Quiet Cartographies

Nicosia

On a late summer day,on a hot sunny day,I longed for a breeze.

My body burned slowlylike a cigar in an ashtray.My heart felt as thoughit would burst.

Had my brain been swallowed?Was my skin shrinking?Night and day,that terrible migraine.

Until one day,seated on a garden bench,softly and gently,I felt it.

All my hairs electrified.My burned skin found relief.

A different kind of feelingfilled my being.A gentle touch,one of pleasure,one of lust,like the soft hand of a lover.

I closed my eyes intensely.Invisible hand,unshaped body,all around my being.

Come, wind,and take me as a lover.Make me live again.Come back.Take me from this burning fire.

Through the Shutters

Through the gaps in the shutters,I hear the wind blowing outside.Huddled in my living room,I flick through a book.

It comforts me to feel the silence of the houseinterrupted by the sound of children playing somewhere.They must be in the bedroom too,enjoying the moment.

The wind blows harder.

I hear a cry and get up to seewhat has interrupted the moment.

As I climb the stairs, the windows open.

A bang is heard,an uproar suddenly arrivesand rips through the house like thunder.

I hear the rustle of leaves,so many leaves, as I climb the stairs.

When I reach the room,I notice that the children are different.

So grown up.

Had I not noticed?

I am suddenly pushed.My hair and clothes flutter in the wind.Leaves climb the stairsand scatter everywhere.

The house is in turmoil.The roads are no longer the same.

Disorganised, the letters scatter across the floor.The pages I had leafed through moments beforeare now torn and battered.

The disorder of the letters makes everything tasteless,meaningless.

What stories would they have told me?

From the once-familiar corridor,the city can be seen in the distance.

People running,cars speeding.

Without looking back,they move through the hypnotic trance of arriving.

I think of the leaves scattered on the ground.Empty, blank.Had they always been like this?

We descend the stairsand follow the streets with impossible perspectives.We run and follow the crowd.

To the right,I see a face mirrored in a shop window.She watches me and mirrors my movements.Two young men follow her by the hand, just like me.

Who is she, I wonder?

But then I forget and move on.

Being you, wherever you are,The sound of rain clapping against the window glassReminds you that there is a world out thereAnd that you live in it.Something is happening out thereAnd it is calling you.It's almost like feeling home…

At the Main Library

A young woman talks to a young manin the main library hall.

They have been talking for a while.Topics come and go,one after another.

She runs through wordslike a person running through a storm,pushed by the wind.

He follows her speechat a different speed,as if in another musical tempo.

I am seated, trying to think,but my mind is disturbedby the fuss her emotions are making.

The three of us embody different rhythms.

Finally, they leave.

I feel the slow rhythmof people crossing the hall,talking at a distance,turning the pagesof the books they are reading.

I can hear the silence.

Goodbye Edinburgh

I have been saying goodbye to the city for some days now. In a week, I will return to Portugal, the country where I was born.

This farewell is happening slowly. My mind already drifts away, yet I remain deeply connected. Saying goodbye to a place I love is hard, quietly painful.

I have spent most of my time here alone, working on my research. And still, this place has felt warm, like a form of comfort. I walked alone through its streets, went to the theatre by myself, visited museums without company, yet never felt out of place. Even in the rain, even when the wind spread across the city, I felt no discomfort.

But I have to leave.

It is a strange feeling, to sense that this is my place, and yet to know that my place is not here. I have family waiting for me. So I continue this gradual goodbye, hoping to soften the departure.

Perhaps the closest feeling I have experienced before was when illness slowly took my grandfather into his own world. I began saying goodbye to him years before he died. Each time I hugged and kissed him, I felt as though I was taking a small piece of him with me, keeping it safe from disappearance.

Many times in my life, I have felt out of place. Unrooted. As if I needed to keep moving.

In my childhood, I lived with my grandparents near a small city called Alcobaça. There, I understood what we might call home. I felt deeply connected, to nature, to something older than myself. I would disappear into the fields, hiding from the human world, just to listen: birds singing, water running, wind moving through the flowers.

Sometimes I would watch my grandfather's neighbour working the land, quietly observing. I could hear my grandmother calling me from afar, but I would only return when I was ready to leave that world.

As I grew older, I lost some of those habits, but not the longing. It remained, a quiet sense that I did not fully belong.

That connection to the past changed shape. I found it in archaeology, in museums. My grandmother was a dressmaker, and by the time I was in seventh grade, I was already drawing clothes. I loved pleated skirts with square patterns.

As I grew older, I tried, for a time, to blend in. But eventually I returned to forms of dressing that felt closer to me. During one visit to my grandparents, I found a trunk of clothes that had belonged to earlier generations of my family. I brought some of them back with me and asked my grandmother to sew new pieces from my designs.

Slowly, my style became my own, eclectic, rooted in times I had never lived. In the city, clothing replaced nature as my connection to the past.

Years later, my university uniform was a kilt.

Looking back, I wonder if my attraction to tartans, kilts and wild landscapes was an unconscious connection to a place I had never been: Scotland.

Two years ago, I came to Edinburgh for a few days and fell in love with the city. I left with the strange feeling that I would return. And eventually, I did.

Since then, I have spent months walking through its streets, museums, theatres, hills and shifting weather. Alone, but never lonely. Gradually, the city became familiar in a way I still struggle to explain, not as somewhere newly discovered, but as something long remembered.

There is a particular atmosphere here that unsettles time for me. My life remains firmly in the present, yet my connection to the past feels strangely closer in this place than anywhere else I have known.

Sometimes it feels as though I am moving within a painting.

And now, I must leave.

So I gather pieces of this city, carefully, quietly, into my memory.

There were also people. G. had been my supervisor, and he warned me, even before I arrived, that he might leave. And he did. J. came after, quietly stepping in, and left just as quietly. I barely knew him, yet I felt something in the way he lived, as if he refused to measure life by its length. As if even a short time could be made full.

He taught me something simple: to enjoy life, to let go of what does not matter, to live fully in whatever time we are given.

With G.'s departure, my path here began to close. With J.'s leaving, the door opened more quickly.

Now I must return.

It is bittersweet. I long to be with my family, yet I know I am returning to a place where I have often felt the urge to leave.

One thing I know: I will carry Edinburgh with me. Not only in memory, but in something deeper.

And yet, it feels as though part of me will remain here.

Tidying Drawers

What a calming feeling.Pending things that finally get put in orderAnd stop weighing on the mind.

No longer waking up with that concernOf having this, and that, and that still left to finish,To complete properly,In a way that leaves me satisfied with the path it took.

More than anyone else's appreciation,Feeling good about what I've doneIs fulfilment.

Finishing projects ahead of time,Having time not to think about them again until the deadline,Or choosingTo return to them and read them with different eyes.Or leaving them hidden among so many memories,One day forgotten.

It's dangerous because I know I'll want to change them.Sometimes I don't recognise myself in what I did and wrote.Sometimes I surprise myself.Other times I think I could have done better.That's the problem with self-criticism.

So in some cases I choose not to thinkAnd ignore the call of: go look at it again.It's easier to close the drawer and leave things tidy.Someday life will take care of piling more things on top of it.

A few months ago, I met my Professor to discuss a text he had written twenty-five years ago. I had sent him an email with countless questions. He replied by asking for a meeting so he could answer them. As we talked through it, he said he had written the text a long time ago, and that some points were no longer very clear in his mind.

Time does that. Tidying does too.

But in the middle of the conversation I realised that when we read our own work through other people's eyes, it helps us return to it.

It's Raining Outside

It's raining outsideWhile I wait for the windto carry me away from here.

I have been waiting for hours.

The rain falls silently.

It wets the road,wets the cars,wets the rooftops.

Vehicles passing,airplanes waiting.

Inside, I waitfor mine to take me away.

The rain moves.People move too,carrying suitcases.

They move while I wait.

Ten minutes pass,then twenty, thirty.

One, two, three, four hours.

I no longer look at faces.

I only hear voices,wheels that do not roll on the carpet.

Everything moves.

Beside me,a man types on his computer.

I feel the air shiftwhen a woman in front of mestands up to throw something away.

Restless,I decide to record what I am living.

At least my fingers can move,travelling through ideas.

I let my gaze wander again.

People circulate,drawing lines through the airas they move.

They drag their suitcases,carry their bodiestowards some destination.

The lines they trace disappearas quickly as they appear.

If I close my eyes,I can hearthe symphony of movement.