Building Blocks - Pete's Newsletter - Issue #43
Essays
This essay captures the cascading effects of change and is a reminder that there is "no going back."
A couple of months ago, I recommended the book Prisoners of Geography. If you are interested in understanding the impact geography has on "destiny" and geo-politics, this (long) essay is enthralling.
New Posts
I recently kicked off a three-part series sharing insight into the personal development and career changes that occur if one moves into an "Executive" level role. One more post to go on this topic. What should I write about next?
Travel Photos and Writing
Cindy and I last visited Lisbon in the early spring of 2018 and stayed in a flat near the Jardim da Estrela. There is a coreto (a bandstand) in the center of the park, its beauty has stayed with me ever since.
The ironwork is exquisite. More photos here.
Lisbon has a way of elevating the building blocks of a city—its parks, sidewalks, fountains, tram cars, and storefronts. And why not?
This recent post highlights its kiosks.
There is something remarkable about Lisbon and the achievement of its ancestors who have made it a wonderful place to wander. I wrote about Lisbon's beauty and pride a couple of years ago.
Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755. It arrived on a Saturday morning during the feast of All Saints. People were crushed by falling stone in their places of worship. Tens of thousands of souls perished. Shortly after the quake, a tsunami rushed in from the Atlantic. The entire city was leveled and the Portuguese empire was bankrupted, never to be the same.
Today, tourists walk amongst a city re-built during the 18th and 19th centuries and then maintained lovingly over time. A grid of streets was installed in the flat valley at Lisbon’s center. Six-story facades were erected, identical in design, built cheaply by the Portuguese army. Today the unified architecture makes the city feel human-sized, comfortable, regal, and from another time. Only a city controlled by a king could be built with such regularity. But the city’s Iberian spirit bursts through in tiled facades, Mediterranean pastels, and most strikingly the operatic dance of cream and black tiles prancing through the pedestrian streets drunk on the cherry liquor made in Lisbon’s corner stores, slippery after a few too many.
To walk the lanes of Lisbon is to move with the currents of its tiles painstakingly placed from hand to earth by a craftsman from another world in pure indulgence— obsession with the idea that beauty can and should exist within the basic building blocks of a city, its buildings, streets, their size, and design, look and color. The windows and doors, street signs and shop facades, piazzas and parks, trees planted by human hands. The basics of communities around the world can all be embraced and infused with beauty and function by a doting lover, a citizen who wishes to live proudly amongst the beauty in their hometown.
The Lisboan man on the corner calls out— Look! Down the narrow street, see the alley let in light? See the cobblestones curve with the street? Little shadows tucked next to each stone. See the alternating pastel facades with clean white framed windows and rich oak doors stained and smoothed from the touch of us—all of us. The builders and lovers of the city by the sea, the old capital of exploration, the place where sailors left their families for years with hopes of returning rich with stories to tell for a lifetime. No sir! This place could not be like any other. This city had to be dreamed of in long nights out at sea, underneath endless stars. This city had to be worth coming home to, and when the sailors did, their riches would be shared with their hometown, for all the Lisboans to appreciate. We are a proud people and so we have built a proud city. Why live another way? You sir! Your city was built by mere mortals like me and my blood. Did they choose to make it beautiful? Did they choose to pass on something elegant and proud to their children? I wonder, how else should a child learn of life and art, and accomplishment? They must see it, they must live within it, surrounded by it, have it pop out from behind every corner, at each new block, on their walk to school, on their trip to the park— but they must not just crave the park and its swings and toys, they must crave the chance to get out in their city, and they must expect this wonder and creativity from within themselves. But it is not just about you and I and the Lisboans of today. This city, like all others, is made by its people from the past, from today, and from tomorrow. All at once. It is not owned by any of us, despite what the contracts might say. Today is gone, do you feel it? It went so fast—they all do. You and I will pass on and return to the soil but Lisbon will remain. So tell me how, exactly, could we own it? We can not. But it is ours, as it is the man who walked these streets a hundred years past, and also the man who will walk these beautiful tiles in a hundred more circles of the sun from today. And we can contribute to Lisbon, appreciate it, and respect it. And so we do.