one of the best sunrises of my life

the himalayan range seen from close to darjeeling, north india. it was definitely worth getting up at those crazy early hours to drive there. on the way back we listened to radiohead in the jeep (obrigada kyle!) and that moment still lasts. 2 weeks latter i was named bihani (sunrise) by the officer at the nepali border and that moment started living as my name too. in my second nepali name, after rita, which blows the minds of many nepalis xx

tonight i bumped into one of my old favorites :)

i always felt thankful for this film. it's always with me while i travel and love and live.

bird with no legs

is that enough of a reason to never stop traveling?

place to be

heath ledger was working on a documentary about nick drake. a few months before he died he did this:

it's amazing how magical nick drake's music is. i was obsessed with him when i was a teenager, read a couple of his biographies and went to his hometown and stared at his house for a while. there's something so strong in this guy.. it always puzzled me the intensity of his short life. same with heath ledger. every time i think of ennis del mar i get a chill down my spine. these guys help me understand there are a few people who live life in such a special and intense way that gives you this feeling they always knew they'd die young.

around 7 years ago an old yellow bus took me to my mountain to listen to the sun, smell the silence and taste the wind

i thank that moment for how much the quality of my life and of my love and of my freedom and of my happiness and of my sensations improved after it :) that moment goes on living in me, again and again and again and it never stops. and it breathes, it has so much air. that moment changed everything, the world was never the same. (gracias!)

i love jason schwartzman

COCONUT RECORDS is a solo project by jason schartzman. it's great as everything else the man does :D to me it makes me travel. you can check him out at http://www.myspace.com/coconutrecords

today is losar

:)

moving

i wish i could dance this in an empty old house falling apart but holding on to its strong structure

audrey horne

good morning

many times i clean up my space looking for stuff i don't need anymore that i give to someone else, throw away, or recycle. i never got rid of the small music box with 'hey jude' that i got in croatia from that australian guy i met in the boat from korjula island to dubrovnik x (thank you!)

be the best man you know how to be

street boner

"If you’re going to wear a t-shirt as pants, you need to be a total Diva about it and just fucking own it."
this is a great one from the streetboners archive :) check out more at http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/streetboners/

it's sunday morning again

dolls

this is still one of my favorite films. the timing for the opening in lisbon was perfect. back then i felt i was part of this film. every time i watch it it brings new things. a few times it shows me distance from memories. sometimes the opposite. and often it reminds me that memories have little to do with space so i can't have a real distance, they're much more.. they're of a different nature. maybe they're not even really memories.. dolls always has a strong impact on me, i think it will never stop being so strong x

four eyes

i saw this film in old cine 222 in lisbon and many years latter i found it for sale in a small dvd shop in hong kong. i watched it in my tiny HK room, kept it with me for some time, and then left it in the best hands possible. (obrigada! feels good to know that film is there)

gadjo dilo

in old houses i bump into old memories. today in my childhood house i started dancing a song from this great film :) i haven't seen the film for many years. but i remember how it felt to see the film the first times. i was so in love then. that sweet love of adolescence. i think my left hip remembers dancing tutti frutti. and often in isolated roads when i'm waiting for a ride or just contemplating the idea of getting one, my whole body remembers the beginning of this film xx i love how some films travel with me

2 hours of sleep

i woke up still kind of expecting the darkness of night. but the sun warmed me up and i made myself a canadian coffee (tim horton's) and noticed i was thinking of the film 'quaresma'. i feel sorry that jose alvaro morais died, it would have been a great luck to see what else he had to say. but it's amazing that he has done such a film before his death. ... can i relate 'quaresma' with canadian coffee? hmm.. in quaresma beatriz batarda is always trapped in these places and situations where she has no space and she needs the wind and the open horizons to find peace. and canada has that, there's space and there's an attitude that makes you feel you can enjoy it, use it, explore it, and where you can simply be. it's peaceful in that way that it's not oppressing you and then you don't feel trapped or out of breath xx you can always drive and drive and drive and you will be driving through spacious landscape where you could run if you could run freely

there aren't enough hal hartley fans out there

i love thursdays

before bed

lost in translation before traveling to my dreams

:)

xx x

strangers again

here's one of my favorite books. i finished reading it in kulusuk, in east greenland. and i often travel back to it, i walk in venice and i feel the love they felt in morning coffees in italy. today i was walking in the morning and felt the book in me. i don't know anyone who writes about love and everything around it as well as ian mcewan. when love is not glamorous nor shinny and it doesn't make people feel happy all the time. it's love, with everything it brings, in its complexity and immensity and with all it brings and it takes away. ian mcewan somehow captures all of its sides. the day i finished reading the book in kulusuk i got a love letter delivered to me by snow mobile. it came from far away, from another land with good morning coffee (obrigada!)

strangers

this one is so many things xx

at different times of my life, at different days, different times of the day, different places, different moods, with different people, in different aloneness, with or without rain, in different light, closer or further away from the ocean, with more or less space...

sexy pink wig

as scarlett johansson can sometimes be a bit annoying.. i was trying to think of the things i like the most about her :) and i love her singing karaoke in tokyo

looking for wabi sabi

this bit of 'lost in translation' sums up the last chapter i've read of my wabi sabi book. wabi sabi is everywhere, we just have to find it, to name it, to enjoy it. flower arranging is wabi sabi, just like the tea ceremony. they value impermanence, simplicity and imperfection.

lost in translation

killing

i loved this film. i know i should have been disturbed but i remember sitting in the chair and feeling comfortable. the strangeness of claire denis' films gives me a special feeling of comfort x

for my sailor

sailors are like boats, they're not made to be in the harbor xx (and i think the boat is beautiful there high up in the snow)

seasons

this song has the power to move everything inside me. and it's just what i wanted to hear while the seasons change. i can't help being excited with the passing of the seasons. it's so beautiful. the trees change, the days are warmer, there is much less water around us, the smells are new, the light hits the city in a completely different way and the nights are sweeter, softer. suddenly nothing is the same anymore as spring is almost here. i had forgotten how seasons change. and it's truly special.

falling asleep to sweet tunes

i can't sleep

i miss b. when he died and i could hardly listen to music i played this on repeat and i think days went by with this on.

at the end of the weekend

:)

onion planet

i had been reading about onions recently and today i was laying in the sun and i suddenly thought of onions again. onions have many layers and the more external ones protect the layers underneath them. when you have an onion around the house for a long time you see the outside layers go bad but the inside layers are still intact. and i thought that maybe the earth could be like that. and maybe we could just peel off the first two or three layers of our planet and underneath there would be layers in good shape.

persian saying

'you have to bake the bread when the oven is hot'

i could have learned this in some glamorous way but it was actually very banal, i was just at the post office and the queue was huge so i checked a book with bits of wisdom from around the world and i found this bit here

i can see this a million times more

thinking about life

i don't know about you but i love mia farrow

changing

it feels like everything changed today. and i can't say what it was. maybe it's just the wabi sabi being acknowledged. it's definitely imperfect and impermanent and incomplete and there's such a humble beauty in that

a trip to a magical place

i think living in iceland made me live better with some things that some people try to keep away from their lives. like elves and other little people and other things that we try not to look at because they may seem odd in the eyes of lots of people around us. so many of those things are just accepted and part of life in iceland. so it's not strange to count on support from a ghost or to make some city planning considering the best interests of the elves. i didn't go to iceland by accident. and i really fitted the place. it was magical. everyday there was magical, and it still is.

half full glass

the glass is definitely half full. always half full. but still sometimes i don't feel like drinking it.

well, i love the guy

leonard cohen

what a great interview :) you have to love a man who wanted to change his name to september :D and who thinks everyone who is not in love should be divorced xx

seu jorge

from hot summer afternoons in barcelona

8 months

so much has changed since i came to lisbon in the beginning of last june. today i took a moment to look at that. it's been 8 months. to me that's a long time as i can't remember the last time i had been anywhere for 8 months. we see babies learning new things day by day, making new movements and new facial expressions, their smell changing, the hair growing, the smile getting more and more expressive and gaining new skills by the minute. we see them being able to say more things, to think differently, to feel in new ways. we see them quickly changing. and of course it's not just babies, it's all of us. in 8 months we can learn so much xx

kunming, china

a place i miss almost everyday :)

in hong kong

the market in hoi an, vietnam

those ladies were a hard bargain! they made my mornings so happy on my trips to the market :) and so did the old lady selling sticky rice and coconut candy :D

dragonfruits from vietnam

i could eat those everyday, such a sexy fruit xx

train to myitkyina, burma

this has been the most uncomfortable train ride of my life. foreigners are not allowed on the train. but i really wanted to go, so i bribed the guy selling tickets and i got on trying to be discrete (hard to be discrete in burma as there aren's many non burmese around...)the ride lasted almost 2 days. i could hardly sleep on those wooden benches and i was so hungry. as a foreigner not allowed on the train i was also not allowed to leave the train and go buy food. i tried twice and twice i was taken back to the train by police officers. i survived because a nice army guy offered me bananas and candy through the window. and an army pin i still have with me. during the 2 days i had 2 kids sleeping on my lap, drooling all over me.

the very small part of me that misses london

it's just so beautiful

from my favorite egoyan

when i first saw this film love felt so strange. and it felt strange to feel strange. and sarah polley gave comfort :) in that amazing egoyanian ambiance, in that film that keeps unfolding its layers to me today.

exotica

i think i was 17 when i first saw this film. it puzzled me then. still puzzles me now. it made me a fan of sarah polley and atom egoyan forever.

one of my favorite dance scenes ever

what is that word?

at some point in my life laurence ferreira barbosa caught exactly what i felt in her films. specially with 'les gens normaux n'ont rien d'exceptionel' and 'j'ai horreur de l'amour'. she's on to a new film now :)

late august, early september

i can watch this film again and again and again and again and again. and i do. it's the only film i remember playing on repeat while doing other stuff around the house. i feel comfortable in it

Comme Au Cinema

irma vep

luna

it's been many years of listening to luna, who i discovered through olivier assayas' films. one day i left my friends in paris to drive to toulouse so i could hear assayas speak at the little cinema next to my house. i wanted to ask him something about luna and tell him how 'irma vep' made me feel the first time i saw it. i crossed france in my little white car under a huge storm and got to the little cinema in toulouse to find out assayas had canceled it because of a SNCF strike. but i got to watch one more of his films. and i never stopped listening to luna.

for a piece of heaven

this is definitely the best place i know for pies :) i recommend the raspberry and rhubarb pie and the apple crumble - yum! the coffee is also quite good and if you smile at the waiter you get whipped cream for free ;)

http://www.wandaspieinthesky.com/

my raspberry nights

i feel comfortable in the texture of wong kar wai's films. they help me accept there is no home, nothing to go back to. in 'my blueberry nights' jude law talks about the keys he has in his cafe. how they don't open the doors they used to open. it's strange to hold many keys that don't open what they used to open. it makes me see the importance of the moment in which they open something special. the day i turned 31 i got a perfect raspberry and rhubarb pie from wanda's at kensington market in toronto. it could have been blueberry but i prefer the color of raspberries. these are my raspberry nights. i try to remember not to let those special moments pass me by. later on even if i still hold the key and if it still opens a door, what i want to find might not be there anymore.