Antiquity in Porto

Written in Porto, Portugal – February 2018.

Beyond the window cloaked in fog, hidden behind the sheets of rain, a candle slowly burns.  The flame flickering with the gusts of wind entering the old abandoned building.  The flame shines violet, moving to crimson, and transforms yet again to a blinding white light.  So much energy within the flame, coming from a small stack of wax.  The old mosaic glass of the broken window on the ancient building glows, and for the first time in many years the fire is reborn with the vigor of life.  The cobwebs begin to crack, and the bats begin to awaken.

I finally pull my fasicantion away from the mosaic glass windows with the strange flickering light and walk through the ancient city of Porto, navigating across the old bricks, and narrow streets.  The two-story buildings are squished together, like old books spilling from a dusty shelf.  The homes are sprawled along the hills, some refurbished and gleaming out of place, while others abandoned with hanging beams and shattered windows, gaping into dusty dark spaces.    The old town laid upon the hillside of the Douro River, perches atop the Atlantic Ocean, overlooking nine centuries of trade and travel, conquer and evolution, destruction and defeat.  But the city rebuilds itself, a testament of the resilience of the human nature.  The river meanwhile, continues its journey – 870 kilometers further east into the Spain, gradually becoming more serene and at peace as it winds it away from bustling city by the sea.  Here, along the urban river bank, humans deposit trash from restaurants and cigarette butts, which are left floating, leaving its once clean dark blue waters with a film of man made residue.  Nothing like the river Tiete that passes through Sao Paulo, with all that’s left but a pool of toxic waste – no, the proud Douro still raises its head high like a lion on the plane, moving it’s way into the mountains further from the threat of city sprawl.

The streets are scattered with bundled up tourists, many admiring the old Portuguese architecture, small shops and restaurants tucked within the alleys made into streets.  Bricks laid hundreds of years before press against my worn shoes, and the pressure moves up into the cartilage in my knee, as my body tries to adapt to the old stone.

Porto is made of impressive steep stairwells that wind up the hillside, leaving room to see the old locals moving through their simple yet elegant life on the river.  The city was all but broke five years before, the abandoned buildings with broken glass the norm.  Travel trends ebb and flow and with an influx of tourism into Porto the falling buildings became bright cafes and bustling restaurants.  Tourists stop in the middle of the road to take a picture of an old building, sometimes with actual cameras, but more often than not with their phones, later to post, and soon to forget.  I find myself here, like a fallen tree moving down the Douro river to the sea; lost within the human traffic.  I walk to the gym to find the pool where I seek to simulate a time I once had, a time now lost.  I will return to the ocean. 

Each morning I wake and my neck strains, the tendons and ligaments within trying to come back to life.  They feel as if I was sixty years old, tense as the trauma still lives inside my neck.  In my mind I see myself sitting below an ancient oak tree, gratitude laced in lugubrious thoughts.  Dr. Cesar and Dr. Evandro, they saved me, I would have been paralyzed…I must rejoice.  Are the ligaments and muscles recovering from what was all but lost?  The titanium within stirs the very essence of those ligaments and tendons – thousands and thousands of years of human evolution shattered and reworked.  A new type of evolution born inside my spine.  The radiant energy that slides between my mind when I meditate – it transfers to the muscles and the ligaments and the tendons, and I bring them back to life.  The Universe, raining down, gently touches my Being and sends me back on my path of light and love.  It is all too easy to become lost, the path of darkness not too far off my own trail, and the terror lurks in cells of the past.  I breath, and I stay on the coarse of healing.   We will rise above.

I walk in the rain across the old bricks, down the steep stair wells, past the cafes, and the tourists with their phones.  No-one notices me as I make my way to Trinidad metro station, and I take the train North to Matosinhos.  I find the Pilates studio where I work my custom made Portuguese Physical Therapy.  Reawakening the spine, finding movements I may have never had, and becoming to know my body all over again.  “Keep your chin down, roll the spine, vertebrate by vertebrate, abdomen close to the spine.” Rita is the owner of the Pilates studio and makes for an exceptional physical therapist.  She is one the many stars that have passed though my long night.

During these treasured moments, I feel I am the Universe itself.  All the stars and glowing planets are the special people I have met on my travels, distant orbits the people I have yet to meet.  Each Being luminous in their presence, deep within the vast expanse.  Gradually and steadily, my long night becomes illuminated – blue moons hang below ephemeral comets, and star dust washes across the horizon.

Somewhere back on earth…down below the clouds, beneath the thick layer of fog, lies a broken building.  Within the abandoned space a soft flame burns, slowing dancing with the breeze, swaying back and forth with life.