Bom Dia, Porto!
This is a place of mystery and miracle.
Originally published 2025-12-15 04:32:47
Morning came timely today and dawn greeted me in a most glorious way. I wanted to find wonder the world. To discover every lost fascination.
I am breaking fast in a very fancy shmancy restaurant here at the hotel. Morning dew glistens on the ancient tile roofs below me. Amidst the old homes is a striking derelict. Roof collapsed, stucco walls are bald and crumbling. The iron terraces, once striking in their ornateness, are now just rusted calligraphy. A record of once better times.
White Christmas drifts out of a speaker nearby.
A church up the hill rang me awake some hours ago and now sits a silent sentinel over its subjects.
An orange tree pregnant with winter fruit is my breakfast companion this luscious morn. It is not much for conversation, but I find it enthralling nonetheless. Between my fruited neighbor and me, a flowing hedge row of sage contributes visually and aromatically to our scene.
And in front and below, stone houses cascade down ancient cobblestone where the streets splash into a finger of the Atlantic snaked its inland.
Jealous more of my eggs and ham than my reverie. A massive gull has landed on a nearby handrail and does a circus balancing act in hopes that my appreciation will deliver it a boon.
I am sorry, bird-friend, there I’ll be no scraps left for thee. You’ll have take your shoe on the road.
Winter in Porto is a very pleasant affair, especially the days. The sun warms as the breeze crisps. And pedestrians everywhere celebrate their holiday. Everyone is happy and festive. The faces and countenance seems altogether different from home. Even frustration here seems less like loss of control or being overridden with emotion and more like a natural expression of circumstance.
A sailboat is pushing up the river in the dancing sunlight. I wonder how the captain feels this Sunday morning.
He is living his dream. Is he content? Is he striving for more? Is he single and hoping for a wife? Or married and praying for children or grandchildren. Or that the ones he has be successful and happy. Perhaps he just longs for a bigger sailboat.
Everyone wants something they don’t have.
Aspiration.
Many just long to be struck and moved to make a great work. Work to move minds and hearts. To evoke tears or longing. Perhaps anger. Artists in particular want material things secondarily. What we really hope for is the ethereal. The midsummer’s dream that solves all woes.
And so, the artist works. What else is he to do? What appears luxurious and opulent to a mortal Is tortuous existence for the creative mind.
This moment, like ever, is passing too quickly. I wish only I had a companion with which to share it. Mine is still socked in sleep, stuck on that old clock. So, you, oh reader mine, are my shared memory today.
At some later time she will stir and then we will laugh together, eyes dancing inte sunlight as I tell her about boats and oranges and birds.
And one day, long from now, I'll say ‘remember when?’
