My Mafra

I forgot to mention a few crucial details about Jacinto Lucas Pires’ reading (see Thursday, June 23 post). That’s what happens when you scribble notes on every random slip and find them much later. Humans’ urge to write throughout history proves that we instinctively know time is not linear, though in most other ways, we act like it is. Jacinto’s observations on writing in general and writing in and about Lisbon:

On understanding why Saramago and other writers of that generation preferred writing in freehand versus on a keyboard: “I prefer the movement of the arm like I’m painting these poems.”

On a particular kind of anticipatory longing: “Saudade do futuro.”

On the intentions of his own writing: “Putting big ideas in small stories” and, citing de Lillo, to reach “that place in the head we call the heart.”

Check out his story “L” in excellent English translation (which he read) from his latest collection.

Sat. 6/25. This is one of the perhaps two days where a few of us went off the program schedule. Lisbon was in the grip of the closest thing I’ve personally experienced in Portugal to a heat wave, Mediterranean style of course (i.e. baking daytime temps in the low nineties, with little humidity but the sun making up for it by turning up the wattage)—and four of us, Melissa, Jacob, Marisol and me, sluggish from the previous night’s partying and continued sleep deprivation, missed the big group train to seaside Cascais. Not a problem since all the group apparently did there was walk, no beach time. Melissa had intended anyway to spend the day at her family’s in the Lisbon suburb of Sao Pedro for a poolside BBQ, and, after waiting over an hour for a rail ticket on a queue clotted with beachgoers (to Cascais of course), all the rest of us wanted was pool and cold adult beverages too. We kept ourselves awake on the train ride to S.P. playing the “up her bum” alphabet movie game starring Angelina Jolie (ask Melissa or Jacob about it, because they always won), a diversion we would later tone down to a G rating when we played it poolside with Mel’s 9 year-old cousin.

Brazilian hospitality and conviviality meets Portuguese small town somnolence is one way to describe this lovely, lazy day we spent drinking beer and lemonade, eating barbeque, feijoes, and farofa, drinking homemade wine, playing darts and fusball, and lounging around a 60 degree pool (refreshing) with interesting people and various tabby cats. Another is, to paraphrase Marisol’s Benter’s memorable line, “Beautiful brown people in bikinis the size of wash cloths.”

Sun. 6/26. OK, so this was the second day some of us went off schedule. Although my cultural consciousness tweaked a little at missing the Jose Saramago themed trip to the Mafra Palace, a humongous Baroque/Neoclassical palace/monastery that is one of Portugal’s prime touristic jewels, I justified it in two ways:

1. I’ve been there before, as a teenager, on a family trip. OK, so I don’t remember much because after a while then all of the country’s Baroque, Neoclassical and Gothic masterpieces started to blur into a general category I now call “Europe.” But, still, I’ve been there. Mafra, in fact was a prime feature of my adolescence. Initiated by King Joao V in the early 18th century after God, the Pope, but really his put-upon (literally from what I hear about royal conjugal visits) wife Mary Anne of Austria starting popping out heirs, the palace took the better part of fifty years to complete. Hence, my mother’s constant question to my brother or me during our prolonged adolescent hair-grooming sessions in our locked bathroom: “What are you doing in there, constructing Mafra?”

2. The second day I was in Lisbon, even before the official start of Disquiet, I attended Jose Saramago’s memorial service. One year after his death, his ashes were interred under an olive tree brought from his hometown, his lovely, gracious window Pilar (see the documentary Jose and Pilar) presiding over press and public with regal poise. So you see, I got my dose of Saramago, royalty and fulfilled promessas.

So the morning and early afternoon of this second and final Sunday I’d spent on this particular visit to Lisbon passed in a soft blur of sleeping in, showering, grooming, and hanging out in the Living Lounge’s lounge. Sally Ashton, a bit nervous about the reading she was doing in the evening with Josip Novakovich, popped in and asked us a few questions.

At 4:00 p.m. we assembled in the stifling movie room/auditorium (aka a long table and fifty chairs) to hear Sally and Josip. Sally went first. The room was an airless oven but to her credit, Sally kept us engaged with some lovely poems, particularly one about Facebooking another Sally Ashton, an appropriate heteronymic exercise considering we were steps away from Fernando Pessoa’s birthplace. Unfortunately, by the time Josip began reading, my (and a few others’) sleep tax collector made his daily visit. Josip read a short piece, and then began a long, interminable, monotonous reading of something about Putin, an imprisoned American, Siberian tigers, a blonde and constantly insinuated but never consummated sex. At least I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I forced myself out of my chair before lack of sleep and oxygen did it for me. The hallway was so much cooler. Josip’s reading finally ended. Someone then thought to open the windows.

Thank God, because we might not have physically survived long enough to watch the next item on the agenda, Nick Oulman’s wonderful documentary Com Que Voz (With What Voice). Oulman’s film is a touching but unsentimental profile of and homage to his composer father Alain Oulman. Oulman revolutionized traditional fado by introducing two contrasting tones into the music, an innovation Amalia Rodrigues took full advantage of and made her signature sound. The film is equally a loving and unsparing profile of Oulman’s mother, his parents’ marriage, and what happens when creativity is a stronger entity in a relationship than affection or family ties.