It’s been a while since I wrote my last blog post.
This time of year is always a bit hectic and there is only little space to think, reflect and write.
But now that most of the rush is out of the way and I start to feel I am ‘on top of the facts’ again, I can allow myself to slow down a bit, bake apple-pies (and eat them) and enjoy leisurely mornings by the kitchen window, watching the tall treetops sway elegantly outside in the wind.

It is then that my thoughts starts to drift in dreamlike motion, jumping from one memory to another, rolling backwards and then again leaping forwards in time, blending reality and fantasy into the mix of the big soup bubbling away in the cauldron called the mind.

As some of you may know, I am currently residing on the edge of the world, where Spain breaks off on itself and is battered and beaten by a relentless Atlantic Ocean, eating away at Europe’s tallest cliffs since, I don’t know, millions of years.
In fact, the stone here that make up Cabo Ortegal belongs to the world’s oldest rock exposed to the eye and the elements.
I love this landscape. It is wild, fierce and knows no mercy.
It has no agenda other than being.
The mystery never fails us here. The mist which is almost always present (many villages and places in the area are named after something to do with mist) gathers itself and flies up from the foaming waves of the sea below and then when it rises up through and over the trees on the mountain side, the flocks of translucent white fluff group together like a storm of witches on their way to a secret meeting further and deeper inside the forest, where the eye can no longer reach.
I feel at home in this landscape, because its sincerity and no-nonsense attitude gives me a deep sense of belonging to the very nature of it.
I can see beauty in many different kinds of landscapes, but to feel at home in one is something that is hard to describe with words. It goes deeper than rationality and thought. I am even inclined to say that being in a certain landscape might reach out to the very cells, bones and fibers of our ancestors before us, and that the feeling of home within such a landscape may have something to do with our ancient cells recognizing their far away past and that, as a result of that, those almost physical memories are pulled right into the present, making one feel so complete.
That state of being may well be the ultimate state of ‘mindfulness’ I would say, because of the unity of the mind and body experiencing the same thing at the same time.
Then, in such a moment, the soul really does experience a sense of ‘home’ within the big and perilous chaos that is the world. But this idea of home goes much further, or should I say, crawls back further and much smaller, than that feeling of belonging to our own natural landscape.
It is funny, because I have been thinking a lot about this idea ‘home’ lately and what it all means, and then happened to meet a fantastic author just a couple of weeks ago, whom has written on this subject herself. Reading up on some of her ideas and philosophies on the concept helped me understand my own thoughts on it better.
(A complicated way of explaining I agreed with everything she had to say about it one hundred percent..)
The home is a place in which we (should) feel safe. It is where we can pause and reflect and it is the space in which we can contain ourselves. Also it is the place from which we can expand ourselves and from which we can journey out into the world, knowing our humble nest awaits us would we need to rest again. It is a place where we can store our worldly possessions and where we gather ghost-like memories of gatherings of family and friends and of lonesome times too. A place where we can create, make and give shape to our ideas. It is a safe haven from which we can give birth to our future selves and become who we intend to be.
In my entire adult life I have not lived in one place for more than two years.
I have traveled from city to village, from country to country. The question ‘where I am from’ flusters me.
All my adult life ‘homes’ have been temporary and I always knew in advance that they would be,
never allowing my toes to reach too deep into the ground, wherever I was.
At the moment all my possessions fit into a Volvo Estate which has become more of a home than the houses I rent.
Sometimes I moved to chase adventure or out of fear I would get stuck and get bored. Other times I moved for politics and societal reasons, and there has been a time I had to move because of the destruction of wild fires.
But every time I move, I take away the opportunity for myself to make a home.
And this is in a way ironic, because it is a great desire of mine to have a place in the world that is just that, home.
I don’t mean a house, not a shelter from rain and wind, not bricks and stone with a roof on top, but a home.
However, in life sometimes one has to start small, which in my case is convenient because I happen to be the proud owner of a dollhouse. Well, I mean I have a dollhouse that currently lives in someone’s garage because I haven’t the room myself to store it.
But alas! I have a dollhouse! And conveniently enough, in a coupe of months time, I will once again find myself living in the same country as my dollhouse.
And then I will restore this wooden, house shaped construction that was once build by the hands of a stranger, back in the 1920’s.
And I will put my heart and soul into that house, papering the walls, laying it a wooden floor of lollypop sticks, sewing it lovely lace curtains and I will make it furniture; fit to scale.
I may even put a fireplace in, one that you can switch on comes the cold winter season. And of course, it will have a huge, beautiful kitchen with a big oven in which pies are baked and hearty soups and sauces bubble away on. There will be a larder full of home essentials and a big family of mice will live in this house.
I think this may well be a very good start to creating my home.
I have always been a very keen miniaturist.

(image of an antique Danish Dollhouse taken from the internet)

FIN

Thank you for reading
x P x