And the Universe

 I'm suffering from a headache and the universe. Physical aches, more blatantly painful than moral ones, reflect in the spirit and set off tragedies not contained in them. They make the sufferer cross with everything, and everything naturally includes every star.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 331

Brother Pessoa, I can feel your pain. Recently I made the decision that this spring's student trip will be my last. Granted, it's my twelfth, which is a lot, especially when you consider that everyone of them was essentially different. That said, I figured that I'd run more. However, a number of factors, at last count I think it was four (although it might be more), have convinced me to call it a day. I'll still travel, obviously, but instead I'm going to take that time and travel with Janet and potentially family and friends. I'll miss taking the little lunkheads overseas because I think I've opened more than a few eyes to a very different world, but, in the end, as the great Canadian philosopher reminds us, there comes a time.

Walkers

 My brother Eric and his SO Linda visited last week, and it was so wonderful to drive them around Vermont for a couple days. Amazingly, I've been up here twenty-three years and it's the first time I've dragged him out the #HoosierHellhole for a visit.

Here's a picture I snapped of Eric, Linda, and Janet when we were walking around Groton in our futile search for moose.

O Grito Do Moloch

 As part of my quest to learn Portuguese (and, as we know, I suck at languages) I'm taking a number of approaches. First off, obviously, I'm working on Duolingo, and as of this morning I think at 218 straight days. I tend to make fun of Duolingo, but they must be doing something right if I manage to jump in and knock off several lessons every morning. And, while I grouse about my utter ignorance of Portuguese, I do feel I'm learning. I also started trying to translate, sentence by sentence (one a day), a Portuguese translation of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (figuring that I've read it so many times in English that it would help the process), but the sentence structure is simply way too advanced for me. So, instead, I just started working on a Portuguese language version of the Adventures of Blake & Mortimer, in this case O Grito Do Moloch (The Cry of the Moloch). My friend Kerry recently proposed, what my other friends who learned languages have proposed, that I start with young adult fiction and work my way up. And so the adventure begins.

Actually, I'm looking forward to this. I checked on Amazon if I could find other Portuguese language versions in the series but they were all $71 (WTF?). I'll pick some more up this summer when I'm back in Portugal (if I'm not back there sooner).

Calvary and calvary

 If one day I succeed in carrying the cross of my intention to the good Calvary, I'll find another calvary on that good Calvary, and I'll miss the time when I was futile, mediocre and imperfect. I will in some sense be less.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Ch. 180

I suppose I should have included this passage in the earlier post from chapter 180, but for some reason I thought it deserved its own space. Why would the other calvary be both less and greater than the final Calvary? In some ways I guess because we were still in some ways still evolving, still experiencing life in an earlier imperfect, but also purer, sense. We will not be undergoing the beauty of living that life for the first time. It's like that passage from The Book of Disquiet where Pessoa laments that he'll never get to read The Pickwick Papers for the first time again.

Vampire Village

 Here's a picture I snapped from the walls of the Lindoso Castle, where I found myself every night that we hadn't abandoned the cottage in pursuit of air conditioning. Not featured in the picture: actual living souls in Lindoso.

The view of the graineries, the appropriate piles of grain - which both mysteriously appeared and then equally mysteriously disappeared, and the vampire village in the background.

Precarious Life

 If one day I become financially secure, so that I can freely write and publish, I know I'll miss this precarious life in which I hardly write and don't publish at all. I'll miss it not only because it will be a life, however mediocre, that I'll never have again, but also because every sort of life has a special quality and particular pleasure, and when we take up another life, even a better one, that particular life isn't as good, that special quality is less special, until they fade away, and there's something missing.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Ch. 180

There are aspects of this rumination that remind me, oddly, or maybe not so oddly, of Marcus Aurelius. I guess the big difference is that Marcus, despite the attention he devotes to the inner life, is also a proponent of the necessity of living in the world, whereas Pessoa prefers dreaming and not leaving the inner world.

Shimmer

 And another shot from the weekend's trip to Groton.

Groton

 OK, so we missed out on moose again in Groton, but we did see this,

The #YankeeHellhole seldom disappoints.

World's Within Worlds

 Eventually I'll get caught up with the hundreds of pictures I want to post from our Portugal trip, but the world keeps getting in the way. Here's an odd little picture that I snapped on the walls of the castle in Lindoso, where I would climb every night to look at the valley, the graineries, and the vampire village itself.

Not a Fan of the Corndog

 Somehow Janet had never eaten a corndog, which speaks to a sad, isolated, and neglected life. Unfortunately, my efforts to broader her horizon at the Tunbridge World's Fair didn't work.

Seriously, how did a girl who grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts never have a corndog?

Morning Writing

 Just a quick snapshot of my little corner of the cabin, and the mood for morning writing.

Now, if I only produced writing as brilliant as this scene promises.