The unidentifiable beauty of broken dreams

Broken dreams, everybody knows how it feels, well, except maybe Donald Trump, but most if us hope he'll encounter his first serious one soon. The problem with appropriated dreams is that if they don't include positive thoughts for others, they rarely come true. The most important condition however is knowing how to dream. Without the aptitude of opening your mind for some irrational and, at first glance, crazy ideas, your brain won't communicate with your heart. I've had hundreds, maybe even a thousand of unrealistic spins on the future and, although realizing that all these fancy castles in the milky-way of pleasant thoughts won't come true, I keep believing in the importance of unrestricted imagination. It only needs a distilled drop of positivism to fall on one of these overheated desires to germinate a little seed that could grow into the, blue sky reaching, tree you could climb in. The more trees, the more opportunities. One day you'll find that tree that's capable of carrying your treehouse.

Sometimes naivety turns out the be the best quality with which someone can be equipped. Enthusiastic people just follow their dream, not worrying about the consequences or problems that will block the way while fulfilling their dream. Central Portugal seems to have a big attraction to the kind of people who want to break with the rat-race world they're caught up in. A piece of land, off-grid, biological agriculture, sustainable housing, in short, a little private paradise. The ones that were aware of the huge effort it takes on a daily bases to maintain that ecological dream, seem to do pretty well surrounded by the beautiful vicinity in the heart of this country. Surprisingly enough, some of those who came unprepared are also successfully chasing their goals, ignoring all the mountains of yet to overcome problems, smiling away all negativity and “no can do” remarks from the outside world. Facebook communities are among these horrible “outside world” places to ask for any advise when it comes to living in Portugal. Every immigration story is different, not in the least because of reasons, background and just good old plain luck during the first actions. Oh yes we, the ones living in a “conventional” house, all had to overcome some aggravation on certain rules and regulations that seem strange through the eyes of a more or less DIW expert. Some were used to just call a company and had things done accordingly to standards, others spend their Saturday mornings in between the shelves of a local supplier figuring how to do it themselves. Standards are different, Europe isn't a big system of regulated building rules and quality is subjective to cultural excepted livability. Still, it beats living in a town where you can't paint your front door red, just because all neighbours like green.

Broken dreams are often the reason for taking a few steps forward. It all depends on the flexibility of ones mind and in many cases these shattered views, through that keyhole of the future, are a healthy guide to become grounded in reality and dig deep into ones needs and into the possibilities that are available to lay down a foundation on which upcoming air born ideas could be build. Times are changing, more rapidly now than ever. The chances you get could be different while the dreams you pursuit are still the same. That's where new dreams come in to the nightly restlessness and new ideas come to be reachable landmarks by the time you wake up. There's nothing more to it than just starting that adventure. No, there are no guaranties, there's not a written almanac, not even a Google map to follow. It means walking up a steep hill, reading between the lines and bending the borders a bit to your convenience. When we came to this beautiful country we just did. We just followed the dream and excepted all the walls and barriers that came with it. Lots of mistakes were undone afterwards, lots of wrong words taken for truthful advises, lots of bureaucratic paperwork done at the time they came to our attention. It didn't break the dream, it made the way to our goal progress in a steady pass and it didn't turn our little paradise into a land of broken dreams.

Yes I admit, we payed some fines. We didn't have a drawing of our house, except for the one some clerk made and stamped as excepted, in a few minutes at the local Camara office, after a small donation, which turned out to be incorrect after a new clerk came to the scene a few years later. We made the drawing of the “real situation” ourselves and the fine was a fraction of what an architect would have cost. Not every nightmare is real if you see it from a daylight point of view. Now does the fact that not all is going as smoothly and straightforward as the dream predicted, really matter? I guess not, I even think to know that there's a reason for all the learning moments that cross your path while chasing the future plans you dreamed about. It's all about recognizing the achievements you made, filtering out the accessible parts of the whole fancy world you imagined to be your future. That's what dreaming is all about, it gives you the ability to go beyond borders, leave out all the negatives that reality brings along and build your ideal paradise. The fact that only a small percentage of all these illusive thoughts will see the light, doesn't mean your living in a broken dream, contrariwise, without them you wouldn't know what your goals in live are. Embrace the broken dreams, the have a unidentifiable beauty in them.

The unidentifiable beauty of being app-less

So are they coming over for tea or not? In the moment of realizing that an appointment with friends seems to be forgotten, the aggravation of being uninformed lasts for a few minutes. After that, other, more worrying, thoughts nestle into your brain. Maybe a flat tire or, even worse, an accident. Maybe they won't come because of a not cleared-up misunderstanding or a secret open nerve that needs some healing attention. Although you realize that personal circumstances have forced a kind of survival instinct upon you, it doesn’t mean you should have to be concerned about an ever so spontaneous friendship, but yet you feel all those insecure thoughts creep in your head after the first few minutes of being disappointed. The tiny world you're living in is big. Tiny in the sense of friendships and relationships with equally minded companions in the struggle that entail these economic dark days, big as in the distance you need to travel on the vibrating Portugese roads that are meandering through the valleys, to meet on each others hilltop. Usually your worries are unfounded, mostly the state of the fuel gauge shows to be the decisive reason. It happens more often lately; our traveling range is curtailed by the budget that's left for holy traveling fluid.

Social media, as Facebook and Google+, are a welcoming additions to communicate, however aren't suitable to replace that kitchen table conversations. Even the private messenger applications that come with these and scroll up from the bottom of a laptop screen will never be able to replace a chat over coffee or tea and remain misty words without the nonverbal expressions while stirring a spoon in a cup. The thumbs up, or worse, the lack thereof, while posting a message or picture, appears to be of the highest importance and the rate at which reactions are placed a measure of mutual friendship. The simple life that we live is partly out of conviction and, without beating about the bush, also the result of unconscious decisions in the past. There's no financial room, nor the need to possess, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and all these other modern day devices, but sometimes it feels like being infected by some communicative blindness in the world of app's.

When being at home there's an old-fashioned phone, connected to an 20th century landline, registered in the phone-book and it's number for anybody to be found who still knows how to use it. When we're not “in”, you'll have to try to connect again later. We are not very important persons, so there isn't a secretary taking messages or a computer voice to inform you on our whereabouts. Sometimes we'll have our, 10 Euro, pre-paid, camera-less, wifi-less, mobile phone with us for emergencies when being on the road. There's no point in using it at home for all obvious reasons. The fact that there's a whole world of communications out there in an other dimension, far away hidden in the megabits of possibilities only accessible by applications on privacy ripping devices, gives you a sense of freedom.  A forced, but gladly excepted, freedom not being able to use them as well as a kind of guilty feeling for not being a part of the modern 24 hour, minute to minute, religion of communications that most seemed to have embraced and some preach as a not to deny and disown achievement of evolution.

It all seems to be about time consuming “app's”, implacable reaction testing ways of communication, where you will be judged on immediate sympathy and enthusiasm with which you are responding. It could take days to receive a letter, for some even an insurmountable waste of time and mental gymnastics to write some well thought out words on a piece of paper. No, it doesn't mean we're living without the opportunities of modern life, e-mail replaced letters, envelopes and post stamps, some social media and services as Skype replaced expensive long-distance phone calls, YouTube and Vimeo gave us a way to share our creativity with the world and a IP-address changing “app” even let's us watch TV from all over the world. It's not that we're not informed, it just takes more than a few seconds. Sure, we won't see our friends messages and pictures about the newly bought bra, the under cooked egg splashing on the floor during their breakfast or the awesome haircut they shared on Instagram, unless they clicked on that button; “We'll share your message with all other social media and meanwhile steel all personal information from your smartphone”. Think about what you have in there: email addresses and phone numbers from your contacts; calendar appointments; personal photos; and, of greatest concern, personal financial information saved on your bank account app and shopping apps. On top of that, the smartphone can continually track your location to build a detailed profile of your recent and current whereabouts. Without your knowledge, the developers of these apps, your wireless provider and your handset manufacturer can sell this information to other firms, like advertisers, insurers or even places you’re applying for a job. The only non aggressive “app's” out there seem to be the Association of Professional Piercers, the Associação de Professores de Português, Art in Public Places, Air Parcel Post, Anti-Poverty Program and in our case the one most listened to; the Alan Parson's Project.

Now I don't expect that somebody on the other side of the valley repeats my morse-code djembe drumming, so it will echo into the rest of the world. It's great to have the possibilities of sharing your happiness, concerns and, hell yes, even sell your products by the means of Facebook groups, commercial sites, YouTube and these magnificent opportunities that are out there on the world wide web. It can't however replace that firm handshake on selling your handcrafted product, or these three, left, right, left, Dutch kisses on the cheek when meeting up, or that provocative wink during a to close encounter or the comforting embrace during tough times.

There's no need for admonishing people for thinking large while living small, it's those big dreams that make little progress happen. However, there's nothing wrong to let time just pass you by standing on the sidelines of the technical ingenuity and live the simple life with all it's natural beauty. It's is not a requirement or condition of a close friendship to copy the drum roll that sounds from the other side of the valley and continue to guide the rhythm on to the rest of the world. All that is expected of you as a good friend is that you are there to help repair the skin of the drum as it breaks down.  There's no “app” for that.