Second Anniversary

 Tuesday the 23rd was our second anniversary, which doesn't seem possible, because it can't possibly be two years already, and it also seems that we've known each other forever. Janet's love and support is such an extraordinary blessing.

We were hoping to go back to J.Morgan's, where we had our first date, and which is our usual special event location, but since the flood they can't seem to get back in business with any regularity. Still, Sarducci's is a worthy backup.

A pictur5e that our dear friend Marcelle sent along on our anniversary. I think we both deserve to be this happy.

Pensar em Deus

 Pensar em Deus e desobedecer a Deus,

Porque Deus quis que o nao conhecessemos,

Por isso se nos nao mostrou . . .

To think about God is to disobey God,

Since God wanted us not to know him,

Which is why he didn't reveal himself to us . . .

Let's be simple and calm,

Like the trees and streams,

And God will love us, making us 

Us even as the trees are trees 

And the streams are streams, 

And will give us greenness in the spring, which is its season,

And a river to go to when we end . . .

And he'll give us nothing more, since to give us more would make us less us.

Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa)

Fernando Pessoa is perpetually surprising, and not simply because he often spoke through his heteronyms. Of his three main poetic heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos, it is Caeiro who holds a special place. In fact, the other heteronyms, including Pessoa, referred to Caeiro as "the master." His is the more pastural vision, but also the most spiritual. The line, "To think about God is to disobey God," has quickly become one of my all-time favorite literary expressions (and I suspect will find its way onto my tombstone, probably in the original Portuguese). In a way, it reminds me of one of my favorite lines from the the Qur'an: "Remember your Lord humbly and in awe." That line, from the end of the seventh surah, expresses a simpler and quieter view of how one should address the divine. If anything, Pessoa's poetic admonition is even more stripped down. God is beyond rational thought, and can't be limited by it. 

Igreja de Sao Roque

 And here's another picture from last summer. On our last full day in Lisbon Janet had run off to catch up with a friend, leaving me to explore. I don't know how many pictures of beautiful churches or temples or mosques I've posted on this blog, but, nevertheless, here's another one. This was also just up the hill from our usual haunts in the Baixa Chiado.

Sao Roque is the patron saint of dogs, invalids, falsely accused people, and bachelors, among other things, so he seems generally to be a good fit for me.

I especially love the unique ceiling.

Penso Mas Nao Existo

 And this is just up the hill from the scene captured in the last post. Clearly, I need to spend time at a place with the title Penso Ms Nao Existo (I think but I don't exist).

Although, truthfully, for me, it might be more appropriate to stay at a place entitled Existo Mas Nao Penso.

Hotel Borges Chiado and Environs

 This is actually a picture that I snapped last summer (at this exact moment last year we were in Portugal - sigh). This is the front of the Hotel Borges Chiado, where we've taken to staying on our trips to Lisbon. The hotel itself is pretty solid, although the main reason is, as they say, location location location. It's right in the heart of the Baixa Chiado, which means that it's right down the hill from the Briarro Alto. Consequently, it cane be touristy, but there's also a real happy buzz there, complete with nice places to grab a meal and two great bookstores.

To the right is the Café Benard, where I would usually sit and write in the morning, milking lattes and snacks before Janet would come down and join me for lunch. Further up the hill on the left is the Café Brasileira, one of Poessoa's favorite haunts (of which I've already raved about much too often on this blog).

Magnum White Chocolate

 Some posts are rather important and thought-provoking (although never mine) and some fall more on the silly side of the spectrum. This definitely qualifies as one of the latter (even more than my usual nonsensical ramblings). One of our constant complaints, and by that I mean my constant complaints, is why it seems to be impossible to get Magnum White Chocolate ice cream bars in the US. They seem to be in every freezer in Portugal, which is another reason why I should move there, obviously.

I've changed my mind, this is of vital significance.

The 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 pleasure 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

Now, will I miss this "precarious life in which I hardly write and don't publish at all"? To be fair, I have been writing a lot, every day, even if only a paragraph or two, but certainly not as much as I need to write. However, I'm certainly not publishing anything, although my goal would be to start sending around the Epics book in the fall (inshallah). However, will I miss this life, "however mediocre"? On the most basic level, yes, because I won't be teaching anymore, and teaching is something I truly love and maybe the only thing at which I've ever been any good. I did point out recently that the time I spent in my little apartment on the last trip felt like what I want retirement to be: writing in the morning and then having the afternoon to explore a beautiful and interesting world. I suppose we do mourn every passing age, if it was not a particularly interesting or important one, simply because it won't come again, and it means that we're coming closer and closer to death. Beyond that, is there something about this specific life that I would miss? I'll have to brood on that one.

British Cemetery

 Right around the corner from my little apartment in Estrela was the British Cemetery, which makes sense because it's also close to the British Embassy. Mainly I went there because it housed the grave of Henry Fielding (who went to Lisbon for his health, and then died about a month later - which is a very Portuguese thing to do) and also because I figured it would be lovely and shaded (which it was, much appreciated on another hot day). While there I met a very nice British lady who was the de facto boss of the cemetery (we discussed the impossibility of learning Portuguese), which shows the strange lives that we carve off for ourselves. I need a similarly constructed off overseas life.

Henry Fielding's tomb. I'm thinking of giving each of my students a little punch card that would require them to head out across the city in small groups in search of objects, which they would have to capture on film to prove that they had accomplished their mission. One of them would be Fielding's tomb, and I would just write Tom Jones on the punch card and leave it up to them to do the detective work.

Miguel happily took a break from his pruning to give me a tour of the cemetery.

Clearly, Miguel has more work to do.

There were so many lovely little spots in the cemetery.

For some reason I found it very moving that the graves of this family were held together by a little chain. I'd never seen that before in a cemetery.

A Not Entirely Committed Apex Predator

 Life in the wilderness, an endless series. Here's a picture of Mollie (aka Mush aka Sizzle Brain aka the Horizontal Cat)  remaining non-committal in response to the invasion of turkeys in our side yard.

I don't think she's earning her keep as our guard cat. We could have been killed.

Cervantes

 Just a snapshot from last summer's side trip to Madrid for our mad museum trip. I love that the Spanish include these tiled signs on their major streets. Plus, it reminded me that we were listening to a podcast recently where these wankers proposed that Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel Don Quixote was a book that you didn't really need to read. Idiots.

Seriously, you really should read Don Quixote.

Another Failed Procedure

 I'm not certain why I'm posting this picture, other than the fact that it captures my mood over the last few months. I snapped it down at Dartmouth Hitchcock during my latest, and apparently final, epidural. It was my third epidural over the last three years. The first one, in the spring of 2021, gave me some real relief, although that might have been from starting Gabapentin for the first time. My doctor had me start the med and get the epidural at the same time, and my kickback was that even if they helped wouldn't we be masking the cause of the improvement? I did have a lovely Indian Summer that last almost a year when I felt a lot better, but then it faded away. I had a second epidural in spring 2023 and this last one in spring 2024, and both of them gave me partial relief for about a week. And then nothing. And my neurologist told me that since neither had really worked it was doubtful that insurance would ever agree to pay for another one. It seems to sum up everything that has plagued the last three-plus years: no one figure out my problem, a lot of painful and expensive procedures, random medications based on no specific diagnosis, and a for-profit insurance company that doesn't really care. In the end I've gone off the meds they had me on, partially because the side effects far outweighed the minimal benefits - but also because it's almost necessary that the situation gets worse because it will increase the chance that exaggerated symptoms might attract some medical professional's attention. This is no way to run a railroad.

And this one really hurt, which at the time gave me hope because I figured that the doctors who gave it to me, unlike the first two efforts, were really pumping me full of meds and that the temporary pain would pay off in the long run. In the end all I had was the pain and another bill.

Freedom Is the Possibility of Isolation

 Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others. This tragedy, yes, is your own and it follows you.

Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet, ch. 283

It's very easy to see Fernando Pessoa is just a very odd man, and, well, truthfully, he was a very odd man. He created dozens of heteronyms, the poets of which wrote in distinctly different styles. His greatest prose book sat in a trunk for decades before scholars began to put the different pieces together, which is why one publication of The Book of Disquiet can be completely different than another one. The Book of Disquiet is subtitled, A Factless Biography, so even when he's sharing who he is it would probably be better to say that he's sharing who he might be. He never married nor had a serious relationship not even, apparently, even had sex with anyone. So, yes, he was odd, but maybe it's better to recognize that he was also free. I've been reading a massive biography of Marcel Proust (although it's not as massive as Zenith's biography of Fernando Pessoa) and one of the topics that came up is the difference between loneliness and solitude, which are simply not the same thing. I've had more than one person propose that I'm a good friend and that I work really hard on my friendships, but I also crave my time alone. I love my time with my friends, but I don't think I ever get lonely. Of course, in comparison to Pessoa I'm an emotionally needy extrovert.  Pessoa apparently had many friends and quite actively worked to get them published as well, but he disappeared into himself quite frequently (and The Book of Disquiet is a celebration of the latter instinct). I think Pessoa lived the life he wanted to live and he seems to have had no regrets at the end, which meant that he did achieve a level of freedom that most of us can't imagine. 

Doubtless Our Future

 I managed to revisit the Fado Museum on last month's trip to Lisbon. I'm thinking of bringing the students there on next March's trip as well as get them in to see some local Fado, hopefully at some dive bar in the Bairro Alto. What better way for the students to get into the heart and soul of Portugal than to listen to some Fado? This painting, Jose Malhoa's 1910 painting, O Fado, is prominently, and rightly, featured at the museum. 

I sent this picture to several friends, suggesting that it would be Janet and I after we moved to Portugal, wasted our money, and had to fall back on being professional Fado singers.

Odd Little Things

 Here are some odd little things from last month's trip to Lisbon that reminded me why I love Portugal so much.

I snapped this picture in a Metro station in Lisbon. It's good to remind people that at one time you had the Inquisition, and that you no longer have the Inquisition - or that you don't have the Inquisition, but that you once had the Inquisition.

I walked out of a museum in Lisbon and came across a line waiting to get into a special display that wrapped around the corner and into a near by park.

This was the brand of vinho verde that we stumbled across at the Maple Corners Store here in Calais, and for which we paid $17.

Mmmm, so Digestivey. Continente has their own Digestives.

Walking Around the Convent

 I guess there's nothing particularly special about this picture, other than the fact that it features Janet walking around the convent where we stay in Evora; so, yeah, I guess it's very special.

I'm not certain when we'll get back to Evora, but hopefully it will be soon.

The Kids

 Just posting a picture that arrived over the weekend of Gary and Ali. Oh, to be so young and beautiful. I can't believe that they're getting married in less than two months. 

I couldn't be prouder or love them more.

Invisible Hands Weaving My Destiny

 Would to the gods, sad heart of mine, that Fate had a meaning! Would to Fate, rather, that the gods had one!

Sometimes, when I wake up a night, I feel invisible hands weaving my destiny.

Here lies my life. Nothing in me disturbs a thing.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 186

Recently I emailed the students in my upcoming fall semester Evil classes, which is something I've started doing to my students to help get things up and running quickly in the semester. One of the subjects that I raised in the email was the question of what evil means now, as compared to what it has meant over the centuries. I usually start of the class by asking them, "When you return to your dorm room and, in fear and exhaustion, tell your roommate, 'Scudder is just evil,' what do you mean? Do you mean it in a demonic sense? That as I passed you in class you caught a whiff of brimstone or you saw 666 in my hairline? No, when you use the term evil, you almost inevitably use it in a psychological or sociological context." The class then is an overview of how our perception of the term has changed over the millennia. However, I also ask the students, "If something has foundational as evil has no definitive, set meaning, then does anything? If evil doesn't actually 'mean' anything, and is only a transitory concept, different from generation to generation, then is God just another transitional concept?" I always tell them that the concept is much less frightening to people of their tender age than to mine. 

Is this essentially what Pessoa is raising in this passage? Does any of this have a meaning? Does Fate (no matter how you define it) or the Divine (no matter how you define it) not have a point? It's easy to think that bad things and good things seem to happen randomly because God had to give us free will - essentially, cutting us loose - otherwise our choices would mean nothing (and wouldn't really be choices, for that matter). There is already enough random horror in today's heavily-armed America, does it have to stretch into the divine realm as well?

And, yes, I just swiped this line from Pessoa for my chapter on the Divine in the Epics book.

What Could Go Wrong?

 I think another climate change event (as I pointed out recently, the "generational" has become the annual) here in Vermont has inspired me to finally post a too-long delayed story from our last Jordan trip. On both Jordan trips from two years ago - November 2022 and March 2023 - we experienced unprecedented weather events. On the November trip we waited out a massive lightning storm, the intensity of which no one could ever remember. In March, as the students were out on a camel ride, we had another huge storm, which eventually turned into a hail storm. Again, none of my friends in Jordan could remember anything like that. Happily, our friend Suleyman didn't like the look of the sky and had sent out a few trucks to pick up the students, which was remarkably well-timed, because once the hail hit the camel drivers had asked the students to get off and walk. As I told them, if nothing else it's an event that they will never forget. Suleyman opened up his private tent for the students to dry out, and I'll post some of those pictures later.

It definitely started out as beautiful day for a ride.

And then hell broke, and suddenly there was a little stream running through the camp - which I had seen only once before, in November.

Looking back towards the center of camp.

Yes, hail. I was stunned.

Water flowing down the rock faces like little waterfalls.

Sheep Shop

 Janet and I try to support local Vermont restaurants or stores as best we can, and yesterday we finally made our way to a nice little place called the Sheep Shop, which features sheep-related goods and also serves as a nice coffeeshop. It opened a few months ago, but we somehow, despite the best of intentions, just made it there. Mainly, Janet would say, "OK, let's go to the Sheep Shop today!," and I would have to sadly reply that it was another Tuesday and they were closed - apparently that was our cycle. We'll definitely be back. 

She made a serious dent in their sheep-related goods.

And, yes, the Sheep Shop has sheep, including that little big-boned character who was born the day before.

A Proust Problem

I get lots of grief from my friends because I've read Proust's In Search of Lost Time a few times, and, well, I guess they have a point. That said, I'm not going to delve into the new translation - stacked on the left in the picture - for at least two years. I'm thinking that will be a retirement project. Of course, I'm also two hundred pages into the Proust biography and swore up and down that I was not going to open that book for a couple years as well.

I was thinking of writing a novel the other day about an old man who decides at a certain point that he's simply going to delve back into In Search of Lost Time and never leave it until death. It would serve as a love of beauty and a rejection of the crass external world worthy of Pessoa, but it would also be a mechanism for sharing what a work that is, much like the epics project, I guess, that goes unread because people think, as my excellent friend David Rous elegantly opined, that it is impenetrable.

Glenn

 Last Friday I had a real treat: my old friend Glenn and his family were staying up in the Lake Champlain Islands. I drove over that morning, making my weekly overnight stay in Burlington even richer this week. He, like my late friend Gary Beatrice, began as a friend of a friend (Dave Kelley), but has now been a friend of mine for over thirty years. Mainly we just discussed baseball and shared fantasy baseball memories, which is a great way for old friends to spend a lovely summer afternoon. He's a good soul.

Like so many members of our generation, he's undergone some health issues lately, but he seemed strong and energetic, which made me very happy. I'm hoping I can see him again next month when I head back to the Hoosier Hellhole to visit family.

Adamant Coop Cookout 2024

 Yes, the calendar has spun around again and it's time for the Adamant Coop Cookouts. One of the ways that we survive the winter is running a series of Friday night cookouts in the summer. Janet and I usually volunteer to grill. For me, standing for a couple hours is a challenge, but it's for a good cause so I'm happy to help out.

The grilling crew was a bit kooky.

We were lucky to get the cookout in. We had another terrible flood, brought on by Hurricane Beryl finally making it's way across the country, on the exact one year anniversary of last year's disastrous flood. There was a lot of work done to repair the road in front of the Coop, which was finished just as we began to grill.

Except in Dreams

 Inaction makes up for everything. Not acting gives us everything. To imagine is everything, as long as it doesn't tend towards action. No one can be king of the world except in dreams. And every one of us who really knows himself wants to be king of the world.

To imagine, without being, is the throne. To desire, without wanting, is the crown. We have what we renounce, for we conserve it eternally intact in our dreams, by the light of the sun that isn't, or of the moon that cannot be.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 164

Following this logic, I should already be king of the world. As I've no doubt discussed, my father raised me to believe that I was the laziest boy and then man in the history of the world. Maybe this is just the nature of fathers and sons, as part of the process of self-deception that makes us, as adults, seem to be more important by dog-piling on the perceived shortcomings of the next generation. Still, I think Pessoa was aiming at something more profound here, obviously. It's part of the call for a greater internality that made up so much of his thought - and which appeals to me in the face of an avalanche of crass commercialism and intentional cruelty that seems to make up the modern world. I've never really read anything at Pessoa and Daoism, but there are certainly times when his thought almost seems Daoist. I think the difference is that the key to him is control, which you only maintain internally, in dreams.

Os Lusiadas

 Here's a picture I snapped on last summer's Portugal trip, at the little café outside our hotel in the Baixa-Chiado. After breakfast every morning Janet would had back to the room to write and I would head out to the café to write, and then we would meet up for a light lunch before heading out for adventures. Here is the requisite galao and Ali McGuirk Til It's Gone hat, along with my copy of Luis Camoes's Os Lusiadas, which he intended to become Portugal's version of a national epic (which it became).

And, yes, Os Lusiadas quickly made its way into my Epics book.

As I always tell my students, if you don't write on your books you don't love your books (more on that subject in an upcoming post).

Fundamental Notes

 This was the Venice that I explore in the afternoons, if I did not go out with my mother. For this was where I found it easier to meet women of the people, march-sellers and bead-stringers, glass- or lace-workers, young working-girls whose long black, fringed shawls were no barrier to my love, since I have nearly forgotten Albertine, yet some were more attractive than others, for I did still remember her a little.  I wonder if anyone could have told me exactly how far, in this passionate perusal of Venetian women, what was due to them, and what to Albertine, or my former desire to travel to Venice. Our slightest desire, although striking its own, unique chord, contains within it the fundamental notes on which our whole lives are based. And if perchance we suppressed one or other of these notes, even unheard, even unconscious, a note absolutely no relation to the object of our pursuit, we would none the less feel our whole desire for this object fade away. There was much that I did not attempt to elucidate in the midst of my excited pursuit of Venetian girls. My gondola followed the side canals, as if the mysterious hand of a genie were guiding me through the byways of this oriental city, the more I advanced along the canals the more they seemed to show me the way, slicing through a neighborhood that they divided as their narrow and arbitrarily traced furrows barely perturbed the tall houses and their small Moorish windows; and like a magical guide holding a candle between his fingers to light my passage, they cast ahead of them a ray of sunlight and opened a pathway for it.  You could sense that between the humble dwellings that the little canal had just divided and which otherwise could have formed a compact whole, there was so little space available that a church bell-towers or a garden trellis would directly overhand the rio, as in a flooded city.  But for the churches, as for the gardens which underwent the same process of transposition as occurred in the Grand Canal, the seas was so willing to act as a means of communication, like a side or main street, that on either side of the Canaletto, churches rose out of the water in this old, crowded and poor neighborhood. 

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 228-229 (tr. Peter Collier)

I told myself that I was not going to delve into the new translation of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but I guess that promise didn't last long. Janet and I are headed to Venice for our Thanksgiving break. For some reason she's never been to Italy, although she's also actively trying to attain Italian citizenship through her grandfather (that is, if the Boston Consulate ever decides to actually do its job and schedule her appointment). I've only been to Italy twice, and I loved it both times. That said, I've never been to Venice, and it's the part of Italy that I've most wanted to visit. Venice is the magic place that Proust mentions so often. This section is drawn from the end of The Fugitive, the sixth volume of In Search of Lost Time, shortly after the death of Albertine. We're thinking of staying at the Hotel Metropole, which is so far out of our price range (although less expensive since we're heading there far out of the tourist season, which makes me happy, more for the space than for any money saved). The Metropole is where both Proust and Thomas Mann stayed, so how could we not stay there? I think my declining health makes us, or at least me, more willing to spend money; essentially, who knows when my last trip will be? My dream is a less-crowded Venice, and plenty of ethereal fog masking the ancient and mysterious city - although hopefully a sinister woman in a red raincoat won't pop up to slit my throat.

Nao Alimente O Pombo

 This is a picture that I snapped on last March's trip to Lisbon. We had wandered into the Alfama and plopped down in a little café (probably mainly to rest up my perpetually cranky legs). We had a very nice meal, although what I main remember is the constant battle between one of the waitresses and the pigeons, which had taken on a near Moby Dick level hatred.

Last month I saw the stairs leading up to the café but I didn't have the legs underneath me to make it back, sadly.

Mass Consumer

 Sometimes I think that my biggest contribution to Janet's life is just to say, "Come on, go ahead and buy it, and if you don't want to buy it, I'll buy it for you." I think we're often very bad about letting ourselves do something nice for ourselves. Janet I very averse to spoiling herself, so I'm more than happy to play that role for her. Plus, I just like this picture.

We wandered into some shop some on our favorite street up in the Baixa-Chiado region and I convinced Janet to let me buy her some new clothes, probably by pointing out that there aren't many shops in Calais, Vermont.

How Everything Wearies

 Who am I to myself? Just one of my sensations.

My hearts drains out hopelessly, like a broken bucket. Think? Feel? How everything wearies when it's defined!

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 154

Over the years I've had so many music discussions - many of them embedded, even now, on this blog - and one of the points I often make, doubtless swiped from someone smarter (which is not a select fraternity), that point that as soon as something has a label it begins to lose its vitality. When something is labelled then it is conscripted into the machine. For example, if there is an official Alternative Music Top 40 then Alternative has been commodified and commercialized and it no longer has any meaning, it has become the antithesis of itself. Is this also true in regards to emotions? Once someone is our "girlfriend" and we are "in love with them" are they and the emotion itself commodified? Is the relationship dying simply because we have grown tired of each other, or because it has been labelled? It's not a new concept, obviously, and helps explain why so many people live together happily for years while consciously avoiding getting "married" (the ultimate commodified concept). Now, do we also do this to ourselves? While we should always be involved in a process of self-examination and self-exploration, do we destroy our own vitality and legitimacy when we label our own thoughts and feelings?

A Padaria Portuguesa

 One of the constant topics of conversation in the cabin is how much Janet and I miss the café culture in Lisbon, whether it's a restaurant or a padaria (bakery). Happily, there was a lovely padaria right around the corner from my little apartment in Lisbon on the last trip. Padaria Portuguesa is a nice chain of cafes in Lisbon, and they are highly recommended for your daily latte and pastel de nata fix.

Quero um galao e dois pasteis de nata, se faz favor.

Feliz Aniversario Senhor Pessoa

 Seriously, what better place to celebrate Fernando Pessoa's birthday (13 June) but at one of his favorite haunts, the Cafe Brasileira, in Lisbon, eating his favorite meal, the bife com molho de café?

You get extra credit if you're rereading his The Book of Disquiet while you're there.

In The Disaster of This Book

 Your ships, Lord, didn't make a greater voyage than the one made by my thought, in the disaster of this book. They rounded no cape and sighted no far-flung beach - beyond what daring men had dared and what minds had dreamed - to equal the capes I rounded with my imagination and the beaches where I land with my . . .

Thanks to your initiative, Lord, the Real World was discovered. The Intellectual World will be discovered thanks to mine.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 125

OK, so I chose this passage for reasons beyond the phrase "in the distance of this book," although that seemed to be the appropriate follow-up to the point I made in my previous post about all the reading I've been doing lately and whether or not it was, on some level, a desire to not spend more time writing (I write every day, but I could certainly write more). Recently I stopped taking the prescription for the pain and weariness in my legs (the third of three different ones I've been on over the last three and a half years) because it was making me fat but also intellectually lethargic. I think of how much I was writing before I went on the drugs in the spring of 2021 and how little I wrote for the couple years after. Essentially, I think that the drugs were making me sluggish, both physically and intellectually; I could feel it in class, but especially while trying to write. In the end I decided that I'd rather deal with more pain if it meant that I could have a greater sense of intellectual acuity. I have lots of time to suffer as I get older, but i feel that I'm running out of time to write.

Hah, that's funny. After starting off saying that I didn't choose that passage because of writing and the "disaster of this book" but apparently I did choose the passage for that reason. However, there's obviously more going on. It definitely is a testament to Pessoa's intense internality. No external world or discovery could compare to their internal equivalents. And not to be too Platonic, but isn't he right?

Can You Have Too Much Proust?

 I don't know, can you have too much Proust? I'm closing in on a fourth reading of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, which must place in some utterly strange little corner of Americana. It's funny, although not particularly surprising, that our perception of novels or films change over the years. Among the things that jumped out at me on this re-read are: 1) The Guermantes Way is better than I remember (that's the third volume of seven, and usually the one that grinds attempts to read the entire novel into the dust: this is why, when you're at the bookstore, the only volume available is the first, Swann's Way, because many people collapse that early on); 2) Proust is simply a lot funnier with each read, and maybe that's nothing more than the process of naturally getting into the flow of his writing; 3) Albertine is not the only captive in The Captive, the fifty volume - she's joined by Marcel, and the Baron de Charlus, and several other characters, including women, and, to a larger extent, society itself, and 4) there really is a lot of sex in The Fugitive, the sixth volume (I mean, I knew that, but I guess I'm always surprised by it nevertheless) - although all the sex is overwhelmed by Proust's extraordinary writing on loss. 

So, I couldn't possibly be in the mood for more Proust, right? Apparently the answer to that is no. Recently I purchased, and started gently reading, William Carter's biography, Marcel Proust: A Life along with all seven volumes of the new Penguin translation of In Search of Lost Time (the later, and more appropriate translated title, of Remembrance of Things Past). The new translations are supposed to be marvelous, although I don't think I'll tackle it for a couple years on my normal Proustian rotation (he said . . .). I guess I'm going to have to admit to being something of a Proust nut.

I had put off reading a biography of Marcel Proust because, well, isn't that sort of like carrying coals to Newcastle if you've read Remembrance of Things Past? Not entirely, of course, because while there are definite similarities to his life and his society, there's a lot more going on in the novel. Still, some of the similarities are amazing, especially if you've read it a few times and you automatically begin to pair up actual characters with literary ones. Now, I hope this latest reading binge isn't simply my way of avoiding my own writing . . .

Liminal Spaces

 I just came across this picture on my phone. I snapped it from the bed in my little apartment, just as the sun was thinking about waking up. The apartment didn't have an air-conditioner so you had to open and close the windows at the right time of the morning and evening to beat the Portuguese heat. Anyway, the shot just reminded me of the trip and Lisbon. 

Last night over dinner Janet and I had another big talk about moving to Portugal or Italy, which would be yet another liminal space.

 

Exhausted in Lisbon

 I was just talking about my recent trip to Portugal, which was, as with all trips to Portugal, wonderful. Still, it was also an exhausting venture. I was hoping to discover many things in advance of next March's proposed student trip, but one of them, truthfully, was whether or not I could hold up under the physical strain. It wasn't that long ago that I had to be wheeled through the Istanbul airport in a wheelchair, and, beyond the humiliation of it (in my arrogant and foolish mind) there's also the question of whether or not I can carry out my responsibilities on the trip. So, with all that in mind, I definitely pushed myself on the trip, walking miles every day. It wasn't always graceful, and I was definitely in a bad way at the end of the day, but I did manage to push through. One day in particular I had visited two museums - the tile museum (more on that later) and the Fado museum - and I walked back to the city center from the latter. I was definitely dragging as I approached the tumult that is the center of Lisbon. When you walk through that area you inevitably get a lot of folks at the various restaurants trying to get you to drop in and grab something to eat and drink at their establishment; not in a bad way - Portugal is not India or Zanzibar - but mainly in a friendly fashion. Almost always I thank them for their kind offer and more along. However, at that particular moment I was definitely running on fumes, so I plopped down at a local place. Naturally, I was not disappointed.

A very Portuguese treat.

Also very Portuguese: the complimentary ginja as a thank you for stopping in. I'm sure my decrepit state didn't hurt.

To Live Everything Through Novels

 My ideal would be to live everything through novels and to use real life for resting up - to read my emotions and to live my disdain of them. For someone with a keen and sensitive imagination, the adventures of a dictional protagonist are genuine emotion enough, and more, since they are experienced by us as well as the protagonist. No great romantic adventure exists than to have loved Lady Macbeth with true and directly felt love. After a love like that, what can one do but take a rest, not loving anyone in the real world?

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 348

And continuing our discussion of why Pessoa never had a lover in "the real world," we come to this brilliant passage. I think in one of my way too many passages about Proust when I devoted over seven-hundred consecutive days to discussing Remembrance of Things Past I spent time talking about women in films or literature that I felt I could settle down with quite happily. Naturally, in an almost Proustian way, I'm brought back to that memory.  It's funny, the older I get the more I narrow down my list of readings (not that I don't read a lot of new stuff as well) and am even more likely to reread a novel that I loved. I'm in the process of finishing my fourth reading of Remembrance of Things Past (more on that soon), which I'm sure, in today's world, would be all the justification one would need to be sent to a mental institute. However, in an increasingly ugly world - and this is a viewpoint worthy of Pessoa - the draw to a beautiful literary world is almost magnetic. How could anyone in the "real world" compare to his love for Lady Madbeth? And hence why bother? Does this statement actually apply to me as well, and it's why I'm drawn so passionately to The Book of Disquiet? Have I actually been a bad partner to the various women in my life because, as my Dad would frequently opine, I was never really there? 

A Letter Not to Post

 A Letter Not to Post

I hereby excuse you from appearing in my idea of you.

Your life . . .

    This is not my love; it's merely your life.

I love you the way I love the sunset or the moonlight: I want the moment to remain, but all I want to possess in it is the sensation in possessing it.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 347

I will often opine that if you want to understand how not to have a happy relationship you should delve into Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Following that logic, if you want to master the art of not even having a woman in your life at all you should delve into Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. We pretty definitely know that Fernando Pessoa never had sex with any woman in his entire life, although he did have one vague girlfriend who he kissed a couple times on a tram. Why? Well, it could simply be that he was a monumental weirdo. It's sort of the same argument that one ends up chasing around when you try and figure out the concept of his heteronyms; was he making a profound point about identity, or was he just being almost unimaginably odd. I would argue that in regards to the question of love - or the lack of love, the passage above helps things come more into focus. That last line, "I love you the way I love the sunset or the moonlight: I want the moment to remain, but all I want to possess in it is the sensation in possessing it," is classic Pessoa. It is easy to think of Proust as being intensely internal, which he is, but he's almost an extrovert as compared to Pessoa. What he wants is a quiet, internal life, shielded from the ugliness, the crassness, of modern life. Maybe this is his problem with any sort of relationship with a woman: he wants the beauty of the concept of it - to possess the "sensation in possessing it" - but not the ugliness of possessing it. At least he's honest: "This is not my love; it's merely your life."

CB and CP

 I don't know why it has taken so long to post pictures of my spring 2023 student trip to Jordan. I suspect it was because it ended on a bit of a bittersweet note. My body really broke down on the way home, and being carted through the Istanbul Airport in a wheelchair is not my idea of fun. It was pretty humbling, which I guess isn't a bad thing. Anyway, it turned out to be a pretty good trip, and I'll see if I can't track down some more pictures. Here are a couple shots of my excellent friend Cyndi and Craig. It was my sixth trip with CB (five to Jordan, and one to India/Sri Lanka) and my second with CP (we made a trip to China once - we all remember the infamous Turtle Boy picture, captured here on the blog - along with this one). They were, as one might expect, wonderful travelling companions.

I think this was the restaurant where we each ate two pounds of meat.

In my tent in The Wadi Rum, debriefing after another day of student adventures.

Meu Apartamento Pequeno

 In June I made a mad dash back to Portugal by way of preparing for next March's proposed student trip to Portugal. There were sites, mainly museums and hostels, that I wanted to visit. It was a wonderful and also very productive trip, and it's one where you find out all sorts of stuff that the Internet can't tell you. For instance, I really wanted to bring students to the Bullfighting Museum in Lisbon, which I visited several years ago. According to several online sites it was still open, but it was only upon arriving at the actual spot was I able to learn that it has been boarded up since the COVID pandemic (that would have been an unpleasant surprise). I also found about deals with museums that will make the trip more manageable. So, like I said, a good trip. One of the best things about it was the little Airbnb apartment where I stayed in Estrela, a quiet area in Lisbon. It's funny, you always see people in movies who take a little apartment to finish writing projects. I always thought it was silly, or maybe pretentious, but there actually is a lot of logic to it; essentially, I got so much work done. I could also clearly see path forward to a retirement that sounded wonderful: a small place in Portugal, with days demarcated by writing in the morning and then exploring museums and reading at cafes in the afternoon.

The apartment was down this quiet street, almost cross the street from the British Embassy.

A serviceable little kitchen. Mainly I used it to prepare my breakfast of  coffee, three eggs, and an apple.

A fairly comfortable bed, and one that caught the morning light in a lovely fashion.

The little sitting room off the bedroom. I tried to write here, but the light was a little bit too strong. However, it was a great place to read.

The tiny but pleasant living room. The SyFy channel is Portugal doesn't have commercials, so at night, after a day of writing and exploring, I would plop down and watch bad monster movies.

The foldout desk in the living room, where I did most of my writing. The timing for writing was great because the time difference meant that I could scribble away for hours before anyone back in the US would be awake that I might want to pester. 

Livin- the dream: hanging out the laundry.