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.

italia - vienna - romania

the afternoon air after the rain becomes luminous and young tree blossoms shine with an uncommon soft luminosity

 la grotta dell'eremita.

in the hermit's cave the early morning light enters and rebounds and illuminates and wakes up.

simone says that a man lived here alone in between the world wars.  he was called the hermit but many suspected that he was a spy.  at a dinner party one night an old local woman spoke to me in the piemontese accent, of which i understood little.  simone later told me what she had said:  her father used to come to the cave and hit the man who was a spy.  she seemed proud to tell us that.

i tell simone how such a troglodyte lifestyle would appeal to me and he says:  maybe you could become the new hermit here.   people would come to visit you and you would serve them chai.  they would give you food to eat.  it happens in india, and i think it could happen here too.

i had never considered becoming a troglodyte until then.

in vienna i stop by tim's place.  i met tim at a vipassana meditation course in india.   tim told me he was looking for a bike to cycle from turkey back to austria.  i told him that i had followed that route in the opposite direction and left my bike in turkey, and that he could take it back to vienna if he wanted.   

there was a strange feeling of familiarity upon seeing my old bike again.  so much road we had shared together.  it is wonderful to glide through the streets of vienna, but i now see the bike as heavy, cumbersome, and not nearly as conducive to meeting people as hitchhiking.

we go to the park to play tisch tennis.  as soon as one hits the ball one runs round to the other side and thus the threesome constantly circumnavigate the table, running and laughing and hitting the ball.  den Ball.  

 wo ist der Ball? i ask the children.  the ball has flown into the bushes.  no matter how much we rummage in the bushes, the ball will not be found.

"der Ball ist verloren," i have to conclude to the children.

outside vienna i hold a sign saying "ROMANIA" and soon a van stops going to romania.  gabril the driver first says that he will give me a lift if i give him money, then he listens to me and asks, "unde te duci in romania?"
"hunedoara" i say.
"ai noroc" he says, "eu me duc la deva, la jumatate de ora din hunedoara"
jump in
it is something like eight hours of travelling in his old van, stuffed full of bric a brac he has bought in the flea market in vienna and will take to the flea market to sell in alba-iulia, romania.  i help them by scouring the nearby wasteland to find a piece of wood to jam the back door shut.  it must be strong and of the right dimensions, gabril observes, otherwise the door could fly open and then everything will fall out on the motorway.  we stop for a bowl of hungarian soup and gabril tells me that i should keep talking to him to keep him awake on the road.   even so, even with my growing romanian conversation doesn't flow so very easily between us.  there is a limit to the number of things one can say before it becomes saying something for the sole sake of saying something.  speaking.  emitting sounds from one's mouth.  exchanging ideas between one intellect and another.  instead i strum my ukulele and sing in english.  no, i know no romanian songs.  on a piece of paper i draw the image of the dashboard as it presents itself to me, including gabril's hand resting on the steering wheel.  gabril's fifteen-year-old son then does the same and concentrates very hard on precision of line and makes a beautiful drawing.  every so often gabril beats his chest and calls out proudly "gypsy!"  he proudly curls the tips of his long moustache.  but what does it mean for you to be gypsy? i ask him.  what is a gyspy? i have to make my questions simple in our simplified way of communicating.  "skin colour" i am told, "a gypsy has dark skin.  and a curly moustache."

we cross hungary and enter romania after nightfall.  before reaching deva, gabril turns into a layby and says "ten minutes pause."  soon he and his young son are leaning on each other, fast asleep.  i don't know what to do.  i am also tired but cannot sleep easily in the cramped front seat.  i consider getting my sleeping bag out and stretching out on the flat ground outside.  after an hour the gabril wakes up and silently starts the engine.  in deva, his son recommends that i sleep in the plastic tower in the children's play area in macdonald's.  "no-one will see you there," he says, "no-one goes there at night.  you will be protected from the cold"

instead i walk out of town and snatch a couple of hour's kip in an orchard, waking up to see two shepherds standing over me and the sun climbing into the sky.  another friendly lift and a half hour walk up into the woods and i arrive at aurora, a young permaculture project high in the hills of transylvania.  i spot ioana collecting salad in the garden and make animal noises to announce my arrival.  cuba from the czeque republic is also there and is fond of making what he calls power smoothies - consisting of nettle leaves, radish leaves, radishes themselves, sunflower seeds and spices, all whipped together in a blender.  "not everyone likes it," he confesses, but ioana and i are instant fans.

we paint mandalas one evening - circular symbols of the never-ending harmony of the universe - and the next day in the rain we tie them to the trees to mark the path for future visitors.

we visit the beekeeping neighbours, and make a plan to prepare a few jars of walnuts to exchange for a jar of honey of theirs.  they serve us tsuica - strong grappa distilled from apples.  i say to the woman who is the daughter of the beekeeper: "ce frumos este aici"

"you really think so?" she says,  "i never liked living here.  i have always wanted to live in the city."

da simone, piemonte

of all the hazelnuts, the piemontese hazelnut is the smoothest, the richest, the most tenderly balanced.  taste these five nuts and tell me which is the piemontese one, the smoothest one, which is it?

each nut had a varying number of followers.  who thinks it is number three?  hands up, let me count you.  let me see, now who thinks it is number four?

it was number four.

it is official.  nut number four is the smoothest because it comes from piemonte.

in the village of alba it is vinum - where wine specialists stand behind stalls and pour small wine tastings into the glasses of those who have paid the entry fee.   simone and i pay for one glass and listen very attentively to the comments of the wine specialists regarding each individual bottle.  the quality of the wine from the nebbiolo grape varies depending on the degree of exposure to the sun on the hillslopes or valleybottoms of piemonte.  simone and i find the barbaresco decidedly aggresive, with some strong bottles offering what we decided to term notes of violence.  it was all bark and bite, its different elements lacked harmony with one another.  the barolo however, now there was a wine in which its elements were both robust and in harmony with each other.  the wine had found its inner peace.  it knew itself profoundly and was thus in complete tranquillity with the all of its essence.

all that good wine called for some good cheese, and we found it that night at sergio's, who had invited us for dinner at his wellmaintained old farmhouse with a wooden balcony amidst sloping vineyards and green trees.  i felt that the house was filled with vivacious spirits, very vivacious and carefree i felt them.  no doubt augmented by the speakers rigged up in every room pumping out eighties tunes loudly, the sad faded paintings showing the misery and comedy of the human situation, the energetic slim little dog with the impassioned urge to run everywhere all at once, to sniff everything and bite everything, bite especially my fingers and not even listen when i call sternly "sta' fermo, pepe"

he really is what one could call a crazy dog
he lacks inner harmony.

sergio - our animated old host wearing a jogging outfit - gives me a tour of the mystical house and in the stable i meet the goat trio - the ram and the ewe and the young 'un - all behaving especially timidly for goats.  we bring logs back into the kitchen and feed them to the roaring stove.  sergio serves us his own homemade wine from a big three litre bottle, and we eat softly steamed asparagus accompanied by a cheese sauce.

sergio is animated and avuncular.  sergio says to me: "i will shows you my workshop.  come" and from the worktop crowded with all kinds of tools he produces a slim piece of iron and proceeds to clasp it to the workbench before sawing it in two.  now - to demonstrate how well he could weld it back together - he welded it back together, finely, sanding down the melted bulges with a whirring spinning disk which emitted a dancing flame of soft yellow sparks.  "this is important" he said, and with tongs carried the glowing red bar to hiss it cold with water at the sink.  i return to the kitchen while sergio continues to work.  he comes in later and presents me with the finished knife, the blade sharpened nicely and gleaming whitely in the light.

it is rather a nice knife, but it is rather too heavy for me to carry everywhere in my rucksack.

when i first met simone in india he was already talking about his plans to live in a little house in the woods and grow vegetables.  he said that his longing to return to his family's land in piemonte only increased as he travelled through south east asia.  as soon as he returned in january he has been filled with vegetable plot and carpentry and furniture repair plans.   simone and i are both aware of and want to accept the diversity of people on the planet.  however, we are both convinced that a simple life in close contact with nature is not only what is good for us, but would be good for everybody, and for the planet too.

simone is undertaking his project alone, but he is happy to have my helping hand for a few days.  in the vegetable plot we plant a line of onions, already green and sprouting.  next to them we sprinkle a line of little carrot seeds and cover it with a thin layer of dark compost.  we cut young straight branches from the hazelnut wood, then skin the bark with a type of small machete.  back in the toolshed we cut them all to size and make a simple elegant robust wooden fence held together by screws.

later that night we light the grand pile of sticks gathered earlier that day.  it is simone's task to manage this woodland and he has decided to allow the big growing oaks space to grow even bigger by removing the smaller hazelnut trees.  the orange flame shoots up into the night sky.  we have made a massive pile of green branches, but they do not all burn at once.  besides, we control the little fire by pulling sticks from the big pile with a hayfork.  in the embers we roast potatoes and bake bread round little sticks held over the embers and construct a little grill to grill slices of aubergine.

this afternoon so far has been slowly spent listening to the rain falling on the trees outside, cracking open hazelnuts and toasting them crunchy and brown on the grill.  i am thinking of heading on soon but i have a cold -  a tickly throat and a runny nose and i sneeze quite often.   somehow so far simone has avoided catching it from me.  maybe if i am feeling better tomorrow and the weather is good - which the forecast says it will be - we will walk through the woods and follow the ravine down to the cave.  sergio says there is a very steep drop and the rock is big and strong and you can sleep in the cave.

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.