Semente

Blue jeans never looked so good

I can't say that my first impression of Russia was a pleasant one. The morning spent handing in papers at the consulate in Lisbon reminded me that the country was not too long ago in the hands of the king of bureaucratic systems.

Yet, upon arrival at the airport in St. Petersburg, that impression immediately started to change. A race into town in a taxi (got ripped off with 4 times the regular fair...), quickly let that first impression vanish. The city is the biggest metropolis so far north in the world. After settling in at the hotel, I started out on a four hour trek through the city and trying to stay close to the river, the Neva, walked through quite a few places which left me most impressed.

Indeed the whole city feels like one huge monument and while being dubbed the Venice of the North it has a personality of it's own. Not only does it dwarf its Italian counterpart in sheer size, but the whole planning of the city is a lot more organized. Not that that makes the peak hour traffic any better, for in this sense St. Petersburg rivals any other metropolis too, but it just feels like the city was pre-planned, and it was.

Again, walking for four hours doesn't cover much in a city of that size but the sights are truly worth seeing, and although it isn't a tourist friendly town (try getting into the subway without knowing how to read the Cyrillic alphabet, let alone understand the Russian language...) it is one that I definitely recommend.

I came away feeling that Russia is indeed a very developed country, although I'm sure in other, perhaps interior regions, the same can't be said. Plagued by corruption, it has managed to come away from the hindering system that made it into a world power, although it does let me feel a little cheated. The level of education is of course very high, yet the Russian population could not learn from the mistakes of other democratic countries and has also fallen prone to the shortcomings of this system.

Tudo o que um pai possa querer*

Hoje, dado ter vindo a casa de passagem entre viagens de trabalho, fomos até ao rio ver se estava tudo bem com o barco. Levamos a bola para dar uns xutos. Antes de darmos asas à nossa imaginação futebolística no relvado improvisado da doca, fomos até à margem ver os barcos a passar, que eram alguns já que havia regata. De mão dada, lá identificamos um cargueiro que minutos antes tinha largado um sonoroso apito de aviso de passagem. Agachei-me para estar mais à tua altura, momento em que tu carinhosamente te agarras a mim e me abraças num gesto de infinita ternura que só uma criança de 4 anos é capaz. Que mais pode um pai pedir.

*Nota: post referente a dia 28 de Outubro 2006

Time*

Time is of course the most relative concept of all ever invented by man. Just for argument’s sake, consider the life of a man like Nelson Mandela: he was imprisoned on Robin Island for 17 years. 17 years!! Can you conceive of 17 years without being able to do what you want? Oh, never mind; you probably don’t even know what you want to do. But I trust that if you were suddenly put in that kind of situation you would very quickly find out!

But I digress from the idea I wanted to post about. Fact is, writing this virtual diary became a vanity that I just couldn’t afford, and the last few months have been testament to the lack of will to put fingers to keyboard and again steal the reader’s time. I do admit that doing this does have some kind of therapeutic effect though. And so now that I’m “on the road” again, the therapy is long coming.

So what do I need therapy for? the reader might ask. Well, I believe I have a disease called never-content-itis. It is probably a pandemic and I’m sure many suffer consciously of the same predicament. I particularly hate the notion that I have a wonderful set of circumstances surrounding me at this point in time, yet feel like throwing it all down the drain for being exactly that: wonderful circumstances. I believe circumstances are like makeup on reality. And makeup can smudge. It looks particularly disgusting in the morning and is only for the occasion. It’s a little like the poem on the side there (which is why I’ve left it linked); a sense of madness which in reality keeps our sanity intact (again, whatever that may mean).

You’re probably still wondering: “Ok, what’s the idea of this post then?” Well, there is no idea. I’m a thief. And I’ve just stolen some of your precious time.

We thank you for your time and hope you’ll come again.

*Note: Post delayed from 21 Oct 2006

Wind*

In some movie, some character talks about a man somewhere with a hole in his heart, a hole he had to fill by building a totem pole which he would erect to fill the void. And let him sleep.

Truth is, once this hole gets installed, it can’t ever be filled again. Like a black hole, it sucks everything in. Until the very memories that make up the soul are sucked in and the very reason that created the hole vanishes, wiping out the self.

In a desperate attempt to hold on to some kind of reality, the body is pushed by the mind to follow helpless, hopeless dreams, in the hope that perhaps those dreams would make sense of the senseless existence that comes about when, this hole appears.

And how hard does the mind try to wipe out the incomprehensible aspect that led to the hole in the first place! How it connives to reduce to mathematical, logical reasoning that which it cannot even begin to fathom.

How it tries to apply ideological reductions with allusions to “complete freedom” and how this unfathomable condition enslaves, imprisons and so is “unnatural”.

But alas! Never can it win. Never can it succeed. For the hole is there.

Like the wind that cannot be seen.

*Note: Delayed post from 21 Oct 2006

I wish I was watching*

Sitting here, in this hotel room in the middle of nowhere, things clear up for a while. The conclusion has been reached that you were always an excuse to end relationships, for everyone else was always going to be compared to you, and of course never live up to the challenge.

Silly notion obviously, since no two human beings are alike and each has his/her qualities and flaws. Yet so is this mind. How feeble to think that the condition induced by you could be replicated. As if it were some kind of chess game where you could just resign and start over. Ha!

The future? Who knows... Looking at the past to know who we are can help, I suppose. But at least the conclusion has been reached. You were the excuse. And always will be.

Yet this moment of clarity is passing. And again the fog that clouds the heart is coming in. I wish I could say, as the song that repeats endlessly in the background:”Every move you make, Every vow you break,… I’ll be watching you,…, Every breath you take, Every move you make…, I’ll me watching you…”

*Note: Delayed post from 21 Oct 2006

Airport lounges

About a year ago I had just returned from a fantastic trip to China. Two years back, Ghana changed the way I see the world. Now, at the outset of a new adventure, I sit at the airport lounge in Lisbon contemplating life as usual.

The taxi conversation on the way here was, not surprisingly, about the weather, and how that has changed too. Just one of those topics that have become routine, bland. It used to be that talking about the weather was an ice breaker (no pun intended), now, climate change has taken that spot.

Looking at the courtesy magazine for the flight, I see that someone has up and gone do what has been at the back of my mind for some time now: move off to some 3rd world country, break away from the “developed” world. Kind of makes me feel cheated. But I suppose, again, it’s no surprise: when the going gets tough, the tough get going (oh how I hate clichés).

On the omnipresent and omnipotent TV screen, some music channel is playing scantly clad women trying very hard to transmit some kind of emotion that I can’t exactly figure out.

The overhead speaker blurs something about some flight to some destination.

The wait. The endless waiting. How I hate airport lounges.

4

Happy Birthday.

You're evidence that time flies. You make me old. Obsolete.

You're my wake up call. My haunting youth crying out: "LIVE!".

Happy Birthday.