4. Astral Geography, No’s & a new addition to the family
Every restaurant is boasting a handwritten sign for Caracóis!!! Snails are not my thing, but I appreciate the continuity.
Hello, I am back and ever on my bullshit. This newsletter is a couple of days late... Mercury is retrograde and so am I. What time is it? What is time? What is time?! The warmer weather and gradual reopening have me feeling like I’m living in a cotton candy fever dream. Consistent sun is a numbing agent and a catalyst. Both full-body anesthesia and a fuller range of feelings. Good times also hint at the shadow of their opposite. Like a sunset so beautiful it makes you a little sad.
I’ve been thinking about land, the stars, and the natural & synthetic processes that are ongoing all around us, all the time. That we aren’t aware of cognizantly, but that our bodies respond to. Developing an intimate and reciprocal connection with the land we live on can be more challenging in a city, but cities too are animate.
Why are we drawn to certain places? It could have something to do with astrology, really. According to a dubious internet source, Portugal is a Libra, and Lisbon is a Taurus. I’ve also heard, conversationally, that Lisbon is a Pisces. This unverified source says that Lisbon and I share a birthday and an ascendant sign. That would be cute if we were birthday twins even if it’s untrue. Another interesting tool for exploring your birth chart in relation to places is astroclick travel :) :) :) You can click on lines and reflect on your relationship with those places and how they correspond with different seasons of life-- seeing what resonates. When I did my chart, a line to the west of Portugal, suspended in the ocean, indicated that I should retire close to this line— this lands. I’m literally trying to live like I’m retired. I want to putter, gossip, and do a maximum of two things per day. It’s called energy conservation.
This is not astral, but I was told that the geography of Sintra is like legs parted towards the sea. The mountains are the legs, and the valley is the yoni.
A friend said recently, about the arrival of tourists and opening of borders, “Portugal is opening its legs.” I mean, we’ve all got to eat. This comment was made particularly in reference to the soccer match held in Porto where many British fans were allowed to enter as spectators before Portuguese people were allowed such a privilege.
I wrote in my first newsletter about how the neighborhood I live in is in an intermediary stage of gentrification. It’s flipping gradually-- an acceleration made even more apparent by the re-arrival of tourists. My neighborhood is mostly sanitized, save for one little piece in front of the alley where I live. There are regular folks that post up there-- they use drugs, fight, break bottles, take breaks from sex work.
One night I came home and one of the men was throwing trash cans, yelling. There was trash in the street. I went home thinking about how this disagreeable behavior can be read as resistance. I’m thinking about this part in an article I read recently by Seitz & Proudfoot:
Black queer women’s small gestures at queer slow jam nights in gentrifying neighborhoods— elbowing onto dance floors, refusing unwanted stares and solicitations to dance or converse— might not register as ‘properly’ revolutionary, but for Adeyemi, they speak to ‘strategies of remaining’ in urban spaces that both desire and displace working class, black, feminine, and queer forms of life.
Anyway, I’ve seen much less agreeable behavior from drunk college boys. The man on the street adjacent to the alley where I live is not fighting for his right to party, he’s articulating his right to exist. And, he also has a right to party. We all do. Há sempre alguém que resiste. Há sempre alguém que diz não.
I think about all the ways in which people, animals, and environments say no. For example, ducks have spiral vaginas; “long and twisting, lined with dead-end pockets and spirals that curve in the opposite direction.” Amazing.
Whether it’s having the Pan’s labyrinth of genitals, throwing bows on the dancefloor, or strewing trash in the street, there are so many ways to say no, I don’t accept these conditions. I won’t acquiesce.
In the realm of saying yes-- I adopted a kitten… her name is… Magda! Magda Beleza. Her mama is a dispossessed neighborhood cat from the fishing village of Lourinhã who started making visits to my friends’ apartment. They noticed she was growing round, and one day she gave birth in their closet.
I’ve had a cat-shaped hole in my heart since my childhood cat Phoebe passed away. I’m committed to being Magda’s companion and guardian for life… hopefully I’ll get at least 17 good ones with her. We’re still figuring out the scratching thing. It’s not clear whether she can yet tell me apart from furniture. As a child I read a lot of those Henry Siamese cat books-- Henry goes in a hot air balloon, Henry goes sailing, Henry goes cross-country skiing, etc. I have similar aspirations for our journey together, but I’m trying not to get too ahead of myself.
I too appreciate a good limit experience, little one.
I’ve read that cats are said to be good antidotes to geopathogenic zones and spiritual disturbances. Golden cats are spiritually radiant. So I have this small gremlin who is spiritually radiant. I’m studying cat chakras so I can practice reiki on her. For real, it’s the least I can do. For such a wee thing, she has already regulated my nervous system so much and also has scratched me mercilessly. I guess that’s love.
When I’m at my most egoic, I fancy myself a sort of transplanted Carrie Bradshaw of Lisbon. Hopefully less problematic. But since language is my primary filter for the world I constantly have a running Carrie monologue in my head. My body moves through spaces and inner Carrie is quipping away. The great thing is that the quips come in Portuguese and English now. I can’t tell sometimes if my Portuguese is getting better or worse, but I made my dentist laugh and I can make well-timed jokes. This has to count for something… even if I can’t quite nail down verb tenses. Either way, there is a directly proportional relationship between imbibed alcohol and fluency. ~ (duh) ~
I’m hard on myself sometimes. I learned some Portuguese words as a child before I learned the English words, but I didn’t learn to string sentences together until I was eighteen and living in Brazil. I feel like a linguistic orphan, stranded somewhere between two syntactical shores. Sometimes I think I speak Portuguese like a child. But maybe that’s not terrible-- with fewer options available to me there’s purity and precision to my chosen words.
I’ll leave you all with this idiom: Quanto mais choras menos mijas… the more you cry, the less you piss.
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Writing update: The journal article that Ellie and I wrote is now available on the Community Literacy Journal’s Digital Commons!
A curiosity: Belly Button Biodiversity Project — I found this after thinking about belly buttons for a whole afternoon. Fun fact— there are benefits to putting certain oils in your belly button.
on astrology & places:
Listening to:
“El Abuelo” by Rodrigo Gallardo feat. Fernando Milagres
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Thank you for spending a little bit of your day with me. As always, this monthly content is an offering. <3 If you would like to buy me coffee or buy Magda some toys & treats, my venmo is duffylala !