Still adjusting

"Only a person with a candid mind, who is usually bored by intrigues, can appreciate the full fun of an intrigue when they begin to manage one for the first time.  If there are several intrigues and there is a certain danger of their getting mixed up and spoiling each other, the enjoyment is even keener"--Cold Comfort Farm

Four days later, I'm still getting over jet lag.  For me, that means doing a lot of sleeping.

Just now I'm reading some of the books I got in London.  One is a children's history of Portugal, which I'm translating now. As well as a book of Portuguese poems written by Fernando Pessoa under the pen name Alberto Caeiro. (He used a lot of pen names, which he termed "heteronyms".) And a book of Charles Perrault's fairy tales translated into Portuguese.  And I got half a dozen books from the "Xenophobe's Guide to..." series.

My inbox had almost 1500 emails!  About a third alone were Meetup notifications.  I still have half of them to go through.

That was a heavy rain yesterday. (I was reckless enough to go out in it!) Betty Anne was sensible enough to delay her latest art walk.

Saw part of the new version of Twin Peaks last night.  Too cryptic for me.

I've written a translation of the first Alberto Caeiro poem. (They're untitled.)

I never watched the flock,

But it’s like they watched themselves.

My soul is like a shepherd,

Knows the wind and the sun

And walks in the hands of the Seasons

To follow and look.

All Nature’s peace without people

I come to feel at my side.

But I get sad when the Sun sets

For our imagination,

When it cools at the bottom of the plain

And I feel the night come in

Like a butterfly through the window.

But my sorrow is peace

For it’s natural and fair

And it’s what must be in the soul

When it already thinks it exists

And my hands collect flowers before it’s there to get them.

With a rattling noise

Beyond the bend in the road,

My thoughts are happy.

I only have to know that they’re happy,

For if I didn’t know,

Instead of being happy and sad,

They’d be cheerful and happy.

Thinking, uncomfortable as walking in the rain

When the wind rises and it seems to rain worse.

I don’t have ambitions but desires.

Being a poet isn’t my ambition.

It’s my way of being alone.

And if sometimes I wish,

By imagining, to be a lamb

(Or to be the whole flock

Spreading out all over the slope

And being greatly happy at the same time),

It’s only because I feel what I write when the Sun sets

Or when a cloud passes his hand over the light

And draws a silence through all the grass.

When I sit down to write verses

Or, passing along the roads or the short cuts,

I write verses on the pages of my thought,

I feel a crook in my hands

And see a slice of myself

At the top of a hill,

Looking at my flock and seeing my ideas,

Or looking at my ideas and seeing my flock,

And smiling vaguely as if not getting what they’re saying

And wanting to pretend I do.

Welcome, all who read me,

Taking off your wide hat

When you see me at my door,

Your coach hardly going to the top of the hill.

I greet you and wish you sunshine,

And rain, when you need rain,

And may your home have

At the foot of an open window

A favourite chair

Where you sit, reading my verses.

And while you’re reading them, may you think

That I’m anything natural—

For example, an old tree

In whose shadow children

Sit down with a thud, weary of playing,

And wipe the sweat from their hot heads

With the sleeves of their torn smocks.