Speaker 1: Pushkin, you've received a pace god from Portugal. Greetings, Not
Speaker 1: Lost listeners. I'm sending you this audio card to let
Speaker 1: you know that I've been thinking about you. I know,
Speaker 1: I know it's taking me a moment to put ben
Speaker 1: to paper, or rather microphone to mouth, but I haven't
Speaker 1: forgotten you. In fact, I've been working on a batch
Speaker 1: of Not Lost Chat episodes which is becoming to you
Speaker 1: later this fall. That'll be a set of travel ori
Speaker 1: ended conversations to fill your ears while the production team
Speaker 1: and I embark on the more time consuming process of
Speaker 1: actually traveling, conjuring dinner parties, and then editing. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, I went on a little holiday this summer
Speaker 1: and I couldn't help but want to tell you about it.
Speaker 1: After wrapping up season one I'm Not Lost, I began
Speaker 1: to take care of all the life tasks I've been neglecting,
Speaker 1: getting a wheel alignment from my car, submitting receipts to
Speaker 1: work inhaling tubes of fig Newman's while flat on my
Speaker 1: back watching old episodes of The Great British Bake Off.
Speaker 1: I also caught COVID, which wasn't intentional but did end
Speaker 1: up working in my favor. It turned out that covid
Speaker 1: antibodies are the biological equivalent of a TSA prejeck. They
Speaker 1: allow you to travel with a little less stress. And
Speaker 1: when I recovered, I helped my then partner move out
Speaker 1: of our apartment. Yes, another relationship ended. I was single again,
Speaker 1: back where I started at the beginning of Not Lost.
Speaker 1: This ending was less sudden and fractious as previous breakups,
Speaker 1: but that didn't make the undertaking any less heavy. It
Speaker 1: was still a breakup stage. Around that time, this lovely
Speaker 1: incantatory song came out by Brazilian musician Tim Bernardes, and
Speaker 1: I kind of served as a bomb for all that
Speaker 1: had been going on. Now. The song's in Portuguese. I
Speaker 1: don't speak Portuguese, so I didn't know what the words meant,
Speaker 1: but I found it soothing just the same, and after
Speaker 1: listening on repeat for a few days, I finally put
Speaker 1: the name of the title and Google translate be Born,
Speaker 1: Live Die. With all the had been going on, it
Speaker 1: was nice to be reminded that there's really only one
Speaker 1: to do list that matters. So I had Portuguese on
Speaker 1: the mind in my ears, which was helpful because I
Speaker 1: was struggling with a new dilemma, where do you travel
Speaker 1: for fun when traveling is what you do for work.
Speaker 1: I'd been to Brazil before Sam Paulo, with its tangle
Speaker 1: of steel, glass and heat at once Ferrell and Cosmopolitan,
Speaker 1: and I thought about going again. But I caught win
Speaker 1: that a friend of a friend recently bought a place
Speaker 1: in Portugal, and that's a place I've always wanted to go.
Speaker 1: I love sardines. A couple summers back, my bloodstream was
Speaker 1: made up primarily of vino Verde. And also, Portugal is
Speaker 1: just a great word to say Portugal. It feels good
Speaker 1: coming out of the mouth. And if it does come
Speaker 1: out of your mouth within earshot of a certain class
Speaker 1: of Americans, they will say something like, I hear it's
Speaker 1: a great place to retire. I heard this from my colleagues,
Speaker 1: my dentist, even an old friend in la I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how you retire from being supported by your girlfriend,
Speaker 1: but that's his plan. To be fair. Portugal encouraged this
Speaker 1: perception of itself as a poker ratan with wine Country,
Speaker 1: partially by creating the so called Golden Visa program, which
Speaker 1: means if you invest a certain amount of money, it
Speaker 1: will give you the equivalent of a green card. Now, personally,
Speaker 1: I found all these people fantasizing about moving to another
Speaker 1: place they'd never been a little bit distasteful and opportunistic, Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: invest a little bit of money in a country and voila,
Speaker 1: you get to live somewhere with low crime, solid healthcare,
Speaker 1: and beautiful beaches and fresh fish dinners for a handful
Speaker 1: of euro balby knights. So I decided to check out Portugal.
Speaker 1: I bought my plane ticket, and after that I went
Speaker 1: to a bookstore and I bought a little prank guidebook.
Speaker 1: That's right, a guide book. I always buy guide books.
Speaker 1: I don't need an Instagram listical telling me about a
Speaker 1: town's five hottest restaurants. That's information I can get on
Speaker 1: the ground. But I do need a concise go to
Speaker 1: guide that gives me a neat bit of local history
Speaker 1: and tells me how to operate the metro machines. Some
Speaker 1: things don't need to be messed with. Pines, ketchup, kissing.
Speaker 1: Travel guides are among them. After crawling the gauntlet of
Speaker 1: airline security, I slumped into my seat on the airplane
Speaker 1: and opened up to page one of Insight Guide's Portugal
Speaker 1: pocket guide, and I began to read. Few countries have
Speaker 1: risen as triumphantly or fallen as forlornly as Portugal, from
Speaker 1: preeminent global superpower in the sixteenth century with far flung
Speaker 1: colonies and abundant riches, to brushed off backwater of continental Europe.
Speaker 1: Portugal is again an Optimi stick country and society in transition.
Speaker 1: Sounded a bit like me, global superpower at sixteen. Now
Speaker 1: I brushed off backwater, but optimistic and in transition. So
Speaker 1: I'm walking through beautiful Lisbon on a Sunday morning, lots
Speaker 1: of hills. Even though I was on vacation, I couldn't
Speaker 1: resist bringing my recorder out with me as I took
Speaker 1: a walk one afternoon. Besides, I didn't have anyone else
Speaker 1: to talk to. At first, I thought it'd be fun
Speaker 1: to take you along with me while I described what
Speaker 1: I saw. But I quickly realized that was a fool's
Speaker 1: errand Portugal covered in tiles blue and yellow, and or
Speaker 1: its symbols put uniform patterns so that I won't even
Speaker 1: try to explain. Lisbon has a heady cocktail of architectural styles.
Speaker 1: There's Roman architecture, Gothic architecture, Moorish architecture, Manu light architecture,
Speaker 1: all things you'd be way better off googling and taking
Speaker 1: a look at for yourself, as opposed to having me
Speaker 1: google them and pretend I knew about them beforehand. But
Speaker 1: the buildings are covered in them and they're beautiful. But
Speaker 1: I can do is show you what Lisbon sounds like.
Speaker 1: So I recorded some audio snapshots of things I found
Speaker 1: around town, like this fountain in the center of a
Speaker 1: square in the barrow Alto neighborhood. Another familiar sound in
Speaker 1: Lisbon is the tram. The Portuguese call it the electricode.
Speaker 1: But the most deafening sounds on the streets of Lisbon
Speaker 1: in the summer the rolling suitcase armies of taurists click
Speaker 1: clicking through the streets in and out of their lodgings.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Oh, and that's a guy who's trying to
Speaker 1: sell me drugs. I just offered me hash cocaine, which
Speaker 1: makes me feel good, like I'm still looking young and modern.
Speaker 1: I was offered cocaine a couple of times while I
Speaker 1: was in Lisbon, which honestly made me feel kind of good.
Speaker 1: I was flattered that these guys thought that I looked interesting,
Speaker 1: enough and that my social life might be robust enough
Speaker 1: that I maybe wanted to do drugs because in truth,
Speaker 1: all I really wanted was a small beer, a salad
Speaker 1: and an app. Okay, well, maybe I wanted something more.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the Italian couples like. Did they
Speaker 1: press their shirts in the morning. It's like gorgeous couple
Speaker 1: muck by as lovely as it was the trapes about
Speaker 1: Lisbon unhindered, I was feeling a bit lonely. Don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. Traveling alone has its advantages wake up whenever
Speaker 1: you want, navigate through crowds with ease, pretend Canadian without
Speaker 1: anyone calling you on it. Plus the whole opportunity for romance.
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't seen Eat, Pray, Love, but I
Speaker 1: get the gist how you scrambled eggs with red wine.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are also disadvantages traveling alone. When you
Speaker 1: find a table in front of a cafe, there's no
Speaker 1: one to hold onto it while you run inside to order.
Speaker 1: Then when you do order, you have to limit the
Speaker 1: amount of dishes because there's no one to split them with.
Speaker 1: And then when you're eating, you've no one to talk
Speaker 1: to the same person you've been talking to you for decades.
Speaker 1: You barely like that person anymore. You know all their stories.
Speaker 1: They get grumpy when they're hungry, and they sometimes pretend
Speaker 1: they're Canadian for no reason. That person is you or
Speaker 1: in this case me, Hey in front of an empty
Speaker 1: shop and the sign on it says in English nowhere. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: when I was really tired of myself and I wasn't
Speaker 1: recording and I wasn't reading for leisure, I have a
Speaker 1: return to my travel guide, and that's where I found
Speaker 1: this nugget about Portugal's national emotion, Sell Dodd. The presence
Speaker 1: of absence, a longing for someone or something that you
Speaker 1: remember fondly, but no, you can never experience again. Now That,
Speaker 1: more than the sardines, the fountains, the trams, hit home.
Speaker 1: Last time I'd been to Europe was the summer before
Speaker 1: with my axe, who went to Roman Venice. And though
Speaker 1: I didn't pine for our relationship ending, it was the
Speaker 1: right thing for us. I was nostalgic for our companionship.
Speaker 1: How we would people watch, hold bags for one another
Speaker 1: while trying to unclose, agree in a restaurant order, and
Speaker 1: hold hands while waiting for drinks. The guide went on
Speaker 1: an untranslatable word that encompasses longing and melancholy. Well, I've
Speaker 1: been walking the cobblestone streets of Lisbon, inhaling the diesel
Speaker 1: fumes of its buses and trying to use those cafe
Speaker 1: napkins which seemed to be made of onion paper and
Speaker 1: stick your face instead of cleaning it. I was accompanied
Speaker 1: by a unique feeling. It wasn't exactly regret, not exactly sadness,
Speaker 1: and yet it was a touch melancholic. Perhaps I was
Speaker 1: experiencing this untranslatable emotion seldad. There was only one way
Speaker 1: to find out. Okay, So I'm trying to ask what
Speaker 1: the word seldad means in English. Yeah, ask the Portuguese.
Speaker 1: It's the It's the loss of something, a person, a place.
Speaker 1: It's a feeling. It's a feeling from the heart, very profound.
Speaker 1: On my way back to where I was staying, I
Speaker 1: stopped at a bookshop in a train station where I
Speaker 1: met Maria. Do you know this feeling? Do you have
Speaker 1: seldad for anything? Yes, for my childhood, for my sister
Speaker 1: that passed away from my the place where I where
Speaker 1: I grew up, grow up. But people say it's not
Speaker 1: it's not all bad. Oh, it's not all bad, because
Speaker 1: the sad things make you more understanding, appreciate more what
Speaker 1: you've got right now, appreciate the present well you learned
Speaker 1: with soda. Thank you for chatting with me. Can I
Speaker 1: get your name? Maria, Maria Jose, Maria Jose, non abregado.
Speaker 1: So sodad was a profound feeling from the heart, and
Speaker 1: not all bad either, because the sad things make you
Speaker 1: appreciate the present more, like a sprinkle of salt and
Speaker 1: grinded pepper, enhancing the main course. Me being me. After
Speaker 1: the bookshop, I stopped at a wine shop and I
Speaker 1: asked the owner, Sergio and his wife Carla, what they
Speaker 1: thought the word man so that it's difficult to explain
Speaker 1: from words because it's a very specific Portuguese word. It's
Speaker 1: like missing, but more strong, more sentimental, because we are
Speaker 1: very nostalgic people. It's not ugly, but it's it's here.
Speaker 1: You have missing about many things, but so that is
Speaker 1: something more strong, more intense. But it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: express my words. You've done a good job. You don't
Speaker 1: know women, they can people just miss you. Man. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure that's my that's the mystery I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out. So how would you describe what the
Speaker 1: word meant? Well, it was like miss you, but more intense.
Speaker 1: It's like missing nostalgia, but more intense. When you call
Speaker 1: to your mom, mom, I miss you, or I said
Speaker 1: in puts my things so nuch to us. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit more intense. But I'm see to a fault.
Speaker 1: It's like, I miss you. Tell me some of the
Speaker 1: things that make you feel that way. I have seluch
Speaker 1: from my grandmother. Then she she roll me what what
Speaker 1: was her name? Cecilia? Cecilia? Was she a character like you? Well,
Speaker 1: she was worse. She'll talk about sex really to you,
Speaker 1: to everyone, And well, I like, what would she say
Speaker 1: about sex? That everyone likes it? Like even the animals?
Speaker 1: That's true. After chatting with Sergio and Carlo about Sadad,
Speaker 1: we got to talking about life more generally and wine
Speaker 1: more specifically. We hit it off and they invited me
Speaker 1: to a pop up restaurant happening at a neighboring shop
Speaker 1: the following night. The crowd was very hip, all haircuts
Speaker 1: and tasteful tattoos. We sip wine that was natural and
Speaker 1: adolf plates that were small and it was there I
Speaker 1: met Francisco and his father Pedro, and I pulled them
Speaker 1: outside to talk about my now favorite topic. So so
Speaker 1: that can be well academically translated as this deep longing
Speaker 1: for something, But because it is a very specific word
Speaker 1: and concept within within our collective thought, it would it
Speaker 1: is very It's best described as, for example, when you
Speaker 1: when you tell someone I miss you, it's like a
Speaker 1: part of you is missing. And so that because it's
Speaker 1: a bit more broad, you miss someone, you you have,
Speaker 1: so that of someone, it's something you have because it's
Speaker 1: a feeling. There's some sort of constancy in that feeling.
Speaker 1: So it's that's that's how I could put It's something
Speaker 1: that is no longer there, either absolutely or in the
Speaker 1: shape in which you grew accustomed to or you loved,
Speaker 1: and then you just feel so that what do you
Speaker 1: think about that? It's happy melancholy, meaning that there's something
Speaker 1: good that happened and you you miss, you don't really
Speaker 1: miss you know, it's not it won't come back again.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a memory of something you consider it
Speaker 1: like a positive thing. Yeah, And usually we use it
Speaker 1: in in the plural, we have sodas meaning there are
Speaker 1: a few events that we've shared or something that we
Speaker 1: keep in our hearts, so that that's that's mother the idea,
Speaker 1: for instance, when someone dies or someone lives abroad, which
Speaker 1: is very common for Portuguese. So we missed those people.
Speaker 1: We have soda again plural, not only in a single form,
Speaker 1: but we missed when we refer to So that my
Speaker 1: opinion is that we missed the good moments. It's not
Speaker 1: crying about. It doesn't have to be some heavy, heavy
Speaker 1: kind of relationship or yeah, you meet again the person
Speaker 1: you had good moments and you had sodas you are
Speaker 1: killing so that we say so that we are killing
Speaker 1: the sada, so wiping it out right now exactly when
Speaker 1: you're in some sort recuperating or getting back that memory
Speaker 1: that was found to you. And so I'm killing this
Speaker 1: for the moment, so it's let's let's let's kill So
Speaker 1: that a funny thing happened while I was talking to
Speaker 1: everyone about sodad. I started to lose that feeling. I
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't missing the United States. As for the lack
Speaker 1: of companionship with all the mingling and talking I've been doing,
Speaker 1: that didn't make so much either. So maybe I killed Sodad,
Speaker 1: and yet before Sodad's body was even cold, a different
Speaker 1: sort of emotion started to creep in. It's mostly dealing
Speaker 1: with the past, but because it's something deeply ingrained in
Speaker 1: the culture and vocabulary. There was this interesting episode a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. I think Namar the football star,
Speaker 1: he wrote to some girl and it got leaked at
Speaker 1: Soda As. You don't be winged though, It's like I
Speaker 1: miss that which we have not lived yet. This is
Speaker 1: the the football star taxed this to a lover, something
Speaker 1: something to that effect, and so so it does. It
Speaker 1: does not always, it does carry that sense of sounds
Speaker 1: just going to be something in the future. I know
Speaker 1: I already miss it. I know that this is going
Speaker 1: to be good, and now already miss it. I miss
Speaker 1: that which we have not lived yet. That felt right.
Speaker 1: I didn't miss who I was before coming to Portugal,
Speaker 1: the overworking COVID, the felt relationship, but being here, spending
Speaker 1: time alone, talking to others, hearing about those they loved
Speaker 1: and missed, it all created sort of a firebreak from
Speaker 1: my life before and my life to come. In other words,
Speaker 1: it did what a vacation is supposed to do, and now,
Speaker 1: after two weeks away, I was starting to miss the
Speaker 1: future I had not lived yet. It was time for
Speaker 1: me to get back to New York and begin making
Speaker 1: new memories that someday I'm probably gonna miss. This Postcard
Speaker 1: from Portugal was written and produced by me Brendan Francis
Speaker 1: Nuno Bart Warshaw also produced, mixed and mastered it. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Justine Lang and Deevid Glover for lending their voices,
Speaker 1: and thanks to Latamilad and Jacob Smith for their notes,
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out Tim Bernard's His song
Speaker 1: Nassar viver morej appears on his latest album entitled Meal,
Speaker 1: Cassas and Visiervas, which translates into A Thousand Invisible Things
Speaker 1: put out by Psychic Hotline Records, and last but not least,
Speaker 1: thanks to Portugal, I miss you a little bit, but
Speaker 1: I've got stuff to do here before I return