More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
sopas
linguiça
chamarita
The saying goes that the Azores have four seasons—every day.
Mark Twain mentioned the Azores in The Innocents Abroad but only to say, “Out of our whole ship’s company there was not a solitary individual who knew anything whatever about them.”
saudade,
fado,
When you are the child of parents who sacrificed and strived but were squashed by the world at every turn and then died young, you are supposed to be the thing that makes it somehow all make sense, to make their lives mean something.
The volcanic Azores are also no strangers to natural disasters. The ties between the islands and the United States are made of lava.
On September 16, 1957, there was a series of very small earthquakes off the coast of Faial. No one paid much attention. On September 27, a spotter manning one of the vigias—whale lookouts—saw turbulent water and signaled that a school of whales had been spotted.
capas
tourada à corda
foguetes,
bolas de futebol
And the Azores way is ‘If you can do it today, you can do it tomorrow. Why not tomorrow?’”
Fernanda got on the phone. She told me that the American way is that “you wash my back, I wash yours.” But the Azorean way is that everybody works together to make enough for everybody. “These men put together a big pot of sopa—you grab a bowl.”
o forno
chamarita
Angra do Heroísmo.
This theory holds that there is nothing more valuable than time to waste. The most interesting things are the ones tucked in the empty spaces to be discovered when dawdling, loitering, lying in bed. It’s the only part of the universe you can truly call your own.
Such bullshit!
tourada à corda
I wish I could figure out the rules that the universe follows for catching you when you jump off a cliff. There seems to be some sort of caveat that the life rafts won’t line up until after you’re hurtling through the air spread out for a belly flop.
Other than angry gulls or a bull, there was no wildlife danger—not one species of poisonous snake or marauding predator on the islands. Indeed, the only animal believed to be endemic to the Azores was a bat.
I once read about a study trying to isolate what factors most brought happiness. After adjusting for health and basic necessities, researchers found it wasn’t money or success or education. They narrowed it to two things: a sense of gratitude and enough sleep.
bodo de leite
lapas.
John looked at her with astonishment. “What don’t you like about it?” he asked. “There isn’t anything to do,” she said.
alcatra
It’s such a pretty fantasy that we can let in the world and stay the same.
I knew this from John, who explained to me one day that his grandparents said marriage works best when people live in separate countries.
“Here’s to nothing,” he said. “That’s when anything can happen.”
chuva,
Dona Amélia was the last queen of Portugal.
Manuel, who would become the last king of Portugal,
“I got so good at flipping back and forth between ways of seeing the world, ways of being in the world, that I didn’t know what inside me was authentic,” he recalled.
“Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it . . . We do these things not to change the world, but so that the world will not change us.”
tourada à corda
vigias
Ti Choa,
pão caseiro,
in the Azores, restaurant hours are seldom exact),
White wine is not always afforded full respect in Portugal. I once biked down the coast of the mainland with a wine aficionado. A waiter recommended a full-bodied red, and my friend said, “Really? But we ordered fish. Not white wine?” The waiter said, “Sir, in Portugal we believe in good wine. So always red.”
forçado.
fajãs
“I have come to understand that what makes the islands beautiful and complete is the island that’s across the way.” Maybe life is like that. For all our talk about living in the moment, what makes the present beautiful and complete is also imagining what we will do next.
Luso
But a friend of mine whose husband died has a theory that there are four chambers in the human heart—so even if one belongs for eternity to someone missing, there is still room for love. I had to smile thinking of my dad’s less poetic version of the sentiment: “A three-legged dog runs plenty fast.”
impérios
Knights of the Order of Christ,
Jewish people had been among the first Azoreans. In Terceira, one of the first bays claimed by Portugal is called Porto Judeu. The story goes that the Jewish crew member who first swam to shore was given naming privileges. The Azores were again a place of escape for Jewish families during World War II. Research around the Y chromosome of Azoreans showed 13.4 percent of the population have DNA markers common to Jewish origin.
