my rooms

I went back to Portugal for 2 weeks, to Lisbon, my home town, the place where I don't have a home anymore. In 2 weeks I stayed in 6 different rooms. One of them used to be my room once. It was my room until I made 22 years old. It seems to me it was a long time ago. Today is a sort of storage room. There's some of my stuff there too: music CD's, films, clothes. The rest doesn't belong to me, definitively it's not my room anymore. I felt out of place, without being able to work or even rest. I read that after a long flight trip we loose 500% of concentration capacity. It must be true. It's such a shock for your body! The jet lag was killing me. My little nephew asked me 'why are you so tired? 'cause you're not used to here?'



Hopefully I was always close to the ocean. I was missing so much the ocean. The smell, the brise, the waves. It is so amazing how we get used to things like that. How we need them to feel good, how they are part of our identity. I missed so much to see the sky line, to feel the infinite, to see so far, just be there staring at the blue. A friend borrow me a house right in front of the sea. Beautiful and cozy house. We spend the weekend resting and looking at the sea, walking on the sand, cooking, things like that. We lived closed by once. We lived in so many different houses already. We were joking about that. So many places we passed by saying 'look, our house!'



Then on Sunday my car broke on the middle of the road. Nothing we could do. The car had to be taken away. No car for 3 days. Lisbon again. Twice in a small, nice hostel in the same neighborhood we used to live. Going to the same coffee shop, same supermarket... the sense of being in a familiar place but in a different time, with the small changes time brings.



I also stayed in a children's room, the 8 years old boy of a good friend. Before he went to bed he draw my portait and gave it to me, after making me an 'interview' about special effects in film while we had dinner. In another day, in a different friend's house I slept in the living room, she bought a zen mattress for me, so sweet. The house is quite new and I was the first person sleeping there.

Then another trip. Just drive over the country side close to the water is such a great experience, such a sense of freedom. The 6 months I was living in Philadelphia I never drove, I never went to the country side, I never saw the ocean. This time we just went on, no plans, just be on the road. Without finding a place to stay for the night, we decided to sleep in the car. It was a cold and humid night and we weren't prepared for that. But to be able to see the raising sun worth that. In the early morning we went to the beach and spend all day there swimming and sleeping on the sun.



A great portuguese writer, one of my favorites - Fernando Pessoa - used to say 'Language is my home'. Yes I was feeling that way. Even if I was wondering around, homeless, trying to find a place for my-self... in some way I felt a weird sense of belonging. To speak the same language brings you a sort of security that you can not feel anywhere else. There, I'm not the foreigner, there I am not 'the Portuguese girl', I just am me.