Two days ago I was packing my bags, folding my clothes to take up the least possible space so I can take a book with me that I won’t have time to read. I was making lists of the places I need to see and crossing out a few already in my mind, as I was going to trade them for sitting in a beach café, looking at the waves, absorbing the city by osmosis, inhaling the salty air — so it can cleanse my mind and body and soul.
I am here.
I am slowing down, breathing more evenly, the journey is touching me and embracing me. I’m in Barcelona. This is the city I fell in love with and I can’t wait to embrace it and devour it bite after bite, gulp after gulp until I become the city and it becomes me. This is home for me. Not sure if the concept of home is a well-defined one, but the feeling of home is what I am feeling right now.
Travelling reminds me of how life should be.
We are moving through life in a rush, absorbed by a never-ending craving to create and consume, to do more, be more, get more, have more in order to live more, feel more, love more. We are chasing our dreams so much that each night we collapse into a dreamless, soulless sleep — not even having the time to question whether we still have our eyes on the prize or is it just the weight of the momentum that keeps us going forward.
We live and love in a routine, ticking off checkboxes, creating another mental list to follow when in doubt, we go through the same motions and we search routinely for the same kind of extraordinary — to tick off our planned out-of-the-box experience for the week.
We are moving through life in a fog that we create around ourselves, we go at such speed that the trees blur into the sky, the people we pass by becoming a colourful pattern, the events of our days and weeks become just stepping stones — leading us toward an imagined future, a dream that we painted for ourselves so long ago, that we don’t even remember why it was important in the first place…
The sea… is the ultimate inspiration for me.
So this newsletter is a short one. Themes around my natural therapy of choice, the sea, the waves, the sand, the wind.
The Sea Carries Me Home
Sit down with me, come closer. And just listen, just watch, just feel. Listen to the trickling sound of tiny ripples kissing the shore, listen to the thunder of great waves crashing on the rocks, watch all the colours, the silver, the blue, the teal, the green, the grey and black and orange. And then close your eyes and just feel it, feel its power, how it is taking you all in a huge embrace that is way bigger than you. Let yourself be carried away, now and forever. Come, sit with me, just you and me and the sea.
The things we cannot have, or cannot have completely appeal to us more than something that we have. The sense of longing, the lingering feeling of uncertainty is mesmerising and terrifying. Both a promise and a threat at the same time.
My heart belongs to the sea, this immense body of water that is older than time, the push and pull of the ebb and flow, the tidal waves of feelings that are long forgotten yet always there.
And a poem, also about the sea…
Read Seasick by clicking here.
And please, listen to this song. Frank Ocean - Swim Good. It’s really really great.
I will be home next week, getting back to my regular routine, keeping you updated about what I write and read. Until then, have a nice weekend. I’m going to sit by the sea.
Zita
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