Tennessee Pearls and Portuguese Filigree

They call it the Third Conditional.

In an effort to simply all the permutations of calendar times and verbal tenses that buzz around in the head of poor, confused speakers of English as a second language whenever the word “if” inserts any uncertainty into discourse, some unknown grammar whiz invented a model. And they numbered these things they call “If Clauses” or “Conditionals”.

Conditional 1 deals with real, future conditions. Example:  If the King is murdered, the monarchy will fall. If the monarchy falls, we will want to rename the streets that are named after minor aristocratic figures. If we run out of republican heroes (I mean, after all you can’t name parks after the two crazy men who not only killed the King and his 20 year old son but just barely missed killed the 19 year old as well), we might have to raise up some rags to riches success story and slap his name onto something. So was born the Parque Silva Porto. But I get ahead of myself.

Image: Amadeu Escórcio

The Second Conditional is the easiest to understand the need for. It’s the Big Lottery Win Conditional. Present situations that are impossible:  I were a boy, I would(n’t)… or highly unexpected future ones: If I became a boy, I would(n’t)… Oh wow.  The Transgendered Age has served me up fitting examples.  

This is all just to say, though, that there is then a Conditional III. It takes an erstwhile event, imagines changing the past and then thinks of all the possible (or just one if you’re not greedy) alternate consequences. If Donald Trump had not won, I would(n’t)…Oh...More correct and still grammatically, I might have moved back to the U.S. . I mean, I really, really liked Big Stone Gap when I was there last year.

But I’m here, and here is Lisbon, Portugal, BTW. And for some reason I wanted to tell you about my day.  (We’ll get back to the grammatical part later.)

I woke up under a black cloud today. Literally (unusual July weather) and, most importantly, emotionally. Children happily ensconced with their dad for the week-end. Love interests tottering towards disinterest. Friends too busy, or too busy.

My plan for the day, a run followed by finishing off that short story seemed unfeasible. Stupidly I went to check the weather on the iMac and Facebook popped up. Bad words! Last thing I wanted to see was the smiling faces of friends from long ago and far away!

I banged the machine shut and took my loneliness for a walk. Not a bike ride, nor a run. The millstone was much too heavy for that kind of energy. My loneliness preferred to walk. I thought to seek out streets around my apartment that hadn’t met my feet yet. But I also wanted to do a few hills, so I pointed us to the highest ones around, those at the Parque Silva Porto, otherwise known as the Benfica Wood.

My sadness, or an excess of familiarity with the spot, took me straight past the gorgeous wrought iron gates and the 1915 tile work.

Instead, I climbed as quickly as I managed the steep, wooded hill that was donated to the city in 1911, on the condition it would be made into a park. My only stop was to gather eucalyptus leaves, stunned as I was by the beauty of their decay.

My thoughts, though, were on those conditionals. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will tell you they were Thirds:  If I hadn’t fallen in love with Brazil…If things had worked out there… If I hadn’t returned home…If I hadn’t met a Portuguese man back home…If I had finished my PhD…If I had worked at a different school…If I hadn’t gone freelance…

In short, today I gave in to the rare opportunity to rue – not so much the choices I’ve made, but the empty spaces they’ve carved into myself, my heart, my wallet.  

António Carvalho da Silva had been born in a poor section of the city of Porto. Then he, like me, left his home city at an early age. Two years in Paris studying painting, another one in Italy, a few traveling and it was 1879 when he was invited to teach in Lisbon. It was in the capital that he had one of his first paintings bought by the King, made a name for himself, and brought naturalism to Portugal. Then, despite his shy ways, he became a permanent member of the salon the Grupo do Leão named for the beer hall where they met. Silva is the morose figure at the center, surrounded by some of the most famous intellectuals of the day, including painters and poets, cartoonists and ceramicists.

Image: Colombano Bordalo Pinheiro

It was in Lisbon that the painter was tenured to teach landscape painting, that he married, fathered 7 children and then died in 1893 at the age of 43.  We have a clue to at least one of his Third Conditionals. He never went back home to live, yet he incorporated the city’s name into his own and signed his paintings António Silva Porto.

So, how did a painter’s name come to grace a park? I’ve found no connection between him and Benfica. An accident of history, perhaps?

Cue entrance of another Third Conditional.

Changes in regime in Portugal have often led to changes in the names of streets and monuments. That includes parks. Following the Portuguese regicide (1908), when the Republican Revolution (1910) did away with the Monarchy, the place naming authorities had to come up with new, republican heroes. All those friends at the Grupo de Leão had been rabid Republicans. And Mr. Silva was as far from aristocracy as you could get. His mother had been a lace maker, his father a tinker.  So, in 1918, the Park was named for Silva Porto.

Today, my search for novelty led me to exit the top gate of the park, into the Bairro de Cima of Santa Cruz. The Estado Novo, as Salazar’s fascist dictatorship was known, left 1950’s townhouses originally built as social housing. They are now gentrifying into posh dwellings.

Image: Manuel Correia

I wandered into the next town, Amadora and only stopped when I arrived at the train line. Next I circled around the Fófó (Clube Futebol de Benfica, not to be confused with world famous SLB).

Then I turned my meander towards home. Before I even saw it, the hawking of the bookseller announced I was approaching the Benfica Market. The exercise and the exercise of my tears having lightened my spirits, I stopped to check the price of the sunflowers. Too expensive. If I’d bought them, my wallet would have been left empty.

Image: Camara Municipal de Lisboa

Instead I headed directly across the massive circle of reinforced concrete, one of the last local buildings of the Estado Novo.  A slight veer to the right and I left the cacophony of fishmongers, fruit and vegetable sellers, and butchers behind. Outside I found another, more affordable florist. Instead of 5€ for one blossom I got a bunch for 2.50€.  Five magnificent bursts of yellow filled my heart and my arms for the climb back home.

In case the picture doesn’t do justice to the flowers, let me tell you I was stopped twice on my way back uphill, by perfect strangers, to admire the exuberance of the blooms. I laughed at myself and wondered if those ladies assumed I was perfectly happy, as I had done that morning about my Facebook friends of long ago and far away.

I got home, put my flowers in water and mused:  If I had remembered to give some given one of those blossoms away, I might’ve made a new friend. I might have forged some powerful alternative consequences.

On the other hand, here’s what I could have done, if I hadn’t chosen to idle around so close to home:

Join my girls and I on a three week trip through Brazil. After 25 years I went back: to Rio, Florianópolis, Foz de Iguaçu and São Carlos do Pinhal, SP. Here’s what it looked like. 

Or Seeking Communion in and around Heptonstall

My course, of course, was sandwiched amidst a tour of Yorkshire, so forgive me if I share some of the things I learned at an Arvon Course, in Yorkshire.

That it costs 20,000£/day to maintain the York Minster.

That it costs nothing to start training my selfie skills.

That I excel at selfies:  of my finger and of my jacket.

That stone masons each have their own mark, a brand that they carve into their work to identify it.

In the past it was her stamp that drew me to venerate the goddess of community, Vesta. Today, I seek a role model, goddess, saint that might bring individual endeavor together with communion.

That every story has an inciting incident.

That the county of York is the home of some of the most ancient enterprises of the confectionary industry including…..drum roll….. Rowntree’s, the inventor of the Kit Kat. I mean, we’re talking about the possible setting for Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory here. And I saw it from the roof of the York Minster.

That I feel drawn to Catholicism: the ritual; the candles

http://open.salon.com/blog/katie_gray_craven/2012/08/29/i_robbed_the_virgin_mary_and_was_blinded_in_retribution

; the saints you can pick and choose from as role models; the idea that a well-chosen priest could serve as psychotherapist — at rock bottom prices.

That just a few things —papal infallibility, the holy spirit, virgin birth—not the possibility of it but the misogyny of it— might keep me just a little while longer, staring in from the outside, envying the communion of saints.

That my love of bargains (in therapy and in writing courses) just might prove eternal. The Merchant Adventure’s Hall in York has in its possession an Evidence Chest acquired in the 14th century.  Second hand. 

That the plots needn’t be overly complex, 6 events is a good rule of thumb.

That much can be learned along 4.5 miles of track linking Keighley to Haworth by the vintage Worth Valley steam powered train. For example, that Virol is the Cure for Anaemic Girls

that Melox is The Food of Dogs and that tunnels are mystical.

That little is made of the train station at Haworth —I wasn’t the only one to miss it.

That touristic Haworth is much more pleasant a place than it was when the current church was laid over the dead bodies of the Brontés. That the genius of those sisters and brothers was recognized, loved and preserved (in the form of many and varied artifacts).

That my evil twin Envy has yearned for a communion of like-minded siblings like that shared by the Bronte’s.

That the moors bedecked in heather are just as magnificently beautiful as all the take-offs of Jane Eyre have described them to be.

That, following a Sunday roast dinner, finally reading Jane Eyre — till the darkest hours of the night — was the most just and fitting way to honor the Bronte’s.

That each decision must lead to unavoidable consequences.

That it wasn’t Lumb Bank but The Beacon, closer to Towngate, Heptonstall where Ted Hughes had spent his most cherished moments in youth.

That Hughes only stayed year at Lumb Bank between his mother’s death and his return to Devon in 1970. That I may have had the good fortune to stay in Hughes’s room, the largest anyway, and with a magnificent view of the Calder Valley.

That the defacing of Sylvia Plath’s grave has included the scraping off of Hughes’s name AND the planting of poems.

That close third person is not the same as omniscient third person and that popping in and out of characters’ heads is as disconcerting as popping in and out of sidewalk pictures.

That all of the 1,400 current residents of Heptonstall would fit inside the village’s three churches—if you include the ruined St Thomas a Becket. OK, you might need to throw in the 2 pubs and the teahouse.

That a tower struck off the roof by lightening in 1875 has been lovingly preserved. Guess the Brits and the Americans hadn’t yet decided whether the lightening rod should have a bulb or a pointed end.

That many writers share my pell-mell writing style, only going back later to impose narrative structure.

That conflict is essential. To fiction anyway. Perhaps I should avoid it less in my quote—real life—unquote.

That it is the loneliness as portrayed by L.S. Lowry that makes the communion so very necessary. 

http://www.thelowry.com/ls-lowry/microsite/art/other/francis-terrace-salford/

That Anne, Charlotte, Chris, Diana, Emily, Gabriela, Naomi, James, Jill, Jack, Jonathon, Jill, Karen, Mary, Michelle, Nancy, Shirley, Suzanne, Thérèse, Thea, and Vera were my saints for a week.

Starlight by ChaoticMind75 on Flickr.

Suggestions solicited from off the beaten path kind of people included:

Outside of Lisbon:

Ferry ride from Setúbal to Comporta at early morning. Beach. Lunch at Comporta or Setúbal.

The Castle at Alcácer do Sal, followed by a visit to the village of Carrasquera and its fisherman's port on a lagoon.

Arrabida, after Cabo Espichel

Sintra: Regaleira and then Monserrate . Capuchos. The village of Ulgueira. Adraga beach. Ursa and Magoito beaches.

Serra de Montejunto and the ruins of the ice factory

Ferry ride to Trafaria for the beautiful views of Lisbon

In Lisbon:

Dinner in Alfama

Beira Gare. Order a bifana and imperial - to be eaten at the counter

Fado at Mesa de Frades, in Alfama. After dinner for drinks. Good  musicians artists and in expensive.

Drinks in the Bairro Alto

Clubbing at Cais do Sodré

What We Did

...close to Lisbon. (Out of town suggestions to be closely guarded for future occasions.)

Parque Eduardo VII. Easy all day Saturday parking. Lisbon spreading itself out at your feet.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/48285866

Walk down the Avenida da Liberdade to the Elevador do Lavra, the oldest in Lisbon

http://www.lisboa.es/que-ver/elevadores-de-lisboa/#lightbox/0/

Jardim do Torel (better in the winter. Too many trees this time of year).

http://www.lifecooler.com/artigo/comer/esplanada-do-torel/421400/

Checked out the interesting facades of the New Nova Medical School building and neighbors.

Rossio. Photos. 

Bifanas e imperiais at the counter of Beira Gare (never had a better pastel de bacalhau)

http://www.minube.pt/fotos/sitio-preferido/1076501/6860871

Rua Augusta

http://www.imagesofportugal.net/media/f481f0e8-4f29-11e0-8637-839087a99c89-rua-augusta-the-main-pedestrian-street-in-the-historical-and-c

Admired the Elevador Santa Justa.

Ananda Krishna Roosli was nice enough to unpack his hang drum for one last song. A one man spiritual concert with didgeridoo, hang drum and shruti box . Beautiful. He turned out to be Swiss so my German visitors had a nice chat. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiY5bfA6JK4

Terreiro do Paço.

http://gambozino-alentejano.blogspot.pt/2010/07/terreiro-do-paco.html

A brief stop in the Cathedral to take in the choir and the stained glass coloring the stark walls during Saturday afternoon mass.

Cais do Sodré.

Ferry to Cacilhas. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosimoes7/3737695502/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Restaurante Solar do Beirão. Grilled ocean caught seabream for two. Grilled squid and (Gonçalo you are now my hero) Octopus Rice to die for.

Ferry back to Lisbon.

Meander down the Rua dos Remédios. Stop and ask a Bangladeshi with very little Portuguese for the Mesa de Frades. He pointed us to Bela's instead.  

Good mistake.

Back to Benfica for showers and clothes washing. Still had time for a chat to finish off the night.

Warm, soft bed. Breakfast and they were gone.

What did my visitors miss out on? 

What else should I have thrown in?  Suggestions anyone?

(Please note, they had already been through Sintra and still had time to check out Belém before pointing their hippie van toward Évora and the Algarve). 

Colossal I. The digger. Biggest in the world. New example of the mythical German Efficiency: quick strip mining, quick reclamation.

 http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Humor/Workshop/Trencher.htm

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Lisbon anymore.

Every nation must come to terms with the cultural riches born in times of error. Witness the debate in the U.S. regarding current day efforts to censor Mark Twain’s  “n-word”, or the controversy surrounding the cinematographic innovations of Reni Riefenstahl during the 3rd Reich. 

In Lisbon, there is the former Colonial Garden, later called the Overseas Garden and now offically named the Tropical Botanical Garden. It was decreed into existence by the penultimate King of Portugal, Dom Carlos I, known, variably, as The Diplomat, for his love of travel, The Oceanographer, for his love of science and the sea, The Martyr for his demise by regicide. 

The Garden's riches include the XVIII century Palace of the Counts of Calheta:

The Macau Gate

http://macauantigo.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/pavilhao-de-macau-na-expo-de-1940/)

and innumerable statues of less than modern sensibilities 

vestiges of the Exposition of the Portuguese World, 1940

organized by the fascista dictator Salazar (http://www.leme.pt/imagens/portugal/lisboa/exposicao-do-mundo-portugues/0001.html).

The internet rightfully said that this garden is not heavily visited. Sounded like the perfect place to test my new camera.  

I found quiet,

the beauty of entropy:

  And a wrought iron gargoyle:

  I wish I'd been granted a glimpse of the colossal stone pachyderm that Salazar ordered thrown into the Tagus on the day after the Exposition, following its decoration by anti-colonialist vandals. We can only hope it is still entertaining the fishes.

___

P.S. More tiles and gutter pipes carryng fresh rainwater to the elephant under the waves.  

Walked 30 years in Lisbon today.  On my way to Penha da França I strolled Alto da Pina, where I'd lived as a fairly young bride. Discovered blocks I’d never known. Street August the 4th, named for the death of Hans Christian Anderson?  Marie Curie?  Streets named for date of death?  Neh. The birthday of . . . Louis Armstrong?  The Queen Mother (she lived to be 101 you know, a longevity prize perhaps)? Yours truly? or that fellow we see on TV a lot who is fighting reduncacy real hard, Barak Whatzit?? 

Research called for.

Circled back around to snap this one, Recycling, Portuguese style. Was musing on how the Portuguese have so little in the way of a second-hand market when I passed a hearse: recycling inevitable. 

Stepped into a used furniture shop to see who was making a liar out of me. Two antique mirrors later, I climbed to the top of Penha da França and then down to Arroios, across the Almirante Reis Avenue and toward Estefânia.

Reminisced on very first trip to Lisbon. Though I found it small and dark after the humid exuberance of East Tennessee and Brazil, the turn of the century architecture, the tiles, particularly, enchanted. Thirty years later and entropy seems to have won.

Flowed down onto the Avenue and discovered that the ravages have spared, yet, some of the Arte Nouveau.

That afternoon, went to fetch my mirrors. Another stroll revealed a new passion: centenary tiles and gutter pipes, carrying the rains toward the sea. Let me share my collection.  

-----

                                                                                            Turning, a familiar smell summonsed me back to the present. Ah, despite the 86º degree heat, the first of October is signalled by the roasting of chestnuts. Autumn is here. Perhaps that explains my preocupation with entropy, recycling. Humans composting.

Paço de Lumiar

Estrela

Campo d'Ourique

"Escrever é esquecer. A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida." Fernando Pessoa, quoted from a wall. I have no idea which of the imaginary friends penned this insight. 

Not quite enough left-overs for lunch so after Security Council level negotiations about the children’s choice of dishes, I opened the fridge and looked, saw and innovated. And let me share:

One small onion, a red one. Chop it in medium-to-small bits and massage it with sea salt, Turkish-style to release the essences and tone down its bite.

As many cherry tomatoes as I had in the fridge. Flashback:  I had almost given up eating tomatoes in Portugal. The local preference is for tomatoes firm, tart and half-way between green and red. Not my tradition. Until the Hungarian co-mother (see previous posts) had a visit from her long-term vegetarian Hungarian scientist father who commented:  the only Portuguese tomatoes worth eating are the cherry tomatoes. Voilá! I began experimenting and today I can enjoy tomatoes once again. Usually the Spanish discount market can guarantee the best quality year round. Being as its early June, however, the Portuguese, re-branded bargain-yet-with-quality grocery chain does pretty well. These were little, sweet yet tart enough that I dispensed with vinegar.

200 grams of Portuguese fresh cheese. Imagine cottage cheese solidified. This was the equivalent of 2% cheese, neither full fat nor low-fat. Chop it into half inch cubes, or as close as you can get because the cheese comes in cylindrical shapes.  (alimentacao-mais-saudavel.blogspot.com)

  This being Portugal and practically the eve Lisbon’s huge Santo António festival, add in half a roasted, red bell pepper, skinned. Mine was bought at the aforementioned grocery store. Better, of course, if you have grilled and preserved your own. I shall blame condo-living for buying mine.  (clickgratis.com.br)

The crowning touch, the most serendipitous ingredient . . . permit me to maintain some suspense.

I had spent a good part of the last four years hankering after a good pepper grinder. I had managed to ruin my mother’s years before (so I assumed; I have the neurotic habit of accruing blame for sins for which I do not always bear responsibility) by trying to grind red pepper grounds in it. You can now buy black pepper in Portugal in a bottle with its own disposable grinder (this is new fangled; when I first came I had to content myself with previously ground pepper) but it seems so anti-ecological that I had been keeping my eye out for a good, affordable grinder. Of course, as Carolyn’s beautiful crystal implement attests to, price and grinding quality have a fairly low level of correlation.

So at Christmas, I took the girls to a fairly small shopping center and turned them loose: their first independent shopping adventure. Before the release, however, I paused to lavish esthetic appreciation on a little golden pepper grinder. 

It turned up in my Christmas stocking. Thanks Kathleen!

So back to said bargain(ish)-priced slightly above quality grocery chain to search for peppercorns without the plastic disposable grinder.

Now, mind you, my Portuguese is not terribly bad. I mean I’ve spoken it longer than more than one published poet (Miguel Alain, for exampe) and my insatiable curiosity helps enrich my lexicon. But I got to the peppers and was stymied. Finally, I bought one that said “Pimenta Something or Other”. I mean it looked like Black Pepper and just ‘cause it had a fancy name after it, I figured it was just another somewhat improved form of the same.

I waved the new grinder over . . . I remember not the dish. What I do recall was  . . .  joy! What an aroma! Sweet and spicy, only slightly peppery.  Internet dictionaries provide most of our answers (will the income eked out by translations be soon stolen by Google?):  All Spice.

Wonderful! Magnificent! Few recipes have come to my awareness regarding the savory application of this cousin of the Pepper plant, but let me proffer one: 

Serendipitous Salad

8 oz Portuguese fresh cheese, neither full fat nor low-fat

I small, red onion, chopped into small bits and massaged with sea salt

Portuguese sea salt, q.b. (Portuguese for “to taste”)

150 grams cherry tomatoes (if they are too sweet, add a dash of Red Balsamic Vinegar)

½ grilled, peeled red bell pepper

Generous amounts of fresh-ground All-spice

SEARCHING FOR THE THIRD DIMENSION

Is awareness of death necessary in order to fully love life?  Absolutely not. Observe the joy of a two year old toddling off into adventure’s way, the voluptuary respiration of our feline masters. No need of fear to stoke the passion of life. Incontrovertible, yet, the boon of waning, late afternoon. It brings our world into focus, into darkness, into relief.

The boss preferred to be thought of as Boss: intimidating, impersonal and commanding. An inveterate traveller, he knew more museums at home in Tennessee than I did, though born in Australia and resident in Europe. One fine afternoon, while marking time in the staffroom, one of his scutes temporarily lost hold, curiosity won out and a smidgeon of small-talk ensued:

“Katie, when you go to a major museum, which section do you visit first: painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, photography, decorative arts?”

 My inability to answer had less to do with my shock at The Boss asking me a question of substance than it did my lack of resonance with the options presented me.

 “Let me think about it and I’ll tell you later.”

The next day, in fact, I walked into his office and announced, “My favorite part of the museum is, invariably, the museum itself. Architecture is my favorite form of art.”

 Only recently have I come to realize why: it’s the third dimension.

Art framing one...

confounding. . . 

imprisoning . . .

enfolding.

Twenty-one year old angst and my therapist had me do a Rorchadt test. All I remember is his saying “You haven’t mentioned texture.” The tone suggested something akin to disappointment, pity.

Thirty years neigh, a ghost recently came to mentor me, since January 20th, 2011 to be exact. I am obsessed with a graveyard, you see (see posts Pottersfield Monologues 1 and 2). It was visit two when it revealed itself to me, amidst late modernist monotony, a tomb crowned with a magnificent bronze neo-realist Pietà. The tomb sported little information save the man’s name, dates and profession “Sculptor”. My initial fantasy was that, just as my great-great grandfather had carved his own casket, trying it on for size, so too might this unidentified sculptor have crafted his own memorial: planning for his own demise. My curiosity was sucked into a sort of thrall from which I’ve yet to research my way out.

Visit number 3 to the Cemetério de Benfica revealed to me children’s flower-bed, where the babies are offered up to the worms, literally. But I neglected to memorize the sculptor’s name.

Visit number 3 or 4 (the spell confounds my math) and I managed to remember the name: José Dias Coelho.  Google provided the story. “He died as a secret worker of the (Portuguese Communist) party when he was assassinated by PIDE, the political police of the Fascist regime, on the 19th December 1961 on Lusíadas street in Lisbon. In 1972, Zeca Afonso released a song titled A Morte Saiu à Rua (Death is out on the Streets), a homage to Dias Coelho.” A Portuguese legend, even I had heard of: right across the street.  (For a slightly more up-to-date interpretation of the song which almost single-hanedly symbolized the tyranny of the regime, see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp37KWkAmq4&feature=related)

Tears ensued. Curiosity flourished. Shall I speak of kudzu?

http://mattsnell.blogspot.com/2011/05/innovative-ways-to-deal-with-invasive.html 

Several weeks later, I followed Dias Coelho’s electronic footprints to the Museu de Neo-Realismo de Vila Franca de Xira in search of his opus. Few of his works in exhibition.

Visit number 4 or 5 to the tomb (which, incidently, 49.5 years later is permanently decorated with fresh flowers) reminded me to study the piece itself for clues. There I found the signature: Vasco da Conceição, dated several years after the murder.

Vasco da Conceição and his wife Maria Barreira had shared a sculpting studio in Lisbon with the younger Dias Coelho before he and his wife had given up their art to go underground in the anti-fascist efforts of the Partido Comunista. Unless Google has misled me, they took their three young children into hiding with them. My fascination became how do you give up your art in search of your goals of community and freedom? How do you conduct innocents into that sacrifice with you?

Going on five months after the first Apparition, I followed the ghost’s melody to the small town of Bombarral last week-end. My reward, a plethora of 3 dimensionality: a trove of texture. The collection of Vasco da Conceição and Maria Barreira exposed in tender neglect, and yet, extant.

Her Dancers:

His Serenity.

---

Their collection might fall have into beautiful platitudes had not my limited knowledge focused my sights on their more political pieces. His Flight produced just about time Dias Coelho and his wife, Margarida Tengarrinha, fled into clandestine activities:

Her Protection:

Mother placing her body as a shield between child and a world of threat, eternally peering over her shoulder.

For more on the Sculpting couple: http://vlapy.no.comunidades.net/index.php

___

Temporizing the return to my 1 dimensional, text-imprisoned world, it occurred to me that the countryside might offer literal relief. So I awaited (expectant anticipation) waning rays which I knew would summon the texture from the midday’s glare.

My reward, engorged peace, virescent sculpture:

And the grapevines marching fearlessly downhill toward my lense:

The following morning I assailed the dimensions of the capital.  Seeking “Old Lisbon” I ended up in a Lisbon older slightly than that of Benfica: slightly more worn, considerably hillier, sporting fewer graveyards, more “character” and the river, offering itself southward, westward, eastward.

Nearing the end of my meander, I pause on Rua Nossa Senhora da Glória. A small, flat, gray cardboard folder apprehended my glance, its brownish-gray not so terribly distinct from the hue of Lisbon’s cobblestones.  The contrast, rather, was that flatness of the paper frame against the rough-hewn facets of the same.

“I know those crafted folders. There is history here.”

A young woman with cropped hair challenged me from within paper bedecked in Art Nouveau.  A Portuguese flapper.

How to return an unidentified, lost family photo? 

As I walked I composed in my head: 

 “Lost: Grandmother/Mother/Sister/Aunt/Unrequited Love”