What a day

Having risen not too early, and had a coffee in my garden in the slanting morning light, under blooming bouganvilea, I then bathed and shaved while listening to a hilarious BBC show on Renaissance Dance (see the dance newsletter). I then strolled through this beautiful city over the the Gulbenkian, stopping at Pao Doce (just milling with people, it being Sunday morning) for coffee and a bolo de Berlim. (They could not make one like this in Berlin if they busted their kidneys). At the Gulbenkian I oohed at the maki-es and aahed at the Mamluk glass (see below); then walked over to the Avenida Valbom where sitting at a table in the middle of the pedestrian boulevard, under delicious trees shot through with autumnal light, I was served steamed clams and Caril de Gambas -- as true South Indian Curry, complete with the compost tang of asafetida, as it gets. I then walked down through the Avenidas Novas -- these incredibly beautiful buildings bathed in the delicious early fall light -- to Londres, where I watched a Japanese documentary. It was an exchange of video letters between an artist and a poet shortly before the poet's death, slow, uneventful, funny, philosophical and touching in that subtle Japanese manner which so often passes for oriental inscrutability. I then returned home, had a whole bottle of vinho verde while listening to a concert on Radio France Musique -- Bach, Teleman, Rameau and watching several Bejart films on Mezzo (Bolero, Sacre du Printemps, etc.). I then turned in and read Krawczuk on Seven Against Thebes and around in Stanislaw Kostka -- about Niemcewicz negotiating in his poor English for the purchase of a pendant from a lady who was under the impression that they were negotiating the price of something else (hint-hint), and the the King of Naples, portrayed by Sontag in her novel (Volcano Lover) as a vulgar and perverse retard, while S.K. describes him as gentle and decorous, suggesting that either he was blind or she has failed to do her research.

It was, altogether, a very nice day; but not unlike the rest of them here.

I cannot describe this day to anyone, of course. If I do, they would hate me.