Home(land)

Gate after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me. Innumerable beadles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks; the treasure-house was being made secure for another night.

Virginia Woolf

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Maya Angelou

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

Jane Austen

Nature is a haunted house–but Art–is a house that tries to be haunted.

Emily Dickinson

No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it’s this world or nothing. That’s a very powerful perception.

Carl Sagan

The home should be the treasure chest of living.

Le Corbusier

_{^{Photos: Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

Publicité

Ode to my Mother

Reprise

You are the roots of the most beautiful tree
The branches and the fallen leaves too
Your inconditional love
Heals our deepest wounds
And your long arms
Wrap us in an endless hug
Beyond distance and time
You go through harsh winters
Always with a smile
And hot summers
Are way less brighter
Than your inner light
That keeps shining
No matter what.

_{Filipa Moreira da Cruz}

_{^{Photos : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

Feeling the blue

Reprise

A certain blue enters your soul.

Henri Matisse

Something happens, blue thinks, and then it goes on happening forever. It can never be changed, can never be otherwise.

Paul Auster

_{^{Photo : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions.

Yves Klein

Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Carl Sagan

Unrooted

Reprise

_{^{Photo : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

I have traveled all over the world
Always free as a bird
No house, no family, no friends
What for?
I don’t need them anymore
So I thought…
I just listened to my ego
How selfish I was!
I have been everywhere
But I don’t have a place to call home
I have lost my faith and my balance
I feel foreign in my own country
I don’t belong to anyone
Not even to myself
My wings are heavy
My soul is empty
My eyes are dull
My body is sore
Without you
I’m unrooted.

_{Filipa Moreira da Cruz}

On my way home

_{^{Photo : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

On my way home I’m on demand
I see the rainbow in the sky
The red crab is dancing
In the golden sand

On my way home I have time
To enjoy the beautiful landscape
And I cannot believe
Mother nature has blessed me

On my way home I just breathe
The salted water on my hair
The seaweed cracking below my feet
The sky changes in a blink

On my way home I forget my pain
My eyes are craving for a miracle
Suddenly, the bush of the old tree
Is waving me again

On my way home I feel free.

_{Filipa Moreira da Cruz}

Home

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

Confucius

The home should be the treasure chest of living.

Le Corbusier

The longest road out is the shortest road home.

Irish Proverb

My home…It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.

Michel de Montaigne

Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.

N.K. Jemisin

One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.

Mark Twain

_{^{Photos : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

Far away from home

Reprise

I wish I could turn back time
When everything was pretty and simple
Stop all the watches of the world
I beg you!
So I can jump off the train
And miss the plane
Just to stay with the people
That still know my name.

^{Filipa Moreira da Cruz}

^{_{Photos : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

Shadows

Before going to school
Before taking the bus to work
Before the town awakens
Before all the noise and fuss
Before the warm sun heats me
Before the waves swallow the sand
Before the seals fly over the coast
Before the moon kisses the sun
Before the shadows dissipate
Before the whole day takes me
I’m enjoying the silence.

_{Filipa Moreira da Cruz}

^{_{Photos : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

Keep the faith

_{^{Photo : Filipa Moreira da Cruz}}

For the past twenty years I missed births, engagements, weddings, birthdays…
That’s part of the package of living away from our own country.
I don’t regret my choices.
Wandering around the world has given me so much!
And I love all the countries where I’ve lived so far.
Little did I know that the worst was yet to come.
2020 was a dreadful year for many different reasons.
Unfortunately, 2021 has been a tough one too.
And what can I say about 2022?
When we all thought that the nightmare was behind us this cruel war broke out.
It’s all a matter of seconds.
Oil, gas and cereals too.
While this mad man tries to regain the lost(?) empire
The rest of the world is obsessed with the rise of the prices for essential goods.
As if money were more important than a human life.
I think God is challenging us.
Everything happens for a reason.
So they say…
I often miss my family and friends but now is different.
The guilt keeps chasing me.
I should be there.
Lately, my life is a frame of suppositions.
A puzzle of missing pieces.
And time is my most feared enemy.
I’ll get there, eventually.

_{Filipa Moreira da Cruz}

The yellow house

Reprise

_{^{Photo : Paul Laurent Bressin}}

Everytime she was feeling blue
She thought of good old times in the yellow house
When winters were cold and bitter
She kept dreaming of the yellow house
If she was scared of something
She thought she was in the yellow house
Whenever she missed her loved ones
She looked at the pictures of the yellow house
If life was too hard on her
She snapped her fingers and pretended she was in the yellow house
In case the moon wouldn’t show up
She would think of the bright yellow wall that covered her house
The one where she was born, got married, gave birth and buried her husband
The house that welcomed her family, friends, pets and memories
All her life remains in the silence of the yellow house
« One day I will go back », she often said
But days became weeks and the weeks became months
Months turned into years and then…
Her hair went grey and her bones shrank
She got sick, she knew her time had come
When she saw the angel opening his arms
She closed her eyes and whispered
« Please, take me home to my yellow house. »

_{Filipa Moreira da Cruz}