Intimate Migrations

Soon it will be five years since I moved to Portugal moved by love.  Looking back, here’s a little of what I’ve learned (I hope!):

~ your patience will be tested (by Kafka-esque bureaucrats, the guy at the post office, and most strenuously, by your self)

~ fake it until you make it; or: act natural (like bluffing your way through a foreign language by using certain key expressions -for instance, I found the exclamation “valhe-me Deus” – i.e. God help me – quite useful and convincing! Non-verbal language is especially effective – keenly observing and imitating the appropriate use of shrugging and finger-wagging have served me well too.)

~ you might find your-self at a loss (shortly before and after migrating, I had a recurring dream about my own death – but don’t worry, this was not so much scary as it was…meaningful)

~ Find kindred spirits – this is essential…and surprisingly, entirely possible.

~ …(to be continued)

If you have any enlightening experiences or words of wisdom to share with potential (or co-) migrants for love, please do so – here! RSVP*

Some places that inspire me ~ by Sabine Merzenich

{in response to the previous post}

let your soul go with them

whatever…walk on

comforting circle – my kids walking through my roots

just to remember - there's more than this

my dear friend

Where to go to soothe your soul…

i go walking among trees…

or here, especially to our balcony to breathe in the view and vastness of it all

café(s) and lovely interiors also help (and um, yes chocolate cake)

and if i had one, this is where i would go:

from coastalliving.com

(a nice-long-hot bath would always be my first resort)

*Where do you go when your soul needs soothing?

**RSVP: if you would like to share your images here, please send them to ddmatthee@gmail.com

~ deidré m.

where am i

& where

do i go

from

HERE

?

it is almost the end

of summer’s reprieve

of winter’s hibernation

it is almost the beginning

of the in-between seasons

of spring emerging

and the grace

of fall

are you ready

to move on?

“The tree stands.

Whatsoever stands has strength.

Once we stand we learn to move and stand still.

The journey, our story, continues when standing leads to walking.

Trees stand.”

~ Alida Gersie and Nancy King (1990)

**Coming soon to a sunny day in a park near you: a creative workshop on identity, passage and belonging!

*If you are in the Porto area and interested in participating, please contact me: ddmatthee@gmail.com

“Language is the house with lamplight in its windows,

visible across fields.  Approaching, you can hear

music; closer, smell

soup, bay leaves, bread – a meal for anyone

who has only his tongue left.

It’s a country; home; family;

abandoned; burned down; whole lines dead, unmarried.

For those who can’t read their way in the streets,

or in the gestures and faces of strangers,

language is the house to run to;

in wild nights, chased by dogs and other sounds,

when you’ve been lost a long time,

when you have no other place.”

~ Anne Michaels

Learning the language I moved (in)to, I hold it to my ear like a shell,

hearing waving white noise and (be)longing;

gradually letting it soften and salt my tongue.

My (own) language is an ocean away; I keep walking its shore in my dreams.

*How do you place yourself in a foreign language? ~RSVP

soon

“I woke up and stared into the grey, my eyes watering and flickering, because something was moving, and before I knew it, Suzette and a choir boy in an eighties sweatshirt came dancing round the corner, hotfooting in slow motion around my room like something from a silent movie, he half her size, and she, no doubt, training him for the delusional glory of a teen Appollo, her rough profile against the light as they turned, holding their heads high, his head inches from her bosom.  And for a moment I wanted to switch on the light and breathe, except that in the dream I knew there was another bed on the other side of the room, where she slept, and I couldn’t wake her, I had to keep still, a conviction which gradually faded as I realised where I was and what period of my life I had woken in.”

www.kailossgott.com

{postcard received from & with thanks to kai}

Saudade ~ “yearning so intense for those who are missing, or for vanished times or places, that their absence is the most profound presence in one’s life”

my front door

If you could create a postcard – an alternative to the touristic versions – of your life here, what would it look like?  This is another invitation ~ RSVP

~deidré m.  (ddmatthee@gmail.com)

How to balance the unbearable lightness

and shifting weight of here and there?

How to build a bridge that could traverse both

the precarious proximity and stretching distance of inbetween?