Lazy Letter: What Time Is It With You?!
They said it’s the land of good wine, and I can now understand how; wine is everywhere. It keeps you company with every meal, lunch, dinner, even breakfast if you feel like it. And I’m absolutely amazed by the melody of the church. Life becomes dramatic all of a sudden as the bells start to ring. I don’t think there’s much of an option, not to know about the time when you have one of these churches around. You have to be living somewhere in the forest all by yourself not to hear it. But I still don’t know what time it is. Have they already changed the clock for the daylight saving?! Funny how there’s not really a way to know about it. The sun is still warm, and is shining where it’s supposed to shine. Soon it’ll reach the middle of the sky; it’s almost lunch time, or in my case, breakfast; you know I don’t start eating until later in the afternoon. The sun will burn hot, and will make you feel like you’re on a vacation or something. As if the beach, the deep blue sea, and warm yellow sands would be waiting for you down the road. But what time is it?! How does it matter?! From the silence of the valley, I could tell that it’s Sunday; no chainsaws whatsoever. People are taking a break from what they do every day. Dogs don’t! They still bark out loud, and they still get mad when someone passes by their yards.
The church bells ring; at least there’s a way of keeping in touch with the clock. The sound echoes all over the valley. Although, you shouldn’t really trust this church if you live an on-time life. The clock of the church is ahead of time, but the bells ring before the actual hour. Now it’s all very confusing with the daylight saving. On very quiet days, you could hear the church bell from the neighboring village which is on-time, so it’s heard a few minutes after our church. It rings half of the melody on half hours. Some churches ring on every quarter. The rings don’t really make sense as long as the clocks are not on-time. Funny how nobody seems to care. Would any of this matter if I wasn’t expecting a company, if I wasn’t waiting for my food to cook, or for my homemade ice cream to soften? Would it matter if I didn’t have the habit of checking my watch every few minutes? Ironic how I just look at my wrist and I don’t really read the time.
All the clocks around me show a different time. I guess I’ll just follow the sun.
I asked my friend about his perception of time which was rather interesting. He said he didn’t like to keep track of time. The clocks and watches are stressing. You sort of worry every time you look at your wrist. That you have to be somewhere, or you need to be doing something that you’re not. “How much time do I have left” is probably the question to make it so stressful, and it’s a bit stupid to always keep track of an illusion, a man-made illusion. You could approximately tell the time by the sun and the moon. He could! I’m not so good at it, but I think I could too. I showed him my other watch, the one that my mom bought me when I was very young, my first watch. All of a sudden I remembered I had it with me all along, it was in the pocket of my camera’s bag. So I showed him that. Told him how I used to wear two watches on my both wrists, and how I loved it. And that I don’t do it anymore because my skin reacts to it. But, I still love it, so I put it on. Later he called them my handcuffs as he was touching my hands and arms.
29.Oct.17 – Bordeiro, Portugal
P.S. I’m supposed to leave tomorrow, but I’m not so sure now. Maybe I leave tomorrow, maybe in a couple days. I’ll leave after the chestnut festival. RJ left a few minutes ago, and he’s now walking to the bus stop. I’m sitting on the railing of the terrace, I keep my eyes on the road. I can see a little bit of the road from this terrace. I could probably see the small bridge over the creek that we watched the fire burning up on the hill. Things look different from down the bridge, you can’t actually see much from there. Those puffy trees block the view. A few steps back and forth until you capture this magnificent view of the school, with the church and its clock on the side; it’s seen only from a certain angle, depending if you’re going or returning. If you’re leaving, you have to look back to capture the scene. No one really looks back as they go, do they?! I now can see only a small portion of the road from up here, but good enough to see which car passes by, and to double check when the bus reaches the bus stop by the chestnut tree. The bus passed by the school now, and hit the break around the sharp turn of the road down the school. The breaks scream loudly, and I could tell for sure which bus it was: the one that brought me here. I keep my eyes on the road, and I see the bus reaching the tree, and I hear its loud break as it stops. So loud it fills the valley. I imagine RJ is getting on the bus, paying the driver and taking his seat; it all takes a few minutes. The bus drives on, disappears through the trees and houses and hills.
I saw another crazy dream last night. I don’t talk about my dreams anymore, you know! But this one was extraordinary. I woke up around six thirty. Still quite dark, I could see the stars from my narrow view out the window. I tried falling back asleep since it was too early to get up, but I had difficulties. Usually, it’s hard for me to sleep if I wake up in the middle of the night, or sometime near morning. I was trying hard, shoving my face into the pillow and turning on every side of the mattress, but I couldn’t sleep again. Little that I knew, I was already asleep, and all my struggles were just another dream within a dream. Then, still being in a dream, I thought that it’ll be a perfect time to lucid dream. I laid down on a surface, apparently our kitchen floor here in the school. And so I fell asleep as I was already asleep. I started dreaming, not any other dream, it was a lucid dream. My body was lifted off the floor, and I was floating in the air. Floating very subtlely and just so gently, I was rocking on air back and forth in the middle of a dream. A girl walked in through the white glass door, and I landed on the ground softly, as if it was my second nature to float like that. I won’t talk about the airplane crash, and all the creepy new residents in the school. Maybe I’ll tell you more about it once we meet up, tell you how I cooked my subconscious with all my recent choices. It’s not just about being away from home, and traveling about. You don’t really long to anyone or any place. As liberal as it sounds, it carries a sense of loneliness. It’s the matter of choice, and the way to observe things. Meeting up with new people, friendships that lack enough history to fill the void, to care deeply about one another, and to keep in touch once we apart. I keep looking for the similarities in between the cultures. Things are at a higher risk when your home is on your shoulders, always prepared for the unexpected.
29.Oct.17 – Bordeiro, Portugal