I start the day with the inevitable: ask for it. honor him Go meet him. Return to the inner place called delirium. Think about the possibility or the harsh reality of being several people at the same time, of various styles, of various writings and concerns. I walk through the center of Lisbon, for the first time in my life, wishing that this would mean a reunion. I see, at a short distance, Luís de Camões Square and understand that I am close. I approach the cafe A Brasileira, which is full of customers, and look for it among the diners. It’s hard for me to leave it until I see him and it’s like I’ve met an old friend. I am moved by the circumstance of being close to a significant painting, provoked by an anticipated melancholy. Not because of the bronze that was cast to take the form of his body and the gestures of his face, but because this sculpture, in the symbolic district of Chiado, is proof that the poet once walked or wandered these streets. many poets, all dear, all important.

The writers we love are friends first and foremost. I stole book of unrest in New York, during the winter of 2018. I didn’t intend to commit theft, but shortly after borrowing it I found myself never wanting to part with it, and since then, like the Oracle of Delphi, I’ve been in the habit of opening it to random pages and reading it aloud of the passage that appears, as if the book had sent me a message. For example: “What, I believe, produces in me a deep feeling, in which I live, of inconsistency with others, is that most think sensitively, and I feel with thoughts.” Also: “why is art so beautiful? Because it’s useless. Why is life so ugly? Because in him everything is purpose and purpose. All his paths lead from one point to another. I wish there was a way from where no one goes to where no one goes!”

Maybe that’s how, with Pesso, my desire to one day visit Portugal, especially its capital, arose. I go into the Sá da Costa bookstore, where I look through old postcards, and then to Bertrand. Path. I enter a football store, where I find a Cristiano Ronaldo doll and Portuguese team jerseys. Then I go to the triumphal arch of Rua Augusta, which I climb. I think of the Atlantic Ocean as an endless tile, the breeze of which bathes this port, which I observe again and again in 360 degrees. At the top is the castle of São Jorge, with its medieval grandeur, surrounded by houses of various colors and orange roofs. I think this city is a joy as I descend from the port and reach the Supreme Court. Are we lawyers speakers of a universal and incomprehensible language? I was and still want to be a traveling lawyer, but where am I going? Where is my life going? I reach the Plaza de Comercio and am guided to a small pier. I touch the water. Portugal is happening to me, like a language.

The fado museum immerses me in the nostalgic soul of this country, which, with its deep lyrics, inhabits the most hedonistic peninsulas on earth with a practical and stoic sense. Those voices, anchored in the guitar, connect me to my country and its music, its warm, almost festive sadness, that of the corridors and its great figures. do we look alike Some distant resemblance exists. The roots of the ancient Arab world, articulated in the history of conquest, reconquest and independence, resonate in my mind and body, even more so when I look at the tiles in the National Museum, displayed in architectural structures that take me back to the riads I saw in Morocco, those traditional houses whose is the heart of the garden or interior terrace, as in the center of Quito and in the Andes. In the Alfama district, I meet the Ecuadorian poet Carla Badillo Coronado, who takes me to explore the Mouraria district, the birthplace of fado, and to ginjinho in the traditional Don Antonio hollow. Then we go to a Roy Montgomery concert with his partner.

From Lisbon I take the strength of its poets and its gastronomy. Subtle and tasty versions of cod, which I accompany with beer. Is there anything sweeter than pastel de nata? In what day Porto will delight me with its wine, the beauty of its river Douro or Douro in their language and the experience of its bookstore Lello, which will include buying a ticket and waiting in line, as if it were an amusement park. But the memory of Lisbon will last for many years, as will the presence of heteronyms. After visiting the Belém Tower, immersed in the brutal summer of Europe, I walk to the colossal Jerónimos Monastery, which was built by King Manuel I of Portugal in 1501 to commemorate the return of Vasco da Gama from India. I love that this historic monument, which embodies the high points of late Gothic and Renaissance, is the final resting place of Álvaro de Campos, Bernardo Soares or Ricardo Reis. The remains rest on a solitary and solemn pillar, which tourists hardly notice. Perhaps it is a lucid paradox, because the desire of the greatest writer of the Portuguese language was not to remain in memory, but to dissolve, forget, merge with nothing. He once wrote: “Travels are travelers. What we see is not what we see, but what we are”. (OR)