clint is just GREAT!

when he walks and talks and thinks and moves and feels and breaths he carries so much with him. it's like his 79 years of life have accumulated an incredible amount of wisdom and emotional strength that comes out of his pores and you feel it at the theater when watching his films. i think that's why they always move me so much. they often make me cry but its' not really of sadness, it's the emotional charge. gran torino has been shaking emotions inside me for almost a week. it's such a great film. and the song he co-wrote is really beautiful. check it out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MItMDkc343M&feature=related

hadn't heard this in a really long time

oh no!

i knew this day would come but i didn't want it to happen... today i opened my KRAFT peanut butter jar and noticed it's just about to end :( oh man! and i can't get more in lisbon :o/ well, maybe in the more multicultural algarve... they definitely have skippy down there so maybe i'm lucky and they stored on KRAFT's too... funny how this hit me about as hard as my doctor telling me i probably need another surgery done to my knee. but hey, it's THE best of all KRAFT's products :D and it makes for many happy moments in my life!

i adore this version

loOoOove

ang lee

andre was looking for this film the other day. i have it on vhs (an old vhs tape with that beautiful size and shape and smell and sound and amazing feel to it) but i can't find the tape. and it's funny how easy it was to get a clip from youtube.
i love ang lee. i remember how this film revolved my world when i was a teenager. i love how the kid explains his love for maths :) ang lee has that special way to touch love, to explore that deep level of sharing between two people.. and i love the way he uncovers people's insecurities and what they do to turn them into security. there's also always this feeling that there is no place to go back to, there's no returning, there's no home. and at any moment things can just change to something completely different. he's great at showing how strangeness feels comfortable. his films touch a special part of me, even in my skin i feel them in different parts than the tissues or the in between tissues that other directors touch

some quotes by ang lee:
"Everywhere can be home and everywhere is not really home and you have to deal with loneliness and alienation. I'm old enough to realize that eventually you have to deal with loneliness, anyway. I'm happily married, I love my children, but eventually you have to deal with yourself. I trust the elusive world created by movies more than anything else. I'm very happy when I'm making a movie."

"Nothing stands still. That's important in my movies. People want to believe in something, want to hang on to something to get security and want to trust each other. But things change. Given enough time, nothing stands still."

"Every movie I make. That's my hideout, the place I don't quite understand, but feel most at home."

"I think I find something new in each culture after being away for a bit, and that's creatively important. You can't move forward without changing, and that's why I try to stay open to new perspectives. I want to keep learning. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can never learn enough."

so beautiful

xx

i like the world best when the world is shocking me. if i was indifferent i'd be worried. life revolves so much, there are always new things, so many old things becoming new, hundreds of love letters and so many smiles and so many memories of smiles. puddles of tears and buckets of sad memories. thousands of places to go to and zillions of places where i've already been and some that i've gone back to. time is always moving, sometimes in slow motion, other times too quickly and only a few magical times moving not too fast and not too slowly. lately in my dreams there's a green man who offers me white ice creams and then disappears. all too quickly before i have time to tell him the only white ice cream i like is pineapple ice cream.

hahahahahaaaaa

one more sunday

zenning

a friend just told me "there are so many ways to meditate". you just need to find your own and call it whatever you want, or don't call it anything, just do it, just let it happen. maybe you don't even need to find your own way, let it find you xx i think meditation is natural if we don't block it out of our lives so just let it float **

if you could go anywhere where would you go?

happy weekend!

it's funny that our time is organized in weeks like it is. after 5 'weekdays' we have 2 days that make up for the 'weekend'. it could be so many different things. maybe simply days? a day after the other? x

equinox

today spring starts in the northern hemisphere :) as if by magic the day has the same duration as the night xx it's a good time for detox, whatever it is you want to detox from ;) for some reason the coming of spring made me want to listen to mana, the band that made the soundtrack of my first months in the southern hemisphere 8 years ago. down there fall is starting and soon in my argentinean mountain the river will turn into mud. i was listening to mana when francisco showed me that love could also mean freedom. it still puzzles me today, but he was right x the equinox is also a great time to start a new journey, whatever that is. so, happy travels!

mount everest

hiking up to everest base camp is one of the things that has made me the happiest in life so far :) it made me happy then and it makes me happy every time i think about it xx it's an amazing place in the planet! i knew i wanted to walk there one day and once i really got there on that full moon day i got an eerie feeling that i could die and i'd be happy... then j disappeared in the mountain and i though 'what the hell am i thinking of?...' it was odd to feel someone i had just met a few days before could have just died like that... the sherpas were not so supportive on our night searches telling me my friend had died... and i was really really happy to see him get back to BC in the morning :) his peaceful smile sleeping that morning is still with me and that moment still makes me think a lot. anyway, i camped up there, but there is a great place to stay at base camp - it's called hotel california :D and if you stay there i can promise you'll have some great chats with tenzin ;) he read my fortune with regular playing cards but i can't quite remember the revelations... hotel california is also a great place to eat and it has good music! i hope everyone at EBC is alright... but that's somehow unlikely (thanks j, great trek!)

naked

in the last 3 weeks or so i feel things are happening with the sort of intensity of mike leigh's 'naked'. it's not about particularly great events or anything like that. it's thoughts and feelings and conversations and lots of unseen things and some intense energy that surpasses me and it's about enjoying the passage of time :) life's funny with thousands of things constantly happening at the same time and everything always feeling so intense xx apparently it will never cease to be like this. we only get to choose what to do with it (we do, don't we?)

bom dia

another great canadian :)

this one is for kyle

kyle left florida last monday on a really cute bike and he's headed to mexico :) it's a crazy trip that fits the character riding the bike, the dude with the funny hair ;) covering his pretty curls he has a great hat that used to be my mum's :) look here if you want to check how the trip goes http://bloguverse888.blogspot.com/

sri lanka

i've been missing my meditation master from sri lanka. i loved how simple it was for him to answer my doubts about life. the days at the monastery were simple and marked by the sound of the little bell calling us for the group meditations. we ate little and that made me enjoy the food more. the silence made me particularly enjoy every time i spoke and pay more attention to conversations. the monsoon made me enjoy dryness. (and nothing made me enjoy leeches!) xx without ever trying to understand why i wanted to go do that retreat in kandy, i left it happy with the changes i felt in me. and when i miss that place it's not a painful thing, i just try to enjoy the memories and put in practice the things i learned there. most of them don't come out in words - maybe because they happened in silence

thinking of things

entre dos fotos siempre hay un gran misterio

walked home thinking of jose luis guerin. womem we don't know. possible destinies. ghosts of people we cross in the streets. time that escapes.

everything is the same even if it's different

i always think this song is perfect :)

(thanks p for showing it to me!) xx every moment in life makes up for what we live, brief or very very long, light or heavy, sunny or foggy, dry or rainy or snowy, slow or fast, pretty or not, perfect or not, windy or calm, happy or tearful... it's all in us xx and lifesaving moments... are too much to say in words. so are the moments of nonlifesaving x

§§§

dolls

every time i walk down the street humming this i'm thinking of the guy who wanted so much to be close to this singer that when she had her accident and got blind from one eye he stabbed his own eyes with a pair of scissors so she would accept to see him and then at last they started spending time together

we do what we need to be free

tibet

check out some of the 10th of march demonstrations around the world http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/march-10-2009-roundup-of-global-protests/

sea star

i know at least one person out there thinks of me when he hears this xx (i wonder if the sea is all that far away from the sky?)

annapurna trek, nepal

this was the first day of a trek that everyone said should take a minimum of 14 days but me and kyle finished in 11 :) and that's because i was sick in the 2 first days ;) but while i was sick my canadian sherpa carried my backpack (obrigada kyle!). if you ever do this trek keep in mind that the price of carlsberg goes up with the altitude... so enjoy a few cheap cold ones in those first villages x

we passed the places where we were supposed to meet the maoists and there was no sign of them because they all went to the huge maoist demonstration in kathmandu (it was really impressive to see so many people going to kthmd on trucks and buses holding their red flags!)

as we went above the 3500m line everything got really dry (the crossing of that line always awakes something in me. i feel so welcome on that lunar side of the planet)

the bridges were great!!

sleeping above 5.000m was fun :) the guy who was looking after the hostel was dizzy & drunk and he was very happy to have company. he was a great cook! plus he gave us free hot chocolate and free pancakes :) all we needed after the prices had inflated so much with the altitude...

we had to make it to the 5614m pass and we made it in style - we all had toblerone and coffee at the top ;)

a few more arid days.. and no sight of the so promised apple pie :( bad timing, as the season had just just ended!

things got greener again :) it feels great to get back down to a place with more humidity where things grow and water flows

great trek! i want to go back to do it with snow :) and possibly to do it in a month and spend much more time in the villages. and to get that apple pie! and to check if the kids are still going 'what's up dude?!' like kyle told then :) haha

mid afternoon

namaste

i've been in a kings of convenience mood today :) maybe because i got a phone call from a friend from calcutta i hadn't talked to in 2 years and he talked to me like it had been a week or so (thanks vicky!)

the seasons again

it's getting so much warmer in lisbon :) usually when i'm somewhere hot i flew there, took a bus, train, boat or a lift. now i'm in the same place and it's just getting warmer. i didn't move, the weather just changes while i'm in the same spot. i had the twisted impression that seasons changed as i went to different places. it's really beautiful to stay in the same city and feel the winter unfold into spring xx

what is there to know?

50 years

today is the 50th anniversary of the 1959 lhasa uprising when the dalai lama had to flee tibet. it's also 1 year since the brave demonstrations in lhasa and around tibet and the amazing support all across the world.

:)

the new album will be out really soon!

i love nellie

that's nellie :) i remember falling in love with her in london and learning to live inside her and sometimes hating the constrictions that came with that and sometimes loving the freedom nellie gave me and other times just laying back and feeling so lucky to be able to experience that poetic nellie lifestyle :) after a long trip from london to marrakesh and back nellie saved my life at the car accident on the 11th of november 2007. she got too damaged so she'll never run free again. me and kyle said goodbye to her close to castelo branco and left her next to a bunch of other old cars that didn't have much use anymore. nellie was great :) she was a dodge spacevan 2000 and she had a great personality. everywhere me and kyle went on her people waved at us and came around to see her, she was a star!

the fish with the color of tangerine for good fortune and the pirate because piracy is not just stealing but stealing with an ideology ;) we left the fish spreading good fortune over the A23! the pirate made it to cascais :)

perfect ramadan days at plage des nations. reading, playing beach tennis, writing, walking, swimming, eating harira, playing gin rummy, watching the russian radio pole, hoping for some waves to come so that kyle could surf, looking at kids doing mortal jumps in the sand, letting time unfold x

the sun sets everyday. it's that simple

this was a great place to stop and spend the night and read 'one thousand plateaus' in the early hours

there's something about arid places.. like the skin feels the aliveness of the mineral

one day i felt i needed to go back to my classes in london and we headed north again

le tourbillon de la vie

schartzman is the man :)

a love letter away

namtso lake, 4718m, tibet

i think this is the highest lake in the world. i saw the most beautiful sky of my life up there. i remember being cold at night and SO HAPPY. there was a swiss guy going around the lake in 3 months or something. i wonder if he went on and is still walking around in circles following that different perspective of things one has high up in all that beauty. the monastery was beautiful, the company was magical, the conversation on parents and places and love is remembered, n traveled there inside me, the beds were tiny and uncomfortable, the roof was unstable, and the sky is still with me. perfect! (except for j getting altitude sickness!)

:)

morning in my childhood house

another sunny sunday morning

palermo shooting

it had been a really long time since a film fitted me like this one. making things go full circle. amazing film.

happy weekend :)

for b

b's voice was amazing. it made me smile all around the world. he might have been slightly out of tune singing, but i don't think so because he was a perfect greek god. i'm lucky to always hear this song with his voice, his direct straightforward honest caring and beautiful voice xx

morning

i had a nightmare at 4.29am and couldn't really sleep after that. but nick drake always puts me back on track :)

old photos i found in cascais :)

that's from my kindergarten in cascais, balao vermelho (red balloon)

my favorite tricycle of all times :)

in dreamland already then...

playing cinema star by the swimming pool in gerez (north portugal)

me and catarina with our favorite ice creams :D

and having corn flakes for breakfast in the algarve

another musical love

i'll never forget hearing this song for the first time in vila nova de milfontes :) as i'll never forget hearing it on the tape i got from carcavelos' andre back in 1996 (obrigada andre!) :) and hearing it daily in the car on trips to and from my university :) and out dancing with cat&dan&ang (obrigada girls!) :) and outside of a bookshop in buenos aires on my first week in south america :) and on an mp3 player in hong kong (dank je arthur!) and on my birthdays at incognito xx and in my head so many times in so many places... :) :) :)

elemental

i first heard the pixies when i was 14. just a little bit before radiohead. it was the summer of 92. life was changing so much at that time, everything was quickly turning into something else. the pixies and radiohead entered my life and stayed in it forever becoming the longest lasting musical loves of my life :)

not for all the tea in china

good morning

:):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

powertrio

tonight i went to see powertrio live. funny how that was just what i needed. a sort of spontaneous musical hug at the end of the day. at some point i thought of all the energy moving from everyone in the room with their happinesses and their frustrations and their joys and their tears and their sorrows and how that energy was all being rearranged, swept in the air by the spontaneous music to fall in a new place entirely, changed, transformed. and it made me think of the passage of time. the last time i had seen them play i was in a totally different place in my life. and the music made really different things to me. but it always feels so comfortable in its sensitivity. parts of the concert are still echoing in me, they're traveling around, moving unseen things. it was a really beautiful concert. check them out at http://www.myspace.com/powertrio3

x x

many years ago i went to see bonnie prince billy live in brussels (obrigada catarina!). i didn't know him before and i was blown away by the concert - definitely one of the best in my life :)

:)

sunset in kulusuk, greenland

iceland from above

the tiny airplane from saudarkrokur (my village) to reykjavik was a fragile looking thing that took up 15 people and shook and shook and shooook but apparently it was quite safe :) each trip was really beautiful and i saw the seasons change from above :) on one of the trips south to rvk i left my favorite gloves on the magazines compartment in front of me. i had bought them in la paz, bolivia, and they had lots of alpaca fur and i used to feel like a little bear when i wore them. i wonder if they are still traveling up and down in iceland **

valle del ingles, torres del paine, patagonia

there had been 6 days of trekking before getting there :) 6 really beautiful days :) as soon as we sat down there was a huge avalanche in the mountain right in front of us. the sound was amazing! at the valle del ingles you have a perfect view 360 degrees around you :) you can spin and spin and spin around and it's always gorgeous. but then you need to get going because you're still far from the next hut ;)

(if, like me, you have been impressed by old traveler tales in patagonia with those strong men braving south in terrible weather conditions but very determined to make their way and reach the beautiful land of patagonia... then you'll love this place! to get there you have to have stepped the steps of some great writers and travelers from back in the day, and it feels great!)

-45 degrees in roros, norway

(photo by n, obrigada!))

memories

brutal

com o empurraozinho do blog http://principerealaoentardecer.blogspot.com

my favorite london lunch

out of the good things in london this restaurant was one of my favorite things :D and the company was always great :) (obrigada a! for showing it to me that time i was in london on my way to india&burma)

this time tomorrow

according to burmese signs i'm a 'guinea pig', which makes sensitivity be my best virtue and makes me empathize with the difficulties of others. it also makes me have a restless nature and dislike being tied to any situation. i can relate with all of these things. but today i'm really happy to be tied to this 'being in lisbon' situation. for about 9 months i've known that tomorrow i'll be in lisbon. i'm really not used to knowing that. in the last 11 years or so i've been much more used to not knowing where i'd be the next day. but now that i am here and that i know where the next day is going to be... i like it :) all those years traveling it never occurred to me i would like being in a place for a long time again. i would probably not have liked it then because i really needed to travel. but now that i haven't traveled much in 9 entire months i realize that is not even true because i can travel so much staying in the same place. there are things i only seem to feel if i'm in one place for some time. and i had forgotten that. it's funny, i get so much from traveling that i never payed much attention to what i was missing out on by doing it. and there is so much. in the last weeks i started having memory flashbacks and i think it has to do with being in lisbon all these months, something that i can only access by not moving around the globe much. so many parts of me don't really function when i move from one place to another quickly. of course other parts don't work when i stay in lisbon long. the trick is probably to find the balance, the biggest challenge for everything xx being a 'guinea pig' and having a restless nature i change my mind quickly so who knows how long this peaceful lisbon mood will last. but right now i'm really happy i ended up in lisbon to have my knee operated forcing me to stop for a while. and as i do with everything else, i'm trying to make the most of it :) who knows what will come next?

look at them :)

traveling

can you travel a very long distance and end up feeling the same?

from arizona dream

coffee and cigarettes

oh the 80's

good morning london

i'm craving the croissants from the broca cafe in brockley. i wish i could go for coffee and read my book till i got distracted with some story from the neighbors x

things that are not there. or are they?

i went to sleep thinking of films without image and films without sound. and how things that are not there can be there anyway. isn't the beauty of life our imagination? is anything really there? so i woke up thinking of one of the most brilliant scenes in cinema

orwell

tonight i ended up thinking of orwell. it happens a lot. i wish everyone would read 'burmese days'. when i finished reading it i was already on the boat to katha where the book takes place. i spent hours sitting at the hospital where orwell recovered from dengue fever and somehow gained more awareness of the dimension of fascism and the disguised role of the british empire, all that is behind the great image of the railway system, the hospitals and the schools. for hours i stared at the tennis courts in the old 'english club' from the book. i felt i could hear the tennis balls running from one side to the other while i could see things more and more clear as the yellow balls went by. 'burmese days' is a really beautiful book that changes the lives of people who read it. because once you get it there's no way back out of it. it was hard traveling burma with a penguin copy on my backpack knowing the book was banned in the country. it feels odd to have the freedom to read it while the people sitting next to you on the bus don't have it. at times i felt like an orwellian character, knowing the importance of being aware of things that don't really make me happy but make me informed.
it's great to read the book in a printed copy but if you don't have the chance here's an online version:
http://www.george-orwell.org/Burmese_Days/index.html