Every December, I leave Europe and spend a couple of weeks in Brazil. This isn’t an escape. It’s calibration—a way to reset how I see the world and myself.
It’s a return, but never a simple one. Each landing feels less like going back and more like stepping into a parallel version of my life.
Brazil Without Postcards
When I say “Brazil,” I don’t mean turquoise water or postcard-perfect scenery. I mean the interior of a southeastern state so vast it rivals entire European countries. A place rarely romanticized yet essential to understanding the country, with its endless roads, expanding towns, and almost no well-documented history.
Innovation and erasure. Productivity and inequality. Pride and unease. Walking through this landscape feels like reading multiple timelines at once, all overlapping, none fully settled.
A century ago, much of this land was inhabited by Native American communities. Today, it supports an agricultural system that moves billions of dollars across global markets. Those realities sit side by side, unresolved.
Heat, Discomfort, and Attention
Then there’s the heat. Christmas under a scorching sun strips the season of its symbolism. No winter metaphors. Just light, sweat, and exposure.
It is funny how discomfort sharpens perception. It pulls you into the present of this place and into how it is affected by the world outside. I listen more carefully, observe longer, and notice what usually fades into the background.
Movement as Identity
Living between places, between the wealth and history of Milan and this poor, hot zone of the Brazilian southeast, reshapes identity and helps me understand what it actually means. It stops me from being a fixed point and makes me a trajectory. Not some energy rooted once and for all, but a being shaped by crossings.
Belonging can be dynamic, formed in motion rather than permanence. This routine I follow seems to enhance my ability to experience this fluidity.
This is just the beginning of a series, as my vacation has just begun. Over the coming days, I’ll try to write more, as I think Creativity tends to awaken during periods like this.
