It's been 2 incredible years for me!...

- It's so encouraging to see the future unfurl. 
- As long as you remember it will bear no resemblance to the past.

in Downton Abbey

Quantas vezes estendi a mão e nela guardei a tua ausência?

Al Berto

I change because I get bored

Continuing my theory from this previous post, seems like this September is indeed proving me wrong and keep bringing some changes around here... Re-re-redecorating my room.

What else to come?

Harbor cottage

This is the perfect cottage to imagine:

(...) wild and romantic [Winters] with blustery walks on the dunes followed by cosy knits in front of a fire and the summers are spent with morning dips, crabbing and paddling in rock pools. Balmy evenings with bonfires on the beach and ever changing views. OK I'm getting carried away. But you get the picture! If you don't, this beautiful former General Store in Maine owned by Fiona And Tony Hooper, now renovated into a holiday home may help set the scene. Behind that door is everything a cottage should be.

in My Scandinavian Home (adapted)

Photos: designskool

People don’t like love, they like that flittery flirty feeling. They don’t love love – love is sacrificial, love is ferocious, it’s not emotive. Our culture doesn’t love love, it loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without paying anything for it. It’s ridiculous.

Matt Chandler Parsons

Water is my element

Aaaaaah, clear mind, calm heart!

Water has to be my element, as it is here that I found myself more times than I can count.

I'm sure that being born and raised near the seaside and this beautiful lagoon (Pateira) gave me this sense of belonging to the water. As much as I can admire and respect countryside, it's around water that I found my best strengths. Being around mountains always give me this sense of claustrophobia and the limits are so clear that it's as if they are an obstruction (to me), whereas looking at the sea gives this sensation of 'infinite' and "let's do this!".

But above all, Nature shouldn't be put on check anyway because beauty is actually everywhere, this is more of a selfish thing and about where you found yourself at your best...

O dia indicado para um dos meus poemas preferidos

"Vem por aqui" - dizem-me alguns com os olhos doces
Estendendo-me os braços, e seguros
De que seria bom que eu os ouvisse
Quando me dizem: "vem por aqui!"
Eu olho-os com olhos lassos,
(Há, nos olhos meus, ironias e cansaços)
E cruzo os braços,
E nunca vou por ali...

A minha glória é esta:
Criar desumanidade!
Não acompanhar ninguém.
- Que eu vivo com o mesmo sem-vontade
Com que rasguei o ventre à minha mãe

Não, não vou por aí! Só vou por onde
Me levam meus próprios passos...

Se ao que busco saber nenhum de vós responde
Por que me repetis: "vem por aqui!"?

Prefiro escorregar nos becos lamacentos,
Redemoinhar aos ventos,
Como farrapos, arrastar os pés sangrentos,
A ir por aí...

Se vim ao mundo, foi
Só para desflorar florestas virgens,
E desenhar meus próprios pés na areia inexplorada!
O mais que faço não vale nada.

Como, pois sereis vós
Que me dareis impulsos, ferramentas e coragem
Para eu derrubar os meus obstáculos?...
Corre, nas vossas veias, sangue velho dos avós,
E vós amais o que é fácil!
Eu amo o Longe e a Miragem,
Amo os abismos, as torrentes, os desertos...

Ide! Tendes estradas,
Tendes jardins, tendes canteiros,
Tendes pátria, tendes tectos,
E tendes regras, e tratados, e filósofos, e sábios...
Eu tenho a minha Loucura !
Levanto-a, como um facho, a arder na noite escura,
E sinto espuma, e sangue, e cânticos nos lábios...

Deus e o Diabo é que guiam, mais ninguém.
Todos tiveram pai, todos tiveram mãe;
Mas eu, que nunca principio nem acabo,
Nasci do amor que há entre Deus e o Diabo.

Ah, que ninguém me dê piedosas intenções!
Ninguém me peça definições!
Ninguém me diga: "vem por aqui"!
A minha vida é um vendaval que se soltou.
É uma onda que se alevantou.
É um átomo a mais que se animou...
Não sei por onde vou,
Não sei para onde vou
- Sei que não vou por aí!

"Cântico Negro", José Régio

Rustic cottage

A whitewashed country cottage on Spain's Costa Brava from artist Pepa Poch.

Photos: The Style Files

The September issue

I never felt "la rentrée", or the "back to school", or "the September issue" to be a turning point in my year and thus in my life. January, on the other hand, has always played this role: time to set up new goals or improve old ones - read here. My year is planned from January to December, that's it.

What I feel both in Spring and Fall time though it's just a moment of changing weather, mood, lifestyle; the first to bloom and the second to embrace coziness (needless to say, I choose the last one!)*.

Nonetheless, seems this September has brought some need of changes in my life - cutting hair (trust me, when a woman is ready to cut her long hair, that's a sign!), throwing stuff away, clean and all the things that make us better, more focus, more resolute, with less, much less... Proofs of it are here presented, in the form of photos, after a weekend spent gardening with my mom.

*More of Autumn days here, here and here.

Ain't no freedom here, nor there

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows?

in 1984