italia

as i neared the summit, glancing up now and again to see a group of men sitting there eyeing me with curiosity, i just managed to overhear a muttered

"e gesù"  

it always makes me smile when that happens.

a man i had met on the ridge described it as a zen place.
first of all i wondered what that actually meant then i liked the description, the feeling of being in a zen place.
natural elements predominate over human elements.  there are so many trees, so much sparkling sea, seen from this rocky ridge - Monte Circe, 100km south of rome.

a young man was helping me with train station destinations and at one point questioned: so what do you think of the this part of italy?
so many warm sunny impressions and lively street scenes came to mind, but what i said was:
it has surprised me here how important physical appearance seems to be for everyone.  not just in napoli but in the whole of italy: the woman have to present themselves beautifully, and the men also have to present themselves carefully, in their manly ways.

i don't think i have ever been so conscious of being so gazed at as here, by - sometimes it seems - everybody who i pass on the street.  their gazes are full of surprise, as if they were not expecting to see somebody like me.  it seems that suspicion of the stranger is rife; at least in the first instant before any contact has been made (yes, once words are exchanged then much friendliness can flow). there must be a reason for such suspiciousness i tell myself.  past experiences which inform their present behaviour.  hitchhiking is a no-go.  i tried hitchhiking along the coast road when i first left rome - zilch, nulla, niente, nada, rien, nichts,
not actually nothing because in the end, after long afternoon hours of road-walking and looks of surprise from passing motorists, two kindly young souls stopped saying "let us take you to the bus station; nobody hitchhikes here, and nobody pays for buses anyway, certainly not foreigners"

and so i have begun to travel solely by bus and train
or by foot.

a woman was on the platform and i admired her insouciance in talking away to her very young child - babbling away - just the way to learn that child that language.  then she said: non correre, non correre, and it became repetitive, strident, do not run. i wanted to ask her why not, but then i remembered that first i would have to have entered into a friendly dialogue before i sprung that question, "so why, exactly, do you not want your child to run?" in some ways one can sympathise with her parental concern: my child has not yet learned to run smoothly - he may fall and hurt himself - one can be sympathetic, but at the same time all those prohibitive authoritative reprimands grated; a child finds that he has legs and feet for the first time and wants, precisely, to run.

i have found a genial spot to sleep and cook over a fire at night - beneath a solitary pine tree, halfway up the hill with the old temple overlooking Terracina and the coast, 100 km south of rome.  i decided to linger in terracina when andrea recommended me a pizzeria in the town.  a pizzeria recommendation by an italian is a good thing.  it is good to lay down my rucksack for some days and not only think about covering distance.

who said man i feel like a woman?
man it is good to be a man, to have muscular strength, to be able to drag these logs and snap these little branches!
wouldn't women also like to be as strong as men?

i pitted my strength against Molare - a brooding block of rock which tips the crest of Monte Faico, even though it is tucked away in the middle of the peninsula south of the bay beneath napoli.   not even "il molare", just Molare, brusque, unintroduced, molar tooth, designed to crush.  it was such an inviting ascent of the white rock, in my hair the warm breeze from the surrounding vast and sparkling sea, exhilarating to be in such contact with the rock - to depend on the rock for my security - to say to the rock "will you let me climb you?"  the rock says "you must also be strong"  i feel exhilarated, i love the strong rock, but there is a point where i have to use all my own strength to pull myself up a dangling rope.  i know that if my strength were to fail my bones would be crushed after such a fall.  nobody knows that i am here, i may have been strong but i decline to take the risk.  thank you rock, i loved to encounter you nonetheless.
i prize being alive all the more, running through the rustling leaves beneath the beech trees, only just beginning to bud at this 1,000m altitude.

the quality of the contact of the people that one meets play a big role in one's emotional experience.  especially when travelling alone.  one asks for bus advise and is given only a mumbled non-response.  later on i wave a ciao wave to the arab-looking youngster from the correct bus which was indicated to me by him, and it feels good to have encountered even that little pizzico of friendliness in my day.

the group of excursionists from Rome were so interested in my plans to cycle towards india.   some of the older ones said, with a hint of wistfulness in their voice, i wish i had done something like that when i was younger.  there was no question of wasting my time by not pursuing some greater life goal, or giving back to society, criticism which can be levelled.   it was an unexpected encounter at the top of the hill, but it also seemed so natural for us to sit up there in the sun and share food and share conversation for an hour or two.   upon parting i could not find the words:  thank you all for your... one of them helped me out: "good vibrations"  one of them then said: "send us some good energy vibrations when you are in india", and i thought it a good way to say goodbye.  akin to:  be strong. be happy. pray for us.  some encounters are brief but all encounters leave their mark and contribute to the global experience of the present moment.

how does anybody know what jesus looked like anyway?   he probably had dark hair and an olive complexion because he was from that part of the world.   he must have had muscular strength as well, to have worked with the wood. 

perturbazione

i was jogging along the road out of town in the rain in the dark with my sore shoulder with my big rucksack thinking, "this is a bit crazy, but i would like to try and make this concert now that i am so close.
even if i am an hour late, i might catch the end"

i caught all of it, because a young couple stopped their car and tooted me their horn.  they were so friendly.  they helped me to find the exact location of the gig.   the girl said: apart from going to see perturbazione, what exactly are you doing in italy?      i thought of just saying "i like being in italy" but instead i said, "i am here to see my brother and his wife, who is here holidaymaking... and then i want to pick up my bike"


the first song they sang was Agosto:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpFxmTvpJrM

the refrain goes:

se non e vero che hai paura
non e vero che ti senti solo,  non e vero che fa freddo
allora perche tremi in quest'agosto?

if it is not true that you are scared
it is not true that you feel alone, it is not true that it is cold,
then why are you shivering this august?


melancholy




everyone liked them so much; they clapped and whistled and the third and final time they came back on the stage they played this italian version of belle and sebastian: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MymMgmz22K0&feature=related

i liked the way that the leadsinger danced and swung about the stage in melancholy ways, i had the impression that he was expressing exactly what he wanted to express irrespective of what anybody else might think.   listening closely to one's feelings and expressing them is one way to define what an artist does.

look after me God

the bolt of lightning struck very close - Gery assures us that it was just outside his kitchen window - "you actaully saw the bolt strike the ground?" i asked him, "well just a big white flash outside the window" he replied.  that is what we saw outside our window: a big white flash in the night, then a loud cracking thrumbling rumble and my barefeet could feel the trembling of the ground.

that is when Laurent covered his ears with his hands and cowered in fright and my feelings suddenly changed towards Laurent.  instead of saying to him "take your hand out of your mouth, Lau-lau", "calm down", "stop being so excitable" i suddenly saw him as a poor frightened creature in need of comfort.

while he was brushing his teeth, Marie-Astrid leaned close to me and said "give him some comforting words when you put him to bed tonight, tell him that everything will be alright and reassure him that i will be sleeping downstairs tonight"

"everything will be alright"   where does comes our sense of security come from? the absolute truth is that "it is possible that everything will not be alright", who can say for sure?  in fact, everything does not always turn out alright for all people.



a couple of days later i was in Taizé listening to about 4000 german voices  gathered in the church singing "Behute mich Gott, ich vertraue dir"
look after me God, i trust in you.
on the way there Julien had given me a long lift from Paris and i had tried to explain to him what Taizé was and how their songs had appeal to people who were not necessarily christians, but merely seekers, even through the words were grounded in the christian context.

as i listened to the words - look after me God, i trust in You - sopranos, altos, tenors, basses, all united into one sweet voice of sincerity - i realised that you would have to have faith in something, whether you call it Life or whether you call it God, you would have to want to have faith in something in order to sing lyrics like that.

that is what unites all the people who come to Taizé: they are all seekers of something strong, they are all multilingual faith-seekers.

get me away from here i'm dying

my hands are tingling.
they are covered with little scratches and there are little thorns still stuck in the skin.
there is also a thorn in my foot, causing me to walk with a little limp.

i am kneeling by Agnes-Marie's rambunctious rose garden, digging in the soil and pulling out all the nascent green weeds.
it feels so good to have my hands in the soil, to be handling the recently sprouted brimming-with-life roots.

Caline, Agnes-Marie's obstreperous dog, will only leave me alone after stern reprimands.  pant pant, lick lick, paws all over my body.
un calin in french means a hug.  caline is the feminine adjective.  it is like "huggy"  cuddly.   affectionate.
i learned that dog's name and that word at the same time. 

when i wrote to Marie and told her i had been in Agnes-Marie's rose garden, she wrote back and described her memory of Agnes-Marie, full of malice.
that puzzled me because in my experience Agnes-Marie is so full of goodness and her presence an elderly charm.  then i dug further and found out that the french word malice and the english word malice do not mean the same thing.  malice in french means innocent mischievousness.



life is so short



ahhhhh



you can only really say "life is short" retrospectively once life is over.   in the meantime there is the present moment, which sometimes seems quite long. 

at present my present moment consists of counting down the days before i leave.  one more week to go.   seven days.  till i begin travelling again. 
it surprises me how i have come to rest here these past three months.   the water must also be surprised when on its headlong course down the hill it comes to a tranquil spot and stops moving fast - does not move at all - actually does flowly but only very slowly.  rest is a restrictive word because not moving through space does not mean not internally voyaging.   that is what i talked about with Veronique the first night i arrived.    i said:  i have done a lot of travelling across the land recently but now i would like to voyage in relationships.

it was quite a poetic thing to say.

i remember when i first arrived i really did want to set aside any personal projects and to align my goals with those of the community.  i wanted it to be an exercise in discipline and self-sacrifice.    it was mattias who inspired me.  i saw mattias and i liked mattias and i saw that he had gone through the experience of living at a l'arche community and i thought: maybe if i do the same i will become a little bit like mattias.  now i want to be travelling again so much; the self is so difficult to sacrifice.     the self is wriggly and exciteable.  it wants to move.  the self wants, it wants.   wanting is a principal action of its.

when the weather warmed up and i got outside into the garden, i realised how terribly i had missed contact with nature, during this domestic relationship-rich community experience.
also the open road, i yearn for a winding open road, for spontaneous hitchhiking encounters, for a future which is unknown.
also speaking italian, i have terribly missed speaking italian.
 
it has been a grounding experience for me to live in l'Arche community.  a discovery of the limitations of the self, through encountering others.  i would say that before i had an idealised vision of my capacity to communicate with others.  i thought: it is pretty easy to communicate with others, i just have to be open and listen to them.  now i realise that there are plenty of different people, and plenty of them that i somehow don't click with.  it is made palpable by living in the same house day after day with someone and never really having anything to talk about.  theoretically there are things we could share, but not really share, more merely a superficial question and answer session.  it makes me feel limited, partial, biased, irremediably locked inside myself.  i feel like a limited little piece of jigsaw that cannot join with many other jigsaw pieces.  it is so easy to beam with interest and friendliness while hitchhiking and during other brief travelling encounters.


Gary - who once lived in this house for around twenty years - came to have a meal with us one day.  it was amazing to behold his expansive free way of discoursing with our handicapped guests.  Gerard Marin in particular suffers from great crises of anguish; he feels mostly insecure around other people; often i don't know what to say to him; how to approach dialogue.  suddenly Gary was there cracking jokes, saying absolutely anything at all, but at the same time he always said just the right thing, and Gerard was laughing away, responding with glee to Gary's extrovert presence.  part of me suddenly felt:  i would like to be as confident and creative and cheery as you Gary. 
when he first met me he said:  wow, Scotland;  I love Scotland;  the castles, the hills, the lochs, the mist hanging in the air.  he said it in french even though he is Canadian and we could have spoken in english.  he said it with such enthusiasm he got me feeling really good about coming from Scotland.  however, the best thing about Scotland, he continued, the best thing about Scotland is the hospitality of the people.   the scottish hospitality rivals that of the indians. and he went on to say that he had spent a year wandering around india in his youth, with only a few possessions slung over his back. 

if i let Francine get close to me and take hold of my hand, she will pull me towards her and will not let go.   although her body movements are restricted to writhing in her wheel chair she has an incredible force in her grasp and an avidity of desire.  when i am accompanying her at mealtimes she is more interested in pulling me towards her than in eating her food and it often turns into an amicable wrestling match.   i say amicable because of the look in her eyes, which desires communication so avidly.  maybe it is not really communication, maybe beholding my separate being and wanting to say things and listen to me is not what she is searching for.  it is more wanting to be me, or for me to be her - she is searching what her psychologist calls fusion.   "francine, francinette, your craziness and your wildness know no bounds", i whisper in her ear.

the handicapped people in this house are not concerned at all with the rules of social convention - that is what produces a feeling of freedom when being with them.  Laurent makes all the noises which it enters his head to make.   physical closeness does not phase him one bit.  you could say that he lacks the respectful question:  how will the other person feel about my behaviour? but there is something about his spontaneity and honestly-being-himself-regardless-of-anybody-else which i love.


i find the rules of the community quite restrictive, like always having to wear shoes in the kitchen.  it is because l'arche in france has begun to be funded by the government, and along with lots of money, there comes lots of rules concerning hygiene to comply with.  i was walking along the pavement between the houses when Ben - the head of the whole community - cycled past and stopped and turned around and told me; with some feeling, Carson, you really have to wear shoes.  he said it like that, with a lot of stress on the word have.   he said it in english because he is english and as often as not we speak in english.
a few evenings later there was the funny situation of me standing on top of the roof with my feet bare leaning out to trim the branches of the tree while the sun was glowing and sinking.    i think ben was surprised to see me up there when he came cycling past because all he said was bon soir! 
i was very conscious then of my bare feet, of the glowing sinking sun.

barefeet.  apparently it is a hygiene issue - Ben says there is a risk of hepatitus B.  other people say "you know, it is for your own safety"

barefeet are important.  i really feel that it is important to wear barefeet.