Portugal 8 Years Later And The Mystery Keeps Unfolding…

Café Spot Diving
Sesimbra Portugal
24th July 2024,

Dear Love,

It’s noon and I sit in the diving mecca of Sesimbra, near the docks.

Tuesday and life is calm, after the weekend rush, a Monday and Tuesday feel like a Holiday from people.

Local characters sip coffee, fishermen unravel their lines from a night of fishing. Here in Portugal the fresh markets for fish are closed on Mondays because the fishermen are blessing the ocean with a day off.

That is a testament to the Portuguese and their love for the waters.

Of course I don’t mean to romanticize the Portuguese, because the same mass consumption of poor quality items exists here. In the big markets you can find everything all day everyday, even ‘fresh’ fish.

Nonetheless…

The traditions that live in the villages of Portugal and throughout spots in the cities mean so much to me.

Sometimes I think humans work so not to be alone, so to be with other human animals. That there is an exchange of money and time aren’t the necessity of life but a secondary reason for working..

Look at us humans with our need for relationships…

Searching…

8 years ago, at 3 a.m. in the morning, after a month and a half of visiting a friend in Portland Oregon, after moving around the west coast of the U.S. for some time, my heart hollered at me, “Go”.

Go where?

“Just go and let the rest unfold as it may.  Pure unknowing…”

I packed my bag and took an Uber to the airport. The Uber driver with dreadlocks and electric music dripping through the windows picked me up and we were off, my heart and I.

No ticket, no destination, no idea…

It’s been 8 years this September that I have been in Portugal. Still without a knowing, still watching the unfolding, still participating in a life that feels so foreign and yet present.

I left my mind here and there in random places in Portugal, let it roam and experience other parts of my being, aspects of a self that would stay quiet, whispering in the background of my existence.

So many dreams have come and gone, many relationships, pleasant and confused, experiences of wild evenings on the streets of Porto, lost spirits on the cobblestone streets of Elvas, scars on my rib cage from the rocks of Sintra, wounds on my heart from resisting love’s invitation too many times to tell.

So many lives lived in such a short period of time. All contained in a memory of my mind.

The dream that is your life, the coming and going of your imagination..

One of my great curiosities in life is how one moment in time you don’t know a person, then you meet them, then you become friends, lovers, whatever the case maybe, a delineation in time.

Once your life was empty of this person and now they are a member of your memory, a part of your dream.

What a strange affair it is, to never have known a person, then to suddenly know them.

I tell you it is the strangest occurrence, if you take a moment to sit with it, to view a time before and a time after meeting whomever it may be.

What a dream.

There are times in my life when I try to reconcile my suffering, my confusion, when I seek to remove one way of being and to replace it with another, but that is a trick.

Off in the distance on the second level of the small port building 65 meters in front of me an old man just took a pee on the wall. Yesterday ten or so imported workers were sitting in that same spot in the morning. Later that afternoon a gypsy woman walked out of the same location.

And just now Jimmy the dog of the docks showed up at the cafe looking for a taste of something.

Life unfolds all around us all the time, even when alone in the nothingness of it all, even while writing in a café near a marina.

And so that mind of mine that wishes things were different, comes up with nonsense ideas to try to convince me it knows what we should be doing or what we should do next.

It is the most curious relationship you will ever have and that is the one with yourself and particularly with your own mind.

This may seem sideways as I say it, but the voice that tortures you is the same voice that tries to convince you it knows what you should be doing next, offering a remedy to the torturing thought that it is dragging you through.

That voice and I have been traveling together for however long we have been discussing life’s affairs.

So here we sit at a cafe in a gorgeous land, with an incredible view amongst so many lives being lived, doing the greatest work one can ever do for themselves, seeing through the mind’s lies.

There is no solution to life because life is beyond solutions and solving.

There’s simply an unfolding of experience and our relationship to it.

And yet…

I’ll save that for the next time I write to you.

Emeric

p.s. It’s been a while since I have shared with you. How are you doing?

p.p.s. I imagine you’ve lived through 1001 stories of your own, mysteries, absurdities, and such. I imagine you’ve come to a point in life that you too have realized that you are in a relationship with everything around you, including your relationship to your relationships.

Recently I put together the best material I have to take people through the experience of relating to the world in a way that is liberating and transformative and as true as one can tell. You can read more about it below.

It’s mostly nonsense yet it is somehow very true.

You can explore it here, my unfinished every growing masterpiece called Love Cheese and The Relationship Romp

Also, you can find a picture of Jimmy dog of the docks here…

 

p.p.s. If I ever get married or choose to have a lifelong partner or a short term partner, if I ever meet anyone who has trouble relating to other people, including their parents or children even if those children are adults, I would want them to go through the program I created, called the relationships romp and love cheese.

Actually if you are an adult or some semblance of an adult human being, I want you to go through Love Cheese and the Relationships Romp, because I am biased and I want more people in the world to understand their own innate incredible nature.

I can’t guarantee anything, but I think it will bring a lot of joy and awareness to your life and it will certainly bring more beauty to any and every relationship you have. But that is my opinion.

You can get it here within 10 minutes.

It’s not for everyone.

It’s opinionated, expensive ($370), and not backed by science or any expert opinion.

In fact it is almost 100% based on 50 years of me being alive and being a troublemaker.

However…

My experience is based on observations and truths that have been verified in conversation with too many people. I converse with everyone, and sometimes I get paid very well to do so.

But like I said. I guarantee nothing and I have a zero refund policy. Because I don’t like taking responsibility for things not working out well for other people. It’s your life! I trust you!

So, If you have 15 minutes a week and are bored and a bit lonely, then you will enjoy what I have for you.

Go here and in 10 minutes you will be on your way…

​www.EmericDamian.com/Love-Romp​

Finally…

I wrote a short story of a kind. My friends have been asking me to publish more of my material. I write every day. Anyways, if you would like to read it, reply to this message and I will send you a link to read it.