05-Apr-2020
Good news...
Good news brings optimism and optimism is the foundation of courage.
I'm not a courageous person, alas, and I'm not very optimistic either.
Nevertheless today I feel a positive energy which looks very much like happiness.
Our nephew and his daughter, who had caught the virus, recovered!
They are perfectly well and the medical tests confirmed the good news.
They came to visit us by bike, because they are usually very active and it had been hard for them to remain at home, ill, for ten days; of course we stayed in the garden, respecting strictly the most cautious of social distancing.
Obviously I could not hug them, but we could chat and laugh together and in those moments I realized how deeply I had missed them.
Maybe I'm selfish, because I feel relieved that they had caught a relatively mild form of the virus and could recover quickly, while too many other people, all over the world, have not the same luck.
I simply hope that others can feel the same joy as I felt, when I saw my dear ones healthy and smiling again.
04-Apr-2020
If you have a garden and a library...
I know, often it's a commonplace quoting the words of wisdom of the great thinkers of the past ages.
But I think that often they were right. We should not try to be original at any cost, because our presumed originality might fade into an even worse cliché.
It's like fashions, you see. When there is a new fashion, which everybody starts following, it becomes irremediably banal after a short while.
Oh well, I'm just rambling, which is never a good thing.
This useless prologue is due to the fact that I thought of a sentence of Marcus Tullius Cicero after taking this picture:
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
And, yes, definitely he was right.
We are so lucky to have a generous garden that has already started donating us fresh vegetables, so preciously welcome in this hard period.
It pleases me to take amateur photographs of my garden, and it pleases my garden to make my photographs look better.
03-Apr-2020
Tenacity...
A lot of people forget how important it is to be creative.
We get caught up in getting ahead and in day-to-day minutiae.
But creativity is a fundamental mode of expression, as is being tenacious and standing by our own convictions and passions, even if it's not the "popular" choice.
It seems to me, that the present times are suitable for a new opportunity of practising our creativity. We might look at the only apparent banality of little things around us with different eyes.
We have more time to observe, more time to think over.
It can help us.
We should also be tenacious and patient at once.
We should believe in our chances and stand what cannot be changed immediately.
I do what I can to find new little ideas to fill my daily virtual pages with pictures and words.
Today I pay a tribute to our old and apparently badly off cherry trees, which keeps on fighting and, surely, will give us delicious cherry also this year.
The old cherry tree is in blossom.
If it could speak it would say:
"I'm not tough. I'm tenacious."
02-Apr-2020
Looking at flowers from their level...
The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
One thing of which we surely don't lack in these days is time.
We may take advantage of this slowed down temporal dimension to dedicate more time to what we usually tend to neglect.
Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like these simple flowers which, if we take the time to observe them from a different perspective, look bigger and more wonderful.
01-Apr-2020
At the beginning of another month...
Resilience is one of the most important skills in life.
We all face difficulties, challenges and setbacks, but resilience is what determines whether we fight through it and grow, or whether cave in and let those challenges defeat us.
Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine to the soul.
It's so curious: we can resist tears and behave very well in the darkest hours. But then someone makes us a friendly sign behind a window, or we notice that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed or a letter slips from a drawer... and suddenly we feel frail and sensitive.
31-Mar-2020
Flowers know that it's spring...
"April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain."
When T.S.Eliot wrote "The Waste Land" surely he could not imagine that this coming month of April would be cruel to us for other and probably much more dramatic reasons.
Nevertheless I have always liked Eliot's poetry, so I couldn't help quoting these lines.
Of course poetry has nothing to do with my today snapshot from self-isolation.
But, you see, all what I can do in the morning is cleaning, tidying up and cooking.
It seems to me that this subject may be more enjoyable than a vacuum cleaner or a kitchen towel.
So here is an apple pie, carefully baked by your humble truly.
30-Mar-2020
Lidia, our Portuguese friend...
Our neighbour and good friend Lidia came over today to check if we needed anything and offering her help.
She is in self-isolation with her family, but luckily they are all perfectly healthy.
Lidia respected carefully social distancing when she arrived to our home.
She offered to help me with domestic tasks and she brought us a welcome gust of cheerfulness.
It was so nice to meet a friend after so many days.
Lidia is Portuguese; she didn't have an easy life, but she could always go through hard times with courage and sound pragmatism.
She knows how to remain always positive and able to see the good sides of life.
"Andar com um amigo no escuro é melhor que caminhar sozinho na luz."
That means
"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."
29-Mar-2020
Shelter...
"Even when a person has all of life's comforts - good food, good shelter, a companion - he or she can still become unhappy when encountering a tragic situation."
I might be wrong, but I think it was Dalai Law who said that.
I know I'm on the good side. I'm lucky and I can face the necessary self-isolation with all possible advantage.
Nevertheless sometimes a malicious gloominess starts haunting my monotonous, but safe days.
Does it happen to you as well?
There is always an alternative, a way to fight to recover one's good balance.
A shelter in a shelter. It might be music; it might be any other rewarding domestic activity.
My shelter is a book.
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
28-Mar-2020
Home is any four walls that enclose the right person.
Our home is a physical and perhaps emotional comfort zone where we can heal and recover enough to address all our problems the next morning.
But when problems never change and every new morning reminds us of the dangerous situation we are facing, home becomes a place where we should feel secure and comfortable.
We shouldn't feel frustrated for our temporary lack of mobility.
It seems to me wiser to take advantage of this circumstance to develop an even deeper and more positive relationship with our home, its spaces and everything it can offer to us.
If we cannot take trips, we may travel inside ourselves and communicate better with the person or the people who share our everyday life.
27-Mar-2020
A not too fearful visitor...
Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?
Time spent watching animals is never wasted.
The company of various birds fills my days with sparkles of good mood in these days of self-isolation.
They are free to go wherever they like, but also their life is risky. They can be victims of predators as cats and other birds as well.
Nevertheless they follow their natural instinct, they look for food, they build their nests, and they communicate among them.
Not too differently from us in that…
26-Mar-2020
Keeping my mind active...
Our mind is a very powerful thing.
It can affect our health, self-concept and well-being.
I like thinking that our mind is just like a muscle.
The more we exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.
Gymnastic of mind doesn't need to achieve records, but it's important to practise it regularly.
During this hard period, which nobody knows how long is destined to last, I try to do the little I can to keep my mind in exercise, reading books in original languages and doing crosswords puzzles in a language different from mine ( which is often quite complicated, but finally very rewarding).
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
25-Mar-2020
Invisible spring clouds...
Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.
I took this snapshot of our neighbour, a vigorous old gentleman, who is preparing the ground to plant his seeds.
Maybe I hoped to convey a feeling of normality, with the seasons which follow their rhythms.
Charles Dickens wrote in "Great Expectations":
"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."
And his description suits perfectly the weather we have here today.
Nature keeps on with its great performances, ignoring the vicissitudes of people. We might see in that either a positive message or a sign of the minuscule role we have, when we are facing what we cannot control.
I can wave at my neighbour only from distance now, and we all speak louder to hear each other. Things change and we have hardly the time to get used to that.
It looks like a glorious day of spring, and objectively it is.
But I cannot enjoy it, for reasons which have nothing to do with this picture.
So I won't mention them.