Portugal and France: Where Rivers Meet History

Points of Encounter - Portugal and France: Where Rivers Meet History

By Armand Ortiz

In December 2024 Yeny and I visited Portugal. We mainly went for the food, and because Portugal is relatively compact, we were able to explore several different regions in just a few days. I was excited to visit Lisbon because I'd already experienced the city through Fernando Pessoa’s writings, long before I walked its streets. Yet the things we saw and experienced, as I later reflected, came to mean much more than I had expected.

In Lisbon we took a walking food tour and tasted bifanas which you could lather up with spicy oil called piri-piri. We also ate the iconic bolinhos de bacalhau, which are toasty, crunchy, soft and chewy all at the same time. The hot chocolate was like none that I had had before: creamy, thick, and deeply chocolaty.

As we strolled along the edge of the Tagus River we were greeted by a giant monument dedicated to the Age of Discovery and the men that set off from Lisbon to explore the world. In their attempts to have direct access to goods and spices they first sailed along the coast of Africa, then rounded the continent on their way to India. As a result, Portugal became one of the earliest European nations to launch an era of maritime exploration. Standing before it, I admired what it celebrated, though I had yet begun to understand the larger story it represented.

We learned of Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan. The Portuguese also explored and colonized South America, creating new networks of trade and cultural exchange while also contributing to systems of conquest, slavery and forced migration. Brazil would become Portugal’s largest and most significant colony. In Portugal it seemed that everything had a story, and that story often led somewhere else– a spice, a crop, a tradition, or a person who had crossed an ocean.

We were fortunate enough to travel around Portugal, learning about its history and how its architecture, art, and cuisine were influenced by centuries of exploration and overseas connections. We visited places like Nazare, where a small chapel dramatically atop a coastal cliff. Today, the town is best known for the giant Atlantic waves that have made Nazare one of the world’s premier surfing destinations. At Sintra, we stopped to admire the architecture of Pena Castle, a building containing symbols of Portugal’s maritime history. Although we enjoyed every place we visited, Lisbon stayed with me the longest. It was also a place where a major battle between Crusader and Muslim armies took place, which reestablished a Christian kingdom in 1147.

At that time I had not fully understood the significance of our visit. It was not until we’d returned from our trip to France that things gelled in my mind.

A few months later we went to France, spending most of our time exploring different parts of Paris. Walking through the Luxembourg Gardens allowed us to experience a city shaped by centuries of artists, writers and revolutions. We dined at one of the restaurants Ernest Hemingway once frequented, and at times I felt that his descriptions of Paris and its people were on point.

We also took several walking tours. One was a guided tour that had us tasting foods as we meandered through the Montmartre neighborhood. The tastiest dishes were the rich beef bourguignon and the cheese board. By the time we had crepes, we were full but still eager to taste the savory pastry, all under the backdrop of the Sacre Coeur. The other tour started on the Ile de la Cite, which is the historical center of Paris and is located in the middle of the Seine River. We were taken to different parts of the island and given brief descriptions of how Paris grew and evolved over the years.

We managed to take a day trip to Rouen, a city along the Seine River where Viking, French and English influences converged. The city is closely connected to the Viking world and the Christianization of Scandinavia, and it is also remembered as the place where Joan of Arc was executed. From Rouen, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, embarked on the expedition that eventually led him to explore the Mississippi River.

The circle of discovery continued after our return from France. I thought that we had traveled to see places. Only later did I realize we had been walking through places where worlds had collided. Soon after, I began to understand that France and Portugal were not simply destinations but meeting points– places where people, ideas, foods, religions and cultures crossed paths. Through those encounters, history continued to shape the world we live in today.

Looking back, I remember standing beside the Tagus River watching small sailboats drift quietly across the water. Now I see these memories differently. Rivers, ports, and crossroads are more than places on a map. They are places where civilizations meet, where ideas are exchanged, and where the traces of those encounters endure long after travelers have gone.

Hummingbird, Lingering: Free Verse

Hummingbird, Lingering

By Armando Ortiz

Humming hummingbird

where do you come from

and where do you go

you hover, pierce flowers

then vanish in a swirl

you rest on thin branches

flicker on by

coming and going

darting through silence

in a kaleidoscopic spin

humming hummingbird

ripe flowers nearby

under a city sky 

time slows as you hover above

tiny wings, a shimmering glow

zooming on down

shooting on through 

toward bell-shaped flowers

to drink their nectar

treasuring that open bloom

humming hummingbird

twitching and chattering

circling in a breath

dancing with yellow petals

brushing blue trumpets

where do you sleep

who makes your bed

two beings frozen in time

looking through my balcony door

your hum lingers in my ear

One Day of Life: The Rhythm of Survival

One Day of Life: The Rhythm of Survival

Reading One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta

By Armando Ortiz

Manlio Argueta is best known for his novel One Day of Life, a story centered on three generations of women from the same family. The men appear only at night or for a brief visit and then disappear into the mountains or the fields, leaving the women in charge of the daytime routines. Set during one of El Salvador’s most violent periods, the novel captures a country strained by conflict and survival. 

Argueta’s story unfolds over the course of a day, with chapters marked by the passing hours, each offering brief glimpses into what the characters do to survive and cope. At its center is the family matriarch, who rises before the rooster’s cry and quietly tends to her grandchildren and their home. 

The author also captures El Salvador’s natural environment, weaving bird sounds and landscape into the fabric of the story. Their presence is connected to religion and superstition, blurring the line between the natural and the spiritual. Nature becomes a character of its own–it sweats with its rain and breathes through the greenery. Within this living landscape, there is a tale of strong religious beliefs that struggle with ideological truths, and economic opportunity is very limited. 

Men on both sides are the aggressors. They are the ones trained to kill their opponents. On one side you have peasants siding with the guerrillas that hide in the mountains. On the other side you have the soldiers fighting for the country, trained to follow orders, and who also come from the same working-class background. In this way, the novel becomes a tragic drama—one in which a life of ease is denied to many, who instead endure a constant, daily struggle.

As I read the novel, I was reminded of Ulysses by James Joyce in its attention to the rhythms of a single day and the interior lives of its characters. Towards the end Mrs. Bloom becomes a principal character of the story, and her perspective is taken into account. But unlike Joyce’s work, Argueta’s novel is rooted in a very raw experience that many people live through today, the urgency of survival. This is not a story of reflection or wandering–it is a story of endurance.

The women at its center are not simply observers of life; they are its protectors, striving to shield the children in their care. Through their interactions and survival, you enter their minds briefly and experience what women endured during the civil war. The novel becomes a quiet, sorrowful symphony—revealing how ideology, myth, and conflict shape even the smallest moments of human life.

A Calendar in the Rock: Road-trip to Sedona

A Calendar in the Rock: Road-trip to Sedona

By Armando Ortiz

We left Los Angeles thinking Sedona would be good for hikes and photographs. Red rock formations. Winter light. Trails that look romantic even before you adjust the colors on your phone. 

That was the plan — make Sedona our base and branch out. On a map, everything feels close. In the desert, distance widens. Hours stretch. Roads thin out. A day can disappear behind a windshield.

So we narrowed the circle. We would stay with Sedona. Let it be enough.

We arrived the first week of January. Rain had passed through the night before, and the air carried that cold clarity that follows a desert storm. The red earth looked darker than it does in photographs. The silence did not feel empty. It felt layered.

At Palatki, cliff dwellings rest inside sandstone walls as if they grew there. Pictographs remain — figures, markings, a silhouette that held my attention longer than I expected. I found myself wondering who it represented. The not knowing felt appropriate.

But it was at the Crane Petroglyph site where something shifted. 

The ranger pointed to a series of etched markings along the cliff wall. At first they looked like many of the others — lines, shapes, fragments of intention. Then he explained that some archaeologists believe they functioned as a calendar. A way of tracking seasons. Movement. Planting cycles.

He said it plainly. Not as a grand claim. Just as possibility.

I stood there looking at the stone differently.

A calendar is not decoration. It is attention stretched across years. It is someone watching the sun closely enough to notice patterns, and patient enough to record them. It requires repetition. It requires memory.

On the walk back, we talked about it — about seasons, about how much observation it would take to live that closely with land and sky. The conversation was easy. But something in me had gone quieter. 

We use the word primitive too easily.

The ranger hadn’t argued that point directly, but the idea hovered there. Ancient becomes simple. Simple becomes inferior. Entire civilizations are reduced to survival stories.

Yet what I had just seen was study. Deliberate marking. Knowledge fixed in stone.

The next day, driving north toward Wupatki National Monument, the land widened into lava fields and open sky. In the background, the ever-present San Francisco Peaks rose like silent beings. The pueblos rise there from volcanic soil in a landscape of extremes — scorching summers, freezing winters, little water, relentless wind. Stone construction was not accidental; it was intelligent. It held heat. It endured. It answered the climate.

We admire the terraces of China and the agricultural engineering of the Inca Empire in Peru. We call those remarkable adaptations to demanding landscapes. Here too, there are traces of altered terrain and cultivated maize – signs of people working carefully with soil, shadow, and season.

At Walnut Canyon National Monument, homes carved into limestone cliffs stretch along what is now called the Island Trail. One dwelling becomes several. Several become many. What first appears isolated reveals itself as community. I imagined late afternoon settling into the canyon – smoke rising gently, hovering at the edge of the plateau, voices carrying across stone, the ordinary rhythm of preparing a meal, a child crying at a distance.

The ordinary is what endures. 

What unsettled me was not the age of these places. It was the quiet evidence of attention — architectural, agricultural, communal – embedded in them.

Sedona did not become a launching point for somewhere else. It became a place that made me slow down long enough to reconsider a word I had rarely questioned. 

We arrived looking for scenery.

We left still thinking.

Under the Shadow: Free-verse

Under the Shadow

By Armando Ortiz

Under the shadow of an absent father I grew 

and the shade of mother’s embrace gave courage. 

The stars reminded me that life is a miracle, 

and even in darkness it guides our way.

Inside passing storms 

we weather floods, 

and below the shade of trees rest our feet 

as countless stars quench our droughts.

Wine, Waves and Change: Reading Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat in Paris

 

Wine, Waves and Change: Reading Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat in Paris

By Armando Ortiz

I read John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat while traveling through France. Although I was there, his book transported me to a more familiar place. It took me back to the Central Coast of California where a crash of waves could be heard - Monterey. At one point I sat in a cafe facing the Notre Dame Cathedral as endless foreign voices drifted past, and yet I could feel that cool onshore wind.

Steinbeck introduces most of the gang of characters in the first few chapters; Danny, the indifferent property owner who inherits land from a relative; Pilon, the risk-taker always trying to get easy money– mostly for wine; and Pirate with his five dogs. Unlike his friends, he peddles bundles of wood and saves most of his earnings. He also survives by getting handouts. The money is kept safe under Danny's pillow.

Many scenes are absurd and outlandish. Reading this tragedy becomes just as enjoyable as reading Don Quixote. There is a scene that involves a vacuum. Later a Mexican soldier wanders into town having lost his wife to a captain and the gang give him a place to rest. 

Though they cheat and scheme, the gang remains loyal to each other. They seem to be characters from Don Quixote, people who go about their business, but in their doomed idealism find themselves in the midst of comic situations. The list of background characters adds more texture to Steinbeck’s story, becoming almost a representation of the painting that I stood in front of while visiting a museum.

At the Orsay Museum I found myself staring at a painting by Leon Frederic’s “Les ages de l’ouvrier” or The Ages of the Worker where a group of young homeless children are playing a game of cards. It seems as if they are gambling with each other's fate and meager earnings. 

I thought of Pilon and Danny who also risk their luck every day trying to find the easiest way to get drunk and fall asleep on a warm floor. For them — aside from Pirate — work is dishonorable.

The boy about to put down his card reminded me of Pilon who is always trying to take risks that favor him. He spends more energy, trying to think of easy ways to exploit people instead of getting a job. In stark contrast, the kid behind him holds a sack— a small and meaningful contrast that reminded me of Pirate’s honesty and willingness to work. Steinbeck’s images and emotions kept me in thought as I walked through Paris.

While walking along the Saint Martin Canal, and taking in the warm summer breeze I also saw a group of four friends across the water. They were drinking and laughing. As we reached a bridge I saw one of them plunge into the water from the top of the metal structure. People took quick glances as they ate their lunch and chatted with friends.

 Their muscles flexed as they pulled themselves up and out of the water. Their hair made them look like cholos from the 80's posted along a street in a Spanish speaking barrio. The guys passed their beer cans between them and talked loudly. 

A dog completed the pack. It would jump from the edge and eagerly chase them as they kept themselves afloat. One of them, probably its owner, pulled it up from its harness. They reminded me of Steinbeck’s characters- men who hadn’t fallen into the routine of work, rejected the accumulation of material goods, and although they led a solitary life they enjoyed each other’s company. I thought about the gang in the story, their unrestricted approach to imbibing red wine. It seemed as if time lasted forever for both the men across the canal and the men in the story.

Towards the end of the book, Danny’s homes had burned to the ground, culminating with him falling into a gulch. He’d completely squandered his inheritance and instead drank. The night of his fiesta fights break out and people get merry. Yet in his drunken stupor his fall ends in an untimely death.

The town is heartbroken and his friends are dejected. Although so close to the ocean, the town and the characters reflect the precarious relationship with nature. Just as a candle’s flame can start massive wildfires, excessive habits whether materialism or drunkenness if not controlled can lead to death. The real fire that the friends played with was excess wine. 

They find themselves without the right attire to go to the funeral, so they mourn from afar. Their rejection of common customs in order to indulge in their drunkenness comes at a cost, and like their unkept homes they have no control over the consequences of the fate that they chose. 

Nonetheless, watching the Parisian friends, and recalling the boys in the painting, I understood why Steinbeck treats their drunken camaraderie with such kindness — not as failure, but as a form of survival. Every day we take chances in the things we do, and the end can come in a flash. Yet it's with friends that we experience the best of times too, making life meaningful. Throughout my trip Steinbeck had me thinking that one doesn’t need to be versed in the best schools to appreciate those things. The memories we make should be with those that we love. Those that love us back will be there till the end, no matter how messy things might get. My trip to France blended perfectly with Steinbeck’s short novel.

Dreams from Bunker Hill: Fante's City and Mine - Book Review

Dreams from Bunker Hill: Fante’s City and Mine - Book Review

From Bunker Hill to Santa Monica: Reading Fante against my Los Angeles

By Armando Ortiz

John Fante’s Dreams from Bunker Hill tells the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer scraping by in Bunker Hill, a neighborhood once bustling with life but now remembered mostly by name. As the story unfolds, Fante paints vivid portraits of Los Angeles, making the novel a gem for anyone interested in the city’s history and character. 

The book fits within the broader, often overlooked history of the Western United States at the turn of the 20th century. Born in Colorado to Italian immigrants, Arturo grew up poor, Catholic, and keenly aware of class divisions. In Los Angeles, he briefly finds success as a writer, yet discovers that the city’s opportunities come with their own rigid hierarchies. Life moves faster, the money is better, yet the drawbacks weigh heavily.

As Arturo weaves through the labyrinth of Los Angeles, Fante describes places instantly familiar to Angelinos. Reading his passages brought back memories of my own. I thought of the Hollywood Hills– the mountains that frame the city– and of Santa Monica, where life always seemed different. Terminal Island stirred another memory: my parents driving to Long Beach so we could fish. For Arturo, it becomes a retreat for writing. His blunder of a beach trip echoes the city’s restless coastline that stretches for miles. 

From the coast, Fante takes you to the city’s core. The Olympic Auditorium, where Arturo attends a wrestling match, was also where I saw my first concert--Megadeth. In the novel, Arturo is booed out of the building. Downtown Los Angeles, too, comes alive in his story, its boulevards crowded with people searching for a meal or a deal— much as they still are today.

Fante contrasts the wealth and free-flow lifestyle of Hollywood’s elite with the lives of Arturo’s former classmates back home. Arturo is consumed by a gnawing envy, shaped by his Colorado upbringing. Although talented and successful, he feels out of place everywhere. To others, he is always too ethnic, too poor and never quite enough. His struggle with identity and belonging is deeply relatable, reflecting the tension between society’s expectations and the choices we make to shape our lives.

In the end, Fante weaves a tale that is both a meditation and portrait, capturing not only one man’s search for belonging, but also the restless pulse of Los Angeles– a rhythm still beating today.

Detroit in the '70s: Elmore Leonard's City Primeval

Detroit in the ‘70s: Elmore Leonard’s City Primeval

By Armando Ortiz.

Elmore Leonard’s City Primeval was a good read that kept me engaged with its sharp dialogue and vivid descriptions of city life. The story is a page-turner, and Leonard never bogs you down with excessive setting, dialogue or investigations details. The writing flows easily, and I found myself moving through the pages at a brisk pace. What stood out most was the glimpse it offers into Detroit in the late 70s.

The villain, Clement Mansell, and Detective Raymond Cruz are a fascinating match-up. Mansell is unchained and unpredictable, his unstable temperament making him a danger even to those closest to him. If he feels wronged or envious, he takes it out on unsuspecting victims. Cruz on the other hand, is cool and collected. He gets along well with all his colleagues and knows how to handle himself, and carries a style that is reminiscent of western cowboy heroes– complete with a weapon of choice to match. Much of the suspense comes from the two circling each other across the city, trying to predict the next move, until Cruz and his colleagues find a way to bring things to a close.

The ending left me with mixed feelings, though it ultimately fits a character with a laundry list of crimes that justified his downfall. If you enjoy sharp writing, witty dialogue,gritty cityscapes and a touch of Western flair, this novel is worth picking up. It’s a strong example of Leonard’s ability to capture lawmen and outlaws while freezing a moment in time.

L.A. Mountains Call

 

L.A. Mountain’s Call

By Armando Ortiz

I walk the adobe road, this old mountain frozen,

sagebrush and baking dust engulf me at the turn.

L.A.’s mountainous slopes like weathered lemon peels,

fade into the afternoon haze.

I disappear into clay and chaparral

A figure in an impressionist landscape.

The portrait dissolves; the fireroad opens.

Deer forage, a yucca thirsts beneath oak shade— 

this is where I eternally wander.

Butterfly shadows circle—signs warn of rattlesnakes.

Nature bustles to its own pulse.

Slithering shadows of heat

shimmer across the coastal desert.

At a junction city scents join the trail, 

leading to barren heights and spectacular views,

where past and present landmarks remain.

At the summit, a hummingbird pauses, reminding me it too belongs.

Coyotes, forever jokesters, play hide-and-seek with the past.

As I begin my descent, a school of wild quail suddenly breaks the silence.

The male perches atop a branch, wearing a black top hat.

Strange characters live up here—a diorama of memories and life.

Everything alive before my eyes,

sweaty and accomplished, I reach my car.

Tomorrow the hike will fade, my legs will ache,

but already the mountains call me back.