Uma mensagem para voces

Uma mensagem para voces Ola, esta mensagem é para o casal que tenho encontrado hoje no autocarro para o Dover. Que mundo pequeno. Então, em baixo pode ver a minha casa, numero 16. Dentro, é um labirintinho de quartos, escadas... estou mutio, mutio contente ali. Não quero sair o mundo de Rua da Adiça. Se voces quiserem, o meu e-mail é charlottemanicom@hotmail.com, podemos manter contacto. Abraços, e espero que têm chegado bem em bruxelas. Até jà!

volta triste

Hello everyone. Everyone who reads this blog will know what has happened, and why I have had to return to England for a few weeks. Two Mondays ago, my Dad was in a motorbike accident and he died that day. So my Mum, somehow, managed to come to Lisbon to tell me what had happened. And so I have come home to be with family, friends and to help mum and to stay until the funeral. How odd this world is. I still do not quite believe it. That something so sad could rip into our lives so suddenly.
I don't really want to write at length about it because all of you know how I feel and I have a special relationship with all of you and I tell you about it. But, for the blog's sake, I want to explain what has gone on.
To be back in England, with the grey, with this death and change... wow, I was a lucky girl in Lisbon.
I will write later on when I am back there and life there starts again, albeit with a diferent style.

Rua Da Adica

My house has a myspace. I did not even know it.

Look:

http://www.myspace.com/ruadaadica

And this video is the sounds of the street outside my balcony. It is a theme tune enough.

What am I doing these days? Procrastinating. It is terrible, I really need a kick up the bum. I really am not achieving anything, just playfighting in the rain (to the point of lying in the puddles. the rain is like a tropical monsoon here), cooking, reading a bit here and there, talking, daydreaming --- the next entry will be full of amazing achievements.

University.

The fact that it is like George Orwell's 1984:

.. forced me to write the famous "War is Peace..." quote in the bathroom...

Smoky Sunday

It is 13:56. Having got in at 4:45 this morning, i optimistically set the alarm for 10:30, only raising at 12:30. The sun was trying hard to shine and the usual elderlies were shouting on the street. I got out my i-pod, picked my soggy trainers from the balcony (rained last night? – or the cat again?) and ran off up and up and down and around and to the Jardim do Torel and up and down again, talking to a tramp, doing handstands, hearing the thunder coming. It started to rain, little warm droplets on my muscles, and people gathered under the trees on the cobbled streets. The hazelnut-roaster continued to roast, the smoke drifting down the street. Rua da Prata, full of restaurants, was buzzing as ever with tourists shovelling their lunches in under large brollies. All the waiters start to smile because I have become a regular runner there, I suppose. Up and up, getting close to home now. It is a real Sunday, a raining Sunday. Peoples balcony windows are open, perhaps they are having a Sunday lunch with their families. In my street all the old men are starting up their Sunday Sardine barbeque and the street is hazy with fishy smoke; or the sardines are lying in silver piles, eying hopelessly up to the sky, caked in salt and ready to be roasted. The artist downstairs has covered his floor in sand now. I come in, get in the shower, make a coffee on the gas stove to the sound of the neighbours TV. Now i have an hour before the protest in Martim Moniz against the new Immigration plan of Sarkozy. I am doing some research on it now.

This dog on my street had had a little bed made for him!!

The manifestation was fantastic: there was a great turn out despite the clouds and occasional rainfall. There was such a mix there: Africans, Indians, Portuguese, old, young... there was a real energy going on with a samba band keeping the rhythm at the back and a group of African guys shaking various beaded instruments in a frenzy of rhythm and shouting. Coming down the main street of Baixa, it started to pour down, with heavy fat drops. The samba band pounded on and the crowd shouted and danced. The stream of people carried on down into Praca do Commercio, energized, for speeches and art displays. By this time it was 17.00 and I had not eaten all day. Me and Toni were soaking but happy, hungry but energiful, and we went home, to the cat and Ana and the little flat, with a baguette and cooked up a storm with bowls creamy pasta and bread. It has been a wonderful, wonderful day. Now I am going to sleep with the sounds of applause outside the window for something in a bar nearby and Zul (cat) next to me.

A Visit to Senna's House.

Theme Tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW9hgMUsVUw (ignore cheesy video. This song is EVERYWHERE -- especially in one car that always parks up outside my window in Alfama. And then I see that Senna has it!)

I have just come back from a day at Senna’s.( Senna is the guy that worked on the farm with me in the summer: a very strong, charismatic Cabo Verdian who is studying Philosophy and Politics here in Lisbon). He lives in Cacem, out in the suburbs of Lisbon. I took the train out onto the line towards Sintra. The train was filled with white, black, old, young people, with hundreds of children running around the place. The woman and her children twins running in the slanted light of the station to catch the train. The train pushed its way out of Lisbon under the hot grey sky. The concrete sides of the track were patterned with fat tropical graffitis. Groups of skyscrapers, like clumps of weeds, grew up either side and up the hill-sides, with a thousand windows looking out over each other. Skyscrapper after skyscraper. Calm eyes of the man opposite of me, the fiddling of the fat African lady with her shopping bag. Arriving at Cacem, Senna found me. I sat on a cafe step and watched a gypsy couple, old and wrinkled, with skin like leather bags, ask a lady to help them buy a ticket from the machine. Perhaps they could not read. The way I could see the back of the gypsy lady’s patterned headscarf, turning towards her husband’s face as if to ask if they were going to get the ticket. His beige trousers, ironed down the middle and his hunched back. They seemed so helpless.

Me and Senna wondered up and up through the area, past the tall building and the bustling shops. Every so often there is a low house with a African-like veranda where, perhaps, an old lady is watering the plants. There is space here, some fountains and some modern community constructions to clamber on, etc. Up and up we go to Senna’s flat. He shares it with an old man, and his half-CaboVerdian son (11) and another young man who is an Electrician, Edgar. The old man was so welcoming. Slight and with a cigarette hanging in his mouth, he chattered away in (relatively good) English. He used to work on the ships. He had been all over the world. His shy son, PJ, enters and is reluctant to talk. The little kitchen overlooks a community centre, a basket ball court and more flats opposite. The TV in the sitting room is on: Senna’s room is simple with the bed diagonally on the floor and full of bits and bobs, including a collection of lamps on the floor covered over with coloured cloths. Kizomba is playing here. Edgar the electrician enters and departs, with or without the dog he has. Edgar’s parents live in London now. He is 19. PJ came here when he was 7, his mother is still in Cabo Verde. Senna says that his father gives him a lot of love here. “Pae?”.

I started making two lemon cakes with Senna in the kitchen (because he loves that cake). We were all involved in getting tins and scales and the old man said he wanted to have tea with his cake at 5 o’clock because that was “the time of tea”. After Senna taught me some Kizomba dancing and PJ kept passing to watch and laugh nervously at my attempt. “Listen to da music with your hear-rt”, said the old man, cigarette bobbing up and down on his lip. The white tiles on the floor and the walls, the sounds of the TV, the cooling day and the people outside wondering around the streets. The €1.50 tag on the packet of tea, neatly rolled and pegged up. Me and Senna ate Senna’s beans and rice that he had cooked and sliced into the cake, washing it down with Spumante, that is a champagne-like drink.

We watched his photos of Cabo Verde with the Kizomba playing. His friends, all so muscular and smiling. The animals wondering around the streets, the low varandered houses, the electricity wires collected up to one pole on the side of a street full of old jeeps. Bays with huts and palms and dark sand. His friends collecting the fish, his sister pounding the corn with a stick as big as herself, the old concentration camp from Salzaar’s time. Senna was a leader of a community centre there that started juntos maos, an idea to form a co-operative group and all help each other in the community – to all work on one farm and then move onto the next together, not each at their own. He was “peopleSenna”. Senna of the people. I felt sucked into the photos, into that life, for a while. Into the heat and the dry dry earth that is so hard to work, into the way they were all smiling in the pictures, the way the group of little nephews had filled a white sack with plastic bottles to float it in the sea... that kind of life, I felt sucked into.

Time to go home: we wondered down to the train station again back onto a bustling train of various races and ages and sizes. Back it went through the suburbs, plonking me right in the middle of Lisbon. I rather missed the house when I got back. The way that everyone had come from some other place, the way they all had family other sides of the world, and the way they came together in a little Cacem flat on a Saturday night to eat lemon cake and the affection of it, especially between the father and the son. The son’s starry pyjama bottoms I saw when he was peering quietly out over the street. I feel pressured to go out now but love to think that they are sitting there now in their flat, in silence, perhaps watching the TV together, the blue flickering light reflecting on their faces, as the rest of Cacem goes on, all in their own little space, yellow boxes for windows, in the Portuguese night.

Italian Blast

Theme Tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go

Leaving behind a pile of school work, I set of, feeling rushed, hot, spontaneous, nervous, happy... to the airport. It was the first time leaving Lisbon and it made me think about my feelings when I was arriving in that airport.

Anyway, off we went. Read the United Nations Charter in Portuguese on the plane and fell asleep. The plane, by the way, was delayed because some Napoli Football hooligans had smashed up the incoming plane. So I arrived very late to two gorgeous friends at the airport, armed with a drum and a guitar and little hats ready to sing Ring Of Fire (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRlj5vjp3Ko). But I was the last one out of the airport so they were floating around with their instruments alone. It was all rather comic.

So, over the next few days, I got to see into Italian family life; two beautiful families with a lot of warmth and love... and food. Flavio’s house was built by his father over 20 years. It is one of the most beautiful houses I have been in, with creamy yellow walls, nooks and crannies, flowers, silky curtains, a hundred instruments, stars in the trees and sofas abound. The level of hospitality there is a hundred times the usual English style; giving welcoming gifts (perfume), flowers and 3 massive meals, driving you to the airport 2 hours away... this kind of hospitality shocked me in a way. The dog Xibo is a character indeed and is very bold. His Mamma cooks a lot and keeps the house very clean and he has two brothers, one is a dentist and one is still at school. So I just sat there, trying to pick out words in Italian and they trying to speak English all laughing a lot. We often went to Marco’s house, a ten-minute drive away. He lives above his grandmother’s shop with his mother and father who are also so warm and kind. And a dog too, a great big chocolate bar of a dog. Their houses, both, are full of ornaments, embroidery, televisions. It is all so comforting.

So, what did we do? We drove around on Motos, flying about the streets down and over the green mountains along the coasts. The mountains look like lush green felt, they have steep sides, thick with trees and slightly obscured by mist. The coastal towns near there are just stunning, look at the picture below to see what I mean. We took coffees and watched as the waves crashed and splashed the town’s edge. It was fantastic. I sang all the way home, trying to spit on Marco;’s moped and clinging on to Flav.

I sat and watched Flav play the drums. Il Flav, lei fa un movimento lovely quando lei gioca i tamburi, lei il sospetto su le sue spalle un po'ed alza le sue sopracciglia e spinge le sue labbra insieme. And I love it. That was terrible Italian because I translated it on the internet. Ah well. So I got a lesson at the drums. Then we went to a Communist festival in the back of a social centre where lots of bearded Marx-looking men were drinking wine and debating under a big red flag. Flav played in his more gypsy like band that has an accordion and a clarinet. In fact he played for hours and hours. Serena and Marco and Serena’s boyfriend came too, we had pizza in a real buzzy Napoli place. Thin, crispy, fresh, slimy...

And what else? Oh a hundred things. We drove to Florence and walked around the wonderful little streets, over the bridge full of jewellers. Ate pizza, looked at the cathedral and the people wondering around. Felt inspired and arty, studied the hands and the hair and the boobs of all the marble figures. We went to Pisa one night. Due to the incredible fee of 15€ to go up the Tower, we sat out on the cool marble and looked up at it. For the first time in 3 months, I smelt that lovely smell of coming-winter, with the orange-lit streets, the night air with that cool edge and that sweet-ice smell. I felt very happy. We saw Carrara, an Anarchist Centre, with flags and boards and graffiti calling for an Anarchist rule.

(The photo above is a terrible attempt at the cliche Tower of Pisa photo that went rather wrong.)

(Need another song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwFYUFnTD9Q) One day we went to the open-mine of Carrara marble. It is funny, the green mountains I was talking about. They stretch out for miles, and then one or two look like they are covered in snow. But on closer inspection, you see that it is actually marble-mining, and whole sides of the mountain have been chopped into 90-degree angles blocks, shining bright white like a mouthful of teeth. It is so surreal. Marco’s father is a mechanic there for the machines there. So he drove us up in the white dust-covered jeep after work. It was a cool Saturday afternoon, the air was cool and fresh and the mine was empty, the great monsters of machines sitting there, still. It was utterly silent and the smooth white sides reflected off each other. Marco’s Dad showed us all the machinery, the diamond-line that cuts the marble, the dangerous machinery. Many people die in the mine. In the winter when it is icy, they still have to work. I was feeling very angry about the whole situation, the injustice, the disregard for the workers’ lives, the great blocks of marble with buyers’ names already scribbled on... the plastic cross swinging from the mirror of the car.

It is amazing to think this was Michelangelo's stone. But at the same time I felt so sad that this is what Man was doing to the earth, hurting both nature and men alike for what....

And about food. Food, food, food... I feel much heavier.. the mums really pile it on to you. But it is good, homemade, real stuff. We ate so well everyday. And Fla... fla, i know you are reading this so it will sound like I am writing it for you. But I am not, because Fla – and Marco – were so so gentle and kind to me always asking what I wanted, always driving me everywhere, always paying. Flavio is calm and constant and I felt so very safe and predictable and content with him; three things that I feel that I lack. And just to have someone to hug, someone to look forward to who will touch you back, always something to look forward to, I cannot quite explain.. that I loved. A lovely excitement. What else? How dark the bedroom was: I never knew what time it was. I was so out of time. Hot milk and biscuits for breakfast. Marimba sounds (of Fla). The roadsigns. The feeling of the helmet on my head on the Moto. Little sharp coffees. Smiling. Photos, everywhere, of every family member and every saint.
Lisbon return was somewhat tearful. But the gang waiting at Gate number D45 were so Lisbon .. a few punks, a gang of Senegalese chatterers, a music student with his Mozart books, tapping away. The descent into the city was a stunner and I was reminded of that first descent. The sun was a golden slant over the city that caught everything in its way. I got home, feeling odd. Cat had pissed in my room. I unpacked all the homemade wines and jams and the mountain of cakes and chocolate and Iced Tea “to keep me going for the journey” and made some couscous, talked to Pappa at last, and saw a film with Tony about immigration, which instantly put my worries into proportion. Woke up the next day, with a whole lot of work to do and my soul still in Italy, and felt a pang. But, come on, Charlotte! It is all ok. I am going to stop being such a mop and get a grip. Time to get into Uni mode, to start working for real. And hope to see it all again soon. Ouch!

Summary

Theme Tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJYZl1Ewoxk This song means A LOT! It has followed me around Lisbon... played it LOUD in Maria's car...


OK a summary is needed here because just too much has happened. Katarina has LEFT another GOODBYE. It the most surreal by far… we were spending all our time together before she left and then, “poof”, she is gone. We went to the top of the Sheraton hotel to say goodbye. It was surreal as hell. Maria was very upset indeed.
That weekend, I missed ANOTHER Erasmus party and went to the house of Maria, where her younger siblings needed looking after. They are adorable, the most caring children I have met, always asking me if I needed something, sharing everything. Maria has hammocks and clear stars and sandy roads and cork trees. Cooked bacalhau com nata and ate together and made up a song or two. It was just what I wanted. The next day, in the afternoon, I rode a moped for the first time. Wonderful! Freedom… golden light… sand. Saturday night was Cesars goodbye meal. Then a gypsy band covered in paint with a crowded room of dancing people. On Sunday I studied all day. On Monday I went to university, had lunch with the man in the jewelry shop, bought lots of things, cleaned the house, studied.
I keep meeting random people. It is easy here. Today – a masters student from London but Portuguese, a tramp from Czech republic, an angel on the bus (I will explain. Feeling a bit… blue, I suppose, on the bus to university. Wanted energy, and comfort. A German guy gets on, a bit lost. Start chatting. He collects fortune cookie slips and sticks them onto cash machines. Brilliant. Ended up showing him the university. At the end he told me to close my eyes and imagine I was in a cosy room with my Granny and she had just cooked buns and it was warm in there. Perhaps he saw that I needed comfort like that. It was surreal. Like god had sent him or something.)