It has proven beyond me to write what is in me - again. Even to myself. That is a measure of how I have become.
All of the memories are too painful...they do what they please with me; I can't stop them.
My one great wish for several weeks now is to wake up and have no memory of anything at all, except for practical things that I need in order to function, like my work needs.
10 years ago today, I handed over the keys to the buyer of my family home in London, left it for the last time and returned to Lisbon the following afternoon materially wealthier, but utterly traumatised.
I guess I still am.
It was a shattering end and a radical new beginning. I never felt like the money was mine. It has helped, but I never earned it and I would rather that those I inherited it from were still here and that I had nothing but what I gained myself.
In any case, it was never going to resolve all of the damage.
These are pigeons that I like. So simple.
Do they have memories? No, not like these, at least.
11 comments:
Spectacular photos Stewart!!! How I wish I could take nice sunrise & sunset pictures as you do....
Be well Stewart, im still reading and listening....
I'm glad that you are taking pictures of the pigeons. So many people here hate them & call them "rats with wings."
They are on the outs with the world, too - & need some understanding.
The minute I saw these pictures they reminded me of your post in Time and Word, June 8th 2006. I simply had to find it..
I wonder Stewart if the pigeons come to speak to us silent words about grief and pain, how it is not bound by time and date,that it wont be ignored nor be kept silent by the plasters we humans can sometimes stick over our wounds in the hope that its enough to keep them covered and us no longer aware of their presence.
I write here of my own experience of the ways I dealt with my own pain and grief down the years, every so often picking off the plasters to see if the wounds had healed yet!! of course they hadnt as I had never truly sat and faced my pain, but then thats part of the human condition too, a natural aversion..
Much like our memories..if we dont see them even in the minds eye we will somehow be okay.
What youve written is so movingly human and opening
I wish you not an absence of your memories Stewart but more a lessening of the pain that accompanies them, does that make sense?
I came across this in Time and Word today as well, good old Babelfish to thank for the translation, but found this excerpt very powerful.
everything changes That I change is not strange But it does not change my love By but far that finds Neither the memory nor the pain me my earth and my people And what changed yesterday It will have to tomorrow change As well as to change I In this distant earth It changes everything changes Changes todocambia
'This morning, the sun rose at 7.30 and I was there to see it and do this again' and these Stewart are the most powerful words too.
xxx Auds
Beautiful photographs, Stewart. I'm glad you are still sharing them with us and hope your memories become less painful, as Audrey says, better than I can.
Wishing you well Stewart, and admiring your pictures as always. I'm sad about your anguish.
Ce sont des pigeons qui ont des ailes de colombes...
Des pigeons qui déploient leurs ailes pour amener la paix...
Icarus, tu as quitté ta maison, et cela est le lot de beaucoup
Songe à tous les immigrés qui ont tout laissé derrière eux
Je ne suis moi-même pas attachée au passé. Parfois je me dis qu'il faut avoir peur du passé, parce que l'on ne peut plus rien sur lui
On n'a pas de prise sur les choses qui se sont déroulées.
Ton "chez toi", Icarus, est là où tu es ,avec ceux que tu aimes, s'il est possible que cela soit...
Pas de mémoire du passé.... Oui, parfois ce serait bien pratique. Le passé éclaire le présent et le futur cependant.
Le futur, seulement lorsqu'on est mort on n'en a plus...
Tu as tant de talents, tu habites un si magnifique pays et je crois que ce pays t'a adopté.
Tu as de la chance d'être l'enfant d'une si ancienne patrie. Tu as la chance d'avoir un tel esprit, un tel coeur.
Et tu as la chance d'avoir su partir sans te retourner.
Ne nous retournons pas. Pensons à la vie que nous avons devant nous...
Our memories are part of what we are, the sad ones as well... It is good to come back and find you are still here and see that you keep writing yours.
I am terrible, I nkow - it's taken over a week to come into my own post!
Beautiful & much appreciated words from all of you.
Seja bemvinda, Aura, sempre. As for digital sunrises & sunsets, play with some of your pre-set programs that your camera must have. And always be careful with your composition, although you should be able to crop on the computer, depending on your software.
High, Paul, how are things your end? And where's our Carlos? I don't know, I am still fascinated with pigeons, even if they are flying rats. I won't feed them, but I like making them dance for me. It's a Ulysses thing, I guess. "Outs with the world...that strikes the right chord with me!
Auds, as you know, I've already followed you up, made the same pilgrimage back to last year and now you can also hear Mercedes.
Grieving...and I never even realised. Maybe I wrote some time before that quote: "Everything that doesn't kill us makes us stronger". Sorry, Herr Meister Nietsche, I beg to differ. Unless you mean "kill" in a metaphysical way.
Maui, so good to hear from you (and ditto Terry & Pequete, ainsi que Cergie - je viens de dire que ça me fait beaucoup de bien te voir içi), I'm taking so few pics now, because of lack of subjects. I wouldn't have believed that could happen too, robbed of my main absorption. It speaks volumes in itself about this town. But starting tomorrow morning, there will be bulls running in the streets for 2 hours every day. I plan to get some new angles.
Last Friday, the full moon high tie flooded higher than I've ever seen it. I managed to do quite a réportage, which I am thinknig of supplying to the local green politicos - the cars parked in the wrong place had a foot of water INSIDE them!
Terry, grateful. But don't be sad. Just keep coming. You never know when I'm going to be able to overcome the mental block & really write some telling things about all of this mess that wants to come out.
Cergie, parfois j'ai du mal à me rappeler des choses que je tiens à garder et, par contre je n'arrive pas à oublier tout ce que je choisirais à eliminer de la carte mémoire.
De la chance d'être enfant de ce pays-là? Non, ma chère, ça a été entièrement par hasard. Je suis né dans une famille juive, ça veut dire d'un peuple bien plus ancien, et errant. Le pays dont tu parles, j'ai eu de la chance d'y être né en 1950, comme je t'avais dit avant. Je m'appartiens à...??? Moi-même, j'habite un pays qui s'appelle Não-Terra. Nonterre (rien à voir avec Nanterre!!?!)Quant au Portugal, recemment, j'y pense et je me dis que je n'y habite plus. Ou peut-être que j'y habite plus davantage qu'autre fois? Je ne sais pas. Étant donné, je ne l'aimes plus. Je crois que je suis trop cynique et à la fois trop idéaliste pour ce pays. De toute façon, je ne m'apartiendrai jamais, surout pas à cette ville sans rien de belle, où je me trouve emprisonné.
Pequete, you help me to see clearly something that is important: of course you're correct, the happy & the sad. The problem is that if the present is so negative, so empty, so damaging, and so unavoidably so, then the memories become disproportionately present, like a punishment. Yes, that's it.
Until soon, all be well, and do your best.
Icarus en effet, je comprends... un peu
Tu es de nul part et de partout...
Tu n'as pas d'attache, alors tu peux aller où tu veux. De plus tu parles au moins trois langues couramment. Tu peux aller quasiment partout dans le monde, et t'y trouver bien...
Sauf Cergie, attends le prochain post, je je suis en train de préparer, d'içi peu.
Étonnant, ce qui se passe au monde bloggeiro!
Sxxxx
Okay, je repasse dès que je peux...
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