No one said piecing was gonna be easy...

[optimist]

I know. I nearly fainted. With a name like Rui, it could not be otherwise. BTW, if you live near Toronto there is an exhibition of Canadian-Portuguese artists this month. It is called Sem Saudade.

Saudade, I love that word. It has so many nuances... It is so untranslatable.

''Deixar a patria é un peso
que se levará sempre
entre as tempas''


I wonder whether my parents dropped you when they went to Santiago in their honeymoon If math does not lie, I was conceived there... We could write a fado out of it!

As a matter of fact, it was my brother who got the stitches. I stood up on a bench and slipped, hitting him in mid-back. It is kind of a miracle he did not get paralized. After that, I lost my taste for skating... Wimpy me. He skates just fine, BTW.

It is the Mediterranean I miss. The sea with the deep, dark soul and the red sunsets over the salt marshes.

Este noso inmenso mar que antonte reflectía
no seu leito os luceiros do alto firmamento.
Aquela praia, na que teus nus pes debuxaban
as historias
que nas rochas recitaban as lucentes ondas,
os luxuriantes e doces aromas
dos xabres, das cunchas
e dos soños.

Esta praia,
estas rías, aquel abano de arrecendos
que o peito agradecía

Sorry for the midnight nostalgia, guys. We expatriates get occasionally romantic. There is nothing worse than a sailor on dry land.

The waves, blue walls
of Africa, go and come back.

When they go...
Ah, to go with them!

Ah, to come back with them!
When they come back...

It is a 2,000 year-old longing. Imprinted, genetically.

Good night. Doces sonhos.