Monday 21 April 2014

After Yesterday

I didn't see much Easter Sunday church-related activity yesterday, as I was saying. Not that I'd recognize it. I do remember sunrise services decades ago in Herbert, when mom would troop us up to the Lutheran church at the east end of town--at Easter, I think--not into the church but to the far hillside to witness, somehow, the rising sun. It meant a good breakfast, that much I knew.
What did seem religious yesterday was the public ecstasy when one of Lisbon's football teams, Benfica, won the league championship. Ending at about 20:00, the game incited mass celebration among Benfica believers, who behaved as if delivered to some promised land. I caught the end of the game in a fado club which, once the champagne was sprayed, photos of children holding the trophy taken, and busty medal-presenting young women escorted out of sight, became a fado club again, serving a couple of sets of fado with tapas and wine. This was house variety fado, strictly amateur, but enough to effect that powerful sense of meeting, audience and song, toward fulfillment of both.
All of that was already in the past (where else could it be) 15 hours ago when I rode the metro to the airport to meet a certain Miss Lucy from Regina. She slept for 4-5 hours when we got back to the apartment. After that we hit the streets of Alfama and beyond in a traveler's first day, when she begins to build a sense of where she is and where she might want to go tomorrow.

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