The new real rural world

The house in Izeda proved to be the exception that proves the rule.

Driven by that naive tendency to attribute general qualities to the Portuguese, as in other aspects of life, I had the fatal idea of buying a second home in Portugal. In a location that, from the outset, seemed idyllic. The real estate agent did her job well, and I was foolish once again. It's true that the place has charm, surrounded by nature near the banks of the Vouga River.

The problem is, there's no longer room for silence, not even for those of us who seek to escape humanity.

As has always been the case with the many homes I've bought or rented, a false ceiling hides a rotten, dilapidated structure. Understand, that's metaphorical.

When the thick fog that shrouds a different reality lifts, that's when I curse my luck for falling into the same mistakes. And pushing the boulder uphill again and again, like Sisyphus, I dream of a place that grows ever more impossible and utopian.

The rural world is becoming more and more like the urban one.

 In these remote villages with few inhabitants, there are two types of people. On one hand, there are the locals, rough, uncouth, and completely uneducated. It's normal that when someone arrives, envy takes hold of their lives, victims of what they never had, blaming you for it. Then begins a crusade to make your life a living hell and force you to leave.

 

 

Overpopulation will exponentially increase this senselessness of living as if tomorrow were our last, trampling over others; everything will end up a jumble of dissatisfaction and power struggles in which the vulnerable, as Darwin said, are doomed to extinction first. 

If anything characterizes our societies, it's that of the predator mercilessly dismembering its victim.