Merry Christmas!

No matter how fed up we are of shopping. No matter how tired we are of the long year. No matter how sick we are of all the consummerism. No matter how bothered we are by all the useless clichés. No matter what, at Christmas we remember our better part, our humanity.

I love Christmas. I love the fact that there's a time in the year when we all mean well, we all make sincere wishes, we all want to let our feelings show. A time when we forget our masks. A time when even the worn-out and over-used clichés make sense.

And we are all of us united in the same feelings. We are all a union of souls making the exact same things. We want to celebrate the family. We want to show our love to our beloved ones. We want peace. We all know we over shop, but we shop for those we love. We want to give. Sometimes words are not enough and so we give to watch people smile and to say we thought about them.

My Christmas is a time of joy and reunion. A time of warm (even if sometimes painful) memories. And each Christmas is always special because we are together, because we love one another, because we have a past together. And just being together is so special...

This year I would also like to wish all of you in blogspace (a space I invaded so recently) a very Merry Christmas in the happiness of home and family, away from pain and full of light. Merry Christmas everybody!

Mutti, Du bist unsere Stern im Himmel! Wir vermissen und lieben Dich, noch, immer, und immer mehr. Du bist hier mit uns...

Feliz Natal!

We Still Are the World

It's Christmas! It's cold, grey, days are short, and... it's Christmas! It's no surprise I'm caught by the spirit of the season!

I was stuck in traffic in 2ª Circular, which is always one of those experiences we can't get enough of, one of those "all dressed up no place to go" kind of situations, when I heard something I hadn't heard in ages (literally) and that awoke the better part of me: it sent me back on a time travel and, for some minutes, made me believe again (or still) in the goodwill of Man.

It was 1985 (oh, those glorious 80s!). I was 12/13 (boy am I getting old or what?) and the world was full of promise: there was Band Aid and suddenly all the world had discovered Ethiopia and all the world united in naïve generosity. (I say naïve because the intentions were superb but the outcome was not far from catastrophic).

I much preferred Band Aid (just the pun in Band Aid, "penso rápido" in Portuguese, is a wonderful language game for someone that is 12 and bilingual!): it was a Christmas song "Do They Know it's Christmas", with still a lot of air play today, it had George Michael and Simon Le Bon (guess what that combination was for a pre-adolescent!) and it was the first wave of solidarity for Africa. But there was also USA for Africa (another pun because USA was not - even if it was - United States, but United Support of Artists for Africa) singing "We Are the World".

So, there I was miserably in 2ª Circular when the radio goes "We Are the World"! It was ages! I remembered each word of the lyrics just as if I was back in 1985! And I felt naïve again! I felt I could trust Man again. I felt that the world could be such a better place if only we could "come together as one".

It's so nice when we are naïve! It's so nice when we can believe...

The Alpha and the Omega

Yesterday I had one of those wake up calls that got me thinking and, worse than that, caused me physical disgust at the world we're in.

Late in the morning, I was at a medical clinic waiting for some check up exams' results and bored to death as is the case in these circumstances. Around me the elderly people that are the great health consumers of our society and some other younger people looking equally bored and stupified as I was. Old, used and torn magazines lay open and forgotten on a small glass coffee table. The younger people were all very much interested in their mobiles and frantically sending sms, looking dumb and alienated. The older people were either chatting (about their health miseries, what else?) or had their eyes glued to the TV set on the wall. Following their eyes I also stared at the TV.

TVI was on. Some idiotic, brainless morning talk show was on. I stopped to gaze in astonishment at what the masses are fed every morning and considering it an experience in life, since I never watch TV at that unusual hour.

Horror began then.

Certainly moved by some fake, hypocritical 21st century Christmas spirit, the producers, or whoever draws the programme's line up, had staged an episode in charity. In the audience a child and her grandmother would be the beneficiaries of such distinct and marvelous altruistic deed. They were poor, their lives difficult, the child had been abandoned by her mother and raised by that grandmother. The child wanted a computer for Christmas. A computer no one would offer her.

Surprise. As they were in the studio, TVI had sent a crew to their house: a naked house with just the basic furniture and no decoration (it looked cold too).

At this moment I thought things were getting despicable. So you go and show the world the inside of a private house? Worse, without the owners being there or consenting? And you make poverty a show? And you exploit the living conditions of obviously very humble people so that viewers can shed easy tears of compassion?

More surprise. While child and grandmother were at the studio, they had put a new bed, new curtains and new toys in the child's bedroom. Proudly, they were showing a very perplexed grandmother and child and thousands of viewers the innovations in the room. How lovely and colourful the new bed was, what fashionable orange curtains! The child was looking at all of that with blank eyes. Suddenly, a laptop on a new desk!

The silent child burst into loud, convulsive tears. She took her little hands to her eyes and just stayed there crying, crying so hard that all we could hear was that torrential cry.

I looked around. The viewers sharing the clinic's room with me showed no signs of emotion. Their faces were void of anything, their eyes still glued to the TV screen as if nothing had been showing.

Repulsive feelings criss-crossed my body. How was that possible? I was watching one of the most ignoble things I had ever seen in my life! I've seen a lot of bad stuff already. But this was too much! People were toying with a child, making audiences out of her frailty and suffering! How can you do such a thing? And for the public this was nothing special, nothing much, just another episode that I'm sure they get on a daily basis.

I knew morning TV is bad, but in my blond ignorance I thought they only showed recipes, beauty advice, interviews with common people, contests, astrology, couple's golden anniversaries, I don't know, stories of people that fight against diseases, survivors of accidents. But this?

With the girl still crying, the presenters ended the programme to the applause of the studio's audience. No commercial break and the 1 o'clock news was on. First news: European delegates were signing the Lisbon Treaty with special silver pens in an imposing, luxury setting that cost a fortune.

In less than five seconds we had gone from an extreme of human misery to the heights of spending. Poverty and prosperity and nothing in between. In less than five seconds we had contemplated the alpha and the omega of our strange civilization. And no one thought this was odd, difficult to digest.

Debt: I took the title for this text from a remark that Ramalho Ortigão did in John Bull (1887). One day, when he was walking in London, he saw a filthy and almost naked beggar go by. Later in that day he saw a carriage with His Highness, the Prince of Wales. Astonished at this coincidence he said: " E assim foi que eu tive a dita de ver quase ao mesmo tempo, o Alfa e o Ómega da espécie humana na grande civilização britânica, o primeiro e o último cavalheiro de Londres" (p. 136).

I saw that too, yesterday, in Portugal, in live and colour on national tv.

Going Poetic...

I recently have discovered blogs in which people find a way to express themselves through poetry. I confess that is something that amases me. It's such a mystery to me how people can combine words in other ways other than prose. I am permanently perplexed at such a gift.

I'm not a great poetry lover (probably because I had a lot of it when I was a child), but there are feelings and ideas that are better expressed either by silence or by the combination of words we don't think possible in straight lines of prose.

This is part of one of my (very few) favourite poems by one of the great 20th century poets Dylan Thomas. It expresses exactly what I feel about something that is not a comfortable thought for us mortals. And since I'm left with neither words nor art, here it is:

And Death Shall Have no Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

...

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.

"Though lovers be lost love shall not". And so we also have a piece of immortality.

Beautiful...

It's that time of year again...

The last time I went to the circus I must have been 11 or 12. It was one of those brand-name circus that was very proud of displaying an enormous number of exotic animals. And even more proud of exhibiting a mini zoo to entertain the visitors.

Mum and Dad took Sis and I to see the animals and it was one of those experiences one will never forget. I still remember the acid smell of urine and I can still hear the roar and growl of very upset animals confined to miniscule cages in which there was hardly any space for their bodies. Mum and Dad were always like this and they would usually give us lessons in life that we would not forget. This was precisely one of those.

After seeing the animals Sis and I were very silent and to this day I still don't remember the circus show. All I can remember of that afternoon was the animals in pain. Now, because it's the holiday season, there are circus tents everywhere and posters announcing "Bengal Tigers" and "Nile Hippopotamus" and all exotic animals we can imagine. One of the circus even has crocodiles! What is worse is the emphasis on how wild and ferocious the animals are that will have to be tamed by humans. And humans will fight the dangerous beasts and win (to the applause of the crowds).

Of course humans will win the fight! We are talking about tired, underfed, sick, depressed animals. Animals abused by all tortures possible. Exposed to extreme weather, forced to live in confinement, obliged to travel long hours, taught by brute force and punishment things that they would never do in the wild, humilliated with each show.

Rational creatures we are. So rational and civilized that we pay to watch shows of violence just like the Romans did and we, in this civilized rationality, consider the Romans barbarians. And what surprises me even more is that those of us that raise a voice in favour of the rights of animals are seen like strange people and crazy activists. In fact, the only time I almost went to jail was when I was in an Arab country trying to stop four men that were kicking and hitting a dying donkey that had simply refused to walk another step.

A pile of skin and bones, overburdened and obviously malnourished I saw the donkey collapse right in front of me. Imediately those men started to kick and beat the animal and it was so tired and sick it just didn't move. It didn't even make any sound. It didn't try to defend itself. It was as if all he wanted was to die and put a definitive end to its suffering. I couldn't take it.

I grabbed the very few words I know in Arabic and the thousands I know in English and went straight at the men. I don't remember much else because I was seeing red. I think I pulled one of them by the arm, something like that, but I'm not sure. I remember a crowd gathered. I remember my husband trying to stop me and talking sense to me because we were alone and very far from protection. In the end, he managed to take me out of there before the police came.

He was, most naturally, furious at me. I was furious at the men and my heart was full of immense sympathy for the donkey, so much I could feel physical pain. I remember looking back and seeing the crowd and the men in their dirty djellabahs gesticulating in the air and very angry. I didn't help the donkey I know, but I didn't stay still, I didn't turn a blind eye and did nothing.

With the circus it's the same. I don't contribute in any way to the show and if ever I have kids, they surely are not going to the circus with mom.

It's more than time animals should be banned from the circus activities. It's slavery. It's cruelty. It's abuse. It's injustice. It's horror. It's a manifestation of our own irrationality.

From Greatness to Ruin

Mugabe is coming but I'm not giving him any importance by writing about him. So I'm going to do things my way and still talk about Zimbabwe, a ruin of a country with a past of greatness.

João de Barros was one of the pioneers in introducing Portugal, and the world (for we were grand then) to Zimbabwe. Describing the lands of Manica, he talked about a place " no meyo do qual está huma fortaleza [...] toda de cantaria e [...] em torno deste édificio em alguns outeiros estã outros a maneira delle [...]. A todos estes édificios os da terra lhe chamã Symbáoué, que acérca delles quer dizer córte". At the time, the Portuguese called this region the Monomotapa and believed it was full of gold. Expeditions were sent to dig the precious metal together with missionaries to spread Christianity, one of whom, Gonçalo da Silveira, was killed and then chanted by Camões in The Lusiad: "Vê do Benomotapa o grande império,/De selvática gente, negra e nua,/Onde Gonçalo morte e vitupério/Padecerá pola Fé santa sua" (X, 93).

Europe had a mirage of Zimbabwe. In a continent of huts and kraals, here were splendid stone buildings made by an enigmatic ancient civilization and the land was rich in gold, probably the mines of King Solomon were here. However, Portugal soon lost interest in the Monomotapa region. And Zimbabwe was lost to the world until the 19th century.

It was a German explorer and archaeologist that rediscovered Zimbabwe. Karl Mauch gave up his health to study the imposing mysterious monument and suddenly Europe was interested again in this interior African region. Of course, Mauch was a harmless scholar, but the British were intrepid imperialists and whenever they smelled gold... no stones would be left untouched.

In the last decades of the 19th century, Cecil Rhodes would become one of the richest, most powerful men in the world. And unfortunately for a part of the world he was a tremendous imperialist (more than the Queen of England herself). He went to South Africa at an early age because he needed a good weather for his poor health. But he was ambitious, determined and intelligent. Soon he made a colossal fortune in the diamond mines of the Rand. He alone was so powerful that he sent expeditions to the north of Cape Colony and founded a country with his own name: Rhodesia.

History is so ironic that Rhodesia was the Monomotapa Portugal had abandoned. So, here it was, a private country, property of a man with immense power and an unbreakable will. Rhodesia was then added to the colonial map of Britain. And so it stayed until 1965 when independence was unilaterally declared. However, due to internal conflicts, the status of colony was imposed again and finally in 1980 independence definitely came. Rhodesia changed its name to an ancestral Zimbabwe and a new country was born.

From then on only one person has had the power to rule. From then on a prosperous country became one of the poorest. From then on a "reign of terror" has swept the land. From then on life expectancy dropped to 37. From then on human rights have been abused endlessly. From then on censorship is the norm (CNN and BBC are forbidden from reporting there). From then on the land of ancient greatness became a broken wreck of misery and suffering.

No, I'm not going to talk about Mr. Mugabe...

On the Iaras and Esmeraldas of this Earth

It makes me so sick that adults toy with the lives of children just because laws, regulations and legislations are what we think makes us democratic societies!

I'm not even going to explain the stories behind the mediatic cases of Iara and Esmeralda, because we've been abundantly showered with them by the media. What disgusts me is that children still have no real protection as individuals and can be left to the whims of adults. Now you have a family, now you are institutionalised, now you have another family, now you don't have a family anymore. Yes, this is good policy!

And I also think it's good policy that when you remember that you are a biological parent of someone, you can just look at the judicial system and have that biological stranger with you, because that is your God ordained right. You donated cells, so you can claim the product when you best think you should. Nice!

Now, I've just heard on the one o'clock news that there is a petition going on for Iara not to be taken from her foster family, just when Esmeralda is about to spend her last, and traumatic, Christmas with the people she calls Mummy and Daddy. I am amased at how things are done. Laws have been made to secure the rights of biological parents, but shouldn't there be a vice-versa premise here?

Did you know that childhood and adolescence were only discovered in the 19th century? Well, they were. Until then children were either infants or miniature adults, ignored most of the times and legally abused. Author Jeffrey Richards explains, in Imperialism and Juvenile Literature (1989), that the decline in child mortality and the economic prosperity of the middle classes in the last quarter of the 19th century made people realise that children were distinct from adults. They were physiologically and psychologically different and therefore had different needs. And it was in this period that compulsory schooling was extended and even a period when books started to be compartimentalised so that there was literature for small children, literature for juveniles and literature for adults. This was more than one hundred years ago.

It seems to me that from then on we have evolved little.

P.S. - Obviously there are no images to illustrate this.