to be the sun

a woomba womba woomba womba woomba womba woomba womba we were singing while we were cleaning the toilets and then matthieu was walking around the kitchen strumming the four stringed guitar with a beatific smile on his face and juliette and i began to dance and that is when the feeling of joy came.
and after a shower i ran to the park i don't mind if i have barefeet and only a t-shirt and it is cold i have the green grass beneath my feet and the joy of running the joy of a beating heart
la joie de vivre
la joie de la joie
la joie de quoi
la joie du paix
the joy of being
the joy of being simple
the joy of simplicity
the simplicity of joy
Beauty in simplicity
the joy of language
the joy of creating
the joy of colours
the joy of music
the joy of fyuzik
the joy of invented words

the joy of the grass beneath one's feet


"You have the most beautiful eyes i have seen"

"no, Your eyes are the most beautiful"

mmm     Beauty


i said:  sensorial pleasures are like the icing on the cake of existential joy
rachel said:  i have to write that down



the woman who stopped and gave me a lift when i was hitchhiking to Taizé radiated happiness and warmth   she made me think of the woman of african way-back origin called papa in the novel The Shack.   when her companion said:  today is a grey day.  there is no sun  she, always smiling and radiating, said: moi je suis le soleil.





and it was true

ben rinnes

other people

the times when i fail to understand other people

are when i think that everybody is roughly the same as me,
- think in the same way as i do,
have had the same experiences as i have had

the factory

now that i am about to leave the factory there is a bubbling sensation inside me.  it is like bubbling boiling water, so full of energy that it cannot stay still.

i did not know what to expect when i went into the factory.   i wanted to always keep my heart held high.  often it was a baffling place to be.   billy shouted across to me one day "cheer up min, its nae that bad!"  part of me smiled at the appropriateness of the gregariousness of that comment coming from a glaswegian, but another part of me had to give a forced smile.  i could not give a fully natural smile because i was too baffled inside.

the bafflement arose from spending six hours each day with people i had never spent time with before, getting to know what it felt like to be with them and realising the limitations of communication between us.

my vision of humanity changed, became larger, more aligned with a certain portion of reality, less only focused on the positive exchanges of travelling always looking for friendliness.
before i thought:   "we humans can share quite a lot of things"
or at least: "we can share a few things",

or "at the very least we can share a smile"

a smile can communicate all that is most worthwhile communicating between people.

also eyes,
eyes can communicate all that is most worthwhile communicating between people.


it made me think of the essential inscrutability of people.
i thought:  this person would smile if they were able to...
something is preventing them from smiling
i cannot understand what that something is
but i must accept it.
i must accept that there are forces operating among people which take away their smiles.
a smile is a symbol.

being happy may be the goal here on this planet among all people,
but it is not the reality.

reality: i must accept you, confounding though you are.

at break time i love to go to the shower room and there have a shower in the dark.  away from the bright factory lights.  the water becomes hot and flows over my body.  i do not know where the water comes from because it is dark.  it is so eager to splash all over me.  pure refreshing water.   away from the hundreds of eyes of the factoy, surveying eyes, shooting darting flashing glances.

afterwards i can go back into the factory with my heart held high.

in the factory, the white coats we wear are like straight jackets; we are not free.
we are humans - nothing can stop us being humans; but part of our humanness has been taken away - we are not free.  the blue headnets we wear are symbols of our anonymousness, the protective gloves are to make us aseptic - we do not have real contact with the world.  
we are humans, but we pretend that we are not humans by behaving like cogs in a machine. 

in the canteen, before the shift begins, i sit and read a book.
andrew the pole always comes with a coffee and sits at my table and we always nod and say hello to each other.  
one day i look up from my book and find him looking at me with a steady calm gaze.  i return the same gaze     for several seconds    i say to myself i will not be the one to look away.   then he looks away and i return to my book with a smile.
one day he asks what i am reading.  it is anna karenina.   he tells me he studied it at school.   i love to read.  he says so does he.  
another day he tells me that three times he has seen the rolling stones play live, and once the kinks, but never pink floyd.
the next day i tell him i ask him what his favourite rolling stone song is.  i tell him i was trying to play "you can't always get what you want" on the guitar.  i hum the refrain in case his memory needs jogged:

   you can't always get what you want....
   but if you try sometimes
   you might find
   you get what you need....  ahhhhh, yeah

it is difficult to hum those words dispassionately, with mick jagger's passion in my head.
one day i ask him how long he has been away from poland.   he outlines his life to me.  he was a farmer for ten years.  he says he had to return to the city or his house would be reposessed by the government.  he builds momentum and tells me that for many years there was no freedom in poland.  he expands and talks about russia, about poland being the buffer between europe and sovietic russia.   he talks about the past and about napoleon.   occasionally i say something, even if it is only to comment that i know very little about history, but i realise that he is not curious about whatever i might say, he wants to tell me things; it is my role is to listen.   all the time his faded old blue eyes fix me directly, but however directly he fixes them, there is a distance, a distance of old age, of time, a lifetime, which veils over his desire to say things in this anonymous factory place.

anna karenina engrossed me and made the fifty minute bus journey fly by.  i did not know that a novel could be so well written.   the whole imaginative eight hundred pages flow like real life - one event arising spontaneously and flowing into the next, not like a lot of fiction where you know that the events did not really happen but are the product of the author's imagination.    it is a human novel.   events in the world are described, but the central theme is the human experience.   the personal psychological experience of each person, and also interactions between people.  a great deal of interaction is wordless.    one may think certain things have been communicated by reviewing the sum of the words spoken, but underpinning them, undergirding them, the solid base of every act of communication upon which an embellishment of words is constructed, is a feeling.   a shared feeling.  a pure, profound wordless interaction of presences. 
expressed and manifested much better through eyes or smiles or lack of smiles or half-smiles or an infinity of different types of half-smiles than by words.
tolstoy drew my attention to all this.  he wrote a sweeping novel which is a reflection of real life in all its majesty and absurdity, in all the little obsessions and worries and joys of all the characters.    most people see the world with a certain particular personalised worldview, and most authors communicate their worldview through what they write.   tolstoy struck me with his ability to enter fully into each character and describe the widely varying worldviews of each one.
he seems to have no overarching message beyond simply presenting the reality of humanity, in the form of a novel.   he documents our great capacity to love, the greatness of our capacity to love, as well as unapologetically documenting our capacity for cruelty; the poverty of the human condition, the poor, misguided, unaware souls that we are.

jack works taking the loaded crates out of the factory and one day he walked past me and said: life doesn't get any better than this.
i liked his comment that the central theme of life is its goodness and i liked his irony in suggesting that working in the factory was the pinnacle of the goodness of life.
i said cheerfully to him:  it is good to see someone cheerful
and he replied:  well, its either that or greet
and i liked to hear the local dialect word greet, which means cry


one day i find myself sitting next to a young woman on the bus and before i open my book she asks me "are you not going to read your book today?"  i say "i like to look at the sea here before we turn inland at portgordon"   she says yes i like to look at the sea too.
the conversation never flags until the factory and i realise that reading a book is only one way of losing track of time on a bus. 
conversing with a person is like reading a book.
one learns things.
her name is stella which means star in italian she is from bulgaria.  she says that she would love to work with children one day. children are so honest.  they mostly do not dissimulate.  they mostly do not hide things.  i say "it would be good if that openness and honesty was maintained all the way through adulthood"
communication is good when it is honest and an attempt is not made to hide things.

one day i am working next to antonio and i tell him that i learned a bit of portuguese when i was in brazil.  another day i am working next to him and i say "how do you say ..... in portuguese?" and "how do you say that in portuguese?"  and antonio becomes animated and ends up talking away talking away to me in portuguese. gradually the words start coming back and it feels so good, so empowering to have the ability to communicate through knowledge of such words.

the portuguese are among the friendliest factory staff.  anna maria works for quality control and when she learns that i speak some portuguese she encourages me, each day coming to me and saying bom dia carson como estas?  
one day she described me one day as timid and i asked her: do you think i am timid?  she said: .....introspective.   most young men your age are loud and want to show off; you are quiet and content to observe everyone. 

it is true, the air in the factory is thick with egos.

the air buzzes with machinery, each person is a buzzing ego.
when it is time to clock off, everyone crowds round watching the clock.
suddenly everyone writhes into action, pushing and shoving, trying to be first to clock off and get out of the factory, like some sort of frolicksome wild stampede, bubbling like boiling water.

one can't take this world too seriously
   but at the same time
you can take this world too seriously.


being alive is a poetic experience.


working at that factory has cast my hours of non-working freedom into sharp relief.   being a free agent in the world is replete with possibilities.   i realise the significance of everything.   even the significance of the action of a drop of water falling into a puddle of water in the garden,
especially a drop of water falling into water.
 
first the droplet forms on the edge of the gutter.  
it morphs  
and becomes detached    it is momentarily airborne, travelling downwards through space, pulled down by an invisible force, travelling through time or with time or accompanied by time.   enveloped in time, everything is enveloped in time

the drop
and the plop

a glutinous, ponderous, joyous plop.   joyful because of its richness and fullness.

a symbol of life

water
movement
a plop



there were lots of apples and bars of chocolate and it was a little sore on my belly to lean inside and grab them.   my headtorch illuminated the inside of the bin.
when i cycled off i realised there was a girl standing behind a car who had probably seen me and there was a young man who probably hadn't seen me because he seemed surprised to see me.
he responded to my grunted greeting and then shouted after me: "far are you gan?"
i said: "i'm awa oot"
and then i said: "i'm awa oot on a spin"
"you're crazy", he rejoined
and it felt good to be free

a schema for life

experience









thought









experience










thought









experience










thought




a thoughtful experience









thought

france

night had fallen and i had still twenty kilometres or more to go.

there was a beaming full moon and i told myself i would be happy to walk under it.  each time a car swooshed past i stood on the verge and held out my thumb, squinting into the anonymous headlight dazzle and holding a piece of cardboard painted with the word Taizé.

when a car stopped the man said he was going to taizé and then he said: c'est dangeroux marcher comme ça la nuit.  i thanked him heartily for stopping for me.  when he heard i was from the UK he said: ah, we have been paying homage to the beatles all the way since lyon.  his young son and daughter must have been wide-eyed at the sight of the man with his big rucksack and his funny accent coming in from the night.  they both had their favourite beatles songs.

"it took me so-wo-wo-wow long
to find out
...but i found out..."

it is late.  most people have left the church service.  night time taizé is teeming with people. 
i stand with my rucksack and observe the gait of one tall fellow.
how particular gaits are.  i know that gait and suddenly he knows my onlooking presence and my brother finlay and i have reunited. 

later on we organise a massive grand old duke of york session on the patio.  there must be approaching a hundred youths engaged in a variety of group dances.  we have the help of an extrovert spaniard and his fiddle, who directs everyone to find a partner and form two big lines, everyone facing their partner.  the first couple join hands and side-step buoyantly all the way down the middle and then back to the start.  they peel off to the sides, dancing round the outside to the other end where they form an arch with their raised hands; the two lines follow close behind, each person meeting up with their partner to pass through the arch and advance successively towards the head partner position.   an atmosphere of festive gaiety is engendered and i imagine that we are attending a country fair of yesteryear.

later finlay and i retire to the woods and cook a lentil onion cheese stew over the fire and sing and talk until late.  finlay finds it humorous that the advise "just act naturally" is given to people who are precisely finding it difficult to act naturally.  it becomes a puzzler; what exactly is meant by acting naturally.   and how does one act unnaturally? 
we consider the simpleness of the story of the grand old duke of york

(Oh, the grand old duke of york
he had ten thousand men
he marched them up to the top of the hill
and he marched them down again).

we set about comparing that story to the complex wordscapes of Queen's songs; we set about trying to remember the lyrics to bohemian rhapsody and we soon throw ourselves into a full, albeit slightly muddled, rendition.  we cannot reproduce freddy mercury's rich vocal tones but we consider the rich meaningscape of his lyrics.

the moon is massive and shining up in the sky.  in the field silver light is everywhere and bathes low clouds which spread their cloudy silver tendrils in front of the trees across the valley.

finlay exclaims:  how can a night be more beautiful?

finlay has found a lift to poland; we borrow juggling balls from a girl sitting alone on the grass for a goodbye game of donkey. 
i give the balls back to her and then i offer her some blackberries i have picked from the brambles at the side of the field.  we sit opposite each other and play a game whereby i throw up a blackberry for her to catch in her mouth.  blackberries are thrown until she does not catch one - then the catcher/thrower positions are swapped.
when all the blackberries are finished i say: j'aimerais passer plus de temps avec toi.
but the daylight is ending and i want to find a lift to lyon before the darkness comes.

i find a lift to lyon
and there in the dark i call charlène.  i have called her all while she was picking grapes and her answer phone message: 
laaa       la-la-la  la-la-la  la-la-laa     la-la-la  la-la-la  la-la-laaa la  in her soft childlike voice is in my head.  i am excited to see her again, but
"ah, i have changed plans...i am now in brittany"
i do not know what to feel.  we have spent the summer exchanging words and colours and music through the post. we said: maybe we will cycle to india together.  i walk to the park and find a place to roll out my sleeping bag by the river.  i feel small.

in the next days charlène hitches south and so do i and we meet up at the train station at the top of the hill in marseille.   we take a walk along the port, beyond the port to where the white rocks fall steeply to the sea.  
i ask a group of young boys in swimming trunks if it is possible to jump there and they say: yes.  i ask them if they have ever jumped and one boy says: yes.  and then he says: look     and runs to the edge of the cliff and lunges high into the air and falls,
falls...
a big white splash appears in the sparkling blue sea. 
his body resurfaces swimming lithely gliding through the crystaline water.

it is a hot day and jumping into that water refreshes enormously.

that evening a little party unfolds at the flat of the friend charlène is staying with.  i observe myself gravitating towards her and wanting to sit next to her but i also observe her polite indifference, neither inviting nor repelling.
the feeling of being attracted to a girl who is not attracted to you is ideal for generating a genuine feeling of humbleness.

the next day charlène accompanies me part way to a spot to hitchhike out of town.  she tells me that she has booked a flight to mexico after seeing the price of the flight was the same as what she earned picking grapes. she says travelling is like a drug; i consider the difference between being addicted to something and liking to do something.  charlène says she is not travelling in marseille at the moment because she already knows this place.  i think about 'being in an unknown place' as a definition of travelling, and what it actually means to know a place.  in a wider sense everybody is a traveller of life and a desire to 'know' new places is only one aspect of the voyage.
maybe a traveller is someone who wants to discover all that is unknown - unknown places, unknown scents and sounds, unknown people, unknown ways of life, ideas as yet unexplored, emotions as yet unfelt. discovering parts of the self as yet unknown.

charlène has inspired me with the book she wrote about her travels in india last year.  her writing has inspired me because of the fidelity of her words in describing the moment.  before i wanted to be suspicious of the slipperiness of the sensations of the moment that passes; i only wanted to focus on the elements of the moment that stay the same for all moments. 
now i want to be more faithful to the depth of each moment, in spite of its temporality.

i hitch out towards the vineyards, looking for more work picking grapes.  i am told that increasingly grapes are cut with machines in the south and i am advised that my best chances are near bordeaux.

sticking your thumb out and letting a driver decide to stop is a fascinating way to meet people.  their private car space has been opened up to you; there is a good feeling of good will that underpins the hitcher/driver interaction.  both are affirming that it is good to be in a world where people can be trusted and where people do good turns where possible.  giving a lift is a simple thing to do.  it may be far from a necessity - i happen to want to move from here to there.  gratifying people's wants is a good way to engender happiness.  (providing that what they want is reasonable).

i get out of one car at a motorway péage bottleneck, standing among all the cars with my rucksack and barefeet. a woman from the window of a nearby car says: where are you going? 
and soon i climb in. 
the shortest time between lifts ever.
the woman tells me that i make her think about a documentary generation sur la route about young people who abandon stationary living to travel and seek little jobs en route. 
in the car are three friends from Nice and they are generating ideas for a theatre production.  they lean close to one another and talk excitedly.  i only catch phrases and vague scenes, but i can sense the buzzing creativity of their imagined human worlds.  the young man sitting in the front seat is wearing a t-shirt on which it is written: "Yes, it is rocket science."   for some reason, i find that significant.
they tell me that the best way to find out about vineyard work is "de bouche a oreille".  i tell them that in english this expression is "from mouth to mouth".   
i reflect and i say "no, in english we don't say from mouth to mouth.   mouth to mouth is when you breathe air into someone's mouth when they have stopped breathing. 
in english we say by word of mouth".



a car stops and the driver says he can take me to bordeaux. i notice he is an old man.   his movements when he pushes the button to wind down the window or to make the indicator flash are so slow that i doubt whether he is able to drive the car safely on the highspeed motorway.  he almost never looks at me.  his voice is low and breathy.  he tells me he has travelled in his youth.  he says:
i speak a little english
ich spreche ein bisschen deutsch
hablo un poco espagnol
ana kanh-dar shwiya al-arbiya
and something which meant "i can speak a little hebrew" in hebrew.
he spoke it as if it were a litany.

he was hard of hearing and seemed not to even register some of my questions and i began to think: i will not converse much with this fellow. 
however, at a certain stage of the journey he began to speak about love.  i had to lean closer and listen furiously, and i asked little questions to show my interest.  he said that humanity is entering a phase of spiritual evolution.   and it consists of moving beyond material concerns and moving towards "aimer l'amour",  loving the love.
 
and the loves to love to love the love   a van morrison moment came on.  i asked him what exactly he thought love was and he said:  "l'amour c'est dieu, c'est ton esprit, c'est tout"  it is recognising the divine within you and the divine within everybody.
at one point i said: it is easy for people to become waylaid with material concerns.  he replied gently that it was important not to judge others.  i nodded in agreement and it seemed that what we were doing, speeding along the motorway in his little car, was affirming the essence of jesus' message.  let us love and let us not judge.

i am homing in on my goal of finding vendange work; i see a job offer for vendangeurs on a shop window. 
however i spend a good part of the morning watching cars slide nonchalently past and eventually decide to walk back into town and get the train somewhere, but that is when a woman stops and drives me back to her home saying: my neighbours have vineyards, let's ask them.   patricia is from chile and her friendliness shines.  she loves to travel and she loves to welcome warmly.  she puts on the coffee machine and lets me use the internet and that is when i read an email from my parents saying that walkers shortbread factory have offered me a job starting soon in scotland.  that is when i decide to abandon the search for grapes-picking work and to make haste for home, for the prospect of a job which lasts more than a week is appealing.

i lay aside my piece of cardboard that says SUD?
and make one that says NORD
and the ensuing lifts are long and roll me along the motorway north. the final lift is when the daylight is diminishing.  a grey-haired, bespectacled, lively man stops and says:  ah i must have hitched thousands of kilometres in my youth.
i say: you have to be a little bit crazy to hitchike
and he says: you have to be a little bit crazy to be an artist.
he describes his worst hitchhiking memory:  one night somewhere on the road to paris the night fell and the cold fell and he was left at the side of the road teeth chattering   all he did all night was spit on the ground and observe how long it took for the spittle to freeze.
i tell him i have always avoided that situation by taking a tent and sleeping bag with me.
we laugh: undesirable experiences are sometimes funny when you look back at them.
we talk and talk or maybe mainly he talks and i listen and so i make the acquaintance of denis pugnere who suddenly makes me think of picasso when i walk around his workshop and look at his stone sculptures.  upon arrival at his home in orleans it is dark and he has invited me to spend the night chez lui.   it is not long before the rain falls heavily and it is a good night to be given a roof after two weeks or dry weather.  i present him with the bottle of wine that patricia gave to me upon our parture that morning, saying "you are the second person full of kindness who i have met today."

denis introduces the philosophical proposition that "tout ce que est réel est parfait", which he attributes to spinoza.   it seems rather too blithe to maintain that all is perfect when one considers the wars and the suffering and the flagrant human badness.   all the same, some moments are described as perfect by some people.
denis summarizes with a sigh and "ah, la vie est complexe"
i say:  but is it really?
are all qualities that we attribute to life not mere interpretations?
all that we can really say about life is that life is.
whether it is big or bad or beautiful or complex or simple depends on how we interpret it.
life is simple for the person who says that life is simple.

denis fixes me with his gaze, and i think: he is wondering what are the possibilities of communication between us.
he entreats me to consider the stars and the galaxies which we can perceive across billions of light years.
he talks about our bodies, made up of millions of cells, each cell with its own memory and its own programming to direct its functioning.   he mentions the stars again and concludes "and there you are, and when you go outside you will take care not to step on the snails.      life is complex"

i think about the stars, and the cells of our bodies, and the snails and say, "what makes it even more complex is the fact that we are aware of its complexity."

i spend the first few hours of the next day waiting thinking: maybe today will be a day when i will get no lift.  be ready for everything.
then a couple stop who are beginning a few days holiday in normandie.  i accompany them to an art exhibition by a photographer friend of theirs, then the rain begins to fall in bucket loads and they decide to take a swerving detour to dieppe to leave me there for the ferry that night.  friendliness in a car.
sitting in their comfortable capsule, speeding along the motorway, listening to saint-germain's bopping chilled energy or keith jarret trilling up and down the piano or pink martini and their old-time swinging vibe.  the car is enveloped in rain, which ravishes the outside of the windows in writhing streams.

i sit on the rocks and watch the majestic clouds glowing red pink in the far away west.  the next day i see my friend andy and he tells me that he admired the same sunset from across the channel. 
why are sunsets so beautiful?
daytime distances are blue.   suddenly at the dusk hour they become impassioned with warmth and red.  it is as if the west had caught light from a glowing pile of embers, warm and close-up but actually very far-away.  the far off horizon glowing close and warm.




je suis libre     libre comme la mer
comme la belle mer   mon frère
je suis libre comme les pierres
comme les grandes belles pierres
comme les nuages, et les oiseaux

la terre d'angleterre a travers la mer
the land of england across the sea

la belle france

i saw my friend Andy - who had received serious wounds from a polar bear attack - in hospital in his hometown brighton; i looked in his eyes, which were a mixture of equanimity and tired awe, and i thought:

nothing can be taken for granted in this life
who can tell what is going to come next?

his parents gave me a warm welcome in their house, and then took me to the next village of newhaven from where i got the night ferry to dieppe, france.  it was a four hour crossing and was 03:30am when all the cars we beginning to disembark and i met a friendly englishman called buck who took me an hour up the road to Rouen.
i had been reading about the gothic churches in the stories of Maupassant and decided to take a walk around the centre.  the streets of Rouen were dark and silent. i thought about climbing up the scaffolding of one dark église but instead i fell asleep on a little grassy knoll nearby, after watching a soft veil of ragged clouds being pulled across a bright quarter moon. 
it was light when i was awoken by a man collecting rubbish nearby.  i wandered through the streets and followed the road to paris out of town and began hitch-hiking in the sun.  a manager of the supermarket chain intermarché stopped and took me all the way in his nice car to orly airport south of paris, a trip which took several hours and where i caught up a little bit with sleep.   i then had a long walk along a busy road through exhaust-fume-filled tunnels before finding a suitable place to hitch at a bus stop.  two girls waiting for the bus saw me hitching and said i should take the bus with them to the train station; one of them gave me a ticket which would pay for both.  we talked a while and she told me she was from mauritania and when we said goodbye we knocked our fists together several times the way rappers do. 

i took the train and fell asleep.
when i woke up the train had been mostly emptied of passengers.  the afternoon was warm and slow. the landscape consisted of the river Seine surrounded by trees and green fields and it was very pretty.

a friendly turk called Mous who had been living here for 8 years took me on to fontainbleau, where i lay by the square pond and looked across the lawn to the chateau and wrote:

fairytale turrets, long chimneys rising into the soft blue sky with the fluffy imprint of clouds
blades of grass dancing in the breeze
the splash of a fountain
the drone of a plane
yellow luminous sunlight everywhere,
   falling on this page.

i walked into the forest and found a place to sleep amongst a pile of big boulders atop a little hill.  i levelled a strip of sloping sand to lie looking up at the moon and the stars and when the clouds came i pulled my tent fly sheet over me and listened to the little tinkling of the raindrops.

the next day i followed the roads east.  a young man from china had been living in italy for the past ten years was touring france on holiday and took me a good way along the road.  he seemed to spend a lot of time alone and it was good for him to share the road with me, and share his breaksticks and pickled gherkins also.  at one point in the conversation i said: maybe to really be with another person you have to abandon something of yourself.  i liked it when he disagreed and said, thoughtfully and slowly: no, i think first you have to completely accept yourself, both good and bad parts, only then you can accept other people.
 
the self/society is a topic i still haven't got to the bottom of.

in the afternoon i arrived at Les Riceys, the little village where i would vendanger for 10 days.  i was the first to arrive but by the evening there were thirty people sitting round the big dining table, ready to pick grapes the next day.   there was a group of women from Montpellier who had been coming every year for the last seven or eight years; for them the vendange is a holiday, "it is hard work to pick the grapes, but we have a laugh.  it is good be away from our normal jobs, out in the sun".  more than simply picking grapes, these vineyard owners want to make it a celebration; every midday we would come back from the vineyards to the big house and enjoy sumptuous meals, always with a big tray of cheeses passed round afterwards, and then the fruit tarts, then the café.  always several bottles of champagne opened up and passed around.  every evening it would be the same; i had never empirically confirmed that there were people who actually lived like that.  my french friend Xavier - who had put me in touch with these vineyard owners - had told me about the bread and cheese and salami picnics during the morning break at the vineyard and the chocolate and beer given out at the afternoon break.  it sounded fantastic, but it was just as he said.  "everyone works hard when they are picking grapes, but enjoys themselves in between."

everyone slept in dormitories and got up at seven for a breakfast of baguette and butter and jam and coffee and worked from 8 until 12;  after our long sumptuous midday meal everyone sat around or dozed until heading out for the afternoon shift from 2 til 6.  sometimes the afternoon sun was very hot and sweat trickled down everyone's faces and some of the young men took off their shirts.  the work was unavoidably back-straining.  even going through a variety of positions - crouching down, sitting down, kneeling down or lying down and cutting the grapes above your head with the sunlight shining through the thick leaves - most of the grapes grew within a foot of the ground, and your back had to stretch and use muscles which are never normally used.  i had never felt my back so much.  after picking grapes one september my brother kevin sent an email entitled "my back is broken"

i think of that title now.

jeffery is about to start university and likes to practise his english.  one morning at the vineyard he asked me
carson, how are you?
at that moment i didn't know how to describe how i was
so i said:  hmmm, i don't know
he suggested that maybe i was tie-red
i agreed that i was, but didn't want tired to be the sum description of how i was so i said
i am also happy
why? was his response
i thought about the reason for my happiness:
because i am alive
because the sun is shining
because there are a lot of good people in the world

jeffery's next question was: are you a hippy?
i told him that depended on how he defined hippy
he said:  like bob marley, smoke marijuana...
do you have to smoke marijuana to be a hippy? i asked
you don't have to be  he said
he thought.
someone who wants Peace and Love

if that is what being a hippy is then i think it would be good if everyone in the world was a hippy.

jeffery elaborates:  a hippy is someone who is disconnected from reality
what reality i asked him
political reality, social reality, every reality...

he got me puzzling over how to know what reality was.

one day i cut with lionel, a member of the family who own the vineyards.  we cut fast together and call ourselves "les bêtes de la vigne" the vineyard beasts.  lionel tells me the french word for tits and slang terms for having sex.  another man overhears and tells me that "can i have a shag?" is what he says means "hello" to people who do not speak any french.

the next day the village newspaper reports that a girl was raped in a nearby vineyard.

it is true that men are generally crazy about the bodies of women

the night when all the grapes have been cut we have a party.  lots of empty bottles of champagne pile up in the glass recycling box outside.  lionel draws my attention to adéline, an attractive young girl, dancing alone and says:  why don't you ask her for a dance? this is your chance; you do like this in france - you take her by both hands and dance really close.
he pressurizes me to ask her for a dance.
i tell him that i have spent the last years learning that the way i like to do things is often not the same as the way other people like to do things.   instead of dancing like that i would climb a tree with a girl.

through the tunnel to the dark courtyard is a big chestnut tree.  i sit on the top branches and see the bright crescent moon hovering above the horizon.

happiness.

later on a group of people are dancing and a special ambience is created.  everyone moves their bodies with ease and looks at each other with knowing smiles - everyone knows that this is the moment to feel good.  i begin to dance with florien - a tall youth with whom i have had vigorous battles across a chessboard and we dance with arms moving flowingly and a little wildly.   what could be termed "feeling the groove" is a very fulfilling feeling.
i also dance with marine, a girl i have only spoken to occasionally.  we look at each other with fascination now, directly pin-pointing the attraction we see in each other's eyes.
i would have liked to get close to her, but i realised that dancing with our eyes was intimate connection enough.

after finishing the cutting of the grapes, we took a group photo next to the tractor with lengths of vine and bunches of grapes tied around our hair.  streamers trailed out of the windows and the horn was honked continually as we drove through the village streets shouting "on a fini!"     we've finished!
i sat in the back of one of the vans and watched a cloud of dust floating in a shaft of light. 
i listened to the excited yells and thought:  they are celebrating the whole of life.  they have chosen this moment for the celebration.

the day when everybody left i got a lift with the minibus returning to montpellier and got off at macon.
i am not sure what to do, whether to meet up with a friend, or look for more work picking grapes.  i find myself hitching to Taizé
it is good to be on the road again.
it is good to sleep in the trees, like being inside a massive lawn of oversized finely detailed weeds, like walking for hours barefoot on warm flagstone pavements or over cool morning dew-drenched grass in parks.

a woman gives me a lift to Taizé and says that she too likes to go barefoot all summer.  she says she doesn't go barefoot in town, because everyone looks askance.
it is good to meet someone who affirms my barefeet.

slowly a hush descends over the long line of people queuing for the canteen meal and voices slowly rise intoning the Taizé chant ubi caritas

Ubi caritas et amor, ubi caritas Deus ibi est.
(where there is charity and love,
where there is charity God is there)


i was sitting on the bench outside the church reading a booklet on the hindi language when a young girl came and sat on the bench next to me.  at one point i observed her smiling and laughing.  it seemed she was looking at me, so i asked her: what is funny?   she said: nothing and shook her head, still very happy about something.  as i was slowly putting my shoes on she asked me if i spoke any other languages.  i said: french and she said: come and see this text.  i came and sat next to her and she opened a black notebook at a page which had a variety of things written in different languages.  one of the longer notes was written with wild handwriting in what looked like a slavic langauge.   the french text she wanted to show me was written in block capitals and read:

le Christ ressuscité vient animer une fête au plus intime de l'homme. 
(the resurrected Christ is coming to liven up a party in the most intimate part of man.)

she asked me to copy it down and then to go and find it somewhere in Taizé.  i had some trouble understanding exactly what she meant.  did i have to find somewhere where those words were written down, or another person who had written it down? (she also talked about finding someone else).  all she said was: you have to find it yourself, although somebody else can help you.   when i asked for a clue she pointed to Taizé entrance and said:  that way.  then she said she would walk with me that way and show me another church in which i should look.

she had very bright happy eyes and she looked at me and said:  you have beautiful eyes     i could not help smiling broadly and responding with joy to the joy she was radiating.
i went over the words i had written down and now memorised slowly and realised that it means the resurrected christ will bring deep joy. 
we walked down into the old Taizé village.  she left me at the entrance to a simple but striking church i had never seen before built with rough ochre-coloured stone.  she gestured to the church and said: go and find it.  as she was walking away i said:  how will i let you know when i have found it?  she didn't hesitate much before saying: i will know    and walked on

inside the church was very dim with simple red stainglass strips glowing at the front.  i sat at the back for some time and realised that i wouldn't find any written text here and that she probably meant that in this church i would fully realise the meaning of that text:  christ will bring deep joy.


i wondered if i should broaden what the words Resurrected Christ meant to me so as to link them with what i felt to be deep joy.
i decided that what was most important for me was the fact that deep joy existed; it so happened that the name resurrected christ was what some people identified as the source of it.


i liked reading brother Alois' letter from Chile, where he affirms feeling happy even in the face of complicated realities:

"opting for joy does not mean running away from life's problems.  instead it enables us to face reality and even suffering.  opting for joy is inseparable from a concern for other human beings.  it fills us with unlimited compassion."


is it the possibility of joy which makes the existence of suffering so insufferable?

is joy the reason for existence?

would a joyless life be barely worth living?

to all these questions i reply to myself:  probably.

portnockie

i had a little encounter with a small group of small children who were swinging on the barrier at the side of the road when i cycled past.
it was a little encounter, but the more i think of it, the more i think of it as a big encounter.

first of all a small girl shouted after me asking if i was the duck man.
i swung my bicycle round and said i didn't know who the duck man was.
she then asked me who was i then.   i hesitated a little before saying that i was a human.
they all hesitated, considering this, before replying that they were also human.

it felt good to establish that point of connection before continuing the conversation.

they thought that the duck man - who was actually a bit of a mystery to all of us - might have worn a hat similar to mine.  they wanted to see inside my hat and verify if there were eggs there or not.   i cupped my hat close to my ear and made a little quack which obviously came from my lips and not from the hat, but which pleased them enormously nonetheless.


a girl urged me to give her a duck (the reputed activity of the duck man) and when i asked her why she wanted a duck, she replied "because ducks are cool" and when i asked why ducks were cool, she hesitated and then replied "because ducks have feathers".
i then thought of the question "why is it cool that ducks have feathers?" but decided not to press the issue.

they wanted to know what i did and if i worked and when i told that i did not work but that i liked to cycle my bike, a girl said "di ye nae want a girlfriend?"
i said that i liked to travel by myself, and doubted myself as i said it.
then the girl, who can't have been above five years old, said with a mischevious air "di ye nae want to kiss someone?" and averted her eyes while still looking at me, mischeavously, and i thought: "how young does one perceive the life activities worth pursuing".

they wanted to know what i had in my bag and where i had recently been on my bike and when i showed them a sketchy painting of the bowfiddle rock one boy whose name i learned was george asked if i would draw him.  he sat stiffly against the barrier looking at me with the air of doing something very important.  i observed myself not being able to prevent myself from breaking into big smiles, and when i looked at george and around at the others, they began breaking into big smiles too.

i thought:  at this young age they are so receptive, they want to learn so much, they must drench any listener with questions in order to learn about the world.  they are also like mirrors that imitate the behaviour of those round about them.

la france

glad to be moving again,
the day i left rome
i got the train north to the coast and began to hitchhike - a long walk through a long industrial yard, but full of optimism.  maybe this car will stop?
No.

maybe it will be this car?
no.

maybe this one?
nope.

after not two hours i say: i want to be in france, and head back into town and get the next train north - swoooooosh!  it is the sensation of one's body moving quickly through space.   a wondrous sensation.  it seems like you are stock still - the bone structure is immoble proportional to itself, the blood system keeps going regularly round and round as if you were stock still, but you are actually hurtling through space.   you look outside the window; you stick your head of out the window and you can't make any sense of the blur that is the world spinning past.  trains all the way till two in the morning when i get off on a sleepy stretch of coast before genoa and sleep on the beach there.  the next day up to Torino, and there i take the valley that leads the mountain pass that crosses to france. 
i love to travel around and see the variety of landscapes, but when i am in the mountains i know that that is where i really want to be.  massimo picks me up and lets me sleep in his garden and gives me fresh bread and pizza from his paneficio early the next morning.  my last italian encounter.
i am soon in briançon, france, about to let the peel fall from my orange into the dry moat of the historic centre when a cry rings out.
"ne jetez pas les ordures là!"
it is the woman responsible for keeping the historic centre clean.  she argues that chemicals are sprayed onto oranges and when they are discarded the birds eat them and fall ill.
i say: the solution would be not to use chemicals in the first place.
that would be the solution.
an old man stops and takes me to grenoble.
he says:   il faut voyager.
i say: oui, mais... i know people who are happy to stay settled in one place and do not feel the need to be in other places.
all he repeats is:  il faut voyager.
we establish that voyager is not just a case of changing location on the earth's surface, but is a state of mind, is a receptivity to the other.  a listening to the other.
then he says the words:  le voyager est aller rencontre ton voison
(travelling is going to meet your neighbour).

i liked it very much when he said that.

he adds to it by saying: le monde est un village.  he has eyes which say to me:
joy

i persuade myself to spend a couple of days in grenoble. the art museum has an exhibition by russian avant guard painter Marc Chagall.   his soft luminous colours and quirky composition say:   the world is a magical place.   i find a place to sleep up on the hill with the bastille which affords a grenoble panorama.   big solid soaring mountainsides all around and anywhere that is flat valley bottom is covered with city.  a wondrous sight.
as evening falls i meet a youth collecting wood and ask him if he is going to have a fire. 
his voice is a little subdued and a little meek and he says:  "oui, juste un petit feu"
i consider his words with humour from my little fire place as twenty of his companions scour the forest and return dragging big branches and logs.  as the night progresses the singing starts up, turning into bawling and howling until late at night, their almighty pyre illuminating the woods just beneath me.  letting off steam and being a little wild is important every so often, i recognise.

i hitch i hitch
i hitch happily though the valence cherry picking season to le puy en valey and meet lavanya at gregorie's place.  gregorie is planting potatoes; he says that it makes him happy to hear someone speaking french in a foreign accent - he is made aware that the world is big, and diverse.
lavanya and i travel north to saint etienne, where she is spending a few days working with lucien as guerrisseurs.  work which involves being very very sensitive, paying attention to the energy vibrations of the people who seek their help, feeling much more than thinking.  one night we light a fire and sleep in a rocky gorge and another night we find a big peaceful lake to sleep by. 
then i hitch to Taizé, and most people i meet say: "ah oui, Taizé", and for  the last car journey i am not even hitchhiking when a woman stops and says: "are you going to taizé?".

Taizé is an awesome community of monks which welcomes many young people.  i thought the place was swarming but they say, "nah there are only 4 or 5 hundred at the moment; in the summer there are regularly six thousand"
in first place i love the warm showers on tap, then the good peaceful vibrations become palpable - the entire community sitting three times a day in the église, sitting contemplatively, singing songs of praise in many different languages to The Creator, sitting in silence and turning thoughts to The Infinite, The Eternal, the Divine Essence.  it is a place of encounters, a unique point in the globe where people come together.  i meet a swedish priest who says he became resolved about his vocation when he was washing after a day walking the Camino de Santiago (contact with water begetting a fresh experience), one of his big reasons for walking the camino: to meet people and hear their stories.  and the afternoon discussion groups, during which many christian truths are affirmed and after which dreadlocked german stephan has to agree with me that it was not the place to ask probing questions.


Taizé - an awesome place where i want to be for a long time, but which i have left with Scotland now in my thoughts.

meeting new people

why is italy so beautiful?

it is the light, warm and golden and beautiful.

i also think it is the light that makes scotland beautiful, but the light in scotland is a different light.  in scotland it is often the moisture hanging in the air through which the light diffuses and is turned hazy and mysterious, and the rugged hills are rendered dark.  
or they stay light.
it is the play of light and dark which renders scotland beautiful.   il chiaroscuro.

i heard said that it is the great variety of landscapes in italy, and the cultural patrimony - the great number of great buildings - churches, museums, palaces and stately homes and fountains and statues in the gardens - that account for its beauty. 
i think it is also the plants.  they love to grow in the sun, and they look simply radiant.

people say that rome is becoming unbearable - the rush of people and the noise and pollution of cars.
it is a city.  people congregate in cities and people will drive those machines.

half an hour's walk from the Central National Library in Rome is Villa Ada - a great natural space of immense graceful pines and other trees towering above wild and lush vegetation, and i love to sleep there.  a few nights ago i had climbed a tree and watched the sky getting dark and the quivering leaves getting dark and before everything became completely dark i climbed down to get the fire going and get cooking.  i was cutting up the carrots when the barking of a dog in the dark became noisome, and soon after a man appeared with a torch.

 "ciao" we say to each other,
he sits down.  i offer him a bit of carrot,
"carrot?", he says, "do i look like a rabbit?"

when he finds out that i am from scotland he tells me he is very glad to meet someone who speaks his language.  and he tells me he has great respect for what i am doing "you have dug a hole for the fire, just the way you should".  then he shines his torch on my barefeet, "you don't even have any shoes - respect!" and he wants to shake my hand.  only later do i find out that respect was something he was lacking in...

"what a coincidence", he says,  "that i meet somebody that speaks my own language on my 39th birthday, 100 metres from my cave! i have lived 8 years here, and you are the first person that i meet that speaks my language".

life is a series of coincidences. i might have said.  - crossroads of different paths followed by different people, begetting an encounter.  like two ants which, busying about on their own path, suddenly meet one other and pause, momentarily, for the encounter.

i ask him if he is happy living in italy now, and after a pause he says
"i can't go back to britain.  on no account can i go back to britain"
i hum thoughtfully and after a while he tells me the reason why he can on no account go back to britain.
i hum thoughtfully again.
he removes his hat and shines his torch on his face for me to behold his rugged features and says slowly,
"I am Frederic"
when i ask him what he does for money and he says: "begging".
he wants me to share in the celebration of his 39th birthday and opens a bottle of Jameson whisky. "i was brought up in ireland, and i have to drink a bottle of Jameson on my birthday".  he says that he is now almost two thirds of his way through his real life - after sixty he says you may go on to live another twenty years or so, but it is not real life.  he says that each day when he hears of people who are younger than him dying, it makes him feel glad to still be alive.  he wants me to come back to his cave with him, but i tell him that i actually love to sleep by a fire in the woods.  he is already fairly in the thrall of inebriation, slumping off the tree he is resting against and almost letting his boots burn in the fire, but he starts up his irish accent, telling me that he moved to an english boarding school when he was eight.  i then get going with my doric accent, saying "aye, ye cannae help absorbin' abbit a the local tongue like, o fariver ye wer brocht up"  and he laughs and says he didn't understand a word.
"ah, ti voglio bene" he says and takes my face in his hands and kisses me on the cheek. "you can only get off with this in italy" he says.  perhaps an english language equilvalent would be a slap on the back, and "you're my mate"  (and i will stand by you...)      perhaps.
he wants me to come back with him to his cave, and curiosity gets the better of me and i follow him slowly picking he way - staggering one might say - my pot of carrot and coriander risotto in his hand, winding through the bushes and down some steps to a little patio space where he lights a lantern and gets me to sit on an armchair and tells me that for eight years he has worked to convert this cave into his house.  i admire it all, a lovely dry place to shelter from rain inside and surrounded by foliage outside, but as the bottle of Jameson is being glugged all down he begins to invite me to practise sodomy with him.
i look at him sitting on a chair across from me and shake my head.   No.   but i comprehend something of him and know that meeting me is an unusual encounter for him after eight years - eight solitary years - begging on the streets, and yes, sexuality is important, but No no no, and when he insists that i suck his penis is when i wordlessly shoulder my rucksack and climb back into the woods from whence i came, leaving him stumbling behind and then falling into the bushes to remain there motionless, reminding me of huck finn's pap - an unpredictable character, given to drinking.  i pass by the smouldering embers of my fire - all i want is to get far away from him - and end up sleeping next to the lake in the park where i wake up the next morning to see the early morning joggers jogging past.


i had been able to receive fabrizio's suggestion that "there was something of the devil" residing inside a man we met on the street, because i had just read Herman Hesse's novel Demian, which talks about the God Abraxus - the entirety of the Spirit residing within us - consisting of both Good and Bad elements.  night time is the time for the most curious - and often the frankest - encounters between strangers.   it was around two o'clock in the morning and this devil was trying to sell his poetry, but he was to have no luck with me and penniless fabrizio who were at the time looking for a place to sleep.  
it was pure sentiment.  his imprecations when i declined to give him two euros in exchange for a sheet of his poetry were imprecations anybody could have carelessly uttered.  his flashing eyes and hands clutching his poetry were entirely human, but in his presence i felt the physical need to close my eyes and breath deeply in order to remain at peace.




it is the italian language which takes hold of you, which filters melodiously inside you, which replaces your ability to speak spanish when you meet the woman from ecuador on the street, and - in addition to the beauteous visual elements - which render Italy an eminently linger-worthy place to be.

rome

the plan was to cross the Aspramonte national park, from the east coast of Calabria to the west coast, and thence cross on the boat to Sicilia.  on the second day we encountered snow on the top of Montalto.  it became very plodding and deep through the trees and after a few hours of cold feet we wanted to descend quickly before the night fell.  we scrambled down steep slopes and followed a nascent running brook to sleep by a big fire beneath big beech trees.  it was only the day after when we observed the sun rising in the east - the same direction as the stream was running - that we realised that following that stream would take us back to the coast we had just left.
in any case food was running low, the scramble back up those steep slopes was uninviting and the idea of unequipped us scaling Mount Etna had become ponderous - at 3,329m it was sure to have a lot more snow than little 1,935m Montalto.

back in the house of fabrizio's father i decide to leave my bike there.   i will travel faster without it.  we decide to take the night train to rome in a few day's time.  i return to pepe and rossella's farm where i have left my scarf and take away a big loaf of bread and a big round of cheese for the journey.  eating the things they produce is an enormous pleasure.  eating food is normally a pleasurable experience, but eating their produce enlarges the boundaries of pleasurability.  rossella says perhaps they can sell and send produce through the post, and i happily consider the possibility.  she also tells me that they will harvest grapes in october and olives in november.  i listen to her invitation to come then and lend a hand with eagerness.

gianni is older now.  he prides himself on having travelled with little money in his youth.   when we first met he asked me if i was borghese.  bourgeois
he clarifies: do i have money? how much?
well...         enough to buy a flight back to scotland if i wanted to.
i detect a note of cynicism in his nod.  he has classified me as bourgeois.

what is actually achieved by classifying people? we are all the same in essence, apart from a few notable differences.
actually essentially the same, in an inner kind of way.

appearance.  the surface.  the superficial.
can cloud and hide what is inside.

michel is crying in the kitchen when it is time for me leave.
he had looked at me with eyes full of far-off worry and said "do you also have mental problems?"
depression.
other times he had sought my affirmation, "la vita e bella, vero?"
- yes, i had affirmed, life is beautiful.
but how can that affirmation be really felt by him?  crying in the kitchen.  
mental health may be compromised, but he knows a human connection when he feels it.

if you want to communicate with somebody you have to speak the language - use the words - that they understand.  therefore thank the good Lord for the bounteous raining gifts.  Dio sa badare ai suoi figli.

"Rome still feels very unknown to me"

"i felt like i knew Rome a lot better after climbing the old railway tower - shall we climb the old railway tower tonight?"

in the morning the soft blue surrounding hills, and a great part of the city spread out in the new sun.   the coming and going of the trains starts early.  

Being in love is the quintessential good experience.

the scent of jasmine fills you at the very same moment that you are filled with a sense of well-being.
mmmmm
how do they do it?  four or five or six little white pointed petals.  they know exactly what they are doing, those flowers.   continually filling the air of that street with that perfume; the next day the very same olfactory experience.


we had exchanged no words, but after having spent the morning hours sitting next to him in the library, i felt like i knew matteo in a certain minor way.  when we shelter from the rain in the metro station and do exchange words, he tells me that he will travel to a house in the countryside an hour south of rome where a his brother lives with a group of families and where they grow plants in a sort of community.  he invites me to come along, and there there are many other people visiting, and a big table with pots of bean soup and a big round of cheese being cut up and wine poured into glasses.  and later some people are playing music and other people are dancing.  and there is a fire.

fabrizio and fabrizio

i cycled and cycled and asked people if there was a way of following the coast to calabria without followin the superstrada 106, with its occasional squished single-lane shared with thundering lorries and other vrooming vehicles.     i asked two other cyclists one morning and they told me to tuck in behind them and amazing how much wind friction is reduced there.   they wore skintight clothing to reduce wind friction and ate little pieces of jelly for energy.
i had just crossed the bridge over the stream one morning and was preparing to set off for a day's cycling when two young men passed and said "ciao" before turning around and telling me that they were staying in an abandoned house up on the hill next to the old castle and if i wanted to spend a night or two with them i would be welcome.   at that stage i was still full of plans of cycling to sicilia and climbing mount etna; as the days passed in their company that plan was happily postponed.  first of all we went to laura's house to drink coffee and breakfast, and then to andrea's house for lunch.  it was andrea who had lent them his adze and other agricultural implements. 

it was a beautiful spot where they had began to settle.  it was a half hour's walk from the coast road and surrounded by a field full of blue flowers with a horse at one end who brayed every half hour or so.    fabrizio and fabrizio (as they were both called) were full of plans of living there and working the land and planting and living off the land.    also collecting wild plants like wild asparagus, which grows all along the side of the paths.   there was a nearby abandoned orange grove, which you have to scramble through the undergrowth to attain, where the orange trees are laden with orange fruit and they are delicious and sweet.  there is so much opportunity for living off the land here in fertile sunny calabria, and occupying old houses which are lying abandoned all over the mountains.  they had already done a lot of work on the house to make it habitable, and had an old wooden bookcase filled with a modest little library of books by Hesse, Nietzsche, Goethe, a novel by Italo Calvino, Henry Miller's novelistic autobiographical account and an old tattered copy of I Vagabondi del Dharma - an italian translation of the dharma bums.
however, robert the shepherd passed every day in his little white car and, besides his habitual ciao salutation, he began to really insist that it would be better if we pushed on before the owner turned up.

therefore fabrizio and i set off one day towards the mountains to look for another house.

there were so many of them, but the conditions of nearby water source, quite far from the road, unlikely to attract attention, roof intact and surrounding land cultivatable made it a special combination when they were all met.  we followed the rocky bed of a river for a while, and when the land rose and the mountains began, we spotted a lonely looking property high up on the hillside with no obvious means of access.  that was when we began to climb up a little path, which soon became lost in the prickly undergrowth, and i said to fabri "rarely have i met someone else with such a keenness to explore".    our desire to attain that house was large but after an hour of slow progress through the scratchy bushes, it was fabrizio who declared, as he was crawling ahead, his body pressed close to the ground, that "it is too difficult to go on", and all we could do was laugh heartily at our state of discomfort and the ultimate unfeasibiliy of our self-chosen endeavour.

fabrizio loved to cook, over a fire outside the house as evening was falling, and more often than not it was pasta with tomato sauce, seasoned with the wild herbs he had found round about. 
fabrizio, however, wasn't so fond of cooking, and found more delight in breaking up the hard earth with the adze under the sun.
therein began to grow a slight tension, for fabrizio had fair skin and always opted to avoid the midday sun.  fabrizio said to me:  "how can you choose to work the land if you don't like being in the sun?".

and one day - how do these things happen? - an argument broke out, and fabrizio swung his rucksack over his shoulder and headed off to look for another abandoned property closer to the coast, and look for some wage-earning work in a bar or restaurant, because nothing can one do without money. 
perhaps it is because
"everything put together
sooner or later falls apart"

in any case later in the day fabri came back with danilo who has a car and we all crowded in and transported all the pots and cooking utensils to the other house.  it was nice to be so close to the beach and the swim in the sea but it was also close to the road and the drone of vehicles, and my thoughts began to turn again to following the road to sicilia.

first of all fabrizio is keen for me to meet his friends pepe and rossella, an older couple who have spent all their lives looking after goats and sheep and a vineyard and making cheese and salsicio and wine and bread and selling them at the big market in reggio.  "it is they who inspire me so much" fabrizio tells me, "to eat good food and to know where your food comes from is so important.  you feel so healthy - in body and spirit - when you eat their food.  you will see when you get there".

greece

Thank you Sun for your Warmth and Light which - when the clouds do not obscure you - you radiate to our Earth.
the moon only gleams because first you shine,
and the warmth and light of the campfire is only possible because of your energy stored in parts of old trees.


the sun says to the moon: Shine!
the moon replies: gleam
the sun says: like this moon - shine, shine, beam!
but all the moon wants to do is ghostly gleam.



i found a jet of water by an olive grove on the road south of Vlore, and washed my body and my clothes, and my fresh body and refreshed spirit carried me up the thousand metre pass into the pine trees beneath the mountain with patches of snow.  spinning down the other side, i told myself:  i have never travelled so fast on a bicycle before.  a bird with black and white feathers swooped in front of me and for a few seconds we shared our flights, then he or she swooped off.  i was whizzing down the road, zooming a thousand metres above the vast extension of rippling sparkling ocean, zooming into the golden haze beyond the sea.

it may sound poetic, "the golden haze beyond the sea", but that is what it was.   the sparkling sea blended into the golden haze and the golden haze melded with the blue sky (whatever the sky is).

okay, "i perceived a golden haze beyond the sea".

or to be scientific, "a golden haze beyond the sea was observed".



the albanian phrase "excuse me, is this the road to greece?" served me well and had me crossing the greek border close to the coast; not travelling far inland as google maps suggested that i would have to do.
maker of googlemaps - ill-informed about the slick new ionian highway that winds though the valleys of the beautiful southern albanian highlands.  new and shiny, although the greek border guard said it was built six years ago.  almost empty, too.   maybe in summer it becomes busy.

i had graeme coxton's blur lyrics in mind when i realised that i was following the herd down to greece.
the herd had not arrived yet but i could see that the coast was well set-up to cater for them, and attract them. 
cycling to greece had always been my plan, more than actually being in greece,
greece, however, is a very nice place to be.  a near-empty road winding along the coast through playful olive grove hillsides which descend to little villages or little beaches.  the only activity from the countless coastal hotels were gardeners pruning shrubs and trees.  an abundant green vegetation in the shade and flowers being beautiful in the sun.  lots of young green nettle leaves making a tasty soup with potatoes, etc.  after a few days of sun soaking and listening to little lapping waves i was happy to cycle seriously again.  i liked the thought of being in italy, in a great part due to language reasons (in greece i scrutanised the noticeboards, and listened to people's conversations, but it was all greek to me). italy also because it led me closer to my summer goal of being in scotland in order to witness happy people becoming happily wed.

in greece i went back to finding food in bins, and one day came across bunches of yellow bananas outside a series of supermarkets, and many packets of biscuits.  i said "it will take me days to eat all of these", but didn't like to see them lying in bin, and so lashed them to my bike anyway.
in the port town of igoumenitsa i found an opportunity to give them away when i met the immigrant population, who were playing football on a patch of wasteland when i arrived - almost all morrocans looking to cross to italy (without the required visa), where there it is easier to find work they told me, and all of them looking for food in bins themselves.  i gave them bananas and biscuits and they gave me their smiles.
waiting for the midnight ferry crossing to italy my eye was caught by a youth climbing up the drainpipe through the window of the terminal building.  it was a scrambly job for him and he had to stop and rest on the dividing bars of the windows.  i didn't want to stare but it was pretty interesting to watch his progress.  then my attention was caught by someone flashing a light at me through the window.  through some unclear hand signals, i thought that maybe he wanted to know where i was going, so i pressed my ferry ticket to brindisi against the window.    we made uncomprehendable hand signals to each other before realising that voice travelled through the glass, and then he told me in english in low tones that he was tunisian that he had a wife from newcastle that he had worked in london three years, did i know such and such a cafe in edinburgh near the mosque where he had also worked?  i wanted to ask him why was he wanting to cross the border unseen, or helping others to do so, (as we were speaking a series of young men were making the ascent of the drainpipe) but all he said was, "it is risky" with a cheery expression.
he made me remember the young man i met on the road in morocco who told me he had tried to cross from the canary islands to spain twice but had been caught both times by the police boat. "i will try again", he had said cheerily.
later, i was standing with my bicycle on the dock wondering how i could board my ferry when a man ran past and crawled under a nearby lorry.  he was followed by a woman in police uniform who quickly found him with her torch.  then a man arrived on a motorcycle and hauled him out and began yelling at him in words i could not understand but whose vituperative tone reminded me of the barking of an aggressive dog.
the caught man assumed a cowering posture, but i could tell that he was silently indignant.


ahhhh      (sigh expressing something indefinable)

most every body wants a slice of wealthy pie.

what is money? how does it come about? and how is it we have managed to generate such wealthy conditions in certain portions of the earth?  where everybody finds labour - fashioning products from the earth's resources or providing some service - and is paid hansomly.


it is as if the world were a small patch of land, and all the countries were ponds, and all the humans were frogs.  warmth signifies wealth in this analogy - and frogs from the warm pond can hop wheresoever they please and splash in all the other cool ponds, but when a frog who happens to have been born in a cold pond wants to partake of the warmth of the warm pond, a barrier is erected in the form of border control.

albania

the white waves crashing over the old pier of historic Dubrovnik were left behind, the scrubby clouds scudded through the sky and i followed the road to Montenegro, surprised to find out they used the euro there, and it soon felt like spain, with lots of restaurants and hotels and apartments-to-let strung out along the coast.  i almost traversed the coast of the county in a day (thanks to a free ferry)  but in the evening found myself in the pine woods next a beach nobody loved - on account of all the waste strewn everywhere - but still found myself feeling fresh from having bathed in the waves.

the next day, slowly progressing through the wind/rain, i crossed the little road to albania, and found myself transported very far away.  waiting to cross the river, there was something about the ordered choas - people inhabiting the street space without any rules but with hand gestures and tooting of horns, where you are just likely to be on the wrong side of the road as the right, on account of all the potholes - that made me feel excited to be alive, made me feel suddenly closer to turkey than to europe (although never been to turkey) and made arise within me an incommensurable desire to be in India.
- couchsurfer mario in split had said (a little underimpressed) "all my friends are going to india.
i don't know what they are looking for - maybe to find a spiritual guru.
you have to find enlightenment within yourself".

yes, i agreed to myself afterwards, enlightenment is found inside oneself.
what is it about india, then, that pulls me?

place is important for experience-creation.

mario said many other things which i found interesting and insightful.  he said that this world (this Universe) consists entirely of energy in motion.  we behold it with our eyes and divide it into elements of different colours and forms but everything is essentially a flux of energy - a wave crashing or a bee buzzing or plants silently growing or a volcano exploding.  we breathe in air and use it to fuel our own energy activities and then exhale, everything swirls, comes in, goes out, passes through, unity throughout, all is one.

All is One.

an interesting way of conceiving of time (for the linear conception progressing linearly into eternity can be rather baffling) is to say All is One Moment, and all experiences and happenings are happening now, and all that is now will always be so.  - taken from a spiritual point of view because the physical side of things wants to divide up moments and live out its finite lifespan.   and so do not lament passing moments - all moments are One and the same.  Mario compared the mind to a field, and our thoughts and emotions to seeds.   we choose to cultivate certain seeds at certain moments and pursue certain thought patterns and habitual emotions.  all seeds (all possible thoughts, emotions) exist contemporaneously, and it is the task of the individual to cultivate his or her mind-garden in his or her chosen way.

Mario's philosophy on his couchsurfing profile was "liberate fully everyone, everywhere".  he struck me as an unusually aware individual - aware of the substantive concerns that being alive entails.

i liked it when he quoted Teilhard de Chardin to me: "you are not a human beings in search of a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience"

we spoke of the poverty of speaking, compared to the richness of communication between spirits.  "take my dog, for example", he said. "he knows exactly when i want him to be still or come close, without speaking a word".   also take sexual attraction between two individuals, for example - something that occurs viscerally, something akin to the way two magnets behave, and which leaves words as a little commentary on the side of the unmistakable message "i am attracted to you" imparted by the spirit, and confirmed by other little messages from body gestures.  an  hour or so after meeting, i asked him if we would have communicated as much, or the experience of being together would have essentially been the same, had we not spoken any words.
he replied with a smile: "surely".
i wasn't so sure though.
our spirits constitute the essence of our beings, but they are combined with our minds, and our desire to rationally comprehend things is also an essential part of human nature.



at the albanian border i stood by my bike waiting in the queue of cars to show my passport.
at one point i turned round and looked directly into the eyes of a man in a car, him unabashedly silently curious about me and me curious about his curiosity and wondering how long such eye contact could last.  after a few seemingly long seconds it was broken and i had to look down at the pavement or up at the sky.

i hardly knew where i was - speaking a handful of little albanian words   but knew that it was a friendly, human place on account of all the happy tooting and greetings, people on the street can have hardly seen cycle-tourers because they look at me and don't stop looking smiling greeting until i have passed.  a man starts greeting/speaking to me from his motorcycle as i cycle by and soon we have stopped and he is communicating with me with his eyes and a smattering of italian that he has worked in italy for four years, and gradually his brown eyes say "i accept you" and he says, stuttering, "you    my    son".   communication is not fluid, but i know that he wants to invite me back to his house not far away, and he feels that i am his son.  he says, "mire, tears in my eyes", and shows me by wiping his eyes dry.  i don't want to seem offhand in the face of his great show of affection, but i feel that i really want to continue along the road, and it is only when he gives me three big close-up kisses to say goodbye that i smell the alcohol and it is confirmed to me (what was hitherto suspected)  that he is as drunk as a skunk...you never know when you arrive in a foreign country for the first time, who the people are.


yesterday was my first full day in albania and yielded  more genuine exchanges, like going into the shop to buy a pen and receiving a lesson (actually at my request) on key albanian phrases from the girl who spoke italian - also ostensibly to see how well the pen worked.   key albanian phrases like "kjo eshte rruga per shkoar ...?" (is this the road to...?), which has served me well today, bumping along country lanes trying to find a quiet road away from the lorries and construction vehicles and hanging dust on the main road.

images of albania for me are becoming: a haystack at the side of the road, piles and piles of litter everywhere, cockerels clucking, old men always wearing faded suits and open simple faces - not "simple" as it is sometimes used to mean "of low intelligence" but "good" and "honest", farming people, everyone in the fields hoeing or digging or wielding some agricultural implement, haystacks, cockerels.

wind says hello

"viento del sur, o lluvia de abril
quiero saber donde debo ir"

                                                    lyrics of sui genesis


(southern wind, or april rain
i want to know where i should go)





cycling a bike is similar to meditating
in that it allows living close to the centre-of-oneself,
one's  movements become mechanical, irreflexive
- also similar to taking a nap or letting one's mind wander -
the miles roll;
a headland appears, jutting into the ocean,
and recedes.
a curve ahead
you follow it, first with your eyes
then with your handlebars and bike
and the centre of yourself all the time speaks
and you listen.


i had mainly been following the main road and began to feel itchy inside because of all the cars and cars and lorries zooming past, and all the advertising boards speaking of shops and hotels and things to sell.
following the little winding coast road then - hugging the sea up close - you enter the little villages where only a group of old men are sitting in the shade in amongst decrepit old buildings sighing beside the flat expanse of water, shimmering out to some lazy blue wiggly island shapes - parcel of almighty oh-shin - lapping, a little lap - and you think "Oh modernity you have done many things for us but, my boy, you have a lot to answer for"


Split came at the right moment then, with its cafe-lined Riva full of people sitting at the cafes or walking past the cafes and the nearby Marjan penninsula, where there were pine trees in which to sleep, where there were squirrels chasing each other round the trunks or people rock-climbing in the sun, or the view at night from the flag-fluttering top over the spread of city lights.  i said: if someone had never conceived of city lights before, this would sure be beautiful, and even though they have conceived of city lights before,  it sure is beautiful.
or awaking in the morning, yet to stir, and feeling a bird come to perch on my sleeping bag - the bird maybe thinking i was a bright orange fallen log - and singing his or her songs and hopping around atop of me laying still stock-still.

are you, perchance, a romantic?

- oh, yes, feelings and emotions are very important for me


are you, mayhap, an existentialist?

- oh, yes, existence very important.


art thou, perhchace, fond of using archaic language?

- aye.



the sea had stopped sparkling
the raindrops began falling;
the sea became a steely mass of hebridean cold,
and the wind stiffened.


wind says hello
i say 'oh'
   can i go on?
   the road is long.

'no - know
that i must halt
your pro
gress'

wind and rain in duo chime
'hush, be still - only listen -
all things i wil whisper to you in time'




what else matters to me,
having my body and soul?

- loose translation of words of Juan Ramon Jimenez

("Que me importa nada
teniendo mi cuerpo y alma!")

adriatic moments

i had left ljubljuana and travelled south for an hour by train, then an hour by bike, and it was only when night was falling that i realised that i had left my tent poles with my couchsurfer friends in ljubljana. 

a tent is important because the warmth from your sleeping body is not lost to the air, but creates its own little microspace of warm air.  the difference in temperature between inside and outside the tent is appreciable.

"yes", i told myself, "those tent poles are an important part of my equiptment and i must go back for them".

i hopped on my bike in the morning and biked back to the nearest best hitchable spot, was hopping around to keep warm for a while when a big bus stopped for me.  the door slid open and i saw that the bus was full of boisterous adolescents dressed in white.  i gave my token offering of words in slovenian: "ne govorim slovensko" (i don't speak slovenian).  a seemly man said that they were going to ljubljana and ushered me in saying: "come in, don't be shy!".  i had been told that slovenians loved to drink and repeated this to a girl who walked past the seat i had taken. "croatians too!" she said.  i found out they were a group of musicians and dancers from croatia, dressed in their traditional white clothes, who had come to take part in some processions here in slovenia.  they were all in some intermediary stage between sobriety and inebriation, and were baying and howling like hounds.  i was very happy to be out of the cold, and to have got a lift.  i was asked if wanted to drink pure wine, or drink it mixed with carbonated water as they did, and elected to drink it 'straight' - a lovely subtle easy-drinking white wine from croatia.  "we are crazy!" a girl who had presented herself to me said.   i still cannot find an adequate definition for being crazy; saying that one is crazy is a contentious statement for me, so i told her "you are happy". 
"always happy!", she responded.   despite the undoubted contribution of alcohol to their mirth, i saw an essential core of warmth and friendliness in those youths.  soon an acordian player was standing in the aisle and everyone joined their voices in a rousing sea-shantyesque sing-along, with their arms around one another's shoulders, displaying faces of perfect mirth.   i asked someone what the songs were about and was told: "mostly about love, or love lost".     "or drinking"

the seemly man who led the group - jadrianco, if i can remember his name correctly - explained everything to me in a most amicable fashion.  he said that he had taken part every year in these processions when he was younger, and now he felt it was his turn to give back.  these small processions in slovenia were nothing but a warm up for the big carnival the next day in Rijeka.  this is the third biggest carnival in the world - after Rio, and some other place - and was actually the world's first interational carnival, starting 40 years ago.  at a certain point he said:  "ah, we are running short of time and are going to bypass ljubljana to perform at a procession in another village.  do you want to come with us?  we will be passing back through ljubljana in 2 or 3 hours".   and so i joined their procession, glad to have forgotton my tent poles and returned to the mirthful encounters that, occasionally, come from the decision to hitchhike.

a few hours later in ljubljana i was happy to pass through the market on my way to the couchsurfers' flat and pick up some pink figs that had been recommended to me by couchsurfer Samo.  i was glad to have met Samo and admired his beautiful abstract paintings of subtly-balanced soft colours showing circles and free-flowing lines.  he said that the circles represent the wholeness of the centre of his being, which he has only been able to settle into after learning to abandon - or at least look beyond - the vagaries of his mind.   some very pleasant moments spent in his room drinking tea and discussing - or at least pondering - the mind/body "what makes a person?" question, and watching youtube videos showing Osho - an indian who answers the question "what is the essence of a person?", by saying: not body, nor mind; awareness.
such an enthusiasm had been worked up in me for those pink figs on account of Samo's great enthusiasm for them.  it is good when enthusiasm for something is transferred from one person to another.  the very fact that i was walking the streets of ljubljana had come from brother gerry's love of walking the streets of ljubljana.  i beheld  his enthusiasm and followed suit.    i had originally planned to spend only one night in ljubljana en route to the adriatic sea, but one night at my couchsurfers amicable flat turned into three and i was able to meet with gerry on my third day, when he came to visit from graz by train.  we visited some of his well-liked bookshops, each with their own atmosphere - an admixture of their smell, their music and their peculiar combination of books - and browsing those bookshops made me extra aware of the wealth and worth of good books.  we tasted the coffehouses of ljubljana and i was put in mind of belle and sebastian lyrics for the rest of the day and days to come...we climbed up the spiral staircase of the inacuratley named 'skyscraper' to the rooftop cafe and enjoyed the panoramic view over the city, and then parted at the train station.  gerry back to graz and me south to discover that i no longer had my tent poles with me...

- - - Graz was a beautiful little rest period for me, a nice town with trams sliding along the streets, in which i sat and slowly translated with my pocket German dictionary the sign which says "Schwarzfahren erhoert den Blutdruck", and let the meaning fully sink in: "travelling without a fare raises your blood pressure" with the explanation below: "passengers without a ticket will be charged 60 euros".  the town still in the thrall of winter, mostly reading in gerry's flat, watching the snow fall, or when the weather was clear following the little valley out of town to the Mariatrost basilica and walking back through the woods on the ridge.  Mariatrost has baroque walls painted a sunny yellow, framed by countless white pillars, rising into the cold blue sky.  my eyes were made to look up, and my head must too, when i stood close. 
in graz i realised that cycling my bike was all i really want to do.  hitchhiking has an adventurous element - because you don't  know what will happen - but waiting can drag on too long, the bus is the bus, the train is a beautiful slide but the bike is a way to interact with the road in a physical way.  your thigh muscles speak to the inclines.  the air rushes past you and maybe caresses you or maybe makes you cold on the declines - - -

when i had retrieved the poles and hitched back to where i had left my bike and spend another night (a warm tent night) in the woods, i cycled to the croatian border and was told that i could not enter unless i showed them that i was in possession of several hundred euros to pay for my stay.    the nearest bancomat was 13 kilometres back down the hill, and at first i was reluctant to cover them.  it always provokes reflection in me when my will comes into contraposition with the will of another.  my will said "i would like to enter croatia", and was gainsaid and had me peddling away feeling like a crisp brown leaf blown by the winter wind - or the spring breeze; finally it had me feeling really fine, glad to have a will at all, and let it be really small - gainsaying another's will is to choose disharmony.  finally it had me thanking them for letting me into their country, thanking God for His or Her infinite benevolence, Bob Dylan's recorded voice ringing in my head: "You have given everything to me.  what can i do for you?". 

my little will says: why don't you cycle to greece?
and i say:
okay
if that is Providence's Way
if not to gainsay
what may come my way


i never really thought about meeting up with the croatian carnival paraders but it turned out that later that day, after crossing the border, and peddaling into the cold wind and finally down into the warmer car-infested streets of Rijeka, and choosing a street at random looking to slink out of the city by the quiet road, a voice rings out: "carson!" and it is jadrianco and the full 100 or so paraders waiting their turn for the annual parade of the streets.   "you timed it well", everyone says.  "this carnival is what i live for", somebody says.  the main streets are packed with paraders decked out in a variety of lavish costumes, music - if it can be termed such - blaring from trumpets or cymbals or amplifying devices, all contesting to be heard. everyone drinking and eating from a big marquee on the seafront; plastic cups and other plastic paraphernalia rolling around the streets and floating on the extraordianrily transparent waters of the adriatic sea.  it was an amicable riot. my group have me tie my bike up and store my rucksack in their van.  they have filled up their tanks normally reserved for water with 150 litres of the white wine/carbonated water admixture.   at first i wanted to avoid such carvnival shinanigans, thinking everoyone could only really share together by sharing their drunken state.  "people from scotland drink a lot", i am told.
well, there are certain individuals...


i love the adriatic moments that have commenced:

• being by the sparkling sea
• spinning along the road
• the 'swish' - or the 'wish' - of the wind blowing through the pine trees
• (also the 'broom' of vehicles, but i search for small roads when i can)
• the wind pushing me along at my back  (reminding me of the hand of my dad at my back when i was first learning to ride a bike)

i knew practically nothing about croatia before entering.  i see that it is a step away from wealthy western europe.  it is rural.   the smell of woodsmoke is in the air.  i see people out collecting wood everywhere.   i also collect wood for a campfire when darkness begins to fall; it becomes "t-shirt weather" during the day but at night the temperatures still fall and freeze water.   it is the time of year for pruning the olive trees - men are at work everywhere.   there are very little recycling facilities, making me less willing to purchase glass products.  (austria and slovenia were a little window of happy recycling)  methinks a country's environmental awareness is correlated to their wealth.  the government must be the mobilisers.  they must have satisfied their basic needs before they turn their attention to the environment.   the croatian countryside is beautiful and hilly, sometimes wooded, sometimes bare and rocky, but it is marred by waste products flytipped everywhere - building products and any assortment of old furniture and household waste.  perhaps landfill sites don't exist or perhaps they do but waste collection is not punctilious; in any case it is a picture of what our wasteful modern lives are like, strewn over the surface of the land. 

i only find rubbish in the supermarket bins. 
i am glad of this.
it has become absurdly normal to open a supermarket bin in wealthy western europe and expect to find and find lots of tasty food.   couchsurfers in slovenia told me that supermarkets exist where they stock all the food which has passed its sell-by date.  i don't know if that is the case, but there is nothing in their bins that you want to eat.