the soundtrack of sailing away

Tem mil anos uma história
De viver a navegar
Há mil anos de memórias a contar

Ai, cidade á beira-mar
Azul

Se os mares são só sete
Há mais terra do que mar...
Voltarei amor com a força da maré
Ai, cidade à beira-mar
Ao sul

Hoje
Num vento do norte
Fogo de outra sorte
Sigo para o sul
Sete mares
(2x)

Foram tantas as tormentas
Que tivemos de enfrentar...
Chegarei amor na volta da maré
Ai, troquei-te por um mar
Ao sul

Hoje
Num vento do norte
Fogo de outra sorte
Sigo para o sul
Sete mares

Sete Mares, Sétima Legião

I'm heading south. I'll be back, love, with the turning of the tide.

life lessons that are priceless – the underrated art of editing for clarity and precision

"No, my dear, surely it is I who am surprised; you are merely astonished."

Noah Webster, American lexicographer, teacher, writer and lecturer, responding to his wife's comment that she was surprised to find him embracing their maid. 

the soundtrack of contemporary life

Wanderers this morning came by
Where did they go
Graceful in the morning light
To banner fair
To follow you softly
In the cold mountain air

Through the forest
Down to your grave
Where the birds wait
And the tall grasses wave
They do not
know you anymore

Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true

In the town one morning I went
Staggering through premonitions of my death
I don't see anybody that dear to me

Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true

Jesse
I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself to a demon
I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself to a demon

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song, Fleet Foxes

The original and a surprising cover by an unknown artist.

life lessons that are priceless – tolerance and human nature

“I haven’t deeply considered the matter”, smiled George Moon, “but if to look truth in the face and not resent it when it’s unpalatable, and take human nature as you find it, smiling when it’s absurd and grieved without exaggeration when it’s pitiful, is to be cynical, then I suppose I’m a cynic. Mostly human nature is both absurd and pitiful, but if life has taught you tolerance you find in it more to smile than to weep.”

"The Back of Beyond", 

in The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, 

Vol II

life on the hill (VI)

One consequence of the wide peripheral vision (as it were) of the House on the Hill is that it, too, is visible from lots of points in the vicinity – any place we can see we can be seen from –, meaning that a measure of exposure is inevitable. Because of that, but even more importantly out of a wish to tread lightly on the Hill – there are too many large, conspicuous houses on it as it is – I tried to make it discrete, so that while one can see it one has to know where to look. Indeed one of our favourite games in the beginning – especially after building commenced – was to see how soon we could spot it, and from where, every time we came on a visit to check on progress.

My own favourite approach is from Sintra, by the road hugging the northern flank of the mountain. All twists and turns and switchbacks, dappled shadows on huge boulders, ancient trees and the twinkling of cool streams, with the occasional mossy stone wall denouncing the presence of some old house or hill farm, or a former convent, behind it.

Its name, I only recently discovered, is Estrada Nova da Rainha (The Queen's New Road), a rare instance of the official designation trumping the vernacular (Estrada da Serra/Mountain Road) for poetry and romance, and of a royalist name escaping the zeal of revolutionary republicanism in the wake of a King’s assassination and the extinction of an 800 year-old monarchy in the early years of the last century.

An appropriately dignified track then, I feel, to make one's way to Fool Manor.