Forever Someone Else
Sunrise yoga class this week brought me gifts that seem to present themselves at those moments of quiet calm, when there is space between the chapters of my brain, liquid storage areas where the beautifully mundane things float forward with all of their sensory input. It was sometime after 6 am and seated on my mat, it seemed the images just flowed forth- in between the fire breath, I saw the Tejo river. While holding a mudra, I felt myself walking up the stone sidewalk to my old apartment and I could smell the dankness of the stairwell that led me three flights up. Memories, friends, and smells floated in and out of the black space I could see behind closed lids during meditation. Why was Portugal flooding my thoughts so intensely this chilly Monday morning of March 5th?
After class I rushed home to prepare for work and saw the calendar hanging on the fridge marked:
March 5 LX anniversary
It was the very day I landed in Lisbon five years ago. Five years of life have passed yet my body was perfectly in sync with its own history. The entire week has brought me thoughts and feelings of Lisbon. I miss my friends, my old apartment, my guys, the fishy smell, the sound of the eléctrico stuttering along its metal tracks. It’s all there, inside.
A full moon shines bright outside tonight and keeps watch over the city.
I head to bed and reflect on the day while staring up at my ceiling. It inspires great dreams.
I wake up in the morning and look out the back door and check how the ivy is creeping its way around the patio railing. The loquat treat is in full bloom and the rooster has finally quieted.
My birthday is almost here- I will celebrate with my dear friends and share photos of different friends on the other side of the world.
The day has passed. The moon is about to set again over the water. The sky paints a beautiful ending to my day.
It’s all there. And here. It’s all the same, and more different than ever. Feeling the saudade. Here’s a tear for that river.
The Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, sleeps near my bed on the bed stand in the book of poems, “Forever Someone Else.”
This excerpt is from 1933 and doesn’t really have a title.
O Estado do Tempo 
What a gift it is to travel! Thank you for your beautiful words this morning!
Thank you dear, T. So grateful for the long history we share.
Love, love, love this post, Mosey, and you, too; early birthday greetings and many, many more trips inside and outside. Besos, Zia TFJ
Thank you, tia. We soon need to plan our trip to the land of sardines, salty sea air, and strong coffee. (and so that you can see Camilla’s amazing work in the flesh!)
Loved reading your beautiful descriptions of your past home and homeland. You’ll forever be you to me with side trips elsewhere 🙂
gracias mamita.
Very sweet. I love how you share your experience of having another place inside you. I know exactly what you mean.
It’s weird because you feel it, and miss it, but don’t necessarily want that place back. So it’s not a yearning or sadness that can be resolved. It’s to be lived with, owning those places and the imprint they left inside you.
I miss Lisbon too, and feel it as part of a magical and transformative place for me.
I love that poem excerpt; thank you!
Happy birthday and happy every day!
Thank you, Cynthia! You said it exactly. Comforting to know there is another soul out there whose feet walk within the unresolved beauty of similar footprints left at another moment in time, wearing different shoes, but worn by the same feet.
Oh, creative woman; may your sun today shine upon you with rays of loquat colored warmth. (I looked up loquat and wanted to use it on a sentence before i forgot what it was). You are awesome.