Relativity.

I wanted to write a post about India called "India: the Aftermath".

In this post I would have said that yes, in India I learned a very great lesson, i.e. to listen to my urges and to gracefully depart from a detrimental place/situation.

I did. I ended the little dispute taking place inside of me, between the healthy part prodding me to leave and the nasty complicated mentalist within me which was engendering sensations of ineptitude and guilt due to my inability to accept, transform and stay, instead. How could I leave, after only 8 days, when so many people stayed and waited, until the dirt and the stench and in some cases their own dysentery were magically transmuted into love.

The truth is I didn't leave out of hate or disgust but out of self-preservation. I had the clear sensation that one of my organs would have shut down had I stayed another week. That was that. Two years after the Grand Operation I wasn't fit for a Himalayan transmutation. I wasn't able, am not able, just yet, to go about without fresh, succulent fruits and vegetables, for more than 3 days. I was, am, incapable, just yet, to feel at ease with new kinds of bacteria and germs gaining access to my body.

Nevertheless, upon my return, all of the above wasn't quite clear to me.

I had forgotten the magic that I, too, had felt. How could I not have felt it? Isn't every place in the world worth seeing? Isn't it ALWAYS an exceptional experience? Isn't it a terrific opportunity to see the myriad creative ways humans live their lives on this planet?

And isn't it amazing how just by catching a plane one actually has the sensation that he has jumped on a spaceship?

Yeah.

For days after my return from India my mind was filled with it. Filled with curiosity. Especially on why so many people love it and return again and again. I wanted to print out a questionnaire. I asked the wonderful people I know who love it. I wanted to start studying anthropology. Wanted to understand the ways peoples evolve in different eras and in different places and at different paces and time-space interludes.

I got unsophisticated answers. They just loved it. Most said: “after the initial shock, despite the stench, I just loved it”.

Voilà.

I thought of the 21 year-old Israelis I had seen smoking joints and chilling out in the restaurant where I had my Wiener-schnitzel (yes, I craved it and I found it, right there under the Himalayas).

I thought about the 50-year-old man I had seen at the yoga center, who got up, patted his back-pack and said “with this I go up on mountain, even if monsoon come I fine. This is India. This is freedom.” (while I, sipping a cup of spicy tea which was meant to sooth my nausea thought “freedom is in your head, man, it's in your deciding to be free”.)

I thought of the blonde skinny girl who got dysentery on day 2 and vomited for 5 days and took antibiotics and of how casual she was when she talked about it.

I thought of my friend Annalisa, doing her shopping in Mcleod Ganj, feeling at home, looking like a blue-eyed reincarnation of an Indian woman, always smiling, doing her Vipassana meditation morning and evening, taking her yoga classes, her jewellery classes, and God knows what other classes, happy as ever. I remembered her smiley answer: “ I don't see what you see, I don't see what you see”.

I thought of the British couple with whom I took the Toy train, who had just spent a month in Delhi teaching English to kids who didn't even know their own names, let alone when they were born and the cool-dom and ease with which they were displacing themselves on this territory as if their predecessor colonizers' blood was still very present in their veins.

And then I thought: bal bla bla bla bla bla bla.

Why was I trying to understand why!

Because! Just because! Because they are young and curious, because they're older and curious, because they're seeking something, because they're traveling the world, because they are photographers, writers, documentarists. Because they want to chill out after their military service. Because they are reincarnations coming back home. Because they don't mind stench and dirt. Because, after retiring, they want to have one last adventure.

Or because, like me, they want to take a yoga class and follow an urge and learn a lesson. And see a new world which stays forever in their eyes.

I didn't go to metamorphose doo-doo into flowers as some of my questioned friends did. I had the chance to do that 2 years ago already during the Grand Adventure :)

And I know what a beautiful thing it is, that kind of transmogrification.

Then again some people never go, or flee, in shock and disgust, 2 days after their arrival.

Or they just don't have a complicated bugger in their minds and don't need to go all the way to India to disactivate it :)

So.

So.
It took me some time to decide what to write in this post.  I could have told you of my difficulties, of my constant sense of nausea and disgust, of my utter weakness.  I could have described, in detail, smells, tastes and sights. Thoughts.  But we can do that when I come back home, can't we, while sipping a delicious cup of tea, while munchin on some biscuits, while cooking together, while sitting at a cafe', while having a walk, while looking at the sea and inhaling the fresh air.  Slowly, taking our time.  I'll be glad to share stories and insights with those of you who will ask me to, with those of you who will really really want to listen, with those of you who will be happy to learn of a way of seeing a piece of world through the eyes of another with childlike curiosity.  I will rather not share with those who might ask only because it is  polite, a custom to do so, but who actually get that twitch in their eyes which reveals a certain nervous envy towards my living, free-flowing, explorative self.  I know who you are and you know who you are and I free you right here and now from having to pose any questions.  The others, those who like to listen to stories and adventures, those who like to share views with presence, purity and the love for this expanse that is Life, may book a cup of tea, of coke, a walk, a skip, a sitting session on the sofa, or on the floor as from now.

This trip has been an opportunity to come to write and feel the following:

I am happy and grateful for the extreme variety of fruits and vegetables I have had the pleasure to smell and to savour in the places I grew up
I am happy and grateful for the incredible good-hearted, open-minded people I have the privilege to have as friends and for all the others I have and constantly randomly meet
I am happy and grateful for my childhood, my memories, the fun and games, the lightness of play, the giggles, the little melodramas, the bruises, the plasters, all happening in a secure, loving and clean environment
I am happy and grateful for living in places where i do not need to climb far above 2000 m of altitude in order to find purity of nature and peace.  I can if I want to, but it is not my only option.
I am happy and grateful to live in a place where I can sunbathe naked on my balcony or with other happy naked people on a beach, if I want to.
I am happy and grateful to live in a place of such VARIETY and CHOICE.
Of such FREEDOM and constant EVOLUTION.

I am happy and grateful to feel light when deciding to leave a situation that is detrimental to my spirit and my body
Instead of feeling shame and guilt and thinking I'll do something extremely wrong if I don't hang in there
instead of thinking that the lesson lies in hanging in there.
For me the lesson (now learned) lies in happily deciding to get out of there. :)

I am very grateful to Patricia (my Australian neighbour) for having been there when I was allowing myself to make that shift.  Thank you Patricia !

And dad, no, I won't be a Martyr.  Take the last 'r' off  :)

Mules carrying heavy things have just passed in front of the internet cafe' and I'll follow their trail, in my endeavour to change my plane ticket and come to hug you all, for slow, long, PRESENT hugs, very soon.

In the fog.

I am back on my mountaintop and there is a cloud passing by, making it foggy.

My lodge is a 50 minute walk from McLeod Ganj, the Dali Lama's hiding place here in Dharamsala, but today I decided to come up with a Tuk Tuk.  I'll never do it again.  It is a life threatening, adrenalin producing experience.  And I DON'T WANT THAT.

I am tired today. Started my Iyengar yoga classes and love them, my body though, is inevitably responding to all this change.  Every day, after 2 or 3 standing poses my body  needs to cry a little (release).  So I cry a little and then resume class.

I have been basically fasting for the first 3 days I was here, now I started to have one light meal a day, drinking lemon ginger honey tea and feeling slightly nauseous, just like when I was doing chemo. My body seems to be propelled by an energy of its own yet I feel tired at the same time.  Last night I was shivering with fever, but I just stayed with it and it soon passed.
Not eating much. Not sleeping much.  Adjusting.  Throwing stuff out of my system.

I'm happy I live up on this hill.  For the friends who know it, it reminds me a lot of Cres - it's like living in an Indian version of Lubenice.  But also makes me think of Triestine "Piscanci".  A mix of the 2, but place it in an Austrian coniferous forest.  Only not quite as clean. And imagine those mountain trails filled with crazy tuk tuks honking and motorbikes honking and small cars honking and bigger cars honking.  Not always thank God.  When I walk down to the yoga school in the morning, the sun shines on me and it is quite peaceful. Except for the spot with the huge disgusting litter tank. Sometimes the supermarket of a host of monkeys, sometimes of a flock of ravens.

Yet, it charms you.  Despite all the litter and stench.  There is a GRACIOUSNESS to it, too.

Guys, I'm gonna go now, too tired to write, plus it's getting dark.

Love love love.

Un Miliardo di Sensazioni.

Wow.  E' forse l'unica parola che riesco a dire da quando sono atterrata ieri.  ma era ieri? Mi sembra di essere qui gia' da giorni e giorni e giorni.  Credo che ogni mezz'ora e' stata talmente piena di cose viste e sentite da equivalere a una giuornata "normale".

Avrei un fantastiliardo di cose da dire.
Ma credo che non riusciro' a dirle oggi.

Mi trovo in un internet cafe', sulle pendici dell'Himalaya, fuori e buio e tra un po' ritornero' al mio lodge con la frontale che mi sono comprata.

Sono atterrata ieri ad Amritsar con il sole e con il caldo.  Dopo un viaggio PAZZESCO in taxi su stradine indescrivibili, semi asfaltate (?) semi sterrate, vie di percorrenza di machine, vespe, moto, tuktuk, camioncini decorati, scuolabus, biciclette, uomini donne bambini, mucche, mucche, furetti (!).
A ottanta all'ora, in mezzo alla strada (corsia di sorpasso) suonando ININTERROTTAMENTE il clacson, con autoveicoli sempre in arrive FRONTALE, ma schivati con grazia sempre all'ultimo secondo, musica Indiana a tenbere il ritmo, turbanti gialli, arancioni, Verdi, blu, viola, bianchi, talvolta in tinta con la maglietta, motorini con 3, 4 persone a bordo, I bebe' tenuti in braccio dal papa', che guida, davanti.

Le strade sono sporche ma i vestiti sono sempre puliti e tutti sono  'smart', eleganti.

Arrivo a Pathankot, al Venice Hotel.  Sono l'unica Bianca in town.  Wow. It's quite an interesting sensation.

Quando scendo alla reception incrocio un gruppetto di ragazzine sulle scale che mi fermano serene e mi fanno restare li, con loro, e a fotografarmi :)  come facciamo noi, quando andiamo in giro e vediamo le persone "esotiche" :)  ora l'esotica sono io :)

Vado pure fuori, in starda, in 'citta'" a comprarmi 2 rullini per la mia macchina fotografica. I ragazzini mi guardano, ma sebbene il mio corpo sta all'erta, in realta' non c'e' davvero nulla di cui temere.  Le paure sono fantasmi. Qui tutti sono gentili.

Ora si fa buio, ritorno al mio lodge a mangiare il primo pasto da lunedi.

Wow.

 

The Essential Plunge.

I will start this post by quoting my father and thus finishing off the Octopus story:

"It is better to eat the Octopus then to let the Octopus eat you".  He makes me smile.  I love this quote.


Well well well.  I have been in Eu, Haute-Normandie, for the past 4 days and the time has come to leave.
At 5.30 pm today I will take a local train and join my friend Matteo who has kindly offered to accompany me to CDG airport. The flight leaves at 22.

Excited excited excited.  I feel very excited.  Have been coping with this trembling feeling for the past days.  Last night a long hour of meditation allowed me to ease my muscles and the alertness in my senses, to reduce the production of adrenalin in my kidneys and to ease off a little.

Rucksack is ready.  Filled with Essential things and essential oils.

I am ready to take the Plunge.

Octopuses.

Yesterday I said that we can eat the Octopus.

But, no, my guts tell me "do not eat the octopus anymore".

The Octopus is too intelligent a creature to be eaten.


I'll keep on being a fish-eating vegan.

But no more Octopus.

The Shift.

I must confess

Devo confessare

that last week

che la scorsa settimana

I had a couple of moments of UTTER FEAR.

ho avuto qualche momento di PAURA TOTALE.

As in "scared shitless"

Della serie "completamente cagata sotto".

So scared as to assume the strategy of thinking "well, you don't need to go if you don't feel like it"

Talmente impaurita da adottare la strategia di dirmi " beh, non devi mica partire se non te la senti"


I think the doubts and fears of others had glued themselves to my brain like octopus suckers would cling to a surface.

Credo che i timori e i dubbi degli altri si siano appiccicati al mio cervello come le ventose di un polipo si attaccano a una superficie.

And so I felt PARALYZED WITH FEAR.

E cosi mi sono sentita PARALIZZATA DALLA PAURA.



Now THIS WEEK,

Ora, QUESTA SETTIMANA

it seems as though a gleaming jumbo magnet has been installed in the middle of my chest.

sembra che un luminoso e gigantesco magnete sia stato installato al centro del mio petto.

And it pulls me.

E mi tira.



THE SHIFT.
THE SMILE.

ps.

The octopus we can have with celery and potatoes. Thoroughly cooked.

Il polipo lo possiamo fare con il sedano e le patate.  Ben cotto.

Bon apetit! :)