Sidewalk Laundry
Seems like every aspect of normal day-to-day life has a touch of the outré to it when away from the home country. Unconscious tasks that are normally rote, like washing clothes, require a newly focused awareness. While here, our duds have met suds at a laundromat, in our flat via a tiny washer/dryer combo smaller than a minifridge, and now in a new hybrid situation that is pretty unique to us.
It took a minute to find, but around the bend of a funky marina apartment complex, down the stairs and generally hidden from all view is a nice little harbor with a strip of restaurants, bars, and shops – and a rather unceremonious popup laundry arcade. No amenities like tables for folding or chairs to sit on, just 3 machines on a sidewalk – two washers and a dryer. Like much of our experiences here, the translated instructions only take you so far and the rest is a puzzle/IQ test. I failed and declared it broken but Stash got it working so basically I must have warmed it up, worked out the kinks, or otherwise played an important role. With garments agitating, we sauntered off in search of sustenance.
Shrimp pizza – it’s good, not great, but reminds us how to build the kind of pie we’d like to make the defacto back home – a basic Margherita. Nothing more that a simple cracker crust with minimal sauce, dollops of fresh mozz or burrata, and big leaves of fresh basil. Well, something more… shrimp, but you get my drift. It must be a quarter of the calories of any American pizza, not that we don’t love those too, mind you.
This joint also has a big dessert menu and I know we’re innit to winnit now because, well, Stasia. A colorful assortment of sugar bombs is just too much to pass up and what is lunch for if not an appetizer for dessert?
Rising (for the) Sun
Up at 6 on the dot and realizing I’m in time to catch the sunrise, I’m out the door trying to find the best vantage point. It’s all hills here so I’m either running up or down and it’s not another 10 minutes before I realize I still have my snore strip on, which makes my nostrils flare out giving me a decided post-fight-boxer/pig-snout/gorilla appearance. No wonder I got second takes from that early-bird couple.
The wrongest turn
One wrong turn, that’s all it was. Just a missed exit in the freeway roundabout (and I’ll tell you all about these suckers in a minute) and what follows is a stressful sequence of highway cloverleafs, fast city traffic, tiny one-way alleys, and a very frustrated navigator. It’s like being a luge chute. I mean, there is no way to just exit the madness and backtrack until we’ve been led so far down a maze there was nothing but to press on. Meanwhile, the driving instructions the phone keeps barking out are constant and confusing – and we’ll take many more wrong turns during our morning drive to a tile painting workshop about 25 mins from our pad.
The stress level is rising – we’re running massively late and the map won’t shut up, Stasia is trying to call the instructor and I’m in some kind of intercity rally race. I was born in LA – I grew up liking stressful driving so there’s a part of me that thinks this is fun, a real locals experience – but it’s time for solidarity, not silver linings.
Finally, we arrive 30 minutes late and of course, there’s no sign of the place, so we start walking. It looks like if we cut through this park we’ll come out the other side and it should be there, but after going all the way in what is now obviously a cemetery, it dead ends (pun intended) and we have to walk back out.
The skies clear and the trumpets sound and there she is – Carla, our instructor, standing outside her studio which is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it door in an otherwise residential street.
My fabulous entrance
Much relieved, we babble on about our travail as we approach the studio. As I’m entering, I notice there are other people in there, all looking at us which makes me feel a little self-conscious about being late – and that, plus the agitated drive and the low rim of my hat makes me completely blind to the low entry and I jam my head so hard up into the top of the door frame that my teeth slam shut and neck makes an audible crunching sound.
It was so sudden and violently unexpected, it takes a second for my brain to put together what just happened. Everyone is looking at me with a mixture of pity and horror, cringing faces all – this is exactly the perfect way to start a lovely painting session. I pass it off like it was nothing, and for fucks sake, will you please all stop staring at the ever-growing goose-egg on my forehead.
Carla and the Zen of Azulejo
I recover, but apparently not completely because as Carla is explaining the mindset we should have for this activity, she is now singling me out and making sure I can get my Zen on. It’s then I realize my face is rigid and fixed like a mask. I need to just take a minute, breathe deep, and release. That’s better.
All is well. We learn about the stenciling process, the oxide layer, the brushes and glazes, and the way to erase. Carla is a great teacher, charismatic and energetic with a big voice. Her English is good but heavily accented and it took hearing certain phrases twice to understand her like “ippyeksdent” (Happy accident).
Stasia chooses a yin/yang representation of two cats for her first tile and an ornate classic pattern for her second. I go with sardine patterns for both – there’s just something about fish. With the other two attendees, a nice pair of college students from Germany, we all spend the next 4 hours in deep concentration while Carla helps and makes sure we have all we need. We leave them in her kiln and are told to stop by in 2 days to get the finished pieces.
She is so sweet that after all that, she keeps us another 30 minutes to share the fascinating history of tiles that we missed by being so late. The session ends with happiness, hugs, and my ducking quite low under the deadly lintel upon exiting.
The beautiful sandwich
Fortunately, there are no wrong turns and we get home in a jiff, affording me the opportunity to make the same beautiful sandwich I’ve been enjoying daily, wherein a couple of toasted sourdough slices dressed in a quick aioli spread throw a salami and cheese party, and invite a salad of arugula, hot chili, cherry tomato, and balsamic vinaigrette to sit on top. I would take a picture but by the time it occurs to me there is no evidence. I inhale it because I have to get back in the car and drive down to the office in order to have a strong enough WIFI signal for a little work-related zoom meeting.
Roundabouts
The roundabout is how business is conducted out here on the cobblestone streets and asphalt highways. They’re everywhere and nearly eliminate the need for stoplights or stop signs. It’s just about yielding and understanding the inner/outer lane. If you enter one without understanding how they work it might be confusing if not a bit terrifying because it’s not exactly intuitive until you get it – and then nothing is simpler. Gone are the days of saying “go straight”, “take a left” etc… all that becomes “take the (first, second, third) exit”. These are even on the highway, though you do have to slow down a bit. We were once scared of them and now think they’re genius. It also seems that all non-freeway roundabouts have large-scale sculptures in the middle – a brilliant bit of community design.
Just surprise us, Luis
Later that evening, in celebration of our tile painting turnaround, zoom meeting success, and a desire to see our favorite waiter again, we return to Casa Azúl. Luis is there, and straight away we say that we’d like him to take care of us tonight. With the one caveat that the wine should be a cabernet, he’s at liberty to pick the bottle and order the entrée.
It’s almost as if he was expecting this. All kinds of head-nods, eye-winks, and hand-flourishes follow as he dashes back to the kitchen, returning shortly later with a favorite cab from the Algarve. After pouring the glasses with that rolling wrist motion that makes decanting an artistic pantomime, a thin focaccia pizza with thick fresh pepperoni and shaved parm arrives at the table. “On the house”, he says.
A glass or two later, it’s now time for the main act. Luis proudly comes out of the back with a large cutting board, on top of which is a thick, juicy tomahawk steak. Stasia and I look at each other with amazement and wonder. We’ve seen this fabled cut of beef (sometimes called a cowboy steak) on cooking shows for years but have never partaken – and would never dream of ordering for ourselves (we don’t eat this much red meat in a month let alone a meal). Basically, it’s a robust ribeye with a formidable length of bone sticking out of it, the whole thing in the shape of a tomahawk.
He’s so happy – this is the highest epicurean honor he can bestow upon us. And it comes with a little performance of cutting the steak into chunky portions and dishing them out along with various grilled vegetables and homemade potato chips. A healthy pinch of finishing salt is sprinkled and a ramakin of zesty aioli put on the side. Luis is beaming.
Did you hear a moo?
Now, we like medium rare, we’ll even enjoy a paper-thin raw carpaccio. I don’t think we’ve ever been served a 30-ounce slab of ‘blue’ steak. This guy is just north of still in the field grazing. What’s hilarious is when Luis comes to check on us I mention that as wonderful as it is, we’ve never eaten a thick steak so lightly cooked, but he explains. “No no, this is medium rare. You see the outside skin? That is well done. Just inside that is medium”.
The other 98% of it is still mooing, but you know, this circle of trust we’ve entered is very important to us; it’s a cultural dance, delicate and meaningful. We eat as much as we can – it really is quite good. The last 20 minutes are spent hanging out, exchanging phone numbers, talking about our kids, our hopes and dreams… and we bid farewell to Luis, another person to try and meet up with when we come back.
Don’t mess with my vacation vibe
I get an email today from the place where I host my servers and they’re telling me I’ve violated all kinds of rules and laws and my account is in jeopardy unless I take immediate action. Confused and a bit worried, I log in and find that some nefarious entity has hacked into my account and spun up 20 high-capacity servers to do bad things out in the interverse.
Look, it’s one thing to threaten my livelihood or even set me up for punishment – it’s another to throw off my vibe when I’m on vacation. I’m kind of a vibey fellow, especially when traveling and I don’t like it getting messed with. This tosses my groove out into the Atlantic and my first concern is, ‘Fuckers are trying to ruin my good time!’
There’s nothing for it but to attack immediately and take back that hill. I delete all the servers, kill anything that I didn’t put out there, change all my passwords, and do a half dozen other measures to protect against this kind of thing happening again. It’s an ugly reminder of the dark side, a glimpse at what lurks in the shadows. Gotta keep your guard up – but also not let the bastards grind you down, or throw off your vibe. I am just getting over the negative despair that afflicted so many of us in the past 4 years. Not going back to that. Fight dystopia.
Unplugged in and out
This leg of the trip was meant to be a place where we could catch our breath, stay at home, relax, read, work, anything but run around. Stasia’s got an arsenal of wonderful influences begging for her time, between listening to The Creative Act (which I’ve just started and cannot recommend highly enough), reading The Listening Path (same author as the Artists Way), painting her daily inspirations or immersing herself in a series of calming meditations. She’s all set for the early afternoon today.
For myself, a bit of a leg stretch over a long walk to the beach – I need to empty out my brain as well.
I locate a walking path that is pointing toward the ocean (now a couple miles distant). On my way, I see I’m heading toward a roundabout that has a large installation in the center celebrating the Age of Discovery.
The walking path continues below the street and directly under the installation via a tunneled underpass – where I encounter a vibrant mural that tells the story of the identity of Portugal. It’s fitting that the historic seaward explorations are memorialized above ground – that is what the world sees. But below tells the story of the people. The fishermen represent the dependence on the ocean’s bounty while the woman kissing the dolphin brings it back full circle, showing respect and gratitude for the abundance. It’s a hidden gem and I am delighted.
The walk to the water winds through the touristy shopping quarter of old town – not my favorite scene. This area is mostly little shops all selling the same stuff and restaurants where guys stand in front and try to lure passersby inside (the only real fishing still being done in this section). This part of town (and in fact much of the Algarve) has a growing population of Americans and other people who look like Americans. In the summer months, it’s positively swamped by them. I despair at the preponderance of pasty pensioners I’m passing and find myself feeling a bit possessive and small – what are all these tourists doing in my country? My judgy alter ego is starting to emerge.
Heteronyms
At the end of my walk, I confess my smallness to Stasia who helps me sort it out – it’s a good thing we all are here supporting and pumping much-needed capital into this country. Tourism is the economic backbone – as important to future growth as those fish were to the fisherman back at the mural. Stasia, in fact, has just read a chapter that relates. In The Listening Path, the author mentions that she has named her inner critic – the one that can never be pleased. She’s given “Nigel” an identity and shone a light on him – which has defanged his power.
She reads that passage to me and suddenly, many disparate threads are coming together. Our friend Chad has just told me recently that he’s given his alter ego the name “Chuck” and only brings Chuck out when he needs to expel raw displeasure and tough-edged commentary. The book I want to buy is written by an author who uses heteronyms to inhabit other perspectives. Stasia tells me her sparkly side goes by the name “Stashy”.
It’s time to give this judgy persona inside me an identity and I choose João, which is perfect because it’s lofty and pretentious – based on a real king of ancient times and we all know they were never satisfied. His full title: João, the Worrier King.
What’s your heteronym?
Oh, and the car says hi
Not sure how we missed this the other dozen nights we’ve parked the car, but …
The Itinerant Three TnTs 