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.