Remembrance of Things Past

The frail winter sun that caresses this windswept park in a quiet northern country town is of little solace, its pale warmth adding no more than a superficial joy to my being here. The sun will soon fade, leaving in its place the inconstant trace of undreamt of stars; very soon the wind shall be all that remains for the senses to delight in, the last tangible sign of life left in this quiet, time-forgotten and world-forsaken country town. I always loved the wind here, its sudden coldness on long summer sunsets being a symbol of life’s inexorabilities, the seductive uncertainty of its source breeding in me an imprecise urge to leave, its dreamy wintry iciness printing in my skin the longing for faraway places.

I left this place, but the wind didn’t. It keeps on sweeping the park, feeding extant tree leaves with a little life, keeping the town warm in forgetful chill. I’m like the wintry sun, only occasionally touching the streets of this quiet country town, a passer-by in the landscape of my early youth. I’m not very original in that: everywhere I see dimly familiar faces of people like me, who have left and returned, each one treading the clew of his own memories.

Getting entangled in the treacherous web of the past is an often overlooked part of Christmas. In fact, it is certainly also that: a yearly return to the past, a revisiting of dormant memories, a sometimes unwilling disturbing of the waters. And yet, there’s a river in my hometown, my whole childhood was indeed a flowing river of happy forgetfulness, as childhood always is, still untainted by the mark of remembrance…

Sitting here, in this café overlooking the sunlit townscape, I vaguely remember the ancient Lethe while I quietly contemplate the impossibility of complete oblivion. I’m not very original in that, either: with a deft extension of the meaning of the words I’m writing, I’m not even individual anymore. Each generation destroys the past, only to be destroyed amidst it in the end. Like everybody else before me, I had to destroy the past, only to find myself entangled in its reflection. There’s no Lethe except in the underworld: there’s no forgetfulness but in death. Each return is a rebirth, as every winter turns into spring. The wind, in the meanwhile, shall keep sweeping the landscape of our lives, as inescapable as the swift passing of time.

Merry Christmas.

Portugal: the Beauty of Simplicity

The Return of a Friend

There’s an interesting paradox in Portugal’s gastronomy: our national dish is made with an ingredient that doesn’t exist in our country. In fact our fishing boats have to go far into the North Atlantic to bring us this much loved fish we call Bacalhau (codfish, in English). However calling it fish sounds somewhat reductive to us. Firstly, we consider it neither fish nor meat: it’s just Bacalhau, a self-sufficient entity which creates its own category in the pantheon of good food. But treating it as mere food is something that in our view doesn’t dignify it properly. In fact we make our relationship with Bacalhau something much more personal than just that, something made evident by the fact that we quite often lovingly refer to him as our faithful friend. Perhaps because, in spite of the distance that separates us, he pays regular (even if somewhat forced) visits to our table.

In Saramago’s book The Stone Raft the Iberian Peninsula gets cut off the rest of Europe by some unexplained geological cataclysm and starts sailing adrift in the Atlantic. After a near-collision with the Azores islands the Peninsula, now itself an island, swerves to the north. As the characters anticipate the freezing landscapes of the Artic, someone points out, in a solacing way, that thus Portugal would at least be closer to its beloved Bacalhau.

Apparently the Vikings brought it here even before the existence of the country, so we ate it before we were Portuguese. It is thus as ancestral as its presence is familiar here, its triangular shape being one of the most intriguing things I can remember form my early childhood: such a strange fish, I thought, headless and all, how on earth does it manage to swim like this? I didn’t know anything about the drying and salting process then…

According to a common saying, there are 300 different ways of cooking it. I suppose that is slightly exaggerated, but the actual diversity bears testimony to the endless creativity of the Portuguese people. Bacalhau is traditionally poor people’s food, and so it remains in our national conscience even if its rising price makes it an extravagant delicacy nowadays. And, despite regional variations in preference, it is the main ingredient on our Christmas table, simply boiled with potatoes, cabbage and golden olive oil: a happy marriage of northern and Mediterranean Europe, proving the composite and cosmopolite nature of the Portuguese people.