If I could choose my favourite moment of day this would be it. Morning twilight. Don’t know why really. I guess it’s the idea of a transient time not preocupied with rules and alusive to the vast majority of city dwellers. As if time and the evolution of the space around us could be frozen in a moment of ultimate freedom.

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/68134837@N00/349443931

Lies.

Let’s face it everybody lies now and then (yeah, you do…). I do not believe a single person exists who has not once in his life told a lie or enhanced the truth, either unintentionally (“er… the dog ate my homework”), or to save someone else’s feelings (“yes, that haircut looks marvellous on you…”) or even for more ominous motives … It’s about the latter type that I have been thinking for a while now…

To different degrees people share a universal need for approval. It’s just basic human nature. It exposes our frailties and enhances our most hidden fears. Lying and deception are often used to create a favourable image or impression. People will go to great lengths, if necessary, to appear more appealing and interesting and to create a positive image of themselves. Often this involves some self-deception as well because people start to believe their own false image and can sometimes be truly ignorant to the fact that others have exposed them for what they are. This is where the tragic part comes in. Many of these are just harmless lies, told to a bunch of admiring ‘confidants’. But sometimes the tale is spread out of proportion, and does serious damage. By that time, the lie will have snowballed too much for the liar to do anything about it, except maybe admit to it.

But… is that really that condemnable? Totally condemnable I mean… What if they only continue to insist on lying to hide their exposed frailties with the notion that they can be used against them, is it condemnable then? If the person has deceived me and there is a feeling of hurtfulness, of having my trust betrayed and spun by deception, of having shared my innermost feelings and realising that the ideas and memories shared in return were often fabricated or non-existent. Should I take the self-righteous high-road and ignore the person for what he/she is even if I still do love them , or should I instead, pay with kindness and say “It’s quite alright you now? I see you for what you are, I love you just the same and will vow to never use your frailties against you no matter what.” Will this render me totally inept to distinguish truth from lie, and even more coy about exposing myself to others, or will it instead make me stronger and give that person the strength to emerge with their unique beauty, with their own rightful truth, confident that they are loved just the same?

I honestly don’t know…

…Oh, oh, oh, I will be
I will be there once more…

Congratulations to R., A., and C. on your newly inaugurated President.

Yes, you could. ;=)

Like this one.

I’m so happy to be loved 
throw me down and light me there 
’cause I’m an awful mess 
and you love me too 
I haven’t a care 
we’re eternity 
oh, I feel the sigh on 
every breath that’s met us here 
this night dreams fantastic 
and it’s ours, my dear 

how on earth could you have found me 
huddled under grapes of wrath 
I will never know but forever I ask 
how I got so lucky 
all this time proceeding 
silent in processional 
the words, they escape me through my singing cage 
of how I love you too 

it’s safe 
to be alone 
and be lonely 
but I found a gun 
with no safety 
and I am going to 
shoot down my ghost town 
completely 

’cause I know there’s a 
place for us 
I made it, I made it 

I am through with sharing all my love 
I have outgrown crowding up my house 
when you found me, I could not be loved 
but then I found me and I’m happy to be loved.

www.joanaspolicewoman.com/

You say the hill’s too steep to climb 
Climb it. 
You say you’d like to see me try 
Climbing. 

You pick the place and I’ll choose the time 
And I’ll climb 
That hill in my own way. 
Just wait a while for the right day. 
And as I rise above the tree lines and the clouds 
I look down, hearing the sound of the things you’ve said today. 

Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd 
Smiling. 
Merciless the magistrate turns ’round 
Frowning. 

And who’s the fool who wears the crown? 
And go down, 
in your own way 
And every day is the right day 
And as you rise above the fear-lines in his brow 
You look down, hearing the sound of the faces in the crowd.

Para ti. *

Patches of green... - Island of Terceira

I take my title from Neil Young’s magnificent Song X. Much the same way this song evokes images of unconquered territory and escape (of young-hood’s everlasting quest for paradise), my mind has also been going astray lately, thinking of voyages to places more exotic and distant than the ones I usually tread. It is after all normal for your mind to search for different spaces when the weather changes and days grow longer and warmer, inviting you to look for comfortable and happier thoughts…

My office is a small space on the top floor of an old Lisbon building. It has a veranda just large enough for two inviting chairs form where to look over the rooftops of Lisbon and the trees of Jardim da Estrela and the Pedro Nunes high-school. At the end of the day I just give myself a couple of minutes to wallow in the amber light of the city before heading off. That time of day, and the office itself with its wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, massive window, overlooking what could potentially be a very inspiring scenery, always makes me feel a bit restless and peculiar. Like a cat waiting to sprung out of a mind-numbing, albeit door-less, cage…

I know what’s on my mind. Nine islands in the middle of the Atlantic, four of which I called home during the Summer of 2007, where life naturally runs its laid-back course, oblivious to my daily hum-drums…

There’s no describing it really unless you’ve been there. Of course you can write about how beautiful and unordinary it looks, and how nice the weather is, but it’s the state of mind you get into that is harder to describe more than anything else.

I have been thinking about my visit to the Azores a lot… Anticipation was really high back then as R. kept promising to take me to his native home of Terceira, but because of work related duties (both his and mine…) it took us about 6 years of actually speaking about it but never really taking off.

It was not the fact that the island was so dear to him but something in his good-humored, and kind-hearted nature (and that of his family) that made me believe this was a place of kind souls, easy to warm up to, where you could effortlessly let go of all those yesterdays.

There’s one place in particular my mind keeps going back to lately, like a battered sea vessel looking for a friendly port of call… 

Peter Café Sport is a small family bar, handed-over from one generation to the other. It overlooks the marina of Horta and the nearby, 2.000 meter-high mountain that is the neighboring island of Pico emerging from the depths of the Atlantic.

Peter’s, like the Island of Faial, a small rock of earthly, uncommon, beauty that harbors it, is a place lost at sea, miles and miles away from the nearest continental capital and the luxuries of urban metropolises. Yet it is the last resort of a once global empire united by the Sea, at a time when the history of Humanity could still be explained by stories of fortune and destiny.

As you enter the bar you are invited to occupy any seat that is available, sitting down to a company of multiple seafarers from across the globe and the stories they have to tell…. whole families from Canada, lonely sailors from Nordic land, or well-to-do yachtsmen who have only the sea to call home…

 I miss it terribly… I miss gazing out at Pico from Peter’s window thinking how great the illusion of every problem in the world appearing to be distat and insignificant when faced by such greatness and beauty…

Bay of Angra do Heroismo - Island of Terceira

St. John's festivities - Island of Terceira

Velas - Island of São Jorge

 

Paradise... - Island of São Jorge

Caldeira de Santo Cristo - Island of São Jorge

Not a Milka add! - Island of Pico

Peter's - Island of Faial

Inside Peter's

View from Peter's

Marina of Horta - Island of Faial

Arrival at Horta - Island of Faial

Sailor painting the walls at the Marina of Horta - Island of Faial

Capelinhos - Island of Faial

… desperately hoping to go back soon!

it’s too high!..come to the edge!

and they came,..and he pushed…and they flew”

by Christopher Logue

I will sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of New York City.