Flashes

I am still thinking of Pessoa 's ability to absorb the present and express what happens both outside and inside his mind so accurately.  For finding my way back to the present, I went to a board walk by the ocean and sat on a bench. I looked at the ocean and its foamy waves hitting the seashore. (While doing a New York Times crossword I learned this foam is called " surf ".) The waves were unusually beautiful, deep green and white, and changed in horizontal waves in a way I had not seen before or just not noticed. The foamy rows were high and reminded me of a painting where they turn into horses. I observed the sand. I looked at a couple with two dogs on the beach in distance. They were standing by the river the winter rains coming from the land and the ocean together form to the beach, preventing me from getting to the other side. Once I did so and all of a sudden a rogue wave from the ocean came and almost took me. The Atlantic is sneaky. The dogs were running happil...

I am reading Fernando Pessoa 's The Book of Disquiet . It is edited from the 25,000 pages he wrote during the 1920s and 1930s, found in a trunk after his death in 1935.  Pessoa had many alter egos ; this book is credited to one of them, Bernard Soares , a book-keeper working in Lisbon , at Rua dos Douradores . For the first time in my life, I am urged to underline sentences in a book that is not a text book, to find them again and again. A hundred years later, they go under my skin, they express emotions I did not know I had. " Brief, dark shadow of a city tree, the light sound of water falling into a sad pool, the green of smooth grass – a public garden on the edge of dusk – in this moment you are the whole universe to me, because you entirely fill my every conscious feeling. I want nothing more from life than to feel it ebbing away into these unexpected evenings to the sound of other people’s children playing in gardens fenced in by the melancholy of the surrounding s...

 When I think of  the biography  of Franz Kafka  I only remember  How he rowed his boat  up the Vltava  Then put the oars up  Lay down on his back  At the bottom of the boat  And let the river take him  In his black suit  He looked like a  Dead man in his coffin  When his colleagues  on the bridge  Watched him float  Towards them  And past under them.

It has been 15 years since I posted these two entries here and I am surprised this account still exists. I was looking for a way to post impressions on books and this simple platform seems perfect for just words.

In Ireland, I went to a cafe, said "a cappuccino, please", and got seated. The waiter brought me a tea pot and a cup. I hesitated a bit, but decided to go for it. I had two cups of tea with milk and brown sugar, read Irish Independent with it, and left satisfied. This happened two other times. Some weeks ago in England, I ordered "a cappuccino, please". I was given a pot of tea. Now I know better than pronouncing "cappuccino" in the Italian way. If I really want a it, I have to say "a" it like in "cap". But it is too late. I have become a tea drinker. It is especially good with a scone, butter and jam.

I walk in the forest in Kent and hear a helicopter. In Ireland, where all the towns are by rivers like everywhere else, whenever you heard a helicopter, you knew somebody had jumped to the river. There were two young brothers who came from a pub in early hours and the other one said, I will kill myself, I will jump to the river. The other brother did not believe but went home. His brother jumped to the river and there was a helicopter above us next day; I lived next to the river. This is why I stopped reading local papers in Ireland.