Porto, Portugal

My Mind at Work

(Arriving in Porto)

FILL OUT THE POLL!!!

View of Douro River, Porto, from air bnb

~

I’m feeling fairly “orgiastic” at the moment—in a spiritual sense, that is—because life in this precise instant feels close to fulfilling. Not “perfect”: That is not something human beings experience. But something pretty far in that direction.

It’s 9:00 in the morning, Wednesday, March 11^th, 2026. I’m writing and frequently gazing out the window of our air bnb which is right on the long, green Rio Douro, which runs west to the Atlantic along the coast, in Porto, Portugal, in the far north of the country.

Our air bnb is incredible: Small but with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river and, across it, the actual city of Porto. Technically we’re actually in “Gaia,” aka Vila Nova de Gaia. Fifteen minute drive or 37 minute walk across one of the stunning bridges into Porto, which we haven’t done yet. We just arrived yesterday.

It’s good to be reunited with Britney: She was in California for three weeks visiting family and friends, staying with her mom and step-dad in Lompoc, seeing my mother once in Santa Barbara, visiting her Okinawan maternal grandmother and attending her paternal grandfather’s 100^th birthday. The man was born in 1926. Can you imagine?

Anyway, back in Madrid after B left for the first week I will admit I felt free as all hell. I basically did the same routine I always do: Caffeine, reading and writing into the late morning, a long walk around Parque Oeste and Plaza Espana, Substack diddling for a couple hours. But now I was also cooking for myself and watching movies almost every night, usually indie drama films about deep, complex relationships (what can I say, I’m a writer).

One thing I did differently was for the last week before leaving Madrid to meet B in Lisbon, Portugal, I stopped activity completely on Substack. No Notes (that was the main thing), but also no posting and no scrolling. I have to admit: It felt good. Glorious, even. I didn’t feel that anxious sensation seeing the same 100 people (it feels like) constantly shitting out their latest hot takes on Substack, politics, contemporary literature, AI, etc. (Yes, I am aware I do it too and am part of the problem.) Taking a break and being In The Present was pretty sexy, I must say.

About 10 or 11 days into B being gone I began, predictably and inevitably, to miss her. It was slow at first, subtle. But then the feeling grew as if a baby were slowly growing inside my psychological belly, wanting to give birth. By fifteen or sixteen days in I was spiritually dying, nearly panicked. I think because I love her so much, and because we spend 24/7 with each other and haven’t been apart for very long for several years now, something feels “off” if she’s gone too long.

Yet we were texting and talking on the phone quite a bit, in regular contact. Every one of her days were busy and spoken-for, seeing friends, family, taking a side trip to Vegas with two girlfriends, etc. Meanwhile I was home alone, doing my routine, lonely but also blessed. I was in contact with a friend and also finally did hit a local Madrid AA meeting which I hadn’t done in far too long and which was, of course, excellent and very much needed.

Britney and I had polar opposite experiences getting to Lisbon. She had a three-hour drive from Lompoc to LAX and then an 11-hour flight squeezed between two people, one of which was, she said, very large and very stinky, and so she barely slept. Once she did finally arrive in Lisbon, she said the line for immigration/passport control was insanely long and anarchic. She sent me a photo: She hadn’t been lying. Her flight was also delayed and the plane taxied forever.

I on the other hand had it easy. Ten-fifteen am flight out of Madrid. A quick 25-minute Uber to the airport. A one hour flight. I ended up waiting in coffee shops for four hours for B, poor thing, to finally arrive, meeting me at a Starbucks I found in the airport. (I’d been listening to a Rebecca Solnit interview on the New York Times Daily, which I will probably complain about on Notes.)

She sat and rested and told me her tale of woe while sipping a cappuccino I got her. I’d lost count of how many large black teas with milk I’d consumed by then; I had enough caffeine in me to juggle two lions. B, of course, was exhausted.

We got a taxi and soon were in Lisbon, in the city, and in our small room. I won’t say a ton about Lisbon other than, despite the stats which claim that both Lisbon itself and Portugal as a whole is one of the safest places in Europe, Lisbon, covered in graffiti just about everywhere (not artistic graffiti but just random “gang tags”) and uneven, cracked tile-mosaic sidewalks with gaping holes, felt sketchy as hell. The sensation I had was of something akin to West Oakland. Maybe not that bad…but getting there.

Our hotel was right along a main drag filled with coffee shops, restaurants, you name it. The food was good, the people were very friendly, and we did a lot of walking. I visited four bookstores searching for two books: Palimpsest (Gore Vidal’s 1995 memoir, which I’ve been listening to on Audible and had too many juicy quotes to not get the physical book for highlighting and screenshots, and essays (any) by Montaigne. Only one bookstore had one book (the collected essays of Montaigne) which was something like a surly 1,000 pages or more and nearly $30 so I left in a fury.

Parts of Lisbon were beautiful, the colorful buildings and apartments which reminded me of our trip last year to Dublin, Ireland, and narrow cobblestone streets and alleyways which reminded me of Madrid, where we live, etc. We had to pick up our rental car, late as it turned out because, shocking me, after three weeks on a very different time schedule, B slept into until…wait for it: 12:30 in the afternoon!! I couldn’t believe it. The egg sandwich and cappuccino I’d bought her around 10am was by then dead and cold.

But we got the rental car—that was a whole other humorous tale about a self-described Autistic woman who helped us with the rental process on her computer who was cracking jokes left and right—and B drove us (she has to drive, especially in Europe, because she freaks out in a panic if I drive and she isn’t in control) in the semi-rain and along a billion roundabouts, in slight terror, to a pizza/Italian place for dinner. We’d gotten a late start with everything. The food was nice (even if we couldn’t understand the waitress when she told us for tea they have “red fruit”) and we ate and then B drove us back to our place.

The following day we left the car and explored. As I said Lisbon felt dirty, gritty, and loud. Sirens. Chaos. There was a Manhattan vibe. Yet it was interesting and enjoyable. After that, the next day, after almost dying just trying to exit the hotel parking garage (kidding but not really) we gathered our things and were out on time by 11:00 in the morning. B drove and we headed out of the city, going north.

We stopped in a small mountain town 40 minutes slightly north and west called Sintra. There we sat briefly in a coffee shop and then decided to see one of many local castles. Sintra is a little hilly castle-filled village. It reminded me of San Francisco only smaller; perhaps S.F. circa 1950. The castle idea was ditched, however, when we circled the narrow, hilly roads twice and realized the only way to see the castle was to park amidst a billion other tourists and board a bus which took you up to the castle on the top of the hill. We eyed one another: Eh. Too much work. Too many people. We headed out, once more heading north.

Next we hit Peniche, another small village. Here we simply peed and thought about our next move. The drive was lovely. It was nice to be once more doing a road trip. We’d both been recollecting our American cross-country trip a couple years ago, which we’d both loved. B and I drove from Lompoc 3,000 miles east across the country to Maine. In Boston she flew home and I clocked in another 4,000 miles solo driving the car into the deep South and then west again all the way back to California. It was one of our favorite trips, ironically, given how many places we’ve traveled now.

When I realized we were only 45 minutes’ drive south of the now famous seaside town of Nazare, the surf spot hosting the biggest waves on earth in modern history, which the TV show 100 Foot Wave is all about—a show which, incidentally my parents and I watched religiously in 2022/23 while my father was dying—I knew we had to go there. By now we’d decided on going to and staying in Porto, about 200 miles north of where we were currently, on the coast and not far from the border with Spain. Nazare was in the right direction. A quick stopover.

In Nazare we parked and walked down a long, steep downhill tiled street leading to the beach. We sat at a restaurant and ordered tea and water. We asked the old waiter about the “big waves” and he explained it was on the other side of the lighthouse, aka the other side of the massive jutting land fingering out into the sea with a sheer, jagged cliff about a hundred yards or so away from us.

We took off, got lost, finally found the Nazare Church, and drove tentatively down the road to a dead end overlooking the sea down below, a trail leading along trees and brush to the brown rowdy sea. Here there were several cars. One guy had his windows down, car parked up by the silver thick railing of the dead end, smoking something and blasting heavy metal. He brought back nostalgia, making me think back to my surfing days, getting high, putting on and taking off wetsuits endlessly, waxing and unwaxing our surfboards, and sitting idly for hours in our cars playing Black Flag or TSOL or Agent Orange or Dead Kennedys, etc, being young wasted Southern California surfer youth.

We walked down the path a ways—we were perhaps 100 yards from the cliff/lighthouse now on the other side of where we’d first been sipping tea at the restaurant earlier—and stood watching in the semi-cold, slightly gray stormy weather. The water was brown. The waves were rebellious: Messy and chaotic and sloppy, chumping and chomping randomly. They weren’t much of “waves” really, more like big lumps that finally crested, unable to bear their own vertical weight and crashing, rumbling wild white wash cascading for a moment until climax was reached.

For Nazare the waves weren’t big. It was hard to tell since we were up above the waves on the hillside but I’d guess they were 10-12 feet, still “big” in terms of surfing (for most average surfers who are not pros) but not “big waves” in the technical sense. A surfer (Sebastian Steudtner) caught the biggest wave (around 90 feet) in Nazare in 2020. Still: It was very cool just being there and seeing it.

After Nazare (we were lucky to even find the area we needed and had circled several times once again, which was my fault, as always) we headed back onto the highway once more heading north. We put on some of B’s strange, delightful, mellow indie music (she has intriguing, eclectic tastes in music) and relaxed, driving along the mostly empty highway. It almost felt as if we were driving again through America, or through Canada, or along Highway 101 in California. There’s nothing lovelier than a nice, wide, open highway and us, bisecting it every moment, driving along as if transcending Time somehow. We were surrounded by mountains and fields and emptiness at various points.

We got into Porto around late dusk. It was stunningly beautiful. See photos. The river, Rio Douro ran through it all, dividing Porto from Gaia, the giant, tall bridges electric with yellow and golden light which was reflected along the still, shimmering river. We loved it. Our apartment, as I said, is incredible, on the 4^th floor and with epic views of the river and Porto across it. We walked to a dinner place and ate delicious food while listening to two men playing mellow guitar tunes, relaxed redo covers of songs like Blackbird by The Beatles.

As always, we already want to move here. The plan is still Albania in July…but we’re becoming more nervous about Iran and that conflict. Albania is pretty far east, only an hour-and-a-half flight to Istanbul, Turkey, and Iran doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. (Thank you, Trump, for that egregiously un-thought-through bombing. I have some mixed feelings on it all but from a basic strategic perspective…this is not looking good. Welcome back to Iraq, Vietnam, etc. “It’ll be a quick, easy war.” Yeah: We’ve heard this song before.)

We’re also discussing Asia for three months and then back to the USA. Japan, perhaps, or Thailand. Or Albania and then Asia for three months. B feels generally “ready” to head “home” to the States…though she is always (almost always) persuadable. We’ll see. Were it fully up to me I’d stay abroad forever, probably. I love the lifestyle, the different culture, seeing America from the outside. But, we have to compromise. B wants stability. We have three cats. Etc. We’re considering places like New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, etc. (Not California or Oregon again.) And the truth is: Who knows for sure how any of this will go down. We worry about the States, too, as far as mass shootings, homicides, and the new Jihadist/Islam-extremist terror which has already started (see the story about two teens trying to bomb Mamdani.)

B and I have been continually in flux, in “transition” for 3.5 years now: Waiting for my dad to die, waiting to leave Lompoc, waiting to leave Portland, waiting to leave Madrid. So I understand her POV. And I do miss the States sometimes. I miss hiking and backpacking most of all which we haven’t done since in Madrid we do not have a car. I miss my mom as well. Things work between B and I for myriad reasons but one is the consistent tension, the push and pull between us. She is the more logical, practical one and I am the artist and risktaker. Between the two extremes we find balance, and a pretty amazing life. I am deeply grateful for her. I learned just how much I miss her when she was gone recently.

Anyway I woke up this morning to the epic views of the river and, across it, Porto. It was vaguely sensational and surreal. B slept until 9:30. I listened to Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest—his retelling of the gay alcoholic genius authors in the post-war late 1940s, some living in Rome: Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and others—with his snarly, ironic, pretentious and sarcastic literary poop-flinging at the likes of Norman Mailer and, his arch nemesis and, according to Vidal, a terrifying narcissist of the first order, Anais Nin, the woman who dated the likes of Vidal, Henry Miller and many, many others all while dating a rich banker who, pun intended, bankrolled her lavish lifestyle. If Capote screwed over his friends by doing the classic “tell all” writing in the various sections published posthumously in Answered Prayers, Nin’s diaries were…scandalous.

And then, finally, at last, caffeinated, facing the river, B asleep, showered and feeling ready to rock, I started writing. I haven’t written in several days, which is never a good thing for me. It’s akin to not taking my OCD medication or going too long without an AA 12-step meeting. It’s spiritual medicine. That’s why I do it. Writing, that is. Actually, no: I do it because (not to sound too cliché): I can’t not do it. I tried not doing it for years when I was younger. It didn’t work. Like a junkie (William Burroughs, say, another literary Queen) trying to get off junk. Writing reveals myself to myself. Didion said we “tell ourselves stories in order to live.” That is very damn true. Too true, perhaps. A little too right on the nose. I understand myself—my ego, my ambition, my failures, my successes, my love, my anger, my hate, my fears—quite literally through the tense act of writing. AI can’t achieve that. Only physical human writing, with pen on paper or fingers whacking keys, can accomplish this feat.

Here I am, 43 years old, looking out the window at the beautiful river and the city beyond. B is up and drinking coffee in bed, with her laptop, back under the covers.

I feel free.

Praca do Comercial, Lisbon, Portugal