As the shades of night descend overhead toward the Portugese horizon, one of my favorite quotes comes to mind. It is by an American author, Richard Ford, and I have to look it up again just to make sure I am quoting it perfectly. A slight change to his elegant use of language might undermine it, and that would be a terrific sin. It is on the concept of 'home'.

‘Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses. Those are pungent things, and vivid. Even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.'

I sit on the soft grass and listen to the crickets warming up for their evening sonnet. The distant sounds of someone playing flamenco on an acoustic guitar drifts across the warm air, and I wonder whether the sound of the crickets is spurring the player on. Perhaps it is the other way around.

I stop my idle thoughts and look down at the sketch cradled in my lap. The sun is casting a glorious viel across the harbour, adding beauty to the image I am attempting to recreate on paper. I must hurry, though. I have watched the sunset from my vantage point above the harbour every evening for the last two weeks, and know from experience that this natural splendour lasts only a few minutes each day. These are my final few hours in Portugal. My plane leaves at midnight. Once the night envelopes the village I will not be able to see what I am drawing.

"Don't rush. Better incomplete than of poor quality," comes a soft whisper by my ear. I feel Kaitlin's breathe on my neck and my hand reaches behind me, grasping hers.

"I wish I didn't have to leave," I sigh heavily, fighting back the urge to cry. "This feels like my home."

She senses my desperation and holds me closer.

"Look across the harbour," she says in her soft, very feminine portugese accent. I do so. The ethereal glow had disappeared over the horizon, along with all hope, signalling the countdown to midnight.

"Whenever you see this view, whenever you feel the warmth of a setting sun, you will be here, with me."

I feel anger. I feel like battling against the authorities who have ended my Visa, battling the airline that promises to take me away. Fighting anything that threatens all that I love.

"But I'll never see this view again! I'll never be able to come back here and see you, or teach English to the kids." My fists are clenched.

"Shhhh," she whispers, knowing that her soft voice will relax me, "I promise you will see this view again."

"But..."

"Shhh, come to me."

We embrace as the sun finally disappears and make love on the grass until the time comes for me to leave... but that is a detail I am not willing to share. These memories fade and I am sitting at my computer, reflecting on the photo that Kaitlin took with her digital camera and sent to me via email. It is the exact view I had tried to sketch almost three years ago. A photo that reminds me, as she promised, of the time we shared and of my spiritual home, my 'designated turf'.

A photo with the texture of a portugese kiss.

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