Love notes from Siel is a monthly-ish newsletter from Siel, who used to live in Los Angeles but is currently traveling around. If you love the notes, subscribe for free.
Dear friend —
How do you go home when you have no home?
That’s the question I’ve been mulling over lately, moving from Mexico City to Los Angeles to Lisbon to Porto to a small beach town in Portugal called Ericeira. All the movement’s made me feel a bit like I’m on the lam, trying to outrun something. But there isn’t really anything I need or want to outrun.
You’d think I’m used to it, since I’ve been a nomad for more than three years now. But for a long time I still had a foot in Los Angeles and considered Mexico City a secondary home of sorts. It was only recently that I finally sold my car in L.A., and grew less enamored by Mexico City.
Where do you go if there’s nowhere you need to be? I love exploring new places, but I’ve come to the realization I may also need a place I look forward to returning to — even if it’s for just a few months.
Moving around, you meet a lot of other people who move around, people who like me were born in one continent, grew up in another, made a home in third, then traveled on to a fourth. In Lisbon I went on a walking tour with a guide who was originally from Belgium. She’d been traveling in Chile when the pandemic hit, was stuck there for months, then finally was able to get a flight back to Europe, which brought her to Lisbon, where she decided to try living for a year, then decided to stay.
A lot of people have decided to move to Lisbon recently — a phenomenon that’s creating some tensions between the Portuguese and the expats. Of course many Portuguese, too, choose to become expats. Recently I watched a movie called Where I Grow Old (A Cidade onde Envelheço), which follows two girls from Lisbon who move to Brazil. One finds her place in that new country, with a good circle of friends, coworkers, a handsome lover — yet begins wishing to return to Lisbon. The other’s newer to the city, adapting is a challenge, she cries from homesickness at times, but still wants to stay.
What drives us to stay, and what drives us to go?
Today, I’m off again, this time to Barcelona. I hope to fall in love with it — the architecture, the art, the language, people. Maybe it’ll be the new place I look forward to returning to, again and again.
Do you think I’ll like it there? Send me tips and recommendations.
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love:
Portuguese history is so rich, with both beautiful and dark stories that for some reason I never learned about in history classes. Did you know, for example, that Portugal had colonies in not only in South America but also Africa and Asia — and held on to many of them until the 1970s? The 2012 film Tabu touches on this legacy of colonialism, taking you from 1960s Portuguese Africa to near-present day Lisbon.
Portugal, under the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar, stayed officially neutral during World War II — though the country kind of played both sides. By the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, Portugal was siding with the Americans, who ran a CIA-run radio station in a small Portuguese town called Gloria, sending anti-communist broadcasts to eastern Europe. Based on this history, Netflix created a Portuguese mini-series called Gloria — which I found unexpectedly addictive though I haven’t yet managed to finish it.
Portugal has many islands and those islands have histories of their own. One, for example, had a bunch of high-grade cocaine wash up onto its shores back in the 90s. That event too is now a Netflix series called Rabo de Peixe, which translates to fish tail, although the commercial English title for the series is Turn of the Tide. I wouldn’t call the series a must-watch, necessarily, but it was interesting to see how hugely the idea of the American dream loomed at this place at this time.
One Portuguese book recommendation:
Blindness by Jose Saramago (Published in Portuguese in 1995)
In this post-apocalyptic novel, a new disease starts spreading: Blindness. Panic ensues. People are put into quarantine — that are humane-ish in the beginning, less so as more and more people get infected.
What happens in a pandemic where masses of people lose their eyesight? Since we’ve just been through a pandemic, some of what ensues will seem familiar. But this story reaches apocalyptic proportions: society collapses, animalistic behavior becomes commonplace. There is beauty in this story too, but a lot of what happens is mass hysteria in a dog eat dog world. Pick up this imaginative novel with engrossing prose, written by one of Portugal’s most famous writers.
Siel,
Barcelona is cool. But it's been so long since I've been there, my memories are fading. Definitely check out the guell Park and the Dali museum. And eat a crema catalana. If you are interested in a bit of history in Lisbon, read the two hotel francforts. I agree, you need a place to come home to, even as an avid traveler. (Autocorrect wanted to write acid tablet, hahaha) maybe just a home of a very good and longtime friend somewhere? Basically a place where you can just be yourself, no pretensions.
Best, Gabriele