Silanigtalersarput

In his book about the Arctic Thule expeditions and the inuit people, Knud Rasmussen (the greenlandic explorer) gives an account of that remarkable skill they call "Silanigtalersarput", the capacity of seeing clearly in darkness and even see through the clothing, skin and flesh of the fellow beings, into their very innermost being."

Anyhow, it is a great word for deep wisdom. I could use some Silanigtalersarput.

An Arctic Poem

Emily Dickinson - As if some little Arctic flower


As if some little Arctic flower
Upon the polar hem
Went wandering down the Latitudes
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer
To firmaments of sun
To strange, bright crowds of flowers
And birds, of foreign tongue!
I say, As if this little flower
To Eden, wandered in
What then? Why nothing,
Only, your inference therefrom!

My town

I live in Porto - Gaia, a double city in Portugal on both sides of the Douro river, close to its mouth on the Atlantic Ocean. You can find a rather nice quality of life here, despite a little too much litter on the streets, rude talking and some very ugly buildings. Street crime is growing too.

But the old trading town center is attractive, there is quite a lot of nice cafés ( I mean, coffee houses: they mainly serve coffee), paved pedestrian streets with old houses and many many shops,some baroque churches and an old beautiful public garden.

The problem is that Porto - Gaia is off the circuit of the great cities of culture. It's a rather dead provincial town. Almost everything looks old and in decay. The only joyful area is by the sea - the sea promenades: North and South of the river , they are the best places to live.

There is absolutely no feeling of adventure here, no research teams, no explorers whatever, no dreams of Thule! Just a conventional and sad day-by-day, without horizons to look for except the sea.

That´s why I started this blog. I feel I am living elsewhere, in lands of mistery and unexpected thrills, of calm lonesome beauty waiting to be discovered and explored.

Images: Isabel Fiadeiro, Henrique Matos

Music for Thule : 1 - Spiegel im Spiegel

Written by Arvo Pärt in 1978 , "Mirror in a Mirror" is my first choice for Ultima Thule music. I found in it the mistery, the strangeness, the tranquility, the solitude, the sense of infinity and transcendence I search.

Here we will moor our lonely ship

Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands.

W. B. YEATS
The Indian to his Love