I’ve been wishing to write something about this
for quite some time. The context is simple: an interval of time between two
professional appointments leaves me with some three hours in Porto. I don’t
live here, so going home isn’t an option. I come by car, which has the
advantage of providing me with a portable sofa with wide windows in front of
it. Given that, all I have to do is choosing the view: I chose the one which is
in front of me right now: the river Douro as it finally reaches the sea. Foz is
the name of this part of town: the word denotes, in Portuguese, the mouth of a
river. I know this river very well: I grew up beside one of its tributaries,
and the simple name of it, Douro, meant to me the golden promise of distant
horizons. I had learned at school that somewhere beyond the last hill I could
see from my quiet country town the river Tua still ran southwest; and that, at
some point, it surrendered its clear waters to the deeper flows of the Douro. I
already had, back then, the idea that one day I would somehow follow the river,
that someday I would accept its invitation and go. In fact, rivers stir the
imagination: they come from somewhere and they go somewhere, and when one lives
in front of one, as I did as a child, questions eventually arise as one cannot
simply ignore that a part of the world, small as it may be, flows before one’s eyes. Rivers are, above
all, a constantly renewed invitation: to dream, to ask, to go, to live.
And now here I am. The afternoon is lovely,
only slightly under the warmth of spring. As the sun hurries to kiss the
surface of the Atlantic a cold reminder of winter quickens me. This is
beautiful here. There’s a small park nearby, its romantic quaintness giving a
delicate touch to the river’s final farewell, and there’s a pier, with people
going back and forth, and fishing rods probing the river banks. There’s the
city in the distance, and the day is approaching its end. I’m starting to feel
some verbal laziness: I’ll take some pictures instead.
