Travelogue From Portugal
- found this, writing about what I had written on my last night in Portugal.
To place you where I am now, writing this, it is facing a white, papered hotel wall covered in faint zigzags. It is stained, with evidence of smoke, dust, shoe scrapes, and next to the table upon which my computer rests, slight chipping. Next to the computer lies Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus, my wallet, my hotel room key. This is on top of a horrible red, blue, yellow, purple and orange striped and flowered tablecloth barely large enough to cover the table itself.
Around me lie my dirty, sand-ridden trainers, a trashcan, heavy curtains to match the tablecloth, slightly blowing on the breeze coming in through my open windows, and the sounds of Parisian mopeds and after-dinner restaurant kitchens, shrill bird cries, the odd conversation, and every so often the door of one of my co-living hotel patrons on their way in or out on this lazy Sunday evening. It is 10:06pm. Here’s what I want to write.
In Lisbon, atop a large hill and inside a “circus bar,” I was told by Nuno to go and take a look at the horizon, for I should find on it a little of myself. Having watched (rather dismissively) Jaimie do the same thing, I scoffed, but went all the same. I brought my notebook. It tells me:
“I am hesistant. This keeps going through my mind. Sitting in front of centuries of civilization, listening to a language whose roots are mine, under the influence of millennium-old chemicals mixing my thoughts into glass, watching lights shimmer through Einstein, Watt, and Portuguese fuel, feeling endings electrify response cells telling me these cold steps were not designed for even my fleshy posterior, writing what should be a second nature, wondering where is my home, and amongst all this, in one page of my writing, is this fool I am.”
I stopped writing and put down my pen, raised the last of the aguardente to my lips, and looked hard at the horizon. I felt a little better. There were people, strange sounds, I was holding onto the railings for support (quite drunk, now), my sunburn was glowing dimly, beads of light from windows dotted about town, and there was a single solitary star (although in fact there were many others to choose from, this was merely the brightest). In that vast expanse of sky it nestled comfortably, modestly amongst the empty space — and had done so for more years than this planet had been alive. No horizon was bigger than its. And it struck me; I am nothing more than anyone else, or anything else.
Ok, so I was a little drunk, and even now I can’t say exactly what each of these thoughts represented. I put my pen back in my pocket, licked the rim of my glass, and went back to the table, silent, but happy. I couldn’t tell the guys why I didn’t feel like talking, and didn’t want to tell Nuno that it wasn’t because of the view that I had been affected, but because of something entirely not to do with Portugal at all.
