Taken by Zedd in Roma before I knew what a cool game Dixit was.

Dixit

See how many minutes of this you can take. It’s good for seeing how the game of Dixit is played, though.

Incredible how everything can be made into competition.

How happy I am that they are there and I am here and the people I play with laugh for different reasons and say different things and think different thoughts. (Even if the thought is: “What a stupid bunch of cards I have!”)

Home

Last March Marco moved to our home first and I followed a month later. Before I joined him, he put up the postbox and took this photo:

I printed it and put it in the kitchen to get used to my new home. At a later time, when I was already here, he added the words below, first in Italian, and then we translated them together.

“Casa. Casa non è il possesso del bene. Casa è un emozione. Casa è il posto dove vivi, casa è il luogo dove torni a riposare, dove ti senti bene, dove trovi le cose che ami, dove vivi le tue emozioni ed i tuoi ricordi. Casa è la panchina al parco del clochard, casa è il materasso, sotto ad un ponte, del barbone, casa è la baracca di chi non può comprarla o affittarla. Casa non è solo quattro mura ed un soffitto. Alcune persone hanno il cielo, a fargli da soffitto. Ma ogni sera tornano lì, a casa. Ogni giorno esco da casa e vado a fare le mie cose, lavoro, acquisti, visite ad amici. Ma ogni sera torno a casa, dove trovo la pace e il piacere di essere libero. Casa è il luogo dove posso evitare le convenzioni sociali, dove posso essere me stesso, dove ho la mia libertà di fare quello che voglio, come voglio. Casa è quello che un uomo deve dare alla propria donna. Non quattro mura ed un soffitto, ma pace, serenità, amore, gioia, emozioni, relax e libertà. Casa non è un appartamento od una villa. La mia donna merita molto più di questo, non soltanto quattro muri ed un soffitto.”

Home. Home is not just an asset. Home is an emotion. Home is the place where you live, home is the place where you return to have rest, where you feel good, where you have the things that you love, where you live your emotions and your memories. Home is the bench in the park for the clochard, home is a mattress under a bridge for a homeless, home is the shack for who has no money to buy or to rent. Home is not just four walls and a ceiling. Some people have the sky for ceiling, but every evening they return there, to their home. Every day I go away from home and I do my stuff, job, shopping, visit friends. But every evening I return home, where I can have peace and the pleasure to be free. Home is the place where I can avoid social conventions, where I can be who I am, where I have the freedom to do what I want, how I wish. Home is what a man must give to his woman. Not four walls and a ceiling, but peace, serenity, love, joy, emotions, relaxation and freedom. Home is not an apartment or a villa. My woman deserves much more than four walls and a ceiling.

And this is what we have almost a year later: our home.

Recently a package came from my other home, from sis and parents. Apart from beautiful Dixit:

 

the package included a ceramic house:

It was accompanied by the following inscription:

Photo: MM & MC (top)

which in English reads: “Happiness dwells in a friendly village… or is lurking among the future tenses… happiness lives around the first bend, around the seventh corner, under a shooting star, under the 13th rock… happiness circles around on the paths, one circle after another, and perhaps it is standing on its thin legs in front of your home right this minute.”

I think it’s important that happiness circles between homes. Because sometimes we do too. The lucky ones. We may bring luck with us but happiness we need to invite in. And build our home around it.

≈ Manja Maksimovič ≈