How To Make A Good Life

Olá e bem-vindos de volta a todos! // Hi and welcome back everyone! We all want the good life, do we not? Achieving that good life sends us all, pretty much, out every morning. So we climb into cars, metros or onto commuter buses and trains. We head to jobs. Those jobs are supposed to buy us the good life.

Work we must. But is that going to get us the good life? Probably not, but for some few, perhaps. Those who find fulfilment, joy and life-giving energy in their work.

I have already hyperbolised the Portuguese and what seems to me their sane approach to life. In an earlier post I mentioned that they find a good balance between life’s uneasiness and its many everyday and quite ordinary pleasures. And, of course, the Portuguese lean into life with kindness and generosity. And with this bent they present a healthier perspective over grumpy cantankerousness.

Today I would like to chat about how place — where one exists and lives — can allow one a perspective on life that changes you for good. But, like all such opportunities, I must acquiesce. That is, the place, my place or your place, is an opportunity. But, as I am finding, the perspective (read, good life) comes from availing myself of the opportunity.

I am going to talk about Santa Luzia, because this, at this moment, is my particular place. But I think what I will share is perhaps true about all places, your own place.

The Good Life Starts Early

Santa Luzia is located on the Ria Formosa, an enormous salt water lagoon formed by barrier islands. These islands, the lagoon and significant portions of the mainland form a 66 square mile (171 m²) natural park. Here development is highly restricted and mostly prohibited. In the States such areas, think the Outer Banks in North Carolina, would be chockablock with expensive homes, etc. Not here, just wide expanse of PUBLIC beaches, bird sanctuaries, and complimentary, non-invasive enterprises.

I find that the best time for me along the ria is early morning, although all times are beautiful. And the ria is nearly always part of the start of my day. So it may be a walk with Tucker and Saga or my solitary run. Then Spring, which the Romans counted the start of the year, is, I think, the most spectacular. In Spring, the sun aims its brush low in the sky. The clouds hang thick creating a perfect canvas.

Sometimes, the painted scene is so spectacular, I fall to my knees quite literally. Brushed across the clouds are blues, greens, oranges, reds, purples, yellows. Then every shade in between. The smooth stillness of the ria refracts spreading color and glory over its surface.

The greatest splendor, however, might go unnoticed within this dazzle. The last star, the Morning Star, hangs low in the sky. She rises as the sun rises. And she persists in pale weakening splendor for as long as possible. But the Morning Star manages handily in this epic match up of brilliance. Only yielding after the sun breaches the horizon. Persistence and endurance may not win the day but, nonetheless, they astonish and stun.

Magic Happens Everywhere!

The winter skies above the ria deliver their own magic. Once in a lifetime moments can unfold and heap majesty upon mystery. Joseph and I had read that two old friends — Jupiter and Saturn — were to meet up late on a late December night. It had been an absurdly long 400 years since they last appeared together in welcome and in good cheer. It was now Christmastime. And 2020, now fading, had delivered little comfort. Especially for old friends who had been separated for too long. Now was the time for magic!

Joseph and I searched, eyes fixed on the night sky over the ria. From afar, and far from our own friends and family, we waited to see these two friends reunited. We focused in the dim light of the crescent moon. There, as the moon stretched in embrace too, Jupiter and Saturn exploded in magnified radiance. Their vermillion conjunction amped the night sky to fever pitch.

It was a moment, too rare, too sublime, not to kindle magic within magic. With a start, four flamingos raced toward the old friends now joined in embrace. These four interlopers mirrored and married the fired vermillion and dim moonlight as their own.

I cursed that I left my iPhone behind. A darkened hollow of my mind must make do. Must secret and hold the camera obscura image as this magic unfolds. Later it would make its way to paper scribble then onto painted image. Magic, once it happens, is never lost.

Cacophony and Wonder

Not to disregard to magic nor sublimity in the other seasons and moments. But I do believe that Spring mornings yield the surest, most breathtaking wonders. The air vibrates, pulses, and vigor and vitality burst forth. This animation has been there throughout the winter. It moves into summer. But in both somewhat muted. Perhaps it is Spting’s thickening humidity. Like a lover’s wet kiss, it makes life beat, throb, with greater ardor. The warming air embraces the cooler tides. Drenched and dewy. Together they ebb over receptive, fertile land.

The full moon of Spring occurs often with Christian Easter and Jewish Passover. Sometimes, more rarely, with Islam’s Ramadan too. This seems a promise, even if faint, that differences can share light and beauty.

This spring moon, this Flower Moon, as it is called, is a beauty. Big, bright and bold. Caught in the lover’s dewy kiss, its light spreads through the air’s gauze scrim. It then dances on the mirror of the ria. A chorus arises in a pianissimo gradual. Quickly it lurches into glorious cacophony. I have seen and heard…

This is wonder. Otherwise disagreeable rediscovered, redefined. The dank sticky and the rude noisiness fathomed. A beginning following an end. An unbroken circle. Comforting, reinvigorating, renewal… the womb.

Change and Not

Not all is mutable, unique, ever shifting with the months and the seasons. Nor awe-filled because of a once in 400-year occurrence. Some, much perhaps, is static. Nonetheless, still imbued with magic and wonder.

A blue skiff moors in the ria. It has not changed position in the last 1,011 days. Since I first saw it on 10 September 2019. The tides ebb and flow. With them it rises and falls. My perspective changes. I stand or kneel at different spots on the seawall. But its mooring is stable.

The weather changes around the skiff, for sure. But is remarkably constant at the times I have bothered to notice. One morning in late summer, humidity drenches the air. A thick moist haze envelopes. Two years later, during a late spring evening, a damp cool mist blows off the Atlantic. Gooseflesh rises. My perspective by position is different each time. The sensation touching my skin differs across those two years. The atmosphere contrasts in the two moments. But the skiff remains unchanged. Even its painted reflection on the water invariable.

While everything around the skiff changes, its beauty, its enchantment holds. What changes is my ability to notice its constancy. Drawn in only when a melancholy of mist envelopes me making the skiff’s solitary mooring standout. In bright sun, in blaze of moonlight, even painted by the dawn’s pied brush, it recedes from my sight. I overlook although that it is always there, ever-constant.

The Good Life

My place, here in Santa Luzia, and on the ria in particular, creates opportunities. That is, so I might discover the good life. Once basic needs are satisfied. Which is not a given for the majority of the Earth’s creatures. But should be and could be, so the shame is ours. Then, however, the plentiful ordinary extraordinary is all that is needed. The Good Life.

With the persistence and the endurance of the Morning Star, so I exist. On the canvas of a Spring dawn, my day unfolds. Day after day. If I open to and wait on magic, then more magic piles on. A once in 400-year occurrence becomes a once in eternity spectacle. What seems hazy and dinning becomes art and music passing into poetry.

It is my perspective that needs change. Not everything and everyone around me. The skiff is the skiff. It is not simply beautiful or inspiring twice in 1,011 days. It has not changed over those thousand plus days. Then and now it was and it is. I simply have begun to notice, to become aware.

Not Just Here, Not Just Mine

And the good life is not just available to me because I live in this enchanting place. In Santa Luzia. I am grateful that I do, however. But like everyplace, everywhere, Santa Luzia offers me the opportunity to see. I, however, must take the chance to see. Eyes wide open.

This wondrous place has taught that the good life is a jumble of small moments. And, more importantly, I am learning that I need to cultivate the good sense not to ignore these small moments. A sunrise, a lone star, a moonset, the mist, the bird clamor, a solitary skiff. Each is magic. Each an equal to the Great Conjunction.

We all live in such places with such opportunities. They will differ, for sure. But I do not believe Santa Luzia uniquely special in this regard. It comes down to this. Nothing more. Am I ready to grab the proffered opportunities — those many small moments of magic — that my situation offers? And then savor the good life?

Até à próxima os meus amigos! // Until next time my friends!