11/11: why can’t I love Lisbon?
🎣 Trying to open up to the city; trying to take the bait thrown to me.
First of all, happy 11/11 to all who observe. In Canada, it’s Remembrance Day, which I won’t even touch right now. All I will say is: wouldn’t it be nice if one day war was just a weird, embarrassing, distant part of our human history?
Secondly, good evening from Lisbon, a city I never expected to be in. A city I’m finding myself a bit disconnected from. A city I’m trying to fall in love with. I’m not sure what makes someone love a place, but I’d imagine it’s an equation that goes something like: magic + meaning + nostalgia + kismet. I’ve been lacking in all departments here.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m dizzy with gratitude and in awe of this weird little life of mine, but something has been missing. Is it me or it is the city? Is it the state of our world or is it my hormones? Idk. Idk. It’s getting late, so I’ll just leave these questions in your capable hands.
As always, sending love.
lvs
I’ve been trying to open myself up to love, to allow my heart to receive what is sacred and lovely and magical about people and places. Because love isn’t just about two people seeking union, it’s about the cosmic thread piercing through every living breathing inspiring magnificent thing. I want to let it all in, to take life in heaping handfuls, to stuff my pockets and my mouth until it falls everywhere, all over everything, all over me. But something prevents me, and I haven’t been able to tell whether it’s disappointment or exhaustion or the fact that my heart just does this sometimes (shuts everything out), but it’s like I can feel my arteries clogged, heavy and sticky and coagulated with some kind of energy, inhibiting the free flow of this love, this divine ecstasy.
I can feel it in my movements, in my meditations, in the way my pen pauses and resists the page. I am unable to access what is right in front of me; unable to submerge and intertwine and become one with this beautiful life. What’s getting in the way?
It’s silly (because I don’t actually believe this), but the feeling is that I don’t deserve it. I’m not allowed to have love and beauty and bliss. It’s as if there’s a conversation already going on and the negotiations haven’t been in my favour. The agreement is that I’m here, but not really. I can hold concepts, but not know them. I can live, but not completely.
It started in 2019, a few months before I realized I needed to make the move to Calgary. My heart was slightly shut off, and that was going to be a problem. I began working with a life coach and switched to a more somatic workout. I added in meditation and long walks. I journaled more. I fell in love. My heart expanded and collapsed, expanded and collapsed, over and over again. But for all the things I’ve done, I can tell there’s still more. Not that I don’t have wonderful relationships and meaningful connections; there’s just something about love and beauty I know I’m not feeling that I want to feel. It’s a euphoria and liberation I have tasted in moments, but only briefly. In times of prayer and encounter; during sunset yoga when the teacher holds my feet; watching a full moon over the ocean; saying I love you more than anything to a person and meaning it. But all of these things have been brief, temporary experiences; all of these things ended, and with them, the feeling of unearthly joy also departed.
Being alone here in this ancient, amazing city, I have been hiding within myself, unwilling to be touched deeply and seen and known by these salmon pink buildings and tile accented walls and a deluge of radiant beings. In every conversation that lingers a little longer, in every meaningful compliment, or genuinely tender smile and extended eye contact, there are efforts at connection — bids, they are sometimes called, but I like to call it bait. Most people only chew lightly on the offered bait, but every so often someone bites down hard, hooks sinking into the soft parts of their skin. There is light behind eyes now, tenderness in the space between, and strangeness starts to collapse into familiarity. With every word that proceeds, souls kiss, tongues touch, and then there’s the old push and pull, as we tussle in the current. Splashing in vulnerability, sipping on anticipation, and finally taking big gulps of love.
But these are the best moments; the rare ones. Often it’s just a gentle passing, like fish gliding in a sea of wonder and wondering. No hooks, no holding, no catching. Only a passage of people who kind of tap you on the shoulder and guide you into a form of alertness. It also can be a sacred and intentional ritual, and despite its shallowness, it’s an aspect of connection required for establishing depth. A precursor to profundity and perhaps even for love.
While traveling, I rely on the latter a lot more, but that’s not to say the hook/line/sinker doesn’t occur on the rare occasion. Albert, the mini dachshund, happens to quite adept at these, inviting the loving gaze and outstretched hand and click-click-click of fingers and kissy sounds of strangers. He rarely takes it (he’s so amusingly anti-social), but sometimes I step in to receive the greeting or acknowledge their efforts. Most of the time it architects a moment that wouldn’t have been, resulting in the exchange of names, a phone number, a wine date, the feeling of friendship. People wave and say “come back soon!” or at the very least sincerely wish us the best. It’s intriguing to see the level of kindness that dogs can pull out of people, especially dogs that couldn’t care one way or the other.
Today, my friend Albert and I generated an ethos that I suppose was well-suited to a photographer’s eye, because as we sat on the bench at the coffee shop, a man approached to say he took a photo of us. He would send it, if I wanted it. The caveat was that it wasn’t very good, in his words, but I was happy to receive it anyway: his bid. As I fiddled around with my airdrop settings, he procured photos of his own mini dachshund: a 12-year-old female, brown and white, wrapped in bedsheets. And then he left and that was all. No phone numbers or plans to meet — just a photo and a passing chat and the ritual of connection which is sharing photos.
An exchange of kindness and seeing.
I was sitting and writing all of this when he came and offered me his gift of sight. It struck me as an offering, a bid placed, money on the table. All I have to do is go all in.
I realized late this evening, while chatting with Americans at a bar in Bairro Alto, that this place is growing on me after all. Not like a barnacle or a mole; more like a smooth blanket of moss covering all sides. A gentle, slow, welcome growth. I guess you could also say I’m taking the bait.