Saudade.
outrunning bulls and longing for home
Hey reader, inviting you in today to my nostalgia. This is the sound track. Play this soothing instrumental, wordless playlist I made while you read this post, if you’d like. Let this one be experiential. Invite all your senses in. Travel with me. Glad you’re here, or where ever it is that you are.
Saudade:
“Portuguese word that describes an emotional state of longing, melancholy, missing someone/something/some place.”
Did you know that I used to live in the Azores?
Few people have visited these small islands nearly 1,000 miles west of mainland Portugal, and even fewer have been able to call Terceira “home” (even if, like me, only for two glorious years) so I get asked for travel tips every once in a while when people I know are gearing up to travel to the islands.
In the midst of all I'm carrying and trying to lay down right now (along with the stories I’m telling here and not at parties), I'm advising on travel itineraries and anticipating introducing people to a land I love. I am practicing holding these different things at once.
There’s so much to discover on this island only 15 miles wide. I'm telling them about alcatra, the slow roasted beef that makes my mouth water just thinking about it. I'm talking about wine grapes grown in between lava rocks, infused with history and tradition. The festas, a preservation of an old world matched with new ways. The cataplana de peixe, which is a dish I'll never stop evangelizing. The wild zona balnear natural swimming holes. The sweeping miradoura vistas and patchwork green fields. The magical white horse at the foot of Rocha do Chambre (pictured above.) The ice cream with the secret Dona Amelia cake recipe. The ways to break into the tight knit community. The ways your heart might break when you have to go home.
These people don’t know asking me about the best dinner spots is to ask me to remember all the dreamy nights spent around the table with strangers who became family. They don’t know asking me about my favorite hikes is to ask me to show them how to fall in love with a place and a path you know you have to eventually leave. They don’t know asking me about travel is asking me about my grief, or what I’ve learned from living in the particular places I’ve lived or been in the last decade.
Last week, I was sharing about how to see a bull run on Terceira. Tourada a corda, or “bull on a rope” as it’s called locally, is an evolved, humane version of the practice of “bull fighting” which dates back to the 1500s when the Azores were first settled.1
During the summer festival season, each village on the island hosts several days worth of activities such as parades, cultural heritage shows and music concerts, food service to the needy from the local church parish or Impérios, and the thrilling bull runs themselves where bulls are tethered at the end of a rope held by “shepherds” to roam the streets. This event includes performances by people on foot with parasols or flags (no spears or defenses other than their ability to run) in their attempt to outsmart the bull.
Personally, I have never been interested in testing my smarts or athleticism against a bull, even if it is on a rope, but this got me thinking in metaphor: outrunning a bull feels a whole lot like life sometimes.
How to survive (a bull or a life):
Confirm the start time of the bull run and go at least an hour or two before that. You'll want to wander around, get the lay of the land, see what's happening at the festival. (Life lesson: Be prepared for anything. Everything happens.)
Look for the crowd. When you find them, look/ask around which road the bull run will be on. A tell-tale sign is boarded up fences and windows. Also trucks with live animal containers on/near them – that's where they're released from. The route of the run will be marked with tape or paint or signs on the street so you can tell where they'll be in the road. You want to stay within the markers on that road to see the bull, but not on the street level itself unless you’re ready to run. (Life lesson: Be observant and be curious. The things that are supposed to find you, they will find you. Be open handed about what they might be because your people will be there waiting for you.)
There are usually 2-4 bulls during a bull run event. You can count how many by the number of bull containers present. There is typically a 10-15 minute break between each bull and they only run one at a time. (Life lesson: Great excitement/work/living requires great rest.)
The bull will be on a rope with a few men holding it so the bull doesn't get away from them. It's for the bull's safety and protection, not people on the street. (Life lesson: Some institutions were not built with you in mind. When you realize you are misaligned, it may be time to walk away.)
One firework rocket means the bull is out. Two rockets means the bull is back in the container. These are your cues for getting on/off the street. (Life lesson: There's a time for rage and there's a time for retreat. There's a time for play and there's a time for deep work. There's a time for running and there's a time for slowing down. There are no rockets, so listen to the body and soul. They give the best cues.)
No one wants you or the bull to get hurt, so assume the best about people. It’s all for fun. Don't be afraid to ask to join a group to get high up on a wall, watch from their balcony or windows. Azorean hospitality is unmatched, especially at events like this one. It's an easy place to make new friends and learn how they do it. (Life lesson: Live a little and find the people doing it in a way that resonates with you. Give abundant grace, forgiveness, and love. Welcome strangers and make room for even more. We were built for connection, especially in the chaos.)
As it turns out, this third island of a million mysteries and memories of mine is still teaching me things, years later.
Coming home recently from a big trip, I'm feeling unmoored and shaky in the convictions. Travel does this to me in the best and hardest ways because I’m a fan of certainty. Travel turns my insides out. You can imagine what living in a foreign country and coming “home” feels like. That reorganization and upending of certainties doesn’t really ever end.
To find my anchors, I’m reaching back to the girl who went to the Middle East and returned home to this island, to homegrown wine and bull runs. I’m reaching back to the woman who went back again to Lebanon and Jordan a few years later and returned home to the Rocky Mountains, to ministry and community. I’m reaching back to the person who knew she’d need rituals to come home to herself and her place after a month in Italy last year, so she drove up to the mountains for a visit with highlighter-yellow aspens as a place to start.
Life continues to change, so the island isn’t home and I’m not in church ministry anymore and it’s summer so the landscape is green for the foreseeable future. Right now – in the disorientation of coming home from the Middle East and then a week in Czech Republic and, shortly after, a week in Grand Cayman with family – I'm following the threads. I’m making new rituals. Right now they look like leaning on nostalgia in a way that reminds me that I’ve been here before. I’ll be here again. And I know forward is the way back home.
Forward means I’m pouring glasses of vinho verde while I practice storytelling, Portugal in a glass. I’m looking to water for its provision and healing, which is something the Portuguese taught me. I’m participating in rituals with kindred new friends and leading them with old ones, which is where I was reminded of the word “saudade” and the ideas for this letter fell into my head.
Saudade is about grief. It’s about love. It’s the well of what's missing when you know you can’t go back.
Saudade is my address right now. Yes, it's formerly Texas, Missouri, Portugal, New Mexico. Formerly Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey and Palestine. Formerly, if only briefly, all the other places I've been. It’s also formerly, if only briefly, all the other women I've been too.
We go out, explore, live, and then come home and figure out how it all fits… or doesn’t fit. We learn to live with the new flavors and the new realities and the new acquired experiences. That’s the paradox of travel: you never get to stay everywhere you’ve ever been. You never get to go back to the same place twice because you or the place has evolved, one way or another.
There's nothing wrong when this feels heavy. It's just the cycle of things. The external and internal landscape changes. Things erode, earthquakes shatter, different resources are needed for other fruits, and roots move earth out of the way to build the foundation for blooming to occur. I'm following the threads of my life as I integrate this experience and, while it feels like saudade now, I know it won't always.
I'll wake up one morning to light my candle called “Italy” and watch the flame flicker around while I drink coffee from my white mug bought at Cafe Younes in Beirut on the couch next to my rescue dog from the streets of San Antonio while reading the novel I bought in Cayman and didn’t get to read on the beach, and I'll hear a noise that sounds kind of like the squawk of a Cory’s shearwater above my house under the dry Colorado sun (it won’t be because I’m not in the North Atlantic anymore) and I'll think: this is as home as I'll ever be.
All of this at once is what feels like home to me. This nostalgia keeps me connected to all these places while it keeps me connected to myself, my home. Presence and longing do coexist because everything here belongs. I can learn to honor the mystery and melancholy.
I think that’s what saudade really means. I want to keep practicing welcoming saudade here at Wandering Home because it’s what I’ve learned coming home really feels like. Telling the truth is what I’ve learned coming home to myself really feels like.
I know by now it’s the cost of going anywhere else.
Longing with you,
In Azorean touradas a corda, the bulls are never harmed. They live happily grazing on beautiful pastures and get trained for these events. After the bullfight they return unharmed to their pasture in the island’s mountainous interior. These events are regulated and accountable for the health and well-being of the bulls, and the safety of the public.
I am blown away, once again!! Your writing is absolutely mesmerizing…..I hold my breath and my heart while reading every incredible line. I need to reread this again and again.