searching for the magic, romania

i met tom - who is a wizard.  we celebrated his 43rd birthday in a bar in cluj.  tom doesn't like the word itinerant but he does like the word nomad.  "what do you say to people," i asked tom, "when they ask you why you don't have a job and a family and a house (a settled life)?"

"nah, people don't really ask me that" tom mused.

a few days later he picked up the thread of our thinking, "there is a big difference between being lost and not being lost, even though externally the situation is the same.   the difference is inner.  people don't question where i am going because i know where i am going.  people can see that."

i realise that i have a tendency to listen to the people and try to enter their world - to see their way of seeing, and agree with them.

tom intimated to me one night that he has tendencies towards wizardry, and i received this information with an:   "aa, so tom is a wizard"

i could not agree, however, with the hungarian driver who gave me a lift.  he began by saying that this northern part of transylvania had been 'stolen' from hungary by the romanians.
''the problem with romania is that it is infested with gypsies,'' he said.
''and in the rest of europe it is the black people . . .they can come to visit for holidays but not to live''
''but . . .europe is a good place to live,'' i said.  ''what gives you the right to live in hungary and not other people?''
''because my ancestors fought for this land''

ancestoral ties.   the survival of the strongest.  the earth's limited resouırces.  the growing population.

''but would it not be better to share the resources of the planet and live together peacefully''

''i will fight till my death to protect my homeland from outsiders'' my liftgiver said and laughed like a schoolboy.

unconsciousness.  unlove.  the challenge of being human.

''i think that fighting for resources belongs to a more primitive stage of human evolution whıch we should go beyond.  for me it is an obvious choice to choose to share and live together in peace.''

to which he did not respond.

i thanked him for the lift and prayed for his soul.


''so,'' i asked tom. ''basically you have spent the last twenty years going from rainbow to rainbow?''

''yep,'' came his quick unequivocal response.


when hitching with tom it was interesting to hear his response to the question, which i also often find myself answering, ''what are rainbow gatherings''

i had been saying things like, ''it is people who live together in nature for a month; we form a temporary community; we love to live together simply in nature, cooking over a fire, singing songs of gladness for life''

tom got to the heart of the matter: ''the fire in the centre symbolises the Heart.  when we stand in a circle holding hands round the fire, we are connecting all of our hearts.  we are all part of the One Heart.  there are no boundaries between anyone.  we all come together as One''

it was all about looking for the right spot for the rainbow.  even though certain essential features were found - clean water source, etc - we were looking for what tom called the wow factor.  the magic energy that the rocks released and made the trees stretch beautifully to the heavens and that would make people say: wow, i love this place!

despite the searching for the rainbow, for weeks now i have been on the brink of leaving for turkey.   the road is whispering sweet follow-me messages.  there is also a rainbow in turkey at the moment.  there is also the maybe of meeting with friend shokouh from iran. and brother finlay has been walking around turkey for the past month.

but, until today, i haven't hit the road.  one thing or another has led me elsewhere.  the day i left gabriela's flat in bucharest the daily message on his calender read, "dace nu stii unde vrei sa te duci, orice drum te va duce acolo" (if you don't know where you want to go, any road will take you there).  it was attributed to a chinese proverb.  it seemed a meaningful message to me that day, when i decided to head out to the apuseni mountains, and meet with tom.  when i told this to ioana, she said that she understood better why i move around the way i do.

searching for the rainbow, romania

it is so Beautiful here

mmmm

i really like this Place

there is a water supply, plenty of spots for camping, space for organising workshops

what we need to find is a spot that is big enough - and reasonably flat - for the main circle.  we are talking about two thousand, potentially three thousand, people.  lets talk to the villagers.

"cautam o poiana unde putem sa facem o intalnire mare in agosto"

key words are poiana (meadow) and mare (big)

we are looking for a big meadow.

one shepherd met on the meadow said:  you want to sleep outside?  No!   too dangerous.  the wild animals will eat you up.  there are bears in these woods you know.  yes, they eat up the cattle and they attack.  stay close to the village! come down with me and watch us milking the cows and drink some fresh milk!

we tell an old woman in a village that we want to find a place big enough so that we can all eat together in a big circle.  "eat together," she says, "invite us too!    yes, please come.  everyone is dying in these villages; there are only old people left.  

i like the way jakub manages to get photos of the interesting country people.  i would feel uneasy about snapping a stranger; it wouldn't be their soul i was stealing, it would just make our brief encounter somehow less genuine.  or maybe not.  jakub manages it.  he just pulls out his camera and his disarming smile and says: pot sa fac o posa, da? the old man first protests, saying he is in his working clothes, but presently buttons up his shirt and adopts a dignified posture.  the old woman says, "what do you want a photo of an ugly old woman for?" but jakub protests, laughing, "no, you are still beautiful!'

i got quite a good photo of jakub's turkish coffee pot standing on the floor of the cave illuminated by a shaft of sunlight.  why do you use that pot to make coffee instead of just boiling water in the pan?  i asked jakub.

i don't know, he said.

it is the way the turks do it.

it is a turkish coffee pot

the cave was chilia lui dionisie - dionisie's cell - chiseled into the soft sandstone rock and reached by a four metre ladder.  it was inhabited by dionisie for thirty years in the sixteenth century.  the informative plaque inside, next to the alter with the icons and the candles, said that dionisie lived a life of extreme asceticism, only eating one meal per day, which was passed up to him on a stick, and only descending once per week to attend the church communion in the neighbouring valley.  all of his days and his nights were spent in earnest prayer to God. 

walking in the woods in the next valley, we came across a massive block of sandstone, green with moss, whose interior had been carefully hollowed to make a little chapel, while the exterior had been carefully sculpted into smooth walls.  there was also an informative plaque inside which i carefully studied.   the centuries of monastic occupation of these wild woody hills north of the town of Buzau was characterized by hermitages and lives of solitary devotion.  the community at the stone church was particular in that it was used by a community of twelve monks who gathered to eat around a massive beech trunk, sculpted into a table.