So said Michel Foucault in Different Spaces.
I arrived in Lisbon Saturday by airship—the jet—a kind of airborne floating space, “a non-place going places,” a placeless place that is at once threshold and destination, neither “here” nor yet “there,” time traveling between zones, continents, and consciousness, across 5600 miles and hours that expanded, contracted. I flew,
to “—Lisbon, the Tagus, and the rest—
A useless onlooker of you and of myself,
A foreigner here like everywhere else, —”
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Disquieted, I came to Disquiet: Dzanc Books International Literary Program, a brand new, two week literary and cultural conference held in Lisbon, where I will teach and be taught, engage with the heritage of Portuguese literature, contemporary writers, and the rich and vibrant Portuguese culture.
I will bring highlights, hoping to prove a more useful onlooker than the native son Pessoa, above, suggests. It has taken these few days to disembark from traveling’s “non-place,” but I feel on terra firma today and look forward to bringing news of Lisbon to you. But now, “The morning unfurls itself upon the city,” and I’m off to find breakfast before my workshop begins. How about a little music to go out on.
