We set to go undivided in search of ourselves with the absolute certainty of who was born. And that condition was enough to go.
So much anger from the chains that the vessel was already whinnying against the quay for not being descendant of those who stayed. Forbidden, closed. Alive!
The sea has no Monday.
The sun is born here and sets there. Sometimes there is moon. Others it is there but can't be seen. And while i'm writing the tide goes up and down.
High tide at noon during a crescent moon!?
The moment arose in June, 2007, while unburdening by Skype about my disconsolation of having none ideas... and then it comes: to build an online platform for beach tourism!
lean over on the novelty, no maps nor schedules, excited by the feeling of liberation. The secret was in finding a wise way of enslaving the anguish of the unknown and the monster of failure.
Between this and what is to come there were five years of employments with bosses.
– Goodbye and see you never.
In February, 2012, I accidentally raise the project with the facebook page of Costa da Caparica. Until that moment, the Playocean had been a crazy summer love. One day...two days...three days...the Caparica page grows, the most curious friends join it, the family is intrigued about that vessel that never left the quay.
It is necessary to understand life: if there is a way to go, do it light. Don't tow the past to the present neither throw the fishing rod into the future. The truth is that there is little or nothing in this daily life which can be taken from here on. Experience only tells us who we were.
In June, João enters the project with the social networks. Many years ago, destiny gave us a holiday house in the same Algarve and with it, the days of eternal summer spent on the beach. Every day on the beach...the days were the beach...there wasn't enough beach for so many days nor enough sand for so many girlfriends.
We close the year with the Playocean's micro site and nearly 20 Facebook pages, one for each coastal county.
The ascendancy of the new year extends the working circle to Diogo with the responsibility of the contents.
During the impossible task of photographing all the beaches in Portugal, the major ally was the ingenuity which since the beginning distanced us from the vision of failure: with no means and moneyless the success was granted!
Gradually the family approached and took its place, although sometimes dubious. Sometimes it was flooded by fear and sunk us with fatalist omens, other times it would stretch its hand, guiding us to the next stage.
The computers may cause this mysterious idea in people's heads, to deal with what's not touchable is not easy. But in a nation used to believe in a God that they never seen, it should be much less complicated. So many people turning to the Afterlife without understanding what is Here.
June brings me a night in the hospital by the will of a migraine that was lasting already for six days. You can't even imagine the terror that is the Garcia da Orta Hospital.
In July we finally started the journey by the beaches of Portugal, from Tróia until Praia do Queimado Beach, in Sines. I did the most outstanding bicycle journey of my life, between Sines and Vila nova de Milfontes. Dropped at Praia Vasco da Gama Beach at , provisions in the backpack, liters of water and the camera around my neck. Some 70 km of heat and dunes amidst the freedom of nature that I will never forget!
August is the month that we photograph every beach of Algarve with the precious help of my family. From Vila Real de Santo António to Aljezur. At this point we are about 500 beaches away from the end.
In September we descend the Serra da Arrábida Sierra and utilize Diogo's house in Porto to bring the beaches of the north into Playocean. Nine days of running against the sunset to accomplish the maximum number of beaches before the sunlight would turn the lens useless. Nine nights of 3 sleeping hours each...Who manages to sleep with such enthusiasm?
The journey ends with a fish dish in Figueira da Foz city, at one of the terraces of that endless sand.
October is the month of our homes. Costa da Caparica is fulfilled!
Odemira county in December. There are foreign elders from Scandinavia walking on snickers and backpacks on the lost cliffs of the litoral Alentejano coastline. D-E-C-E-M-B-E-R!!! Who would say... Portugal is a country with beach tourism all year long!
We begin the new year photographing the Grande Lisboa (Oeiras, Cascais and Sintra). At Cabo da Roca the Assentiz cliffis remembered by a near fall and an old lady appears without appearing and never disappeared from our memories. We descend the vertical cliffs five times in a row, from the top until the beach, in the same day.
— Positive thinking, learn to enjoy from the impossible!
. Still with 30% of the beaches not photographed, there are no words to describe the sensation of accomplishment. We are closer of making history!
Never anyone photographed every beach of Portugal nor is known exactly how many exist and where they are hiding. Inside us settles the truth that the art is born from passion.
In October we were lucky while photographing a big part of Estremadura region from the house of a great Friend of ours, near to Ericeira town. Pedro is also an entrepreneur of his own brand of ecological clothing, the OHNO Clothing, a project of an extreme environmental consciousness.
Until the end of the year we are converted to the computers. Tuesday is the same as Sunday or Wednesday. The work starts when we get up from the bed and ends when we close our eyes. What matters the rest? Shitty body that only works fueled by food and bed...
, at Praia da Foz do Lizandro Beach we photographed the last beach of our journey, including an important chapter in the history of Portugal. The victory was as secretive as ours!
Leaning on the rocky cliff of Ericeira town the sensations speak for ourselves. We open the bottle, smoked a cigarette, the words throw themselves into the water, there is nothing to be said. No one knows what we did neither how we did it other than ourselves. It is a thing each one's soul.
We won ourselves!
I remember being a kid riding a bicycle, no hands on the bicycle handlebar, descending the pinewood slope. I remember of running to the hot waters of Algarve with the pockets full of sand... free... free... free...
During these years people tried to convert me to everything: schedules, evaluations, wages, expedients, and to a Capital of prisoners at Avenidade da Liberdade Avenue (Freedom Avenue) . Ironic, isn't it?
It occurs to me, suddenly, that the summer has become eternal. Like João and Diogo.
Ah...would the Earth be less round and the whole Sea would make sense, flat and alive in infinite perpetual spaces.
Experience taught me that there two kinds of people in the world: the ones who do and the ones who don't (generally, the last kind also doesn't allow you to do). The advise is simple, find people who do and do with them, for that is how dreams become lives. I'm proud of being one of the " Three of the Playocean", together with Simão and João.
The stages to get to the point when I'm writing these same lines weren't easy, but we are united and more alive than ever! The path is clear and the chains which bond us to the imposed slavery in this life begin the cracking that precedes the shattering. They must be broken!
We live in a castrating society of the different and where the faithful alike pilgrim the whole holy day to a life so void that makes the vacuum density look similar to the one of a black hole! (Yes, I know that the equations tend to infinite, but the metaphor seems to me gently appropriate). So many people and so many hours with the eyes staring the red lights of the front car. I want to be always the anonymous guy going in the opposite track of the road, the one that when I'm jailed in the herd and see passing by, I call "the one of the yellow lights".
The baton of time, the schedules, weeks, months and years...is a language invented by ethereal prison guards that rule people's lives assuming the form of bosses, politicians and false well intended ones. I want to be the guy which never has time because in freedom time is nothing, and in it, there are no maestros.
Concerning the employments (normally I call them "prisons with parole") that people tried to foist me, those, I broke them into sharp nails which were put in the beds of those who wanted to forcibly graft them in me! The bed where I lay down well never be of sharp nails. It will always be of peace, love and freedom. I thank the cosmos for the uncertainty that at this moment baths my life, without it, I would be completely buried in the certainties of others! Lucid and unfitting the herd, I will never say "life is ok; life is like this; I'm so and so; to have a job is great", because if it happens, then I will be already dead and the dead don't speak nor care about chains. I am Diogo.
Written by Diogo Belo
Born again
I first dived on Playocean by June 1st,2012, when I received Simão's invitation, my friend of many lives, to be part of the project in which I found my other great companion, Diogo. My eternal passion for beaches and my deep connection with the sea made me accept in that same second, my life even without knowing it had started to change...
Almost three years passed with many dreams and emotions that nearly fit this world, and part of my destiny was fulfilled... I discovered the path to reach freedom! Yes, to be free, I want to dive on a beach every day, I want sun and salt in my body, be my own master, of my choices, master of my steps and my ways, without schedules nor pre-set hours for working or having vacations, to wake up and have lunch or to sleep and have dinner.
This is the perfect and passionate world that the Playocean conveys me every day.
As said by our beloved Fernando Pessoa, Sit in the sun, abdicate and be the king of yourself
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It is very near, and not wanting to think about anything else...I'm happy!
Written by João Veiga