Bear Your Portion of the World

The part of Portugal not seen in the guide books

Chico is back in the fold and sleeping like a person who has spent 10 days as an apprentice with super fun Russian oligarchs. He is now conversant on the decor of the better known VIP lounges in  Ibiza, and slightly less skeptical of the idea of champagne at lunch.
But he arrived home ready for peanut butter and sleep. 

We have been playing tennis of course-usually for two hours, three days a week with the Portuguese guy; but have added personal training with a Brit whom I can distract from the workout by asking about the rules of cricket.  

Meanwhile we eat at beach restaurants or one star places run by Dutch people. Both are excellent. 

Not on the list: golf or the sea. I don’t know why we haven’t done much golfing or swimming, but somehow the day slips by. 

We are still aiming for steps when we can. At one point we were walking through a deserted construction area and I wondered what my friends on the Mediterranean were doing. Walks with Thomas are sometimes more like the obstacle course portion on a reality show featuring disabled green berets. The beach is apparently for sissies

I am enjoying watching the debate assessments, which varied from “total absolute disaster- the Dems promised to do things that will get them killed in the general”, to Rachel’s careful, granny wrote your review- in which she highlighted every single person and the good thing he/she said. 

So it looks like we are all going to die, or live to fight another day because no one in America was watching. 

I am sort of sanguine now. Maybe it’s the lawn mowers or the port, but I can’t seem to worry about anything heavier than my backhand theses days.

How about those US women soccer players? Adorable and awesome at the same time. I really abhor bad sportsmanship, but is the tea thing really that bad? I mean it is almost July 4th….anyway since when do we care what Piers Morgan thinks? 

Finally I am reading the most wonderful book: Letters to a young writer. I will leave you with a portion here because it relates as much to writing as to life:

“Do the things that do not compute. Be earnest. Be devoted. Be subversive of ease. Read aloud. Risk yourself. Do not be afraid of sentiment even when others call it sentimentality. Permit yourself anger. Fail. Take a pause…..Have wonder. Bear your portion of the world. Find a reader you can trust. They must trust you back….Do not allow your heart to harden. Enjoy difficulty. Embrace mystery. Do not tread water. Transcend the personal. Have trust in the staying power of what is good. Restore what has been ridiculed by others. Write beyond repair. Make justice from reality. Sing. Make vision from the dark. The considered grief is so much better than the unconsidered. Be suspicious of that which gives you consolation. Share your rage. Resist. Denounce. …Dilate your nostrils. Fill your lungs with language. A lot can be taken from you-even your life-but not your stories about that life. 

So this, then, is a word, not without love and respect, to a young writer:

write. “

I don’t know what it means to "bear your portion of the world"….but I am committed to doing more of it.