Breakfast at Fontecruz, Lisboa

Puny silver-haired Frenchman and
his underage Anthropologie-clad
mistress -- all her decades of lace and old-fashioned
frill, his brown checkered pants
cinched at the waist
by a belt pulled too tight, complaining
in high-pitched French tones, there's no
eggs at the buffet!  then

smiling beside himself at her
seated glance of approval while
the Lisboan scrambles
for his, the sound of one, two, three wet
smooch, making himself

an escargot of it all.

Walking into Walls

Strolling along the beautiful patterned walkways of Lisbon, one eventually comes to a wall -- that is, tile walls -- for which the Portuguese are known worldwide.

Tile making, or azulejos, probably comes from the Arabic word azure which means 'smooth surface.'  It's hard to put a date on when the Portuguese became the most renowned tile makers in the world because azulejos came to Portugal via Moorish influence (dominance) well over 1,000 years ago -- and Spanish influence (dominance) about 500 years ago.

Both cultures contributed a diverse style of tile making, which was really, in its primitive state, just "wall making" -- designed to keep out rebellious subjects.  I stood for a long time at this crude Moorish wall that surrounds what is now called St. George's Castle, built on the highest peak in Lisbon by the conquering Moors around 800 A.D.   Today it is a popular lookout post for lackadaisical peacocks.  Some areas of the fortress date to the 4th century.

Moorish design is characterized by geometrical patterns and extensive symmetry. Early examples were devoid of color because the technique for using color was not devised until the late 1500s.

The technique for color, called maiolica, came to Portugal through Spain -- and to Spain through Mesopotamia in the 9th century -- and to Mesopotamia from China. Color led to an outpouring of patterns and creativity . . .

Blue and white is considered to come from the influence of Chinese ceramics, brought back to Portugal through India after Vasco da Gama famously discovered the trade route to India and Asia in the late 1400s.

The most humble of restaurants and pastry shops is graced with tile wall patterns, both inside and outside.  This is the exterior wall of a tiny restaurant called "Istanbul Pizza Shop."

This exterior wall graces one restaurant on a tiny island in the Tagus River, the longest river on the Iberian Peninsula.  It runs east to west through Spain, and empties into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Lisbon.  As we sat outside and ate salted dried codfish and drank vinho verde wine,  I wondered what significance those petite floral patterns held -- because, as I came to learn, virtually everything in Portugal carries symbolic significance.   The interior walls were just as beautiful as the exterior.

No place shows the diverse styles of tile making more than at Pena Palace, which is located about 45 miles from Lisbon.  This was the summer palace for the Royal Court through 1,000 years of history and changing regimes -- beginning of course with the Moors in medieval times, and ending with the rein of Don Manuel II in 1910.  Each regime, or conquerer,  preserved the existing artistry of the palace, but added its own "updated" style -- therefore it is a panoply of architectural and tile making history.

Legend is just as important (and real) to the Portuguese as documented history.  We were told by a native Lisboan that "if it happened in Portugal, there is a legend for it."  And if there is a legend for it, she added, there is probably something built to commemorate it . . . to honor it . . .
Tile making is one very useful mode of expression to catalogue the nation's identity. Symbolic representations of the country's folklore, legends, heroes, and history are literally spread out on the walls for citizens to absorb daily.  Perhaps history books for young children are optional!

I was strangely drawn to a circular pattern with a knot in the center, which I later learned is called arbiter esfera, or the armillary sphere.  It is a symbol of the constellations, but representative of the nation's great seafaring history.  In its glory days, beginning in the late 1400s when Vasco da Gama discovered the trade route to India, Portugal dominated the Indian Ocean and therefore economic trade for well over a century.

I could not bring home a wall of tiles, or even take pictures of all the walls I loved, but I settled for three beautiful tiles which caught my eye (and would not let me go home without them). I found them in an antique store just down the steep hill from the old Moorish castle that overlooks modern day Lisbon. They date to 1750, which means they were crafted before the catastrophic 9.0 earthquake of 1755 which devastated the nation and left it in ruins for nearly a century.  

The antique dealer from whom I bought these tiles noted that he had never seen a pattern such as the third one shows -- "not even in tile museums," he said.  As I contemplate that third tile from my seat at the kitchen table at home, I surmise that it may have been the singular experiment of a woman who was not really a tile maker by trade -- perhaps her husband or father or brother was a tile maker -- and perhaps she had an idea for a trellis type design which she had got from observing the way vines grow along a fence outside her kitchen window or along the tiled walkway on her way to market -- and maybe her father or brother or husband said it was not such a good design because it had never been done before -- and so she stopped making tiles after that first one -- but somehow this tile survived the catastrophic earthquake of 1755 -- though maybe she did not -- and maybe she had a bit of Moorish or Arabic blood in her from long ago -- because, when I sit back and look at this tile long enough, those vines begin to look like Arabic writing . . .

Walkabout Lisbon

The sidewalks -- that is the first thing I noticed when I stepped out of the hotel lobby onto Avenida Liberdade in Lisbon, Portugal -- the beautiful mosaic patterned sidewalks.  On that first day of walking through Lisbon I think I did not even lift my eyes to look at the numerous monuments and cathedrals, Moorish castles, or perpetual blue skies that graced our weeklong visit -- because the limestone sidewalks were so beautiful.  And the more we walked, the more varied and interesting the sidewalks became . . .

Most of the city's sidewalks were made by prisoners in the early 1800s.  It was thought that the prisoners needed something to do with their time, and that the "something" ought to benefit the nation.  Therefore, they were put to work creating much-needed walkways for a city that had been devastated nearly to extinction by a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on November 1, 1755.  It is a day still talked about by Lisboans -- their history, their art, and even items for sale in antique stores, are categorized as "before the earthquake" or "after the earthquake."  I bought three beautiful tiles from "before the earthquake," that is, from 1750 -- "survivors," the store owner called them.  

The Marquis of Pombal, the Secretary of State during the reign of Joseph I in the late 18th century, is much honored and credited with foreseeing the benefit of a "grid pattern" in rebuilding Lisbon after the earthquake. Nothing was left to the city but rubble and mud at that time, and so anything could have replaced it.  The previous layout of Lisbon, like all medieval cities, had been designed on a circular pattern in which the city radiated out from a commercial "center" (from which our word city is derived).  

At the time, The Marquis was criticized (or at least questioned) for making the sidewalks so wide.  His response was, they may seem wide now, but someday they will be filled with people.  Many monuments exist throughout the city to pay homage to this man with such foresight, but I admit I did not take a single picture of his monuments -- simply because I was taken up by the handiwork of his position, not by the man himself.  Is this not the mark of a true leader?

The "Alfama" district of Lisbon was miraculously saved from total destruction during the 1755 earthquake.  Therefore, the medieval winding walkways still exist.  This is an area built primarily by the dreaded and overbearing Moors of the 9th and 10th centuries.  History is filled with accounts of Portuguese struggles (battles/wars) to overcome Moorish rule.  However, hated as the Moors were, their buildings -- and walkways -- were indestructible.  These 1,000-plus-year-old walkways are still trodden by the likes of me today.  One can spend a pleasant day tangled up in Alfama's winding streets while looking for Fado houses or family restaurants serving inexpensive lunchtime fare of salted dried codfish and local olives and pitchers of delicious Vinho Verde.  I will always remember those meals -- and those inclusive pitchers of wine -- and the winding narrow walkways that would miraculously lead us out of Alfama and onto the familiar grid-like streets.  

The walkways are made from a type of limestone, called "creme lioz," that is abundant in the nation.  Each small tile, as they are called, is chiseled by hand and made to fit into the ground about two or three inches deep; it is made smooth on top, and placed into patterns like puzzle pieces.  The tiles come primarily in two natural colors -- black and white -- though I have noticed (in the proximity of monasteries or cathedrals, at least) there is also a natural pink and a brownish-bronze.

The patterns, like so many things in Portugal, are designed with a purpose -- and that purpose is to pay homage and remembrance to an event in Portuguese history.  The above and below photos show homage to the nation's searfaring history, most especially to Vasco da Gama who discovered a trade route between Portugal and India in 1497, thus granting the Portuguese supremacy over the Indian Ocean throughout the next 100 years.

I think one of the most profound traits of the Portuguese people is their natural inclination to give thanks.  I noticed that people often greet each other by saying, Obrigado, or thankyou!  They are thankful for the many miracles on which their country's legends are based, for their rich history, for overcoming Moorish dominance, for strong family ties, for the bounty of fish which the Atlantic Ocean provides, and for the beauty all around them.

Even the dogs seem to pay homage to the city's sidewalks by mimicking its native colors.  I call this photo "Black and White." Only seconds after this photo was taken, the cute pup ventured to attack a white pit bull (unleashed) as it strolled by.

In a country deemed by economists to be one of the poorest in Europe, where unemployment staggers at 30 per cent, and where many educated men and women sleep on the sidewalks which I've shown -- there is art everywhere.  One young woman, Margarida, who works three jobs to make ends meet (one of which is to conduct weekend walking tours for English speaking tourists), said, "I wish I could be a tourist in my own city.  It is hard to make a living here, but it is beautiful!"

Holy Water Fonts of Portugal

The scallop shell has been the iconic symbol of the pilgrim on a journey since the Middle Ages, possibly because pilgrims often carried such shells for drinking water or eating food.  This marble font is from a cathedral in Fatima, Portugal, on the site where three children in 1917 experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary.

Also from a cathedral in Fatima, Portugal.  The scallop resembles the setting sun, therefore a destination in westernmost Spain for pilgrims on the "El Camino," or Pilgrim's Way.

From the Dominican Monastery at Batalha, Portugal, built to celebrate the Portuguese victory over the Castilians in 1385.  This represents a Gothic style with Moorish influence.

Batalha Monastery

 A simple font from a small chapel in Nazare, Portugal, 11th century

11th century, Nazare, Portugal.

 This freestanding font is from St. Dominic's Cathedral in Lisbon, built in the 13th century.

From an 8th century Moorish Cathedral in Lisbon

Gregory's Pond

A short pathway to the lake . . . 

I saw three Pileated Woodpeckers darting in front of me and in back of me and around me the other day – while I was walking on a footpath leading from the main street of our suburban neighborhood to the lake where I walk daily, right in back of Greg’s house . . .

Greg – the neighborhood nature photographer who died of pancreatic cancer a few months ago.  I only know he died because I saw his obituary in the newspaper.  Greg lived about two blocks up the street, and I never knew his last name or his wife’s name, though I saw him often over the course of many years when I walked around the lake and he stood or sauntered around the lake -- his head up in the trees or down to the ground, much equipment always around his neck or crosswise on his chest.  We talked briefly about what he had seen each time we passed, and many years of brief talking had added up to what I call friendship.

. . .  quietly teeming with wildlife 

I think his wife moved from their house only a month after he died – a moving van was outside of it the greater part of one day – and just yesterday I saw a young girl talking in the front yard on her cell phone with a great flurry of arms and a pitch of voice – Oh . . . the new owners, I said to myself.

The Blue Heron is patient with the amateur photographer . . .

Anyway, I walked along the footpath that runs in back of Greg’s house (his former house), and I saw three Pileated Woodpeckers darting back and forth, in front of me and in back of me – as though to accompany me on the trail which is not very long, just long enough to let one imagine being somewhere more expansive than the suburbs of a city . . . leading to a small lake where I can walk a few laps while taking in a bit of nature. 

And on this short walk leading to the lake, I thought of Greg to whom I would have reported my finding when I saw him next – or who would have beat me to it and said, “Yes, I know, I saw them too – I got the shot!”  By shot, of course, he meant the picture.  He would have known the secret of quietly waiting on a bench or standing still – to get some wondrous close-up shot that would possibly be on the front cover of Virginia Wildlife magazine.  His “amateur” photos made several covers of this and other magazines, he had told me.  He could somehow make his lens zoom right up to a tree, if not miraculously behind the tree, to get a snapshot of a thing you could never see while just looking – you can never get that close in real life – and of course the object always darts away before you can be sure of what you’ve seen – and you can’t preserve the thing at all except by insisting on what you saw in memory alone – and memory is always changing . . . at least that is my experience. 

There were six right before I snapped the shot

But the picture lasts forever – and Greg knew the miracle of capturing the picture to prove what he had seen.  He worked at it, patiently, almost every day when he got home from work, or early in the morning, or on Fridays, his day off.  He once told me he had a closet full of boxes of negatives and photos of the wildlife that no one would guess existed at this small lake in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, enclosed by houses and busy streets – owls, kingfishers, cormorants, egrets, fox, and even a turtle the size of a small ottoman!  I didn’t know it at the time (time being the course of many years) – didn’t know it, but Greg taught me to start looking when I walked – to keep my eyes open, my ears too.  He said,  NO ONE WOULD BELIEVE WHAT WAS THERE . . .  

The last time I talked to Greg's wife, and that was during one of his several declines about a year ago, she said that Greg always joked that the lake was named after him.  Everyone in the neighborhood refers to the lake as “Raintree Lake,” for it is located right off Raintree Drive – but old county records or surveys, Greg found out, refer to it as “Gregory's Pond.”  And so, she joked, “Greg considers this to be his pond.”

I've seen turtles snatch goslings from beneath

I thought of all this while the three Pileated Woodpeckers darted side to side in front of me and in back of me – sometimes perching high in the trees above, playing hide and seek as they went around the backside of one tree before re-emerging on another tree to find me – all the while voicing the characteristic laughing sound, Ha ha a a a . . . Ha ha ha ha ha ha a a a – at least that’s what it sounded like to me, like they were laughing at me.

I stopped right at the spot on the footpath behind Greg’s old house.  I noticed through the thicket of trees that all the hanging baskets and birdfeeders were gone from the deck.  The three woodpeckers were still playing their games, in and out of trees, laughing at me – and I said, sort of out loud, but in a whisper, “Wow, Greg, did you see those three Pileated Woodpeckers?  And right behind your house!  Did you get the shot?”

Willa Cather at Home

Great American author, Willa Cather

When Willa Cather was 68 years old, she visited her birth- and childhood- homes in Gore, Virginia, which is located about 80 miles west of Washington, DC.  This was her last visit to Virginia, for she died only six years later.  She was gathering information to write her last and most personal novel, “Sapphira and the Slave Girl,” which takes place on “Back Creek,” an actual place near the two homes where Cather spent the first nine years of her life before the family moved to Nebraska.      

“The great disadvantage about writing of the places you love is that you lose your beloved places forever – that is, if you are a quiet person who doesn’t like publicity.” She wrote this in a letter to woman named Miss Masterton, who had written Cather a ‘fan letter’ praising the latest novel about a jealous landowner named Sapphira and a beautiful slave girl named Nancy.  (This quiet and very private person’s letters have been published expressly against her wishes in a book called “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.”  The editors state that the “statute of limitations” has expired and that she is now part of our cultural history.)  Cather continues in the same letter:   

“I have not been back to Virginia since Sapphira was published . . . Such simple, honest, earnest people live there.  It would have been the same forever if motor cars had never been invented . . . It was the most beautiful piece of country road that I have ever found anywhere in the world.  I never found anything in the Swiss or Italian Alps so beautiful as that road once was.”  

Apparently, Miss Masterton had taken a visit to Virginia to trace the steps outlined in the novel.  “I seem fated to send people on journeys,” she remarks to Miss Masterton, and then proceeds to tell her about other readers who have similarly gone “a-journeying” to such places as Quebec and New Mexico, based on her books.  She tells her that the slave girl, Nancy, is a real person, and that the story is based on an event that actually happened.  “She was exactly like that, and old Till was just like that.  I was between five and six years old . . . “ – but Cather seems apologetic in the letter when she refers to the house called “Willow Shade” where she lived from ages 2 to 9:

Cather's home from ages 2 to 9

“I am sorry you saw that desolate ruin which forty years ago was such a beautiful place, with its six great willow trees, beautiful lawn, and the full running creek with its rustic bridge.  It was turned into a tenement house long since, and five years ago the very sight of it made me shiver.  Of course, it still lives in my mind, just as that March day when Nancy came back still lives in my mind.”

Cather would perhaps be happy to know that Willow Shade, 70 years hence, is privately owned by a non-Cather family who reside there and have restored it to historic standards – (though she was not to know that the house served as a hospital for a short while after it was a tenement house).

The very sight of it made me shiver . . . That is the one phrase in this letter that stays in my mind as I stand before the other home, that is, the birth home of Willa Cather.  I have come here for the last five years or so, on a sort of annual pilgrimage (yes, Miss Cather, you send me a-journeying too!) – and why? – I suppose to observe the slow deterioration of the birth home of this favorite author of mine before it is gone forever – sharing my private condolences with her each time I stand in the front yard where I imagine this great American author might have taken her first steps in life . . .       

Willa Cather's birth home today

The decrepit condition of her birth home would undoubtedly cause Willa Cather to shiver profusely.  She most likely stayed in this home whenever she came to visit Virginia, for it was owned at the time by Cather relatives.  In this home, in the years preceding the writing of Sapphira, I imagine she acquired both the inspiration and material for her final novel.   She made no comment about this house in any of her letters that I have read so far, most probably because it was well tended at the time and she had no concern or need to make comment.       

The home today is taken over by termites and neglect.  Once lived in by Cather relatives, the home has been abandoned for decades and is for sale by the current owner who would love to see it preserved but does not have the resources or ability to do so himself.  Unfortunately, neither the State of Virginia nor the literary scholars of our nation, nor the Willa Cather Foundation of Red Cloud, Nebraska has shown any interest in preserving this historic landmark – though a very nice sign in the front yard proclaims it a noteworthy spot.  And so, I stop by the house each spring to linger and wonder, take a few pictures of the changes I see, and then leave.      

While scholars busy themselves to publish private letters that the author had expressly stated should never be published, the author’s own birth home – located near “the most beautiful piece of country road . . . in the world,” amongst a people she said were the most honest and earnest – is sadly given over to termites and the next big storm that deems to take it down.  We should all shiver to know this.

I imagine Willa Cather taking her first steps here

Did she gaze out this window while imagining Sapphira?

The Interrupting Cow

My eldest adult daughter, when she was a young child, told a particular joke with such proficiency –  never failing to elicit the hoped-for surprise response from aunts, uncles, parents, and others – that it endured for bounteous years.  It was one of the endless variations on the knock-knock series . . . 

MOOOOOO!!!

Knock, knock

Who’s there?

Interrupting cow.

Interrupting cow wh . . .

Pause to explain.  This is where the child’s skill of ‘timing’ comes in, for she must scream MOOOOOOO!!! in an obnoxious manner before the adult has had a chance to finish the final response, “Interrupting cow wh . . .”

  

MOOOOOO!!!!  Much laughter ensues when the adult comes to realize what has just happened.  The adult has been interrupted . .  . MOOOOOOO!!!

This might define many years of motherhood for me . . .

I had a vision . . . I could see and feel and hear the thoughts in my brain, perhaps manifested as brain synapses – tiny strands of matter that connect and make sense of all the data coming and going -- and these connecting synapses were being chopped into bits and pieces by a fine sewing scissors – all day long.  Perhaps the living links carried thoughts or story ideas or plans for a future life, or the line of a poem I’d write one day, or maybe just dialogue with myself – but interrupted, snip-snapped, all day long – until my brain felt inside like a bowl of chopped up, one-half-inch sized spaghetti pieces.  This was my vision.  And each night, as I slept, some of those pieces (I could sense it, I say!) would secretly reconnect – and I would remember . . . but then, a new day began and they would be disconnected, snip-snapped, again. 

I often wondered what I was doing to my brain, what was happening to my brain in those many years.  What would be the long-term accumulation, I asked, of always having the brain synapses snipped just as they were trying to connect?  Would there be a learned response for disconnection? . . . would learning stop?  Would I develop an induced form of Attention Deficit Disorder?  Would my brain eventually stop thinking altogether?  Was I creating Alzheimer’s in myself?  All those uncontrollable interruptions of young motherhood were coming at me from every angle . . . I felt them in the brain, saw the break, experienced it, heard the sharp snip-snap, and I worried about it.  I often said, “I just want to complete one sentence in my brain . . . without interruption.”  I wanted to write books full of sentences someday.  What was to become of me?

Brain synapse, "the connector"

My fear – or hunch – has been corroborated.  In the New York Times last Sunday I read an article called “Brain, Interrupted” which studied, not mothers, but regular people, subjecting them to interruptions (only two! what a joke) while requiring them to perform a simple task of reading something and answering questions about it.  The Interrupted Group scored 20 percent lower than the Control Group.   “In other words, the distraction of an interruption, combined with the brain drain of preparing for that interruption, made our test takers 20 percent dumber,” the article says.

The High Alert Group was warned there might be an interruption, but the interruption never came.  Unbelievably, this group improved by 43 percent over the Control Group.  This surprise finding suggests that participants learned from their experience, and their brains adapted.  “Somehow, it seems, they marshaled extra brain power to steel themselves against interruption, or perhaps the potential for interruptions served as a kind of deadline that helped them focus even better.”

Nowhere in the article does it mention snip-snapped synapses or spaghetti bowl brains – but I had the vision (for I am prone to such things), and I know this is what happens.   

My greatest lesson from all those years is this:  Anticipate interruptions.  Life will never be free of it; interruptions do not go away, they only change.  When I sit down to write or even read, I am prepared.  My brain is on high alert.  I was trained by the best.  And now I know, because of the aforementioned article, that if the day should ever come when there is not a knock-knock or a ding-ding, for even an hour, I will accomplish much.