A Room of One's Own

Signing Out...RIP, Steve Jobs!

2011-10-06T02:06:00.000-05:00

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life; don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

- Steve Jobs

Something to ponder about: “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.” Steve Jobs

Son (republished)

2011-10-03T00:00:00.001-05:00

You have my heart and my respect, my son.
I have seen you grow from "petal to oak", and I am confident that wherever you go you will do it with dignity and heart.

We are a long way from those mornings of searching for dinosaurs at the sound of classical music on the way to the babysitter. Last week, when I was sick and couldn't drive, you were the one who picked me up from work and cheered me up all the way home.
I love the new dynamic of our "mother-son" dates-that constant mutual sense of protection felt when we listen, open up, and support each other.

You are a man, and yet the mother in me will always see you as the kid who drank hot chocolate through a straw,

the one who balanced leaning towers of soft ice cream with the dexterity of a juggler,

the charmer of little (and big) girls' hearts
always ready for a hug,
and the comedian in full-time: with perfect timing and punch lines, strange accents and hilarious body language, always the clown
with props and funny faces,
and whose persistent begging even convinced dad to make a U-turn and drive for miles just so you had a photo in front of the post office of what you kept calling "the coolest town in Jersey".

For me, you will always be the kid who never missed a Steve Irwin's show, and the wonderful heart who cried when Irwin died and who wore a shirt in his memory to school for more than a week. Without washing!
I love how your body of a man sleeps like a kid,and how you feel protective of our family.

I am SO proud of you!

Stained Glass

2011-01-28T06:17:00.003-05:00

"My souls (characters) are conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul. And I have added a little evolutionary history by making the weaker steal and repeat the words of the stronger, and by making the characters borrow ideas or "suggestions" from one another."
~ Johan August Strinderg(author's foreword to Miss Julie, in Six Plays of Strindberg, 1955.)

We are a sort of stained glass.

Pieces of life and learning assembled over time and attached to bodies like wings.

We fit snugly into the space for which we were meant, resistant to wind and rain, supporting our own weight, and withstanding time.

We are simultaneously fragile and strong.

We are opacity and transparency.

An architecture of self and others.

Meant to be shared.

To fulfill the purpose for which we were created -To shine.

Isabel Augusto

Sunday Delicacy

2011-01-09T20:54:00.001-05:00

Ice frosting over a chocolate of a landscape...

Pedro Boaventura -Oil Paintings

2011-01-07T23:45:00.000-05:00

It is always a pleasure to share the work of wonderful new artists, especially if they are Portuguese like you and went to the same high school :)

For more of his interesting paintings please visit

Pedro Boaventura's Virtual Art Gallery

Pedro Boaventura's Facebook Page

Enjoy!

Sharing Some Portuguese Talent: Digital Media Art

2011-01-07T23:11:00.001-05:00

For more, please visit Pedro Boaventura's Virtual Art Gallery

Pedro Boaventura's Facebook Page

An Old Letter for the New Year

2011-01-02T11:13:00.000-05:00

Two years ago a received a lesson in the art of living. That Christmas, I folded a copy of it in four, placed in handmade felt pouches, and shared it with the following letter addressed to my friends. It was William’s gift to me. It still is. To all of us.

Whitehouse Station, December 12,2008

“William’s Desk”

We are the second family to live in this old house. The first time we visited the place, there were still books forgotten on the shelves, clothes hanging in the closets, personal items here and there, old bills and last year’s calendars, and several picture frames documenting important moments of the previous owners’ lives, but the day we moved in everything was gone except the large tiger maple wood desk, where I now sit writing in between glances of nature outside the five windows of this small library.

The enthusiasm and industry (and sometimes sheer despair for the series of never ending projects) with which we have tackled renovations have been punctuated by doses of nostalgia triggered by thoughts of how quickly we go from building a home, raising children and letting them fly, to the irreversible process of growing old and dying. But even though William and Clara died in 2006 and early 2008, respectively, this space still remembers them, and the house, no matter how many coats of paint, will always have layers of their history. I do not wish to erase their presence and replace it with ours. I rather honor their absence by appreciating and respecting the job they started, and by loving the land and the blessings of each room and the landscape outside our windows.

I have questioned myself often about who they were, what did they think, where they came from, how did they feel about this piece of land and the old trees that shade it, the deer that cross the property, and the black-capped chickadees, sparrows, blue jays, cardinals, and tufted titmice that have breakfast on our back porch. And as always, I am a firm believer that when we open ourselves to possibility things will find us, neighbors will reach out and share bits of information, and most importantly-the house will gradually reveal their presence to us.

On this note, we have been given our first gift the week we moved here. I was cleaning the bookshelves, my mother was polishing the desk and lining its drawers, and we were wondering about William and Clara’s life, and how we wished to know more than just their names. I had just finished saying (more to the house and its previous occupants than to my mother or myself) - “I hope they know, that I’ll take good care of their space and will continue what they started”-when my mom raised her eyes from her task and handed me two letters she had just found taped to a pull-out writing board overlooked by whoever had cleaned William’s desk.

My gift to you is the gift William left me taped to that writing board. Not only did he reveal himself and answered some of my questions in one of the letter, but he has also brought me a message in the art of living, and a warning about not waiting until 1996, the date he retired at the wiser age of 70, to follow through with plans we should execute every single day of our lives.

May you, this holiday season and every day of your lives,

“Pay attention!!”

Isabel

Jai Guru Deva

2010-12-31T10:14:00.000-05:00

"Across The Universe"
The Beatles

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass they slip away across the universe.
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai guru deva om.

Nothing's gonna change my world,

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
and call me on and on across the universe.
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box,
They stumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.
Jai guru deva om.

Nothing's gonna change my world,

Sounds of laughter shades of love are ringing through my open mind,
Inciting and inviting me.
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe.
Jai guru deva om.

Nothing's gonna change my worldJai guru deva

2011 Wishes for All of US

2010-12-31T09:42:00.013-05:00

Live with abandonment

Love wholeheartedly

Be yourself

Happy New Year and THANK YOU for your gift of Friendship!

The Portal

2010-12-30T07:14:00.000-05:00

The headlights broke the dark
as I,
skin against seat
hand on the steering wheel,
approach the bridge like I always do
letting the body follow
the contour of the asphalt
the incline of the hill
passing the one lane bridge
like threading a needle
squeezing myself to the other side
hopeful of all the sewing
it is yet to be done

Isabel Augusto

As We Prepare to Sing the New Year...

2010-12-28T08:26:00.000-05:00

We write the music

In sheets of sky and bird notes

We - a single sound

or part of a chorus

Always - earth songs.

Isabel Augusto

The Caligraphy of Nature

2010-12-28T08:16:00.002-05:00

Christmas in the Heart

2010-12-26T19:20:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a wonderful time!

A Bundle of Heartstrings

2010-12-22T09:05:00.001-05:00

I'm a Tom Sawyer
with the heart on a stick
over the shoulder

This barefoot of a heart
exploring the road, the holidays,
with as much childhood
as I can fit in these adult days

Isabel Augusto

Jumping the Fence

2010-12-17T08:23:00.002-05:00

"Oh now release
And let her out into the seamless world…”
-“The Magician & the Dryad,” C.S. Lewis

On the long extension of grass where the cattle rests,

the fence shows up like a hiccup

in the normal breathing of the land.

Every morning I see the cows gathering at its edge

and wonder: if they're there

for the protection of the barrier

or attracted to the forbidden side?

Tomorrow, they'll be there again.

Tomorrow, I'll ask myself the same question.

Tomorrow, and the next day,

and the next.

There are no answers,

other than the warning of the barbed wire,

and my liking for jumping fences.

Isabel Augusto

Gifts for All Year Round

2010-12-16T10:48:00.000-05:00

The spirit of the season is in the light we reflect and share with each other.

An open heart is the door...

Isabel Augusto

The Sky Is Almost Winter...

2010-12-13T21:23:00.000-05:00

Every morning I have been admiring the delicate india ink drawings of bare branches claiming ownership of the greys closest to the crust.
The sky is such a complementing canvas...

Music of the Cold

2010-12-12T11:53:00.000-05:00

Brittle cold
a kind of grey that measures you
for scarves and gloves
a winter coat

and you talk like an indian fire
in puffs of smoke
and messages in the air

while the branches
like batons of winter orchestras
listen to what you say
and write symphonies of silence

Isabel Augusto

Listening Together

2010-12-11T08:44:00.001-05:00

"Keeping Quiet"
Pablo Neruda, Extravagaria

For once on the face of the earth let's not speak in any language
Let's stop for one second and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines.
We would all be together in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales
And the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire,
Victory with no survivors
Would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers
in the shade doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused with total inactivity,
Life is what it is about.
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single minded about keeping our lives moving,
And for once could do nothing,
Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never
understanding ourselves
And of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

This is why I am a Neruda girl...

Pieces of Conversation, Pieces of Heart

2010-12-09T10:46:00.001-05:00

"Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished."

Michael Strassfeld

For many years, our Christmas tree had been decorated with the kids' art, ornaments collected from their baby days, and everything else they created in school or at home for fun.

But when we moved to this new "old" house two years ago, we collectively decided it was time for new traditions, new memories, and so their art is now displayed in a basket under the tree, right next to the basket with the Meaningful Christmas Cards of Years Past.

Sometime during the holidays, we sit together and read the cards, tell stories about the ornaments, laugh at silly things, and allow memories and love to completely fill the room.

Now, the Christmas tree became an organic one.

The ornaments become gifts each visitor takes with him or her after they spend sometime here.

I make them of old linen and vintage pieces, bits of lace, mother of pearl buttons, and old keys. I cross stitch or embroider words and hugs and kisses, and give new life to old things.

The pleasure is in the giving. Freely.

The pleasure is in knowing that nothing is lost.

It all becomes heart and the possibility of a smile.

Back to The Spirit

2010-12-08T10:20:00.077-05:00

“My own dog—gone commercial. I can’t stand it.”
–Charlie Brown, "A Charlie Brown Christmas"

Thinking about my childhood always leaves me with a tender smile of gratitude for what we experienced as a family, even in hard times.

Life was so much simpler then, or maybe we just tend to complicate it nowadays.

We clutter it with so much stuff, that the spirit is sometimes left out.

We complain (myself included) of the loss of Christmas spirit to the commercialization of the holidays, of too little time for so many things we "must" do, of traffic jam and long lines at the mall, of cutting trees and damaging the environment, of eating too much and feeling guilty for the extra pounds.
We complain from Thanksgiving to Christmas; we're exhausted from Christmas to New Year's; and by January 1st there we are with our long "To Do" lists in mind, pretending this will be the year when everything will be tackled.

We live at such a fast pace, always busy trying to get “somewhere”, that we forget to enjoy the way there.
So, maybe the holiday season is that perfect time for us to stop as a family, breathe, look back with gratitude, and look forward with a renewed outlook on life.

On that note, I am sharing something we started as a family when my kids were a little younger, and that turned out to be not only a lot of fun but an eye opener as to how much we have to be thankful for.
In addition to our customary Christmas tree, we had the idea of an “(A)live Christmas Tree”, which we would take turns “decorating’ with “virtual life ornaments”.

It all started in the car during a long hour of Christmas shopping traffic.
At first, it was hard to find "ornaments", but once we put our minds to the task, it was almost contagious the way we started finding thoughts, things, people, and moments that had made our life so much richer.

The “decorations” on our (A)live Christmas Tree included (drum roll):

* Ric’s teddy bear collection
* Ric’s back of the neck
* Cat’s chubby little feet
* the smell of their skin
* Ric’s scar from his “mountain climbing’ adventures of our kitchen counters
* memories of the day he met his sister for the first time
* daddy's singing abilities on a Labor Day Weekend trip Upstate New York
* Cat’s white and pink bear
* the funny games Ric and I played in the car on the way to the babysitter searching for dinosaurs at the sound of classical music
* Cat’s favorite baby dress and hair brush
* a trip to a local bank’s drive in (too embarrassing on my part to share...eheheh)
* hot cider at our favorite Christmas tree farm every year
* the smell of our house
* a broken set of Christmas lights (motive of many family laughs)
* apples
* trips in the woods to gather moss for my old nativity set (a family tradition since i was about 5)
* Cat’s favorite poem by Shel Silvestein form the book Falling Up
* Ric’s Berenstain Bears old book collection
* my first grade green leather bookbag (made by my grandfather)
* eating roasted chestnuts in the streets of Lisbon
* my father's version of the ballet Giselle in our living room during Christmas (I must have been 9 or 10)
* the stories of "Crazy Joe" (Ze Tontinho) I invented for my brother at bedtime

...and I could go on and on.

Even the kids were surprised at how much they remembered with gratitude, and we are still adding to the tree as we speak...

Happy Holidays, everyone!

That Which Runs in Me - IV ( revisited )

2010-12-07T08:37:00.000-05:00

Photo by Crikiricis

"There was a choice of three bridges. On one of them a woman sold roasted chestnuts. It was warm, standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the chestnuts were warm afterward in your pocket."

"In Another Country" in
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

The streets of Lisbon were never cold when there were chestnuts.
I could never resist that sweetness in the air, the comforting scent of roasted chestnuts meeting me at the corner, warm, unforgettable, and during that time of the year I usually walked with coins tightly held in my left hand, worth a dozen chestnuts.

“Chestnuts! Chestnuts! Look at the chestnuts. Toasty and tasty!” announced the street vendors in a singing voice, standing by their motorized tricycles parked in strategic spots- the subway entrance, a busy intersection, and of course, right on my path to school.

"At the edge of Autumn,
at the corner of Winter
The chestnut man is eternal."

"The Chestnut Man" from As Palavras das Cantigas, Ary dos Santos

The best days for a breakfast of chestnuts were those cold ones when your breath matched the spirals of smoke rising from the round iron canisters of the street vendors, and you walked with your neck buried in the collar of your winter coat, nose following the scented path, preparing for the magic.

I placed the coins in the vendor’s hands, he would reach for the pile of hot chestnuts cooling in a burlap covered basket, and a dozen beauties would soon find their way to a paper cone made from the white pages of an old telephone book.
He handed them to me with fingers the color of ashes, and it would take only a few seconds before my fingers matched his.
Like so many other pedestrains, I quickly disappeared caressing the paper cone, transferring the heat, salt, and ashes from the chestnuts to my hands, peeling the shells and skin and holding on to the magic of the nuts, golden ,with a hint of burnt, soft and heaven in my mouth.

Photo by LUA

I ate mine on the subway or walking up the avenue to school, distracting myself with the names and addresses on those telephone book pages, and on rainy days, I peeled and nibbled slowly, making the dozen last. The city, the wind, and rain-all forgotten. There was just me and the chestnuts, pockets full of shells, and ash traces on the wool coat.

Then, whenever I bit on a rotten and bitter one, I remember the disappointing feeling of thinking how I then only had 11 instead of 12 chestnuts to enjoy. It spoiled the magic. But now, I think that one chestnut increased the value of those 11 other ones. Made them more sacred and precious.

It was the same with my last chestnut. I always held to it a little longer, a certain tenderness of youth in my action, making the comfort last, creating the memories.
And later in those evenings, I would still be holding on to the salty taste of those shells on my fingers...

Back to the Bones (an old post revisited)

2010-12-06T07:44:00.000-05:00

" 'There is nothing new under the sun' says the proverb. I think the meaning is that there are just so many truths or laws of life and no matter how far we may think we have advanced we cannot go beyond those laws. Howver complex a structure we build of living we must come back to those truths and so we find we have traveled in a circle"

"A Bouquet of Wild Flowers" from A Little House Sampler, Laura Ingalls Wilder

There is a song of trees outside.
A chorus of leaves.
Some rustling refrains.

The acorns take rides with the wind

and play slow taps of warning

against the old brick of the patio.

The trees are shedding.

The black walnut -practically naked,

if not for the stubborn nuts in solid husk coats

bouncing on fragile stems

defying the wind.

The house is cold.
The toes are frozen.

The body calls for hibernation.

I collect leaves, a basket of nature,

handfuls of pinecones,

and it all gathers now

under a teepee of fire

and crackling wood.

Fire talks to the body,
and toes defrost

It is the call of the bones
the murmurs of the ashes

that reel me back in.

Full circle.

Isabel Augusto

Flights with Patrick Desmet

2010-12-04T10:17:00.000-05:00

The mind is such a vast canvas...

Stillness

2010-12-04T08:27:00.000-05:00

I do not fight the natural silences.

Even when the tea is cold

and my writing appears to have died

I can still turn to the moment

and find words

I no longer confuse these silences with the unnatural ones,

those that stifle

keep us in the dark

I gather momentum

suspended as a dew drop at the edge of the world

ready to quench something

someone

myself

to find a voice again

Isabel Augusto

Reading Tillie Olsen's Silences always makes me a better listener.

Anselm Kiefer's "Next Year in Jerusalem" Exhibit

2010-12-03T08:53:00.003-05:00

Gagosian Gallery, NY
Nov. 6 - Dec. 18, 2010

The more I stared at this dress
the more I saw Emily Dickinson
all in white and glass...

A solemn thing--it was--I said--
A woman--white--to be--
And wear--if God should count me fit--
Her blameless mystery--

A halllowed thing--to drop a life
Into the purple well--
Too plummetless--that it return--
Eternity--until--

I pondered how the bliss would look--
And would it feel as big--
When I could take it in my hand--
As hovering--seen--through fog--

And then--the size of this "small" life--
The Sages--call it small--
Swelled--like Horizons--in my vest--
And I sneered--softly--"small"!

(J271) Emily Dickinson

Rain!

2010-12-01T09:07:00.003-05:00

"A steady, wind driven rain composes music for the psyche. It not only nurtures and renews, it consecrates and sanctifies. It whispers in secret languages about the primordial essence of things."

Wild Ducks Flying Backward, Tom Robbins

The earth is perspiring after a good rain.
A film of mist everywhere
Gradually dissipating
Given us back the road...

The Pleasure Exists Where We Want to Find It..

2010-11-30T08:25:00.004-05:00

The cold clings to the windows
The day is all a grey warning of Winter
Ahhhh...how it all feels like flight and blue skies!

Isabel Augusto

My Mondays Start Simple

2010-11-22T06:30:00.004-05:00

A solemn thing--it was--I said--
A woman--white--to be--
And wear--if God should count me fit--
Her blameless mystery--
Emily Dickinson, (J,271)

feathers-rested
body-posed
wings-tucked in
and in the air - the possibility of flight

A "lemon tea with honey" kind of day...

2010-11-21T08:46:00.006-05:00

My throat feels like this today...all stone and roughness...
Swallowing is a never-ending walk ...full of sharp corners and dry spots...

The Slow Advance of the Cold...

2010-11-20T07:54:00.002-05:00

It tiptoes in
dressed in morning frost
all sugar over the fallen leaves
materialized in the puffs of breath
I take when I meet the morning outside

But these yellows don't give up that easily
they cling to the sun inside them
and insist in brightening
the day

Isabel Augusto

Fall Writes Itself on the Asphalt...

2010-11-18T09:23:00.000-05:00

There is a Phoenix In All of Us...

2010-11-18T07:45:00.002-05:00

No obstacles exist without a reason.
They are there to make us jump over them...or at least to makes us create our own ladders back to life again...

May Your Path Always be Colored...

2010-11-17T10:03:00.001-05:00

Bread and Butter and Pepper-Box

2010-09-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

"A steady, wind driven rain composes music for the psyche. It not only nurtures and renews, it consecrates and sanctifies. It whispers in secret languages about the primordial essence of things."

Wild Ducks Flying Backward, Tom Robbins

The earth is prespiring after a good rain.

There is a film of mist everywhere...gradually dissipating...given us back the road...slowly enough so that I can live the magic of the moment at the sound of Loreena Mckennitt's Visit on my Ipod and recall similar mornings of my youth.

When you hear the splash
Of the water drops that fall
Into the stone bowl
You will feel that all the dust
Of your mind is washed away.
"Though I Sweep and Sweep" , Sen no Rikyu

I always preferred my rainy mornings with warm bread and butter.

At My Grandparents,Tras-os-Montes, Portugal

The open window pulled in scents of burning wood and rain. I would wake up to the medley of drizzle on terracotta. The fields were quenched; the rooftop mosses swelled to a rich green; and here and there chimneys puffed slow spirals of smoke.
Those mornings never left me:early mornings when only the sound of rain was heard through the village, and I sat by the window mesmerized by the fog visiting us from the valley, suspending us as in a dream.

I remember taking in all the first movements of the day- the sounds of an early farmer and the grinding sound of metal wheels on cobblestones, images of his rough hands guiding horse and cart, greased jacket shielding his back, breath lazy as chimneys’ smoke; early birds exercising wings on top of ruined chimneys, a stubborn rooster who never failed to wake up the village and stop me from dreaming.

I always felt the pull of the land and the elements. Grandma always scolded me for walking in the rain, but there I was with a warm and crisp slice of bread in hand, licking all the melting butter, rediscovering the town reflected in the water puddles, and behaving like the child I was, destroying all those perfect images with my feet and making them live forever in my heart.

As the rain balances itself everywhere, drop by drop, I travel back in time...missing the breakfasts, grandma's presence...the peace of blessed moments...

"To trace the history of a river, or a raindrop, as John Muir would have done, is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both we constantly seek and stumble on divinity, which, like the cornice feeding the lake and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself over and over again."
“River History”-Gretel Ehrlich, from Sisters of the Earth-Lorraine Anderson

..and I am truly thankful for the way this rain baptizes the mind.

"One of those gentle, straight-down rainy days, when the rain begins by spotting the cultivated fields as if shaken from a pepper-box."
"June 7, 1851" -The Writings of Henry David Thoreau

Who Am I?

2010-08-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

In "The Sound of Paper", Julia Cameron says-"I do better being here when I try to be here consciously".
This made me think how "being here consciously" also means learning to be here anonymously.
Anonymity allows me freedom to discard the "known" and question who am I.

I am not a learned song.
Nor am I a sheet of music.
I am the silence in between notes and also my own sound added to the music of each day.

Nurture the Child

2010-08-21T07:57:00.003-05:00

The Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Ros and "Hoppipolla" :)

Bloom and Transform

2010-08-12T06:51:00.005-05:00

“Ask not for an easy life...ask for the strength to face the elements, to weather the storms; to be the might for the right and the weak, to be the voice for those who cannot speak, to see one's dreams to fruition with dignity, integrity, and grace.”

~Giac Nguyen

Sometimes, the wind throws you like a seed into hard places to bloom, but nature rescues, gives helping hands of sun and rain, a little piece of sky, and seeds press their way against a speck of soil and find ways to do more than survive.

They bloom and transform.

Life Mariner

2010-08-06T06:37:00.002-05:00

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving... we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it... but we must sail and not drift nor lie at anchor.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr

Learning by Example

2010-07-20T08:19:00.002-05:00

“Nature, by example, shows us anything worthwhile comes over time. Anything worthwhile grows methodically, building on a strong foundation. Develop a willingness to carry on despite roadblocks.”
Jaren L. Davis

2010-07-15T06:49:00.002-05:00

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."
Aldous Huxley, "Texts and Pretexts", 1932

Reevaluating...

2010-06-14T06:18:00.004-05:00

"When the student is ready, the teacher appears." ~ Tao saying

I have been away reevaluating the first half of my year, the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity, the fragility of life and how fleeing everything is...
How we should take hold of the moments we have with those we love...and live them to the fullest.
Sometimes, we clutter what is clear...complicate what is simple...crowd life with wants and needs that have nothing to do with what we really NEED.
But when the student is ready....the teacher appears.
All we need is to find the inner courage to face life in the eyes...and be ourselves.

Sweet Moments Between a Girl and Her Brother

2010-05-22T18:31:00.010-05:00

I flew to Portugal last week to spend some time with my brother.
His friends and I planned a party to celebrate their friendship and his recovery, and when he arrived...I was there.

We hugged for over 10 minutes, everyone and everything fading in the backgroud. Just a brother and his sister holding on to each other, finally reunited!

Why more words, when pictures say exactly what the heart felt...

Enjoying Life...

2010-05-22T11:29:00.003-05:00

I've been in Portugal for the past week enjoying my brother.
So much to tell...so much to share...

Thank you all for the energy and prayers you always sent his way.

He is back to enjoying life!

Motherhood

2010-05-09T06:00:00.006-05:00

"if there are any heavens my mother will(all

by herself)

have

one."

e.e. cummings

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there, and that includes those who are mothers even without being one.

Motherhood is in the difference we make in any child's life.

Happy Mother's Day to my Beautiful and Loving Mae!

Everyday Special

2010-05-04T08:03:00.005-05:00

The Dandelion's pallid Tube
Astonishes the Grass -
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas -
The tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower -
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is o'er –

Emily Dickinson, J1519

On the way back from taking Cat to school, I noticed that our grass was invaded by a village of dandelions.

They stood like tall necks above the grass, elegant and fragile. Their pom poms following the way of the wind, greeting me at the edge of the road to remind me that the grass is as much theirs as it is ours.

How can we call these weeds, when they give us so much more.

I finally came to realize that they do not interrupt the grass... they complement it.

And here is an old post with an excerpt from a book worth reading...

Freeing the Dandelions

Make sure you enjoy the ones in your life :)

Today is Mother's Day in Portugal!

2010-05-02T10:39:00.005-05:00

These flowers are for you, mom. My Mother Courage.

This poem is for all of you, bright and courageous women out there, mothers and grandmothers, women that shape us into the comunity we are.
It is also for you, the ones that don't have children but shape the children of the world. Today is your day. You are all mothers.

Book Round Robin Book Exchange Project

And today, I celebrate all these women who have cared for me, directly or indirectly, and live in everything I do.

You are all a piece of my heart. Happy Mother's Day!

Being in the Interval and Celebrating the "-" Dash

2010-04-30T08:34:00.003-05:00

Wise words from a relative of a good friend.
Words that I now have on a frame on top of my desk as a thanking prayer for the day.

Today, while searching for an inspirational gift for another friend of mine, I found this video.

May you all remember to celebrate the "-" dash you have between the day you were born and the day you will leave.

Seat Choice ( for my brother)

2010-04-29T07:20:00.002-05:00

...because what I want to tell you is all in this old post. I love you!

Mana

"Oh for a seat in some poetic nook, Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook!"

Politics and Poetics, James Henry Leigh Hunt

Yesterday had a hint of summer, enough for us to eat outside and have sips of hot coffee and nibbles of warm pumpkin pie on the back porch.

The light of the afternoon beckoned to a stroll, and the chairs were soon left empty.

The floor around our trees is now covered in pine cones, acorns and nuts, an occasional pear. The chestnut tree is heavy, almost ready to give birth, and the wind keeps playing its tricks on her branches, bringing down premature nests of chestnuts.

I saw them there yesterday, laying on the ground untouched, such beautiful shades of golden greens that my fingers forgot and reached out, tricked by a misleading softness that soon prickled my fingers.

I sat under the chestnut and among those fruit porcupines while the pain dissipated like a fog that lifts slowly, and gradually my eyes focused on the play of the mature light on the chestnut leaves, branches of translucent green and plenty of veins, a slight breeze, and I wished I had my camera there to capture it all for you. Oh and I had so many words, but no pen.

And I found myself restless, so impatient with my prickled fingers and my needs, that all I could do was let go, let go of the words and the images and allow myself the contentment of being, not wanting, or wishing, or seeking. Just being.

It was the perfect seat choice. I could have been seating on the hardest rock or a bed of nails that it wouldn't have mattered.

Even rough paths hide sparkling brooks, and what we make of our seats creates our poetic nooks.

"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society." Walden-Chapter 6, Henry David Thoreau

In Color

2010-04-26T09:12:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, I go to bed with the moon...

and wake up with wings!

The Medicine

2010-04-22T08:21:00.004-05:00

"If I find a green meadow splashed with daisies and sit down beside a clear-running brook, I have found medicine. It soothes my hurts as well as when I sat in my mother’s lap in infancy, because the Earth really is my mother, and the green meadow is her lap."

~Deepak Chopra

When I read this quote I thought...there are all sorts of meadows out there, not all have flowers, or running brooks, some are covered with thorns, pointy rocks that hurt your feet...the willingness is all.

The willingness to see the mother and the medicine.

As Marcel Proust once wrote "we are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it in full."

Today, after my brother's accident, I know that well.

For another take on pain and medicine , check out this old post:

ILLUSIONS

Awakening the Buddha Within

2010-04-18T14:03:00.003-05:00

Taking the Sunday to do some Spring cleaning...to my mind.
Sometimes, you do have to sit back and look at your life as a stranger peaking in as if through an open window, learning yourself all over again.

I feel transformed by my brother's ordeal.
Not in a bad way, far from that. I have a renewed appreciation for everything and most of all a much clearer awareness of the importance of acting from within, out of love and concern for all beings.

And I am thankful and blessed by all the experiences, the good and not so good, as they have allowed me, the seeker, to purify my attitude and thoughts, and to develop a working loving-kindness, empathy, and compassion toward all creatures.

If I Was a Bird...II

2010-04-17T07:32:00.001-05:00

"Flying Over the Waves of the Land" , Photography by Americo Meira

I wish I could fly like the stork over the cork oaks, one with the shape of the land. My beautiful country!

But eyes can turn to wings when the heart commands, and I find my way to Meira's place and take off.

4/17/10 -Missing my country and my family...but smiling because my brother is alive and well. I am there in spirit...hugging him :)

At the Sound of Yo-Yo Ma- Bach: Cello Suite N.1

2010-04-11T16:48:00.006-05:00

Today, I could finally work at peace in my garden.
I tended the soil and smiled at the pace of Spring and the vibrant flowers that so well match the speed of my dear brother's recovery.

In Prayer IV

2010-04-10T23:50:00.000-05:00

In Prayer III

2010-04-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

In Prayer II

2010-04-10T23:43:00.002-05:00

In Prayer I

2010-04-10T23:42:00.000-05:00

Altar II

2010-04-10T23:40:00.000-05:00

Altar I

2010-04-10T23:36:00.001-05:00

Threshold II

2010-04-10T23:35:00.000-05:00

Threshold I

2010-04-10T23:32:00.002-05:00

Peacefulness II

2010-04-10T23:30:00.000-05:00

Peacefulness I

2010-04-10T23:21:00.002-05:00

My Boy is Back to Flying

2010-04-06T07:48:00.002-05:00

I always BELIEVED this day would come, and it arrived - thanks to all of you, your collective prayers and positive energy.

I believe in MIRACLES- my darling brother returns home today.

My dear, sweet, handsame kindhearted man, forever my boy, is HOME to stay.

It is a HAPPY day!

Thank you everyone!!!!

Thinking...

2010-03-30T08:01:00.005-05:00

I've been back to the US for over a week now.

It has been so hard to be apart from you dear brother and our parents when all I want is to be near- protecting and helping you, but I have found comfort in this connection of ours that erases distance.

I have found comfort in the drives to and from the office accompanied by sunrises and sunsets, or rain spells at the sound of Rachmaninoff's Concerto N. 2, Op. 18. My moments of prayer and meditation.

Moments when what I feel, it would have been the same had I been at a church as the S. Domingos in Lisbon or under a dome of sky and clouds, in the presence of invigorating sunrises or resting sunsets or of saints and souls, birds and pure energy.

These are the moments of my day when I connect to the faith and become a vessel to the energy of the universe.
I absorb it all with an open spirit and give myself a moment to smile at the sorrows which make me appreciate the blessings, and at the blessings which I genuinely wish for everyone. Moments not of taking but of giving of self.

And the other day, even under a persistent rain, I could still feel the blessing of the water on the windshield, opening me, touching my heart, and I added to all that beautiful flood of energy my deep love and tenderness and sent everything back out your way.

I can still feel your warm forehead against my lips, your smell as I kissed you while you slept, and all that gives me strength.

You give me strength. You, with your love for life, your perseverance to overcome these hard times.

You, with your head full of projects and your heart so full of family and friends.

And more than ever, I am thankful for this faith that doesn't abandon and give comfort, a faith of all religions, as we are after all not that different from one another.

We all want the same.

Each Day a Small Victory

2010-03-28T19:22:00.003-05:00

Soon, you'll be flying my darling...

We are all waiting for you :)

We want to thank you ALL for your comments and emails of hope and healing prayers.

I have no doubt that you, my dear friends, were and are instrumental in my brother's miraculous recovery.

This difficult time in our lives has taught me many lessons. One is that we always have to believe. The other, that doctors fix but love heals.

You are all in our hearts.

My Hero

2010-03-24T15:24:00.002-05:00

I never doubted he is a SURVIVOR!
His sense of humor I love so much...is BACK!

I Always Believed!

2010-03-24T15:07:00.002-05:00

Against all odds, you are showing us that miracles exist.

Yesterday, you held the spoon and ate by your own hand.

You still can't talk, but you can murmur, and yesterday you asked when will you be starting physical therapy.
And today, you even wrote and practiced your signature in a notebook your friends gave you.

I might not be physically there anymore, but my spirit was in the room, caressing your life force and telling you I always believed.

You are my hero, my darling brother!!!!!

The Door Has Opened...

2010-03-20T17:58:00.004-05:00

"A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity."
Charles Ives

We have yet a long way to go, but you are here my brother, my hero.

You hold my hand and nod that you see me, you know me. You love me.

I love you back.

Deeply.

I kiss your feet and you move. I ask if I tickled you and you give me the okay sign with your right thumb.

You had vegetable soup and chocolate mousse for the first time today. No more feeding tubes for you, my love.

You tried to lift mom's hand to your lips and kiss it, and you held strong to dad's fingers.

Tomorrow, we will bring you music.

Music of the heart.

The Healing Power of Love

2010-03-18T05:44:00.004-05:00

"Perhaps everything terrible is in its being something that needs our love."
Rainer Maria Rilke

Through the power of love and deep faith, we are starting to see the light.

My brother's recovery, although progressing extremely slowly, is definitely on its way thanks to all of your prayers and positive energy.

I am forever thankful to everyone.

Love heals!

Faith and Hope- Abundant

2010-03-11T19:03:00.003-05:00

To all of you who have written and join us in prayer and positive energy for my brother Ricardo, I just want to send my deepest gratitude and a heartfelt thank you.

Ricardo is still in a coma. The good news are that at least his condition did not get worst.

I believe. He is a survivor.

Small But Important Steps

2010-03-07T17:28:00.003-05:00

One more day in my dear brother´s recovery.

With the help of all of your prayers Ricardo´s head is less swollen as well as both his eyes. His long and curly eyelashes are coming back to normal at least in his left eye.

He is still in a coma and the severity of his brain injury remains,but we have witnessed slight pulse changes in response to my kisses on his left shoulder or my father´s voice.

Somehow we feel he is listening or at least aware of our presence and touch.
Small steps but important ones.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and positive thoughts.
I have continued and renewed faith in the power of human solidarity.

He is my HERO and so are all of YOU!

Prayer Request

2010-03-05T18:56:00.003-05:00

Dear Friends,

My brother Ricardo is in a coma and on life support after a serious automobile accident that left him with a serious brain injury and multiple factures.
Having experienced up close the power of collective prayer, I ask that you all keep him in yours and send positive energy his way.

He is my hero, a true survivor, and a special man well known for the light and friendship he always casts on those he becomes in contact with.

May that same light now come back home to illuminate him.

Keep him in your prayers. Please.

The sister that ADORES him!

Dressed in Layers

2010-01-27T08:56:00.005-05:00

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

Anais Nin

I have always been fascinated with layers. Full skirts of secrets, delicate fabrics piled up like soft snow over each other, a soft movement over the skin.

Layers should not come with weight, there should always be plenty of pockets of air, spaces where to hide and discover, a lightness that frees instead of imposing.

That is my type of skirt-the one I want my mind dressed of, with plenty of room for the cells, a nest to my constellations...

Food for the Soul

2010-01-13T04:08:00.037-05:00

"Bread and water—these are the things nature requires. For such things no man is too poor, and whosoever can limit his desire to them alone can rival Jupiter for happiness." -
Seneca

A couple of weeks ago my parents and I went for breakfast and a morning walk to the picturesque Town of Clinton, nestled in the hills of Hunterdon County and home to the historic Red Mill.

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”
The Yosemite, John Muir

We did some window shopping despite the cold, laughed at the wobbly pigeons ice skating at the river's edge, listened to melodies of running water, and warmed ourselves with steamy cider, hot coffee, and the most yummy warm Apple Pumpkin bread at the Clinton Coffee Company.

"If civilization, as is generally accepted, was born of the first settled riverbank farms, bread made from harvested grains may well have been its first, and most profound, culinary expression."
Michael Batterbury

It is not everyday that I can share these walks with my parents, as they live in Portugal and only come to visit a couple of times of year, so Clinton "tasted" even better this time around. And to add to the comfort of food, great conversation, and their presence, I was especially delighted to discover a charming bakery on Leigh Street.

" Bread deals with living things, with giving life, with growth, with the seed, the grain that nurtures. It's not coincidence that we say bread is the staff of life. "
Lionel Poilâne, French baker

When I saw this plate on the window, my heart raced straight back home to the Alentejo's wheat fields , to the songs of the women at harvest time, the sound of crickets in the golden afternoons, men and women laboring on the promise of bread.

"I am going to learn to make bread tomorrow. So you may imagine me with my sleeves rolled up mixing Flour, Milk, Saleratus &c with a deal of grace. I advise you if you don’t know how to make the staff of life to learn with dispatch.”
September 26, 1845- Letter to Abiah Root, Emily Dickinson

And as we walked in, there they were-the Portuguese rolls of my youth, those I purchased every morning from the bakery down the street from our house in Lisbon and ate at breakfast with mountains of butter and cafe-au-lait.

With a colorful cloth bag in one hand and a few coins in the other, I would stand in line for what it seemed ages until it was my turn to ask for the usual half-dozen rolls. "Dark and crispy", I said.

I would run back home feeling the rolls still warm under the fabric, the scent on the verge of inebriating, invading the elevator and making my stomach rumble on the long, long ride to our 4th floor apartment.

"The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight..." The Art of Eating, M.F.K. Fisher

The smell of fresh bread and Rise Bakery 's inviting atmosphere were hard to resist. We didn't even try, and we returned home with all sorts of loaves and of course...the last of the Portuguese rolls.

“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.”Robert Browing

I am a bread lover. Oh yes! None of that sliced bread that tastes like rubber and disappears in one's mouth without leaving a story or a memory to tell, for me. Oh no. I want thick slices, full of texture and songs of golden fields and fruits of the earth.

That is-food for the soul!

We have learned to see in bread an instrument of community between men—the flavour of bread shared has no equal.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

And this is a tour of the place where you can find this kind of nourishment :

"[Breadbaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells...there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread."
M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating,

Sharing a Gift of Listening

2010-01-11T10:31:00.011-05:00

Last week, I posted here the photo of a small figurine my mother gifted to me at Christmas time.
It's the small statue of a woman, praying or maybe meditating, with wings made of wire and a tree carved as the front of her plain white dress, and I simply love it.
It translates exactly how I feel in relation and as part of the world.

This past year I have documented my listening with thoughts and plenty of photos, and for Christmas I shared what moves me with those dear to my heart.

The self-published book "Listening to the Pulse" is a collection of some of those thoughts and photos, and of plenty of quotes from thinkers and writers I admire. I wanted my kids to have it as a piece of who I am,

and also to raise their own awareness (even though they are not strangers to my constant ramblings and likings). This book is a mother's contribution to their education- my appeal to their art of listening.

Reassessing the Language

2010-01-06T06:56:00.006-05:00

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
"Little Gidding" from Four Quartets , T. S. Eliot

January is my time of reassessment.

I weight actions and words, body language, dreams, and goals.

I have long stopped fooling myself into believing that everything will be accomplished. Instead, I allow myself to reenter the atmosphere softly.

I sit at my desk and examine the things I have surrounded myself with, the books, the words, the people, the interests of the year past, bits of paper and pieces of crafts, collections of nature and color schemes, and I examine how they have changed and enriched my life.

This is the time I reassess the voice, the contribution I wish to make to both my immediate and the extended world, and I face the new beginning never losing sight it will build itself up on the teachings of the past one.

Some of the books are flying off back to their shelves. Others are making new landings on top of my desk. There are new words brewing, new thoughts taking shape.

I am expanded by the willingness in the air.

A Gift From the Old to the New Year

2009-12-31T07:57:00.004-05:00

"The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows."

George William Curtis

It is snowing this morning.
A soft steady fall of white flurries caresses the land, almost as if the Old Year planned on creating a blank canvas for the New One.

Happy New Year to you all, my friends.

xox

Isabel

My Christmas Baby

2009-12-30T08:08:00.001-05:00

I always admired my Cat's independence, even as we said goodbye on the first day of prek-3 and she insisted on going in by herself.
I was all tears, she was all wings.
I secretly hoped she missed me, yet I smiled as she never looked back.
She has spunk, my girl!

I always admired her grace and strength.

Children and animals are drawn to her playfullness and inner light, sensing her motherly instincts and the easiness of her personality.

She doubts herself often, yet she's always determined and willing to try anything new. I encourage these flights with the utmost admiration.

Her smile melts me. He heart expands mine.

I am proud of the friendship we have developed, the way we can be serious and silly with each other, and talk about everything.She is now fourteen and radiant. My best friend. My girl.
Happy Birthday darling!

From My Family to Yours

2009-12-24T19:26:00.003-05:00

My heartfelt wishes of a warm holiday season and a healthy New Year.

This year at our new "old" place, we have decorated our tree with handmade hearts to celebrate new friendships as well as to cherish old ones. I felt a bit uneasy about not using the kids decorations collected throughout the years, but we are now displaying those in a basket, along with the usual basket filled with our favorite past holiday greeting cards.

We are all loving how these baskets are turning into great pieces of conversation. And we still keep up with our (A)live Christmas Tree tradition.

I wish you all a rich family time.

xoxo

Isabel

Round Robin Book Exchange

2009-12-12T02:22:00.018-05:00

After September's Squam Lake Workshop adventure in New Hampshire, EB, Karen, Leslie and I decided to extend the fun and celebrate our spiritual bond with a Round Robin Book Exchange.

I have to confess I felt a bit lost at first, never having participated in a RR before, and October ended still empty of ideas.
Then November arrived, and while going through the contents of an old jewelry box, I found a broken vintage family brooch that immediately determined the course of my Round Robin creation.I started by making an envelope bag in a complimentary green velvet and embellished it with lace from an old handkerchief and mother of pearl buttons.
I even attempted some coptic binding techniques learned from the coptic master herself-dear Eb.

It hurt to cut linen pieces from one of aunt Carolina's old corsets, but considering the corset had been tucked in a drawer for over twenty years, the prospect of celebrating it as part of a meaningful book became rather comforting. Almost liberating.

And here is the end result-not perfect but unique, all heart.

I sent this card out with the book (yes, it is a picture of me on the cover)to explain all about the theme I chose - "The Women in Us"-a celebration of women, past and present, who made a difference in our future.By taking this journey collectively, I hope we all end up learning more about ourselves and each other in the process.

Lucille Clifton's poem "Daughters" fit perfectly with my theme

as did photos of aunt Carolina,

of my mother and her mother ,

statements of innocence and possibility

A celebration of all these "mother courage". My pillars.

"Nothing is lost, nothing is created, all is transformed"

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

Women whose stories I look forward to share.

Alice in the Rain

2009-12-11T15:13:00.001-05:00

"Mad Hatter: No wonder you're late. Why, this watch is exactly two days slow.”
Chapter 7

The rain added to the magic of the Bergdorf Goodman holiday windows, and rain drops reflected light and images in a dreamlike fashion.

I think that Susanna and I could be heard down the block....Oooooo......Ahhhhh...look at this window...look at that flamingo....

Bergdorf Goodman, New Yok City

“It’s that old-world quality—it’s that opulent, madcap thing we do,” he says. “It’s layer upon layer of incident and antiques and things happening … but there’s also a kind of deliberate non-commercial quality.”

David Hoey -Bergdorf's Senior Director of Visual Presentation

The Bergdorf team must have worked endless hours to achieve these creations. For us, it all started with this magical Alice and the possibility awaiting down the Rabbit's hole...

"Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said: `one can't believe impossible things.' `I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Chapter V

“The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. `Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. `Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'”
Chapter XII
"The sun was shining on the sea,

Shining with all his might:

He did his very best to make

The billows smooth and bright—

And this was odd, because it was

The middle of the night."

"The Walrus and the Carpenter", Through the Looking Glass- Chapter IV

"So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality"

Chapter XII

"The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" Chapter VII

" 'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone. 'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.' "

Chapter VI

There were so many details we could have stayed there all day, but this was one of my favorites- the birds of our mind surfacing in between the pages of a book, ready to take flight...

"‘When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' `The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.' `The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.' "

Chapter 6

Can you believe that all of this Magic is made out of paper- the books and desk, a cat, the flamingo, lizards, and turtles. Such careful planning and detail!

"Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing:"

Chapter VIII

“Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. `I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.' `You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take more than nothing.'”

Chapter VII
" 'Curiouser and curiouser!' "

Chapter II

And look at this bird's eye view of the ultimate tea party.

" Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. "

Chapter XII

Who cares if we were soaked and wet...our mind was definitely warm and alive.

Now you must check out Susanna's beautiful photos of the Bergdorf windows. She creates magic with her camera. Yes, she does.

Living the Magic...

2009-12-08T07:18:00.000-05:00

"Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished."

Michael Strassfeld

There is something magical about New York city this time of year, that even the rain and sleet accompanying us on Saturday could not stop us from dreaming.

We had tremendous fun, my friend Susanna and I, noses glued to the decorated windows, eyes taking it all in.

We walked miles and snapped a thousand photos, visited a million places, attended a fabulous holiday party at Elizabeth's and and after experiencing the wonder of the season we have no doubts that we Believe.

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love."

My Study Fire, Hamilton Wright Mabie

Please, don't forget to check out Susanna's blog for her coverage of the Macy's Christmas windows. She did a wonderful job at sharing the magic we experienced.

And there are more photos to come...

Moments with Aunt Carolina

2009-11-18T12:51:00.022-05:00

The yellow trolley stopped right in front of aunt Carolina’s house on Duque De Avila Avenue and off we went for over half an hour of traveling, me with the face glued to the window and aunt C. keeping to her thoughts.

Because of the long ride there and back, visits to Mata de Benfica only happened once or twice a month, weather permitting, and would invariably include packing not just the usual afternoon snacks but also a light lunch.

It was not a comfortable ride, between the abrupt and countless stops and the hard seats, and the hills and narrow streets that made it seem like a roller coaster ride, but the view, the people who came in and out, and the overheard conversations made it rather interesting.

This is where wonder was born...

Ours was the last stop. We walked hand in hand a few more steps, past the heavy gates of the park, and the city was no more.

Before us was a steep hill flanked by two sinuous roads leading to the children’s playground at the top, and among the gigantic eucalyptus, cypress, pine and oak trees, cedar and a few acacias there were also stone steps and dirt trails one could climb to the top, but aunt Carolina preferred the blacktop path with the occasional park benches where she could rest.

Whenever she sat, she would hand me a plastic bag and I was in charge of collecting eucalyptus leaves the shape of roaster tail feathers and eucalyptus gum nuts for aunt to burn with brown sugar back at home. Blackcaps, goldfinches, and peacocks abound. I ran after the last and admired their iridescent plumage. I remember it all…the squirrels, the doves, the armies of pigeons and a few confrontational ducks, my fingers sticky from the gum nuts, the delicious scent of eucalyptus all over my hands.

I hurried my pace near the top already attracted to the sounds of swings in motion and screaming kids. “Wait for me”, said Aunt C., but I was already like a bird with unclipped wings.

“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality: the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.”

Identity and the Life Cycle, Erik Erikson

I played to exhaustion, covering every inch of that park in sandals full of sand, toes the color of dirt. It was there I learned about friendship and fight, belonging and being excluded, testing one’s courage and overcoming scraped knees. The adults would stand on the sidelines and we experienced in our own terms. Aunts and mothers and nannies would sit and talk, glance and smile, stop a more serious quarrel, open tupperwares and glass bottles and wait until we came running between rides to take a bite or drink in a hurry.
There, I graduated to the tallest swings, the ones that took you way above the tree lines. I was all legs and courage. Wind and pride.

And every time I left the park, I walked a little taller.

I have aunt Carolina to thank for all these lessons in the art of growing up.
Aunt C. who was born November 17 and never left me.

For more adventures with my aunt please read:

Easter Pleasures with Aunt Carolina

Places That Keep on Giving

Cemetery Visits

All the photos of the park are by Alexandra, who grew up in the area and enjoyed that same playground.
She has a wonderful portuguese blog about the area called "Retalhos of Benfica"

Battle Turned into Wing

2009-11-17T08:39:00.007-05:00

“In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."

"Ingersoll Oration at his Brother's Grave"

-Lectures of Coll. Robert Green Ingersoll, vol I

For my high school friend Joao Marchante and his angel father.

Organically Connected

2009-11-15T07:32:00.002-05:00

"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."

As You Like It (Act 2 Scene 1)~William Shakespeare

Cat and I went for a walk the other day to capture the last colors of Fall before the wind and hurricane Ida took them away.

She laughs when I sudenly stop, always wondering why...and more often than not, I surprise her with some rusty nails on a post. Yet she smiles.

But how can I explain this attraction for things that are just there, seemingly without purpose, or for those so alive and that so effortlessly stitch themselves to the heart?
For me, there is wholesomeness in the connection to the organic and to the silent life of things, to the fabric of being, all color or the fading of it, the unknown story.

"In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? (...)"

"Song for Autumn" - New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2 -Mary Oliver

Undressed trees are my favorite, with their clusters of seeds and twisted branches, bark full of wrinkles, ash tones that pick up the muted blues of the earth.

They connect me to the bare shapes, the essence. They strip the noise and leave us to the pulse.

And I bring them home. The nails and wood. The shapes. The thoughts of them.

“The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.”

"Nature" - The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am as revitalized by the flaming reds of the trees and the stormy sky as by the simplicity of the houses and their working chimneys, the planted grain, the unexpected take off of the birds from the middle of the field.

We stop to admire the horses. Cat gets closer with the camera and I cheer her, "Go on. Don't be afraid." .

And child and human meet half way. Without distrust. They think she's there to feed them. She thinks them adorable. I smile full with that moment's peaceful coexistence.

"Dawn and sunset are the times when Nature herself is unstable and in flux. The nocturnal world and the daytime world are meeting, and for a brief time coexisting. It's not a neat hard cut, but a blurred, irregular dissolve. These moments are the seams in existence through which we can get a glimpse of the deeper, fundamentally random, chance workings of a system in which we are only a small, insignificant player."

- Bill Viola

The end of the day is full of stillness, here. The farms rest, and I think of my favorite Copeland as I embrace the different rythms of the day.

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." - Lao Tzu

The light is warm, lazy, aiming towards rest. We follow suit.

We always return home with bits and treasures. A hint of grass, a root, some seeds. A bit of farm and grain. The yellow of the sun.

These are the days that call to warmth,
to scents of burning wood and baking ovens,

apple pies and hot cider, cinnamon and clover filling the air.

Cozy throws. A touch of sky.

"Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself."

Walden (Chapter V: Solitude)- Henry David Thoreau

This is the road that leads to our place. Now it is all ochre and burnt umber, copper and rust, sienna, but last week it was full of golden yellows, rich greens, branches heavy with orange.

It is a road to drive slowly and with the window down, listening to nature while the body follows the contour of the landscape. One almost wishes that the yellow lines of the asphalt would go on forever.

It is here I collect my leaves, right before they become a carpet under our feet...

Then I display them here, to make the season last.

“I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God”

“Nature” –The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reflections of nature on the nearby creek are yet another world to explore, the water almost like a portal to the unseen magic-the angles we often miss.

The creek is a traveling vessel.

And so is the railroad track. Their contemplation offers a sense of distance that brings one as much outside oneself

as back to the core.

Gradually, Fall makes its exit and we're left to the bare wood. Times of seed.

Our mantle is now a showcase of pale earth tones, straw and cream, delicate branches, and the warmth of candles.
"The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves."

Willem de Kooning

The fields are as much coming to the end of a cycle as to a new beginning, and the nest I found empty on the ground under my forsythia awaits now full of stones on top of my blue table - a reminder of the promise of renewal that will revist after Winter.

Susanna's Wings

2009-11-11T07:11:00.020-05:00

She like a restless bird,

Would spread her wings, her power to be unfurl'd,

And let her songs be loudly heard,
And dart from world to world.

George Moses Horton, Myself-George M. Horton

I met Susanna Gordon for the first time last year, when we got together for a picnic and a celebration of friendship.

It was one of those blind friendships that starts with a leap of faith and an affinity of the heart. We had never seen each other before, having only shared words and thoughts over the internet, and yet when I saw Susanna in her brown straw hat and her easy smile I instantly knew we would be friends.

Conversation was effortless. We shared Starbucks and our lives, missed exits and smiled, turned around and really tried hard to follow directions without getting lost in conversation again.

Susanna is easy going, interested, and full of heart.
Her Winged Messengers Project attests to her giving nature, and she sends these wings out into the world with quiet messages that softly knock at your mind and engage the heart.

She gave me a pair the next time we saw each other. I had asked her to write "saudade" in them, and a few week after my daughter Cat took the pair of wings to Portugal and photographed them by the river Tagus ,with the Vasco da Gama bridge in the background.

"Saudade" is being Portuguese.
Every time I look at this photo of Susanna's Wings with my favorite river in the background I am instantly connected to my heritage.

My offspring on Lisbon soil, "saudade" held up to her face, the bridge named after one of our most famous Portuguese explorers in the background - it all makes sense to me.

It connects me to the heart of being Portuguese, and I have Susanna to thank for this beautiful memory.

Later last Summer, when a group of us got together for a wonderful weekend of creativity and to celebrate Susanna's birthday, I gave her a framed photo of her wings in Portugal as a token of my friendship.

I wanted her to feel the magic of her wings, how far they're traveling, how far and deep they're touching.

And touching they DO.

More than what I even think Susanna imagined. And it makes me smile as I witness Susanna's Wings in the act of transforming and raising awareness, giving hope and revealing beauty and strength.

Just like they did for my maple tree and my friend Anna.

You ARE SPECIAL, my friend!

Wings turned into bridges- physical and spiritual ones.
Wings that connect us to others and ourselves.

27,000 Miles

The Kitchen Sink, Albert Goldbarth

These two asleep . . . so indrawn and compact,

like lavish origami animals returned

to slips of paper once again; and then

the paper once again become a string

of pith, a secret that the plant hums to itself . . . .

You see? — so often we envy the grandiose, the way

those small toy things of Leonardo’s want to be

the great, air-conquering and miles-eating

living wings

they’re modeled on. And the bird flight is

amazing: simultaneously strength,

escape, caprice: the Artic tern completes

its trip of nearly 27,000 miles every year;

a swan will frighten bears away

by angry aerial display of flapping wingspan.

But it isn’t all flight; they also

fold; and at night on the water or in the eaves

they package their bodies into their bodies,

smaller, and deeply

smaller yet: migrating a similar distance

in the opposite direction.

I hope you go and visit her- our Winged Messengers Queen. Our Queen for the Day!

Montage created by Shin

This Celebration was kindly organized by the Angie from Visually Oriented.

And here the creative women who joined in this celebration of gratitude for having Susanna and her Winged Messengers in our lives:

Towards Lightness

2009-11-10T06:20:00.002-05:00

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds.

Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being,

common to us all and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion,

let us fill our hearts with our own compassion—

towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be

the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility, with awareness of the existence of life,

and of the suffering that are going on around us,

let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and

on earth.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Behind heavy gates, I was instantly taken by the lightness of these white birds spiraling towards the light.

I felt a string from the heart to the moment, almost as if I too was suspended with open wings, the light above my head, the earth tones of the brick and moss glowing in the background.

The metal bars of the gate felt cold on my cheek as I lowered the face almost to the ground and angled my lens up on a reaching angle and tried to capture-----

-------that lightness of being.

Growing Younger

2009-10-18T17:10:00.008-05:00

"We may look old and wise to the outside world, but to each other, we are still in junior high." - Charlotte Gray

This is a special day. His day.

I woke up thinking of him, and I reached for the telephone like I do every year we have been apart and wished him a heartfelt-Happy Birthday, Ricardo!

Conversation between us flows easily. We are not only brother and sister. We are part son and part father, part daughter, part mother. And distance taught us not to spare words and feelings between us.

There is a quote in one of my notebooks that always reminds me of him:

" Gaiety that sweetens existence and makes it wholesome - a sense of humor, a zest of enjoyment - this is the accompaniment of courage which gives it a supreme value. "

He is all courage and heart. My source of smiles and laughter.

"To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. "

Clara Ortega in Cultural Diversity and Families , Bahira Sherif Trask

He is young at heart, and my kids love that about him.

This year, they spent a big part of the summer vacation with him at the beach house in the south of Portugal, and they returned to the States with my brother in their eyes.

I can see him there every time they smile and we talk about all the adventures they had together: the silly parties, the games and laughter, the nights sleeping at the beach around a fire, the picnics and places they visited. The long conversations they shared.

And I love how my kids are learning from him to "grow younger". With lightness in their hearts.

"Why not simply honor your parents, love your children, help your brothers and sisters, be faithful to your friends, care for your mate with devotion, complete your work cooperatively and joyfully, assume responsibility for problems, practice virtue without first demanding it of others, understand the highest truths yet retain an ordinary manner? That would be true clarity, true simplicity, true mastery."

The Hua Hu Ching, Lao Tzu

He is our source of inspiration and laughter. A kind and resilient spirit. A MAN.

Happy birthday, my brother. We love you!

How Could I Not

2009-10-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain."

The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, October 22, 1839.

People slowed down and looked at me.
Some smiled, others held a puzzled look of "what the heck is she doing???", and there were even a few who didn't look too keen on the way I parked my car with the blinkers on, halfway on the narrow countryside road and half on the shoulder, but I was too excited to care.

I was under a spell, a nature's rush, as I walked the four feet of carpet of leaves separating the asphalt from the magic.
I forgot I was dressed for the office, that my high heel shoes would end up full of mud, and that leaves and lower branches had just messed up my hair. All it mattered was that vision of loveliness, the way nature surprised me from one day to the other.

I went crazy with the camera in mushroom town, feeling half adult half child with thoughts ranging from botany and life to dreams of villages of little creatures, smurf-like, hiding from view.

Traffic had no hold over me yesterday. I didn't even care about the almost one hour it takes to get to my office every day. It has these blessings. "Mushrooms"
The Collected Poems, Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us
Stops us, betrays us
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves,we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.

Sweet Innocence

2009-10-02T11:06:00.003-05:00

(my son feeding the pigeons downtown Lisbon)
"As innocent as a new-laid egg."

Engaged, Act I - William S. Gilbert

My son called me this morning from the university just to share this sweet talk:

Mom, I can't stop smiling. I just witnessed the funniest, most adorable thing by the door of our childcare center.

There was this 3-year-old looking outside the window and yelling at the top of his lungs: "Teacher, teacher, look at the big bird. It's a big bird!"

All the other kids' attention was then on that side of the room, and the 3-year-old continued really excited: " It's a beagle. It's a beagle."

And then they all ran to the window and kept telling each other, " Yeah, it's a beagle. Ooo ahh, it's a beagle. Look....a beagle. A big beagle!"

From Bones to Ashes - to Life

2009-10-01T07:46:00.006-05:00

"A Bouquet of Wild Flowers" from A Little House Sampler, Laura Ingalls Wilder

They are starting to fall. The leaves.

The acorns play slow taps of warning on the grass, and the leaves are like a chorus of rustling refrains against the old brick of my patio.

Contorted and crinkled, rushing back and forth by a wind dance, twirling on command, stopping abruptly, and then jumping on the grass like tiny hiccups or a jumping rabbit.

Our trees are shedding. They're letting go of leaves and pinecones. The black walnut is almost naked, if not for the stubborn nuts in solid husk coats that cling and bounce on fragile stems.

The house was cold this morning. My toes were frozen and my body called for hibernation. But life has its way to make us bounce back into action, and so I got up and gathered handfuls of nature in a basket, brought them back into the house and piled them under a teepee of wood that now crackles invitingly by my feet.

Ashes that will me back to life. Full circle.

Touch, Intersect, and Reverberate

2009-09-28T07:45:00.002-05:00

“For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; (…) then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born.”

A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

How far we have come since Virginia Woolf wrote these words in 1929.

When I first started blogging I often pondered on how virtual blog rooms seemed almost like extensions of Woolf's vision, a sort of Dickinson's bedroom from which we observed, tested our voice, found the body, the expression, and most importantly shared ourselves with one another.

Today, I am amazed at how far these rooms have taken us not just as individual places where we reveal ourselves even to ourselves but as community places where through word and image we open and support each other in all sorts of spiritual and creative endeavors.

And here we are- magical circles of life that touch, intersect, and reverberate with a clearer message of openness, support, and community.

We are building bridges, making new friendships, getting reacquainted with the power of word and of writing, the healing and transformative quality of art, and reevaluating the essence of humanity.

Leaping from computer to real life interaction is not an easy task, but in my case the willingness of the spirit to give and to receive has made this transition rewarding beyond my expectations.

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. "

A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

The past two weeks have been some of the most fulfilling I've ever had as I experienced in the flesh what women are capable of accomplishing when they put their heads and hearts together. I returned home transformed, touched, and so appreciative of the gifts I was given-gifts of growth and of renewed understanding of the preciousness of every moment.

I have spent the most amazing seven days sharing life, laughter, and art by the shores of lake Champlain in Vermont with my dear friends and blog gals Elizabeth, Karen, and Leslie .
We collected nature in our pockets, walked a labyrinth and witnessed magical sunsets, played shadows like little girls, shared stories, words, lives, our hearts.

And then there was the road trip and our stay at Squam Art Workshops, in the beautiful setting of New Hampshire's Squam Lake.

SAW (Squam Art Workshops) is the creative vision of the inspiring Elizabeth MacCrellish, a biannual celebration of the artist in all of us, a place where kindred spirits from all parts of the world reacquaint themselves with the simplicity and beauty of nature and give freedom to their artistic sensibilities.

A place where possibility becomes bloom under the cheering sounds of souls equally grateful to yours.

"Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small."

“Modern Fiction” in The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf

I arrived there as one and left as many, blessed by everything, more in touch with myself and enriched by others. That IS the Power of SAW.

Squam's water conquered me with its mornings of lazy fog and satin lapping sounds. It primed me for creating, and I have given myself the room to explore.

When I walked into my dear friend Nina Bagley's jewelry class (Step Into the Story) I was an empty vessel, an open heart. Knowing nothing of technique or jewelry making. All hope and wonder.

"For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice."

A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

And somehow my hands created from the heart things I never imagined they could.

I created under the spell of those talented women, so full of chatter and laughter, a creative force of boxes and boxes of treasures and life keepsakes, real women, women I could have passed by on the street without ever finding out who they were, the treasures they harbored. But I didn't.

And I am happy I gave myself this time. The first of many to come.

"That perhaps is your task--to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist's way, but condensed and synthesized in the poet's way--that is what we look to you to do now."

Virginia Woolf Reader, Virginia Woolf

I am home now with the heart full with the dear friends with whom I travelled both physically and spiritually.

I am home and do not want to let go of the momentum, the openness, and the opportunity to touch others the way they touched me.

I am home. Smiling. Warm by those I met and the ones I am still to know.

Never so fully aware of the importance of touching and keeping in touch...

Connected by a Thousand Invisible Threads

2009-09-11T04:02:00.006-05:00

The High Line, NYC

August 2009

Eight years ago, I lived a river away from the city.
The towers were a fixture of my morning drives to the office, but until that morning I had never understood they were more than architecture, steel, glass.
On September 11, 2001, I finally realized they had been made of flesh, visions, and dreams, and in minutes all that possibility was lost.

I will never forget that morning and the days that followed. How we rallied and persevered. As one.

Why should it be different today?

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."

Henry Melvill

"Moonlight" and Inspiring Warriors

2009-09-10T08:50:00.006-05:00

"Moonlight" by Celeste Maia

Two days ago I received a "Moonlight" recognition from the beautiful soul and artist Celeste Maia. She created the above painting for the occasion and posted it on her blog Into The Moonlight with the following words:

"Moonlight in this case represents the glorious brain-sharpening, mood-enhancing experience one feels when reading or seeing something inspirational in other blogs. Something that sets the tone for the rest of your day, puts a smile on your face, stimulates your work, or makes you feels awesome about life. It is not often one feels wonderful. But some days, some blogs do just that."

I wanted to share this recognition with ALL of you, no exception, because you are all inspiring and touch me in every way, enriching my life in so many more ways than I can express.

You know who you are: my Sun Rooms at the right of the screen, and all the other ones who I keep in touch with by email and letters, a word, a touch.

Also, today I received a beautiful note from a blogger, a warrior, with a warrior nephew, in reply to a comment I made about their strength and beauty in the face of adversity, and in reply to a post I shared with her about immortality and my uncle who like her nephew was also diagnosed with a fatal lymphoma many years ago, she wrote:

"I always want people to talk about me when I die and I will talk about Sheldon."

So, I am here to tell her we are already talking:

With admiration, I am awarding a special "Moonlight" recognition to

Renee from Circling My Head, and to her nephew Sheldon.

September's Baccalaureate

2009-09-09T06:50:00.001-05:00

Photo of the Amherst Inn

Emily Dickinson's Poetry Marathon-Sept. 2007

September's Baccalaureate

A combination is Of Crickets -- Crows -- and Retrospects

And a dissembling Breeze

That hints without assuming --

An Innuendo sear

That makes the Heart put up its Fun

And turn Philosopher.

J1271, Emily Dickinson

Today was Cat's first day back to school. Usually, she walks alone to the corner of our property and waits for the bus. I stay by the window, and she always turns back and waves. And I wave back.

It is a moment just ours. A moment of simple body movements yet charged with precious care. Images that will last me until I am old and she no longer lives here. Things she will repeat with her own children. But today, she asked me to accompany her to the corner and we waited together. I guess we both needed that extra time beside each other.

I stayed by the corner long before she left, missing her, excited for her, feeling this prelude-to-fall breeze that enveloped and accompanied me up the old brick stairs to the back door.

This morning I am left with the sounds of the crickets and the cicadas. Two blue jays fighting by the birdbath. Five newcomers from the north flying in formation over our maple trees.

A steaming cup of tea inviting me into the house.

The Light is Changing

2009-09-01T08:31:00.005-05:00

The breezes taste
of apple peel.
The air is full
of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
burning brush,
new books, erasers,
chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
well-honeyed hum,
and Mother cuts
chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
with suds, the days
are polished with
a morning haze.

"September"- A Child's Calendar, John Updike

As I drove Cat to soccer practice this morning, I noticed that the light changed. There is a slanted glow to it. Soft over everything.

We might still be a couple of weeks away from official Autumn but the warm tones of the impending season are surely making their introduction. The greens have more yellow, the fields a touch of mustard, and today the tops of the trees bounced in slow motion, touched by a new cool breeze that truly awakened the skin.

I had to go back for a jacket, and as I put my arm through the sleeve and felt the warmth of the fabric on my back, I realized I am now officially on an Updike's September mode.

Pedro and Armindo - Part III

2009-08-31T05:30:00.006-05:00

When the day come for Unit 122 to return to Portugal, the commander on board of the ship carrying the troops still had not received any authorization to take Pedro to Portugal.
According to Armindo, one of the soldiers from Unit 122, they rallied and refused to go on board unless Pedro went with them, and faced with the problem of having to explain to the army why he was returning to Portugal without the whole Unit, the commander finally acquiesced.

Armindo always had a particular fondness for the boy. He played and took care of him many times, but as all stories go, life moves on, and when the soldiers returned to the main land, they went back to their homes, their lives, their families.

All except Pedro who was starting a new life, at a new home, with a new family. His own, hopefully still back in Africa, still somewhere by the edge of the Lukeia river.

(Armindo is the one holding the binoculars)

A year after his return, Armindo then married, went with his wife Maria back to the base in Santarem with the hope he could find Pedro's whereabouts, but no one seemed to know what happened to the boy.

A couple of years later, now a father, Armindo still tried one more time to locate Pedro, but when all failed, he went back to his life and buried this part of the past deep in his heart.

Mid April 2009

Every morning he would get his wife a cafe-au-lait from the Portuguese pastry shop in town. He would walk there, talk to the locals, have a coffee and read the news from his homeland, and then go back home with the wife's breakfast. But that morning everything was different.
The front page of the
Emigrante/Mundo Portugues Newspaper read:

"Pedro Lukeia de Santarem: the Child from Angola that the War Adopted."

His eyes filled up. The story too close to his heart.
And he walked back home still in tears. Trembling hands, trembling heart. The newspaper carefully folded under one arm -a treasure of answers after almost 70 years of his life.

Late April 2009

My mother-in-law called me early morning right after my father-in-law left the house to get her breakfast.
"I have something to ask of you, but I don't want your father-in-law to know. It's a surprise!", and then she told me about the article on the newspaper, the story I never heard before, and the newspaper full of answers and clues to Pedro's whereabouts that my father-in-law Armindo kept for almost a week on the top drawer of his bedside table, right next to his two only photos of Pedro and his memories of the war.

"Do you think you can get hold of the newspaper , and I don't know, maybe telephone the Portuguese Consulate, or someone who could give us any idea how to find Pedro? ", she asked me.
"He works not too far from where we used to live in Portugal! Can you believe it!"

She was so excited, and I was immediately committed to the task, but didn't want to give her false hopes. "Okay Maria, I'll try to see what I can find", I said.

For the next two weeks I was on a mission. Armed with the information that Pedro was working as a mechanical engineer for the city of Barreiro, I e-mailed everyone I could find at the city hall explaining who I was and asking for someone to put me in touch with Pedro.

When that failed, I e-mailed the writer of the newspaper article Antonio Freitas, and two days before my father-in-law's 70th birthday, I finally got an e-mail from Pedro himself.

I cried reading his words. We exchanged a few emails, and on May 10, the day of my father-in-law's birthday, at about the exact time I had planned with Pedro, we gave Armindo three gifts: a folder with the exchanged emails, a card with Pedro's address in Portugal, and our telephone handset artistically wrapped by my daughter Cat, and to which we taped Pedro's telephone number.
And in five minutes, we put an end to almost fifty years of waiting and wondering.

"Pedro? Oh my God, it's me Armindo. Your godfather!" he said with tears in his voice as he heard Pedro's voice again.

Pedro and Armindo - Part II

2009-08-30T09:45:00.009-05:00

“I was playing on the margins of the river where I used to fish with my family, when suddenly we were caught on a crossfire, all my family started running everywhere, and I tried to run, and I remember being in the middle of the tall grass listening to the whistling of the ammunition very close to my ears, and then the sun started rising, a big bright ball of fire, and then I saw these people, very pale, almost gelatinous skin, all dressed alike. This is all I remember. I had never seen white people before, and these images have stayed with me all these years.”

All the quotes are from an Interview with Pedro Lukeia de Santarem

O Emigrante/Mundo Portugues Newspaper-April 7, 2009 by Antonio Freitas

For many of the terrified soldiers who returned to camp after days of starvation and atrocities, the presence of little Pedro among them was “God sent”. Many had not seen their own children for almost two years, and all that pent-up paternal love found fulfillment in the rescued little boy.

Letters and aerograms flew with the news to girlfriends, wives, and families in Portugal. Pedro had now 150 parents in the 150 soldiers of Unit 122.

“I never went hungry when I lived with my parents in the jungle, we ate what we could find, I still remember my mom grinding seeds with a big mortar and pestle., and so the adaptation to the new food was hard. The rest was good, the soldiers were very good to me, they were my fathers and mothers, my brothers, and I quickly forgot my family who must have still been somewhere along the Lukeia river.”

The captain had suggested they handed Pedro to an institution, but the soldiers collectively insisted they would take care of him. According to one surviving soldier they unanimously told the captain they would take care of the child. Pedro was the best that could have happened to them. They felt responsible for him, and while playing and showering him with affection, time went by quicker.

“Pedro …was the name I told them. I am Pedro, my father is Miguel and my mother Mayete.”

“I am proud very proud of my name, chosen by one hundred and fifty godfathers.”

Since not many of the soldiers spoke the native language, they started to teach him Portuguese. Then came a time to give him a full name, and in group they all agreed to call him Pedro Lukeia de Santarem- Lukeia for the river near which they found him, and Santarem for the name of the Portuguese region from where the unit came from.

According to the old commander of the unit, they had a parrot that only said “bad” words, those words learned from being amongst the soldiers, but when it came to the kid, they were very careful so he wouldn't learn them.

They taught him to march, hold the guns, and even salute. “He was the most well cared and fed soldier we had, sometimes to the excess, and the doctor of the platoon had to come to his rescue many times as he was not used to such heavy foods as the chilly they served at the canteen. "

“one day I went on the food line three times, and I ate so many garbanzo beans with codfish that I felt I was going to die, but doctor Noronha saved me.”

“I stopped having a ‘color’, felt supported, and stopped missing my parents as much. I played with a tiny monkey, and rode the jeeps. I had a marvelous time, a second childhood, a happy childhood…”

The unit had now one more element, and the soldiers even made him a uniform.

“I was always with them, learned everything, they were like a mother and father, it was like having one hundred and fifty parents, everyone wanted to wash my clothes, they made me a bed in the dormitory, and I was “promoted” to higher ranks many times until the time come for me to leave to Portugal with them.”

As time to return home approached, the captain had to seriously consider Pedro’s future. He thought about taking him to the city of Luanda and placing Pedro in a religious institution for orphans since Pedro had been found lost from his parents, and to try to find his parents or family was then almost impossible.
The soldiers insisted in taking him back to Portugal with them. It was a very easy decision for those men. One other solution would be to take the child to their main headquarters in Santarem, and then to place him in a military school so he could study and get an education, but the captain was concerned that once in Lisbon, every soldier would go back to their families, and Pedro would be almost immediately made an orphan again.

Pedro’s trip to Portugal was then made conditional on someone volunteering to be his legal guardian, to give him an education, and even to adopt him.

Soldier Sa was from Vila Nova de Paiva, and after speaking and convincing his mother Angelina that Pedro was the perfect addition to the family, he talked to the captain and they immediately started to take care of all the paperwork and necessary authorizations for Pedro to become part of Sa’s family.

Angelina Sá, a school teacher, was the mother of four other children, all adults by then, and her calling to take care and teach children found in Pedro precious fulfillment.

By then, the news started to traveled quickly from the north to the south of Portugal:

“Pedro is coming with the rest of them.”