I have been meaning to write for a long time. I thought about the small stories I observe around. And yet what I have to say is too private, too difficult but I feel I owe it to myself. And to you who have supported me in so many ways. So at the risks, of being offensive, I start by already appologizing. I ll try my best to be as gentle and as kind as I have never been.

What I want to say here is what I find important that I understood these days …

If I am able to do so speaking and eating like I did before will be really not that important… Though I of course, hope I can one day say sing again 🙂

Lots of love,
Me

I thank you all for your prayers, meditations, positive energies, support. I could not have done it without you. I really could not.

I am better. Not perfect but much better.

I no longer take any medicine. And yesterday I visited my neurologist once again.

It has been almost 30 days that one day I woke up with my tongue switched, paralyzed and was put in hospital.

5 years ago I had once had an epileptic attack while I was travelling Morocco. I was sleeping alone and knew not I had had one. Later on, I eventually was put in Hospital. It was then, that I met my neurologist. An important neurologist in Brazil and in the world.

At the time, they investigated what was happening to me, and it was established that my immune system was attacking my brain, my central nervous system. No one knew why.

It was a terrible time. I was in hospital for about 11 days as well.  And it was the first time that I was  not  able to run away from something. I had to stand the uncertainty of it all, doing all exams I was terrified of, and totally afraid I would never be “normal” again.

It was established that we knew not why my immune system had attacked my brain, but that if that was to happen again very soon it would mean I had multiple sclerosis.

I never knew much what it meant. It terrified me. And I just thought I could no longer ever do nothing that I love. Visit the places and hear people stories. Dance.  Play music etc.

So for the following years I had to come to Brazil once a year to do an MRI. They terrified me. After all, a machine would tell me whether my brain was still destroying itself.

While this all happened in my life, I started a mystical search visiting all kinds of places. Sometimes believing, sometimes falling back to my total lack of belief. As I once put, I was an atheist in the body of a believer.

My exams never showed my brain was worse. In fact, it was even better. And year by year I cared less about doing  the MRI. I became less and less  to eventually not claustrophobic at all. I was thankful every since for every move I could do in my body.

And then I left my whole life last year and went to travel the world.

I visited places in Eurrope and the middle East and eventually made my way back to Asia. I was searching meaning for life. I expected it to be laying somewhere by the Himalayas, or in the Mekong. In the stories I heard in Kashmir, or from Tibetans and once I took many forms of transportation to reach the last village in Nubra Valley  before Pakistan.

It was paradise on earth. It took so much of me to get there. Dangerous roads, permissions, and eventually climb a mountain to reach the plateau. The place was closed to tourist till a bit before I came. And I remember perfectly well the simultaneous love I felt for being there and despair for knowing I knew I was an agent of destruction. I, and the 4  travelers companions I encountered in the journey embodied a modern world.

Till this day I love that place in particular. I know that place quite well in my body. And it was there that I thought something that came back to me now and then. That beauty relies in recognition.  And happiness in belonging.

These people where apart from it all. And they were happy like I had never seen before. The children climbed trees.  They laughed enormously.

But I kept going. Going and going.  Never knowing much where to before 5 minutes before going. I made friends. I loved. I heard people from all over the planet. And yet, the dissatisfaction of not belonging to anything and anyone made me always just move till the next place.

Until I broke my foot by the Mekong. And the Mekong is one of these places that I belong to. I love that place I spent 3 months  in like one of my homes. I knew the people there daily.  I have enormous thankfulness for the amount of feeling of belonging they gave me.

I still confess, I felt despair. Not knowing, what on earth was I doing? Yet the sameness of knowing I was going to be there for at least 3 months calmed me enormously. The Sunsets provided the diversity I needed. And the people that passed there told me their lives. But eventually, almost all went.

It is easy. Or at least it seems to be easy not to belong.  Just a bit like it seems to be easier to have many options than few. But the brain seems to not work on our favour here.  It makes us choose more freedom, more choices which almost always augment our anxiety very much.

I came back to Brasil despite of my desire. And from day one I ran away in my mind. And eventually I did run away and went back to Europe, to the Middle East and was about to back to Asia when I realized I was in despair and I needed to be home.

In fact, I needed to create a home for me. A place where I belong to. Where my absence will be noticed. I needed help.

I came. And I started to climb. It clamed me. It made me less try to run away. I made a decision t o stay and one day…. I woke up twisted.

Almost 30 days ago I woke up twisted, and half of my tongue was paralyzed.

I was taken to hospital. I was kept in Hospital. My same doctors from 5 years ago returned to see me. They were visibly desperate, they felt it was my brain attacking my central nervous system again. And so all kinds of exams were done.  And while, they were not ready I was given medicine for that case.

It was the best they could  have done  (allopathic medicine) . They could not wait because if it was my brain attaching my brain it would keep going.

I had not longer fear of the exams. I just had such a deep fear that the exams did no matter. A deep fear to live sick forever. To be abandoned.

I also did not have so much desire to live anymore. I confess  it here. Because maybe it could help people.

And the mixture of me being entirely more and more depressed, with my almost  100% allergy to anything given to me,  made me more and more lost.

I eventually begged to get out of there.  They allowed me. All exams had been done.

And then you all know it all. Once I left the hospital I got more allergic to the new medicine. I got to the point I could not read, nor understand or say anything. To me. It meant I truly little by little did no longer belong to this world.

But it passed once I found out it could have been and allergy to all theses medicaments. That it could be me very depressed. It could be something else.

And finally, yesterday I went to my neurologist after having been tortured in an exams  ( for instance in one they gave me shocks and put needles in my body and face and tongue). After having done an exam that put electrodes in my brain while I watched a video to measure how fast the information go to the cortex. After all my blood exams, lumbar punctures etc etc came back normal.

These exams together with the dozens of other exams I did proved one very very very very important thing for my doctor and me

That my central nervous system was not affected. This time it was my peripheric  nervous system. My neurologist by exclusion believes what I had was as a consequence of some untreated virus  I eventually got a neuritis. By exclusion he concluded that.

I love my neurologist. He is an amazing, and very human man. Not only do I have his cell phone, but when I did not call he would call me to know how I was doing. I am thankful for all he did to me. But I also decided to do alternative things.

Massages, Reiki, Cranio Sacral therapy, Florais. I have accepted all prayers, and thanked them. I have even eaten meat when my body seemed to need.

And I started to do psytherapy with a Reichian therapist who also does acupuncture and has studied Chinese medicine.

I am finally fine.  I am still tired, and weak. But I am finally fine. And most importantly I want to be well.

I was sooo moved yesterday that I could not explain my relief. It was not exactly happiness. It was such a deep feeling that I just could not explain it. I cried. I slept. I felt profound relief.

And I feel profound thankfulness to you all who have sent me all kinds of messages. I have received poetry, and prayers of all religions. Music. Much love.

And I believe in love more than anything else. I am fortunate to be so capable of loving so much, and being so much loved.

But I guess, maybe what I want to say today…apart from thank  and explaining a bit more because many people were very confused…. is the following.

We need to pay more attention to people who are around us. We can love people in any distance but we must take care of our actions, and of the people around us more. Because all that joy I have seen by Pakistan came from belonging. And unfortunately, we all, search for more and more freedom, and choices at the detriment of taking care of each other.

I really could not have done it without my family. my friends. the doctors, the psychologist, the parapsychologist, Neusa, and Claudia who works here in our house.  Had they not been here I could not have done it. I would not have wanted to have done it.

I am so thankful that is hard to put into words.

I am thankful to each of you for the messages you sent. So thankful because it proves me that the world is a place where love and generosity are always present if we allow it to be. If we take more care of each other.  We must do it.

Maybe all I want to say. Is what I realized by Pakistan. True beauty relies in recognition. And happiness in belonging. And the path is love.

Lots of love,

me

My dear friends,

I stayed in Hopsital for 10 days now I am home.

I have been in Hospital before. They used the be the place I hated the most to one that simply is.  There are the gentle things that come from being in hospital. But, only when the worse has passed can you actually see them. Right then you are but presence, since any possibility of future feels like a contraction.

My days are running through me. I walk more, I work, and I climb. I breathe deeply on my yoga classes. I stretch to the point that those who see me tell me I am like an origami. I try to reconnect to my own rhythm, my own flow. And I am never completely certain whether this relief I feel is real.

Sometimes smells of Asia, the Middle East or Europe flood me. I don’t look at them too long. I let them run with a shiver in my skin. Am I lucky or unlucky to barely have the time to think with them? About them? I am not sure.

Some times I wonder what is it with our generation of cowards? How did we all fall victim or perpetuators of profound encounters of seconds. Deep one night stands which are not even the exercise of impermanence. Rather it seems to be the eternal evasion, and lack of courage to commit that our generation calls freedom?

I seat in a restaurant called Pita. We eat Babaganoush and Falafel. We are in Sao Paulo. The only person who I actually knew before I sat in this table is a Brasilian originally from Lebanon. We met when he first arrived in London. He had just been crossing borders in the Middle East and he wanted to know the world. He wanted to have access to all the information available in the universe. I was intrigued.

This time he came to my rescue to show a bit of Sao Paulo to my friends who were the world itself. Iva and Nam. Iva born in Malaysia and raised in Australia. A mix of Chinese mother with a French father. Nam ,also raised in Australia, from a family who escaped a camp from Indonesia. A Vietnamese family that had escaped the war.

At night we go dance in Serralheria. Andre shows up. Andre who lived in the UK and travelled a year.6 months in Africa and who I met in the border of the Mekong. We dance. We take the Ozzies of the world to have breakfast in a 24hours bakery at 4 am.

They are intrigued. Does Sao Paulo ever stop? Do we ever stop? I am not sure.

I enter the place and I encounter the Heiddegerian Psychologist I had once met in another cultural event. A beautiful man who told me he could feel my angst. The angst of someone who is always on the move.

He is anxious. He is not so well. I had been to  his house before. His own guts carved by his fingers and imagination into a beautiful house for a happy couple. A house that has to be sold now. One more relationship that comes to an end and closes someone´s soul. I see him now in this bar and I feel he is still floating though he is in Sao Paulo.

I drink Cachaca, the Brazilian sugar cane strong drink, and I am drunk. So drunk that I can feel every single part of me and I can´t really know where the boundaries of my body are. I am happy I feel. Nothing did really go as I wished this week. Yet, I feel a bit braver.  I have thought even less of going away. I imagined myself in the Mekong for brief seconds, maybe milliseconds.  I instead go to my cousin s bed. She is now a sister to me.

Am I happy here? I am not sure. I walk one further step in the moving slack line. I have to contract all my muscles, and at the same time breathe slowly. I have to focus in one point not to fall. Am I happy? For once, it does not really matter; I walk one more step in the moving slack line. I simply am.

We seat around the table. We are upper class in Brasil. Claudia, the maid, serves us. My grandmother is 87 and seats next to me. My aunt and cousin seat across the table. It is a huge apartment. There is one dinning room which is used only for meals. When lunch is served we are invited to come in. My aunt, when she is in town, wakes up very early. She listens to all of the stories Claudia has to tell. Claudia came from the northeast of Brasil as I have once explained. She always smiles. Sometimes she has tears in her eyes but she still smiles. Her life should be written down by a real writer. I am no writer, so I write about lunch.

We seat. She serves us. Her phone rings. It sometimes scares her as it vibrates loudly inside of her pocket. She has two children she has finally managed to bring from the northeast to live with her in Sao Paulo. She lives in my grandmother’s house. They lived till last week somewhere else in a poor and far away neighbourhood of Sao Paulo. Jessica, the 17 year old daughter has a boyfriend who also lives with her and her 12 year old brother Jemerson. Sometimes the police comes to the house because neighbours think Jessica is being abused by her boyfriend. It turns out that she hits him. Jessica calls daily to ask Claudia for money. Now they had a fight. The phonecalls scare Claudia because they are usually violent calls. Violent in that they are always related to some aporetic situation.

Claudia tells me Jessica had been very offensive and that Claudia had hit her. I am shocked. I attempt something simultaneously silly and fundamental. It is something I really believe but saying it out loud while I am being served simply feels completely wrong. I explain disturbed that violence breeds more violence. I say it wondering what on earth I even mean by that. I say that under no circumstance a person should hit another. Claudia explains me she had lost her temper. I say it and I believe it though while I am being served, while posing the silver knife in some artifact also made of silver which is called in Portuguese “a rester” it feels idiotic. A silver knife rest in a silver “rester’, I seat being served in a dinning room while Claudia, a poor lady, who like many other northeasterners who had left it all for a dream of a better life serves me and my family. What do I even mean by violence? She explains that Jessica had now abandoned the brother and left with the boyfriend taking with her all the furniture her mother had bought for this far away shack they were living in. So now the brother, Jemerson, lives in the centre of Sao Paulo, in some equally crappy place with an uncle that he barely knows and he visits Claudia in the afternoons. My grandmother suggests that he should come visiting during lunch time, so that he could eat. Claudia with so little is moved.

Jemerson also gets into to troubles in school all of the time. He beats his younger classmates because they make fun of him because he is older.

Claudia works like crazy. Every night she parties. And she studies to become a hairdresser. And she dates complicated guys that come from economically underdeveloped countries in Latin America and in Africa. Men who came to Brazil also looking for a better life. She never really knows which language they speak. They never really call her back.

I ask her how many siblings she had? It is complicated. Her mother had so many children she once explained. For every new partner her mother had she named the children of that man with the same first letter so she would remember who the father was. Sandro, Sueli, Sonia etc. My aunt knows many names. Many died. My aunt knows most of these stories as they are told to her during breakfast. I am never awake that early and I never really know how to react to them. In fact none of us do. We just hear.

Claudia tells the story of her sister Monica who died because of the flood.

They were all sleeping in a room and the flood came. The mother was sleeping and the young Monica could not wake her up in time so she was taken away by the flood. Claudia has tears in her eyes. Then she says.

“My mother is crazy. She had sooooo many children. Once we killed one.”

We don’t say anything. I am first appalled. I dont even know what this could possibly mean. She says something else. Then I ask details. I am speechless. the story is so unclear. It is also told in a mixture of incoherence and different words we from upper class sao paulo dont know.

“She left us taking care. We were little too. We gave her baby food. She had “ventre caido” (fallen womb).”

It is not the first time the ladies from the northeast of Brasil who work in my grandmothers house refer to that. I never understood what on earth it meant. It seemed to change meanings depending on the story. It seems to be used for something that kills and cant really be explained.

I ask what does it mean in this context.

“we gave her to much baby food?

My aunt asks whether the baby had chocked and she says that yes.

The story is so surreal. We seat being served in some fancy building in Sao Paulo listening to that. This story different than so many others does not bring tears to Claudia s eyes. It leaves me and my aunt so speechless that it takes us hours and in fact even days to talk about what it really meant.

And what it really means, is that incredibly painful fact that we often try to hide. That inequality whatever form it is, leads us all to accept that some lives are worth more than others.

But it is lunch time. And we don’t touch this. We drink our coffee which Claudia says laughing that it tastes like medicine. It was gift from a friend to me. It is expensive coffee with cardamon. I drink it and I try to push the whole thought aside of my mind as I have done it in so many other places of the world.