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Green, said the younger woman who sat cross-legged on the small wooden porch, her eyes closed.

Good, said the older one from a rocking chair beside her. But try harder.

The girl went deeper into whatever focus she was attempting. Squinting with already-closed eyes.

Brown.

There you go.

The old house was painted purple, vintage 1800s. Across the street, another one selling crystals, five for twenty bucks. I had just walked past a psychic in training, trying to guess the eye color of someone she had never met. Not an everyday occurrence. But an everyday occurrence indeed in Cassadaga, Florida, an actual town of psychics, where I had stopped after graduating from UNC (shout out Tar Heels) before setting out across the country to move to California.

I wasn't a big believer in psychics. But it was a long road trip, she'd record the reading, something to do.

My suspicions were confirmed later when I listened back and caught her interchanging "You can always go home" and "You can't go home again" at different points in the reading. Like she was hedging against her own prophecy.

Worth the ten bucks.

I thought about that recording when I returned from Medellín to Los Angeles… back to my once-home, Hollywood, where I hadn't been in over seven years.

As it turned out, both were true.

First impressions are like dreams. If you don't record them, you forget them. They are often wrong, but wrong in the way of innocence. And more often than not, they contain a certain fragile beauty.

I went to Ralphs. Not the Gelsons… the regular one, where The Dude abides. Got the same weekly shop I get in Colombia: chicken, vegetables, coffee, a watermelon. At home that order runs about fifty dollars, delivered to my door. At Ralphs it was a hundred and eighty-one dollars. Nothing fancy. No booze. No specialty items. Just the basics.

I hiked up to the Hollywood Sign the next morning. On the trail, many people on phones, doing business, by themselves. Three coyotes materialized on the path. Two together, one alone. The lone one was eating popcorn. If that isn't the most LA thing I have ever seen, I don't know what is. Maybe his name is Wiley.

I tried to pay cash somewhere. Nope. Cashless now. I said buenas to a stranger in line out of sheer habit, a white on white buenas, and she looked at me like I'd asked for directions to Mars.

Signs everywhere explaining the social contract: this gated fortress is not a public space (duh, I’d skewer myself climbing that), dog poop destroys the landsacape, thanks for the tip LA.

I think what that singer meant from “breaking my mind” was how easily the song Signs get stuck in your head.

Fifteen percent as the floor on a coffee, the screen rotating toward you, the pause.

And everywhere you go, people talking about the music business or the movie business. Two guys on the trail, a distribution deal. That's a real thing about LA that doesn't get said enough. You absorb the industry just by being there. Osmosis. You can't replicate it anywhere else.

I love LA. And I love Medellín, Colombia. I don't think it's possible to love two people at once. But it's okay to love two cities.

Something wonderful about traveling is the return. Not the return to your own bed and coffee grinder (though those carry their own comfort) but the return to a place you once knew completely. You get to make first impressions for the second time. The familiar has a slight sparkle, a slight wear, a newness underneath the recognition.

The psychic in Cassadaga couldn't decide which version was true. I think she was right both times. You can go home. And you can't. The place is the same and you are not, and that gap, the distance between who left and who returned, is the whole education.

I'm writing this from Medellín. I flew back three days ago. I'll be here until I'm not, and then the impressions will start again, fragile and probably wrong, and worth every one.

🇵🇹 Portugal — Citizenship timeline just doubled to 10 years for most applicants under the new nationality law, and with AIMA's processing backlog running 2+ years, new Golden Visa investors are realistically looking at 12 years to an EU passport.

🇬🇷 Greece — Digital Nomad Visa went fully operational this week, offering 2-year renewable stays at €3,500/month — plus a flat 7% tax on foreign pension income, making it one of Europe's better retirement plays right now.

🇹🇭 Thailand — Cut visa-free entry from 60 to 30 days for 93 countries in May, effectively making the Destination Thailand Visa the only legal route for anyone planning a real long-term stay.

🇧🇬 Bulgaria — Now Schengen and euro-zone, its Golden Visa offers immediate EU permanent residency through a €512k fund investment with zero physical presence required — flying under the radar.

🇮🇩 Indonesia — Processing delays hitting the E33G remote work visa this week following anti-corruption investigations; add extra lead time if you're applying.

🇺🇸 U.S. EB-5 — A pause on immigrant visas, an adjustment-of-status crackdown, and a September grandfathering deadline are converging at once — narrow window to act.

🌍 EU (Broader) — Brussels is now openly discussing suspending visa-free Schengen access for Caribbean citizenship-by-investment countries, which could hit anyone using a St. Kitts or Dominica passport for European travel.

Check your target country’s official immigration page for exact income thresholds and application windows. They move quickly.

Another fellow recently moved to California. Different neighborhood, slightly different tax bracket. More likely to see Oprah at the market than me.

Spare is the memoir nobody in the palace wanted written, which is exactly what makes it worth reading. The title comes from the old aristocratic logic of "heir and a spare": two sons to secure the inheritance, the older one born toward a throne, the younger one born toward what, exactly. That's the real question underneath the whole book. William had his purpose handed to him at birth. Harry had something rarer and harder: freedom, of a kind, but no script for what to do with it.

Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Harry was the carefree one. The happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He joined the British Army at twenty-one. Two combat tours to Afghanistan followed. There were the Vegas photos, strip pool at the Wynn, international front pages, and a surprisingly unbothered response from Charles. Tame, honestly, compared to what I've seen. There was Frogmore Cottage, gifted by the Queen, later revoked after the book came out.

And came out it did, to quickly become the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time, proving the royal engine is working on all cylinders. No wonder Meghan wants her quince quiche candles in there.

The marriage to Meghan, the decision to leave, and then the Queen's death. Harry learned of it mid-flight, via the BBC website after a text from Meghan. That detail alone tells you everything about where things stood.

People were furious at him for writing this. That fury is the review. In 407 pages he never quite questions the institutions he belongs to, even as he catalogs what they cost him, which is, maybe, the most human thing about it. He's not a revolutionary. He's a younger brother who needed to be heard, and who had the means and eventually the courage to say it out loud.

He is the Spare. California suits him.

I recommend the audio version as Harry reads it himself.

I wouldn't trade my life with anyone's. Not a prince's, not a Pitt's. Javier Bardem, on the other hand. I think I would. The man is perfect, again, as Max Cady in the new Apple TV+ series, executive produced by Scorsese himself (and someone new hotshot named Spielberg). Short fellow. Enormous eyebrows.

The aggressive, Italian-style opening credits alone signal someone is taking this seriously.

I was skeptical. You don't easily improve on De Niro's Cady, which is one of the great screen villains, tattooed, scripture-quoting, coming for a lawyer who buried evidence that might have kept him out of prison. The monster was invited in. Bardem's Cady is slower, stranger, more patient than De Niro's. Less of a shipwrecking storm, more of a tide coming in.

Both versions understand the same thing Scorsese understood when he made the original: that the monster was invited in. Bowden buried evidence that might have kept Cady out of prison. The lawyer is not innocent. That moral complication is what makes this story worth returning to, apparently across generations.

Amy Adams is eye-opening as a sailor-mouthed, other half of an attorney power couple.

I watched this with my brother my first week back in LA. Behind me on the shelf sat the De Niro DVD box set (a gift from attending his 2003 AFI lifetime achievement award), always turned to the Cape Fear side, as if De Niro's Cady from 1991 had a sightline to the television. Watching to see if Bardem's Cady could pull it off.

I think he was entertained. I think he approved.

Ten episodes, weekly through July. Watch the '91 first if you haven't.

If something in here stayed with you, pass it on. The right essay finds the right person. Help it along.

See you next week. Don’t Escape. Design.

Ask Birdbrain GPT (Powered by Yours Truly, Rio)

Rio is a hummingbird who's been everywhere and trusts almost nothing he reads online. Ask him about visas, nomad life, or whatever the travel blogs are getting wrong this week.