awesome places

i said to andrea: "perhaps God is the name we give to the immense joy and goodness of being alive"

he replied (with words to the effect) that "God has rather been seen by a lot of people over the course of history as the Great Hope in which all wrongs will be righted at the end of this sorrowful life on earth"

Yes - i surmised - everyone does see the world through their own eyes.


there is a whisper in the wind which becomes a vibrating whooosh! and i lift my eyes to see the suspended body of a Griffon vulture, only a few metres above me and already gliding towards the other side of the valley.

contact with rock - scrambling up elegantly sculpted (eroded) limestone towers.  they feels smooth and cool to the touch of my hands


i spoke to an old man in the village and found out that Santos Lugares - the place where i have been staying these past weeks - was an old moorish settlement dating from the moorish occupation of andalusia. 
it was lived in a long time ago - said the old man - much further back than i can remember.   it made me wonder if it was the moors who gave the place its name - santos lugares (holy places) - and why they might have done so.   it made me think: what makes a place holy?   does the holiness of a place reside in the mind of the beholder?
i think to regard a place as holy is to behave with reverence towards it, to be aware of its immense specialness and that there is a vast spirit astir which overwhelms you and causes you to say: wow  

perhaps if the planet earth in its entirety were considered a holy place...everyone would tread more lightly.