Art: “Fevereiro” by Vera Fonseka
HOW I KEEP DON QUIXOTE ALIVE
Christmas safely behind me, I sat out on the patio of my apartment at the Quinta de Valverde and drank a cup of coffee – no sugar, no milk – preparing myself to survive another year. It was a little early for a glass of red wine. I heard the clop clop of horse hooves on the cobbled drive and turned my gaze from Viana do Castelo below and the smoke-swathed hills to the south to see Don Quixote half asleep in the saddle. Rocinante was a bit winded. The path up to the quinta isn’t long, but it’s steep. I was in the habit of walking down but taking a taxi up. That too would have to change in the coming year, I thought to myself. Quixote slid out of the saddle, various bits of makeshift armor clanging like a wind chime of empty tin cans. “Where am I?” he asked. “Portugal,” I replied. He patted Rocinante on her boney rump and watched the dust rise while he did some mental geography. “I came from the north, along the coast. Perhaps I was in Spain,” he said. I didn’t say anything for a moment. Quixote, like the rest of us, is a character who needs a quest to stay alive. “See that river there?” I said, pointing to the Lima skirting the town on its way to the sea. He raised the visor on his helmet and squinted into the sun. “I’ll pack you a lunch,” I said, realizing this was an opportunity to unload a fruitcake or two. Because whenever Quixote shows up, Sancho’s not far behind.
New Year’s eve
the familiar ring
of old resolutions
About the Author:
Bob Lucky is content editor of Contemporary Haibun Online and author of Ethiopian Time. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including KYSO Flash, Flash, Rattle, Modern Haiku, Atlas Poetica, Shot Glass Journal, Haibun Today, and Contemporary Haibun Online. His work has been anthologized and translated and disseminated in print and digitally, but he has no website or blog; however, a cursory search online usually dredges something up. He has a problem with ukuleles. They seem to be attracted to him. He currently lives and works in Saudi Arabia.
Art: Fevereiro by Vera Fonseka, verafonseka.com
In the artist’s words:
Vera Fonseka was born in the Ex Soviet Union, in Tallinn, in 1982. In 2003 she emigrated to Lisbon, Portugal, where she took the degree in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, in Lisbon.
Currently her biggest production consists in 2-D work – drawing and painting. Her works live in a paradoxical existence between the scrupulous delicacy of the details and the brutality of the iconography used simultaneously. Among the vivid colors that stand out in a first contact with the work and the dark side of death also present in it. All her cultural baggage is symbolically represented on canvas.
The collage of images depicting violence and despair is solidified with colorful embroidery, the presence of femininity, the solidity of feelings and colors in an optimistic view of life.
