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.

Wie Sind die Clowns

Brussels, 28 May 2010. My daughter wants to listen to music from iTunes in the computer. Her choice? The Swedish artist Zarah Leander singing "Wie Sind die Clowns?". Not much to comment. She's a star! Georgie that is. Well, Zarah too, of course.

Zinneke Parade

Senne or Zenne is the river that runs through Brussels (that's right, the same name as the bigger one in Paris). The river was covered over in the XIX century because of its foul smell from rotting animal carcasses and all sorts of domestic and industrial sludge. It now runs under Boulevard Anspach. Jules Anspach, the Brussels' bourgmestre whose name was given to the Boulevard after his death in 1879, wanted it to be a showcase of modernity. He built beautiful apartment buildings à la parisienne that no one wanted to live in. The Belgian bourgeoisie couldn't really part with their maisons de maître unifamiliales (a sort of national obsession).

Anyway... zinneke is also Brussels' dialect for mutt (many of them ended up in the river) and by extension anything that isn't pure, that is mixed. Like Brussels today.

The Zinneke Parade happens every two years and has been going on for the past 12 years. It's the parade of the mixed, the parade of the mutts. I went there yesterday with my cousin Andreia who was visiting from London. I loved it. It was one of the best Zinneke Parades ever. We stopped by the bar Au Soleil (my hangout in my early days of Brussels in 1996) and watched group after group of ravellers go by. All the mutts of Brussels in a beautiful swirl of colour and fun. I was glad my daughter is growing up here in this town. We are all mutts in here. Yuppeeeeee!!!

Georgie threw paper petals into the air. Some ended up inside a man's beer glass and they both laughed. A lot. We danced to drums and ran away from giant spiders. We saw a cloud that had been caught and brought down to earth. We touched the cloud. I wonder if they released it in the end. I so hope they did.

middle-age

I now realise I'm getting into middle-age when I notice the beauty of youth. Casually. It can happen in the tram, or coming out of the cinema. Or just standing at a corner watching people go by. There's no lust involved, just a pang in the stomach and the tightening of my jaws.

The realisation that their muscles are supple, their tummies are flat, their necks don't flap, their eyes wrinkle only when they smile. Their hair is all on top of their heads and not coming out of their ears, nor sprouting in bushes of grey in unexpected places. Yes, lately I started noticing the beauty of youth. Not before. I felt part of it. Not anymore.

There's no sadness. Maybe a bit of jealousy. Then again that pang in the stomach, sometimes a nervous twitching of the mouth. Or just the intense look of the eagle. I observe how laughter seems to inhabit the body of youth, how they jump with each step, how the sun shines brighter on their skins. The beauty of youth makes even the not-so-handsome young look beautiful. And that's how I realised I'd come to middle-age.