Between September and October 2024 I traveled between the North and the Center of Portugal. Like most travellers, I was looking for something, something elusive and indefinite, impossible to focus on.

My journey began in Porto, the days when the fires tried to suffocate the city with a lethal embrace. The clear sky, the smell of smoke that contemptuously slipped into my nostrils, while small spores of ash rested on my shoulders. I was looking for something, but it was still not clear to me what the point of arrival was, nor the stages that would dictate its meaning.

So I began to move north, first Braga, then Guimaraes and then Amarante. Docile and slow environments. Overflowing with history and old men and women. Then I decided to head down to the acclaimed Silver Coast. The first barefoot surfers crossing the streets, girls with messy hair, old cars reflecting a life detached from reality. At my side wild dunes, and above my head a troubled sky in which a furious battle between sun and clouds rages.

And again. The almost unbearable patience of old fishermen. The restlessness of surfers disappointed by the lack of violence of the waves against which to throw themselves and fight. Their girlfriends leafed through books, indifferent. Secluded kids intent on consuming their first loves away from prying eyes. Old shriveled hands clutched rosaries. Naked men immersed in muddy waters. Girls absorbed in their manual jobs sitting on uncomfortable rocks. A lifeless octopus in the hands of a kind gentleman.

It is this variegated painting that I was looking for. This moment suspended between the past and a present that is now incomprehensible, hostile. Incomprehensible like this blue, frozen ocean. Hostile like these silent waves, always ready to vent their unstoppable violence.

“I don't believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it's about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted.”
Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone