water does not resist… water flows
when you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress
water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you… but water always goes where it wants to go
water is patient, dripping water wears away a stone
you are water! if you can’t go through the obstacle, go around it… water does!
Patrícia Durão
yesterday i ended up in a nightclub with friends. nice place, cool music, pretentious people… i think everyone was looking for the same… there was an instant when i actually thought that humans are nothing but predators in all aspects of their life!
at first i looked around and my ‘radar’ was capturing way too well the ‘auras’ for me to actually look twice at anyone! then i realized there was probably nothing wrong with anyone’s ‘aura’, they were simply not the ‘aura’ i was looking for.
in my head i was trying to describe that feeling that became so strong then, i thought of love, i thought of loss, i thought of anger, i wanted something i can not have, a mixture of frustration and feeling powerless and wanting to fight for it at the same time and, still… i wouldn’t be able to describe it in one word if anyone asked what i was feeling right then… then it came to me… it was so easy, it’s such a special, particular and (as you will read below) portuguese word! i guess it became quite vulgarized, as everything does now days, but for me it was always a special word, i don’t think i did use it often, because it is quite deep and powerful, it is quite daunting and, believe it or not, i don’t think you can actually ‘taste’ it’s real sweet and sour flavour unless you are ‘in love’ - saudade is what i am writing about!
then, as a true and complete fool i came home and downloaded Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ to my iPod!!! surely not the best choice of song to lift up your spirit, as amazing as it may be… (go on insult me and call me an 80’s music lover, I DON’T CARE!!!). so now that i have found the feeling i had to try to explain such a complex word, and aren’t we lucky now days that ‘wikipedia’ exists! the fact is that although this is THE word and i know its meaning and its depth and complexity, the whole explanation i’ve found for it just made me realize (that word again!!!) that i am in more sh*t than i thought…
go on… a little culture for free…
saudade [sɐu’ðað(ɨ)] in European Portuguese and Galician, and [sau’dadʒi] or [sau’daði] in Brazilian Portuguese) is a Portuguese word for a feeling of longing for something that one is fond of, which is gone, but might return in a distant future. it often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.
saudade is generally considered one of the hardest words to translate. it originated from the latin word solitatem (loneliness, solitude), but developed a different meaning. loneliness in portuguese is solidão (a semi-learned word), from latin solitudo. few other languages in the world have a word with such meaning, making saudade a distinct mark of portuguese culture. it has been said that this, more than anything else, represents what it is to be portuguese.
what sets saudade apart is that it can be directed to anything that is personal and moving.
in his book In Portugal of 1912, A.F.G Bell writes:
“the famous saudade of the portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.”
saudade is different from nostalgia (the English word, that is). in nostalgia, one has a mixed happy and sad feeling, a memory of happiness but a sadness for its impossible return and sole existence in the past. saudade is like nostalgia but with the hope that what is being longed for might return, even if that return is unlikely or so distant in the future to be almost of no consequence to the present. one might make a strong analogy with nostalgia as a feeling one has for a loved one who has died and saudade as a feeling one has for a loved one who has disappeared or is simply currently absent. nostalgia is located in the past and is somewhat conformist while saudade is very present, anguishing, anxious and extends into the future. in Portuguese, the same word nostalgia has quite a different meaning.
although it relates to feelings of melancholy and fond memories of things/people/days gone by, it can be a rush of sadness coupled with a paradoxical joy derived from acceptance of fate and the hope of recovering or substituting what is lost by something that will either fill in the void or provide consolation.
saudade and love
although named by the Portuguese, saudade is a universal feeling related to love. It occurs when two people are in love, but apart from each other. saudade occurs when we are thinking of a person whom we love and we are happy about having that feeling while we are thinking of that person, but he/she is out of reach, making us sad and crushing our hearts. the pain and these mixed feelings are named saudade. It is also used to refer to the feeling of being far from people one does love. what sets saudade apart is that it can be directed to anything that is personal and moving.
sh*t!!!
Patrícia Durão
it’s easy to love… you love your family, you love your friends, the park, the flowers, the children (when they are not yours and behave like angels), you can even love the neighbour’s dog…
to fall in love is a different story… i have been taking the time to get my head and feelings sorted AGAIN!!! and i have realized (AGAIN AS WELL!!!) that actually i love and have loved many people but there were very few people that i have actually fallen in love with!
you can love someone, you can even devote your life to and love this person with all your heart and soul but you may have never fallen in love with her… you love as you love someone you know, someone you trust, someone that makes you feel safe and that you feel it is safe for you to love back…
when you fall in love, it’s a completely different story, it’s a gamble!… there are no guarantees, there are no rules, no certainty that you will be loved back, and no escape… actually it usually happens the other way around… maybe it has something to do with challenge, maybe it’s the unknown, perhaps we are all “James Bonds” when it comes to love!
all i know, and that is so wonderful and terrifying at the same time is that i have only really fallen in love twice in my life… and none of these times were with who ‘i thought was the one, but thankfully wasn’t!’, so i guess, once again, i am realizing (i promise this website will be the first on Google if you ever check this verb ‘to realize’) that bad things happened for a very good reason…
as for who i have fallen in love with… that would be telling… and as the song goes in portuguese (de quem eu gosto nem às paredes confesso!)… all i can say is, and i am once again ‘quoting’ my best friend, it’s the type of person that i really like and there is no turning back from that now that i have realized it!
Patrícia Durão
i never really asked or had expectations on becoming a walking encyclopedia, specially not one entitled “a-z of how you can get screwed up in life”.
i have had enough material to write a book for quite a few years now, but to realize that i could be launching a successful ’self-help’ book is almost as scary as my mother treating me like ‘Bridget Jones’ on a Saturday morning.
i guess there is always a lesson to take out of everything, and i really appreciate that no one holds the key to all knowledge and that learning is great but i would really appreciate a ’school-break’…
i thought i had done my PhD last year, which in other words means that i really didn’t think that anything else could really affect me, specially not my heart…
everyone else thinks it’s great! ‘it means you still have a heart!’! well… thank you very much! i am just trying to figure out how much i can get for it on eBay since i am better off without it!
second thoughts… there’s a very profitable exchanging current going on now days, where a guy got himself a house in the end and started by exchanging a paper clip or something like that, i’ll gladly exchange my heart for the voodoo doll that is still being carried around… any takers?
Patrícia Durão