Tenho sono

Tengo sueño. I´m sleepy, but I have no dreams. No tengo un sueño, nor sonhos, or anything of the sort. I feel a bit like a desert, long since the torrential downpours and far from anything new. I imagined the fecundity of writing poetry while sitting quietly, relaxing in the park, halfway back from an excusrsion for laundry detergent, milk and bread but suddenly realized that I have nothing to say. Surprising, I know. Well it isn´t so much that I have nothing to say, or even nothing to think about, but rather that when one flips the switch to reception it is extremely difficult to then porduce anything of value for posterity. Last night I realized that it had been weeks since I dreamed. I stayed up late talking with Kristina about what she did over the weekend while I was gone. I tried to evoke some kind, any kind of description of the overwhelming peace that I found in the country, but it just comes out like a soporific stew of blanched landscapes and crumbling castles.

Sara was my first Portuguese professor at school. Her cousin (who had no business looking so good for 40) Dulce picked me up on the corner, rescuing me from a somewhat uncomfortable conversation on the street corner. We waited at her parents house in Sao Martinho do Obispo, a «freguesía» (she explained that it is the smallest governmental unit in Portugal) just outside the city. Manela, her cousin arrived and I had my first taste of pizza (of course I never would have tried this on my own, although my new friend Juli, from Amsterdam, was clamouring for it). Portuguese pizza, is all its own. We left for Idanha-a-nova around 10 and pulled in around 1 in the morning. After about fifteen minutes of sitting in the back seat, I zoned out, fully capable now of understanding anything (practically) in Portuguese, but detached enough to be able to disconnect if not being directly addressed. Sara was outside waiting with their 93 year old grandmother, tiny white-headed woman, with misty eyes and a warm smile, who each time she saw me, tried to lift up my skirt because she said I had beautiful legs, unlike her granddaughters who, in her opinion are too skinny. (I realized of course that it was indeed time to procure a razor and did so promptly today.)

Sara's father is the presidente municipal, and we stayed at the newly remodeled house, so new that light fixtures had yet to be installed and though the workers came the following day, they abandoned ship to watch the game. And what a game. The Portuguese were fully unable to attack and each time they had an opportunity for a break they thwarted it with a pass backwards. Absolutely infuriating and could be likened to the technique used in torture and certain relationships in which tiny scraps are offered, and then rescinded, only to be offered in greater or lesser degrees, maddening the victim or lover. But, I digress.

We saw the large dam, built in 1930 under Salazar (insert brief history of Portuguese dictatorship), and we attended, briefly, a colloquium on cultural patrimony of the zona raiana (frontier with Spain). I was initiated, finally, to the delicacy that is bacalhau, afraid that it would be as horribly salty as I remember, but rather amazingly tender. I spoke Portuguese until I felt like my tongue would fall out of my mouth, drank my first sips of Porto, traipsed to the top of a castle ruin in the «most portuguese town in Portugal» Monsanto, and finally went to the Feira, the town festivities, which seemed like Yautepec´s carnaval, or any other small town in which the motive of the celebration becomes much less important than the celebration itself, a rare opportunity for the town´s young and old alike to parade about, mixing smells of cotton candy, popcorn and chouriço and frango grelhado...

And now, after a day in the sun, reflecting on all this and nothing at all, I think I will sleep for a bit until I go to this night´s festivities.