English Version | Editor's Letter: Oceans of Life, June 2025

Salt in the Soul

They say that the Portuguese have the sea in their bones. But it is in their blood that it runs — 70% water, 30% longing. We were made to leave. I don't know if it's out of courage, but perhaps out of a liquid restlessness, a call that is stronger than fate. The sea taught us to lose, but also to dream of maps larger than the Earth allows.

Sara Sampaio
Élio Nogueira

Our heritage is not only in history, nor in the pages of manuals. It is in the chest that tightens when we look at the Atlantic. In the sweet nausea of ​​departure, in the salty taste of words. Yes, because even the language betrays us, Portuguese has the rhythm of the tide and the taste of salt. And a slight aftertaste of loss. We say “saudade” as if we were saying “storm” in a low voice. Perhaps that is why our literature is so impregnated with absence: Camões, exiled from everything; Pessoa, shipwrecked from himself; Sophia, listening to the sea in silence. Speaking Portuguese is like sailing.

Paola Manes
Carly Dame

We have glories spread across continents, but what remains is this way of looking at the vast and immense blue as if looking deep inside. The sea does not belong to us, it is what possesses us. And perhaps our greatest achievement was not passing through Cabo da Boa Esperança, but continuing to sail within, even when all around is dry land. Because those who are made of water do not fear the depths. They fear dryness. And even so, we go to the seashore as if we were seeking God. Not to pray, but to remember. Because the sea is not a landscape — it is a mirror. When we lean over it, we do not see the horizon, we see the curve of our own restlessness, the shadow of what we were, and the silence of what we still do not know how to be.

Angelina Usanova
Vicoolya & Saida

We have water in our tears, in our entrails, in our gestures. We are water with human form. We carry in our bodies the same salt that the sea carries in its veins, as if we were brothers separated at birth. And yet, we look for water outside, as if we had forgotten that the source is inside. We travel to see it fall from mountains, run through valleys, stretch out on beaches that we photograph with thirst in our eyes.

Angelina Usanova
Vicoolya & Saida

Perhaps the sea attracts us because it confirms us. It knows that we came from it — and that, one day, we will return to it. Water is the beginning, and, they say, the oblivion.

Marcelino Sambé
Kosmas Pavlos

Translated from the original in the Oceans of Life issue, published June 2025. For full stories and credits, check the print issue.