Yesterday I turned in my portfolio for promotion. I put pictures of it on Facebook and received plenty of support from friends and colleagues. I feel eternally grateful for the good wishes everyone has sent me, and look forward to honouring their commitment to the task of researching, learning, writing, teaching, and serving for a lifetime.

The grammarians reading this may have noticed the singular form of “task” above. Not to turn overly pedantic about the point, yet there is no mistake in the statement. In fact, I would argue that these five elements feed into a single act. This act, that of “professing” within one’s field, gives me such pleasure and enlightens all the facets of my own life is so many way, one body cannot contain it. This enjoyment must pass to others through as many variants and modes of expression as could be possible in the course of an intellectual career.

Here is another way to approach the idea. When Khalil Gibran wanted to expound about his views on teaching, the narrator of The Prophet detailed the following:

“Then said a teacher, "Speak to us of Teaching."
      And he said:
      No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge.
      The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
      If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” (The Prophet)

I would add to this his conclusions on the ideal of “work,” one on which his prophet dissertates a while before his discourse on teaching:

“Work is love made visible.
      And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
      For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
      And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
      And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.” (The Prophet)

If work is love, and teaching the expression of love for the sake of awakening another’s abilities, then research could be the re-writing of one’s own knowledge in order that love may have a space in and from which to reside and to flourish. In this sense, then, we are “among the books, seeking human knowledge” (Gibran, “A Lover’s Call XXVII”), full of a greater self-knowing yet in need of guidance to unite that which informs our individual capacity for illumination from within. To serve others, then, is to know, learn from knowing, inform, describe, and awaken, so that the path may continue from me to those in need of one to follow. Once they see a path they can eventually make their own, just as we did; they can, in essence, profess as we did.

Good night! / Tenham uma boa noite! / ¡Que paséis unas buenas noches!

Now for an original poem / E agora, um poema meu:

Pão de Sandes:

Será que vale a pena continuar?

Sonhei com uma grande obra de condução,

De Luanda para Windhoek, e a Joanesburgo,

A acabar a façanha em Maputo,

Lugares que nunca visitei, talvez vá algum dia destes,

E no primeiro andar, à vista desde os vidros de protecção,

Ela praticava a ginástica e olhava-me de quando em quando

Para ter certeza que a seguisse e celebrasse.

Sonhei que estava um dia em Portugal,

Cito, e ouvem-se outras músicas e metades das faixas

Pela RTP que demora menos de dois segundos em chegar

Ao meu telemóvel, Marinetti tinha rebentado um edifício,

Quer dizer, uma faixa azul,

Será que vale a pena continuar?

Quando no seio até os mamilos desejam reiterar o seu terror,

E o olhar desenvolvido amamenta o pasto que mexe no vento,

Sonhei que estava um dia

Em Curitiba, seixo do espírito atirado ao filho da esperança,

Trevisan nem aceitara estas palavras roubadas aos fadistas,

E no segundo andar, à vista desde o chão em baixo,

E a explosão de sobre-coxas adolescentes acima das barras

Num equilíbrio que em segundos se desajeita.

Depois, como se nem o alento efémero dum prato de batatas

Aquecidas num forno e lá esquecidas,

Passeios algarvios e solitários, e bifurcações que nem interessam,

Aquecidas no sol e lá esquecidas,

Será que vale a pena continuar?

A rapariga que pergunta se desejo uma ou duas bolachas

Com a refeição, de mesas de um metro e sessenta de altura,

Ou de conversações nas que todos concordámos há tempo

E desfazemo-nos em pegarmos todos no pão da sandes da mesma forma.

E é no terceiro andar que as vozes derretem aos poucos pelos buracos

Que se abriram entre aqueles antigos tijolos e amores de mentira,

Quando as nuvens violetas se murcham nos angélicos raios amarelos

Do final da tarde em Lisboa

Há horas que as mãos trémulas te deram a tua fome

E tantos dias que os meus braços tas aceitaram em vão.

Será que vale a pena continuar?

Tudo vale a pena, disse, e repito várias vezes ao dia

Em emails lidos e relidos sem reparação,

Que sim ou que não, quer impressos ou deitados

Numa lixeira na Mouraria como acordes à meia-noite

Será um dia quando os meus seios desejarem reiterar o seu terror,

Quando os trovões alumiarem o meu cerebelo e as águas doces

Misturarem com as manteigas e farinhas do futuro,

Sonhei que estava um dia em Portugal.

E esta alma hoje à noite pequena e fixada no ecrã

Que faz as pupilas doerem na sua questão elétrica e viva,

Sem dúvida com as perguntas que todos já fizéramos,

Se é possível de apenas o açúcar numa única colher de pau

Atravessar o Kalahari rumo à fronteira

Entre leões e ginastas a pularem sem perdão.

07/2015

Deixem-me saber o que pensam :)

     

This week I don't have any poems to share or read, no greater or lesser analysis to offer. Put simply, the time has come to return to my own eccentric, happily imbalanced normal, and I feel perfectly prepared for the task.

Of my first "true" vacation in years, I can only say this: I've never liked spending time in swimming pools, but from this week I have the fondest memories of helping my daughter learn to swim in one. Among all of the good news, great news, very bad news, fleeting visit to the PCL, and curious culinary choices of the week, this stays with me more than anything, kind of like that day with the chicken bones.

Have an excellent evening / Tenham uma noite excelente / que paséis una noche excelente.