calmness

it always amazes me how life is transformation. i can still look back and taste and touch another mood, another feeling, another lifetime, an old tear, a kiss or a smile. and now, today, at this very moment, it's all so different. all tiny particles are balanced together in anotherness. yet, never is ever new. but everything is unique. breathing calmness in, i've been here before. and not *

o ponto

the rain is cleaning my soul :)

i've been smiling my way through the day and i bumped into this all time classic bit of wisdom

the true wise man is not the one that reads a lot but the one that puts in practice all he reads

+ +

Os olhos da mulher do homem que nos ama são indiscretos.
Inês Pedrosa, Fica comigo esta noite

things are looking for new places

camino de santiago

we walked 500 kms through beautiful and happy and ugly and tired and cranky and hungry and smiley and cold and meditative and talkative and spontaneous and full bellied and looking down at our shoes and looking up at the sky and looking deep inside ourselves and looking superficially on others and deep at others and shallowly into us and in the end... there was no end.

we hitchhiked from faro to astorga with a lovely unexpected stopover at pepe~s house in zamora :) then we walked from astorga to santiago, from santiago to finisterra, from fisnisterra to muxia. then we hitchhiked from muxia to muros, from muros to noia and from noia to padron. we had divine pimientos del padron in the oldest taverna in town. it was a magical meal. then we walked from padron to valença. right after we crossed the border we started getting lost. could be that thing this country always does to me. but the arrows did get scarce, people were uninterested and unhelpful and kyle wanted to rest. it was his birthday. we started walking to vila nova de cerveira but it made no sense to walk on the highway. there was no other path. we hitchhiked to viana do castelo after a surprise stop at a super friendly funny family. we had some amazing bolas de berlim in viana, warm from the oven at 11am. and from there we hitchhiked to coimbra and got on a bus home. home? i mean we got to lisbon. we spent an EXCELLENT week in lisbon and got home. home again? i mean we got to faro. faro was all transformed by the arrival of autumn. many birds came to populate this part of the country and the salt has been taken out of the salt lakes. it cooled down a little too, up to the point that we can actually sleep at night!! i missed autumn :) have been skipping it too often with intercontinental travel and its jumping of seasons. it's so calming and makes me look more into myself :) staying home with a warm cup of barley coffee ;)

when i got here a friend asked if i had been in the tunnel in santiago. i haven't. she said you walk on a long long looooong tunnel for about an hour. it's a tunnel under a cathedral and it's moist and dark. you walk and you walk. to move along in the tunnel you have to kneel down at times, crawl under big stones, go up and down and accept the humidity. then suddenly you reach a wall. on the wall there is a sign that says:

turn back. there is nothing you can find here that is not already inside yourself.

so somehow i have been in the tunnel too. as i'm still in the camino. searching, walking on, moving, looking, meditating. and it's beautiful to walk in the algarvian autumn.

world peace

quiet is the new loud and apparent stillness is the new movement

i'm always m o v i n g. even when apparently settling for a while here in faro, my particles float around the world, the consciousness is the size of a globe, the awareness is sharp, the perception travels, the heart beats oceans away, it travels to the top of mountains even when i walk in the lowlands of faro beach, i'm here and i'm in many other places, in a tear in the desert, flowing in the leaf of a sikkim flower, in the steam of a freshly baked french croissant, on a rug in lhasa, in some grain in the wall in barcelona, in an icelandic glaciar, in the smell of incense in a chines temple, in a pakistani heart, floating particles that make for the feeling i have when i walk here and anywhere else. stopping isn't stopping. movement has many shapes and floats in various textures. let it flow *