Obrigado à vida que me tem dado tanto

 

Oh, sweetie darlings, I got the most wonderful gift for my birthday courtesy of my Dad. He had finally, after years of careful consideration (you know how these things go), digitized all the ciné films and slides he’d filmed and taken in Brazil and during our pit stops between South America and Europe (we did some exploring on the way). Filming and photographing are hobbies of his, so what I now have, oh dearest denizens, it's a treasure trove, a time machine, a magic carpet ride. I’ve been going through them all week, forcing my family to take part (“Mom, I don’t know these people!” “But you must remember that street, it’s hardly changed!”), and it has been so moving and rousing I’m sure I’ve been a bit…tiresome. Am I getting old, is it these times we live in, the forced separation? Don’t know, don’t care, I’m just so happy and grateful that these moments have been stored and that so many memories have been restored, and I know I can’t go back but I can look back, step back in time, just for a visit, and feel my parents smiling in my soul.

Coming around again

How are you, dearest dearest denizens? Doing well, I trust, being as Tardis as they come, right? We came back late Friday night and on Saturday I celebrated my birthday in glamorous fashion by doing loads of laundry with some bubbly close at hand, estupidamente gelado i.e. insanely cold as Brazilians drink their beer. Vacation time is over but summer certainly isn't, the sun finally found it's way to Scandinavia and it's a hot one.

The last leg of our trip was a scorcher of a week in Denmark where we met a lot of very nice (and very tattooed!, what's up with that?) people, at least half of whom had probably done bit parts in Vikings (the TV series) at some point, judging by those tattoos I mean, which read like episode guides. If Finland is a forest spotted by towns and fields, Denmark is a (level) field of connected islands spotted by towns and forests. Using Swedish was just as useless as I thought it would be, apart for reading signs and such. They might understand what you were asking but trying to decipher the answer... Holie!

The World Cup now feels like a hundred years ago. I felt sorry for Brazil for a minute or two. So did they. And then life and the party went on. Germany displayed amazing restraint on the pitch, playing against a team playing in total shock, and admirable sportsmanship and support later on, on Twitter for example, and I second Mesut Özil: "you have a beautiful country, wonderful people and amazing footballers-this match may not destroy your pride! #Brasil".

Life resumed normal programing but they'll never ever forget. They're still talking about the loss against Uruguay in 1950. 1950! Brazilians still love football but many hated the Cup (read: FIFA) and are actually relieved Brazil didn't win because then all the insane amounts of money spent would have been forgiven and the protests forgotten. They didn't deserve to win and that's that, not with how they played, and maybe the pressure was too much, the expectations too great and the signals the team got, well, like I said they were mixed. What do I know. What I do know is football has always been fun and free and inclusive, an outlet as much as a doorway to a better future, everything the multibillion business the Cup is wasn't.

Next in line: the Olympics in 2016. We'll see how that goes. Don't know if we're going. Time to get back to work and down to business or we're definitely not going. Looking forward to it, actually, going back to work. No, really! Sure it was fun spending time with family, mine and Hubby's. On the rare occasion all siblings on both sides get together, I've counted 4 nationalities of 3 denominations with an atheist and agnostic thrown in who speak 5 mother tongues and all work in different fields. A family of many cultures and colors and creeds, some deeply rooted, some expats on the move, and it may look and sound like Babel but it's our life. It's life.

Such is my family, sweetie darlings, and such is the world and such a shame not everyone sees the beauty or respects the diversity of it all and I guess I can't make them, but we're all cousins on this planet, some more distant than others but cousins all the same. So when that's the world you know, your truth and your experience, how depressing was getting up to speed with the news after doing the Dark Side of the Moon Tour i.e. trying to unplug and avoid news outlets of all sorts. Pretty damn depressing. South Sudan and Syria, Gaza and Ukraine, Libya and Egypt, ISIS and Boko Haram, Ebola and terror, extremism and nationalism of the worst kind. Never again but always one more time.

What a family of feuding, belligerent clans we are. One thing I've noticed, no, four: In the middle of all the barbarity, it's easy to lose sight of all that's good and right and getting better. In the middle of all the savagery, it's easy to lose hope and trust and faith things will keep getting better. In some, any sign of vulnerability or helplessness, of distress or fear, rouses the need to protect. Some it just puts in a sadistic rage, and when that rage takes over you get a baby torn out of a belly sliced open with a machete. A five-year-old shot in the head. A woman raped to an inch of her life then buried alive. A man gutted like a fish. Not on the dark side of the moon. Not in some alternate sick twisted world. Ours.

I know you can't dwell on it all day long or you'll go mad. You cannot not think about it because it's like toothpaste oozing out of the tube. Good luck trying to push it back in. It's out, it's a mess, so what are you gonna do about it? What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, I guess. Everything, I suspect, because last night I dreamed I was back with my grandparents where I spent many happy summer weeks in my childhood.

I wasn't a kid in the dream, I was an adult and so were they. Not old like in the end, just adults. Funny that's where my mind went for solace. Logical, really. They gave the best years of their youth to a war that claimed her brother early on and a piece of his mind forever after. The very same years I spent at university having fun and getting a degree, he spent dodging and firing bullets while she worked her fingers to the bone in backbreaking labor so he'd have a home to come back to.

He rarely talked about it, any of it. She often told stories about life in the home front and what her brother was like, and one of my most treasured pictures is my great-uncle in his uniform, 19 years old, so very handsome and about to die. I could only imagine her pain. She missed him all her life. I could only imagine her fear. Would she lose her husband next?

He came back after years of fighting and close calls with barely a scratch on him. How is that possible? How do you go on in the middle of all that, after all that, with all you've witnessed and suffered and sacrificed? Play some football, meet up with family and friends, go out and see the world, not with a rifle on your shoulder but a backpack? You just do because you have to and because there is no option and it's not always your choice or voice that matters, it's not about you but the people around you.

So much randomness, a location lottery, a game of chance, an inch, a second that changes the course of one's life or spells death. So much love and selflessness, so much beauty and wonder, a word, an act that changes the course of one's life for the better. What a world we live in, sweetie darlings. What a family we are.

Away we go

Temperature: heading south because it's been c-c-c-cold up north

Eating: what the garden and greenhouse deign to give. They're kinda pissed the sun won't shine. As am I. As if it helps.

Drinking: would that help?

Watching: the World Cup! And it's turning out to be the surprising and exciting copa das copas the Brazilians hoped for.

Listening: to Chrissie Hynde's Stockholm

 

Reading: just finished Home by Toni Morrison. That book is a Tardis, so much bigger than its size! Next in line: The Goldfinch. Laugh all you want at my tardiness but when you read in more than one language you don't have a TBR list, you have TBR lists. So there. So shut up.

Writing: back and forth to settle something that's been up in the air for far too long. Hoping to return to good news, just in time for my birthday!

Feeling: my wanderlust about to be slaked. Be good, sweetie darlings, willingly good. I will see you soon. And if, for whatever reason, I never do, promise me you'll be a Tardis, always bigger than your size.

Flicker

I feel a sense of rebirth every time I travel. It starts the moment I leave home because I know the person that steps through that door...I never see them again. I come home transformed, sometimes in some minor way, sometimes in major ways, and that metamorphosis is not dependant on either the destination or the length of the journey. Neither do you know in advance what will touch you, move you, shock you, disturb you, and what will leave you cold.

That's the beauty, the horror and excitement of travel. If you do it with all your senses engaged and open, and all your electronic devices closed (OK, take a picture if you must, but remember: by the time the camera is out, the moment is usually gone, wasted), something always happens to derail the way in which you view the world, think about it. And yourself.

I rarely travel alone these days, but even with friends and/or family in tow, I always try to find a moment all to myself, go where I've never gone before, see something I've never set eyes on. It's a moment of zero reason and logic and total concentration and connection. All emotion, all sensation. Animal existence. Often fleeting, flashing, but I find there's something terribly healthy and healing in those moments. It's a chance to reboot. (I hate these computer terms, but in lack of a better term to explain the inexplicable...)

What you're seeing is of course totally indifferent to you. It demands nothing, asks for nothing, expects nothing. In that moment, you see exactly how tiny a place you occupy on this planet and how big an influence and importance you grant things that are of no consequence. Human pursuits seem mad, our aspirations moving, our fears ludicrous, and much of what is going on absurd. And your life...

You know the person who walks through your door upon return will feel strange. Strange because of what they brought home. Strange because of things they left behind. Some without thought. Some on purpose. This person who now occupies your house starts a string of interrogations. They question everything. Your thoughts. Your actions. Goals. Aspirations. Is this who you are? Is this what you commit yourself to? Is this what you want? Are these your thoughts and choices? Still?

Some things in this life bulldoze you with their implications and consequences. And then there are moments like the sting of a bee. More may be revealed to you in such a moment than you might find in a decade of determined search. What you do with that vision...now that's an altogether different journey.

And I think to myself

...what a wonderful world.

Sunset over Cape Pakarang, Thailand

Final destination

I spent my childhood abroad. Or rather the country and continent of my birth was just a place my family visited every summer and the exotic faraway place friends and relatives visited in the winter was home. Travel has always been a central theme in my life. We traveled extensively then and travel is the number one reason I'll probably die with nothing to my name. What money I manage to save up, airlines and B&Bs gobble up with greed. My kids have traveled since birth and I'm afraid I've infected them with my wanderlust. Which is just as well.

Some travel to get away from, some in search of themselves. Some travel to broaden their horizons, some to reinforce national and cultural stereotypes. There's a fine line between patriotism and nationalism, between loving your country and being suspicious of all others. If there's one thing I want to teach my children on our journeys is that the world is not black or white or some skin shade in between, it's not English, Portuguese, Swedish or Spanish speaking, it's not Christian, Catholic or Muslim, it's all of that.

Not many things in this life you get to experience for the first time, but when you travel, you can get in touch with that sense of wonder, that sense of seeing and smelling and tasting and touching and hearing for the first time. (You can achieve the same at home, of course, but too often the daily grind makes us blind to things around us that have no bearing on the tasks at hand.) It's the thrill of adventure. Searching, finding, getting lost and surviving.

St. Augustine said, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” What of those who do not read a single page, literally, ever? They're confined to very close quarters indeed, the insides of their head, a very narrow strait through which very few ideas pass and when they outgrow their prison and escape out into the world, they wield the sword of single, simple truth because they never came in touch with some other thought or someone else's truth.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts," Mark Twain said. But maybe you don't have money to travel. You don't need money to travel. You don't have to leave home at all. You can always, you should always, read. I wrote a post that relates, kind of, if you want to have a look. No, you should definitely have a look because be you reader or writer, I want to ask you something. And there's a new snippet from Perpetual Pleasure!

I've liked that book all along. A good thing, liking what you do and the end product. But more often than not, there comes a time in the life of every manuscript when the author curses the day they got it into their heads it would be a great idea to write that book. I never felt that way with this one. I felt for my heroine. I rooted for my hero, hoped he wouldn't give up on her even when she gave him every reason and excuse to do just that.

I also got a kick out of writing the dialogue, and with the exception of a few surplus endearments, my editor didn't touch it. Sooo hard, writing decent dialogue, and if that's one thing I got right, that's what I want to offer you on the days leading to release. What do you say? Tiny teaser trailers, a tasty countdown.

Check in daily! Know someone who loves paranormal but is tired of vamps and shifters? Bring them along!! Starting tomorrow!!!

See you then, dearest denizens. 

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
– Henry Miller