Today, for the first time, Lisbon, Lisabona, Land of Ulysses. The legend goes that it was founded by Ulysses himself when returning from the Trojan Wars. That may be. What is known is that it is one of the most ancient cities in the world, capital of the first country to be formed in Europe, Portugal.
For me, the time travel, the return to the home I had never seen, considering that all in Brazil carry a Portuguese side in our memories.
It is in the roots of our family names, sculpted in the architecture of the houses, in the design and pattern of the sidewalks, in the building of the phrases and the walls, in the Iberian mode of expression, with its peculiar words, in its very particular use of the verbs, in the choice, old to my ears, of expressions and, specially, in the gentle way the way of addressing each other.
Between the place where I was lodged and the bistro where I had my ‘small lunch’, I used six time the words ‘good morning’. It may seem little in these times of unchecked violence, but I believe everything begins there: in the minimal daily and formal respect they show each other.
There is, I realize, in the much talked about sad soul of the Portuguese, much of what is heard in Brazil in the sentences, nowadays spoken to the rhythm of the tropical swing and the African inheritance. The fact is that somewhere in our souls we remain Portuguese, who came to Brazil, not after the ethics of work, but after the ethics of daring, in which there was no necessary correspondence between what is beautiful and what is good, I which the art (of life, so to speak) cannot be seen as politically correct, because it is, most of the time, in fact, politically incorrect, for it is the expression of what goes on in the hearts of people and not of what their consciousness would tell them or the mandate of what is known as civilized behavior.
I strolled by the back streets, entered some antique stores and in so many other bookshops – I bought an edition of the Divine Comedy -, had my reading glasses fixed, had a couple of espressos, took two or three snapshots and considered the day well ended.
The next day began early, I woke up – I had been sleeping in the couch with the TV on – and saw, through the wide shutters, the first rays of the sun. I was happy with the prospect of seeing the day rise in the Sun Coast. I got up, prepared a mug of coffee, brushed my teeth and combed my hair, lit up my first cigarette of the day – always the best one – and pushed the bottom that raised electrically the shutters. He magnificent sunrise I had glimpsed through the shutters was just a garden lamp.
Each Ulysses with his own delusions.
