la passione per il lavoro

on easter sunday i woke up and decided to travel to iran.

this easter monday morning i am looking out of the window onto sunsoaked white houses and swaying green trees.  i am in erica and brent's appartment.   erica travels all over italy as a tour guide on a bus.  brent is a graphic artist from canada who is looking for work at the moment in rome.  they met during erica's school exchange programme in canada.   i met them last night on the train and my enquiry about where i could find internet access led to a beer in a bar and then being invited to stay at their place.

online i have found out that an iranian visa for a UK citizen may cost 275 euros.

i was sitting on the train platform playing my ukulele when a woman gave me a bag of chocolate eggs and a smile.


i used to curse God because i had no shoes
then i met someone with no feet.

(muslim proverb)

brent is playing the guitar and erica is making some pasta.  a sunny easter monday morning in rome.  easter sunday was also a very sunny day.  i left the rainbow gathering in the morning and began walking along the via francigena, the old pilgrim path to rome.  across the sunny garden fence, a group of friends having a barbecue invite me for a glass of wine, which leads to a plate of pasta and salad and the most succulent soft lamb i can ever remembering tasting.  massimo the barbequer and i talk about being open to the new opportunities that life offers us each new day, about the importance of sharing with the people we meet along the way and the essential unity of all beings.  we end up embracing each other often and, looking into each other's eyes, commenting that it is not so frequent for two people to choose to look directly and honestly into the eyes of the other.  massimo's fidanzata - whose cuban parents gave her the name lady - says she will give me her eyes in return for mine.   massimo says that she is a wild african spirit enclosed in the appearance of a lady.

next to the welcome home arch leading up the the rainbow encampment is a sign bearing these words:

Fermati, respira profondamente
sintonizzati e ascolta la Madre e il Cielo,
entra in profondo contatto con te stesso.
Risuona con la tua frequenza, il tuo colore libero delle impurita che ti hanno appesantito.
Armonizzati in un unico ARCOBALENO
che rifletta la strada piu alta.

it sounds like a religion, especially the last bit.

what makes a religion a religion? i said to the guy from holland with the cowboy hat and the long hair and the smile and the guitar.  do you believe in the rainbow? he asked me the first time i met him by the evening fire.  what is belief?  it is our way of seeing the world, our way of behaving in accordance with our deepest values.   all religions have a sacred book, says he, ours would be The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.  Now is our religion.  we believe in Right Now.
the Power of Now suddenly acquires an extra resonance as i listen to his words.  he is an animated figure at my side flickering in the soft blazing glow of the fire.  the beats of the bongo drums powerfully measure out the flickering passage of moments, overlaid with a female's singing tribal voice

i left finlay juggling by the fire circle in the morning.  he said he was thinking of travelling back to la valle degli elfi - the community in the wooded valleys in the north of tuscany.  finlay and francesca travelled up from calabria, and we met at the festa della luna piena, which was combined with their celebration of thirty years of occupation of the old farm houses which were falling into ruin, scattered throughout the woods of the steep valleysides.  being there is like stepping back in time, many houses have no electricity, the various young families educate their children in their own school and they live by growing their own vegetables and herding goats, as well as by touring the music festivals in the summer, making and selling pizzas.  often they gather together for a festa lavoro - playing music and sharing sumptious meals of lasagna and pasta and homemade bread, in between working together on some project - planting potatoes or recementing an old leaky wall.  the morning when it rained roberto, the grey bearded animated young soul, encouraged everyone with his exclamations, "oi, raggazzi. voi siete fantastici."  he encouraged everyone with his exultations of the wonderful act of all working together in the freedom of the open air, and handed us cans of beer.  when finlay and i told roberto that we would leave to go to the rainbow gathering, he responded: "ma il rainbow e qui. noi siamo il rainbow"
he said they all came from the rainbow.  "the rainbow is good," he said, "but they don't do any work.  what we have here is la passione per il lavoro."

it was a gleaming vision of the sort of life i would like to live if i ever decide to settle down.

Taizé

"i am really interested in what people really mean when they say 'God'"

"lets talk about this later," said stephan, the german washing up at the sink, for the church bells had already begun ringing.

rita, the german mother who did her knitting during the morning discussions, said that she was filled with something at taizé which had to keep her going till her next visit because she couldn't find it anywhere else.


it is a feeling, an awareness, God, that everything is insuperaby good.  it is an overwhelming wave of Peace, the perception of goodness, the perception of beauty - Love - it is a recognition of the value of, God it is Hope and Faith and Charity and Love, it is a feeling and a perception, an attitude, an affirmation, begot by such words as:

In manus tuas pater, commendo spiritum meum

or:

Mon ame se repose en paix sur Dieu seul: de lui vient mon salut.  Oui, sur Dieu seul mon ame se repose, se repose en paix

or simply:

Toi, tu nous aime, source de vie

or:

O toi, l'au-dela de tout, quel esprit peut te saisir?  Tous les etres te celebrent, le désir de tous aspire vers toi

sung by everyone sitting in the church either side of the central isle where the monks in white robes sit; the voices of all rise in unison, humble-hearted voices, sincere, full of tenderness and hope, accompanied by the simple melody of a harpsichord.  it feels awesome.  it is a feeling.   God, what is it?

another taizé song offers this:

The kingdom of God is justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Come Lord, and open in us, the gates of your kingdom

ma che bello!


however, in the underground crypt in the early morning catholic mass, my principal thoughts were:  "but what are the thoughts of he who reverently, spectacularly holds aloft the holy host? he who is draped in those robes, he who repeats those words because those are the words that have to be said, what are his real thoughts and feelings?  what is he experiencing in this moment?"  i can see that hitting upon a good ritual then following it again and again may give a feeling of security to the worshipper, but give me the simplicity of the taizé service, the silence, the simple melody of the harpsichord and the super simple focus on the super positive superthemes of our lives.


brother norbert wrote back and said that even though i was "only" 28 years old, i have experienced a lot of things in my life.  he hoped that i understood that the diversity of countries, cultures, churches is already very big and they need to keep a common age among volunteers. As well, they like to give a priority to young people who begin their faith journey, who are about to make important decisions in their life.

i came round to appreciating their focus on the young.  i watched the video about the founder Brother Roger and appreciated that from the outset taizé has been conceived as a place for the young.

long live the young!
off to pastures new

the group of belgian high school students made a lot of noise in the dormitories.  one night they all sat in a circle and one of them dashed into the middle to pick up the spoon as soon as they recognised the song played by luigi and gabriel on the guitar.   luigi and gabriel, the young italians who took a photo of us all together smiling in the sun on their polaroid camera, which they soon signed and gave to me, telling me to give them a call if i ever came near their village near torino.  the photo which i was admiring in the street in cluny on the day i left when lo and behold! they drove past and we all sat in the square and they played stairway to heaven while the sun sank.  we talked about italy and travelling and europe, and the international goodness of taizé.  wide-eyed they were at me saying that i would go in to the woods over there and look for a place to sleep seeing as night was now coming on.  i could see that such solitary sleeping in the woods could be seen as not so much fun from a standpoint of social conviviality.  i told them of the joy of solitude; the return to the source that is meditation, the beauty of being with the trees and falling asleep with the stars above.  in the end i did in fact spend an evening of human conviviality because when i walked into the boulangerie, asking if they could fill my water bottle, marie said:

"tu est en voyage? tu fais du couchsurfing?"
i said: "oui, de temps en temps.  cette nuit par contre je pense que vais dormir dans les bois"
"dans les bois?  ben, tu peux dormir chez moi si tu veux, il n'y a pas de souci.
c'est comme tu veux"

"ben, comme j'ai dit, dormir dans les bois est ce que pensais faire, mais ton offert d'hospitalité commence a me sembler une bonne option."


an offer of spontaneous hospitality.

a night of meeting her partner nicolas and his circle of friends in the bar, then going out to a restaurant, then admiring her spectacular photos on her laptop of the year she spent working as a chef in new zealand.  spectacular, new zealand is a place where the air is pure and the water is pure and the plants grow to their full sparkling best.  even the rocks seem to radiate with extra special verve.  everyone who has been there says that.

quite impressive really: a stranger walks into your life and twenty seconds later you invite them back to your house.  "intuition," marie later explained, "i always trust my intuition."

Vision Quest in london

lavanya and i went on a Vision Quest.

it could have been called 'a walk in the park', but lavanya called it a Vision Quest.  we both had questions to ask.  my question was: what should i do with my life? (why am i alive? what activity can i pursue that is best for me and the people and the planet?)  lavanya shook her rattle to mark the beginning.  before leaving her back garden, lavanya suggested with her eyes that i might want to take along the ukulele.  we weren't to talk; the purpose of the Quest was to listen, to be attentive, to perceive.   the activity was consonant with the message of the book that i am currently reading: The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram.  the book asserts that, fair enough, humans have developed the capacity to distance themselves from The World through abstract thinking, but let us not totally forget that it is also a good experience - a healthy one, a grounded one and in reality the only Real one - to be in direct sensory connection with the world.  language was born - Abram asserts - through humans mimicking the sounds of their surrounding environment.  the spoken word vibrates and goes out to join the other murmurings of Nature - the wind in the leaves and the rush of the brook.   along with the development of writing, humans developed the habit of encapsulating ideas (about our sensory experience of the world) with symbols.  the ideas, like the symbols, were an abstraction of the real sensory experience of being in the world in the present moment.   according to Abram, Language - messages - meanings - communication - is something more than abstract ideas in a human head.  it is a whole body thing; we are embodied beings and can only fully be ourselves by being sensorily aware of our placement in the world: the surrounding smells and sights and gleaming eyes and the calls of birds and the rustling bustling tactility of our environment.  these are all Essential Messages to our embodied selves, which run the risk of sliding by unnoticed if we allow our attention to be wholly caught up by items of technology. 

with this body of ideas in mind, i held on to a stick.  lavanya was holding the other end.  she was my guide; i had full faith that she was leading my along exactly the path i should be on.  i walked slowly.  the sunlight filtered through my closed eyelids, alternating with the cool shade of the trees.  the birds were so alive, filling the air with their lively cries.  my barefeet fell with curiosity.  mostly i stepped on smooth dried mud, but sometimes i squelched on cool moist mud.  i felt the enormous security of being on the Earth.  it was an enchanting journey of light and shade, soft muddy footfalls full of faith through a wood i saw not.  total exploration.

like all journeys, it was a succession of moments.  i embraced the sensory experience of walking through those light and shade woods with particular enthusiasm, because lately my appreciation of the present moment has been replaced by preoccupations about the future.  

later on, it is natural that we take separate paths.  i leave lavanya lying on the grassy hill pointing up to the pure blue sky, whispering, "that is my mind" 

Inner Peace was what she was searching for.

i must go to the Big Tree where each massive sprawling branch is like a fully grown tree itself. i pluck up the courage to reach for the high branch, pulling myself up into that elevated world of gnarly trunks, rough and easy for my barefeet to grip after days of dry weather.  it is a very inviting climb; several sections cause me to think twice and evaluate possible alternative routes, before plucking up courage and moving confidently on, cautiously, very alert to perceiving the feel of the tree.  then the feeling of being on the topmost branch, the green grass now far below, watching the sun sinking in the west and, ten miles to the north-west, the cluster of tall buildings that constitute central london.
as i am climbing down i carefully observe two young green birds that look like they might be parrots.  the one that looks like the male arches over the one that looks like the female.  imposing.  he is contemplating her.  she nimbly steps along the branch away from him.  he moves close again and pecks her gently and moves away.  she moves close to him and their bodies fold and they are gently pecking each other.   they are oblivious to my watching them for maybe ten minutes.  then, suddenly, the male falls off the branch and swoops off to a distant tree.  she is left with her green feathers watching me carefully picking my way down the lower branches and falling onto the ground.

previously lavanya suggested that i nominate some thing - guide - guru - God - animal spirit - body organ to listen to and let guide me.  (besides lavanya) i knew this to be my very own heart.  i always want to listen to my heart and take my cues from there, even though at times i lack the confidence to do that. 

later, as evening creeps over the land, we pause to admire the young-uns in the skatepark.  they skate with confidence and elegance, and one of them performs a 360 jump. 

after a while, "where are your shoes?" asks one, who looks like he has recently become a teenager.

"i have left them at home," i say.

"do you have shoes?"

"yes, but i prefer to feel the earth beneath my feet"

a pause, and then,

"are you a hippy?"

"what is a hippy?" - a question i always ask.

"someone who dresses like an idiot, and walks about the woods playing the ukulele - like you, by the looks of it." he retorted.

"well, he is quite right about the woods and the ukulele," i was thinking.

"i am just a person," i say, wanting to avoid any categorisations and separations between peoples.

then, next day i am running into central london and i ask the time of two young gentlemen both walking dogs and both holding cans of beer.  i ask them the time and they wonder about me and where i am going and why the barefeet.  "are you a tree-hugger?" asks the young man from dublin.

well, as it happens, i am rather fond of trees.

for the painting, my mother said she liked the image of a path winding through sunlit woods.

it was very easy for me to naturally feel inspired by that image.

first i tried to mix acrylic and oil paints before finding out that acrylic paint cracks when applied on top of oil.  in the end, i scraped off all the cracked paint and stuck to just oil.

crossing the cairngorms

     "is that a sign saying buckie on it!?"
     asked the delighted girls
     at the back of the bob scott's
     when duncan and i walked in

     "is there any room at the inn?" i had said
     "aye, plenty!" they said,  "there's wine too."

     three boys and three girls
     (three young men and three young women)
     a merry young group of young students from aberdeen young
     they were certainly welcoming; they were merry.  melodious too,
     andrew brought a guitar and sang songs and everyone played songs and andrew said,
     "everyone - every young person - plays guitar
      in scotland
      now"

     young, they ask us what is it like to now have finished university
duncan is still studying art therapy, actually.  we talk about us all being students of the University of Life.  duncan says he knows several people who haven't gone to university but have chosen another path and love what they are doing.   luigi (from nairn, actually called andrew but called luigi to distinguish him from andrew) asks me what is the best method to learn a foreign language; "una mesa para cuatro por favor," (he has also studied spanish.)  i tell him that a love of learning the language is the essential ingredient, but he is right in that befriending a native speaker and speaking with her or him is a powerful method of directing one's language learning love.  luigi's companions comment on his habit of adopting a hang-dog approach in order to encourage others to share their food.  i didn't realise how effective his technique was until duncan and i were tucking into our pot of pasta and luigi is there lookin on,
"that
 looks
 really 
 good"

     "bucky is what we drink in our flat.  it is cheap and does the job.  actually it is not that cheap it has gone up to eight quid in aberdeen"
     "i used this sign last week and i have it now because i plan to hitchhike back to buckie again"
     welcoming and merry they were, slowly i could see them catching on to duncan and i's calm reflective ways.
     our most significant
     act of communication
     was to look at each other appreciatively
     chewing slowly
     eyes open, appreciative
"mmmmmm"       "fine"      "a fine taste indeed,"     duncan would say in the voice of a highland laird
     :pasta and tomato sauce and garlic and cheese,
     or potatoes sheathed in foil baked on the embers draped in olive oil,
     or a tipple of whisky.

"i thought about joining your skinnydip in the river last night," duncan said, "but then i thought better of it..."
"inspired by alcohol," he said.  he had stayed inside to pluck the guitar,
also when me and the lads went out to look for dry wood in the wet forest with our headtorches
and came back howling like dogs to the wetness and the night.
duncan stayed with the guitar and the girls in the bothy.  they hid under the table
so that when we first returned it looked like there was nobody there.
" - or maybe inspired by the ginormous freshness of being in a swift-flowing mountain river"
i thought, "alcohol is a sufficient reason, but not a necessary one"

we saw what duncan thought was a golden eagle,
a big bird soaring far off across the top of the snowy valley
the day we set off to walk over the lairig an laoigh
we got as far as the glas allt mor
a raging wee torrent necessitating
boots off
breeks off
a chilly chily chilly crossing, cold, embracing
the elements.
elemental.
it made our skin go red.  it made duncan stand there by the snowy bank of heather
bent over his half pulled up breeks,
pausing
out of exhaustion
every so often giving a little wriggle to one of his legs.
five minutes just to get his breeks back on!
it was difficult for me to suppress my laughter
at the highly unusual sight of this man, belabouring over the simplest of tasks
frozen limbs
not so compliant any more.
it reminded me of julio cortazer's short story about a boy who gets up in the morning and goes to put his pullover on but gets his head stuck up one of the arms and then can't find his way out.   his existential angst mounts as he tries another hole but remains trapped inside his dark pullover existential angst help! he can't do it he can he tries again he sees the light he finally makes it outside
phew!
end of the story

plodding through the wet snow the wind whipped up stinging rain in our faces
"windy and rainy" - that is the word description, but this is the feeling
a battle.
the cairngorms.
the thought of the bigger wider fords of avon which lay ahead
the icy grip of the fingers of the water of winter.
elemental.
"lets head back for another night in bob scott's"
beautiful bob scott's with his hot stove and wood panelled insulated bothy warmth
and an encouter this time with two older men up from fife
and two younger men, one tubby and red-skinned, the other lean and blonde, who came in later that evening having just walked thirty kilometres from the tarf hotel, necessitating a three hour detour in the morning to get round the flooded river, and a total of twelve river crossings throughout the day, often holding each other and crossing as a duo, as they later recounted.
the snow melts
and fills the watercourses.
elemental.

the next day duncan walks back to braemar and aberdeen while i continue over the lairig ghru to speyside.
in the lairig ghru there is nothing but Deep Peace
the wind, temporarily, has abated,
the only sound is the muffled white water of the infant Dee.
in the glen are russet grasses amid faded brown heather and grey granite boulders, spattered in the south with elusive hints of the sun breaking through clouds.
the snow slopes rise up and give way to the deep misty blue of the high corrie.  the black rocky slabs of the devil's point - the showcase rocky peak of the cairngorms, which the gaels saw fit to call Bod an Deamhain (the penis of the Devil) - rise up and disappear in a shroud of enigmatic plateau mist.
at the top of the pass i cross a couple of miles of snow field
where i find
a plump
white
ptarmigan,
stiff,
black eye expresionless
cute little black beak
a bright red streak of feather above his eye
i have never seen a ptarmigan so healthy and unalive and close-up
"i could leave him in this icy exposed burial ground
 till the snow melts
 and he decomposes
 or . . . i could
 take him home," i decided.

he is now plucked and in the pot,
and tastes pretty good,
along with the onion and celery and mushroom and garlic and herbs and olive oil that i added.

a different kind of burial.

twenty five kilometres after leaving bob scott's i got to drake's bothy near loch an eileann,
glad to find it still open
in the dark
the simple wooden hut
sheltered me from the rain

my cardboard sign became wet in the rain and disintegrated and blew apart in the wind,
but i stuck out my thumb anyway on the A9
and not one minute passed before david and catherine lowry stopped for me
told me they were recently back in the uk
after building their own wooden boat,
sailing across the atlantic
and running 6,500 miles from the south to the north of
south america.
full of enthusiasm they were
about hitchiking about ecology about living in the countryside about birds
i told them about the golden eagle about bob scott's about my plans to cross the atlantic
they encouraged me - like others have done - to head to the canary islands in november and ask the america-bound yachts there for a lift.
"it took us a month to cross, but we were taking it easy.
 most boats have a motor which they turn on when there is no wind,
 and cross in 21 days"
it is inspiring to be fed by such enthusiasm on the road
- otherwise one would have to keep the flame of enthusiasm going
all on one's own.
although i didn't tell them that.
i just said, "thanks for the lift"     "enjoy torridon"
they were going up to torridon.

on the road out of inverness, again before a minute was up
a van stopped
containing a gently spoken man from aberdeen
who took me to fochabers
he tipified that quietly spoken north-east character
who is devoid of bravado
who doesn't shy away from speaking slowly,
pausing to find the right word,
happy to converse in a wandering way,
consider any topic: travelling, the love of languages, local dialects, the suppression of gaelic by the english, why learn gaelic now? esperanto, local dialects discouraged in schools, his ten year-old grandaughter coming home from school using local expressions, having been actually encouraged to do so by her teacher, hitchhiking in decline, our individualistic society, the hospitality of the stranger in poor countries, when you have little you share it, when one lives in an affluent society one does one's own thing.

he dropped me off in fochabers.  he was called rod.
"thanks rod.  all the best!"
i walked along the path which runs along the river spey to spey bay - sometimes across soft mud, othertimes prickly gravel, othertimes silky grass, then across the grassy golf course and finally along the sandy beach as the sun sank.  the only words i exchanged with anyone in those windy sunlit bracing 9 miles were with an old man with a white beard in portgordon who said,
"you are a hardy chappy!"

"my boots were rubbing - i have walked many miles - so i saw it as a good opportunity to walk barefeet, which i love anyway," i called back to him across the wind.

scotland in february

i wiz awa oot ta look for wid fan andy waaks through the door, and we initiate an evening of sitting by the fire, eating things and talking about things.   by the bothy fire is a great venue for a rendez-vous.  i ayeweez slip in'o the brogue fan im in that bothy, a fact which i alluded to in the bothy book.  andy signed the book, "andy fae embra."  i had never thought of it before, but that is the way some people pronounce it.  particularly the youths who andy is now working with - those who have dropped out of school early and are looking for a job.  "you could come and talk to them," suggested andy, after i told him that i had been back in my old high school talking to fifth year students about my activities since leaving high school.  perhaps my alternative footloose path of exploration is not the most relevant to them, i muse, but i think the biggest influence on another person comes from the simple being of a person, more than information about what they do.  andy says the only viable path for the youngsters he comes in contact with is to find a job - the more locally the better.

"so, would any of you consider moving up to aberdeen if there was a job there?" andy says he asked them.

"naw, they're aw sheep-shaggers up there!" he says they responded.

the next day andy and i climb up ben vrackie.  a few hundred metres up and the hill is covered in snow.  near the top the air becomes thick with blustery snowflakes.  the top of the hill is a wild place to be.  the cairn is a beatifully sculpted white winter monument, its horizontal ice flutings indicating the direction of the prevailing wind.  for the descent, andy regrets not bringing his waterproof trousers, with which he could have slid down the snow.  i regret not bringing boots, for my trainers are soon soaked and i feel the cold seeping up through my body.

driving along the motorway to edinburgh, the sign for glenrothes gives me the idea to visit my grandparents.  i somehow manage to locate their house amid the labrinth of big roads and big roundabouts and homogenous housing schemes which constitute glenrothes.  i knew they would be happy to see me.  as we enter the house there is a great cry of surprise and happiness, and andy and i are soon sat on the settee with cups of tea and plates of chocolate biscuits on our knees.

the next day, my grandma doesn't want me to hitchhike, so i get the bus into edinburgh.

"the thing is, i like to hitchhike," i had said to her.  "it is a pleasure for me.  i don't mind waiting.  i like to meet the friendly people who stop."

but my grandmother is tenacious in her insistence that i take the bus:  "i know that you hitchhike everywhere, but just this once, take the bus.   will you do it for me?" she implores with her tenacious loving smiling eyes,  "i want to know that you'll arrive safely."

as well as money for the bus, she gives me some sturdy shoes which my grandfather no longer uses.  she doesn't like the sight of me wearing those ones with holes in them.

in the national portrait gallery in edinburgh there is a tall dandy man with tinted glasses.  he is standing next to the portrait of a prominent early scottish feminist and telling a group of female visitors how the word feisty is spelt so they can write it down.  "this word is only used to describe women," he says.
"and it is not a positive trait."

later i ask kevin what he thinks feisty means and he immediately gives a catsnarl and swipes the air with his paw.  brother kevin and sister-in-law ally have 35 acres of young woodland, for which they have received a considerable grant from the goverment because of their aim to increase biodiveristy, and to engage in social activities.  they have already had children from the local school up planting many different varieties of scottish apple trees for their orchard.  kevin and i whack wooden posts with a mallet into the squelchy ground to make a woodland enclosure for hens.  one of us holds the wooden post with one hand and the ladder with the other, while the other one stands atop the ladder with a look of fierce concentration, emitting fierce concentrated grunts, coincident with each mallet blow.  we dig over a piece of ground and wrestle out the tree stumps so it will be level for big new shed soon to arrive.  on day three we are kneeling weeding the vegetable plots when the wind - coming from the east - brings flurries of fat flakes of snow.  back in the house for the rest of the afternoon we watch the world becoming white outside.
it is good to engage in purposeful activities with kevin, while we perceive our beings being together.  it has been a while since we caught up.

scotland in february.  in the morning the first car takes me to the motorway near falkirk.  before getting out i ask him if he has hitchchiked himself.  his only response is: "no.  i am a humanist."
rain begins to fall and, as i am waiting, the side of the road becomes a cold uninviting place to linger.  a police car pulls up and tells me that it is illegal to hitchhike on the motorway.  "i know that it is illegal to hitchhike on the motorway," i bend down in the rain to speak through the window, "but i thought this slip road would be a safe place for cars to pull in before they enter the motorway."
"this is still considered the motorway," says the police officer, his voice indicating that his patience threshold is not very high, "you'll have to get into falkirk and get a bus from there."

"okay.  i see the problem," i say, and walk away and walk down the sliproad which joins the motorway going in the opposite direction.  i want to go to perth, and can either go via stirling to the west or via the forthroad bridge to the east.  i prepare a patient response to the police if they come again: i know that it is your job to enforce the law, and i would like to assist you in the job where i see that it is sensible that the law be followed.  obviously it would be dangerous to stand on the motorway next to the fast-moving cars, and expect them to stop for me, but can you not see that it is quite safe for a car to pull in here on the slip road, like you have done yourself?  surely the only reason to follow the law is if the law itself is reasonable?  i didn't really expect the police to follow me on this line of reasoning.  i suppose that i wouldn't even have got half-way through it before they quashed me with their overweening voice of authority, but i felt that i needed to at least try and stand firm by my desire to live in a more human society where strangers can choose to trust each other and have spontaneous positive encounters, sharing their roads together - those who have wheels inviting those who have not to accompany them on their journey, to construct a society less obsessively based around the aquisition and spending of money in order for each one to live a life of self-contained self-sufficiency which requires no contact or affirmative trusting interaction with others.

i know it is a question of being rescued by someone before the police come.  my rescuers are two poles who invite me in out of the rain.  they are going to edinburgh.  one of them says he has been living in scotland for twelve years, and has aquired so scottish an accent that i would niver hae been able tae tell that he wisna fae embra, were it not for him telling me.  the voice of his companian who is driving reveals unmistakably his polish origin, although he says that he has been living in scotland for ten years.  he says that he, like me, loves to travel. "last year i participated in the london to mongolia rally race.  next year i want to travel to south asia, but only by foot.  the car is unreliable."  i say that i similarly prefer to travel by foot, although i am happy to travel in other people's cars, when they want to take me.
they are both happy people whose laughs came to them easily.  they drop me off at a petrol station where i can shelter from the rain and ask the motorists who stop to fill up their cars.  before long i meet bruce who says he can take me to stirling, which is, in fact, back along the road i have just come from.  he says that edinburgh is a cold place, certainly compared to the isle of skye where he grew up. he explains what he means by cold by saying that he has never talked to his neighbours not even once.   when i say that i don't have a job and move around a lot, he says that i will end up like him - running a restaurant.  (i am still not sure what he meant by that.) he just bought a pub in callander.  he is quietly scottishly pragmatic.   it seems that he isn't prone to getting very excited about very much.  he tells about the sites of historic interest scattered across argyl, the first part of scotland to be settled.

when he drops me off it has stopped raining, but it is still cold.  there is snow at the side of the road.  soon billy stops for me and tells me his name with a handshake.  "yer hands are freezin', here get them under that heatin' they'll soon warm up. if i had picked you up a month ago i could ha' taken you aw the wai up ta inverness.  ah work on the pylons.  ah hid a job up north an wiz aawais travellin up the A9.  up and doon fae dundee.  we wiz workin up near wick once, and the big crane got stuck in the bog.  the next day you could only see the light on its roof.  it had sunk right in."
i tell him how grateful i am that there are still people like him who are happy to pick up hitchhikers.  for most people it has really disappeared as a cultural practice.  "aaaye, they're aw too scared o' strangers noo," he drawls in his dundonian brogue "nae me; i'll pick up onyone.  i used tae dae it myself goin to the football.  my mates and i wid get pished and hitch to the match."

"right the broxton roundabout is comin up," he says, "get ready to jump out.  you got aw yer stuff?  right there's naeone behind, GO NOW!  AW THE BEST PAL!"

i jump out into the fresh cold sunny air of perth and walk along the side of the road north until i get to a layby.  soon a posh cream coloured car pulls in with leather upholstery with a quirky driver with fair stubble on his chin - called malcolm i learn - and a young australian in the passanger seat, called bethan.  we talk a lot about travelling.  i tell her about bruce chatwin, who has written a book about the australian aborigines and about the restlessness of the human spirit.
chatwin hypothesises that nomadism is the original and the healthiest human society - perhaps to explain the ants in his own pants (he said that after a month in the same place he becomes restless, after two months it is unbearable). the story of farmer cain killing nomad abel - chatwin maintains - is a prefiguration of our human story of settled people becoming attached to their possessions their territory, but ultimately leading to violence and war.
when i say that i want to cross the atlantic ocean bethan tells me about a couchsurfing group who are building their own yacht, with a view to making the cross.  bethan turns round on her seat and fixes me with her bright travellers' eyes, asking me question after question (she tells me she has worked as a journalist): what do my parents do?  do i have any brothers or sisters?  what do they do?  where is my next travel destination?  malcolm chuckles and says that he hopes i don't mind such an interrogation.  he hopes i don't mind his habit of speedily overtaking the car in front.  i say i felt quite safe and am happy to be in his car.  malcolm says he would do a lot more travelling if it wasn't for his business pursuits - restaurants in edinburgh.  he says he had a "rather solitary childhood" near lochindorb, "do you know it?"
"aye.  it is a romantic place in my mind," i say.
"why so?"
"i don't know... as you say, it is a solitary place.    there are very few people who go there.    it is surrounded by wild open moorland.    then there is loch and the island with the ruined castle and the legend of the wolf of badenoch."
he listens carefully to what i said before agreeing, "aye aye.  its true."
he is more of a listener than a speaker.

i get them to drop me off at the layby near luibleathann bothy.  "it is a fine place to spend the night," i tell them, "cooking over the fireplace, drinking water from the burn.  i always find myself gravitating there when i am on the road. there are even armchairs, but hardly anybody goes there. there are not many people who know about it."  bethan wants me to write its name on her phone.

the next day is bright and sunny but fiercely cold when i am not moving.   i think i will easily make it back to my parent's place in buckie before evening, but after a lift from lois -a self-assured woman who has driven up from glasgow to oversee the repairs to her holiday home in granton - i spend a long time waiting at a layby reading the jungle book in romanian between smiling at the file of big shiny vehicles probably coming from skiing in the cairngorms.  not one of them stops for me, and even though it is sunny, it gets pretty cold just standing there. sometime in the late afternoon i tell myself that walking along the speyside way will be the best way to keep moving and keep warm and make ground.  it is something like fifty miles from granton to buckie, but i give myself confidence by repeating to myself the old dictum: where there's a will, there's a way.   i know that the terrain is flat and easy and if people run along it in the annual race why can't i walk it?

however, after going through the big old pine woods of anagach i decide to try hitching once more, from cromdale, in the last half hour of sunlight.  wow, hitchhiking has really disppeared as a social practice, i think as i watch all the cars slide past.  it is a thought that runs through my head everytime i have to wait for a long time.  but it only takes one receptive person . . . and, yes! a quiet couple respond to my sign saying BUCKIE and invite me into their large car containing their ski apparel.  they are going to fraserbourgh and can drop me off at keith.  they have never picked up a hitchhiker before.  they are surprised that i would walk like that in the cold night.  "walking keeps you warm," i say, "and the moon will be almost full tonight.  it is only eleven miles from keith over the hill to buckie - much easier than the fifty miles i was contemplating.  thank you so much for stopping for me."

along a dark country road outside keith a dog-walker tells me where i can find the fishwive's path - which the fishermen's wives used to follow to take the fish from buckie to keith to be sold.  when he learns that i want to cross over that night he says,
 "you're keen,"
as if it were abnormal to be enthusiastic.
coming out of the village i pass an old church and see three of the tall gothic windows are lit with a soft orange glow.  "maybe there is an evening service," i think and walk across the driveway to see that it has been refurbished inside.  at the first window a naked man and woman are standing, moving cautiously.  they must have heard me crunching across the gravel because the woman soon looks up and i hear her muffled voice through the window, "there is someone watching us.  O MY GOD!" and i quickly run away.  i feel uncomfortable about my overweening curiosity, my unwitting enacting of the prying eye of society.
contrariwise, i only want people to feel safe and at ease in this world.

later the little country road plunges through a dark tunnel of tall conifers and i remember the baleful presense of the Eye which watched me from the dark corners of the countryside when i was a child.   now i can reason it away, thinking: even if there may be some baleful lurking presence (a person who intends no good) i think the chances of it are slim; i will take the risk and venture forth.

bruce chatwin talks about the Beast, which was there at the conception of homo sapiens.  indeed, which resulted in our conception.  when the forest cover of Africa disappeared - chatwin supposes - our hominid ancestors were forced to think in order to survive, being, as they were, physically helpless against the predatory big cats of the big plains.  it was the Beast who brought us together, prompting us to make fires, around whose protective arc we gathered and commnunicated the whereabouts of the Predator, giving birth to language.  whether the Beast still poses us a real physical threat or not - chatwin proposes - he is still firmly embedded in our subconsious, and will always be present in our mythical wanderings.

i walk though the tall dark coniferous woodland that exists between buckie and keith, stopping to peer closely at the signposts for the fishwive's path - which bear the symbol of a white face shrouded by a dark shawl . those who conceived of the path must have wanted to mark the difficulty of the lives of the fishermen's wives; the symbols give an eerie resemblance of the grim reaper.  the stars are bright and numerous.  i see a shooting star in the north, then a big white moon rises in the east. i don't stop very often because i want to find a warm place and rest.  before following the road down to buckie, i enter a big shed full of cows who come close to me.  they want to lick my hand through the metal railings.  the shed is illuminated by soft orange lights and contains about fifty cows, some of them lying down, some of them wandering about their carpet of hay and dung.  i wonder if they like their life of domesticated captivity.  perhaps if they don't have a good memory, they are happy to wander around and around in that soft orange glow.  some big hefty specimens waddle over and regard me with their peaceful unenlightened gaze.  bovine.  it would be a warm place to sleep in that shed with the cows, i think, but instead i head back out to follow the cold moonlit road down to buckie.

return to the ocean

for the past week or more finlay and i have been running down to the old harbour at buckpool pretty much every night; around midnight or before one of us will suggest to the other, "fancy a dip in the sea?" and the other will invariably respond with an, "aye, let's go!" and we'll bundle ourselves up - it is not exactly warm outside - and run down to the sea.  the first time we went we took the bikes, but finlay is right: it is better to run.  it is exhilarating to make our bodies course through the deserted night streets, running ourselves into an enthusiastic body heat for the cold naked encounter that awaits.  it feels like there is a cord which joins me and the sea; the cord pulls me; the cord is my desire to enter the sea.

mostly it has been lowish tide, so we clamber down towards the swishing laconic pull across the big round clunky stones and don't even think - splash!  sometimes i swim out beyond the pier so as to see the yellow street lights of the yardie sparkling off the sea.  sometimes the stars are up in the sky.   we don't stay in the water very long.  usually twenty seconds is enough to make me shrink in the sea's icy hands and furiously front crawl want to regain the shore, the beautiful solid dry stones and the blood which is left coursing round the body as if a big wild blood circulation celebration had been initiated.  the blood is furiously happy to run round the body.  i can't say it feels particularly cold; i could almost say it feels hot.

extraordinarily fresh is what it feels.


finlay says that the dalai lama says that the purpose of life is to be happy, and i can tell from the way he says it that he too thinks it is so.

c'est étrange, etre ange

i am dancing to keep warm and i am dancing to keep my spirits up and, as a by-product, my dancing is attracting the attention of the motorists.  i am listening to colin steele's the journey home on the mp3 player colin gave me, and that makes dancing a very natural thing for me to do.  i remember doing a lot of roadside jigging when i was 19 when i was hitching for the first time.  it surprises me now to think about that because, if it wasn't for the warmth and the spirits up, i would probably prefer to adopt a more sedate posture now, for the sake of the sedate drivers who might not find themselves instantly identifying with sympathising with such a bopping roadside figure.  it is good for me to think about how others see me before i decide how to behave.  yes, mp3 gives instant access to the musical inspiration of others, but creating music oneself - ah, singing - is fundamental.  it is filling the air with vibrations of good cheer and hope. 

seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and his righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you,
allelu-alleluya...
man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word,
that proceeds from the mouth of God,
allelu-alleluya...
ask and it shall be given unto you,
seek and ye shall find.  
knock and the door shall be opened unto you,
allelu-alleluya.

i love to sing these words.  they wonderfully affirm my faith and...si tu demande avec un coeur pur, Dieu te donnera.  is that true?  yes, it is called manifestation, people tell me.  one can cause things to happen through the heartfelt appellation of a limpid will.  later on, i say to alex:  oui, mais je doute si Dieu veut écouter ma petite volonté, quand je sais que je me trompe souvent. je veux dire:  est-ce que je sais vraiment ce qui est bon pour moi? et pour les autres? en lieu de dire "je veux cela, je sais ce qui est bon pour moi" je préfere dire, "que ta volonté soit faite"

"ah, c'est magnifique écouter cela", me dit Alex, avec son grand sourire,   que ta volonté soit faite, alex repeats in a slow enlightened whisper, as if he had just found the solution to some longstanding conundrum.   
Stephanie is in no doubt that it was my prayer to the Universe which caused our paths to cross: j'arrete pas souvent pour les autostoppeurs, tu sais?  mais là, au moment quand je t'ai vu, je savais que je devais m'arreter.  il n'y avait pas de question.
mon cri avait été:  ahhhh, il fait froid, je veux faire de la route.  je veux rencontrer des bonnes personnes.  aide-moi, Dieu...si tu veux....que ta volonté soit faite
j'ai cri aussi:   ahhhh, je suis petit.  je ne sais pas où aller. montre moi le bon chemin, bon Dieu...que ta volonté soit faite.
c'etait tellement beau a Sisteron, j'ai dit a Stephanie. il y avait beaucoup des personnes sympas sur les rues, et qui m'ont parlé dans le marché.  et puis ce grand parois rocheux qui se leve a l'autre cote de la vallee.  c'était magnifique.  
c'est toi qui fait que tout ça soit beau, elle m'a dit.  c'est toi qui cherche la beauté partout.  c'est toi qui a decidé que nous alliez nous rencontrer.  
alors...moi je tourne ici.  si tu veux venir avec moi, je vais passer le weekend chez mon amie corinne.  il y auraient aussi les enfants - ils viennent chaque weekend.  corinne et moi nous sommes comme des soeurs.  elle est magnifique; une femme toujours remplie de joie et de bonne énergie. et de la force aussi; elle a eu pas mal de contretemps dans sa vie.  elle habite dans une maison qui elle-meme a construit entourée des forets et de campagne.  c'est un endroit magique.  
c'est incroyable, je l'ai dit.  justement je me posait la question: ou est-ce que je vais dormir ce weekend? j'allais visiter mon amie marie qui habite pas loin de grenoble, mais elle va etre a paris ce weekend, alors: oui je serais enchanté de venir avec vous.  

my housemates were so surprised when i told them you were going back up to the waterfall to sleep last night, said marie.  clemence said that before she thought that i was crazy, but that now i seem normal in comparison!  they could never imagine somebody wanting to do that.
it is the humidity which you'll have to watch out for if you sleep near la grande cascade, said ludo. for that reason i lit a big log fire, big long sleeping logs being awakened into yellow flame by the glowing bed of red embers keeping me warm all night.  they fascinated me.  i slept very little.  i lay back and listened to the cold slap of the graceful cascade on the glassy rocks. i was protected by the mossy big boulders. i looked into the universe of the Fire and watched the crimson sparks dancing capriciously up to the naked branches of the trees. i read up to page 137 of Jean Giono's que ma joie demeure, a beautiful poetic-prose elegy to the web of Nature and the simple life in the countryside and the warm relationships between the people.  and the Joy of Life, and the joy of the language, the gracefulness of the old french verbs, which one never hears in conversations, but which capture the meaning with melodious finesse, slowly understood by me through constant ferreting in a little pocket dictionary. 
maire loves to write stories.  she has many projects involving going into schools, going into libraries, going on the radio, and telling stories.  in the library they want my stories to have a christmas connection, says marie, but i don't know how to...christmas is a polyvalent concept, i reflect. first of all it was the christians who loved to celebrate the birthday of jesus, the coming of light and joy and hope into the world. that was mixed with the midwinter wish to get together and celebrate warm times together.  warmth and happiness.   ho ho ho, merry christmas!  and where did the idea of santa claus come from?  father christmas, who is he?  christmas is also an excuse for the people of commerce to sell everything they can, wrapping it up in the package of family warmth vocabulary.   brrrrr, don't want to participate in none of their flashy guileful pricetags.
so why do you want to live with us?
well, first of all i love the songs that you sing.  everytime i pass through france i feel this attraction to come here, even just for a few days.  it feels like i am recharging my batteries with an essential faith in life and the perception of its goodness.  the words are very faith-affirming.  often, when i am travelling, when i am doubting, when things are not easy, i sing the songs to myself and they restore my faith.  
i know it is a different experinece to visit taizé for a few days or a week, compared to living here on a longer term and working as a volunteer.  i am very attracted by getting to know the community better.  i am very interested in living in community.  i know that one learns so much through sharing with other people, and i would really like to spend some time here with the brothers and the other volunteers and to learn together.

well, we recommend that anybody who wants to come stays initially for one month, so, if you wanted to come maybe for the month of april?  write to me in march and i can let you know what you need to know then.  we will be busy in april. lots of people come for easter.


fiez-vous en Lui, 
ne craignez pas, 
la paix de Dieu gardera vos coeurs, 
fiez-vous en Lui
alleluia, alle-luu-huu-yaa


l'ajuda em vindra del Senyor,
del Senyor, el nostre Deu
que a fet el cel i la terra
el cel       i la terra!


Jesus le christ, lumière intèrieure,
ne laisse pas mes ténèbres me parler


from taize i sent a postcard to corinne saying:
c'est la famille et les amis que donne la bonheur aux gens,
et puis, pour ceux qui voyagent, c'est les personnes sympas qu'on rencontre sur la route.
et puis, quand l'on est seul, c'est le souvenir de toutes les bonnes personnes  - leurs yeux souriants, leur sourires - que font que le moment soit tout beau


la matiére - said alex - c'est l'ame a terre, tu vois?  tu sais que lucifer a été jeté du ciel parce que il voulait avoir tous les pouvoirs de Dieu? nous sommes tous des petit lucifers.  lucifer etait un ange - il est un ange, et nous aussi.  nous sommes tous rempli de lumière - ca c'est notre essence.   afin que lucifer regagne le ciel il faut que michel-ange lui met son épée par sa bouche, jusqu'au centre de son corps.  c'est pour ca qu'il faut toujours s'assoir avec le dos droit, pour que l'épée de saint-michel nous entre et nous libère toute la lumière que est en nous.  enfin, ce ce que quelqu'un m'a raconté.

c'est etrange, etre ange.
its strange to be an angel.

i thought alex was perhaps a weirdo when he first stopped for me in his dishevelled van, wearing a dirty leather jacket, fresh dried blood scars on his forehead and a fearless guileless look in his eyes.  i am glad i trusted them.  he was a circus performer and had spent years travelling all round europe, mexico and russia with his own circus company.  j'ai vécu un peu de temps sur les rues, he told me, en belgique.  j'ai quitté la maison de mon pere alcoolique quand j'etais encore jeune.  pendant un temps j'etais perdu, mais après je me suis rendu compte que rien ne me serait donné dans cette vie et que c'était moi-meme que devrait la construire.  alors, j'ai commencé a jongler sur les rues.  je suis avant tout un artist.  je sais que je dois toujours suivre mon coeur, meme si les gens pense que je suis fou.  si je tombe amoureux de quelqu'un, il faut que je la suis jusqu'au bout.  ahhh, peut-etre c'est toi....
je cherche quelqu'un qui parle anglais pour traduire une lettre d'amour.  je faisait un spectacle a saint petrebourg l'annee dernière et la j'ai connu une femme que ne parle pas du francais.  moi, tu vois, je parle pas un mot d'anglais.  mais je sais que elle ressent le meme pour moi - on a communiqué tout avec nos yeux, sans besoin des mots.  tiens, voici la lettre.  tu me rendrà un grand service si tu la traduissait a l'anglais.  je t'invite a un café quand on arrive à macon.  ah, je savais que quelqu'un allait venir, mais je savais pas qui, ou quand.
ca serà avec grand plaisir, je l'ai dit.  his little letter was such a simple almost childlike expression of amorous heartfilled guileless longing.
que ta volonte soit faite - c'est genial ça.
on m'a dit que mon coeur est pur, mais j'ai encore du travail a faire pour le realiser pleinement.  tu sais que j'etais un punk quand j'était plus jeune?   en cet époque, je n'aurais jamais pensé que je deviendrais mystique.  maintenant je realise que il faut pas combattre contre les autres.  je sais maintenant que mon chemin est celui de la lumière - qui est l'amour.

it is our task on earth to go beyond our materiality and realise that pure light is our essence, says alex at the wheel of his van.
 
may this bread - which is the body of Jesus - transform us, washing away all our sins, says the taizé brother in the church.

may the energy of this food be transformed into Love, in our actions and words, says lavanya in her south london flat.