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June 26, 2006
Childhood Nostalgia
Tough times, the late 70's and early 80's in Portugal. But my parents have always spoiled me. Still do.
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Never understood this Barbie thing. My Sindy Ballerina was the cutest.
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The Fonz action figure with moving thumbs. Can't believe I thought Henry Winkler was a hunk. And I loved watching Happy Days. What was I thinking?? (it could be worse, I could find Richie Cunningham cute - but I didn't)
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I could spend hours making Mickey catch the rolling eggs. A bit numbing though.
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Great success with friends and family. An italian cult object, a Mupi Super 8 projector. I had Disney tapes. Fun!
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And my ZX Spectrum, of course. But I've written a whole post about it. I miss my Spectrum so much. I miss BASIC. 16Kb were more than enough. So odd.
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June 23, 2006
"I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity?" --Correspondence, Horace Walpole
"The kaleidoscope (...) has always fascinated me as a metaphor for life: how a seemingly slight incident can alter the course of one's destiny, just as an almost imperceptible shift in the angle of the lens changes the composition to form an entirely new pattern". --"The Cairo House", Samia Serageldin via J Ryder.
"Some dreamed of a new alphabet, a new language of symbols through which they could formulate and exchange their new intellectual experiences." -- "The Glass Bead Game", Hermann Hesse
"If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons, writes Bokonon, that person may be a member of your karass." --"Cat's Cradle", Kurt Vonnegut
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June 21, 2006
Gerês
Will someone please cut the top off that damned tree? It's ruining the view from Pousada de S.Bento.
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June 20, 2006
Bacchanalia
I don't think I ever used my blog to advertise anything (maybe a bookshop or two and my dentist :-) but I finally found a "product" I can sponsor with the greatest conviction.
A rainy evening in Porto. A crooked street near the the river Douro waterfront, in Miragaia. I called in advance to book a table and on the other side was someone who was not just booking tables but was trying to chat with me, addressing me by my name and asking if I knew how the restaurant worked. I dismissively said yes, believing it was one more of these places mushrooming all around offering a "menu degustation". How I was wrong.
I was surprised to find a tiny restaurant. The host introduced himself and asked for our names. From then on, a very presonal treatmet: "my good friend Claudia, please have a sip of this honeydew melon juice". On the table sat beakers bearing a greenish liquid. The lamp looked also like a beaker. Later I found that this was really a laboratory. Sensory experiments.
The host, Mario, brought chilled white wine and grapes "to dress the table". We were invited to taste the wine before and after having a grape. To feel the nuances between sweet and sour. We tasted different types of olive oil, we were given quizzes - which olive oil was used in the confection of this dish?, we were incited to moist the tips of our fingers with olive oil and flower of salt and suck them like kids. Mario, our host, is also the resident DJ; a cool, lounge music was playing. A popular party outside brought some new sounds and, while we waited for our next course, Mario invited us to take our white port glasses outside and dance. An unusual combination of tastes and smells were successively presented. He sprayed balsamic vinegar on my ice cream and you know what? It was delicious.
A series of the most carefully selected wines and tasty dishes - while we played with luminous gadgets - were accompanied by Mario's bright dissertations on smell, touch and taste.
A feast for the senses and a great experience. That is what I call service. And I'm not even talking about the food...
When we left, I almost felt like I just had dinner over at a good friend's place.
*****
À mesa com Bacchus
Rua de Miragaia, 127
4050-387 Porto
Tel: 222 000 896
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June 18, 2006
Summer Interior, Edward Hopper
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June 10, 2006
So cute
Google is commemorating Portugal Day with us.
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I'm....
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random summer cheesy euro-disc silliness
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June 07, 2006
Sometimes memories come up unexpectedly, triggered by this Lisboa heat that glues to the skin, softens the movements and turns the act of remembering into a whole body experience. A remembrance of summers past, of joyful hours with friends or little pleasures. Portraits, glimpses of moments.
Prosciutto and cantaloupe melon at Sant'Andrea in Amalfi. A hot August in which each dinner was crowned by an intoxicating shot of limoncello. Andrea Pansa's delizia de limone pastries in a cove by the warm, green Mediterranean sea.
Escargots and red wine out in the terrace of Café Serpente after an evening concert in the cathedral. Feeling a child again, laughing and learning a mysterious foreign language. A labyrinth. A moleskine.
Mushroom and goat cheese tapas in La Latina. Too much Ribera del Duero and a long walk under a full moon, from Puerta de Toledo to Puerta de Atocha. I may have talked about going to Africa and saving the children.
Sitting in a clawfoot tub, dipped in hot sulfurous water. Raining outside, the cold air in the cheeks and the creek running wild, pretending to be bigger than it is. Pancakes and maple syrup. Naked bodies.
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June 05, 2006
XXX, NSFW, shocking content ahead, read this only if you're above 18, etc.
I found out that James Joyce was a coprophiliac through Javier Marías' entertaining little book "Written Lives". The idea of defying the authority of someone by means of ridicule is a dishonest one. But it's so much fun. I personally have a very mean strategy for the very few situations in which I find someone intimidating: if it's a man I picture him wearing nothing but socks and shoes and if it's a woman I imagine her brushing her teeth, drooling toothpaste all over her chin, looking like a dog with rabies. Works every time.
No one is intimidating as soon as you get to know them better.
Time Magazine, Coprophiliac of the year
I was googling for Joyce's letters to Nora Barnacle in order to see for myself if Marías' diagnosis wasn't the fruit of his own dislike of the man - which he bluntly states in the prologue.
"My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or to fling you down under me on that soft belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shame of your upturned dress and white girlish
drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair."
"Have I shocked you by the dirty things I wrote to you? You think perhaps that my love is a filthy thing. It is, darling, at some moments. I dream of you in filthy poses sometimes. I imagine things so very dirty that I will not write them until I see how you write yourself. The smallest things give me a great cockstand - a whorish movement of your mouth, a little brown stain on the seat of your white drawers, a sudden dirty word spluttered out by your wet lips, a sudden immodest noise made by you behind and then a bad smell slowly curling up out of your backside. "
And lots more here.
This is perhaps one of the weirdest things I have ever read. The letters are at times beautiful, poetic, erotic, romantic and simultaneously...yucky (to me, at least....a big apology to all the coprophiliacs reading this). I find this insanely funny. I suppose he meant it to be private...tough luck. You're dead, buddy.
(I warned you)
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