the river lit by the city lights

Why this title? Because I heard it in a song and I liked it. I still find time to feel tears gathering around my lashes when I hear a beautiful song.

Tomorrow I'll start my Winter holidays. Almost two weeks. I need it. The past four months I felt like a moth flying in the dark. I need some light to dazzle me, no matter how burnt I get.

Work has been hard. I had to learn so much new stuff it literally made my head hurt. It's a good job but it hurts. I'm not sorry for myself, I'm just saying it the way it feels.

Denise was here yesterday from Strasbourg. She always brings a load full of laughter in her bag. I love hugging her, feeling her body under my arms. I love kissing her. Denise's skin is so soft, at times it almost feels brittle; it's the absence of any stubble I guess.

I sometimes dream of a river lit by city lights, just like in the song that I heard this morning, again and again, when driving to the office with Jarl.

Georgie is in the living room with Mona, her French teacher, banging on a drum; tam-tam! I can hear their voices while writing this post. It's soothing. The light is fading and no cars can be heard nor seen outside. Mona is singing and Georgie is listening. Mona's voice like a river. Georgie's eyes like city lights.

Argentina, mon amour

I saw this new Argentinian film, Plan B, by Marco Berger a week ago and I loved it. I watched in the soothing and intimate darkness of my room.

It has become one of my favourite films ever. The acting was perfect, the love story tender and fun, and the sexual tension between the two main characters was just right.

But the filming, oh the filming, it was just like an abstract painting made real, with concrete blocks literally coming out of the ground. You don't see Buenos Aires, you just feel it, and that's what's so special about this film.

So today I decided to write to the Director, just like that, and here is the e-mail I wrote:

"Dear Marco Berger,

I do hope you get to read this e-mail. There's not much to it; simply to say how much I loved your film, Plan B. I saw it a week ago and it still reverberates.

I particularly liked the fact that you don't see Buenos Aires, you just feel it in the distance, you can almost smell it. I liked the photography too and those "blocks of concrete" that come up unexpectedly in between scenes. Those buildings, caught in midair between ugly and sublime, almost moved me to tears (weird, isn't it?).

The love story was fun and tender, and the sexual tension between the two main characters was just right. And it is so hard to resist to a happy-ending...

I'm looking forward to your next film."

the pain of missing Chicago

It came this morning when I was getting to the office. It was cold, and early (7:30 a.m.). The streets were empty of people and almost of cars. In the car, Jarl and I had been listening to Griffin House ("if you want to be loved you've got to be the one taking the risk"; "sitting on the rooftop looking at the city lights"). We saw them play at Lincoln Park Zoo in August. Minutes before we had taken Georgie to the school bus (so early for our bundle of joy).

The pain came slowly, as I left the car and walked up the street. It lingered for a minute or so in my eyes, then my lips. Chicago I spelled in silence. I stood there for a nano-second breathing the winter air (there's plenty of it in Chicago too) and longed for the summer, for the trees, for our friends (they called this Sunday), and didn't want to go inside. I wished I had my sandals to take me across the ocean and back in time, to smell the summer of my beautiful Chicago. A walk down North Greenview among the familiar, unfamiliar sights. Becoming my skin, although so foreign still.

I spelled the letters and they lingered on my lips the time of a sigh. And then I stepped inside the office door and turned my computer on and Chicago was gone.

merveilles du Portugal

I'm back, not from out of space, but from Chicago, where there's a lot of space.

I started a new job on 1 September. Don't really feel like talking about it. It's OK. I will learn a lot. It's a stable job. I like my boss. Well, it sounds good actually.

What I want to write about is what happened just now. I came into the office and looked outside the window, across from the building site of the new EU building, the Résidence Palace. And on Rue de la Loi there was this huge truck with the letters Merveilles du Portugal written all over, in green and red and yellow (the colours of the country's flag). Like a personal sign to me. The sort of thing that makes you smile. Then the truck was gone. It's a kind of magic. The sort of thing that makes you happy. This is what I wanted to post today.

pause

a little break from my personal blog while I concentrate on the Chicago blog...

My father

My father was called Dario, not Dário, like everybody in Portugal - annoyingly, irritatingly - insisted on writing. How dare they correct me? I know my father's name, it's Dario. No accent, you hear me? No accent, full stop. Dario, like the Persian King of lore, the father of that other great ruler, Xerxes. From the old Persian Dârayavauš. Also known as Darius. We are talking civilisation here, people!

My father died in 1996. I sometimes miss him a lot, like some kind of physical pain that grows inside my gut and then goes up my chest, straight to my heart. It squeezes. Old Egyptians were right to think that the heart was the centre of our humanity, so many of our emotions seem to grow in there. What would our brain do without the heart and the gut? It wouldn't feel the same...

My missing him comes in waves. Like a tsunami. Like today. I was standing by the kitchen door towards the balcony watching the rain of polen be swept away in the yard, and then this yearning for my father came rushing through my body. I so wished he was there, turning the corner, smiling at me. Sometimes it happens when I'm walking in the street. I just wish he would turn up and hug me. I wish I could run to him and hug him. Hug him long and long, and still longer. I don't cry, I just feel my chest growing tight, a sort of pain. A good pain of saudades.

I don't believe in the afterlife, I never did as far as I can remember. But my father lives in me, in my gut, in my heart, in my brain. And his name still fills the airwaves of my emotion. Dario. No accent. You hear me? You hear me, you fools? How could I not know how to write and pronounce my father's name. It's the same name of a famous old Persian King. Persia is today's Iran. Persia was a great civilisation. Dârayavauš. Darius. Dario. In the name of my father.

Chicago

We were supposed to leave today, but then we got sick and decided to leave on Saturday instead. I got a phone call from the office this morning asking me what the weather was like... in Chicago! I had to say we were still in Brussels in the middle of a tapotage session in St. Josse to release Georgie's lungs from mucus. Valérie was very nice and gave Georgie two fruit toffees after the session. Georgie behaved so well.

So, here we are, still. Waiting to go to Chicago. We'll start a new blog to report on our three months in the land of the free. It will have photos and bits and pieces of what we do and think while there. We'll send it around to friends. To share. Pour partager. Para Partilhar. För att dela oss.