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. 

In a few days we will be on vacation. It's a simple trip to see a place we used to call home, visit family and friends, and get away from our normal routines. It will also signify the first time I declaredly will not check my e-mail during a break.

For those not aware of my tendencies with regards to technology, I obsessively look over my e-mail. This happens for a reason - I have avoided many a nasty, or at least inconvenient, surprise by staying on top of things. Yet, when in the past several days my mood has shifted suddenly over trivialities, or I have taken slightly annoying occurrences as personal slights, all of which have made the need to seek a counter-balance to my usual patterns that much more apparent.

The whole experience has reminded me of the idea that in every system there must exist an equilibrium - its lack will show in unexpected and dubious ways. A topic that comes up often in academic culture, and particularly in academic professional publications, the "work-life" balance takes center stage when we find ourselves forced to confront our deepest fear ... that we cannot continue full speed all the time without part of our emotional stability and overall psyche giving in. You can rest assured that I've arrived at that faceless, lonely, and disheartening precipice before (as many of us have and will again) and have no intention of looking out again upon the wastelands its perilous presence engenders. In essence, each element of one's mind must find harmony with its antithesis, and as such within itself.

Miguel Torga hints at the fragile, yet necessary, scale of opposites such an approach warrants in the first stanza of his poem titled "Agora":

Abre-te, Primavera!
Tenho um poema à espera
do teu sorriso.
Um poema indeciso
entre a coragem e a covardia.
Um poema de lírica alegria
refreada,
a temer ser tardia
e ser antecipada

...

The opposing forces of cowardess and courage, of the fear of both arriving expectedly and too late, play into an ambivalence which opens the door to the world's beauty and opportunities for prosperity for the poetic subject.  The former seems more clear-cut, since one can imagine in concrete terms the dichotomy the opposition engenders. The latter, on the other hand, requires a certain pre-existing knowledge of the self in order that its significance contribute to the reader's understanding of the poem's true message. This awareness of fear, and of its illogical, although entirely explicable, existence, offers the poetic subject and reader a nuanced and fulfilling resolution to the conflict the various elements of the poem seem superficially to nurture into a place of doubt and self-loathing. They do not respond to a need, but hint at one.

With this, I wish you a good evening and a restful end to the summer. Have a great night / Tenham uma boa noite / que paséis unas buenas noches.

When you realize you've put something off for too long it begins to gnaw at you. Part of your mind keeps on it until you can't shake it anymore. Then you realize you need to do something about it. So I thought I would share something quick so you know I haven't forgotten about you, and in doing so let you know that I'm back.

Literary themes and the real life they reflect can intersect with readers in concrete and overt ways, and in particular, when they engender a necessary, if not postergated, reaction. Take the following poem by the late Vasco Graça Moura, for example:

soneto do amor e da morte:

quando eu morrer murmura esta canção
que escrevo para ti. quando eu morrer
fica junto de mim, não queiras ver
as aves pardas do anoitecer
a revoar na minha solidão.

quando eu morrer segura a minha mão,
põe os olhos nos meus se puder ser,
se inda neles a luz esmorecer,
e diz do nosso amor como se não

tivesse de acabar, sempre a doer,
sempre a doer de tanta perfeição
que ao deixar de bater-me o coração
fique por nós o teu inda a bater,
quando eu morrer segura a minha mão.

("Antologia dos Sessenta Anos")

At first I found it fascinating that the poet would break up the verses by sub-theme, rather than by the traditional Petrarchan sonnet format of 4-4-3-3. Perhaps it has more in relation with the poetic subject's desire to transmit his message; in doing so the author helps this voice to override a formal demand for the more pressing one of relaying important instructions to the listener. Thematically, death in this poem, in this case the poetic subject's own future passing, occurs not in a vein of shame or in a realization of the self's vanishing, but in a movement into passing toward the object of the poem. What I mean is this: the poetic subject does not attempt to fight nor does he call out to "not go quietly into that good night." Rather, his knowledge of the inevitable happens concomitantly with the awareness that the other person will continue on, giving a part of his own life a place to reside. This ontological perpetuity makes for a comforting feeling when faced with the end of the body. Indeed, our evolving notion of self-worth may  find solace in such a message.

Today marks a month since my daughter has surpassed the age I had attained when my father died. When I look at her and see the innocence and playfulness on her face, I feel fortunate that she had not needed to take my hand in the way that Moura's poetic object took that of the subject's; rather, when she takes my hand it is to cross the street or enjoy a stroll together, or just to see "a mão tão grande do papá". The times we enjoy are not of endings, but of continuing to walk side-by-side for all the years we won't have to miss.

I've put off letting these words into my own mind for too long. Tonight turned out to be a good moment to share them. For those of you in the US, I wish you a happy Fourth of July weekend. For everyone else, espero que tenham um excelente fim-de-semana / espero que paséis un buen fin de semana.

It is impressive what a little distraction can do. I meant to return to this blog the second week of May. Now, here we are, June 23rd, and only now do I get around to some more 11pm blogging.

Referencing distraction, and in fact gratuitously repeating the word, makes little difference. Like a rainstorm falling at just the right angle to make itself look gratuitous, my own approach this evening bears almost no resemblance to what I may have meant to write when I sat down.

The act of teaching was the thing that kept me from this. I do not mean in-class teaching, that would be too easy and painfully exaggerated. No, I mean the other kind, that which comes only to the forefront when someone close to me needs something.

In this case, the persons in question are my wife and daughter. The former, having recently returned to her studies after around twenty years away from them, needs more than anything a lot of support and an ear to listen. She also needed someone to help reorganize the home office space and move various large, oak tables for a garage sale that ended in a lot of donated tables. The latter just needs to be asked lots of questions, reminded of how "forte e capaz" she is, and of course tickled with a dizzying frequency. Both, like me, are busy-bodies, always needing some sort of project to keep the mind active.

Instructing 18-in-class hours per week this summer has borne itself into a rather exhausting prospect, one which has left me drained and on many an evening and with very little creativity left over. Yet (and in the spirit of keeping you distracted while I get away with teaching something) I have still been able to write a few poems such as this one:

Old Sugar:

By the time the sofa

Was in place we realized

That the walls needed a

Fresh coat of white

Where the brick had

Been lain, crevasses

Between them with grey

Mortar, mold and bright

Reflections we’d

Dreamt of back in

2006 when we thought

In a year we’d buy easy

A dozen drywall slats

To cover up the brick,

Now that we haven’t

Done even that nor I

Had thought a couch

Would end up in the

Office where I could

Possibly nap or write

Hopeless to stop. Now

While everyone sleeps

The place has realized

Its fragile and balmy night.

25 / V / 2014, midnight 

It actually is not such a bad set of verses (if I do say so myself), referring mostly to what I had meant to say in the paragraphs above. It also encompasses the essence of true teaching (again, not instruction or facilitation, that's for my university students). To whom we may assign the title of "professor" in this case is still up for grabs. In which direction your spirit may wish to wane this evening is as well. 

Tonight's entry is very short. Really, I just mean to wish every mother a Happy Mother's Day.

We tend to look at a day like today as one of celebration and remembrance of the woman who either gave birth to us, or adopted us, the one who held us when we hurt and made us feel tall when nothing else seemed to. She took us by the hand and led us to ourselves, moving only as fast as we, their children, could go.

There is another piece of Mother's Day that no hallmark card wants to explore; that of pain, and then forgiveness. At some point in our lives we begin to see our parents through the lens of our own adulthood, one to which they had at least some part in leading us (as I said, by the hand). We lose our innocent adoration of them and start to look critically at all of the bits of us that we don't usually share, the memories of their human subjectivity and fallibility that we cannot want to accept. Nor can we grasp at it, as it resides only in a past told through our subconscious whose face we see in terms of its imperfection and what we like to qualify as their outdatedness. In effect, we do not want to live with the side-effects of being someone else's children; as such, we strike out at it. This becomes even more acute and defensible as our parents age, becoming more rigidly the people they were, or changing into people with whom our affinity may not be as apparent.

I won't get into details about why this occurs here, at least not in my own case. It should only suffice to say that the idea of forgiveness becomes paramount when we move through, then past, this phase of our adulthood. Yet, the forgiveness goes both ways; we must forgive them, and we must forgive ourselves for the guilt of having felt this way in the first place. When Dickinson says "the heart asks pleasure first / and then, excuse from pain" she is not just speaking of the love we all assume; she speaks of any love, any time when we adore, then challenge, then hurt, then beg forgiveness. In this vein, when we move through all of the motions and emotions of days like today, we need to make sure we can live with the past, the present, and the most hopeful future of who we are and who they are to us.

So, in that spirit, Happy Mother's Day; may you love, forgive, and treasure what your hearts asks and what their's have given to you. Good night / boa noite / buenas noches.