That Fantastic Thing, Crazy and Stupid,
Do It Again!

É bom ter-te de volta! Obrigado por teres vindo! // It is good to have you back! Thank you for coming! Remember that I cut last week’s post in half? Goodness, that single post would have been long! Well, this is part two. Both are on a similar theme, that is, the fantastic thing called life in Santa Luzia. But this week we peek in from a different angle.

Before we jump into today’s post I want to tell you a little about the paintings that appear below. All four are from early 2020, when I first started tinkering with painting. They originate from before I started to develop my language, so to speak.

I am a bit embarrassed by the first two especially. But I still would like to show them to you. I think they help communicate some of what I would like to share today. And I do not think they are so terribly rendered. But I did struggle quite a bit with perspective, however.

These first two, “Não Se Apaga!” and “A Janela Aberta”, are bit ”silly” too. The buildings, with the graffiti and the big fancy window, actually exist here in Santa Luzia. The people, however, I imagined. I painted them from images in magazines. The paintings themselves are allegories à la William Blake and Henri Rousseau, if not in their styles except perhaps in their naïvité. I was fiddling with the idea of creating pictorial fables. But it seemed forced and so I abandoned the idea.

Now on with the real grist of this post, i.e. that fantastic thing.

Bom and Boa — The Goods — Go Missing

I mentioned in an earlier post that the Portuguese typically acknowledge one another with a time of day greeting. You are more likely to hear bom dia / boa tarde / boa noite rather than olá. People here use olá more and more, but it seems to me an accommodation to North Americans, especially to folk from the USA.

I have noticed, however, that the “good” bit of the greeting, that is, the bom / boa before the time of day, gets swallowed or lost completely in the utterance. The audible part is an attenuated and full-throttled dia or tarde. Just parenthetically, regarding boa noite, I do not know what actually is said, as Zé and I are not night-people.

I always greet folks with my carefully and fully articulated bom dia or boa tarde. The attenuated, albeit enthusiastic, response of the unaccompanied dia or tarde has made me wonder about intentionality. Are the Portuguese generally and genuinely not feeling good about their lives so that they drop the “good”?

I have asked a couple of people whom I have met here why just dia and not bom dia, why cut out the good? The first person I asked is a young woman about 25 years old. The second person is an older gent in his late-seventies, I am guessing. I will share with you their two very similar responses from their quite different perspectives.

This Fantastic Thing! Life Is Good!

Verónica, the young woman, said in response to my obviously silly question, ”Everything is good… the sky is blue, the day is warm, the beach is just over there. And everyday is the same, everyday is good; the sky is blue, the sun is warm, and over there is the beach.” As she walked back to her house after further conversation, I saw her greet an older woman… I knew she was sincere. Their interaction was full of gentleness and patience; Verónica caressed the woman’s shoulder with her hand before moving on.

O Senhor, because I only know this older man in the requisite formality of Portuguese, responded more directly, but just as poetically. ”I am here this morning.” Like the proclamation of the philosophic graffiti “não se apaga”, he has not been erased nor will he be. I got his intent immediately. At his age, if you can greet another, then obviously it is a good day.

We spoke out in front of his very modest house that fronts one of those dirt roads. I had seen him many times before, and we chatted briefly on several occasions. He still works hard plowing, planting and harvesting a small patch of ground. He lives on his own but not alone. A few goats live with him, and a cat. Plus family and friends are in and out often, I have noticed.

It Ain’t Easy, But…

Verónica has hopes and dreams, as a person her age should and must. For her the window onto life is wide open. She and a friend had started a business cleaning Airbnb apartments here in Santa Luzia. She admitted that the money was good. But she said, “l am young, I want to see I places, be on the road”. Her particular dream is to be a truck driver. Sure, I was surprised, but who am I to question someone’s dream. She now works at one of the two Pingo Doce supermarkets in Tavira. Her application for the requisite training wends its way through the Portuguese bureaucracy and so she waits.

For someone like Verónica it ain’t easy. Wages are low, the lowest in the Euro Zone. Opportunities, even for the better educated, seem sparse; many move abroad to pursue dreams. As I write, I remember the lamentation of a headline in a recent edition of the Expresso newspaper. “Recent inflation has brought real wages to their lowest since the Financial Crisis of 2009-10.” Dreams can get writ small here. But still the ”good” is presumed always, especially when greeting one another.

For o Senhor, dreams have been dreamt. Now is the waiting time, the keeping busy time and the remembering time. As for many older people it is impossible for o Senhor to ignore that life is not easy, that it is not meant to be. Still, there is plenty of good to enjoy. He tells me, “the morning sun warms my face and shoulders”. And, “the goats’ milk tastes sweet while still warm”. I have seen that his grandson’s hug lights up his face. The younger man has o Senhor’s strength and his quick smile. So many good things.

It’s Fantastic, That Blue Sky!

Everyday is good, of course it is… just look up. So, no need to state the obvious when you pass a friend or a stranger in the street.

One of southern Portugal’s claims to fame is its famously blue, cloudless skies… 300 days of them. I never tire of their deep cobalt. I suspected that I might through sheer monotony. But these skies become a canvas on which the everyday, ordinary masterpieces paint themselves, like the ubiquitous conical Algarvian chimneys. Or an orange or a lemon as you look up through the tree branches. Everything stands out declaring its beauty.

The sky, blue and brilliant, is the everyday ordinary here. But it too is special, that is, a daily, everyday and ordinary treat. It is not just the special things. The crazy-stupid food, the wine and the desserts are truly fantastic. They add zest and vibrancy to our life here. But that everyday blue sky and every darn ordinary thing painted against it also add zest and vibrancy to our fantastic life.

Taking It All In Stride

It seems to me that the Portuguese still understand this. What exactly is the ”this”? That life is crazy-stupid, that is, fantastic. That life’s goodies, both the ordinary and the special, out-weigh all the hard bits.

It is surely inaccurate to suppose that the Portuguese have some special ability to turn life’s lemons into lemonade or even a lemon cake or tart. Although they do all of these with the lemons they grow. I think that the special skill of the Portuguese is to that they let life’s supposed lemons just be what they are. They do not expect them to be anything other than lemons. Nor do they spend much time fretting that lemons should be something other than lemons.

I am not saying that the Portuguese find their lives any easier as a result. I think the Portuguese know their lives are not easy in the least; they will tell you that if you ask. What I am saying is that the Portuguese perspective sees both, values both, and, in the end, finds that the good that life offers outweighs everything else. They are able to take it all in stride. This gives them the ability and the justification to belt a hearty and full-throated dia that presumes the good.

Fantastic Lessons Learned

Contemporary culture has a problem. It expects, we expect, lemons not to be lemons. For more than a century we have been feed a line. That line became the number one tune and broken record of Capitalism and its offspring, Neo-Liberalism. Its refrain goes, “your life can and should be easy. If it is not, then you are doing something wrong.” The verses are equally uninspiring.

“Buy this, that or the other thing then your life will be easy.” ”Use this toothpaste and your teeth will be white, then others will fawn for you, money will appear in your bank account, etc.” “Buy this dishwasher and your life will be easy because you will have twenty minutes more free time. Do not worry that you will have to work at your job one hour longer over many years to pay for the dishwasher.”

Life is not easy. It never can be. Even if everything was done for us, and our days were totally free and leisure filled, life would not be easy. Our teeth might become the whitest white. Our hair might finally attain the perfect highlighted shade. The dishwasher, the clothes machine, the vacuuming robot might give us endless free time, but at a price. Nonetheless, life will not ever be easy. We would still feel pain, unbearable pain. Sickness will find us. We will still walk hand in hand with our own mortality. Those we love dearest will pass from us. And so on and on.

What To Do

Contemporary Capitalism and Neo-Liberalism cannot deliver easy. Many are justly angry having been promised this undeliverable. They feel anger at themselves for not achieving easy. This anger becomes twisted and manipulated in the hands of unscrupulous conmen and would-be despots. They offer cozy, comfortable substitutes, like nationalism and racial pride that directs this anger at others.

The Portuguese are angry too. Fortunately, they came to the party later than the rest of us. The Portuguese have so far drank less of the Neo-Liberal kool-aide. They can still feel and find the balance between the not-easy and the good in their lives. I am not sure for how much longer.

I do not know how to fix Capitalism and Neo-Liberalism other than through personal choice. Life is not easy, it is not supposed be. But it is full of lots and lots of fantastic, crazy-stupid stuff. That is, there is just so much beauty and joy. Life can be simpler. We can do without much of the stuff we think we need and we are told we need. If we do not have it then others can have it.

Joseph told me that he read that companies change production goals on a dime once sales move 10% one way or the other. If we do not buy something because we no longer think we need it, or because we decide we no longer need abide its environmental impacts, then perhaps things will start to change. Perhaps our simple acts are truly potent. That thought makes me happier than the disappointment that my life is not easy.

Até à próxima quinta! // See you next Thursday!

Special Note

I know my perspective here is not everyones. It cannot be. I write as one whom Neoliberalism has benefited albeit one who tried to enable Liberal Democracy to live up to its promises of equity and justice. Now, as I see fewer years ahead than behind, I try to simply live the principles and do the things I can do. Practicing personal redistributive justice, living gently on the earth, being open and welcoming, diligently maintaining the tension between tolerance and personal conviction, and so forth.