JP and FP

 Here's a silly picture from this summer's trip to Portugal and Spain. Janet and I were sitting out in front of the Brasileria, a cafe that was a personal favorite of Fernando Pessoa - and which was situated right outside our hotel in Lisbon. Janet was mugging with the Pessoa statue over her shoulder as we waited for yet another bottle of wine and yet another delicious plate of food. Sitting outside the cafe and writing was an absolute joy.

She had to suffer through the face that every time someone would come up to post with the statue I'd mutter under my breath, "I bet they've never even read The Book of Disquiet  . ."

There's Something Wrong With That Boy

 I ran into my friend Kathy Leo-Nyquist the other day and we were reminiscing about the time that we were part of a crew of Champlain professors who travelled to China. It was part of the infamous seven country/seven week trip that I made in 2009 when I was freshly separated and my sense of self-loathing was at its most intense (as you can see from my relatively skeletal body - I was in the middle of the breakup diet that far too many of us go on at one time or another); it helped that I actually had some place to sleep other than my office and something to eat other than ramen noodles. Unfortunately, on my last stop, Barcelona, my camera was swiped so most of the pictures - and memories - the trip were lost. Happily, Kathy sent me a bunch of pictures of the trip, the one below being one of them. We were all together for a week or so in Beijing before the rest of the professors took off for southern China on a faculty development tour and I went off to far western China alone on a different one.

Seriously, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing in this photo - either yelling or just gesticulating wildly in the midst of a ridiculous story or some combination of the two.

In a Future in Which I Won't Belong

 It sometimes occurs to me, with sad delight, that if one day (in a future in which I won't belong) the sentences I write are read and admired, then at last I'll have my own kin, people who 'understand' me, my true family in which to be born and loved. But far from being born into it, I'll have already died long ago. I'll be understood only in effigy, when affection can no longer compensate for the indifference that was the dad man's lot in life.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 191

Actually, beyond the number of depressing/distressing posts I've had lately, I don't necessarily consider this to a sad reflection on the part of Pessoa.  Earlier today I was talking to Janet about my interest/fascination with learning Portuguese. I told her that I think it falls into three categories: 1) whether or not we end up moving to Portugal I could very well see us spending four or six weeks in the country every year, and I'd like to be able to fit in - and not simply be one of those American wankers who live, especially on the southern coast, who don't actually try and live in Portugal, 2) I'm at age where learning a foreign language is a really good way to keep your brain lubricated, and 3) it pains me that I've reached the age of sixty-three and I'm one of those Americans - and the very ones that I make fun of - for not speaking, or even trying to speak, a second language. Essentially, I'm embarrassed that I don't speak another language, and even if I speak a particularly ugly version of Portuguese I'm still going to try and speak Portuguese.

Finally, it gets at a bigger point: how have I reached this point and have not finished a couple books? I have publications, but they inevitably relate to teaching (which, obviously, is nothing to be ashamed of - and I'll doubtless finish my life being a better teacher than a scholar). Still, I have a doctorate and people with doctorates should be produced more tangible and useful scholarship, even if future generations don't pay much attention to it. However, if they do, that may be the family reunion I finally attend.

Better the Flight of the Bird

    Better the flight of the bird that passes and leaves no trace

    Than the passage of the animal, recorded in the ground.

    The bird passes and is forgotten, which is how it should be,

    The animal, no longer there and so of no further use,

    Uselessly shows it was there.

    Remembrance is a betrayal of Nature,

    Because yesterday's Nature isn't Nature.

    What was is nothing, and to remember is not to see.

    Pass by bird, pass, and teach me to pass!

                          Fernando Pessoa (as Alberto Caeiro)

Or, as Marcus Aurelius would remind us, soon you will have forgotten the world and the world will have forgotten you. Yeah, eventually I'll push through this mood, and I'm definitely wallowing in it too much as of late. The other day my wonderful friend MK sent me a note which read, "No matter what happens with your balance or your body or any of that shit, know that you are still the awesome funny, kind, thoughtful friend you've always been and none of this bullshit will change that. Love you." I told him that I couldn't accurately express how much I loved his note, and how much I clearly needed to hear what I didn't know I needed to hear.

The Size of What I See

    From my village I see as much of the universe as can be seen from the earth,

    And so my village is as large as any town,

    For I am the size of what I see

    And not the size of my height . . .

                                 Fernando Pessoa (as Alberto Caeiro)

OK, so this is not actually drawn from Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, but I'm still using the Disquiet tag. While Pessoa used over fifty heteronyms in his writing Alberto Caeiro was one of the holy trilogy along with Ricardo Reis and Alvaro de Campos. This is what led Richard Zenith, the most popular translator of Pessoa (I'm quoting from his A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe collection) to propose that the four important 20th century Portuguese poets were Fernando Pessoa. I guess this jumped out at me because, as one can tell from the desultory mood of a previous post, I'm struggling with a decreasing universe; essentially, if I'm the size of what I can see I'm clearly losing height. In her Persons & Portraits Cynthia Freeland discussed the four selves, with one of them being the Bodily Self, meaning that our manufactured selves are based on different experiential identities and one of them is our existence as physical beings. Yes, I know that if I'm forced to retire I could still devote myself to writing and, and least theoretically, still see a vast and fathomless universe, and thus I would be as tall as Hanuman as he jumped across the Indian Ocean to Lanka, but I'm having trouble getting to that point. 

TASTee Grill

 And after that depressing post, let me post something a little happier, Here's a picture of my dear friend Kevin entering Vermont's TASTee Grill, a place that he stumbled across. It's now become my go to place for early morning breakfasts on the nights I stay over in Burlington. Like a lot of places the guy who runs it is having trouble balancing the books and keeping wait staff, so sometimes he and I are the only people in the place.

Seriously, how can a greasy spoon inside a Sunoco station not be great?

A Far Shittier Yes

 The other day I was in the midst of yet another medical test, in this case a more sophisticated vascular test, which form a seemingly boundless tapestry over the last two and a half year. When I step back and think about all the doctors' visits and tests I've waded through it's rather daunting: seven MRIs, three EMGs, two epidurals, two vascular tests, a stress test, who knows how many x-rays, seemingly gallons of blood work, etc. (truthfully, I often forget how many tests or doctors - general practitioners, spine doctors, pain doctors, neurologists, neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, etc. - I've seen). Anyway, I was on my back while three doctors ran a series of tests to measure my vascular capacity (I still don't have that results on that one) and I turned to one of the doctors and said: "You know, it's strange, but whenever I get a 'no' or a 'within normal limits' on a test it actually makes me sad, because I feel that it's just setting me up for a later far shittier yes on a test." He nodded as if her completely understood. I don't mean to sound too depressed or bitter, because in many ways I'm not, even when I'm practically climbing up the stairs while using my hands or resorting to using my cane all the time. And I do appreciate all the hard work from all of these health care professionals. They can't seem to figure out my deteriorating condition, but it doesn't mean that they aren't trying. I received a lovely, and a bit heartbreaking, not from my neurologist the other day apologizing for not being able to diagnose my condition. In a previous visit I had told him that I wasn't angry or frustrated as much as simply afraid. The trajectory of my declining health doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. In November 2021, on my trip to Jordan with my son, I managed to climb all the way up to the Monastery at Petra, which was probably a ten mile hike and climb; at the end I barely dragged myself out of the siq, but, by God, I made it. Fast forward a year to November 2022 when, on a student trip, I barely made the half-hour largely flat walk in and out to the Treasury - and by the March student trip I didn't even walk from the hotel to the entrance of the siq. On the flight back by legs essentially gave up the ghost and I had to be pushed through the Istanbul Airport in a wheelchair (and experience made even worse by the nice airport assistant driving the wheelchair like I was a child on an afternoon stroll to the park - thankfully only my friend Cyndi was there to see me cry in sadness and humiliation). Unless something magical shows up on the latest vascular test, which doubtless wouldn't be very promising news, obviously, the next step will be Dartmouth-Hitchcock or some teaching hospital in Boston, as I queue up for a far shittier yes.