I recently came back from vacation in Portugal.

It was nice to spend some time in my home country.  The weather was great and I
did manage to go to the beach a couple of times.  I did very much miss a proper
sandy beach with appropriately salted water and waves.  Waves change the
perception of the beach quite a bit.  It is difficult to explain how much the
waves in particular and the currents in general make up my perception of
beaches from my youth.  To go to the "beach" without these elements is a bit
sad.

Once again I managed to bring quite a large haul of books with me that I will
try to do a better job of reading in the coming months than I did last year.
It is always a pleasure to read old  Portuguese literature, and in particular I
want to focus on classical Portuguese poetry.  Here, by classical I mean 19th
and 20th century, Camões may have been great but I have yet to develop the
taste for his work.  I'm sure that will come in due course.  For now I revel in
more modern Lusophone poetry, I find myself back to my fascination with 20th
century futurism and 19th century modernism.  Like poetry, life itself also
rhymes.

I also took the chance while I was there to write (or at least draft) some more
poems in portuguese, that I will eventually add to that section (maybe) if I
still don't hate them in a (liberal) couple of days.

September 16th 2020