h a p p i n e s s

"[My guru] says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."

- Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

the things that i cannot see

warm late afternoon light

the other day i recycled all the cinema tickets i had saved since i started going to the cinema. and cinema is everything to me. having these tickets was important for all the time i kept them. i had the dates and the theater in which i had seen the film and sometimes the name of the person that went to see it with me. yet, the other day at my childhood house, in the middle of clearing up my room to move to my new house, it was important to recycle all of them. i was already taking a lot of my travel guides in the car to give them away. it felt like the perfect timing. but i thought i should keep one. so i opened the stack of cinema tickets randomly and i found the ticket for 'les temps qui changent" by andre techine. what a perfect one to keep :) catherine deneuve and gerard depardieu together again :) and a memory of a beautiful day in 2005 in lisbon going to the cinema to see this film with n. coincidentally the character in the film is called antoine, and one of the most beautiful love stories i know in lisbon also has an antonio :) and then morocco, that somehow has that late afternoon light that makes it a perfect place to look at the love of your life and see him glow * i didn't put the end of the film here because i hope a lot of people get to see it :) but the way it ends always makes me think of a friend of mine who lives up north in the cold and always chooses her lovers depending on how the universe floats around her when she's with a new man. if they try to go to the beach and it rains, she breaks up with him. if she plans a skiing trip and they get perfect snow, that might be the love of her life :) it's a way, like so many ways. for something as huge as love sometimes it helps to have a way **

* longest day of the year *

here we go again :) happy sunshine!!

casa kike

i close my eyes under the sun in faro and i am there in the middle of the costarican nature