I’ve done many things in life. I went from being a teacher to serving in the army, and I’ve worn just about every collar there is. I’ve juggled blue-, white-, and even green-collar jobs. But through all the changes, one thing had remained constant:

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Pub Crawl 2026 is now behind us, and Alchemy Publications had a great time interacting with readers and writers on Medium. But the event also reinforced something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

As Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine mentioned in his opening note, the event gave us a moment to pause and reconnect as a writing community.

Tony spoke about the importance of building relationships behind the writing/editing process.

In all my years on Medium, I’ve always tried to live up to this principle, and this sense of community-building was always our main focus on Alchemy Publications.

So I was glad to participate and host a booth at the event.

I had a terrific time.

It was great seeing people who had only interacted online finally meeting live.

The shift from avatars in the comments to real conversations reminded me how writing communities are still fundamentally human spaces.

I just wish more of you had shown up to chat. To all those who did, thank you so much for stopping by.

I came out of this event with an energy boost to give even more back to the community and help other editors and Medium authors grow on the platform.

Medium, VP Content, Scott Lamb mentioned one thing that really resonated:

“Editors matter now more than ever.”

This is such a powerful message. As an editor and Medium author, I fully agree.

In times when AI seems to be running the writing/publishing show, the editor’s role is crucial because they know human writing better than any AI detection tool.

I have written about the idea that we live in times of instant everything.

Everything is becoming too frictionless.

Writing these days needs to feel organic. The best way to do this, to make your writing human, is to add more “friction” to it.

Readers can usually tell when something was written quickly just to publish versus written carefully to communicate something meaningful.

Editors can help you with this. They give you a better insight, and they do this for free.

Medium editors aren’t financially compensated for their work. They take time away from their own writing to help others with theirs.

Editing on Medium is an act of generosity.

Writing isn’t supposed to be easy. It should take time and go through a process. Your first draft is just a starting point. There’s always room for improvement.

Sometimes the best thing an editor does is ask a simple question like:

“What did you really want the reader to take away from this paragraph?”

When an editor drops you a private note asking for edits, please take it as a sign that your story is great and that person wants to help you develop it to its full potential.

Scott also note something we’ve all noticed.

The internet is changing.

With more than twenty years of blogging under my belt, I know the change is real.

We are moving from an internet built around search and blogs to one increasingly shaped by feeds, algorithms, and AI-generated summaries.

So, indeed, it’s increasingly harder to find places online that provide real human value. Most online writing these days is a composite of regurgitated information fed by AI.

I agree with Scott when he highlights the importance of the “Trust” factor, and how Medium is working to build trust, and how editors can play a huge role in helping the platform achieve this goal.

Trust may become the most valuable currency a platform like Medium can offer.

As always, Alchemy Publications will be working closely with writers to make sure stories have that “human factor” which is so relevant today.

I still believe readers will be more likely to engage with human stories than all the AI slop we find on the internet.

Reader engagement for me has always been the best metric to be taken into consideration when deciding which story has the potential to appeal to a wider audience, and therefore picked up by the algorithm and distributed.

The internet is changing, but the reason we read hasn’t

This is the reason why I’m still here, writing, and running Alchemy Publications.

Even if the internet is changing, for me, the reason people read stories online hasn’t changed at all.

They read to connect with another human mind.

Want to be part of that conversation?

At Alchemy Publications, we’re always looking to collaborate with writers who want to share thoughtful stories with the Medium community.

Visit our homepage to explore our latest stories, and if you’re interested in writing with us, we’d love to hear from you.

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You can also find this story on Medium.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

By the time Storm Marta arrived, I was ready. Just days earlier, Kristin’s sting jet and cyclonic winds had torn through Portugal, leaving the central region looking like a war zone.

The scenes I had witnessed still haunt me; roofs flying as if thrown by a giant hand flashed through my eyes. Power pylons bent and twisted like mashed paper. And the most haunting of them all, thousands of pine trees from the centuries-old Pinhal de Leiria, the offspring of the legendary trees that once rode the waves across the world in the Age of Discoveries, lying side by side as if felled in a single blow.

The despair of those who lost everything remains vivid in my mind. And one thought keeps creeping back. What we lived through here is what others may face tomorrow, elsewhere.

Life in between storms

Meteorologists called it a “storm train.” Ingrid, Joseph, Kristin, Leonardo, and Marta, one system after another in quick succession. A whole alphabet of wind and water pouring over those who barely made it after the last and have to mend their lives and their broken homes to meet the next relentless weather event.

After Kristin’s bomb cyclone came the floods; the days blurred together. Rain and wind against glass, and the senses numbed by the unrest of never hearing silence anymore. A constant hum of news alerts, red warnings, and the insidious low anxiety creeping in from the fear of what’s next.

Between storms, neighbors helped each other. Many left their roofless homes to clear branches from the road so help could come to those injured. They checked on friends and family on foot because communications were out. Those with a roof still over their head prayed the tiles would hold one more long night.

Leonardo

When Kristin made it to Spain, our neighbors’ dams couldn’t hold it any longer. Our common rivers doubled in size, and as Storm Leonardo approached, the flooding was inevitable.

Quiet streams swelled into thundering rivers, and fields turned into vast lakes. As the saturated earth gave way, landslides buckled the roads. The pavement cracked, and houses crumbled.

Marta

Marta wasn’t as thundering. Not as loud. And we can say the storm lived up to its name and showed mercy to a land already broken.

Like Kristin, it arrived by night, making landfall in the same region already punished by the explosive cyclogenesis a few days earlier.

Fortunately, it brought rain but weaker wind gusts. Although more people were without power the following morning, the damage wasn't as severe as we feared.

Nils

Now, the sky still hasn’t cleared. The storm train has slowed, but it hasn’t stopped. A new storm is upon us. It already has a name, Nils; the alphabet has never looked this haunting.

Portugal is now under the grip of what meteorologists call an atmospheric river, a ribbon of warm, moisture-laden air stretching all the way from the Caribbean across the Azores to our coast.

They say this phenomenon never lasts less than a week, and it feels true. The rain has been constant, relentless, and heavy with the kind of humidity that seeps into walls and bones.

In the land between rivers, the waters pour from above as the flood feeds on itself, keeping us trapped beneath a curtain of gray.

From here to the coast in Vila do Conde, where the waters meet the Atlantic Ocean, everything is drenched. The rivers are swollen, the soil is saturated, and even the air feels liquid.

Each morning, I wake to the same sound: water dripping, gutters overflowing, the steady percussion of a sky that refuses to stop.

And so, as the rivers submerge everything from below and above, I feel caught inside a story that refuses to end.

For the last two weeks. I couldn’t help but think about how often life doesn’t give you time to think. You just have the time to act. And sometimes that comes at a high cost.

In the brief moments of quiet in between storms, people did what they could. They mourned the dead and cared for the living.

I’m certain we will emerge stronger when this is over. Despite all the personal tragedy, I’m proud to say we still had the strength to vote and live up to the values of the Carnation Revolution that restored our freedom on April 25, 1974.

Yesterday was our Presidential election day. Today, I’m proud of what we achieved and the lesson in resilience and democracy we embraced.

We went to the ballots in rubber boots. In our flooded villages, boats replaced cars, and we paddled our way to often remote polling places against all odds and the disbelief of those who wanted to ride the wave of misfortune.

Together we prevailed, and for now, before the next storm hits, I pray for a sky that finally runs out of rain.

Lessons from storm fatigue

The last time we had a day-long outage, supermarket shelves emptied in minutes. This was back in April 2025 when the Spanish grid suffered a catastrophic shutdown, and our power plants had to “black start” the network.

Suddenly, the butterfly effect was real. A system flaw a thousand miles away, and the world goes black. In my apartment, when the power goes everything else goes with it. I can’t take a shower, fix a quick meal, or do anything. And that’s when you miss all the small things we take for granted: warmth, water, someone’s voice on the other end of the line.

Since then, I learned to be prepared, and now I keep a survival kit ready to go. For instance, a small solar-charged radio with a flashlight and a power bank would have been useful during the outage.

Now, with storm season underway, the emotional burden outweighs even the material losses. We shelter our bodies, but soon enough, the mind needs shelter too.

One thing I’ve noticed is how we don’t talk enough about storm fatigue. But after a couple of months of living under harsh conditions, I started to feel the exhaustion set in.

The noise outside becomes background, but the noise inside your head doesn’t fade so easily. You begin to measure life in warnings. From yellow to orange, from orange to red, and back again.

I’ve learned that living through constant storms changes your sense of time. Everything becomes about before and after, and the quiet in between alerts feels fleeting.

The hardest part isn’t finding all the missing parts. You can find the right tiles for your roof. But you still have to take them up there. And last week, more people died repairing roofs than during the storm itself.

We need to rebuild what’s been broken, but we can’t forget about finding the strength to fix ourselves.

There’s no point in fixing a roof just to have it go again in the next storm.

The body adapts. The mind, not so much.

If you’ve read my stories lately, you might have noticed how often I return to life during the storms.

Writing about it helps me breathe between them. It helps me make sense of days that would otherwise seem blurred together.

Writing helped me realize that when life pushes you to the limits, survival isn’t only about what you save. It’s about letting go of the things I cannot control; otherwise, fear would slip in and swallow me whole.

The quiet before the next storm

Today it has been raining nonstop. The sky falls like ashes. The hills are ghosts in the mist, and the constant rainfall is a reminder that this isn’t over yet.

There’s this stillness in the air. Life seems wrapped in a never-ending dream. We are all here waiting. Crammed together in our concrete cocoons, hoping that the roof holds just one more time.

But somehow the storms seem to have brought us together. I knock on my neighbor’s door, a woman who has lived through worse times than I ever had, and now faces the storm holding on to a rosary and a prayer to Saint Barbara, the protector against storms.

I check on her whenever I can. Sometimes there’s not much we can say. We sit in silence listening to the rain. And in that moment, this fragile widow is the one who reminds me of the most subtle lesson of them all. When the world seems out of control, what saves us is the kindness we bring to others.

Thank you for reading.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

A version of this story was first published here on Medium.

There’s a line from The Crow that has stuck with me ever since I first saw it back in 1994:

It can’t rain all the time.

Lately, though, it feels like it just might.

This winter, I’ve spent more sleepless hours than I can count, listening to the wind batter the windows and the rain drum against the skylight.

The series of storms that have swept across my country in the past week stands in stark contrast with the postcard image many have of Portugal.

For us, the past week was a rather bleak reminder of the new normal we’re all learning to live with here in the sunny edge of Europe.

A “weather bomb” over Portugal

While some still deny climate change, here in Portugal, we have a front-row seat to what’s happening to our planet’s weather.

In just a few months, I’ve seen more rare weather events than in the rest of my life combined.

Back in June 2024, a massive roll cloud hit our shores, and just yesterday, I saw another rare formation.

Mammatus clouds, like the one that hovered over my village, are bulbous, hanging formations that get their name from their peculiar shape.

January 28, 2026, will linger in our collective memory as the day of the most extreme weather event ever recorded in Portugal.

This weather system was named Storm Kristin by the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA).

According to IPMA experts, Kristin was a low-pressure system that formed and developed on the southern edge of Storm Joseph between 21 UTC on January 27 and 03 UTC on January 28.

The storm made landfall when almost everyone was safely in their homes. Had Kristin struck in daylight, the toll could have been far worse. Still, six people lost their lives, and each of those lives is a tragedy of its own.

Storm Kristin

Meteorologists have a name for this type of phenomenom they call it an “explosive cyclogenesis” or “weather bomb.”

The Coimbra and Leiria districts took the full blow of Kristin’s devastating power when the explosive cyclone made landfall around 4 a.m. in the São João da Madeira region.

Kristin’s “Jet Sting” tore through the ancient pine forest in Leiria in a scythe-like strike, cutting hundreds of trees in half with 125 mph wind blasts, as you can see in this impressive video.

In the cities, centuries-old trees were torn completely out by the roots. But the image that has stayed with me is a road buried under fallen trees. Every single tree pointing in the same direction, bent or struck down by the sheer force of the wind.

A cyclonic wind blast also struck an aerodrome in Coimbra. The roof of a hangar was ripped off, and several aircraft were severely damaged, some beyond repair.

These werent’t the only aircraft hit by the storm. In the Monte Real air base, at least two F-16 fighters sustained damage when the hangar gate and roof collapsed under the 100 mph winds.

Many power and communications towers were also completely wrecked. So, with communications down, we had no clear picture of the destruction the next morning.

A twist of fate

The storm’s Sting Jet, which on satellite images looks like a menacing scorpion’s tail, was expected to hit farther north than it did.

Early projections had Kristin make landfall around the Porto district and the Minho region. This would have put me dead center in the eye of the storm.

If that had happened, there’s a chance I wouldn’t be able to share with you this story, as so many are still without power, water, and internet access.

Somehow, the storm took a different route and landed further south into the night, catching people in their sleep and unaware of the true force of the storm coming their way.

Around one million homes were hit by the storm, and some of them are still isolated by the wreckage and floods.

It’s been three days, and I still can’t reach family and friends in that area.

Kristin was the latest storm to hit my country, but it’s been raining for weeks now.

Storms Ingrid and Joseph were also heavy on rain, and our dams are now near full capacity, and they will soon have to start releasing water, which will cause even more flooding.

I live in a village between rivers in the Ave valley, and the heavy rain has made the water rise to almost record levels.

Last summer, I went down by the river and took some pictures of the Ave near the Amieiro Galego dam.

Then, two days ago, I went back and took another picture, and looking at it, you can imagine how much it has rained this winter.

You can’t even see the dam wall. On the sides and above it, the water runs free now.

I wish you could hear the thundering sound it makes as it goes.

The calm before the next storm

Today, Saturday 31, I drove along the river almost to its mouth in Vila do Conde. The waters had risen far above the margins, flooding nearby fields and roads.

The rain took a break this afternoon, but the forecast says it’s the calm before the next storm. We’re looking at a week of heavy downpours ahead, with meteorologists predicting rain every single day.

The authorities have already issued a flood alert for my region. We’re preparing for the worst while hoping for the best.

It can’t rain all the time…

In 1994, Brandon Lee’s character in The Crow, Eric Draven, told a grieving girl, Sarah, how, after a tragic “Devil’s Night,” all the sadness would eventually give way to better days.

This was a message of hope, so she could find the resilience to endure the wreckage of her world.

Right now, it feels like a message across time. It Can’t Rain All the Time, the song by Eric Draven’s fictional band Hangman’s Joke, has become my mantra for the days of relentless rain ahead.

For now, as the waters rise and the cloudy skies seem menacing once again, I’ve seen neighbors check on one another, share resources, and find small ways to endure.

In many places, groups of volunteers have joined to help clean the streets and people’s houses.

But I’ve also heard reports of pillages, and many have to keep watch of what’s left of their homes and workplaces.

Times like these bring out the best and the worst in us.

Human behavior is predictable. Nature is anything but. Yet we adapt, we rebuild, and we keep moving forward no matter what.

We’ll get through this together.

Thank you for reading.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

A version of this story was first published here on Medium.

For decades, I cultivated a type A personality, first in the Portuguese army and then working for the European Commission in Brussels.

During my time in Belgium, my life was measured by how much I could achieve.

I was driven by ambition and was always struggling. Goals. Deadlines. Everything was urgent.

Time-management was a nightmare.

If you’ve never worked in the heart of the European “quarter,” it’s hard to describe the specific type of exhaustion it breeds.

Working in EU-funded projects is a high-velocity meat grinder of productivity culture.

For me, it was a place where your value was tied to the thickness of your briefing.

It would often come down to how many “alignment meetings” I could survive before the sun went down.

In Brussels, everything is a trade-off. You trade our circadian rhythms for deadlines. You shed empathy for “professionalism.”

I watched myself become a zealot of the hustle cult, slowly alienated from humanity.

Just a nameless cog in the machine.

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Living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world is not what you imagine when you come from a small village in rural Portugal.

Yet I only ever saw it through the blue-light filter of a laptop screen or the blurred window of a late-night Uber.

The city is famous for its surrealist art and its hidden, winding alleys, but I was too busy “optimizing” my commute to notice the magic.

I had reached peak efficiency, and I was miserable.

My life on the line in a Maelbeek Minute

Before the “meat grinder” was a metaphor for my career, it was a literal fear.

On March 22, 2016, I was on the Simonis line, heading toward Arts-Loi. I stepped off the subway car just minutes before the blast at Maelbeek station.

When you realize you’ve had such a narrow escape, a gap of minutes between life and a headline, things will never go back to the way they were.

You’ll adapt. As I did for months.

And sooner or later, something happens, and you may feel an urge to pivot.

I didn’t realize it, but a shadow of doubt was slowly building up in the back of my mind.

Insidiously creeping in.

In 2018, I allowed my survival instinct to lead me back to something real.

An old flame from high school popped up on Instagram.

Her photo with a poem from a love letter I had written 20 years ago.

We reconnected.

True love never dies.

Finding the kind of “old soul” love made the gray walls of Brussels feel a little less cold.

But long-distance love is hard on the heart.

I had to go back home to be with the one I loved.

But the hustle culture is a powerful spell.

Even with my love by my side, I brought the “grinder” home with me.

I spent the next few years trying to build a “perfect” life with the same frantic energy I used for EU policy.

I was back in Portugal, but my mind was still in a briefing room.

Now, in 2026, the spell is finally broken.

I am choosing a life that isn’t just “safe” or “productive.”

My only goal now is to live a fun life and be deliberately, stubbornly whimsical.

And I want to share it with the person who reminded me why life was worth surviving in the first place.

How to be more type B

To protect this new life, I have built it on three foundational shifts:

1. Dare to follow the unproductive path

In Brussels, if an hour didn’t produce a “deliverable,” it was a wasted hour.

Now back home, I am reclaiming the right to be “unproductive” in the most beautiful ways possible.

If I want to spend an entire Tuesday afternoon with my fiancée exploring an abandoned haunted sanatorium, sitting high up on a desolate hilltop.

I will do it.

And when you have a “wonder woman” by your side. A daredevil who will hike up a rocky mountainside on high heels.

You know you’re on the right path to add a lot more whimsy to your life.

In 2026, I’m no longer a “resource” to be managed.

Now, I put on the apron and spend three hours making a perfect Arroz Doce just because Marta loves the smell of cinnamon, and it makes the house feel like it’s Christmas all over again.

2. Take out “the good china”

Brussels taught me life doesn’t wait for a special occasion.

You should never mortgage your happiness, hoping for a future that isn’t guaranteed.

If I learned anything from the machine, it’s there’s no point in postponing the things that make you happy.

All the good things in life are to be experienced right now.

I have a beautiful set of Vista Alegre fine china that has just been collecting dust in a cupboard for years.

Now, if Marta is coming down with a cold. I’m serving her breakfast in bed with our best porcelain set.

3. Use spontaneity as a strategy

The “Brussels Brain” wants to schedule everything six months in advance.

My third pillar is about breaking the grip of Google Maps and the Calendar app.

We are devising a new series of road trips for 2026.

We call it the “N-222 Drive.”

Portugal’s N-222 is one of the most beautiful scenic roads in the world. It crosses our country from west to east along the Douro River.

But our roadmap will be rather unconventional.

My love and I pick a direction and stop only when we find a village that isn’t in any tourist guide.

It’s way more fun to follow the sound of a local festa and forget about the GPS, and when you reach the end of the road, you just want to go back and do it all over again.

The survivor’s choice

We often consider the opposite of “survival” is “death.” But after Brussels, I realized the true opposite of survival is living.

For years, I was just surviving.

I was surviving the subway, surviving the never-ending flow of meetings, and enduring the crushing weight of a culture always asking you to be a machine.

But as I look at 2026, I realize just enduring isn’t enough of a tribute to the fact that I am still here.

If my life was spared by a matter of minutes, I owe it to the universe to do more than just be productive.

I owe it to myself, and to the love I found again, to be extraordinary in the most quiet, whimsical ways.

I’m leaving the meat grinder behind for good.

I’m trading the “briefing note” for a “love poem in a postcard” and the “performance review” for a “side of the road photoshoot.”

Efficiency is a hollow master.

A boss who won’t remember your name.

But whimsy?

Whimsy is the light itself.

So, I dare you.

Find your own “unnecessary” joy today. Light the candle. Wear the silk. Take the long way home.

Because the “perfect time” to live is a myth, but the magic of right now is real.

I’m choosing the magic.

I hope you’ll join me.

You can also find this story on Zenite.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

I grew up around textile factories, so I understand why your clothes don’t feel or last the way they used to.

My quiet town was where the golden age of Portuguese textiles began. The Industrial Revolution put us on the map, transforming the way cloth was made and shaping our future.

By the 1830s, cotton spinning had become mechanized and was powered by water. Surrounded by two rivers, the Ave Valley offered ideal conditions for production, helping our town become a center of textile innovation.

In 1845, a group of eleven local businessmen founded the Fábrica de Fiação e Tecidos do Rio Vizela (Rio Vizela Spinning and Weaving Factory).

Leading them was French engineer Eugene Cauchoix, who was determined to modernize the local industry and break the dependence on cotton yarn imported from England.

This was how Rio Vizela became the first plant of its kind in Portugal. For decades, it was also the largest. Its workflow marked the rhythm of everyday life, and the factory was at the center of the local economy.

Like many others, my family was part of that story. My grandmother would tell me how the giant factory provided jobs for entire families.

At one point, over three thousand people worked at Rio Vizela when quality materials still defined the industry.

Then things changed. Cheaper artificial fibers, with polyester at the top, entered mass production.

Costs went up, and manufacturing moved elsewhere. What took generations to make crumbled in a few decades, and much of Portugal’s textile industry faded with it.

We’re now in 2026, and I remember how last year, one question kept resurfacing on Google Trends.

Is polyester bad?

The question is complicated because polyester today is not the same material that replaced cotton decades ago, and the way we relate to clothing has changed just as much.

What we now call “polyester” ranges from the cheapest disposable fibers to highly engineered textiles designed to perform, recycle, and last.

When you put those two evolutions together, it becomes clear why a simple yes-or-no answer no longer makes sense.

But I do think we’re seeing a shift toward quality.

People are changing their views on clothing. Many consumers seem to be moving away from cheap, disposable fashion and favoring fabrics with a premium touch and a longer lifespan.

So, right now, I have a first-row seat to what’s happening because our new textile factories are at the forefront of this shift, bringing back cotton and other natural fibers.

Planned obsolescence: Was polyester designed to fail?

To answer the question in the title, we have to look at what “quality” used to mean in the past and what it means now.

Thirty years ago, you could really feel the quality in the fabric. Cotton garments softened with wear instead of breaking down.

Clothes were made to be repaired, not replaced. I used to buy a shirt expecting to wear it for years, not seasons.

My favorite Portuguese streetwear brand was founded in the same year I was born, 1978.

I grew up wearing their clothes, and I have a clear notion about how their quality has shifted over time.

Their t-shirts used to be 100% cotton, and you could feel the quality of the fabric. I still have some of their t-shirts from back when I was a teen, and they look almost new.

I still buy from them, but the new t-shirts are really thin in comparison to the old ones. I wear them a couple of times, and holes in the fabric start to appear out of nowhere.

It’s strange because they are an expensive premium brand. So quality these days has little to do with numbers on price tags.

Durability was part of a brand’s reputation.

Polyester as a technological shift

After the rise of polyester, brands assumed consumers didn’t care about longevity and leaned toward affordability.

Manufacturers chased quick profit, and quality fabrics lost priority.

Today, brands still choose cotton because it’s “natural.” Sustainability has become increasingly relevant.

But a century ago, it was chosen because it worked.

Over time, that definition shifted.

As production scaled globally and speed became the priority, quality was quietly rebranded.

When speed and cost drive production, polyester becomes an easy choice. It’s inexpensive and adaptable to mass manufacturing.

So it’s clear why in the 1950s, polyester was considered a technological upgrade.

At the time, cotton was no match for polyester. Clothing became lighter, thinner, and easier to discard.

T-shirts were no longer made to last.

The allure of an old flannel shirt was no longer something most of us would care about.

Maybe I think differently than most, but I still have jeans and flannel shirts from my teen years.

They have that grungy look I love.

Unlike polyester, which just looks tired after a year, high-quality cotton develops a beautiful patina with every wash, and over time, it only gets better.

I used to distress my jeans on purpose, as I was obsessed with getting that authentic, grungy fade.

Now, my shirts look like that effortlessly. I just need to put them on, and they will be ruined almost by magic, worn thin long before they develop character.

Still, in recent years, more of our local factories are shifting to premium high-tech clothing.

They stress test their fabrics to learn how they will feel after months of wear.

They’re comparing materials again. They’re noticing that some fabrics trap heat, hold odor, or lose their shape quickly. And they’re starting to connect those experiences back to fiber choice.

That’s where the renewed interest in cotton and other natural fibers comes in.

The new standard: A return to eco-friendly fabrics

I live close to the new factories and know the workers. I read the news in our local newspapers. I shop in their factory shops. I’m aware of their technological achievements.

Several of our local factories are references in their area, and some have around 80% of their production going to the external market, as they work mainly for luxury brands.

Many of them survived the collapse by staying small and leaning on what mass production couldn’t deliver.

They still work with cotton again, but not in the way from my childhood years.

In their laboratories, fabric testing is now highly technical and follows strict scientific protocols.

Materials are washed, stretched, and stressed for months before production starts.

As demand grows, expectations have climbed even higher, and production needs to adapt to meet the demand for innovative designs and fabrics.

Today, it’s all about “invisible technology” and sustainable textiles.

Portugal is no longer the “cheap labor” hub it was in the 80s; it is now the “European Lab” for premium, high-tech natural fibers.

This explains why, where the Rio Vizela factory once stood, we now have the Modatex Training Center.

This infrastructure is part of a larger network, which includes CITEVE (Technological Center for the Textile and Clothing Industry of Portugal).

The modern textile factories in the Vale do Ave benefit from work done at Modatex and CITEVE and research done at Minho University and the 2C2T (Center for Textile Science and Technology) in the development of breakthrough fibers and fabrics.

Research now focuses on developing stain-resistant and wrinkle-free natural fibers through molecular science. Heat retention matters. Odor matters. Shape matters. And these are only some of the aspects considered in the testing and development stages.

Cotton was an obvious first choice for scientists. But other fibers followed.

Portuguese manufacturers are particularly interested in fibers originating from plants that grow without special care or demand irrigation.

• Himalayan nettle grows wild and needs little water. The fiber regulates temperature and resists bacteria. It breathes well and lasts.

• Pineapple fiber comes from discarded leaves after harvest. Farmers extract value from waste that once rotted in fields.

• Banana fiber comes from stalks that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill. The material feels light, strong, and clean on the skin.

• Some high-tech fibers come from starch and sugar. Others are made from wood pulp and recycled cellulose.

All the above break down faster than petroleum-based materials. They return to the soil within years instead of decades.

This shift helps explain why Portugal has re-emerged as a textile powerhouse. Much of that strength now comes from research-driven material development.

Is polyester that bad?

The answer isn’t as simple as you’d think. To find out what the experts at CITEVE are really saying about our wardrobes:

Read the full story with a subscription.

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Ronaldo isn’t just one of the best soccer players of all time. CR7 is one of the world’s best-selling brands, and wherever he goes, millions follow.

Ronaldo sells. He is the biggest social media influencer across the board. CR7 is the G.O.A.T.

• 668M followers on Instagram

• 171M followers on Facebook.

• 111M followers on X

Overall, Ronaldo has more than 1.1 billion followers, and these figures show the scope of his influence worldwide.

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What CR7 Told Piers Morgan about Trump

In a recent interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, Cristiano Ronaldo shared that he would like to meet the US president in person.

Ronaldo, currently playing for the Saudi club al-Nassr, recently sat down with British journalist and TV personality Piers Morgan for a rather personal interview.

When the current U.S. President’s name came up, I wasn’t surprised to hear that Ronaldo is actually quite fond of Donald Trump.

Morgan recalled how, back in June 2025, former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, now the President of the European Council, gifted a Portuguese National Team shirt to Trump during the G7 meeting in Canada.

This was the first hint of Cristiano’s fondness for Trump.

“I have something special for you from a very special person,” Costa said, before handing a Portuguese Seleção shirt signed by Ronaldo to Trump.

“It has a very special message”, Costa added.

Ronaldo had signed it, and there was even a handwritten message that said:

“To President Donald. J. Trump, playing for peace.”

Trump added while showing the shirt to the cameras:

“Oh, playing for peace. I love that.”

Ronaldo went on to share with Morgan that President Trump is one of the few people he would very much want to meet in person one day, but never had the chance.

Morgan, who is known to have been in Trump’s close circle, noted that he could probably make it happen.

Ronaldo picked up on the offer and opened up about how he admires President Trump:

“He is one of the most important people, one of the people I want to meet. I hope to do so one day, if I have the opportunity. I want to meet him one day to sit down with him, he’s one of the people I really like because I think he can make things happen, and I like people like that.”

Then CR7 wrapped it up with a cryptic teaser that left Morgan curious and probably many more around the world.

Ronaldo hinted that he had something he would like to say to Trump in person, something they have in common, something they both “share,” but he did not reveal what it was. “It will be fascinating,” he said, assuring that the conversation, if it ever happened, would be special.

So what do these two personalities have in common? Can you guess it?

Well, don’t have to wait long for an answer.

The Meeting: Ronaldo and Trump at the White House

Today is the day Ronaldo gets to sit down with Trump. The news broke yesterday evening when White House correspondent Jake Traylor made a post on X saying:

New: Trump is expected to host soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo at the White House tomorrow, according to White House officials. Ronaldo who plays in the Saudi Pro League, is expected to visit the WH on the same day where Trump will host the Saudi crown prince.

The meeting didn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Cristiano Ronaldo has been a topic every time one of my country’s highest representatives has met with Donald Trump.

Ronaldo is a Portuguese marketing asset. His popularity is probably unmatched. He has many of the qualities Trump admires.

The 2026 World Cup agenda

With the FIFA World Cup 2026 on his agenda, Trump met yesterday, Monday, November 17, with the FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

Speaking from the White House, Trump said he has directed his administration to “do everything within its power” to make the tournament “an unprecedented success.”

On Sunday, November 16, Portugal qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup after a 9–1 win against Armenia.

Ronaldo was out after receiving a red card in the previous game against Ireland. But everyone knows, CR7 will be the biggest star at next year’s World Cup, which will have the United States, Canada, and Mexico as hosts.

The Portuguese team is also expected to face the United States national team in the warm-up friendly matches ahead of the World Cup.

So this meeting serves everyone, and President Trump is probably playing his cards right and looking to score points at a time when his popularity has seen better days.

Donald Trump probably doesn’t care much about soccer, but he is fond of ratings.

I don’t even think he has watched Ronaldo play.

What Trump knows about Ronaldo

I remember when, back in June 2018, the Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was invited to the White House during an official visit to the United States and met with U.S. President Donald Trump.

During the meeting, as always, the most famous Portuguese came up. Trump asked Marcelo about Ronaldo’s quality: “How good a player is he? He’s impressive.”

Although Trump confessed that he is not a big soccer fan, Marcelo explained that Portugal is the European champion and has the best player in the world.

Trump asked. “Will he ever run for president against you?”

Without even letting Marcelo answer, the U.S. President added while tapping Marcelo on the shoulder.

“You wouldn’t win! You know he won’t.”

President Trump looked around and laughed to the cameras. Marcelo kept his relaxed body language and replied vaguely:

“President, you know, there’s something I must tell you…”

Marcelo grabs Trump’s arm and smiles, adding:

“Portugal is just not the United States…”

Both Presidents laugh.

Trump replies:

“That’s right! That’s right!”

Touché!

Famous Portuguese at the White House

This afternoon’s meeting between Ronaldo and Trump is little more than a media sideshow and PR stunt for the U.S. Presidency, but it’s all over the news here in Portugal.

It’s rare to see a Portuguese at the White House. You can count these visits on the fingers of one hand. And the subjects on the table are always the same. Transatlantic cooperation. NATO, economic cooperation, and the geostrategic importance of the Azores (Lajes Air Base).

Before President Marcelo’s only three Presidents were invited to the White House:

• António Ramalho Eanes was received by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

• Mário Soares was the Portuguese president who had the most meetings at the White House during his term. He was invited by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. Then by George H. W. Bush in 1989 and 1992. And finally, by Bill Clinton in 1993.

• Aníbal Cavaco Silva was received by President Barack Obama in 2011.

The G.O.A.T. ego: Speculating on the big reveal

So, today, Ronaldo will enter a very restricted circle of Portuguese personalities to sit with the U.S. President at the White House, and we will find out what CR7 thinks he has in common with the incumbent POTUS.

Thinking about it, I can say they both believe they are the G.O.A.T. at what they do. They have big egos, and Ronaldo even told Morgan, he considers himself more popular than Trump. So this afternoon, we will get to sit and watch how these two get along, and wait for the big reveal.

The bets are on, share your guess.

Thank you for reading.

This post was first published here.

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Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

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I’ve spent most of my adult life using my voice, pursuing words, writing them, and even helping to preserve them along the way. And for the last four years, I’ve often taken the stand to speak out in defense of the common good at my town’s council meetings.

I grew up wanting to be a doctor, but eventually, I realized words can cut deepe…

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20% Off All Annual Plans For Life

Regardless of your faith background, you have likely noticed that the same deity may have many names. This is something I have thought about many times as a linguist. Being raised in a deeply Christian family, I have studied the Bible and noticed how it uses many ways to express divine power.

Many of these variants aren’t synonyms. They offer us windows into different aspects of the divine and how we have molded our idea of a universal Architect to our own image.

The concept of a supernatural force that created the universe transcends the borders of religion itself. And this is one of the aspects that led me to see God as more of an abstract concept.

So in many religions, God has all these attributes that stand on three main pillars:

1. All-knowing

2. All-powerful

3. All-loving

The Christian Bible depicts God as having all these features, but translators of the Old Testament seem to have mainly focused on the masculine principle, the All-powerful. Still, one of the many names for God might be more linked to the feminine than we thought.

The many facets of God in the Bible

In the Old Testament, YHWH means “I Am Who I Am,” an all-encompassing deity with many facets. This is the God in the Garden, the One Who Provides, the God of Noah, and the God of Moses, the One Who is a Banner during the Exodus.

Then we have Elohim, the Mighty One, emphasizing God’s facet as a powerful Creator and judge. Or other compound names like El Shaddai, which religious scholars usually translate as “God Almighty,” “God All Powerful,” or “God All Sufficient.”

If there’s a name for God in the Bible that poses translation problems, El Shaddai is the winner. Furthermore, the plot thickens, as the text retrieved from the Dead Sea Scrolls also shows a different choice of words in relation to the Masoretic text, the ancient Hebrew origin of the Bible, which is also the main source of the Latin Vulgate (the Latin translation of the Bible in the 4th century).

So have you ever stopped to wonder if “God Almighty” really grasps what the Hebrew El Shaddai means?

I don’t think it does. Not even close. And I believe this shift from the Old to the New Testament is not as abrupt as some biblical translations have led us to believe.

Those who try to understand the meaning of this name used by the people of Israel to identify their God, generally translate El Shaddai as “God Almighty,” the name used in several English translations of the Bible (see Genesis 17:1, NRSV, NIV, ESV). However, the translation “God Almighty” does not actually provide the basis for the proper understanding of the true meaning of El Shaddai. — Claude Mariottini, in El Shaddai

As Dr. Claude Mariottini notes in his study about the true meaning of El Shaddai, somewhere along the way, translators and theologians may have twisted the meaning to fit a certain idea of God. In Portuguese, there’s a word for when something drifts so far from its original sense. We call it a corruptela. It’s a corruption, a bending of meaning that may be voluntary or not.

So to go beyond the corruption of human belief and theological agendas, I keep questioning things many take for granted. Old dogmas have been collecting dust for centuries, as I try to get closer to the original meaning and to read with clear eyes, and maybe a little humility.

“The translator’s task is compounded by the presence of words and phrases whose original meanings have been lost.” — Jeff A. Benner

The divine epithet Shaddai appears forty-eight times in the Hebrew Bible:

• 9 times in the Pentateuch.

• 2 times in the book of Ruth: Ruth 1:20–21.

• 4 times in the prophets: Isaiah 13:6, Joel 1:15, Ezekiel 1:24, 10:5.

• 2 times in the book of Psalms: Psalms 68:14, 91:1.

• 31 times in the book of Job.

Each time, the name is tied to fruitfulness and promise, not domination. So, I have to say El Shaddai is one of my favorite names for God. It highlights the deity’s bountiful and nurturing nature, as according to Hebrew lexicon X, the masculine root šad-, pronounced shad; or שֹׁד shôd, refers in its original sense to the breast of a woman or animal.

A nursing God is a rather controversial image, but one that seems fitting as an epithet in this cultural background, where divine and earthly maternity were not strictly parallel. Nursing was not regarded as simply maternal aspect, but a divine act (Albright W.F., 1935).

We find it used several times in the Holy Bible:

Gen 49:25

Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:

Job 3:12

Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

Psa 22:9

But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.

From a semantic perspective, this etymology takes us far from the conventional image of God as a typically masculine entity. If Elohim refers to God as the Maker, Shaddai reaches deeper than simple creation.

The original translators of the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint in the third to first centuries BCE, used both the Greek words theos (“God”) and pantokratōr (“almighty/ omnipotent”) for Shaddai. But “God Almighty” may not be the best translation for it.

El would then be a reference to God, but Shaddai remains a mystery. Some authors believe “Shaddai” derives from the Akkadian word for “mountain” and thus “El Shaddai” would have meant “God, the One of the Mountain.”

This imagery is open to interpretation and symbolic amplification. Harriet Lutzy’s study helps us understand how Shaddai, as a Goddess epithet (Astarte), became an El epithet via syncretism. The author highlights how “mountain” is a metaphorical extension of the “primitive meaning,” which was “breast.”

Shaddai is thus usually understood to mean “the one of the mountain”, an interpretation supported by the frequent identification of Semitic deities, including both Yahweh and El, with a mountain or as being “of the mountain”.—Harriet Lutzy

So, it seems that in translating to Greek, the feminine metaphor of God was less emphasised, but some mystical traditions may have thrived the idea of Shekhinah (the divine presence) in a more feminine, ever-nursing and all-loving way?

Could El Shaddai link there?

That question opens an entirely different way of seeing the divine—one that theologians, mystics, and linguists have wrestled with for centuries.

Subscribe here to support my work and learn more about how this forgotten connection reshapes our understanding of God’s nature—and why it still matters today.

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Mom is our family’s plant whisperer. She loves flowers and spends hours caring for them. Her little garden is never still; something is always sprouting, blooming, or stretching toward the sun all year long.

Her work is one of love, and when you care for something with all your heart, love becomes its own kind of miracle.

Tending the garden keeps my mother active. There’s hardly a dull moment at her place, as the work is never finished.

For the past few months, Mom has been struggling with a series of heat waves, and it still feels a bit like summer.

So, even a plant mom’s love depends on the weather, and lately, the weather’s been putting her to the test.

Here in Portugal, 2025 was the hottest summer since 1931, with an average air temperature of 23.5 °C (1.55 °C above normal).

With highs around 30.8 °C and lows of 16.3 °C, both well above normal, I can’t help thinking the extra heat gave her plants an unfair advantage.

That may explain why Mom’s sunflowers grew taller than last year’s, and after they withered away, a new plant started reaching for the same sky.

Chrysanthemums: Mom’s new darlings

Her sunflowers had barely finished their season when Mom set her sights on new botanical challenges.

I didn’t think much of it at first. Chrysanthemums have always been part of her autumn ritual, brightening our garden when most other flowers start to fade.

Chrysanthemums, or “mums,” as gardeners like to call them, are native to Asia, specifically Mongolia, China, Japan, and Eastern Europe.¹ (Sharma N. et al., 2023).

I find it fascinating how the earliest records of this species date back more than 3000 years, when the phenomenon of wheat production corresponding to the flowering season of chrysanthemums was discovered during the Xia Dynasty in China (Hao et al., 2022).

As a Portuguese teacher and linguist, I love that their name comes from the Greek for “golden flower.” The name Chrysanthemum was given by Carolus Linnaeus, a renowned Swedish botanist who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms.

My mother started growing chrysanthemums a couple of years ago. They are quite resilient, and their longevity explains why you see them almost in every garden around this time of the year.

Here in northern Portugal, the end of October is the biggest week of the year for us when it comes to plants.

Since I was a child, I watched how flowers are a huge part of our traditional All Saints’ celebrations. Every year, I would attend mass at our village cemetery and watch it transform into a sea of blossoms.

As explained by Luís Mendonça de Carvalho, a renowned biologist and Director of the Botanical Museum of IP Beja here in Portugal:

“These plants begin to flower when the nights start to get longer, i.e., in early fall, which is unusual for European plants, where flowering is more common in spring and summer. In the past, the flowering period of chrysanthemums was decisive in Europe for selecting flowers to place in cemeteries in early November,”

The reason why chrysanthemums are associated with the day we celebrate our dearly departed is deeply ingrained in our cultural past, originating in Asia and probably brought to our shores in the Age of Discoveries by Portuguese sailors and merchants.

In China and Japan, they are still used in traditional medicine and are a symbol of resilience and remembrance.

The chrysanthemum has many meaningful connotations in Japanese culture. You find the country’s imperial crest. And the flower has its own commemorative date. September 9 is Chrysanthemum Day (Kiku no Sekku), one of the five oldest and most sacred festivals in the country.

Mums were widely used as protection amulets by Japanese soldiers during World War Two. When the war ended, the flower became a central piece of ceremonies in honor of those who had fallen in battle. As one article from The Hill described during Japan’s national remembrance ceremony:

In a national ceremony Friday at Tokyo’s Budokan hall, about 4,500 officials and bereaved families and their descendants from around the country observed a moment of silence at noon, the time when Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech began on Aug. 15, 1945. Participants later offered chrysanthemum flowers for the war dead.

Chrysanthemums were already used to honor the deceased during All Saints’ Day in France during the 19th century.

In November 1918, to commemorate the World War I Armistice, chrysanthemums were placed on the graves of French soldiers who fell on the front lines.

That connection to the past and its use as a keepsake runs deep here in the western tip of Europe.

In Portugal, they are a memento of our departed and the official All Saints’ Day flower.

This explains why chrysanthemums have a high commercial value around this time of year. Their late autumn bloom makes them the perfect choice as an ornamental plant in our cemeteries.

So, every year around this time, prices go up as people rush to the cemeteries in the days before this date of remembrance of those who have passed away.

People still pay tribute to the dead with candles and autumn blossoms. The white marble of our graveyards and the grayish mausoleums are the perfect contrasts to the thousands of colorful flowers clipped from gardens or bought from florists to bring new life to the final resting place of our loved ones.

Mom needs plenty of flowers all year round to honor our loved ones. She visits their graves each week, tending to them with fresh bouquets in different cemeteries.

She’s been especially attentive to the garden lately, making sure everything’s ready for All Saints’ Day.

We had far too many hours of sunlight for autumn, and most of the flowers blossomed way too early.

Then, last week, we had a couple of days of heavy rain and strong winds.

In the middle of the night, Mom had to rush out to the garden to save her chrysanthemums.

By then, one flower was taller than anything she’d ever grown. But would it be enough?

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The last thing I took down from my Brussels apartment walls was a wooden sign that said, “Home is where the heart is.” At the time, I didn’t realize how true it was.

My heart was never really there, in my home away from home on Metairie Street in Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, a place I used to call my little “village in the city,” one of Brussels’ quietest communes.

I know it now. My heart had stayed behind in my small town in Portugal when I packed my bags and moved to Belgium.

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First steps as an expat

The life of an expat wasn’t new to me.

My mother was an emigrant in Switzerland for almost ten years. This was, by far, the hardest period in both our lives.

Eventually, she returned to Portugal, but then came a time when I couldn’t find a job, and depression began to settle in.

So, once again, my mother made a hard decision.

She called her former employers and got us both a job. I can’t even imagine how hard this was for her.

Mom had left Switzerland with a sense of mission accomplished. But now, only a couple of years after my graduation, she was about to go back, not because she wanted to, but because her son couldn’t find a job during one of the worst crises in Portugal.

This was how I became an expat for the first time in my life.

While I was staying in Geneva, working the night shift in a hotel, my mother went to work as a housekeeper in a small village called Versoix.

I only stayed for six months in Geneva.

One day, I called my mother and told her I wanted to go back to Portugal.

Working the graveyard shift wasn’t for me. I was living and working at the hotel. Couldn’t get any sleep. My mental health was declining. It felt like I was even more depressed than before.

That was it. We packed our things and went back to Portugal.

Going back to expat life

Portugal was still in crisis. There were no jobs. No one was hiring. But, luckily, a few months later, I joined the Portuguese army and for almost a decade I served in Peacekeeping Operations.

When I left the ranks, I couldn’t find a job teaching. Working in an international setting during my time in the ranks made me consider becoming an expat once again.

Having friends in Brussels helped me find a place to stay, and so I left Portugal once again with nothing more than a piece of luggage and enough money for the three months I was allowed to stay in Belgium.

I had three months to land a job or go back home empty-handed.

Luckily, I signed my work contract one week before the deadline.

This was the beginning of my five-year stay in Brussels, working for a company managing Consumer Protection and Market Surveillance projects for the European Commission.

I rented an apartment and lived alone for most of those five years. This was a new build. I was the first tenant of the small, three-story building.

Then I had to buy everything myself since only the kitchen came equipped.

Even though I bought a few things from large home goods retailers, most of my dining and living room furniture came from local stores that offered great value for the quality.

All my furniture had to come in through the living room window, as this was the only way to get large pieces inside. Local stores have their own crews who handle delivery. So they came with a lift and assembled each item in place. Less work for me.

Finally, my apartment looked just like I had imagined it.

After I was done with furnishing and decorating, my Belgian rental was way better equipped than my house in Portugal.

Back home, I only had the bare essentials for my holiday stays.

I tried to make my apartment in Brussels reflect my Virgo personality. I decorated it with warm earth tones, soft grays, glossy browns, and calm pastels, colors that made the space feel grounded.

But somehow, it never felt quite right.

Every piece I bought was meant to build a sense of home, which I thought would last for years. Back then, I truly believed I would stay in Brussels for a long time.

I was wrong.

Decluttering my past life

In March 2016, I lived through one of the worst periods in my life. After the Zaventem and Maelbeek bombings, life in Brussels became even more tense and, in those first weeks, almost unbearable.

I was always looking over my shoulder. For months, armed police officers and soldiers patrolled the city center. We could find them at every station and on buses or trains.

I worked in a building next to the Turkish embassy. Every day, two soldiers stood guard in full army gear near the entrance.

Across the street, we had the United States embassy, and security over there was even tighter.

For days, I had to walk across town because we had no public transportation, and it took months to reopen Zaventem airport so that I could fly back home for a short holiday.

Life in Brussels carried on, but I didn’t. The anxiety had settled deep inside, and I drowned it in work.

Working in the European Quarter was already challenging. I became a workaholic. I lived for my job, and would sometimes stay up to twelve hours at work.

I would leave the office. Then, take the subway from Arts-Loi back to Simonis/Elisabeth. Run to the gym. Train for an hour. Go back home. Sleep. Repeat.

The next day, I would return to my workstation, log in to my laptop, and tackle several Excel spreadsheets and databases on my two screens.

Letting go and coming home

The army had tempered my spirit. I was no longer the kid who left Geneva after six months on the job.

Army training gave me discipline and perspective, lessons I would later use to make life-changing decisions. But after several years in Brussels, I was starting to feel the burden of expat life.

My heart was still somewhere else.

Career-wise, I had reached the highest position I could expect in the organization. Money wasn’t a problem, but paying 1,000 euros for a one-bedroom rental was too much.

I had been thinking about quitting my job for over a year, but I never found the strength to sever the ties and let go of everything I had built.

Everything changed when Marta came back into my life.

We had been in the same class and were high school sweethearts.

Marta was my first true love.

After more than 20 years without speaking to each other, I found her on Instagram.

Still, I never found the courage to send her a message until one day she posted a picture with one of the poems I had written in one of her notebooks.

I never forgot those first lines:

I gaze at the endless night in search of the same star you see.
Thinking about how many stars had to be born and die
Just so that we could be one once again.

I gathered all my courage, and despite my natural shyness, I dared to comment with a single word.

Inolvidável!

Unforgettable!

This was how fate decided to give us a second chance at love.

Marta was back in Portugal, and I was going home more often. Long-distance relationships are hard to maintain.

I wouldn’t let anything come between us again. So I started making plans to leave Brussels. I talked with the director of the NGO. She understood why I wanted to quit. I was also her personal assistant, so I made sure my boss was fully aware of my decision even before the mandatory three months’ notice.

I didn’t have much time to take care of everything before leaving Brussels. My apartment had to be empty before I moved out.

So I had just a few months to sell all my almost brand-new furniture and appliances.

I signed up on a secondhand website and started posting photos of every single thing: furniture, lamps, kitchenware, decorations, all the little pieces that had turned my apartment into a home.

At first, it felt strange taking pictures of all my belongings as if they were products in a store.

The table where I had eaten countless meals. Two wardrobes. My espresso coffee maker. Appliances like my microwave, toaster, vacuum cleaner, iron, washing machine, and TV. A cookware set and even my Brita filtering bottle.

The couch-bed where I spent so many lazy afternoons was one of the last things to go. It was the most expensive piece of furniture I had. For weeks, I tried to find a way to send it back to Portugal. But the logistics were far too costly, so near the end, I had to sell it too.

Everything had to go.

It didn’t take long for replies to start popping into my inbox.

Then, before I had time to process what was happening, buyers were showing up at my doorstep. And soon enough, everything I owned was going out the door and into the back of people’s cars.

Little by little, my apartment began to empty.

I had mixed feelings about it. I felt a bit sad. A bit relieved, too. Each item going out my door was like passing a piece of my life to a perfect stranger. But it also meant I was a step closer to my objective.

I was decluttering my life of every single thing that tied me to a place I had never really belonged to.

The only thing that stayed behind was a mattress. I had already arranged everything with the landlord, and he agreed to dispose of it.

Looking back, I still can’t believe I pulled it off.

It was a long series of goodbyes. But selling all my stuff helped me close that chapter in my life. Seeing my living spaces slowly becoming empty prepared me for what was to come.

By the time the place was stripped bare, strangely, it didn’t feel like I had lost anything.

I closed a chapter the right way.

So, when the day came, I woke up. Glanced out my curtainless bedroom windows to the Koekelberg basilica, and then to the view of Metairie street.

It was time to go. I was at peace. Things were as they should be. Everything was gone. Everything but me. I grabbed my trolleys, walked out the door, and never looked back.

Marta was waiting for me. That wall sign was right all along. “Home is where the heart is.” And my heart was finally where it belonged.

Thank you for reading.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

I miss making new friends.

I’m not talking about the type of friend who sends the occasional DM or likes a post because the algorithm reminded them I exist.

I miss having friends like the ones I had back in elementary school. Friends who show up, no invitation needed, and knock on your door after everyone else just passes you by.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time one of my friends called me just to ask how I was doing.

The more I think about it, the stranger making friends feels now. In adulthood, friendship suddenly starts to feel more transactional. As if, instead of sharing an emotional bond, we’re trading treasury bonds.

So I can’t stop wondering how a real friend is worth more than just about anything, and, honestly, that’s probably why finding true friendship is harder than falling in love.

When friendship was effortless

I never had as many friends as when I was in elementary school.

Times were different then.

My school was packed with kids running around. Each class had 30 or more students. We didn’t have cell phones, Game Boys, or even Tamagotchis.

We only had each other during recess.

In the 1980s, friendships were forged while playing catch in the schoolyard or amid feints and tackles on the soccer field. Friendship was a hand that helped to lift us after a tackle left us clutching our shins and scraping our knees. We didn’t have lunchboxes or snacks prepared by our parents. We all drank the same chocolate milk distributed to every class.

We were happy and didn’t know it.

Forty years ago, rain or shine, we walked to school. But we never walked alone. I had two friends who waited for me along the way and another who waited for me at the school gate to carry my backpack.

I have never known friendships like that, so pure, so genuine. But childhood, as we know, doesn’t last.

So, I can’t help thinking there’s something special about childhood friends.

Children make friends effortlessly. They have this innate ability or naivety. They value things for what they are and not for what they may eventually become.

That kind of effortless naivety¹ is something I struggle to find in adulthood.

I made some good friends while growing up, but it’s hard to replace them once our lives follow different paths.

From experience, I feel true friendship doesn’t deal in credit. It thrives only on what’s already been paid in care and time.

There are no emotional loans among real friends.

Friendship shouldn’t be confused with interest. But adults are puzzling creatures. Children are simple. They tend to be more genuine and open. Adults are naturally more selective, often drawn to friendships that benefit them.

So it’s been years since I made a real friend, and I’m starting to wonder why.

The cost of growing up

Then, as we grow up, everything becomes more complicated, and relationships become increasingly complex. There comes a time when friendship gives way to an emotional outburst and a tidal wave of untapped feelings.

Adolescence is an awakening for love, and what once felt simple can suddenly feel charged, as if the world has added invisible rules we never agreed to.

I was a troubled teenager. My parents’ divorce and watching my mother leave to work abroad deepened the teenage angst I was already carrying.

Somewhere along the way, I lost the childlike innocence of my early years.

This was when the awareness of my individuality manifested itself through the grief and pain I was feeling, and the sense of the collective began to fade.

It didn’t take long until I began to learn the hard way that friendship, for me, was now a conscious act; it required negotiation between who I was and who the group wanted me to be.

And then love made everything even more complicated.

Nietzsche, who once suggested that true friendship requires a certain “physical antipathy.”²

He argues physical attraction can easily get in the way. But maybe that’s less about gender and more about how adulthood teaches us to second-guess our intentions.

Some people still collect relationships like trading cards, focusing more on what they get than who they’re with.

Others carry too much emotional weight from work, family, or life itself to invest deeply in new connections.

Either way, the result is the same: genuine friendship becomes rare, not because we don’t crave it, but because we’ve forgotten how to let it simply exist without expectation.

Then, when love ends, we might replace a partner. But in friendship, each person holds a place that can’t be filled by anyone else.

The years in between

I don’t think I’ve made a flesh-and-blood friend in decades. And I’m not talking about the kind of friend who shows up at your house and knocks on the door to ask if everything is okay when you don’t say anything. I’m talking about the kind who actually calls to know how you’re doing and never forgets your birthday.

Yes, because my birthday doesn’t show up on my Facebook. This is my way of making sure people actually remember my anniversary and are not just reminded by an app notification.

I think I stopped making friends when I left the army, and even back then, we didn’t treat each other as “friends,” we were all comrades.

The funny thing about being a Portuguese teacher who one day decided to join the army is that I have a special interest in the meaning of words.

The word “comrade” has a curious etymology, deriving from the Portuguese (and Spanish) term “camarada,” which means someone who sleeps in the same “camarata” from the Latin “camera” (‘chamber’ or “room”).

So in the army, our friends are those who sleep under the same roof as us.

When I left the army, the problem became worse. Military life was still social and relational by nature. But when I moved to Belgium, my social life took a sabbatical.

I was all alone in Brussels for several years. I had never been a workaholic, but suddenly I was working twelve hours a day. I would leave well before sunrise and come back home when it was already dark.

All this in a city where winter meant weeks without almost any sunlight.

Loneliness in modern times

Before long, I began losing friends the way someone misses a bus.

You wait for it in the rain, only to watch it pass by already full, or it’s changed its route and will never come again.

Even a strong friendship is as fragile as a cobweb.

So it’s hardly surprising that I find it difficult to make new friends now. This isn’t a midlife crisis; it’s simply life moving on without the people who once waited beside me.

Nowadays, people get angry over everything and nothing and fall out with each other for no reason.

Each one has their version of why they fell out.

Each one thinks they are the one who tells the truth.

Each one gives their reasons.

Everyone is convinced they are right.

This dual existence of truth is the ruin of many friendships.

Modern life has become too self-centered, and this impacts how we connect with others.

Durkheim believed excessive individualism was eroding our social bonds.

The French sociologist even had a name for this state of social instability where people can feel disconnected.

He called it “anomie.”³

It’s a thought I keep returning to when I notice how isolated we’ve all become.

So, I’m probably not alone when I have trouble making meaningful friendship connections with others, even if I feel a need to, knowing how “peer relationships are important because people have a profound need to belong.”⁴

As a life coach, I know how forming meaningful bonds with others facilitates a sense of relatedness, connectedness, and belonging.

So it came as no surprise when collective effervescence hit an all-time high this year, and “self-transcendence” became a breakout related search according to Google Trends.

This form of social bonding transcends the individual and creates a sense of belonging via an intense shared emotional experience.

It can serve as a placebo for the disconnection many are feeling in a time when loneliness is at an all-time high as well.

Making friends requires the ability to see beyond our own “truth.”

To make friends, we have to be able to see things through the eyes of the other.

But now it seems we are facing an “epidemic” of social-emotional and existential loneliness (sic).

And I miss the kid I once was, with messy hair and always skinned knees, who even made friends while sprawled in the dirt of a soccer field.

Reflecting on collective effervescence made me realize how being social online or attending a music concert works as an alternative to those who, like me, have trouble making real, lifelong friends.

I get easily disappointed with people when they don’t live up to my expectations, and those “rituals” are spaces where I can tap into a certain sense of “effortless connection” from my childhood.

However, we cannot be friends with anyone if we are closed off within ourselves, waiting for a friend to knock on our door.

The only way to find a friend is to be one.

Finding my way back to friendship

I’ve spent years trying to understand why making friends as an adult feels so hard.

But maybe the answer can’t be found if I keep searching for it behind closed doors.

Maybe friendship has been here all along, quietly waiting for me to find my way back to the schoolyard at recess.

To stop overthinking.

And start reaching out again.

What I need to do is show up without expecting anything in return.

Because friendship, like childhood, isn’t something we grow out of. It’s something we grow back into.

And who knows, maybe friendship isn’t lost to me after all.

Maybe it’s just waiting for me to remember how to play again.

Thank you for reading.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

References:

1. Furman W, Bierman KL. (1984). Children’s Conceptions of Friendship: A Multimethod Study of Developmental Changes. Dev Psychol;20(5):925–931. doi: 10.1037/0012–1649.20.5.925. PMID: 25378711; PMCID: PMC4219827.

2. Nietzsche, F. (1908). Human, all too human: A book for free spirits (A. Harvey, Trans.). Charles H. Kerr & Company. (Original work published 1878)

3. Durkheim E. (1972). Anomie and the moral structure of industry. In: Giddens A, ed. Emile Durkheim: Selected Writings. Cambridge University Press.

4. Maunder R, Monks CP. Friendships in middle childhood (2019). Links to peer and school identification, and general self-worth. Br J Dev Psychol;37(2):211–229. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12268. Epub 2018 Oct 31. PMID: 30379339; PMCID: PMC6587842.

Every time I go to a concert, I feel there’s a certain frisson before the artist takes the stage, walks to the microphone, and the first note breaks the silence. For me, it’s in that instant, the line between self and the collective pulse starts to fade away.

I feel that when the lights go out, emotion becomes communion. And this is why I see us, music fans, as a new type of congregation. Together, we embody a kind of devotion rooted in emotion.

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French sociologist Émile Durkheim would have recognized this feeling immediately. More than a century ago, he described religion as a collective representation:

“Religion is thus essentially a system of ideas by means of which the individuals represent to themselves the society of which they are members, and the obscure but intimate relations which they have with it.” — Durkheim, É. (1912)

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Durkheim described moments when people assemble and feel together, lifted by a collective current, a state of intense, shared energy that leads them to conceive of a power greater than themselves (the sacred).

He called this collective effervescence. Durkheim conceived it as the cornerstone of religious fervor and one of the pillars of any religion, and postulated it could be scientifically measured.

For the French sociologist, the concept of collective effervescence was a surge of shared vitality turning ordinary meetings into sacred events where people come together, leading to a feeling of social solidarity.

“For Durkheim, individuals’ survival and well-being rest on cultural resources and social belonging that must be revived periodically in collective assemblies. Durkheim’s concern was to clarify how these assemblies achieve this revitalization. An intensive examination of primitive religions led him to identify successive levels of engagement experienced by participants and to develop explanatory principles relevant to all types of collective gatherings.” — Rimé, B., & Páez, D. (2023)

Sociologists call this an Interaction ritual, “a causal mechanism by which variations in mutual focus of attention and rhythmic entrainment transmute shared mood into collective effervescence, and result in feelings of solidarity and respect for group symbols.”

Music concerts are among these types of gatherings where participants feel a sense of belonging to something bigger and are bound by shared power symbols.

Every society reads collective effervescence through its own symbols. In Pentecostal services, trembling and weeping express divine presence. In Sufi ceremonies, rhythmic chanting brings trance states resembling musical frisson. In Western arenas, people speak of “vibes” or “energy.”

This translation defines meaning. It determines whether a shared emotional high evolves into a religion, art, or fandom. Durkheim’s enduring idea holds. The sacred is a social creation. Culture molds emotion into narrative.

“The very fact of assembling is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are assembled, their proximity generates a kind of electricity that quickly transports them to an extraordinary degree of exaltation. Every emotion expressed is retained without resistance in all those minds so open to external impressions, each one echoing the others. The initial impulse thus becomes amplified as it reverberates, like an avalanche gathering force as it goes. And as passions so strong and uncontrolled are bound to seek outward expression, there are violent gestures, shouts, even howls, deafening noises of all sorts from all sides that intensify even more the state they express.” Durkheim, É, (1912)

The social mechanics of shared emotion

I find it interesting how the sacred became intertwined in many aspects of pop culture. Reading Durkheim’s work helps us understand that the sacred experience isn’t exclusive to religion. The sacred emerges from what a group treats as special, powerful, or emotionally charged.

Tribal totems once carried that energy, but now the same mysticism and imagery are used by artists on stage with the same visual appeal and exhilaration.

In a certain way, today’s culture reinterprets Durkheim’s “ sacred” in the form of artistic transcendence or collective joy becomes the frisson fans experience standing in front of their idols during a concert. The gestures are the same we see in certain religious events. Concertgoers raise their arms, hold each other’s hands; they chant, cry together, and do so many other mannerisms commonly associated with religious ceremonies.

Theologians might call it worship. Others point to a state of self-transcendence, a momentary erasure of self-boundaries, and Durkheim sees it as a vehicle for the self-sacralization of the social.

In this state, the human being feels “possessed and led on by some sort of external power that makes him think and act differently than he normally does (…) It seems to him that he has become a new being (…) and because his companions feel transformed in the same way at the same moment, and express this feeling by their shouts, movements and bearing, it is as if he was in reality transported into a special world entirely different from the one in which he ordinarily lives, a special world inhabited by exceptionally intense forces that invade and transform him. (…) It is in this effervescent social milieu, and indeed from that very effervescence, that the religious idea seems to have been born.”. — Durkheim, É. (1912).

Still, Durkheim also warns effervescence is morally double-edged. The same energy that unites can mislead. Crowds have been moved by both music and ideology.

The challenge is to channel collective emotion toward empathy, ensuring that what feels sacred on stage enriches life beyond it.

The new spaces of self-transcendence

“Far from dying out, religion can be found thriving in contemporary quests for meaning and ritual.”— François Gauthier

Nowadays, music festivals and concert venues are the new spaces where we gather to experience the same type of collective exhilaration once found in worship places and temples.

This is why stage cenography has evolved to exert the same public magnetism of ancient rituals for the masses. Every single aspect is staged to ensure audience engagement and summon euphoria.

On stage, the artists act as priests or priestesses who wield ancient symbols of power, and the audiences become congregations in search of connection.

So, in the image above, and in line with Durkheim’s considerations, I tried to highlight the analogy between ancient mysticism and the symbolism of snakes at Taylor Swift’s concerts, especially during her Reputation era, and the corresponding segments in The Eras Tour.

Taylor Swift used this ancient religious symbol of power as a tool for transforming negativity into strength. An emblem of strength, resilience, and reclaiming her public narrative.

In full, the diverse symbology of the serpent richly presents itself throughout biblical tales and Ovid’s Greco-Roman mythos, establishes these creatures as emblems of the dualistic nature of thought and religious belief, and demonstrates the importance of their enigmatic and transformative abilities. — Hixson, W. (2020)

The backstory for this dates back to 2016 and a feud with Calvin Harris that escalated to a social media clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian after a “snake emoji” used by Kim on a post on National Snake Day was taken as a reference to Taylor Swift.

Taylor came back with a roar on her 2017 album, Reputation, and ensuing tour, where she used the snake imagery heavily. This was probably used to make the most of the symbology of the serpent totem and shed any negative connotations. Thus explaining why in the Reputation Stadium Tour and the Reputation segment of The Eras Tour, the snakes are massive and elaborate, often a prominent part of the stage design, towering over Taylor as she performs.

In ancient Mesoamerican mythology, feathered serpents like the Aztec Quetzalcoatl and the Mayan Kukulkan were eternal beings able to navigate dichotomous domains. Snakes were a fusion of sky and earth, representing creation and the boundaries between different realms.

Snake shedding was also perceived as a transformational experience used by many religions to represent death and renewal (Stanley, 2008).

“From their legless, slithering movement to their shedding of skin, serpents’ features have captivated the attention of ancient cultures across the world and, as symbols, have been given an enormous range of interpretations, and central to this convergence of definitions is their symbolism as a bridge between the earth and the heavens. The bridging quality of serpents originates mainly from their perceived immortality, due to the sloughing of skin being seen as a way for snakes to live forever (…)” — Hixson, W. (2020)

This explains why Taylor Swift, on her Reputation album, represented the “death” of her former, squeaky-clean image and the birth of a more self-aware, darker, and resilient persona.

During her Reputation Tour, Taylor Swift effectively used the snake imagery as a trigger for collective effervescence by appealing to their subliminal connotations deeply ingrained in our subconscious.

An imagery that echoed the ancient Nāgas (serpentine semi-divine beings) that guarded the thresholds of temples from evil. A wink to the Egyptian goddess Wadjet and the Uraeus (a rearing cobra) worn on the Pharaoh’s crown.

When Taylor Swift performs next to these images of giant serpents on stage, her fans experience a sense of emotional alignment. I think we can look at this as an expression of Durkheim’s collective effervescence made visible.

Frisson and the neurobiology of collective emotion

Frisson is the chill down your spine when an external stimulus triggers a strong internal response.

Science explains how “music has a unique power to elicit moments of intense emotional and psychophysiological response (Harrison L, Loui P. (2014).”

These chills are the biological spark for collective effervescence.

Neuroscientists trace it to dopamine release within the brain’s reward system, especially when the music teases and resolves tension (Schoeller et al., 2024).

In crowds, frisson becomes social. Music concerts are the perfect example. As we sing or cry together, our bodies begin to synchronize. We become more connected. More in tune. Breathing, pulse, and micro-movements align in what scientists call emotional entrainment. The instruments set the cadence and the rhythm; our bodies and our voices amplify it.

I find it insightful how often the experience is so intense the fans forget some parts. Le Monde (2023) reported concertgoers leaving shows unable to recall full setlists, as if the experience exceeded what memory could hold.

Durkheim might say the sacred briefly overpowered the ordinary.

A meta-analysis by Pizarro et al. (2022) confirms that collective gatherings generate lasting positive emotion, stronger social bonds, and a greater sense of purpose. Participants often describe feeling part of something larger, echoing Durkheim’s belief that in ritual, the real object of worship is society itself.

Further research found that concertgoers who experienced collective effervescence reported increased happiness and meaning for up to a week. The uplift came from shared emotion, not individual enjoyment.

Concerts act as social recalibration points in a lonely age. I have often referred to the new reality ensuing from the COVID pandemic as the age of loneliness. It’s in times like these we need to pay attention to feelings of vast connectedness. Collective effervescence turns that ethereal vastness into something tangible, the collective pulse of the crowd.

Yet intense unity can drain as easily as it uplifts. Some fans experience emotional hangovers after concerts. Once the lights rise, the sacred feeling dissolves. The challenge, as Durkheim noted, lies in weaving moments of transcendence into daily life.

No contemporary performer embodies this energy like Taylor Swift. Her Eras Tour was similar to a secular pilgrimage. Millions gathered and together they produced measurable seismic activity as a result of such an intense emotional communion.

Swifties are also known to trade friendship bracelets as tokens of belonging, much like relics once sealed spiritual bonds.

Sociologists describe this as parasocial bonding: one-way emotional ties that become reciprocal in live performance. On stage, the performer mirrors the crowd’s energy, creating a feedback loop where everyone contributes to the shared feeling.

Collective effervescence as modern communion

While some religions struggle to bring believers to their temples, music festivals and concerts have become spaces where we congregate for a different kind of emotionally-driven celebration.

Now you know, there’s a name for why you cry at concerts or any other place where you are surrounded by people you don’t know, but surprisingly you feel connected to. Collective effervescence is the frisson that gives you goosebumps and the chill running down your spine when everyone around you syncs, locked in a moment.

We are all wired for connection. So, the same sense of divine exhilaration and collective effervescence Durkheim speaks about has not vanished; it has simply moved on to new venues.

When the final note in the encore fades into oblivion, the artist leaves the stage and a quiet follows. The crowd hushes one last time and walks back into the night. The sacred returns to its holy place behind the curtain’s veil. And in the silence that follows the loud exhilaration of an almost mystic bliss, I sense what Durkheim always knew.

What feels holy in music is, in essence, the collective energy of ourselves, amplified, harmonized, and briefly, in tune.

Thank you for reading.

This article first appeared on The Academic.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

References:

Buehler A. (2012). The twenty-first-century study of collective effervescence: Expanding the context of fieldwork. Fieldwork in Religion, 7(1), 70–97. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v7i1.70

Chung V., Grèzes J., Pacherie E. (2022). Collective emotion: An experimental framework. PsychArchives. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/axz2v

Durkheim É. (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Harrison L, Loui P. (2014). Thrills, chills, frissons, and skin orgasms: toward an integrative model of transcendent psychophysiological experiences in music. Front Psychol. 23;5:790. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00790. PMID: 25101043; PMCID: PMC4107937.

He S, Zheng X, Zeng D, Luo C, Zhang Z. (2016). Exploring Entrainment Patterns of Human Emotion in Social Media. PLoS One. 8;11(3):e0150630. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0150630. PMID: 26953692; PMCID: PMC4782991.

Hixson, W. (2020). The Symbology of Serpents in Greco-Roman and Biblical Mythology, The Drover Review, L. III.

Koefler N, Naidu E, Gabriel S, Schneider V, Pascuzzi GS, Paravati E. (2024) Let the Music Play: Live Music Fosters Collective Effervescence and Leads to Lasting Positive Outcomes. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. Doi: 10.1177/01461672241288027. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39417534.

Pizarro J. J. et al. (2022). Emotional Processes, Collective Behavior, and Social Movements: A Meta-Analytic Review of Collective Effervescence Outcomes During Collective Gatherings and Demonstrations. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 974683.

Rimé, B., & Páez, D. (2023). Why We Gather: A New Look, Empirically Documented, at Émile Durkheim’s Theory of Collective Assemblies and Collective Effervescence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(6), 1306–1330. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916221146388 (Original work published 2023)

Schoeller, F., Jain, A., Pizzagalli, D.A. et al. The neurobiology of aesthetic chills: How bodily sensations shape emotional experiences. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 24, 617–630 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01168-x

Stanley, J. (2008). Snakes: Objects of Religion, Fear, and Myth. Journal of Integrative Biology. 2. 42–58.

Whitehouse, H., and Christopher M. K., (2022) What Is the Role of Ritual in Binding Communities Together?’, in Justin L. Barrett (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Cognitive Science of Religion, Oxford Handbooks. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190693350.013.14

As days grow shorter, I’ve been thinking about how some plants and some people learn to thrive in the dark.

This morning, as I walked past my ZZ plants, I had a striking insight into the importance of change and resilience as days grow shorter and light starts to dim.

I live in a small duplex flat with limited sunlight access, so one day, Marta, my fiancée, gave me a ZZ Plant, and she also got one for her place.

Marta’s was a fully grown ZZ plant, covered in mesmerizing, dark-green, glossy leaflets that sprouted directly from thick, tuber-like rhizomes. But while my Zamioculca thrived, after a while, Marta’s started to wither, with its leaves turning yellowish.

ZZ plants are the Incredible Hulk of houseplants, and I’m not just talking about their matching green color.

So if those glossy leaves suddenly start turning yellow, then we have a problem.

Most of the time when this happens to your ZZ, the problem is the same — overwatering.

This happens when the soil isn’t drying out as it should because of waterlogging, which leads to root rot, which explains why the plant withers.

Marta’s ZZ was going to die if we didn’t do something about it.

I considered repotting, but that wouldn’t be a definitive solution.

The plant needed a change in habitat.

So we brought it over to my flat, and I placed it next to my little one. I knew that was a nice spot because it was under a skylight, and my ZZ loved it.

We left it there, and I would only water it about once every three weeks.

Time passed, and nothing happened.

Apparently, we managed to stop the rot, but the plant seemed frozen. Almost every leaf was a mix of yellow and green, and that’s how it stayed for months.

Until one day, I noticed several new shoots sprouting.

The plant’s quiet strength was what amazed me the most. From those small stems, she grew tall and strong.

It was a slow process. Inch by inch, it grew until the biggest shoot was about 3 feet tall.

And that’s how our big ZZ got a second life.

Watching my plant come back to life in such an unexpected way serves as the perfect metaphor for the importance change can have in our lives.

Embracing change when life feels low-light

Even the smallest change can have a massive impact on our well-being.

Like my ZZ, I’ve always thrived in darker times.

When the conditions were right, I would also branch out in unexpected ways.

I was never afraid of change.

Instead, I embraced it.

That was when I quit my job as a high school teacher to join the Army and work on peacekeeping operations for seven years.

No regrets.

Those were among the best years of my life.

I like to say, after a Game of Thrones line, “chaos isn’t a pit, it’s a ladder.” And just the right amount of it can work wonders in our lives.

When I left the army, I could just go back to teaching and resume the career for which I had studied for six long university years.

I did the opposite…

Sometimes change starts with a single, quiet act of defiance, like choosing growth when everything tells you to stay still.

Subscribers can read the rest of this reflection on resilience, change, and the lessons of the ZZ plant.

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“Too much white, they say, can turn everything black.” That haunting line sets the tone for season two of Netflix’s Turn of the Tide.

The Portuguese hit series tells the story of a cocaine flood that turned a quiet fishing village in the Azores into a place where Imperial beer glasses filled with cocaine were sold for five contos (about twenty-five euros).

On São Miguel Island in the Azores, Rabo de Peixe was a place where the poorest among the poor called home.

Locals say the village’s name, “Fish Tail,” comes from the days when its people could only afford what was left of the catch after selling the good parts.

The villagers were used to honest hard work and lived with what the sea gave them, following the rhythm of the tide.

Until that day. Because one stormy night changed everything. Rabo de Peixe would never be the same again. The sea had brought a fortune to its shores, and with it, a curse.

The white tide

It happened in June of 2001, somewhere off the Azores. A Sun Kiss 47 sailboat was fighting its last battle against the sea.

On board, a group of drug dealers turned sailors and their bad luck.

Hidden beneath the deck, packed tight and silent, was a secret worth a fortune: over half a ton of cocaine, pure as snow and worth around $160 million.

The Atlantic wasn’t kind that week. The wind came hard, tearing at the sails until the mast snapped.

There was no hope of sailing on, and no chance of docking without raising suspicion.

So the men on board did what desperate men often do. They panicked. The crew decided to get rid of the evidence. Overboard went the bales, vanishing under the waves.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The saying goes. So, for a moment, it must’ve seemed like a smart move. But the ocean, as always, had the last word. It spat the cocaine back out.

This was how, one by one, the packages began to wash ashore. Strange white bundles bobbing among the waves came floating around the pier and landed on the beach.

By dawn, the dark sands were littered with white bundles. Word spread like wildfire through the narrow streets and salt-stained houses.

Soon, everyone, grown men, children, even old widows with their black shawls, rushed down to the pier.

It was chaos. Beautiful, absurd chaos.

Nobody really knew what they were holding at first. Some thought it was flour. Others said sugar and stirred the white dust into coffee.

The powder drove the young into a downward spiral of white madness. Money became an obsession. For many, cocaine was an escape from a harsh reality. While others saw it as a quick path to make a quick buck.

The hospitals filled up. Overdoses spiked. People were dying. The coastal village was drowning in a sea of white.

And as the supply flooded the island, prices plummeted.

Cocaine was suddenly everywhere. So cheap, so easy to get, it might as well have been salt.

There were stories of people selling cups of Nutella filled to the top with the stuff for almost nothing.

Finally, the Judiciary Police was called to the island. Authorities eventually showed up and managed to recover about 400 kilos, but hundreds more had already disappeared into pockets, houses, and up people’s nostrils.

I know these stories sound like urban legends, but around these parts, as I had the chance to learn by sitting across from the table with those who actually lived it, legends often start with a little truth.

Between truth and fiction

In May 2023, Netflix dropped Turn of the Tide. The first season took me back to the time I spent in São Miguel Island and the stories many would like to forget, but Augusto Fraga turned it into a popular drama.

As hours turned into days, I found myself regularly taking the road from Ponta Delgada to Rabo de Peixe.

The road winds along the coast. Every curve smells like salt and blue hydrangeas. Back then, I was just another stranger. A tourist with questions. A Portuguese from the Continente.

In the most remote parts of the Azores, people were still suspicious of strangers. But if you stay long enough, buy enough coffees, drink their local beer, then people start talking.

Cafés are where secrets live in the Azores.

Old men with hands like rope. Women who’ve seen too much. The hiss of the espresso machine. The hum of the radio.

And then, if you’ve joined in several rounds of cold and foamy San Miguel Especial, a story slips out.

Not all at once. Piece by piece. Like the tide revealing what it had buried.

One afternoon, in a small tavern, I met a fisherman.

We’ll call him Manel.

He was nursing a Melo Abreu beer, eyes fixed somewhere past the window.

We talked about the sea first. You always start with the sea.

Then the silence stretched, and he said it.

“You know… when the beach turned white.”

He told me how he and his friends found the packages. dozens of them scattered along the shore.

They didn’t know what it was. Or maybe they did. Doesn’t matter now.

Curiosity and hunger share the same face when you’ve got nothing.

They tried it. Everyone did.

The young, the old.

Some out of thrill. Some out of need.

The first high felt like magic. The second one, like falling through ice.

Manel’s story spilled out slow, heavy. He talked about the ones who didn’t make it. About his friend who jumped into a bathtub, hoping cold water would slow down his heart, which seemed about to burst from the overdose.

He told me about the trade. Kids selling cups of white dust for a five contos bill, flipping it for more. How the beach had turned into a market. And Rabo de Peixe succumbed to the “white fever.”

Then came the stories behind the legend. Women frying horse mackerel in cocaine instead of flour. Kids marking soccer fields with white lines that weren’t chalk. Men pouring spoonfuls of it into their morning coffee.

And the strangest thing? Everyone I met told the same stories with grim wrinkles on their foreheads. Not even a nervous smile.

Because here, absurdity wasn’t funny. It was a curse.

“We thought the sea had blessed us,” Manel said, “but it cursed us instead.”

Manel finished his beer, eyes somewhere far away. Outside, the wind howled like it knew the story too.

I kept coming back to the Azores. And with every visit, it was as if I peeled away another layer.

Behind the postcard beauty. The white houses, the neat fishing nets drying in the sun, the dark sand, I could feel it in the silence that hung after sundown.

The cocaine didn’t just disturb the town’s ordinary life. It shattered people’s lives.

The white flood impacted everyone and everything. Families. Friendships. Lives turned apart, and even the social order was shattered.

I met mothers who’d pawned wedding rings to feed a habit. Fathers who’d traded their nets for baggies. Kids who grew up learning how to hide money from their parents.

Some houses stood empty, their walls still stained by the salt of the sea and the weight of old ghosts.

For me, Rabo de Peixe became a metaphor of what happens when fortune crashes into poverty. I guess when temptation meets despair, many will lose themselves.

But not everyone stayed lost. Drug addiction claimed lives, but some found their way back.

Manel was one of them. He told me it took years to get back on his feet. The shaking and sweating take only a week, and then they say you’re clean.

But forgiving takes decades. Forgiveness takes time. Those who love you will forgive in time, but can you truly forgive yourself?

Now he still goes out to sea, still casts his nets, and still drinks the same beer. But the sparkle in his eyes is different. Tired, maybe. But alive.

“The sea gives, the sea takes,” he said.

“That time, it gave too much.”

Then, he shuddered his arms, with a grimace for a smile, and a vague melancholy in his dark brown eyes, the kind that only knows pain. And I thought how maybe that’s what survival sounds like in a piece of land halfway between continents, that once saw its black sands mixed with white stardust.

Years pass. The sea forgets nothing. It just waits. In each rolling wave, a memory in the foam of days.

I went back to Rabo de Peixe several times. Nothing had changed, at least on the surface.

Maybe Netflix’s success brought more visitors to São Miguel’s forgotten corners. Tourists come now, chasing the myth.

The “cocaine village,” some call it. They buy T-shirts, take selfies by the docks. And next to the graffiti on the pier.

Still, ordinary life seems to go on unstirred.

The fishermen still go out before dawn. The church bell still rings.

But if you stay long enough, if you sit down and listen, the old stories still breathe beneath it all.

The laughter is different. Softer. A little haunted.

Ghosts return to Rabo de Peixe on high tide

And now, here we are for a new chapter in the Rabo de Peixe story. A week from now, on October 17, season two of Turn of the Tide will bring back old ghosts.

I don’t know much about the plot, but from watching the trailer, it seems several months have passed since Eduardo (José Condessa) left for America.

He comes back to the island. Back to salt-soaked streets and restless memories, only to find that everything has changed.

Uncle Joe’s (Pepê Rapazote) cocaine stash is now in the hands of someone who will spare no efforts (or lives) for a profit.

The sea still holds its secrets. Quiet on the surface. Restless underneath. So, as the tide turns, even those we thought lost somehow find their way back.

Rafael (Rodrigo Tomás), the friend everyone thought was gone, returns from the dead.

Nothing is simple for those who stayed in Rabo de Peixe. Rafael’s girlfriend, Sílvia (Helena Caldeira), is now pregnant with Eduardo’s child.

The sea, once again, gives back the unexpected.

And somewhere between truth and fiction, between memory and urban legend, that’s where I feel the real Rabo de Peixe waits for its story to unfold on the small screen.

The tide always turns.

It always brings something back.

Sometimes it’s a fortune.

Sometimes it’s a curse.

Let’s wait and see what the next Turn of the Tide brings ashore.

Thank you for reading.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

When I first started on Substack three years ago, we didn’t have all the amazing audience development tools at your disposal right now.

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September 3, 2025, is a day we will never forget. On that day, sixteen people died in the Gloria funicular crash, one of the most tragic accidents in Portugal’s recent history.

At exactly 6:04 p.m., one of the cabins of the Gloria Elevator crashed against a building in the last turn before the final descent to Praça dos Restauradores.

Minutes earlier, the funicular cabins were parked at both stations: no. 1 at the top of Calçada da Glória and no. 2 below, near Restauradores.

At approximately 6:03 PM, the cabins began their journey. They had traveled not more than about six meters when they suddenly lost the balancing force provided by the cable connecting them.

Cabin#2 suddenly reversed until it came to a halt slightly beyond its station anchorage point. Cabin #1 came down the slope at increasing speed. The brakeman immediately applied the pneumatic brake and the hand brake to try to halt the movement, but his actions didn’t reduce the cabin’s speed, and it continued accelerating down the slope until it derailed and collided with a building at an estimated speed of around 60 km/h, with all these events having occurred in a timeframe of less than 50 seconds.

The Portuguese Railway Accident Prevention and Investigation Office (GPIAAF) has published an information notice about the tragic accident, which has so far resulted in sixteen fatalities and 23 injuries, as well as the destruction of one of the elevator cabins and damage to the other.

Within the hour, the Office immediately opened an investigation in coordination with the judicial authorities. Experts started collecting evidence on the morning of September 4, and the crash site analysis was completed in under 24 hours.

At this stage of the investigation, the Office has already determined the probable cause of the accident, which was described in an information notice describing the opening of the investigation.

Portugal Calling

Lisbon Gloria Funicular Crash Leaves 16 Dead

The Gloria Elevator connects Lisbon’s Restauradores Square to the Jardim de São Pedro de Alcântara overlook in Bairro Alto and has been carrying people uphill since 1885. Every year, millions of people ride in its iconic yellow cars. It’s a short journey, but a steep one, as the route is 265 meters …

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a year ago · 25 likes · 9 comments · Rui Alves

Built for another era

The funicular system installed at Calçada da Glória is operated by Companhia Carris de Ferro de Lisboa. It has a 276-meter travel length and covers a 45-meter drop, with an average gradient of 18%. Its maximum operating speed is 3,2 m/s (11.5 km/h), taking a little over a minute to complete the journey.

The elevator consists of two vehicles, known as “cabinas” (cabins) and numbered 1 and 2, each weighing approximately 14 tons and holding 42 people, 22 of which are seated, plus the driver (called “guarda-freio” — brakeman).

Each cabin consists of a truck and a metal chassis to which a carbody is attached, made up of a frame of wooden uprights and crossbars, covered also in wood and thin sheet metal.

This configuration was kept for historical purposes, as it follows the classic construction standards in place at the time it entered service.

However, as many experts have pointed out in the past few days, the wooden frame lacks the modern safety features designed to preserve cabin integrity in the event of a crash, thereby protecting the lives of those on board as much as possible.

The Glória funicular system technical breakdown

The Glória elevator works on a counterbalance system, meaning the cabins are connected by a cable.

As depicted in Figure #2, the cable balances its weight through a large-diameter flywheel located at the top of Calçada da Glória in an underground technical compartment.

• The balance cable has a total nominal diameter of 32 mm and an approximate breaking load of about 68 tons.

• It has a defined useful life of 600 days for this type of operation.

• It had been in use for 337 days earlier, with a remaining useful life of 263 days until replacement.

Considering each cabin's weight is around 14 tons, and the combined weight at full capacity should be around 18 tons.

So the type of cable used seems to be adequate for the workload, and considering the cable was still well within its lifetime, a visual inspection like the one carried out on the morning of the accident should suffice to guarantee that the cable was fit for use.

With this piece of information, I understand why the authorities were so careful not to immediately assume that the cause of the accident was simply a broken cable.

In a conventional funicular system, the flywheel is powered to drive the cable and thus move the cabins. But the Gloria Elevator is a self-propelled funicular, meaning each of the two cabins is equipped with two 18 kW electric motors that provide the necessary tractive force to overcome the internal forces resisting movement and those resulting from the weight difference between the vehicles, resulting from their respective passenger loads. So, to begin operation, the brake man has to manually put the control system into drive position.

The connecting cable between the two cabins runs underground and is attached to the truck of each cabin by a special trolley (“trambolho” in Portuguese), which extends from the truck into the trench and to which the cable is attached using a special process.

There are two “trambolhos” in each cabin, interconnected by another cable, itself independent of the connecting cable between the two cabins.

Each “trambolho” incorporates the actual mechanical features which act as the vehicle’s primary braking system, both for service and emergency use.

The cabins also have a manual braking system that actuates a common friction shoe on each wheel.

Subscribe and read further to learn what investigators uncovered about the tragic derailment and the engineering flaw that cost sixteen lives.

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At least six people were killed, and there are several seriously wounded, following a shooting on a crowded bus at Ramot Junction, one of Jerusalem's busiest intersections.

The attack also left several passengers lightly injured by shattered glass, and Magen David Adom paramedics treated them at the scene.

At the time, the bus was packed with passengers and stopped in traffic when two assailants jumped in and started firing.

Within minutes, officers sealed off nearby roads, blocked access routes, and deployed large reinforcements. According to the latest reports, security forces neutralized the two assailants shortly after the shooting began.

Eyewitnesses described scenes of chaos and terror. One woman told a news source:

"The bus was packed. The moment the driver opened the door… terrorists came. It was terrible. I was by the back door, I fell on everyone and escaped, I saved myself. There was gunfire there beyond anything imaginable. I can't believe I'm standing here."

The gunmen reportedly were carrying Carlo submachine guns, a makeshift weapon which has been a recurrent feature in similar attacks.

The Carlo is frequently associated with terror attacks in Israel.

I remember how, in March 2016, this was the weapon of choice in another shooting attack on a public bus. The weapon had also been used a day earlier in a drive-by shooting that left two police officers seriously wounded. A 19-year-old Border Police officer, Hadar Cohen, was also killed by a Carlo in February that year.

Considering all these facts, the Israeli Police is calling the latest incident a terror attack.

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What Is the Carlo?

The “Carlo” (or Carl Gustav) is a locally-manufactured improvised submachine gun.
Loosely inspired by the Swedish Carl Gustaf M/45, it’s a cheap but lethal go-to gun first manufactured in the West Bank that has since become a weapon of choice for criminals worldwide.

Produced in underground workshops and metal shops, Carlos are crafted from scrap pipes, refurbished military parts, and components from airsoft or paintball guns.

The Carlo is built in variable forms—specs change across each weapon. It’s commonly chambered in 9×19 mm, though versions exist for .22 LR, .32 ACP, 9×18 mm Makarov, and even adapted 5.56×45 NATO magazines.

Operated on a simple blowback, open-bolt mechanism, it typically fires fully automatically.

Far cheaper than factory-made rifles, Carlos can cost as little as $500 to a few thousand dollars, depending on build quality and materials.

They are unreliable, inaccurate, and prone to jamming or misfires, yet in close-quarter situations—like buses or junctions—they deliver devastating, indiscriminate firepower.

Aftermath

Looking at what witnesses at the scene said, they were caught in a hail of bullets, which makes me think Carlo is the chilling embodiment of terror.

A weapon that doesn’t rely on precision or military-grade sophistication, but on availability and simplicity.

We are living in times when conventional warfare relies on over-sophistication. Drones and AI-assisted surveillance help nations carry out precision strikes.

But terrorism doesn’t need any of those resources. Terror adapts not just to gaps in security, but to any tool it can repurpose.

I can imagine how, with just a drill press, some scrap metal, and easy access to blueprints from the Internet, anyone can make a deadly weapon in their backyard.

The war in Ukraine proves that security strategies focusing on cutting off supply chains for advanced weaponry don’t work. Russia can easily get everything it needs inside its borders, and the latest strike on Kyiv shows how its industrial warfare machine has exponentially increased the production of missiles and drones despite ongoing restrictions.

The same happens with low-tech weapons: border sealing can’t stop the proliferation of weaponry made from everyday materials in clandestine workshops, which are then used to inflict high-casualty attacks.

The Carlo is a tool that makes terror look banal. A small homemade gun sold for a few hundred shekels. It’s DIY, up close, lurking in the empty jacket beside you on a bus.

My thoughts

I keep returning to the survivor’s words: “I can’t believe I’m standing here.” That disbelief is what ties us all together. Our shared vulnerability. The thin line between our daily routine and tragedy

As someone who once skipped a rendezvous with death during the Brussels 2016 terror attacks, I know very well how a padded jacket or a backpack can be death in disguise.

Thank you for reading.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the current president of the Portuguese Republic, is in his final year in office, and that may explain why he said that his US counterpart, Donald Trump, has been acting as a “Soviet asset” by favoring the Russian Federation in the war against Ukraine.

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The controversial statement came last Wednesday, August 27, as the Portuguese head of state was attending the JSD Summer University.

Marcelo returned to his POTUS criticism after having accused Trump of favoring Putin during the French president’s visit to Portugal in February.

Marcelo was part of a panel entitled “The President's Responses,” and during his opening speech, he called out Donald Trump as an example of a new style of political leadership, which is more emotional and focuses on direct contact with citizens, without mediation, in a world in which the balance of power has also changed.

"I'm saying that, in objective terms, the new US leadership has strategically favored the Russian Federation,"

The Portuguese President further clarifies his perspective:

“In other words, they've gone from being allies of one side to referees of the challenge,” he said, adding that Trump became a “referee” who only wants to negotiate with one of the teams, excluding both Ukraine and Europe, which had to “impose themselves” in the recent talks.

The Portuguese president went on with his lecture and stressed that this was not “an alliance based on friendship, economic, ideological, or doctrinal complicity.”

"With one peculiar and complex thing: the top leader of the world's biggest superpower is objectively a Soviet or Russian asset. He functions as an asset."

Portugal is a free speech nation, and Marcelo is well within his rights to speak his mind, but diplomacy-wise I believe he regrets his choice of words, and the hesitation in the video above clearly supports that idea.

The Portuguese president could have avoided using the words “Soviet” and “asset” in the same sentence. But I can understand what he is talking about.

We all know how charged those words are and how the “Soviet asset” idea has fueled many conspiracy theories surrounding Donald Trump and the defunct USSR. But Marcelo isn’t wrong in saying Trump is playing on Putin’s side and seems to be always trying to tilt the playing field in Russia’s favor.

It would have been different saying the US President is a Russian asset. Words have immense power for good or bad.

My favorite Portuguese novelist, Vergílio Ferreira, says words are like stones, and indeed we need to think twice before starting to throw them around. Especially if we are still the incumbent of a nation’s highest seat.

So the big question on everyone’s mind right now here in Portugal is will Trump respond to the Portuguese head of state?

Donald Trump's new 15% tariffs came into force recently and will heavily impact the Portuguese economy.

Now, we all know this isn't over. The deal has been negotiated, and there is a principle of agreement, but Donald Trump is very fickle and a constant flip-flopper who changes his mind a lot.

So a reaction from the US president could make things even worse. Even if I don’t think Trump will even care to react to these allegations from a president who is about to step out from office.

I’ve been following Trump’s posts on Truth Social, but so far there's been no reaction. His latest one is a sarcastic criticism of “the people running our country,” so he’s talking about internal politics. Still, this is the kind of response Marcelo could expect if he were the head of state of a country with a bit more influence than Portugal.

Thank you for reading.

A longer version of this newsletter was first published on Grind.

Rui Alves is a language teacher, published author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage on Substack, Life Unscripted, Musicverse, Writelicious, The Academic, Portugal Calling, Engage on Medium, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, Poetaph, Grind, and Babel.

A little support goes a long way! If you’d like to help me keep creating, you can do so at my Ko-fi page or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

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Portugal has many magical places that make you feel transported to another time. Marta and I recently visited one of these places.

When we arrived at the beach in Gulpilhares, Vila Nova de Gaia, we saw this tiny church perched on top of a rock.

As I looked at the chapel, Saramago’s words came to mind.

The Portuguese Nobel Prize winner titled one of his novels The Stone Raft, a metaphoric amplification of my country’s place at Europe’s western tip.

In his novel, Saramago envisions the Iberian Peninsula breaking away from the rest of Europe and drifting across the Atlantic.

In the author’s eyes, Portugal is a nation as sturdy as the rocks of its mountains. A nation always facing the sea. Portugal (and Spain) always dreamed of breaking the ties that bind it to the old continent and setting sail to offer new Worlds to the world. That’s what pushed us to the Age of Discoveries.

Standing there with the setting sun as the perfect backdrop, I couldn’t help but think of a line I once read:

Looking at it from afar, it feels as if the chapel is carved right into the rocks, blending seamlessly with the landscape, in a liminal place between sand and sea.

Locals often recall that this chapel indeed “belongs as much to the land as it does to the sea.” And looking at it from a distance, I understand why… Just look at the photo I’ve used as a feature and the one below, and let me know what you think.

For me, the site has that magical vibe you can feel in other ancient worship places.

The rock on which the chapel sits has been a place of pilgrimage for millennia. As I learned this, the place felt even more charged with meaning.

Local folklore recalls how originally, this was an ancient pagan worship site. A place where rituals were once performed, and even today, this is a place of pilgrimage for Christians and Neo-pagans.

Its name, Capela do Senhor da Pedra (“Chapel of the Lord of the Stone”), is a reference to the telluric forces upon which the church was built.

The fact that a Catholic chapel was built in that place in the 17th century is proof that the place had been revered since time immemorial.

Catholicism has always had this appeal for building temples in ancient pagan sites. This blending of different religious beliefs, cultures, or ideas is known as syncretism.

It was a sign of dominance and a way to boost conversions and promote a smoother transition for newly converted populations. By building on familiar, sacred ground, the Church aimed to reassure people and create a sense of continuity.

Pope Gregory I, in his Letter to Abbot Mellitus, advises about converting temples rather than destroying them, so that “the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God.”

It’s no surprise, then, that the Chapel of Senhor da Pedra carries this layered sense of time.

Knowing this, I looked at the chapel differently. More than a Christian shrine, I knew it was part of a much older story.

The Church may have placed its cross on top of the rocks only in the 17th century, but the stones themselves had already been touched by centuries of worship.

Through time, the stones have listened to centuries of prayers, and from the chapel’s balcony, with the waves crashing below, it feels as if they whisper back.

The Atlantic winds still carry the memory of old pagan rites and Christian prayers. But in my heart, while standing there, I feel those different languages of faith were often seeking the same divine protection from the forces of nature when people came to this place.

And with such a setting, legends were bound to take root.

Legends of the Chapel of Senhor da Pedra

The chapel is as much myth as it is mortar. Locals still share the stories that give this place its unique mystique.

A light in the night

When the first stones were to be laid, the townspeople chose a flat stretch of land near the beach. Easier to build on, safe from the pounding surf. But night after night, an unexplainable light hovered above the rocks.

To the faithful, this could only be divine instruction. The plan was abandoned, and the chapel rose exactly where the light had shone, on the edge of the sea, balanced between heaven and earth.

With my feet in the sand and my eyes looking into the horizon, I watched the sun turn the sea into a fiery mirror just before darkness set in. I imagined what it must have been like to see that mysterious light.

The Christ carried by the ocean

Inside the chapel rests an image of Christ. According to legend, it wasn’t brought there by human hands but carried in by the waves themselves. And on one of the rocks, locals point to a strange marking they say was left by the “blessed ox,” the very animal that warmed the infant Jesus in the manger. A trace of the miraculous carved into stone.

A sailor’s vow

Another story tells of a sailor, shipwrecked in a violent storm. Certain he was about to die, he made a desperate promise: if he survived, he would build a chapel to God. He washed ashore at these very rocks and kept his vow. Many coastal shrines in Portugal were born from such promises, but here the legend feels especially powerful — standing on those rocks, you can almost hear the sea’s fury and the desperate prayers carried on the wind.

Listening to these stories, another line came to mind.

A Living Shrine

Today, the chapel still attracts pilgrims and the curious alike. Each June, during the Festa do Senhor da Pedra, the site bursts with life.

Processions wind their way to the chapel, flowers and candles are offered, music fills the air, and fireworks light the night sky. It is part faith, part festival, part folklore, an unbroken chain stretching back to the first rituals held on these rocks.

Images and stories kept flowing through my mind as I felt the weight of centuries layered into one small chapel. But photos and words can only take you so far. For those who want to dive deeper into the atmosphere of this place, I’ve put together exclusive images and a few travel notes.

Want to learn more?

Subscribe to Engage to read further and unlock our full photo gallery, including rare angles of the chapel at sunset.

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Our paid subscribers also gain access to an extended travel guide and personal tips.

Here’s a sneak peek:

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