June in Europe is turning out to be as wonderful as I hoped. The wet spring transitioned to beautiful summer just as we arrived. Our week in Girona, a Spanish city I had never before visited, was a delight, and now we feel very much at home at our villa in Portugal, sharing precious times with our three-year-old granddaughter.
Of course, thoughts creep up on us about activity in my brain from time to time. I can only celebrate an absence of worrying symptoms and prepare for what the next scan might tell us when we return to New York. That news might end up modifying our plans but we try to avoid being paralysed into inactivity by the uncertainty. Plan A is to move here rather soon, and plan A should remain the primary focus until something necessitates a change to plan B or plan C.
One of the enjoyable aspects of plan A has been to invest in improving my Portuguese. Progress is slow but noticeable and gratifying. I found a great website before my diagnosis, then paused my learning for a while, only to restart it about a year ago. The activity gives me a lot of pleasure.
Three Portuguese words have come to have a special meaning for me. The first of these is LHE, not a word with any emotional attachment but more of a technical curiosity. It is the dative pronoun meaning to or for him or her, the same as LUI in French. The oddity in Portuguese is how it is pronounced, because it is hardly spoken at all. A leading L in Portuguese is very gentle, while an H after another consonant, a common feature, is also only mildly expressed, with something of a Y tone to it. Then a closing E, like in French (when without an accent) is virtually silent. So LHE consists of three virtually silent letters strung together. It sounds almost like a neutral exhale. I find it beautiful, and also amusing, as well as frustrating when my computer never understands me when I try to say it.
My second Portuguese word is perhaps the archetypal word of the whole language. It is SAUDADE, which can translate into homesickness, but usually signifies something deeper, maybe a visceral longing. Longing for what? That could be estranged family, or a special place, or simply peace or comfort. It probably originates from the days when Portugal was a nation of seafaring explorers such as Vasco de Gama. You can imagine large crews on boats undertaking long, uncomfortable journeys of uncertain duration, and dreaming of home comforts. It may be erroneous, but I also associate Saudade with the traditional Portuguese form of song called Fado. A Fado performance is invariably full of longing, most often (but not always) for a lost lover. The tone is emotional and slow, like some forms of Gaelic folk ballad. It is always a pleasant experience listening to a good Fado performance, and I often find it conjures up some sense of Saudade in myself.
My third Portuguese favourite is LAR, a masculine noun usually written or spoken as O LAR. Its literal translation is HOME, but it means it in the deepest possible sense. If you are taking the bus home after a day at the office, you are going A CASA, or home in the simplest sense. O LAR is home of the heart, not just home of convenience or habit. It is LAR that the ancient mariners were thinking of while experiencing Saudade. Like Saudade, LAR usually refers to a place, but it could be a person or a time as well, or some combination of all three.
At O LAR is how I feel the moment I land in Portugal, and this visit has been no exception. Moments of serenity abound, often involving tears. But this time the experience has been expanded. We first landed not in Portugal, but in neighbouring Spain, and already I found myself feeling at home. Then, on my first morning in Girona, came a moment of rare sublime serenity. During the half hour morning break in rehearsal, I took a stroll through the Suddenly, I felt at O LAR, in a place I had never visited before. The feeling persisted throughout the stroll and returned many times later in the week.
I spent some time trying to rationalise what was going on. Could it have been the way the city was laid out, archetypically European, with few cars, narrow alleys, towering historic landmarks, terraces, doors, courtyards, public squares, and a general sense of faded elegance? Or the people, also elegant, moving with grace and without hurry, the young and old obviously satisfied with life, groups mingling and enjoying some tapas and a beer whatever the hour? Or perhaps did Girona remind me of some other place at some other precious time?
I could not work it out and I still cannot. But the sense of LAR was palpable and remains so. Perhaps this whole continent, or at least large chunks of it, is my LAR. And of course it conjures up longing deep within me, Saudade for the time when I can once again call Europe my literal LAR as well as a metaphorical one. Maybe the sensation will change once we are here and the reality of various unconsidered or forgotten downsides kick in. But I doubt it. O LAR is deeper than that.
Learning Portuguese has been a pleasure, and I look forward to continuing progress. But just as I found earlier with Swedish and Dutch, languages are tough to master and bring frustration along the journey. On this trip I have forced myself to initiate conversations in Portuguese, but with very limited success. Unless my counterparty is prepared to talk very slowly and with many pauses, they quickly change to English to make things more efficient for both of us. I hope I can move beyond this phase. Health permitting, I will give it my best shot. And I will seek out chances to use my three favourite words in context.
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