I write this first post directly from London. I have just arrived an hour ago, and I haven’t yet had time to find a corner to call “home” in this new city. So, before I root myself here, I want to share a place from my old home in Brazil

This place is in Bangu, a neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. Its name is a Tupi indigenous word that means “surrounded by mountains”. Bangu is famous for two extremes: its unbearable heat, among the highest in the country, and its closeness to the largest urban forest in the world (we have no beaches here). Living in the suburbs, I grew up with both: the ordinary rhythm of small urban life and, at the same time, the constant presence of nature.

Inside my condominium, there is a bench facing an abandoned party hall. When I was little, that hall was alive. It hosted birthdays, weddings, barbecues—the everyday celebrations of Brazilian life. It stood in its glory for many years, more than twenty. But as time passed, it was left behind. It became dark, almost sinister, filled with broken bottles, trash, and the traces of people who no longer belonged there. It became a place unsafe for children, families, or joy.

From that bench, I witnessed its slow transformation. First, it seemed like pure loss. But then, I began to see the gaze of nature upon it—a gaze of opportunity, of patience. Year after year, the hall was reclaimed. The walls cracked, and trees forced their way through. Plants split the asphalt, not only because the asphalt was weak, but because the plants themselves were strong. Their leaves thickened, their bark hardened, their roots deepened, their seeds multiplied. Butterflies arrived, in orange, black, and yellow. Birds nested. Cats prowled. Chickens started visiting from our neighbor’s yard. A ruined hall became a shelter, a garden, a small ecosystem of resilience.

What amazes me is that when I was a child, the hall only seemed alive in the presence of humans—in the noise, the music, the movement. Today, it shines in silence, in birdsong, in the wind through the trees that refreshes the Bangu’s heat. The sounds I hear now are not of parties, but of roosters, chickens, and countless birds whose voices overlap until it is impossible to distinguish one from another. And each time I sit on that bench, I notice something new: another flower, another nest, another sign that life never stops rewriting itself.

From that bench, I feel suspended between past and future. Nature shows me that what we humans discard, she reinvents. Where we see ruin, she sees renewal. She invests not in endings, but in beginnings. And it makes me reflect: while humans often exhaust a place until it loses all use, nature insists on revitalization, recycling, and retransformation.

I hope to find the unexpected ways life flourishes even in the most unlikely places now in London.

— This text was automatically translated from Portuguese to better express my feelings but may not fully be clear in each sentence.