Poetry Makes Might

In light of the violence and destruction in Oslo today, I wanted to post a poem that speaks to the absolute and enduring might of loving another person, even across lifetimes. This translation of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore is one of my favorite readings on any given day. In the belief that words are true power, that words create thoughts, and thoughts create reality what better reaction to violence than poetry read aloud at cribs and kitchen tables, in heatwaves and heartbreaks. Poetry whispered or sung might be the answer to life's unanswerable questions. Who knows? Given enough attention, poetry might have the power to make enough space in our hearts for peace--for might as expressed today causing the end of human life is an empty mouth; the abyss of an expressionless face. Be mighty in response, read poetry this week to yourself or anyone who will listen. Maybe start with this one:

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

~Rabindranath Tagore

From Selected Poems, Translated by William Radice

Read Silver Sparrow

Summer is one of my favorite times to read, and I would bet it is one of yours too. Especially right now as so many of us are in the grips of a serious heatwave. Why not turn on the fan, turn up the air conditioning, put your feet up and read. My recommendation this week is Silver Sparrow, the third novel by author, Tayari Jones. I was captivated by the voices in the novel and could not put it down. The novel begins, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist..." and the story picks up speed from there with gorgeous storytelling,complex characters,  and tension that will not turn you loose, and trust me, you won't take a breath until you reach the last page. This book has something for every reader.

You might even catch Tayari on tour, if she is in your part of the country don't miss the chance to attend a great reading. Or listen to her interviewed here.

The Chapel of Angels and Bones

Hanging from a cliff at Sitio, is a beautiful and tiny chapel (the ceiling featured here). I've visited this chapel on every trip to Nazaré, and the place (rich in it's own legend and origin connected to the appearance of the Blessed Mother) holds a kind of mystique for me that I am yet to unravel. Aside from  its absolute and obvious beauty there remains in this place a  physical symbol of an aesthetic state of being, a transcendence, as if the chapel is a doorway to another doorway.  I copied these lines from Fernando Pessoa in the notes from my journal documenting the day: My dreaming of you will be my strength, and when my sentences tell of your Beauty they will have melodies of form, curves of stanza, and the sudden splendors of immortal verse.

This day left an whisper in my ear, but memory continually eluded my conscious mind over the week since I left Portugal. Until yesterday, when a friend said he believed angels often inhabit tangible substances and give those places life. His words made me think that angels, as he described them, become the sign pointing to the next sign. The "presence", if you will, that brings inspiration/creativity  into the bloodstream. 

By chance today, I picked up two books that I have had on my shelf for awhile, George Steiner's Real Presences, and Real Presence by Nathan Mitchell. * Steiner, a linguist and cultural critic, poses questions towards transcendence (or divine presence) in modern culture, while Mitchell, a theologian, is speaking more directly the the concept of the eucharist as it exists in the Roman Catholic faith (note: this is a gross simplification of both of their works, please read them, and forgive me the understatements).

What struck me was that both "presences" were host in this chapel at one time or another, and still reside on some level side by side. Steiner argues in his work that a covenant exists between language and the world, that "whereever and whenever human beings experience meaning, they implicitly affirm the presence of Ultimate Meaning..." and asserts that this meaning can be understood as God, as Plato's "Ideas", as Descartes' self-consciousness, as Kant's transcendent logic, or as Heidegger's "Being" - that "it" remains the center to which all of these roads lead (Steiner 121). 

The chapel has convinced me: certain ideas, like certain books are as bone, and the responsibility of the artist is to  chew them carefully,  to suck their marrow, or swallow them whole, whatever means necessary to obtain their meaning in the fullest measure, to intuit the Source that grew the bones in the first place; the body where Art lives.

Tonight I Can Write...

When writing in Nazaré, the sea is a prescence that expands anything near it, creativity, poetry, even Neruda seems more beautiful with the waves roaring in the background. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXHPk-ctoYY

Bats, Books, and Saramago

A tour of the National Palace-monastery at Mafra was on the agenda today. This location, aside from being a fascinating and important piece of Portuguese history, is also the literary location of Jose Saramago novel, Baltazar and Blimunda. I'm re-reading this novel, but to actually be in the place he was writing about changes the whole game. Mafra has a magnificent library where Saramago did his research. The library has resident bats who are very popular with the librarians as the bats consume the bugs intent on eating the rare books - 40, 000 rare books to be exact.

In this photo, I am in small alcove above the church where the Franciscan monks practiced playing the pipe-organ, where the servants passed through, and parts of the aparatus to ring 16 tons of bells were stored. Here's a shout out to our own Father Dominic of the St. Louis Priory whose namesake I happened across today cast in marble. Father Dominic teaches history and would have been delighted at every crevice and cornerstone of this beautiful place.

And since today was very hot in Portugal, I leave you with this:

The day was already hot, with a dark-blue sky and one of those shining festival suns that inflame the stones in the street, gild the dull dust in the air, throw mirror-like sparkles on to windows and give to all the city that white, chalk-like glitter, monotonously alive and implacable, that tires and somewhat saddens the soul in the slow summer hours. —Eça de Queirós, The Maias

The House of Stories

Stop what you are doing and learn about this artist, Paula Rego. Right now.

Today we visited the Casa das Historias (the House of Stories) in Cascais (a lovely seaside town outside Lisboa). The Casa das Historias is a museum to the work of Portuguese artist, Paula Rego. The museum itself is art. Her work and her aesthetic is absolutely original and fierce. We were able to view a short documentary of her work, and then have a guided tour of her work. We also received a walking tour of the city by a dear friend of hers. It was an incredible day. Her work is the kind that shakes something loose in you as an artist, that says are you feasting from your heart everyday, are you breathing from every pore in your body - if not, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?

So ends the day.

So Ends the Day

I'm quite at home moving around the city like a real Lisboeta. Staying at the university villa, outside the action of Baixa/Chiado, lends itself to feeling more civilian that tourist. Another amazing day: 2nd workshop, excursion to the Vieira da Silva foundation, and the Alberto Lacerda tribute and poetry reading. The night ended with a fabulous reading of young Portuguese poets at the Liveria da Sa in Chiado.

Here is a poem by the Azorean writer, João de Melo

LOOKING OUT, SHIP-FOCUSED

On this island there is no looking out
that isn't ship-focused: in the sea
man has his destiny awakened and the
course for embarking.

Everyone is born looking out from the island
at water ripped slowly
by the edge of the keel
of ships on the high seas.

And courage bespeaks courage
maybe a ship placed
in the eyes of this voyage
the whole dream a shipwreck.

João de Melo

At the end of each day at sea, the captains of Portuguese whaling ships closed out their daily log with the phrase, "So ends the day,".

I think this is also the perfect sentiment to end a day of writing & wonderment, and the last thoughts before sleep.

A Workshop with A View

This photo is the street view from the entrance to our workshop, the river Tagus is the lovely blue water that you see. Streetcars frequently rumble by and we are just across the street from the apartment building where Fernando Pessoa was born. The next photo is a bica and pasteis, the small espresso and custard pastry that Lisboa does so well.

Our first workshop was today, and it is a pleasure everytime this group gets together. We marvel that this may be the biggest gathering of Portuguese-American writer's to ever take place. We discussed in detail what this meant to us, our charge, and the how we would go forth from here after this moment-- both unusual and authentic.

I saw a woman discussing writing quite intently, the sound of the city swirled all around her as she spoke as if the sounds had wings. She used her hands in an unusual fashion when she spoke, the movement was so charming and odd that I wanted to save the image in my mind and use it somehow in a story. I always capture images like this as poetry, it helps me remember them more clearly. Fiction is not as emotionally phtographic as poetry to me. Or else the moment was a poem itself.  Either way I'll share share it, just here:

The woman cups air like water.
Her mouth a faucet pouring phrases.
She pushes her palm skyward
and tempts three angels loose above the street,
hungry from heaven's neglect.

See them just there,
hovered above the trash cans and cracked sunlight
feather's dripping like candlewax in the heat,
they bend low toward her offering
and tongue words from her fingertips
silent as water seducing stone.

Pessoa in Lisboa

Today was technically the first day of the Dzanc Disquiet International Literary Program. How is it possible that so much has already taken place? Today we were given a walking tour of "Pessoa's Lisbon" by Pessoa scholars - a brilliant experience. Here are a few photos.

 A photo from the oldest cafe in Lisboa - Martinho Da Arcada-- and em particular this is the booth where Pessoa drank both coffee and absinthe...not necessarily in that order.

In the same cafe, Pessoa, a sample of his writing and the woman he was in love with (at least that's the rumor:)

Until tommorow.

Saramago and the Stones of Blood and Story

Travel is one of the great reminders that grace is without borders. Last evening while fixing supper, I chance met another guest of the University of Lisbon who invited me to attend a ceremony on Saturday commemorating the one year mark of Jose Saramago's death. I was of course thrilled to go and would have otherwise missed the entire event.

Saturday was sunny and fair. Saramago's wife Pilar del Rio(pictured here)  spread his ashes under an olive tree that was brought from Saramago's home town. The olive tree is in a small park plaza outside the Casa dos Bicos that will serve as the Saramago foundation. Pilar moved about the plaza with much grace giving interviews and answering questions. Her dignity was to be much admired.

Later, friends and I visited the Castelo Sao Jorge, and I was struck, as I always am, at the magic of that place. The sense of palpable history. I was still thinking about Saramago, his work, and what it meant to be standing on the walls of the castle, a place alternately occupied since the 6th century by everyone from Celts, Carthiginians, Moors and Portuguese (to list but a few). Literally, the land beneath the stones is soaked with the blood and story of countless generations. I try to listen to those voices with body and soul pressing my palms against the coarse rock warmed by the sun. Stones will not be rushed in telling their tales though, but I did not leave empty-handed. This evening I ran across a quote by Saramago that referenced the birth of Lisboa when the Moors were defeated in 1147 at this very castle. Saramago wrote:

We recall that blood was shed, first on one side, then the other, and that all sides make up the blood that flows in our veins. We, the inheritors of this city, are the descendants of Christians and Moors, of blacks and Jews, of Indians and Orientals, in short, of all races and creeds considered good, along with those that have been called bad. We shall leave to the ironic peace of their tombs those disturbed minds that not so long ago invented a Day of the Race for the Portuguese, and instead reclaim the magnificent mixing, not only of bloods but above all of cultures, that gave Portugal its foundation and has made it last to this day.

And I'll end with a quote from Pilar del Rio, who now resides in Lisboa,: “I want Portugal to become a country of entrepreneurs. Who invent, who create another type of work, another form of communication, a different society, a society that is not based on oil. For people to use their imaginations. If the Portuguese discovered the world, let them now discover others.” 

The link above tells the story of Pilar and Saramago in her own words, and is worth reading.

One More Sleep Til Portugal

Tonight in Springfield a terrific set of winds has descended--fresh and a bit damp. All the windows are open and the curtains lift and flutter as sheets on a clothesline. From where I am working by the window listening to Madredeus, the rush of wind through the trees could be the sea.

 I was reminded of a quote I read in a travel book years ago (though I don't remember where) that the city of Lisboa was a beautiful woman always craning her neck to gaze back toward the sea.  This image and the city has never lost my adoration. I found this trailer from Wim Wender's Lisbon Story featuring Alfama by Madredeus and love these scenes.

Disquiet Reading List

Besides reading the amazing work of my fellow workshop participants, I am re-reading Antonio Lobo Antunes, South of Nowhere, which is re-translated by Margaret Jull Costa and released as The Land at the End of the World . I highly recommend this book. Publishers Weekly did a brief review of the novel if anyone is interested. Next on the shelf is Frank Gaspar's, Stealing Fatima, and though somewhat unrelated, Catherine E. McKinley's, Indigo, and Albert Camus, The Plague (this one on Kindle). In the early pages of all of these so stay tuned.

I haven't  forgotten to pack my Book of Disquiet, either. I'll end there for now.

II Litany
We never know self-realization.
We are two abysses--a well staring at the sky.

-Pessoa

Can't Keep Quiet about Disquiet

Dzanc Books International Literary Program kicks off on June 19th and runs through July 2nd. I am attending this year on a scholarship and am both excited and grateful for the privledge. The opportunity inspired me to start a blog that has long been on my list of literary "things to do", and to also finally kick-off an author website. So I hope new and old acquaintances of the Weird Little Sister will keep in touch to see what's happening at this event and others that follow.