exchange of the courtyard effect.  They also provide shade drawing out the period the courtyard stores cooler air.  Fountains assist in the cooling process the water temperature being usually below the air temperature. 

 

People in Lisboa love their past.  They love the fact that the city is so very old and that it has a past extending far longer than most major European cities.  They love it was once mighty and its people opened the age of discovery. With that passion they are loath to see ancient spaces disappear. They fight for their parks. You have got to love a place where they have not allowed the lust for money to destroy so many functional, sustainable cooling spaces.  

Tall Ships

 

Last we needed to take an explore.  Upcoming is a tall ship race that is starting from the Port of Lisbon.  We wanted to see the tall ships. We walked to the subway.  Took a subway to the train.  Took the train to Alcantara Mar.  Turns out it was one stop too far to actually see the ships at dock.

 

But wow what a restaurant scene.  Located under the 25 de Abril Bridge suspension bridge the row of restaurants was packed to the gills. (Yes, it is a seafood pun tied to the fact that these are almost entirely seafood restaurants). We walked around and gawked and watched the crowds pour in and then caught the train back to the Santos stop where the ships actually were docked.

 

Again, despite having been here a year I was surprised at the very vibrant, very active bar and restaurant scene down along the Rio Tejo. The stroll from Santos to the ferry/subway/streetcar/train stop at Cais do Sodre is a short, pleasant and vibrant walk. 

 

We found the tall ships at dock awaiting the race.  We saw one of the ship’s crews returning from wandering about Lisbon.  We saw people watching the set and fade.  We saw the outstretched arms of Jesus blessing the river and its denizens. 

 

The light along the river is amazing.  If you get a chance you need to take a wander down along the Tejo as the day is fading.  Hey grab a pint or a gin and tonic and let the day fade away as colors of orange and indigo bleed across the river’s waters and the western sky.