This week’s song: Anthony Phillips – To the lighthouse

You can listen to it here, on grooveshark :) The song is taken from the album “Field Day” (2005). More about Anthony Phillips, here. His music is truly wonderful so do make the time to check him out.

I am going away tomorrow! I am leaving for Austria to spend one more amazing week in this mindblowingly awesome school, Lernwerkstatt Pottenbrunn, that I have yet to find the words to talk about. Maybe because it was SO good, and so life changing, that I selfishly want to keep the experience solely to myself. Just for a little while longer… :) After that, I am off to the States and I will catch up with you, and with the blogging, from the other side! :)

Fun times and joyous days to you all!

Roxi

Inspirational Tues: Journey

The best journeys answer questions that in the beginning you didn’t even think to ask.

Author unknown

Guys, I’ll be gone as well this week and I’ve been super busy so we’re taking a break from Happy Monday (keep posting/sending me your suggestions though!) but I have found this quote that  fits perfectly with the beginning of my trip and with Inspirational Tuesday series.

I hope all our trips, whether small or big, keep pushing us beyond our limits, expanding our horizons, stretching our beliefs, and yes, helping us realize things that we would not have had the chance otherwise.

May you all be merry and full of light!

Roxi

Understanding

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Source for this quote found here – The Human Mind section: What is the Meaning of Life?

Destination

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way in seeing things.

Henry Miller

San Francisco, California. August, 2008

View from St. George’s Castle, Lisbon

View from Sao Jorge’s (Saint George’s) Castle, Lisbon, Portugal. August, 2007

Overlooking the Tagus River, Lisbon, Portugal. August, 2007.

Lisbon is such an amazing city! rich in culture and history, with all its influences displayed, layers upon layers, on its grand architecture, it’s so wonderful to visit and the view over the city, from Saint George’s Castle, breathtaking!

Take a look at it here!

Journeys…

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. (……)

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves – that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

Alain de Botton, “The Art of Travel”, 2002.

Blessed

Blessed is this day, because everything is as it should be and it is not in any other way different than what it already is. The sun came up, with the same force and shone on everyone. Good and bad alike, whether we saw it or not.

Blessed are all the things that can’t be changed. They all have their place and meaning, on this earth, this lifetime. Even though we do not know it.

Blessed are the oranges and all the fruits of life and the moments of solitude, for that is when we learn that we are strong. And blessed are the ones who hurt us, for they show us our own freedom.

Blessed are all our travels, wanderings, journeys and lost roads…for they always return us to ourselves.

Blessed is the hope and the faith for we can accomplish nothing without them, even though they are frail and unsubstantial; they hold the miracles of life in their hands.

Blessed is this worm that only squirms the earth once, blessed is the futility of our everyday lives, blessed am I and you, in spite of all our faults and nothingness…

Home

It’s strange to be back home. Especially if you have lived and grown somewhere else, in a different  reality. Everything’s the same and everything’s changed. You recognize it because it’s written within you but still, you find it small(er) and to a certain degree, unfitting. 

View over the Somes River, Gherla, Romania. Late October, 2010

Venice

I miss Venice out of the sudden.

I want to visit it again, in a short weekend, hoping on a train and entering it by the sea. I want to walk barefoot on its stony and scrambled, ancient and minuscule streets. Then find shelter in a strange church to collect my thoughts and listen to the sound of silence. To wonder at all its sights, and smells and people. To get lost but still know that I am not.

Photos taken in August, 2007.

Green

Near Lernwerkstatt school, Potenbrunn, Sankt Polten, Austria. October, 2010.

Can you tell I miss the spring?