AIN'T NO TONICHA

In the airport in Vilnius there's a store that sells incredibly overpriced reflective badges. This store plays the best music in the whole airport and that's important to know because it was next to it that I waited for the gate to open and sat crying in silence.

Which is that type of crying where you just shake and make absolutely no noise. Like you stopped breathing.

Like a vacuum of sadness.

Going to Vilnius again was surprisingly natural, a bit like visiting my parents at my hometown. It’s not your home anymore, but it's familiar. You know this place and this place knows you back. 

Summer days feel like a blessing, in Lithuania. There’s an almost tangible need to go outside and enjoy the day before it starts raining again, and it’s something I don’t feel so much back at home.

I had also forgotten how bright it all is. Seeing the sun rising at 4 am still feels like witnessing some rare space oddity.

For the first time, I was in the city with plenty of time. I could be lazy. I could be a tourist.

I went up to the TV tower. and to the Bell tower and to the mountain with the crosses (not to be confused with the mountain made of crosses) and to the castle mountain.

I saw Vilnius from all the high places.

And then I came down and did all that I used to do: Went to a poetry reading, drank beer, hang at Elena’s place and walked aimlessly around the city just noticing people.

I had a book reading in Vilnius and another one in Riga.

When in Latvia, I got a call from my mother who was very worried about a plane crash not far from where I was. To my mum, all post-soviet countries are near each other. 

 I don't consider it bad geographic sense but a wise conclusion that the world is small, that we are all linked and that if just met a portuguese man in a bathroom in Kanepes Kulturas Centrs, so Ukraine isn’t very far either.

I told her I was taking 1, 2, 3 flights on my way back and none of them would fly over conflicted lands.

But, as I passed the airport gates, I felt very much like a conflicted land myself and only by the time I was in Frankfurt I managed to be slightly less teary and more resigned.

The next day I went to work early in the morning. Porto was foggy and the seagulls were very agitated, shirping loudly and flying around like crazy.

The city looked like the beginning of a crime mistery film. It was not a cheery sight, and couldn’t contrast more from the hot sunny mornings I had been having for the past 2 weeks.

But as I passed Praça da Batalha I noticed that theater S. João, that had been covered for construction work for what seemed like 5 years, was finally unveiled.

Like an unwrapped welcoming present, just for me.