lisbon | Absurdia.Net

August 1, 2014

I was here before, and I am here still

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The mystery of things is in their ineffability. When now I try to figure out Lisbon I still long to see the city as from the windows of the cab on my first night here, a strange geography of decay where light and shadow allow glimpses of an old colossus at the end of the world. The buildings of the Avenida Libertade, streaked all over by dark tears and burdened by the sadness of obsolete signs that in their time must have looked grand and exciting, palms all around as static one-legged giants standing with their monstrous heads held high. The lights burning into the depths of the Assembleia as in a monumental subterranean cave. The fulgent dome of Estrela, an alien spaceship trapped in wires and surrounded by the black manes of the trees. The blinded eyes of the abandoned houses, mouths agape, neglected mummies of ceramic and wood.

And now, now I can almost feel the terrible ubiquity of familiarity, and I can finally place everything… Everything? I look up and on top of a towering building a fluorescent light is still on. Cold and eerie against the dark summer sky, it glows like the eye of a sea monster. I need more dull light, to dispel the tricks of memory, to become once again a stranger. Beware the anaesthetic of routine, you start to feel for places that are not even there. I walk with an eye turned inward and my city is all there, forever defiled and falling apart. When I will be gone, memory will turn sour, then recede. Will I be freer then? Will my inward eye weep harder than the outward one right now?

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July 7, 2014

On leaving Lisbon

This city is an injured diamond, its broken facets shining day and night. White and coral, the doubtful light grazes dry crevices and blotches of mould on these quiet façades. Blue and yellow flourishes reflect echoes of dogs barking and remorseful human cries. It’s a melancholy that has no purpose, so perfect and true. I look up and see grass growing in the sky and I say to myself, “This is the place, the place to be. Let my body rest here.” My doleful stance is heavy with confusion. Summer rages on, timid enough to be tempting. I just want to find a hole where I can sleep for two hundred years, all responsibilities forgotten, all ambition void of meaning.

Lisbon, you have become my cradle, the warm comforter of my lethargy, but the day is long and the eye of the moral destitute needs to wander. My face is growing longer under the sun. I will leave you with pain, hopeless, vagarious. The hope of a comeback is not the luxury of the maladjusted.

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July 5, 2014

Pombalina

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Her little joy lasted less than a handful of days. The dazzling light of the kitten Pombalina has sunk fast. Just one week ago she was sending loud cries to a cherished missing mother. “Find me,” she said, “I’m so lonely and everything is so scary, I don’t have big enough teeth yet.” Instead of welcoming back the beloved whiskers, she was abducted by strange people, then handled, washed, given medicines, all in the hope her tiny frame would grow stronger… but for whom? All passed her by without her consent, but she timidly submitted to everything. She was tired, she accepted any home that would have her.
Once she found herself in a new environment, she made a house in the midst of towels. Buried in fluff smelling of laundry she would dream about the litter, the familiar scents of warm milk and cuddly sleep, of the little brothers and sisters who, one by one, were fated to disappear. She stayed there most of the time, a soft bundle of silence enveloping her, emerging once in a while to eat and to be socialized, to play.
It’s curious how life has always a way of creeping into the most unlikely spaces. Pombalina’s short-lived existence took place in the fissure between the lonely fear of the dark streets and the dissolution of the body. In this negligible interval she had the time of her life, purring and wishing to jump, looking askance at the dog while getting her ears cleaned and biting avidly on fingertips.
The sun in Lisbon goes down today over a city of forgotten cats. This world is still big enough to be a wonder, but she will never know how far its cruelty and beauty can reach. She will never eat a cockroach, fall down the chest of drawers when she’s fallen asleep or brush her spotted head against the hand that feeds her. Her sight was limited to an irregular ridge of rags and towers of shoe boxes, the light in the towel rack went out so soon. Her frivolous name is her burial’s ultimate treasure, the only gift she was given, the sole proof she was here at all.

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June 25, 2013

A polyglot dog can spoil your night walk

A drunk man approaches us (me + partner in crime + dog) in the night. He was shouting insults at the Prime Minister’s house until that moment and I was hoping he would not get too close. He starts psychobabbling about government, corruption and social ineptitude, so the partner in crime goes with the routine “Desculpe, não falamos Português” (sorry, we do not speak Portuguese) as this usually works like a charm when you need to drive the loons away. Well, it didn’t work this time as the man asked without even blinking, “E o cão?” (and the dog?) to which the partner in crime replied, “Não fala também” (he doesn’t either), condemning us to listen to the man raving for the next 20 minutes.

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