I realise I haven’t written anything here lately. My notebook is full of daily notes though. Over time my relationship to this space has changed. But some things I want to re-start again. Just like writing, freely.
Continue reading “Distance Between Two Bodies”Drawing
I remember I used to draw a lot. It didn’t matter where I was standing, if it was raining or if it was freezing, most importantly, what mattered to me was that I drew my best.
Continue reading “Drawing”M
Two years ago, I spent my birthday on the other side of the world. Bogota was the farthest city in the world for me. It took a 35 hour journey for me to get there.
That day, we walked in a garden and looked at flowers. When I was 12, I thought that when you turned 30 – a person becomes this “fuller size” of human — someone more actualized, or someone completely complete. But now that I am here, in this time, I realise that “completeness” is not a one time thing or a destination to arrive at. Perhaps we are always, and have always been complete, evolving everyday, into something new.
Mga Kaibigan (Friends)
I take a lot of photographs but it often takes me months before I see them again after the moment of taking. I mostly photograph people around me. I used to think that I would have a life as a photographer but right now, that’s not the life I have. Today I found these photographs of a trip I took in April 2019 with my friends.
Continue reading “Mga Kaibigan (Friends)”A Tiny Box
In March 2017, Marta, a former teacher of mine arrived in Lisbon. She had been to Colombia and told me that my friend Anna sent a package for me.
When I had met Marta, she handed me a tiny woven box, that fit in my palm. In it was a note and a pair of flower earrings. In the note Anna wrote to me how the earrings, I am inheriting from her, and the box, used to be a storage for her fallen tooth when she was a kid. Now, it travelled all the way to Lisbon for me, carrying the note, the earrings and the scent of flowers from her yard in Bogota.Continue reading “A Tiny Box”
About today
“For the tender flower — I think of you. So far away. Where ever you are.”
Many months ago, the biggest fear I had, were no match for the realities of today. These days, in the time of difficulty, in the face of a New Corona Virus, taking away those we love, and putting us all to the test, I realise more than ever, how we cannot win if we are not together as one. As long as someone in the world is in peril, no one will be safe. So, although we are told to be distant, it does not mean we should be shut off. In a contagion, all must be healed. We must find a way to re-think the systems already in place, and see how we can become more inclusive, and build security for each other. Especially because things like this may happen again.
I think of all of the people I love who are far away, and all the people I will never know.
Being Here
Sometimes, I catch myself wondering how I got here. So many plans I had made, that lead me somewhere else. It’s as if I built my plans as destinations when they were really steps toward where I was supposed to end up.Continue reading “Being Here”
Open Eyes
I arrived in Taipei in the night.Continue reading “Open Eyes”
Swimming in the Sea
When she was pregnant with my sister, she travelled on a boat with our father to go to an island a couple of hours away. Continue reading “Swimming in the Sea”
On the Road
On the road. I don’t remember to where.
A Curve in the Sky
I left Lisbon almost suddenly. My lease was up in a week, and my internship at Terratreme had just finished. Winter was leaving. I knew it because I began to sweat profusely during my bike rides to work – that never happens in the winter. In winter, I’d bike in the biting cold morning. Eventually I felt the skin on my face break because the cold made it dry. I continued biking anyway, without moisturiser, I thought I was invincible, but a couple of weeks later when my skin broke, I had to buy some finally. Continue reading “A Curve in the Sky”
From Home
This time a year ago, we graduated from our masters. It was a very swift two weeks moving from a DocNomad, to just Nomad. In the last week of our course, we all flew to Brussels for our graduation. I remember that week in Brussels so well, so much that I feel like not much has changed since then. But here we are– it has been a year! I had forgotten that I took my trusty film camera with me along for the ride, I got some prints done yesterday and to my surprise, found a roll of celluloid immortalising the last months of our masters.Continue reading “From Home”
The Last Years
If I never again encounter a period of life such as this one, Continue reading “The Last Years”
The Start of Lines
I have developed a habit of drawing lately. It all began one day when I was at a miradouro and saw two friends talking with the city as their backdrop. It reminded me so much of my friends who would hang out with me on the roof of our home to watch the sunset. And the ease of the conversation brought back an ease I had experienced some time before.Continue reading “The Start of Lines”
A Portrait of Anna
I met Anna two years ago, sometime in September 2015. She had knowledge of the discount tickets that you can purchase so you can go to Caiscais for an unlimited amount of trips for a week. I think it was a summer treat program. We became really good friends after that, until now.
This photograph was in the summer, in 2017. After our program had ended and we had decided to gather as many times as we can before we all flew to our next destinations — a destination that we will not share. It was summer, then, in the two ‘then’s that I describe.
As the sun start to set later and later, and the sunlight gets stronger and stronger, I realise that soon, it will be summer again. I wonder how many more Annas will I meet, Annas with knowledge of discount tickets that can bring you to Caiscais for an unlimited amount of instances within a period of 7 days.
VENICE DE CASTRO ATIENZA 