Happy Birthday and the full snow moon....Dreamwalking!

Happy Birthday and the full snow moon

A birthday is like a full moon knocking on your door, but with a different knocking. In Dutch we call it “verjaardag”, far away year day and that is it technical now, it’s already a week ago but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like yesterday, a week of birthday trance and now the full moon is coming again, life. I was talking with an English friend who calls himself Angel (there are a lot of different Angels, with this one you can have fun!) and I told him, that it feels indeed like full moon, you don’t plan it, it just happens. He told me that the gipsies always celebrate their birthdays for many days. A nice story, but when I checked it out, I didn’t find any proof for it. I told him that is has probably to do with the position of the stars. All though the universe is always changing and the stars are not the same as when you were born, maybe you changed natural in and with the universe and that’s why you get suddenly so much energy. Well I also cannot proof that, so maybe it’s only in the mind or whatever.

The fact is that it was an interesting day which I started with what I call flying or dream walking, which means walking with feeling without having a goal. This is how I started discovering and exploring the city in the beginning when I was arriving and that is the fundament for my walking tours.  A destination I had, but that could change within the walk as well. It’s like walking in meditation, with the mind here, nowhere, in the past and in the future, whatever comes spontaneous without thinking. At the end of the walk you will see where the walk was about. Or not! I am walking from one of the highest spots of Lisbon, called Graça in the direction of Martim Moniz, when the first door with knowledge opens.

We are talking about the second of February, Groundhog Day in The U.S. and Canada. It started around 1847 and it’s for them a long tradition. Around that day the groundhog comes out of his burrow to check the weather outside. In early times it was seen as a sort of weather broadcast. If the sun was shining and the groundhog saw his or her shadow, it went back in the burrow, knowing that the winter would be going on for a while. When it was cloudy and rainy weather it meant that spring would come early. Old folklore can give nice stories and thoughts. The weather of that day was cloudy; sometimes a sparkle of sun and rain was possible to fall. This would mean, Spring will start fast. Good! 😎

Meanwhile I was walking and arrived at Martim Moniz, where the famous Tram 28 starts his tour through the city. I met a nice Italian couple with their bikes. They told me that they made this year already 6000 km, wauw! And they asked me if I knew a place to sleep. I told them that although there are many empty and abandoned houses in Lisbon, it is difficult to find a place. Sign of the times! I advised them to go to some places to meet people who could maybe help and I continued my way. 

Without thinking I was following the tracks of Tram 28 to the endpoint Prazeres, a cemetery in Campo De Ourique with beautiful white houses and cats. A little bit similar to Pere Lachaise in Paris. That is one of the points where I go with my newest tour  'Night Train to Lisbon' and I suddenly felt like going there, maybe to connect the life and the death like in the old myths was done to say goodbye to the winter and welcome the spring. By thinking that I was back with the relatively young Groundhog folklore again, this has many much older ancestor stories.

I read already about Ishtar and that was more than 4000 BC.  Who went to the underground or underworld, and when she was gone, fertility was gone as well. And when she came back, it was there again! And what to think about Isis and Osiris from Egypt, Greece Persephone and Hades, Rome’s Proserpina and the Gaelic Imbolc and Brigid, the wolves and the Bears, very old and almost forgotten and polytheistic religions celebrating nature! because than the Torah was written and the Christian Bible of the church and even later the even more 'young' Koran, all monotheistic religions, and in the western church an image of Jesus arrived and with him Maria and theblessing Candles, Candelmas, who took the power and degraded the old myths to Barbaric not civilised customs which had to be forbidden. The monolheïstic religions threw shadows on polytheïstic and natural thinking. Yes dreamwalking can bring your thoughts very far away, meanwhile somewhere going here and there, where to you don't know yet. 

When Maria gave birth to Jesus without having sexuality involved, she still had to follow the old Laws of Moses and that is why she had to purify outside the temples for forty days before she could come back and that was on February 2. (Februare means in Latin purification). We see here a world of the myths suddenly turn upside down. The day of purification, nature fertility and sexuality became suddenly to a holy interception without body, but only spirit. Nature and body became suddenly something bad. Maybe that is why we have so many problems with the nature on this planet, who knows. A fact is that the Church started to try to baptise the whole world and we see where we are now.

But when I was walking and these thoughts came to me, I passed already the parliament and the beautiful Basilica Estrella before I woke up in Campo de Ourique. Walking in dreams knows no distance and time and I was suddenly on the other side of the city. I was in a ghost town. “Different rhythm and empty eyes”. Humans protected, almost sterile and morals of fear with no contact with life. You ask yourself do they still have dreams, hope and future or are they only living in the now and trying to keep it like it is. Different inspiration.  It is interesting though, how all this different neighbourhoods are indeed very different like small villages in the countryside. Was it the Cemetery which made this with these people? (The grey weather did not really help the people smile as well. Portuguese people are very sensible for that fact!) When I arrived at Prazeres, I saw that they just closed the fences. It seemed that the death didn’t want to talk with me. It started raining slowly and I felt that I was not at the end of my birthday tour yet.

 To go back to the centre I took another direction. I walked in the direction of Santos and MadreGoa. Walking walking with cloudy grey weather and it was raining a bit. I didn’t follow the normal road and found myself suddenly in a street which I don’t remember that I was ever there. This doesn’t mean that I was never there, but I just don’t remember it J Rua Garcia de Orta. That’s the fascinating site of Lisbon, you can always find new things, old and new and always changing. I found a mysterious dark looking castle house. I asked an old woman who lived there. She said she didn't know. I searched later for it on the internet (I love internet!) and found out that it was owned by Real estate agents, home health care. I had to laugh, but not really, because this is what I found on the other side of the street.

The decay of empty houses. That's Lisbon as well. Behind and not only behind the facade there are a lot of houses empty for a long time and that brings decay. Nice for pictures but not a good sign. It's not only the European Union what brought this, although they didn't make it better neither, in contrary I would say, but the most of the managers are very bad managers and greedy as well. If you compare it to the Netherlands, we have Heineken, I don't like the beer so much but that is something else, and they sell it everywhere, Portugal has one of the best wines of the world and they sell it not a lot abroad and I can give many more examples.

 And there is here an other mentality as well. I heard a story about a fisherman in the South of Portugal. He was relaxing on the beach and a German Fisherman arrived and asked him why his was not working. The fisherman answered I was working one hour and caught my 3 fishes. So now I can relax. The German business man said but if you catch 3 fishes in 3 hours you will have in 8 hours 24 fishes and than you can sell them and after a while you can buy a boat and then even a factory and so on. And than what? asked the Fisherman. Well replied the businessman well than other fisherman can work for you! The fisherman looked at him and said and then I can relax on the beach? He looked at the German businessman and he smiled. Moral? Different weather, different time, different mentality! 😊




A little bit more far in the direction of the city centre near the Belgian Embassy, I found 3 small new brooms still packed in plastic. I chose one and I took it with me to help me flying to somewhere I had to go but I didn’t know where it was yet.

Even though it was a small broom it worked very well. After a short while when I was arrived at Praça Luís de Camões, I met a Belgian Friend who I call a Sound juggler because he makes music with a guitar, microphone a simple sampler, and many natural sounds, a whole DJ trance show on the street. He is a positive sunny guy and we had some fun when he told me that there was a exposition opening near Casa dosBicos. , because some friends of him showed there new paintings, he was planning to go there. And there would be good music, wines and food too. If I knew where it was? I told him that it was near the Alfama left behind the palace on Terreiro do Paço. The name is now Praça do Comércio, but the Portuguese call it mostly by the old name. Things change slowly here.

I decided to go with him. And found out it was in Arco da Conceiçao, one of the oldest ports to the city in the old city wall. It seems that it was already in the 6^th century there and that they called it in the 16^th century the Port of Laziness. When we walked up the stairs in the narrow arch we came in the gallery, it was above a restaurant which is official situated at Rua dos Bacelhouros 4c. I met some friends and some nice interesting sometimes surrealistic paintings and drawings. We drunk good red wine had some tapas and went outside to smoke something.  When I was sitting at the stairs of the arch, my mouth fell open, with what I saw in front of me, just above the opening to the street...........

It was a stony shield with tiles with two Angels protecting something what is not there anymore. I have to admit that I was first stupid and not understanding what this meant. That this dreamwalking actually came here to the end. (More of them will follow of course). I was even thinking what could have been there in the middle. Mostly in Lisbon that is Jesus, São Antonio, São Vincente or..... MARIA da Conceiçao!!!!!! Our lade from the immaculate conception. The name of the arch! But the shield is empty. The angels are waiting for something else to protect. This is a blog for Dickology and I explained alraidy that everybody can put his or her name in for this Philosophy. You can even put an picture of yourself in the shield. Or an heart or Ishtar, Isis Persophone or whatever you think what is good for this planet!

Ok after this round dreaming walk my life was not over and I had a nice birthday party with some friends in Crew Hassan in Intendente and after that life went on again till I wrote this blog on Full moon what they call the snow or hungry moon because it is the moon in between winter and spring etc. etc. Life! Enjoy it!!!!