February 2009 - Meandering home

February 22-23. The womb of the Carnival.

Total detachment is a crying freedom. The days are so hot that the hammock catches the odour of its sleeper and you have to use chalk powder and shake it real hard. In the morning, we went to a bloco (a street parade with drumming and dancing). The drums had a lot of energy. These ...

24 February, 2009

bus, carnival, muerte, Sao Paolo

Travel

February 22.

I'm falling / Safely to the Ground. So what use is it to go all the way up to visit the Christo Redemptor? Since it is a tourist magnet and I swallowed some tourist iron, I walked to the entrance gate of the tramway that comforably takes you up the 700 m hill that is ...

24 February, 2009

Christo, Copacabana, Rio, Sugar Loaf

Travel

February 21.

See the blind man / shooting at the world. Jack stands up and makes his move. He's a tactical guy. Start talking with the older one, the uglier one, the least attractive woman. Following the harsh merciless laws of nature. That way he transforms himself from a danger coming from outside the group into a ...

24 February, 2009

funny, Gringo, Jack, Lennon, Rio

Travel

February 20. Rio

That day, Jack decides to go to Rio de Janeiro for the Carnival. It's very famous down there. He comes to me in the morning, all excited about it, says he would dance all night and drink juicy beverages and make love to the Brazilian women. I say Jack you know what? I'm coming with ...

24 February, 2009

airbus, flight, Modeste, Rio

Travel

February 19. Jazz

A life for the art is a life apart. A life à part, a sacrifice of solitude. You have to keep moving on, or you will become mediocre, a painful aesthetic entrepreneur smiling unctuously to his customers. But how do you live art? Hear that question? It is no good thinking about that at all. ...

24 February, 2009

Alfred Brendel, Berlin, café A Brazileira, Daniel Barenboim, Jack, jazz, Mozambique, Napoleon, painful aesthetic entrepreneur, Paris, Patagonia, Southern Patagonia, street musician, writer

Philosophy, Travel

February 18. Jack’s first adventure.

Today Jack got out early, while I was still dreaming of rosabuds and guirlandes on the wall of a monch's refectory, of tulips and waterpipes, of drowsy days spent under semispherical
pink umbrellas, of the Lisbon elevator that takes you up to the sky for only 2€ and the tram that takes you down for ...

18 February, 2009

drugs, Jack, Kamiel, Lisbon, Miller

Travel

February 17. Meat and Metaphores.

I want to find my way into the cave underneath us, explore the big hollow caverns that lie below the fundament of our civilization. I want to descend as far as I can, and breath the stale air of the dark grotto that is filled with highly inflammable gasses. The weight of our civilization compresses ...

18 February, 2009

library, Lisbon, metaphore, Nietzsche

Travel

February 16. Jack enters.

I decided to split up. One part of me is sitting in the sun being wonderfully happy, living up to his dreams to his heart's content, he produces reflections like sunrays on the surface of a still mountain like, and he produces the illusion that those reflections will last at least a few centuries. The ...

18 February, 2009

Christ, Jack, Obama

Travel

February 15. Belém.

That professor of mine might be infected too. He could be part of the complot. He accepted my PhD-thesis just because he felt sorry or something. Otherwise what would it mean? I am not used to squeeze meaning out of that. The complot thought could be interesting: just imagine the whole world working together diligently ...

18 February, 2009

Belém, electricity, little miss sunshine, phd, picknick

Travel

February 14.

It is sunny outside but I write inside. Had a great lunch that filled my belly like it hasn't been filled for weeks. All the chemicals that will be involved in the digestion, plus the cafeine intake that I'm used to after a meal make me write like a fertile hen. It's a typical working ...

18 February, 2009

Barrio Alto, Lisbon

Travel, Writing

February 13. Fumar mata.

Fumar mata. That's what it says on Portuguese cigarette boxes. Zé forgot his pipe. Friday the thirteenth was just a lucky day like every other day. I had to take my vaccination and it all worked out fine. In Barrio Alto I walked up to a private hospital where they sent me to the health ...

18 February, 2009

fado, health, Vaccin

Travel

February 12. Sintra.

Sintra. A wonderful, sunny day. Portugal has been a monarchy but the coward royals went off to Brazil during the Napoleontic invasions. In Sintra, you can visit one of their flamboyant castles. It's very beautiful as you can see on the pictures. The opulence of the crown was paid for by the poverty of the ...

15 February, 2009

Travel

February 11. To whom it may concern.

For writing perhaps you need loneliness. Loneliness for breakfast, loneliness for lunch and loneliness for dinner. But that will never be enough. You'll need to sleep with her, caress her cheeks, she'll have to be the muse in all of your dreams. And what is it you can write then? A really-real account of that ...

15 February, 2009

erotic, Freiheit, Miller, sex

Travel

February 10. Pasteleria and abstractions.

There are very good Pasteleria's in Lisbon, and the coffee is very cheap. I can work fast without caring too much about quality, about what the reader might think. I can't put the bricks of words together when I know what the building must look like. I can't guarantee you the building isn't going to ...

15 February, 2009

abstraction, dream, past, Pasteleria

Travel

February 8,9. Pombal built this city.

Marquise de Pombal is the Hausmann of Lisbon. The streets of Rossio are laid out like a chessboard, like Barcelona or Manhattan. That's Pombal's work. They have Pombal-style houses that are made of wood in order to make them earthquake-proof. In the 1755 earthquake the city was almost completely distroyed by the tsunami and the ...

15 February, 2009

earthquake, meaning, Pombal

Travel

February 7. Adamastor and the human condition.

In Lisbon don't miss the Miradoura Adamastor. Adamastor, a great Portuguese discoverer, an icon of the empire that has been. His statue looks out over the Tejo now, and there are always young people drinking and laughing in the square of the Miradoura. The sun heated up the scene, a drunk Scottish boy mooched about ...

15 February, 2009

Adamastor, dream, laugh, write

Travel

February 6.

Consumption and religion. If you buy a cup of coffee or a Patéis de Lisboa, you just put your coins on the counter without any other emotion than the great taste of this combination. It's my reason (in fact, one of my reasons) to be here in Lisbon and write in the February sun. ...

15 February, 2009

hostel, meaning, product, truth

Travel

February 5. At the Docks again.

I went to the docks again, wanted to find out if a crossing is possible in early February. Here's the result: no. The freighters have their European Union regulations with safety measures and every human being on board needs a certification for everything. It would take me months to do the necessary paperwork and besides, ...

10 February, 2009

Docks, Lisbon, marine, poem

Travel

February 4. City over the Rainbow.

Famous scene with Streetcar The next day, I turned into a tourist. Got up early, same breakfast, same women, same atmosphere. But I met Alicia, a little Chinese woman who was nice to talk to. With her and some other guys we walked up to the castle. If you're visiting Lisbon, you should walk up to the ...

10 February, 2009

Barrio Alto, defense, Lisbon, Portugal, rainbow, Tejo

Travel

February 3. At the Docks.

So I woke up in a hostelroom in the upper bed of a bunk bed, pretty girl below me, pretty girls in the other beds, pretty girls everywhere. Went to brush my teeth and have breakfast which two diligent women prepared for all the youngsters. What will they get paid, I thought. The scrambled eggs ...

10 February, 2009

Docks, Lisbon, Paul Auster

Travel

February 2. Hostel World.

I was taken care of once more. On the day I left, they took me to the bus station in Oliveira. Sixteen euros to get straight back to Lisbon. I dozed in the bus, let a lot of thoughts pass my inner eye. Where would I go? South America? India? Which country would be next ...

10 February, 2009

hostel, Lissabon

Travel

February 1. In the Dutch enclave.

A lot of Dutch live in this area. It's popular to live here. Not like the Algarve, this is popular among people with style, and maybe money, too. We went to a second hand market somewhere
in the hills. A lot of Dutch expats, yes they called themselves expats, were around, and a very tall ...

10 February, 2009

Dutch, expat, James Bond, oil, pipeline, Portugal

Travel

January 31. Life as Literature.

Birthday of Beatrix, the Dutch queen. Felt even more connected to my native country. I woke up at nine, and was taken care of again. I'm so grateful. We went to the village with the new dog that day. The new dog can't be together with the old one yet, since they're not used to ...

10 February, 2009

Literature, old people, Oliveira, Portugal

Travel

January 30. In the green hills of Portugal.

The next couple of days I spent with my friends. It was a fantastic experience: just being around the house, giving a hand to he who needed it, walking the dog, discussing life and literature, and watching the day and some cultural heritage die away in front of the tv at night.

The ...

8 February, 2009

Oliveira, Portugal, stay, working

Travel