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.