Short and long distances

The city is full, packed, vibrant as always. Then you step into one of its parks and you get a chance to pause, feel, take a deep breath and think again of how you wouldn´t like to be anywhere else in the whole world. Just here.

Invitation / Provocation

Weiwei´s sunflower seeds or how something that could be just beautiful grows in front of our eyes and fullfils you

Feeling good, in one´s place

The same feeling for years now, when the time comes to take the tube back to Heathrow.

Room with a view

It was these small, peaceful gardens what I loved the most when I first came to this country at 18. They are still very special, their view always comforting and welcoming me.

Every time I come back it´s as if I´ve never left. The beloved city greets me with the same smells and sounds and instantly makes me feel at home. Comforted. A place I belong, without effort. A place where everything else can stay behind, forgotten or definitely ignored. And it does, for a while.

Then, there is again that pressing need to walk, to keep walking, to pass from all the places I love or mean something to me, to take the whole city in. Because the countdown has started.

Coming soon

An injection of happiness.

One-way road

A relationship called 'friendship' is a two-way road. If it´s one-way, it should be defined as humanitarian aid.

Lux

By brazilian artist Laura Vinci. It´s absolutely beautiful when you see it. But in the photo, is seems to be gaining movement too.


At Carpe Diem, Palácio Pombal.

Kepele

I intensely thought of this movie today. It´s one of my favourites. For Nicole Kidman´s accent. For Sean Penn´s hurt look. Both submerged in their grief, alone. And far apart. Two units. As if each one carried a sign saying "don´t touch". Even when they´re looking after each other, they are "kepele" - on opposite sides of the river.

The interpreter, by Sydney Pollack

For a week only

". . . One afternoon at four o’clock we separated
for a week only. . . And then—
that week became forever."

From The Afternoon Sun, by C.P.Cavafy (transl. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

Trust

"Dazzling... Profound and urgent", was the quote from the Observer review on the cover. I was reading and reading, but I coundn´t exactly find 'my' Ian McEwan. Until I reached page 206. And there he was! Marvellous, frightful, charming, repulsive, addictive. I wanted to close the book to breath, but I couldn´t, I kept reading. I doubted him, I shouldn´t have. Sometimes we can simply trust.

Sous la pluie

Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante,
Épanouie, ravie, ruisselante
Sous la pluie
(...)
Un homme sous un porche s'abritait
Et il a crié ton nom
Barbara
Et tu as couru vers lui sous la pluie
Ruisselante ravie épanouie
Et tu t'es jetée dans ses bras
(...)

Barbara, by Jacques Prévert

The eye of Bamako

Two of my favourites, by Malick Sidibé. Couldn´t find the rest online. I love views from the back.

The antidote

"Dream", they say. "Don´t stop dreaming". But what if you listen to them and you dream the wrong dream?

To be or not to be...

To be brave or to be intelligent? Is there a way of being intelligently brave? Or bravely intelligent?

It doesn´t matter really. One way or the other, the result will be the same.

One of those things

We met by chance almost a year ago. We shared a table. An hour of interesting conversation and a genuine feeling of closeness that made a big difference in that trip and that has stayed with me. We barely know each other.

I don´t know why, but a couple of days ago I thought about that trip and about her. And then yesterday there were more references reminding me of her. So I wrote. Briefly, openly. And it seems that I did it on the right moment. She wrote back and her words felt like a hug. How do these things happen? How to explain this kind of connection and closeness with an almost stranger?

Maybe there is no need to find an explanation for everything. It´s just one of those things. I thinks it´s safe not to try to undestand and to simply enjoy it.

Shirin

The day started beautifully. The hotel looked as if it had come out of the 30s. For some reason it made me think of Tender is the Night by Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Very special atmosphere. It really felt autumn.

I have to admit that even when I am trying to avoid it, it is almost impossible not to get into a museum. And I am so glad I did. First of all, because walking through its almost empty rooms I felt peaceful. And then because I had the opportunity to see Marlene Dumas´s Against the Wall exhibition. Two of her paintings drew particularly my attention.
"Living on your knees" - A praying muslim or a humiliated palestinian?
"The sleep of reason" - Us all?

And then, meeting Shirin Ebadi. Many people were waiting to enter the auditorium and she passed among us. Tiny, looking shy, but still, I could imagine her wearing the obligatory scarf and defying in court her country´s brutal regime. Once she´s on stage, once she starts talking, she grows bigger and bigger. The expression becomes tough and determined, the voice is strong, steady. She´s and imense woman, she belongs to all of us.

Not a good photo, but all mine.

And now, putting aside, just for a while, politics, brutal regimes, human rights, brave people, culture, religion, freedom of speech, I can confess which was the other passage from her book that touched a chord. Talking about her elderly mother after voting for the first time in years:

"When we were coming out she told me: 'I wish your father was still alive.' She would rarely say that. It was her way of saying that she was feeling happy at that moment."