Eight Years Later — Infinity and Belonging

This is the story of how I landed in England in 2017 — not knowing that the body, the face, and expression would find a new rhythm here.

✧ This piece was originally published by McSill Media.
✧ The original version, in Portuguese, is available here.

What follows is the full version in English.

I landed in England on 15 October 2017.
I didn’t know where I would live; I could barely speak English.
Yet something inside whispered that this was the beginning of a greater journey.
My ticket, by chance, placed me in first class - as if destiny were winking.
Only later did I notice: 15-10-2017 adds up to 8 - the number of infinity. I came for four months.
Eight years have passed. Born in the 80s, the 8 has always followed me.

The first week I spent in London, attending an English course and living with a host family.
Then, through a study-and-work programme, I was sent to Oxfordshire - a small village deep in the countryside.
Four months became a year.
Later, I moved to Brighton, but that first encounter with rural England marked me forever.

The countryside here is alive. In spring, daffodils and rapeseed fields turn everything bright yellow.
In summer, the wheat glows gold against green hills.
In autumn, trees burn in reds and golds, leaves carpeting the lanes like living rugs.
Even ladybirds and spiders seem gentler.
And in winter, the trees stand bare - branches drawn against the grey sky, mist softening the horizon, silence whole.

England feels like a fairy tale. The houses, the gardens, the villages - all look as if built to hold stories.
No wonder so many writers were born here: the land itself tells them.

This year, on the weekend after my birthday, I went to Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, by the Thames.
A town of elegant Victorian houses, where swans glide along the river like figures in a painting.
A gift from a friend: a wooden cabin, number 8. Eight again. No internet, only silence and birdsong.
The river flowed, the houses dreamt, people moved slowly. I couldn’t stop taking photographs.
Everything seemed touched by grace.

I went alone. Years before, my birthday had been a whirlwind of friends and noise.
This time, solitude.
But a good solitude.
In that cabin, I found myself again. It felt like 2017 - when I first arrived, not knowing what awaited me.
In Marlow, too, I had no plan.
And I rediscovered the countryside that had once been so new to me. The old enchantment returned - and with it, the urge to write again.

I’ve never felt like a typical emigrant.
At first, I looked for Portuguese people, but it didn’t make sense.
Today, I hardly know any. My circle is English; my life is English. I’ve given myself fully to this culture.
People always ask, “Where are you from?” I say, Portuguese.

But when I go to Portugal and someone says, “You’re going home,” I answer, “My home is here. That’s my hometown.”

At the end of 2021, I came across a Scottish twenty-pound note full of 8s in its serial number and kept it as a talisman.
The note carried the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II - who, almost a year later, would pass away on the 8th of September, 2022.
The day itself was another eight.
I remember holding that note and thinking how infinity, once again, seemed to whisper through numbers and faces.

Months later, when an English artist I admire was raising funds for a long-term treatment, I knew I had to give him that note, tucked inside a letter I handed him myself.

This year, 2025, I took part in a music video by the same artist. In the dressing room, the token for my belongings read number 8.
Coincidence? Perhaps.
I prefer to believe it was infinity, winking again.

Eight years later, I’ve learned that belonging is not geography - it’s breath.
Portugal is my origin, but here, on this island, I breathe fully. Perhaps that’s what infinity truly is: not closing cycles, but opening space to be reborn.

Days after finishing this text, I was looking for a pair of trainers. Among hundreds of listings, one caught my eye - black, with the number 8 stitched on the back. Nike Air Uptempo. Eight again. I smiled. Infinity, sometimes, likes to play.

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It was along this path of listening and belonging — to time, to silence, to land, to self — that Face Dance was born.

The practice I now share began here: in a body that didn’t yet know how to express itself, but already sensed that gesture would come first.

The face became an extension of that: a place where memory moves and presence breathes.

This story is mine — but it’s also for all who dance between worlds.

Categories: : MemoryinMotion