I told you I would

I'm not sure anyone is still around, maybe you've all escaped to far away exotic holidays...now, there's a thought, right?

Anyway, I'm back and I bring some photos with me.

To start with, the reason everyone goes to the Algarve on holidays. The beaches.

Usually the sea is calmer than how it's pictured here, but waves are better for photographs. Anyway, the water temperature was above 20 C which was refreshing enough but not too cold. The air temperature, on the other hand, was above 30 C every single day and in a couple of days reaching 37, 38. So the only thing to do was to head to the beach hoping it would be cooler there and in the meantime endure the heat in the streets melting your brain relentlessly.

When the temperatures allowed it, it was nice to stroll around during the day, though I strolled mostly at night this week. One late afternoon I managed to get to the castle in Tavira to get some photos. It was only a 5 minute walk from my house but it was a hard task with the heat.

This is the main church seen from inside the castle. The trees helped to freshen it up a bit.

Tavira is completely packed with churches (see that white and yellow one at the end?). I believe it was how the Christians tried to establish their religion in a place that was strongly influenced by the Moors. Brief historical information: Portugal was founded in 1143 but it was only in 1249 that the lands in the South were conquered from the Moors, the whole Algarve region in particular.

Inside the castle there is a really nice garden.

It smelled wonderful, I can tell you.

It seems Tavira was conquered from the Moors in 1249. In 1252 a Spanish King decided to conquer it for himself, claiming it was his. After a few harsh words (I imagine), the Kings settled an agreement that involved their children marrying and the distribution of the lands. Since there was a child from that marriage it was agreed that the whole Algarve region would be portuguese. God bless that child!!

It is not clear when the castle was built but it already existed in 1168, when the Moors were in battles against a traitor called Abdalá ibne Ubaide Alá - I couldn't make this up even if I tried.

Oh I miss these pretty little houses already.

As I mentioned before, strolling at night was more pleasant but you needed to stay close to the river and sometimes it was still too warm.

One time the river was almost empty and there was a heron hanging around.

In the Algarve or anywhere in Portugal, you have to have fish, particularly freshly grilled. Even if you don't like it, because you will like it. The only dinner when I didn't have fish was when I had this vegetarian pasta thing. The tomatoes smelled for miles. I had lots of great fruit, strawberries that really tasted like strawberries and that you didn't have to add sugar to, cherries, apricots, figs. Yum.

This was the view from my balcony, on a very stuffy day. See the castle and the churches?

This part of the fortification was really close-by.

And to finish it, a required sunset photo. Days are so long in June. Happy Summer!

I'll be right back

Yes, very caring of me to disappear for so long and then come back to say I'm disappearing again. I know. Hopefully when I come back I'll be a much better blogger.

(You know you've been away for too long when blogging feels strange).

ss - follow

I follow invisible threads of dreamy consistency, I watch the smoky lines jets left behind in the blue sky. I follow audacious routes circum-navigating the oceans and the simplest bus lines through the town. 

In my drowsiness the paths are unclear, seemingly complicated and trampling over any apparent logic. I follow the easy way out because there is no easy way in. I follow the tides without getting seaweed around my ankles. I follow the cycles like any other living being. I follow the paths that the archetypes tell of. I wasn't born a stalker, so I don't follow you.

What follows me? That's a different story. You follow me to my dreams and to my pillow seams. 

*lyrics are again from Smoke City's "It's Amazing". It's amazing that I evoked the same song in two different prompts, in two weeks in a row.

Follow more on Sunday Scribblings.

SS - language

The language that you speak torments me in my sleep*

I hate repeating myself (or do I?) and I know I've posted these lyrics before. But, you see, I'm obsessed about languages, as much as I'm obsessed about certain songs. And how could I help it? It's right in the first sentence -"or do I?" - shouldn't it be "or don't I?". To be honest, I don't know but it's these crazy language hiccups that make things interesting. 

With languages it is often a case of the stranger the better. Typically, as you get to know a language and begin to master it, it gradually becomes less mysterious. It stops being something that is foreign and exterior and it becomes a part of you, an instrument of you. This has happened to me and English. I started to learn the language when I was 10 years old. Before that happened, I was so fascinated by it that I pretended to know it and tried to immitate the sounds from songs and films. 

Then began the slow process of mastering the language. It was incredibly fascinating because it was the language of all things cool. But it was also immensely frustrating wanting to use it as if it was my own - I wrote a lot of terrible phrasing before my words sounded more or less decent. It took years of practice of both reading and writing and, in the process, English became a part of me, not the language that singers sang in anymore.  I know this because I cannot help but write in English, it is now a part of my mental processes, my creativity, my writing abilities. And even though I still enjoy it, it has become too familiar to keep the previous allure, so I have to turn elsewhere for fascination.

The fascination is in the sounds, the musicality, the accents, the similarities, the differences, the meanings, the connections, the exceptions, the origins, the evolutions. Really, what is there not to like? Unless you aren't into languages, which is also an option.

As I mentioned above, I believe a language becomes a part of you when you use it frequently enough. Being the way to express yourself, you have to mold it to your preferences and to your profile. This makes me wonder if, considering how different languages can be, certain languages aren't a better fit for certain people or certain usages and expressions. Obviously every language has the ability to express the whole range of realities, but can one language trap you in your expression? Could you express a side of you more easily using a different language? Or are you able to be more 'you' in a certain language? I don't know if these questions make any sense to you. 

More Sunday Scribblings.

*lyrics by Smoke City "It's Amazing" / photo on everystockphoto.com

SS - Celebrate

* can you think of Celebrate and not think of the Kool & the Gang song? I can't, I'm afraid.

These are my reasons to celebrate:

- I finally received the results for the english exam I did a few months ago and I got an A.

- My grandmother is back home today and feeling better after months of worrying illness. 

- My football team is still top of the league and on its way to another title.

- I'm getting closer and closer to finishing my story. I don't know how it will end or how I'll manage to put the last full stop in it, but it WILL happen. 

- I'm reading an extraordinary book called The Other Side of You. It's a story told through the eyes of a psychiatrist/analyst and it's full of sentences that you want to keep to yourself / or share with the world. 

- I was graced with the Kreativ Blogger Award by Sepiru Chris and I'm very thankful for it, even though it feels a bit unfair since I haven't been that creative around here lately.

More celebrations.

*Summer Cheers on everystockphoto by JennyHuang @ Flickr

If

If I could speak your language the way you do, 

use and abuse the words the way you can, 

if I could dispose of the sounds, organize the music, arrange the sentences and construct poetry with the simple usage of your grammar,

then I would express the richness of feeling, 

the palette of spring tones that is now a mere black and white film,

I would describe tones of dusk and dawn,

sounds of the silvery night, 

landscapes of pure sensation.

I wouldn't feel so tied down in my way of speaking of this matter,

I would leave the symbolic and the allegoric behind,

I would write only of the tried and true,

embody the dream I thought was ethereal

and I would feel closer to you.

Image from stock.xchng

Any excuse will do to post Klimt's Danae.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Ah women...what is there to say? 

Just know that you are fantastic and have a great day.

In the meantime, take a few minutes to listen to Isabel Allende's talk on ted.com. It will make you laugh and perhaps cry too, but above all it will tell you that we're not even remotely there yet. If you don't have the time because you're an independent, working woman, well you're half forgiven. Just half because we women demand it all from each other.

SS - Trust

Don’t you know when you’re loving anybody, baby,

You’re taking a gamble on a little sorrow*

I've come to the conclusion that you have to trust in a lot of things in order to simply live in this planet. To start off, you have to trust yourself, your abilities, your resilience - that's self-confidence. You also have to trust your feelings, your reactions, your instincts - that's self-esteem. 

Then as you try to grow up into the person you're supposed to be, you need to trust others, you need to trust the World, the future. You need to believe that good things can happen to you, that putting something out into the world will bring you positive consequences, that you can be happy no matter what you are or what has happened to you before - that's faith and optimism.

And when you want to share your life with other people, you need to trust that they will want you in return. You have to trust that they won't hurt you, that they will try to make you happy in that relationship. In short, you have to trust them with your heart - and that is love.

More Sunday Scribblings here.

*Janis Joplin - "Get it while you can"

Image - everystockphoto.com

ss - phantoms & shadows

Maybe it was the fact that I was listening to an old CD yesterday, maybe I've just lost it...but today in the middle of my sleep I came across a detail of my life of ten years ago. It was a completely useless detail, not even entirely related to me, it was about my friends and our daily routine. It served for nothing but stir other old memories. But why would I remember something so useless in the middle of my sleep?

This is just one of the subtleties of my memory. Some parts of my life seem to be buried under cement. Sometimes with a little help from what people tell me or something I wrote I can recall and recreate these events.  This forgetfulness goes  against my theory that I have a really good memory, particularly of details. I remember things I ate years ago, songs I was listening to, the sensation of certain clothes I was wearing - it's always very sensorial and if it wasn't for my senses I probably wouldn't remember anything at all. I haven't mentioned the smells but that is obviously the sense that brings out more memories and feelings.

My memories are like cotton wool. They are soft and light and often seem ready to disappear like the clouds in the sky. And when you pull one memory, others come right after, exactly like the cotton threads. Coincidentally Cotton Wool by Lamb was the song I was listening to last night.

The house is quiet and simultaneously full of familiar sounds. She walks to the kitchen where the echoes of the outside world transport her to a familiar yet unrecognisable time of afternoon streets and distant voices. The kitchen buzzes with refrigerator waves. A gleam of light, passing through the window, highlights a speck of dust in the air. 

She leans onto the balcony, touching the cold surface to try to find herself in the present moment. Her mind is constantly jumping through dimensions in those lazy afternoons when the house seems like a receptacle of outside energies and a trigger to time travelling.

Her gaze lingers in a sheet of paper stuck to the refrigerator door. A poem she wrote and that a magazine published. She has stared proudly at her name in capital letters in the bottom of the poem many times before. He asked if it had been written about him and she denied.

'It's a love poem. It's about love.' she said. He looked at her as if she was losing her mind. 'Just because I wrote a love poem, it doesn't mean you were the source of inspiration.'

Her heart stings when she remembers how her love was a source of self-esteem for him, when ironically it seemed to mean very little most of the time.

'So who is it about?' he insisted and she laughed half-heartedly.

'You don't get it, do you?'

He shrugged, apparently amused with himself. Him who didn't write poems, him who copied other people's words for special written occasions, him who didn't trust his own words. Well, how could she trust them herself?

Outside a cloud covers the sun momentaneously and the curtain of light vanishes from the kitchen leaving her in the shadows.

photo from everystockphoto.com