As far I know, up till now, Mr Gledwood still hasn't been back to visit. No problem. The point is that just 3 days after posting my thoughts on his question, this wonderful piece of inexplicable serendipity happened.
It was Saturday late morning, another perfect, blue-sky. T-shirt-&-shorts day. I took myself 5 minutes along the main street to take my place under an umbrella outside the Café Plaza, accompanied by the camera, my new Sebastian Faulks novel and a tall, freshly squeezed orange juice.
On Saturday & Sunday mornings, you can be sure to meet various members of one of the extended groups of friends - that I will describe for you as those whose brain-cells continue to function. A semblance of city café society, 'bohemia & bonhomie', Vila Franca style, with humour, gossip, discussion.
After 10 minutes, I was joined by 2, then a man whom I hadn't met, and lastly another guy, who I just happened to have first met on my first ever visit to this town, 30 years before to the very day, 20th Oct. He has been a big friend ever since, but that isn't the serendipity, though he was staggered when I pointed that out to him.
This year's 20th October was immortalised by an even greater landmark event than the anniversary ogf my ill-fated first visit. It was the day that the town was to welcome the President of the Republic (who either really IS a wooden puppet, or is doing a remarkably convincing impersonation!) and Her Excellency the Minister of Culture to inaugurate...wait for it....the splendid, shiny new architectural wonder that houses the nation's first Museum of Neo-Realism. YES! Right here in bull-mad Lilliput-on-Siberia!!! Don't ask.
The discussion quickly became local-political (it is a modern, patient-friendly Health Centre that the town needs as first priority, not a white elephant-doomed cultural palace, which the populace is neither into nor wants - but thank you, European Union for 75% of the funding), then national, then philosophical, as we were entertained by the red-nosed, black-clad & white clad clowns and a strolling band dressed as Turkish/Morroccan/Roumanian musicians (another of the heated arguments - my take was that they were from no further than Alverca, 11 kms up the road, there being nothnig vaguely Balkan or Maghreb about their music, or instruments). It all furthered my argument that this whole jamboree to promote neo-realism was distinctly surreal.
The new man (to me) in the group, Álvaro Nunes, had taken out a HARDBACK BOOK! The conversation moved on to how you can always recognise the northern European children on the Algarve beaches every year, because they will be the only ones reading anything. This is quite true. I volunteered my anthropological observation that it is also interesting to watch how the children of other nationalities PLAY, compared to Portug. kids (in general, Pequete!, Really!).
After 10 more minutes, I reached across the table and picked up his book.
We're getting there. I just fancy writing a bit, to lead you in. Here's the latest effort from the Kollage Kid:
That's Álvaro, the book cover and an excerpt from the preface.
Now we get to it, I was drawn by the title, thinking immediately of Gledwood's question. My breath flew away when I started reading Page 1. In the next picture below, you see the end of a paragraph ending at the top. The generalisation it refers to appears in that paragraph; it is those very same 3 lines, "Beauty is truth and truth beauty", etc! Twice in the same week, except that the paragraph told me that they were written by the English romantic poet, Keats.
You can read how the authors deal with the notion, along the very lines I had thought (Auschwitz, Srebrenica, etc.), but far superior.
I go with their answer to the question!
And Álvaro was revealed to be a deeply intelligent, articulate philosophy fan. It was 3 O'clock by the time we left that table. And back into the madding crowd waiting for its Presidents (not to forget the self-saisfied, self-seeking Prezz of the local council)and all the fun of the circus, while the price of every basic food continues to rise spectacularly. Lilliput? Siberia? Bedlam? Ancient Rome, anyone?
My last pic was shot yesterday, when I came across my dear 77-year-old pal, Ventura (remember him? My picture around my birthday last November?)with his humour, gentility and clear insights into everything. An hour of worthwhile chatting and laughing (he loved my analogy of the gentle lunatic asylum on a Sunday afternoon, inmates taking a walk around the grounds). I suddenly noticed a moving black "cloud" flying upriver, which excited both of us, realising that it was large wild geese flying in formation. I grabbed the camera, knowing that I was at least 200 mm short of lens reach to do it justice, but all the same, a beautiful natural truth captured.
No comments:
Post a Comment