40/41. Who is driving this bus?
A series of summer vignettes / Flix bussin around Portugal
Dear inbox intimates—
I fucked off for most of July. But we’re so back. <3 I’ve often thought of this newsletter as something like notches on a wall, or rings on a tree. A core sample of my own interior landscape that I’m able to share with all of you. Growth wrapping itself around a center I can’t name. I consider an older version of myself examining the rings: this year there was blight, heartbreak, war. This year the flowers bloomed early. This year was exceptionally hot. This year the rain didn’t come like it was meant to.
I’ve been asking myself recently why I continue to write. What is the purpose of working with language when we are experiencing so many horrors beyond words. I don’t know. I used to say that writing was my way of making sense and meaning. The more I read and study and live in this world the more uncertain I feel, like standing on a beach at night and staring out at the place where ocean and sky conspire into one dark void.
I’ve also asked myself a lot recently, who is driving this bus? I mean that within the scope of my own small life and also collectively. Ask anyone and you may receive a range of answers — God, the ruling class, the final bureaucracy boss…idk.
For this two-in-one midsummer edition of big moods, I’ve compiled some impressions in no particular order. Some on the bus, and some off the bus. Little windows into a summer spent only in Portugal. I missed this season, here.
Home in Lisbon
If you tie a cherry stem in your mouth in your kitchen and no one is around to see it, are you a single, childless woman in her 30s? I do it again and record myself as evidence. It takes 4 minutes and 19 seconds. I am determined not to reference any sort of online tutorial. Just me, my tongue, my teeth, and the pliable stem of a stone fruit. The way God intended.
Wax melts down the neck of a wine bottle in ropy streaks. My cat vomits on the hardwood floor. The tower fan oscillates. I ignore my phone. There are heat waves all over the United States. Here, it’s just summer.
Coimbra—--> Lisbon (evening)
A man at the front is standing. The bus driver starts yelling at him to sit down. It’s giving road trip dad. He threatens to pull the bus over. Everyone is watching Portugal v. France on their phones. Track lighting in the aisle glows green. I fall asleep with my mouth open, breathing stale bus air.
At one point, the bus driver pulls into a gas station. He commands us to stay in the bus and is gone for ten minutes. Maybe he’s buying cigarettes.
Santos
I get college drunk off white wine and sangria and eat bites of bifana. We stumble upon an abandoned shopping cart in an alley. I get inside and my friend pushes me down the cobblestoned hill. Nobody falls down. She parallel parks the shopping cart and we continue on to another arraial—teeming pockets of block parties for saints. Pimba music pumps through the speakers and suddenly we are packed in line the sardines piled on plates and laid on slices of bread. It begins to rain and I open my umbrella. Standing on a curb above the crowd. My eyes grow heavy.
Lisbon—--> Lagos
When every hour feels like a preamble. When the colors of the sunset make melted wax.
I watch sunset after sunset. At miradouros, on hills, at beaches the colors bleed into one another. I briefly think of the damage I’ve been doing to my retinas ogling these sunsets and marveling at their colors. Under the prompt “Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about…” someone on a dating app writes “Sunsets are an ordinary occurrence and enjoying them is not a feature of personality or taste.”
I delete the apps.
Sesimbra
Dozens of lounge chairs rotate through the afternoon like a collective sundial. On a grassy poolside plane overlooking the ocean. My friend and I stay in a hotel that likely hasn’t been updated since the 60s. Darkwood paneling, surreal tapestries everywhere. A helm out of context behind a velvet rope, two spiral staircases and one made of stone. Small old elevators that move slowly. Buttons that need to be punched to register the floor.
People at breakfast buffets make me anxious. Glassy vacation faces moving zombie-like through the assortment of breads, fruits, and cheeses. It’s very possible that I am also making other people anxious. Maybe I bring an aggressive and over-caffeinated vibe to the breakfast buffet that others don’t like. Seeing families on vacation sometimes makes me feel a little sad.
Speedboat in Lagos
Two friends and I don bright orange life vests for a caves tour in Lagos. The last time I was in these caves was ten years ago, by kayak. Then, I remember walking through the town square at six in the morning in a purple dress after spending the night on the beach with a bartender I’d met that evening. I think one-night-stands create spatial memories more than anything else. I remember very little about the person I was with or what connected us initially. I remember the beach, the sand. I remember someone’s house we smoked weed in. I remember the night sky.
This trip looks very different. We enter into a portal that is in the shape of an unnamed store. My friends call it the “magic store.” I don’t know what they’re talking about, and then I go in and see for myself. Linen on linen on linen. We all enter a fugue state. Most of the garments are one-size and miraculously fit all of us. Linen-pilled in Lagos.
Who was driving the boat then? Who is driving the boat now?
Woman Dinner
I speak with industry friends about how we are trying not to refer to other dancers as “girls.” A habit we’ve picked up in the club atmosphere, cemented in culture at large; girl dinner, girl boss, hot girl walk, “I’m just a girl,” neon signs that flicker GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. We wonder aloud about a neon sign proclaiming WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN and why we’ve never seen a one like that. I conclude that the word “women” is inherently political, and maybe people aren’t ready to see it lit up in neon.
When I say the word, “girl” I have to grit my teeth. When I speak the word, woman, I push my lips out and open my mouth to make room for the vowel. I think of strength braided through generations. I think of small and large cumulative pains seeded through quiet moments. I think of migration, marriages, and children. Again, vertigo.
We eat Italian takeout around a candlelit table in our rented apartment in Old Town Lagos with the door open. Sharing a little slice of our vibe with passerbys who peer in curiously — we commune with the neighborhood.
Bellicus
A cat slides through the bars in an abandoned building’s window. The wind hits me, my entire body, a nerve. Crackling. Wearing a skirt my mother got for me at a Goodwill in Florida, pencil cut and patterned with leaves. She knew it would fit me like a mermaid’s tail. My shoulder bears the imprint of a ring of teeth.
I have very little buying power. But I do have the power to change some things. For example, my toenails are very long and they bother me, so I will cut them.
Neighborhood
I walk past a man fervently listening to a voicenote like he’s eating a nectarine. I’m hit with a wave of grief so intense it feels psychedelic. I see things that could be interpreted as signs and I tell myself, it’s just a coincidence… it can’t hurt you. I consider a litany of coincidences that have inserted themselves in my path in recent months and try to strip them of their meaning one by one. Orange peels meant for the compost. They're just coincidences, they can’t hurt you. I used to read signs hungrily—primed, always for synchronicity—led by small coincidences, delighting in my inside jokes with the universe.
Lately, I have been feeling like I’ve never really known how to read. The pile of peels grows. I take a break from delight.
A topskim of my notes app reads things like:
Get this papasan chair [link]
The closure of a karmic cycle
I had a dream last night that
By a man’s cowardice
The genre of memoir invites us to co…
Municipal Bus to Sesimbra
I’m convinced there is nothing a night walk can’t cure. Sun-warmed berries and salted fish. Castle on a hill and we walk through its bones, thread through the turrets and ancient grain stores.
When in doubt, sparkling water with lemon and an espresso. When in luteal, sparkling water and earl grey tea.
Postscript
A phenomenon wherein you slowly adopt the worst traits of the person you miss the most. Until you wince at the hypocrisy of the critic you once were. High summer air at night feels like a warm bath now just one more time on the skin, one more lap around the park. Make it last, make it count. Full moon and a campaign announcement. Feast day of Mary Magdalene and a plump, waning gibbous. You think, please take me to the people who have organized through conditions worse than these. You think, where are those people and how do I find them? Who is driving this bus? Who could drive it, in a pinch, if they needed to?
XXX
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Creative updates:
Philly friends! There’s going to be a launch for The Holy Hour Anthology this week, August 3rd, 7pm at Small Works Gallery! You can RSVP here. <3
I have a new poem in the latest issue of Anodyne Magazine!
I had the great honor and pleasure of being part of a team that commissioned a multimedia installation by artist Rita Ravasco — you can read our curatorial note and the latest issue of Diffractions here. :)
Current song on repeat:
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As always, I appreciate you for spending a slice of your precious time here with me! This monthly missive will always be a free offering. If you would like to support my work further, you can subscribe to my paid tier for occasional poems, unpublished musings, and deeper dives. xx
Such a gorgeous way to travel through the summer with you 🌞 I'm excited to read what happens in the final half of summer for you.