Colombia- Minca, Art and Stories

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My feminine nomad soul comes through generations. My mother loves traveling. She made sure that I was educated in several languages so that I could be raised for the world. My grandmother in her trips, which started early on, always learned something from the people.  Nowadays I learned from her to appreciate something that is handmade.

I never bought anything. I always traveled hearing stories but markets were for me just to see people. I heard stories of carpets in Morocco and I never wanted to have one. I never had anywhere to put it.

So in Colombia I decided I would find myself something to bring home. I did not know it. I did not look for it. And one day I was walking Taganga, a village who became more mine because of my Gazan friend Yassert, and Yuhhi who is Guajira descendent and who I talked to every breakfast. And for the music of Alejandro who looked like a blue phase painting of Picasso, and for Joselito who told me the stories of people and introduced me to my guide and friend Eliecer.

So when I bid farewell to taganga it made me cry. I sat in Yasssert’s place.  Eliecer had just come the night before all the way from his village with his wife Tati, and his 4 year old son Christian to say goodbye. I thanked them, I played with the child and I knew I had some dear Colombian friends.

Then the following morning I walked down the mountain to say goodbye to Joselito, to buy him a juice because I know how much beer he takes everyday. I searched for Alejandro and did not see him. And I went to have my last breakfast in Bansai. It was hot and I had a long sleeve shirt. I asked Yuhi if it was ok for me to be in my Bikini inside her place or disrespectful.

She looked at the tourists in Bikini, looked at me and said. It is ok for them, but not for you. I knew in her sentence she knew I cared what was respectful to her. She took me to be from the people who care. And I kept my blouse on.

And then Yassert told me he had a child, a son, and he went to get him, we waited for him. I spoke that day only of this, his life. And we sat playing with a toy elephant and I asked his 4 year old child to take a picture. And we sat in front of the Handalas while Peter took several pictures of us. I love those pictures… I almost died when I thought I had lost them. But they are here. And we sat in front of the handalas… and we laughed.

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I cried when I was about to go. I love this people. I love this place. Yassert tells me Brasil is next door. I should not cry in front of his child. I tell him I cry of happiness.

And I walk back to our guest house called Techos Azules. Blue ceilings. And in South America to be Blue is to be happy. Or at least in Brasil it is. I always wondered why in English to be blue was sad.

I felt both feelings. And I decided that for me, blue is all there was about being… in true contact with feelings. To me now to be blue is to be fully human.

And then as I walked I saw some artwork. I sat to look at it. And Nathalia the artist told me the story of it all. Most of them were made of White Clay, but my favorite piece was made of Brown clay, which was made in  province called Chamba Colina. She had walked peoples houses to find these pieces. And she painted them.

She looked under beds, and behind wardrobes and she found this viniera. A viniera is a bottle for people to drink Chicha or whatever brew that comes from the earth.

She painted a pointilist style, which she explained to me she learned from the Australian Aborigines. And the painting was a praise to the carribean. I looked at it… and I knew that was my first ever bought piece of art. I sat with nathalia who was interested to know who was taking something that was more precious than the rest. I told her I learned it with my grandmother, and my mother to value that which is made by hand.

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And suddenly I realized that I learned through my life to value artistic culture as the best manifestation of humanity.  That piece of art carried the story of tradition, of Colombia and the celebration of nature, and the art that is manifested everywhere.

I bought it and I showed to everybody I could.  And I carry it as my precious treasure. And then I said goodbye to Taganga carrying a piece of art, friends in  my heart, the feeling of saudade ( the brazilian word that is a nostalgic feeling of the past wishing for the future). I left feeling Blue in Portuguese and in English.

And I came to Minca. A village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. A mountain range by the Caribbean that reaches 5,700 meters. And I ended up in a Hotel that has a truly Gabriel Garcia Marquez touch to it.

It was not the first place I was in. But it is the place I take with me. Here I met Claudia, a Colombian lady from Bogota who is a psychologist and has worked in Brasil and who could recognize my little Viniera for what it was. A treasure! As I walked this place I thought it might have been an old colonial farm house of coffee… but she told me it was a Convent till the 1930’s.

And that it was said here that the main nun had fallen in love with the priest, it was a huge scandal in the land where “Love in the time of Cholera” was written. This nun helped the community a lot because she felt guilty for her love. And One day she died. And she is thought to have reincarnated as a Parrot. A Guaca Maya! This Guaca Maya lives here with us and is thought to only like men and not women. So when I see her I always talk to her in my mind. I tried to preach love. To ask her blessings. I look at the Guaca Maya in her blue and red color. And I know she too has felt blue in both Portuguese and English.

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And as I am about to leave this country I carry with me love, art and stories. I am finally a celebration to humanity in its fullest and most beautiful version.  But as I learned about it there is sooo much more to this place. But I will only know better tomorrow after I once again go back up the mountains through the words and care of Nacho who has lived in this hotel when it was indigenous ground. Tomorrow I am taken to see the snowed peaks and the the mother of all waters. But of that I can only write later, when I have once again entered truly sacred land.

Colombia, Sierra Nevada, Resistance and the Human Journey

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I was asked by my doctor not to climb for a few months.  So when I came to Colombia I was asked by my family not to bring my brand new climbing shoes. I was not planning to do much here but to recover in Cartagena so I only brought flip flops.

I was told by many friends that I had to visit the Tayrona park while in Colombia. And that is why I got to Taganga where I met Yassert, the Plestinian from Gaza I last wrote about. Taganga is a small fishing village that is close to Santa Marta. It has through time become a backpacker village.

As I explained the last time I wrote, I heard about another battle of resistance taking place around here. So I went to find out about it.

Everything I will write from now on is what I heard from the people. People that I asked so much about. I was asked by an Italian to go see the Playa del Muerto. Now, it was called Playa Crystal. I took an incredibly scary boat ride to get to this beach, which is in the Tayrona Park.

The Tayrona were an indigenous population, which has been entirely decimated. The park Taryrona is a natural reservation and I was told is under the administration of a French man who is friends with the sons of Uribe.

Playa del Muerto has people living in it. People who were being massacred for tourism. I walked the Taganga beach till I found Joselito, a local who is known by all. He told me his version of the story as someone who was related to the people there. I took a boat and I got to the pristine beach now known as Crystal Beach. It was full of tourists. I searched for the senora Rufina who was a local I was told to look for. She was not there. Her grandson was. I asked him to tell me what was going on. He looked first scared… then he told me he wanted to tell me about it.

He introduced me to other guides who had in their shirts written “Playa del Muerto”, which was obviously an act of resistance. According to these people, the Tayrona came to Playa del Muerto and lived there for many years. They buried their people and their treasures. Now people who had lived there for many years were being evicted for tourism to prosper so they wanted to hide the past of this place by changing its name. The boy told me about his family members he had that had been killed there. I asked whether they were afraid. And he said they were resisting it. They were now armed. I left the beach not knowing what to think.

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I came back to Tagana and I decided that though I did not have climbing shoes I was  hearing the calling of the mountains. So I decided to go there.  First, I visited Joselito to tell about my trip and my desire to see the Sierra Nevada. He introduced me to Eliecer a great guide he knew and who was a campesino of the Sierra Nevada.

Eliecer came from Santa Marta to explain me how it would be for me to walk to the lost city. I told him I was in fact just more interested in walking the mountain and to see the Kogi if I could. He agreed to that. And I for the following 3 days started a long walk in the mountains of Colombia.

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I asked Tayrona, Kogi, and ultimately permission from the mountain and the spirits of the forest  to walk in what it felt like a sacred place. I asked for permission, connection, and understanding. I remembered how I once was a very critical of these ideas; how as an anthropologist I condemned perspectivism. Yet, as I entered Indigenous land I asked for permission of the spirits of the mountain.

Before that I asked about the Farc, the paramilitary, Uribe. I asked about all there was of politics that I read about. I asked the people. But suddenly as I walked in, it came to my mind my friend Nathalie. The woman who taught me about hearing those who have not their voices heard.

For those of your who have read me for a long time… she was the Australian I met in my first trip to India and who had gone to Afghanistan alone just before the war. Nathalie loves Colombia. And as I walked the sacred mountains I somehow knew Eliecer,our guide,  might know her. He did. It felt special, so special that all my interest in the politics, the conflicts all subsided and instead I focused on what was happening to me. Why was I walking a mountain.

In not even 3 months after thinking I was going to die ,I was walking a mountain. I, who could not walk nor eat, could suddenly do it. I walked that mountain with all the respect that I have developed for mountains and myself in these years.

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I observed the Kogi beautifully dressed in their white clothes. Yet I knew I could not know much of the Kogi in so short time. I walked those mountains thinking of my own relationship of the massacres of the indigenous peoples of South America. How much of a Holocaust had happened here…. Through theses centruries. I apologized to it. As I walked knowing I was part of it… In some distant past I was part of it.

And as I struggled to walk a mountain in flip flops I realized something incredibly important: I could recover my sense of independence because I was being taken care of by Eliecer, his wife Tati, and my friend Peter, who I found out in this journey was half Italian and half Jewish. Somehow it fell all inside of what I knew. He was born in the US. He was part of the Gaza mission and yet he was Italian and Jewish two people I know so well.

As I walked I felt I suddenly knew in my whole body it takes full care of someone to allow us to endure a human journey. I had it here. I was struggling between nonexistent muscles, wrong shoes, weakness, heat, cold, and I could do it because there was someone taking care of me completely. And I understood I needed it forever. And that life was too kind to me to always have given it to me.

I walked back exhausted yesterday. A day I survived. And today I visited Yassert. He had a gift for me. Some artist called Vladimir had painted us while we talked. I wanted to take a picture of the painting… but Yassert said it was for me. I took that precious gift just as Mattias the chair of the Religion and Politics of the Upsala University in Sweden showed up.

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Mattias had been to many flotillas of liberation to Gaza. He was in the Marmara mission with his wife. They told us how two people were shot by the IDF  before they came down.; how terrified the IDF soldiers were; how all their recording video was taken away from them. They told me of the different treatment they had compared to the Turkish people because they had a different passport. I heard it all intrigued. Yet I thought peace could not happen there.

We sat with Yassert for coffee… And I could only speak to Yassert that though I was impressed by people who went to those missions, I thought peace could not happen there.

I explained to Yassert I wanted to hear him play the Oud. Peace had to happen through the collapse of separations. Through art. Through similarity. Not in things that made stronger divisions.

I remembered how once from the West Bank I spoke how subversive I thought love was. How an Israeli philosopher I had met who was against the occupation could not deal with what I wrote.  I asked him why… and he said, “it is too human.”

And that is what it is. All separations and divisions, and occupation depend on the idea that people are very different. Collapsing these systems takes us understanding we are not very different. We are all human, Indigenous massacres depend on people believing the indigenous are less humans; occupations can only take place because people believe Palestinians are a different kind of human.  Slavery was only possible because humanity was stolen to slaves. We are however fundamentally human! We are all how capable of amazing cultural diversity yet we are human beings who are so fundamentally flawed and amazing.

When my dear friend Michal told me now she had been to Hebron with Breaking the Silence ( the ex soldiers of the IDF who speak against the occupation). I cried. It hurt me to imagine my dear friend seeing the absurdities that go on in Hebron under her name.

I knew she would suffer seeing what the settlers did there. How could she live after? I did not wish that for her. A collapse of her system, yet I was so proud that she did it in spite of it. And I gave her what I could do of most valuable…. My unconditional love.  I could never do that before but in this X-mas, I finally could and that is what I did . I gave full unconditional love to my two cousins who made me survive my disease. And then to Michal. I gave them, and thank them to make it possible for me to give it. And in doing so I understood that only being unconditionally loved we can venture in a human venture full of mistakes, pain, love, happiness. I gave Michal because I could, because I could, and because this way she could venture in the difficult journey of humanity knowing she would always be loved.

I walked these mountains as weak and as strong as I have never been. And I understood I too needed to be cared for, loved to be able to step one step next to the other. It hurt me to imagine some of my ancestors massacred these indigenous peoples of the Americas. Yet I could take the pain because I am not directly responsible for it; but most importantly, because nowadays I take different choices.  I do know, and understand, I am part of a whole process of colonization. And yet, I can walk one more step in these indigenous lands feeling part of it as well.

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I hear all stories of Uribe and Farcs and Bolivarian ideals, and I am more convinced then ever that ideologies are just one more thing. Time goes away and takes it all. I take one step and I almost fall on a loose rock.  I have to ask help. And I do. Even when I feel so fragile to this help, I finally can ask for it.

And when I finally return to Taganga I go to see Yassert. He is my oldest friend here. He has read me. He thanks me. “Thank you, Just thank you. Thank you for my people” I am moved. But as we sit for coffee today I tell him. Yassert “ I know you crave to go home. I know middle easterners have different conceptions of time, and relationship of land.” I remember as I tell that of Hannah telling me of the people who go back to Europe to visit where they came from before the Holocaust and it does not exist. They all suffer.  So I tell him how much I felt lost in this enormous world. Always looking for home.

In Colombia, I know finally where home is. Home is in an encounter. For me it is when I can seat here and write of those who have no voice. I can be home where I am allowed to be vulnerable. Where my vulnerability does not oblige me to run. I take one more step.  I breathe in and out and the weakness of my body does not do much to me. I inhabit here now.

I sit and hear a man, Alejandro, an old Peruvian playing songs from Latin America. I feel home in his voice, in his music. In the fact that I take the guitar and I sing. I feel finally home in all that I am…. Till I loose grips to it again. I encounter Yassert one more time as I am about to go to my hostel. I tell him one more time I want to hear the Oud, and tell him to go to sleep and rest.

And there I somehow know that home is when we take care and are taken care of. It is in the cultural production we all have in the world. I feel exhausted but so happy that I could walk for 3 days the mountains. I feel mountains will always be where my soul lies. Where I can recover my sense of belonging to this world. And I could only be there because I understood in my whole my body that I could only be an individual because there were people taking care of me.

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Taganga, Gaza and the Message of the Condor

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ImageI am in Taganga about to go tomorrow see the natural park of Tayrona.
My last email I started by saying I had received an email from a
Palestinian. So this email I wanted to start by saying that my first
response to my last email talking of al Naqbah was from Hannah who is
an Israeli who I met when I first came to Israel. She wrote with the
concern of a mother and the words of someone who has worked on
grassroots movements to finish the bloodshed of the occupation for a
while. Though I met her years ago I feel love for Hannah and Motti her
husband who hosted me on Yom Kippur. It was then my first time in
Israel and she was the first person I met who was open to talk about
the Palestinian cause. She is now in my list and this time she wrote
me concerned with my health and also talking of the symbolisms of the
key.

And just as she wrote me a friend from the US arrived to see me here
in Colombia.  He came to Colombia to see me. We had met also through
couchsurfing years ago. And we had become friends because he had been
to the first flotilla mission to Gaza in 2008. He was responsible for
making sure there were satellites transmitting what was going on so
that it would be safe to all. This mission was before the 2009 mission
you all know about.

Peter my friend, knew Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian who had been
living in Gaza and was killed when Lorenzo took me to see the wall of
separation. I sat for Vittorio’s funeral with my Palestinian friends
Yahyah, Jaafar, and Samir. Though I did not know much of Victorio. I
was upset that day. It was said he was killed by Palestinians. Most
people I know thought it was Mossad. Till this day it is a bit of a
mystery what happened. I was upset because the activists spoke in that
memorial in us vs them terms. I could not believe it. I who then was
with my Palestinian friends, felt they had to explain to me they were
not going to kill me. I thought the woman could have phrased as in
“some lunatics” killed Vittorio but not create yet another problem
within the movement of resistance. No one knew who had killed him. All
those that knew him loved the man. Meeting him, has changed Peter’s
life who till then just worked a normal job but in seeing Vittiorio’s
passion he understood he needed to do something that mattered.

So we are in Taganga. And here I saw a Palestinian flag painted on a
door. Next to it was written Revolution, Free Gaza.. and there were
painted the cartoon Handala. Handalas are painted by Naji al Ali who
was a Palestinian cartoonist, noted for his political criticism of the
Arab regimes and Israel.

Handala is his most famous character. He is depicted as a ten-year old
boy, the figure has turned his back to the viewer and has clasped his
hands behind his back. The artist explained that the ten-year old
represented his age when forced to leave Palestine and would not grow
up until he could return to his homeland; his turned back and clasped
hands symbolised the character’s rejection of “outside solutions”.
Handala wears ragged clothes and is barefoot, symbolising his
allegiance to the poor.

Here Handalas do not have clasped hands. There a few Handalas They
have arms around each other. The first carries a key, the last a sling
shot. Those in between have arms in a hug. They carry different
objects but not in their hands. They hold each other. The objects are
in their shoulders. One has a weapon in his shoulder, the other a
camera, the middle one just wears a Keffiiyeh ( Palestinian scarf) .
As I saw this all I wanted to meet the owner  of that place. And now,
I just did.

Yassert is from Gaza. He has a food place in Taganga. His Palestinian
flag has been stolen  before, so now he has painted the flag in the
door. Together with the flag, and the Handalas you can also see a sign
written “no IDF and no Mossad”.

I arrived there and I introduced myself as being who I am: someone who
has enormous love for the middle east, for both Israelis and
Palestinians. Enormous gratitude for the Palestinians I met in the
West Bank. I introduced him to Peter who had been to Gaza. He was
nice. He brought us tea, then coffee. We ate. And I took my phone to
show him my pictures from the West bank. He saw Ibrahim Mosque and
started to become moved. “I am going to cry” He said. I told him it
was not a problem as I always cried. I told him all that I could while
he worked non stop. And then he gave me coffee. Made me Hummus and
Falafel.

I asked him his story and in between serving lots of people he told
me. He had been arrested in the second Intifada. Taken out by the red
cross to go to Switzerland, and then since he could not find jobs in
Europe he came to Colombia where just like in Brazil there was a big
Lebanese Syrian community.

“Why are you in Taganga” I asked?

Taganga is a small  fishermen village. It is close to Santa Marta.
Close to the natural park of Tayrona. He told me he came one day and
saw there were many Israelis. Here was where he was going to do his
fight for Palestine. He set up his restaurant. He wrote in big letters
“Free Gaza”. I asked him whether he served Israelis. He told me only
if they were against the occupation. I asked how often that happened.
“In 5 years I had met one person”

It is not surprising. Israelis that come to Taganga come after serving
for the IDF ( the Israeli Defense Force). Those who go to Asia tend to
be more in the search of Cannabis and spiritual paths. South America
is the continent of Sex, of music, nature, and Cocaine. So the
Israelis who come towards us tend to be the ones who are even more
traumatized then the ones I saw in India.

I pity all of them. As I sat there eating my hummus, seeing a grown
man moved by me being in love with the middle east I could not help
but remember that last night I heard Peruvians play music from the
Andes. This Palestinian man bought me chocolate when he heard I
wanted. When I wanted to pay for it. He told him I had brought him
happiness. I had heard this before in the Westbank. Yet the Peruvian
music came back to me. The people from the andes had a message of the
Condor for us. South America should unite beyond borders. I tell them,
not only south America we all should united beyond borders. And yet
keep the plurality of the world. They agreed it is the spirit of the
mountain… unity.

As I come home to write this. I read that Handalas were political
because they had clasped hands. I look into my mind and I remember
that not here in taganga.  Here they hold each other. One carries the
key, But all of them hold each other. They are together in a massive
hug observing whatever it is that they do. I get some hope out of
this. Whoever painted it knew not… but the movement towards peace
cannot be in clasped hands. It takes holding your neighbour.

But now I must go as we are expected by an Italian to learn about some
other resistance movement  that is taking place in one of the beaches
of Tayrona. The word revolution in Yassert’s place has the word love
backwards. Love is in Red. Yes.  It is big and red! That makes me
smile in the land of Garcia Marquez who went up and down the river in
“Love in the time of Cholera”. I smile and think thank God Love has
spread more than Cholera.  Now a man who fights for Gaza in South
America puts the biggest and brightest word in the middle of his
revolution. It is love. And we all hold each other looking for the
message of the Condor. Yes we should all Unite.

Love,
Jules

The Bracelet and The Key

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I have found my bracelet. Mysteriously like everything else that happens here in Colombia. In this mixture of  Africa, Europe and indigenous culture we can expect anything to happen. I however, never expected   for the first email that I got as a response to my last to come from Palestine, from my first Palestinian friend I had met the first day when I crossed the separation wall. That day it was the birthday of his best friend, and so Lorenzo (who is now here with me) was also there. It was in Ahmad s house that I met Lorenzo for the first time. This only came to mind as I read Ahmads email saying he thought it was a beautiful story and that he wished I found my misplaced bracelet, and that he wished he could be here with us.

I was  exasperated first to find out Ahmad read me. I somehow never thought he did. Then I was touched he  understood it was important for me a lost  bracelet, as I did understand in life sometimes we put emotions in things. And I had mine  ( feelings of belonging) there. And somehow in reading his words, I remembered the keys Palestinians kept since Al Naqbah ( the great disaster when Palestinians lost their houses..). Palestinians kept
the key to the front door of their houses, when they had to leave them in 48, hoping one day to return.The key is full of symbolic meaning. And I till  very recently used to feel we should all just let things go and move on. Now thought I still carry this belief in me, I understand, we must do it, but not before profoundly understanding where it came from. And yesterday I understood that well.

We went out dancing, Cartagena is the land of dancing. I love dancing. I have friends from my hostel, but also locals now. And as usual I put people together. And I danced, and danced. And yet…. there was this loneliness in me last night so I walked away from my friends…and I wandered off. I was taken by a looking like middle eastern guy to dance. He was a brilliant dancer. And I was silent. I danced without saying anything particular of me. And I felt so happy. And suddenly just as he came from nowhere… he disappeared.

I, for my own shortcomings, felt abandoned, and even sadder… And I kept wandering in that place. I had a desire to cry. In fact, I just could not contain my tears… so I cried feeling like a boat that is wandering aimlessly and does not want to be seen by any fellow sails men. I remembered Ishmael in Moby Dick.

And as I made my way around and was taken to dance by other Colombians. I decided to just not care about anything anymore yet I was sad and did not want to loose connection to what i felt.. It took me so much to get here. I could not trace where it came from this saddness. Or maybe, I could the beginnings of it… but not deeply it…. I had no courage to follow the thread of my feeling of loss. And suddenly, I bumped into the guy again. And I decided to talk to him.

It was a great thing to do. Because now he has a story. My abandonment was just mine. And it had no relationship to the world.

This middle eastern looking like, came from San Diego. He was born out of a father that came form Colombia, and a mother from Mexico. Though he looked in his 30s he was 19. He had just started a trip through South America to find out where he came from. His own father left Colombia when he was 11 to become American . Chris, the boy, had never been here. He was also a climber and had saved money to come to a trip to south america. It would pass through Brazil as in California he joined some Brazilian church.

So we stood out and talked. He told me about being raised by a grandmother who usually had described the house she was from. It was hand made by the family. It was there that his father was born. Now he had been to Bogota and had visited this house. I had tears in my eyes listening to him trace back the journey of his life. Discovering all that he came from, and yet knew not. We spent hours speaking and I understood why I needed to make internal home.

I understood the keys from Palestine. I understood the need we all have to go back and understand things. This boy is wondering south america learning a new language and meeting people. He is deeply religious… and yet all I could see of his trip was how human it was.

By the time he finishes he expects to be able to speak better Spanish. He expects to talk more to his family. I expect him to find out, what is south american of him. I understood last night so much of this existential quest. I understood though I did not carry a key like that of Al Naqbah ( the great disaster) I also did wish I could go back to my home. Yet for all of us it might be unreachable. We do not need the key, nor the house, but somehow we need to understand where do we come from.

Being here makes me understand so much of me as a traveler. It also makes me understand Al Naqbah much more deeply. So I wish one day my Palestinian friends will, (like I hope I do) understand we dont need to carry a key, or a bracelet. We need to carry a bigger space inside. One that allows us to create what we are. I do understand though today that we all must take this journey to an nonexistent past by carrying some special things.

So as I mysteriously reencounter my bracelet, jut as I loose my key to my lock. I am taken by joy the bracelet is still containing me, while happiness the lock can be broke. I ask for someone to break it. I get my passport back, my money and I feel both contained by those I love, and yet free to find out where I ll go.

Cartagena and the Bracelets

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bracelet

Usually as I see things, I want to tell them to the world. Here is the same.. But
writing is a bit harder now because when I am not doing something I feel I
should rest… Yet I have 3 stories I want to tell and if I do not
write now tomorrow there will be 4 things that I will have to weave
together.

You all know I have a strong relationship with Palestinians, Israelis
and Italians. So I left Brazil having just spoken to an Israeli who
lives in Italy.  We spoke and I said farewell to Brazil and when I got
to Colombia I met Lorenzo, a friend from Italy whom I had met in Palestine.

He used to live there, now he lives here. He is a very special person. Who I have written about when I was taken by him ( against my will) to see the wall in Bethelehem with three of my friends from Nablus in Palestine. Those of you who have read me since then must remember it.

I was furious with him that day. Here it is a reencounter. A third
continent we see each other in.  He knows me so well. He makes me eat. He has
introduced me to a place he has been living in for a while. And most
importantly, he introduced me to his family who is here visiting him.

So my atypical trip started by me recovering, joining 2 italian families who know each
other for decades. Through these families I am being introduced to
Colombia. I who can barely eat am being made to eat slowly. Eat well.
And I who can barely speak Portuguese have to have complicated
conversations in Italian, swap to Spanish, English French several
times a day. To Lorenzo I speak Portuguese and now it feels like
resting.

I spent Christmas with them. Italians are hilarious. They are so
sacred about their food. And they remind me sometimes of my father with
how much it matters the food that it is put inside. Hunger can not be
wasted they say. I who can not waste hunger either (but for physical
reasons) am learning to really appreciate the food I eat.

So it was in one of these lunches that I met a Colombian woman who
knew some men Lorenzo ( my italian friend) knows. She looked at my
Chinese bracelet and commented on it. I told her it was from china and
she showed me hers.

It was made of the same material. Yet hers were three that had been
put together. She wore them and one day the love relationship she was
in broke and so did the bracelet. They separated and one of them broke
off. She took it away and locked it away. She eventually, fell in love
again, one day that relationship broke off  as well, and the second
bracelet also out of the blue broke out. She locked it away with the
first one.

I heard her and as a true south American I am discovering myself to be
I asked her whether she was starting a new relationship. She confirmed
it. It immediately came to me a story I had heard a week before. Someone
important to me had read it, It was a short story about some man who had
fished a beautiful bracelet out of the sea and had given it to his wife and fell in
love with her when she had it. He then died and some other married man fell in love
with the lady who had the bracelet.

In realizing it she gave the bracelet to the wife of that man. And so the man fell madly in love with his wife. Eventually as they decided moving houses and she used
the bracelet to tie the wires of a computer her husband fell in
love with the computer, and more precisely with writing. As this wife
also noticed this love the bracelet created she decided to break it
into pieces and asked her nephew to throw it in the sea. The nephew then fell
in love with the sea.

I heard the story and told my friend who  had read it that to me what
made me moved was to think of how love is not on things. It is in
relationships and yet sometimes we need something symbolic to see
it…. and yet this women, this archetypical women of the book don’t
want that power, they return the love that does not belong to them
either to the person who it belongs to ( first wife), or even to the
sea. And the sea for me is water, it is movement, emotion, they return
love to it all…

I tell the story to the lady. Not entirely sure why. She looks deep
into my eyes and tells me that that was the greatest gift she had
gotten for Christmas. She had locked away those broken bracelets but
had lately been thinking to throw it in the sea. Before thinking much
I said ” do it”.  Not sure why I told her then…

And after i understood why… We all have to close cycles to start new ones.

Today Lorenzo and his family invited me to go to an island. We took
the boat there… it reminded me as I entered the boat and felt the
sea in my foo that just before me waking up sick I had been the day
before in the sea. As I made my way to the island i thought of the
bracelets, and of my health.

Yet in the Island i started to do yoga for the first time as I sat in
the sand. It was also the last thing i did before being sick yoga in
the beach and the sea. And then as i deeply enjoyed discovering this
new body I live in.. A little Colombian boy sat watching me. Usually,
I would have just kept my practice. But yet there was a child and I
could not. I asked his name, and decided to teach movements to him. And
within seconds I had 4 young boys talking to me. I learned their
songs’. I learned their lyrics.. And when they were gone I entered the
sea. I sang. It was no perfect singing but I could sing to the sea. I
had nothing to return to it. Just maybe my difficulty of speaking.
Maybe i wanted to thank the sea, I am not sure… so I sang whatever came to mind.

Ironically or not, I can not know what I did to my Chinese bracelet. I
dont know where it is. I am still hoping to find where i misplaced it.
I never minded loosing things. Yet this bracelet was given to me by my
grandmother.

I know perfectly well what are the things that I am supposed to throw
to the sea. But maybe I am not yet ready. But at some point if  we
want to start something new we must return things to the sea. They
might be back. But we can t lock things up. Broken things. We must let
go what makes no sense. So that we can be in what makes sense.

And what makes most sense to me now. Is to go have dinner with Lorenzo
and his family. They are making me much healthier and happier.
Love from mysterious Colombia.

ju

Ps: I wrote this post last night, I sent it and my first reply came from the Palestinian who introduced me to Lorenzo 🙂 He wished to be here, and wished for me to find my bracelet. As I went to bed yesterday I found it… under me. Who knows how .. who cares..? I wished Ahmad could be here too…

Colombia and Dona Inah

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I fly above Colombia. I feel sooo much joy that I cant decide whether
I am like an addict that is just trying to go back to it. So I quit
writing. I pause and decide I should be silent and just feel it.

I feel so much joy to have random conversations with people around in
the airport of Bogota. See the elderly men who look like they have
just fallen out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. I remember in my
body what i love about going alone to places i don’t know. I watch
from the distance. The little intricacies of a society that is unknown
to me.

So I stop writing and I start to try to remember what is it that I
want to go back to. I know… I still do… But I wonder how much I am
in essence a nomad. Then I put music to listen.

I listen to Dona Inah. Dona Inah is a 76 samba legend in Sao Paulo.  I
ve known her for many  years.. But the first time I talked to her was
on my birthday this november. I was in my favourite place. The Bar of
Cidao who died while I was away this year. And of which I have spoken
so much of.

I celebrate my birthday in this little bar.. It is my place in Brasil.
I was so sad to go there when I came back bc Cidao was not there. But
now it is for me the bar of Rose ( his wife) whom I always talk to. It
was the last place I went before I got sick, and the first I went to
when i could move again. So it was where I decided to celebrate my
birthday. on a monday, with my closest friends.. At around 3 am Dna
Inah in her 76 of age shows up.

She like me, i found out later, finds it hard to go there without
Cidao. She knew him for too many years. He was a dear friend to her.
She is something like the Cesaria Evora of Samba in Sao Paulo.So I,
barely recovering, went up to her and asked her to sing a song in my
bithday. She did. I was beyond happy.

After that I went to her concert and I sat with her listening to her
tell me her life. They were really epic stories. I encouraged her to
come back to Cidao more often. She told me it was hard for her. yet 2
days later she came. and I again asked her to sing a song i loved. She
did.

I had taken with me a friend from childhood i had not seen in 16 years
(as she lives abroad for all these years). Heloisa, my friend, is a
brilliant pianist, and she was like me dazzled by encountering these
beautiful places in sao paulo. These gems in Sao Paulo.

And then I came to Colombia and I love it. And my whole body is soo
excited. But as i put dona Inah to sing here. I recognise this old
voice. Now, not only, she sounds as the amazing woman as she always
has.. But now as I hear  her  i know her stories. I know   her health.
I know her.

I now know where to go to hear it. So through music again I can
remember what is this new journey I am trying to travel. The one of
more consistency.

I am so happy to be in Colombia. I am about to get to famous
Cartagena! And I love it. But As I hear all the songs Dona Inah sings
it makes me realise I need to be back to hear her more often. To hear
her stories. i want to go back to the bar of cidao where I now know
every single musician.

Building a home when you so easily get sidetracked like me is very
hard. When, like me,  I get to meet only the nicest things everywhere
makes it easier to choose to keep going. But, maybe, there is some
balance I can find. I am not  yet sure how.

Where I can keep all  these wonderful people in my life and yet have a
home. i dont know how to… but I want to.

The most important thought of this flight is:  it is the first in a
long time that I care about. Every single other one I had no fear of
dying. These time, I have, no fear either, but I have a desire to
live. To see. To find out more clearly what is this journey all about.

I start a conversation with the beautiful black woman next to me. She
is from Cartagena. She works as a maid in Bogota. She has abandoned
her 2 children in Cartagena.  She  has to work. I have heard stories
like these all over. It reminds me of the children of Asia. I tell her
what I can. Let them know how much you are suffering. I dont know the
lady. She is a tough one. Somehow I see she is suffering. I seat there
the embodiment of someone who has no ” real economic politic
problems”. Yet I talk to her of what comes to my mind what I feel will
help her. In the end, she is concerned about me getting to the hotel.
She tells me her life.

It is one more precious life that I have heard. One more different and
yet the same  than all others. I get to Cartagena and I love it. I am
brought to the Hostel. This is home to me. The travellers. Their
thoughts. Their existencial quest. It all dazzles me yet it feels less
profound than before. They are amazing people. I can connect to them
in seconds we have all been to too many continents. I seat quiet for a
while reading Mia Couto. The Mozambican author.

Then I loose it, and I go back to talking to travellers.

I do not know the balance yet. Since I got sick I for the first time
do Yoga. I observe how much less flexible I am now. How much weaker. I
am not shocked. It is what it is. It is what I asked for. The human
discovery. In my own body, I feel, the plurality I defend  in the
world. Today I inhabit a different body then I did before. I am yet
not sure what it makes me think.

It is morning here. In very few seconds I will connect with  it. But
as I seat to finish writing what I started yesterday I listen to Dona
Inah. And in my whole body I am ready to listen to Colombian music,
hear peoples stories, connect to whoever shows up. But in her voice
there is something broken. I know what it was. She told me about it. I
recognize it. I know her story more. And so her voice is yet more
beautiful to me. Yet there is some nuances I cant know. Only with time
it might make more sense to me.

I remember once again that beauty is in recognition. I recognize this
life style. It is what I lived for so long. It is beautiful to me.
Yet, maybe, I should learn to recognize something else. I dont know…
something we can build in time. I am not sure. But I am open to find
it  out.

love,
Me

A More Gentle Path

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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.

 

I am better. I am not perfect I still not speak properly nor can eat much. Which both things have turned out to be good. Made me more observing, silent, and more cautious of what I put inside of my body. Yet, it is rather hard for those around who see me skinnier and skinnier when that is def not my goal.
There are many languages of descripitions for things we live. My neurologist has his, my musician friends theirs, and I have my own. So it is of mine that I will speak today.
I was asked by a Musician these days why did I get sick. Why I thought I got sick. I gave him the history of me being sick but was of course incapable to tell him why I thought I was sick. Yet those words have stayed with me these weeks. And through so much pain, and support I have had so far.. I came out with my own narrative. It is one that makes sense to me. And is the one I want to share with you.
Most of you know me. Most of you have encountered me in one or other place in the world and have known how much I care about people. How much I open myself to total strangers. And you also know.. that almost always I have to just keep going.
I grew up like this. I was born in an upper class family in Sao Paulo who supported me enormously and yet I always felt enormously lonely and abandoned. They had a vision for who I should be. And I was just someone else. Someone who needed to be taken care of. Someone so fragle and so affected by the world around that I needed probably more support that they could see.
I dont blame my parents for this…at all.. it has been , and still is a very difficult journey for all of us to understand each other. And it suffix to say that I grew up searching for the love, and the support I needed everywhere else. In friends, in strangers.. I always found it. And maybe because of this enormous loneliness I always felt…. I loved as many people as I could because I was afraid to be abandoned.
I of course, never really realised this… I thought I was strong, independent and could find my way wherever I was with the people I encountered bc I was capable to connect to anyone.
When, I was in hospital for the first day, this time… my cousins, my brother, and Gustavo the guy I was seing spent hours there with me. Feeling this independence that I do… I told them to go. I was used to being alone, and managing with what I had around. My cousin, Olivia, held my hand and told me “That is good, but you no longer need that”
I cant explain how much that has moved me, and how much that has shaped all this recovery that I am having now.
It was on that day that I started to understand how fragile I am. How much I need a home, love. To be needed, and cared for. How much it was important for me to care for all the people around me.
Lots and lots and lots of things happen in this process.
And I wont write all about it.

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

Many of you are also travellers. Many of you are out there…. searching like I did. Some of you have very stablished internal homes… others  like me are a bit lost.
Some of you are in a fix place and are lost.
And that is all fine. We all have to take different journeys.

I feel that the most important path to follow is the following:

Creating an internal home. Accepting our fragility, and being more gentle and caring with those around. Allowing for people to care about us… and being vulnerable to it.
I am not saying that out of any moralism, or religious teaching. I am saying that from my skin. My soul. My heart.
I really thought I was going to die.. and did not much care about it bc there was nothing truly here that made me want to stay. I cant point to an specific day that things changed… they just did.
Suddenly I understood ( in my language of description) what I had. And it comes from understanding that though I tried so hard to be a good person. I was good in the surface, but this loneliness I always thought was deep in me. It kept me from loving others, because I could not fully love myself. I could love fo brief moments..and then I fled… I asked from others this love that I lacked. Others who could obviously not be able to do give it to me.
I was a horrible wife to my husband, bc I was uncaring, I of course disguised with detachment of buddhism, or i don’t know what. The truth is that I just could not be there.I did not know how to be. And I left. He is a wonderful person, and had to learn his own lessons through this. Yet, I fled.
And once I left I started to searc in the path for meaning. Through volunteering, hearing stories, and love ….In one of these things there must me meaning. And yet all the encounters though they were profound… they were profound for as long as I could not be vulnerable to them… then I always left…
I fell in love with an Israeli, and I never wrote about this here, and I moved with him, and he was the male version  of me. He knew me so well, and I felt for once remotely home, that terrified me and I ran away because I just could not do it.
And that is when my total lack of desire to live started. If I could not even find home in love. If I were totally incapable of it.. What else could I do? I searched in metaphysical paths, in stories and yet there was an incapacity to stay still inside of me that made me move so much… that made most people who know me always feel I had so much desire to live.
I confess it was not desire to live… It was a desire to find whether there was some point to life. To so much suffering.
Yet, this all changed now. I am still recovering. I am healing my soul. I am discovering myself. How much what made me move was fear. And not bravery. Though they are always together.

And how in the movement I always encountered precisely what I could .. is something that dazzles me.

 

And now, after this almost death, I believe firmly we must all take more care of each other. We have to take more care of the consequences of our actions. We can employ any religious, theoretical discourse to go living a life of following our instincts and desires.  But to me, that led me to satisfy my ego, but never “my soul”
Ultimately, it made me disconnect from who I am. Be proud of who I was in the surface but not in the inside. Not loving what I am inside, I had to ask too much to all the people I got involved with. I had to have them to satisfy my own lack of love. And I could never trust any of them to do so. And I always fled.
I feel it is sad I lost so many amazing people along the way. Though now… I understand it was what we could live then. That is it.
Nowadays… what I wish to all that I know is not to get what you want, but to transform in the best way you can with what happens to you. Some of you learn faster than me. I am stubborn. I had to go through all of this to understand it in my skin.
It was tough, but now I am sincerely thankful.

I wish you all a beautiful life. A life where you are more present in what you do. That you are responsible to your actions. No one, expects to live a life without  ever suffering.. but what i finally understood it is that what is important is for you to stay once that happened. Be responsible. Be gentle. Be patient.  ( all the things I am still leaning how to do ).

And if you are a parent. Remember how difficult is this balance of love and support and freedom. Actually,  in all of our interactions this is so difficult to understand. We are individuals in a social world.
I am more certain than ever that we must take much more care of each other, supporting people in their freedom, but always letting them know… they are needed.. missed.. wanted there.
When I was in Israel this time. I impulsively bought a ticket to go to India. My dear dear friend Michal wrote me saying
” I know you are impulsive but this time that hurt me. I was expecting to spend time with you. And now you just go. I am hurt and sad”
That movement of containment was as important as my cousin telling me i did not need to know to be on my own. That day I canceled my tickets and went to stay with Michal. Till the day I decided to come home, which she understood well.
So, yes,  this is my most private email ever. And I write it bc I hope it helps someone. Because I have become such a public person.. through this life. that people write me… and I am happy and thankful for that.
I dont expect to now never to travel again.. I love the people and the places I have been to. They are part of me. I just expect to be able to be more in place when I do. I expect that I am more careful and in place. More gentle to those who are close. To be able to fully be.

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

True beauty relies in recognition. And happiness in belonging

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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

After the Hospital

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My dear friends,

Thank you so much for all the emails you sent me.
Things got soooooo much worse after I wrote you but they are finally getting better. Or at least I do believe now that I will be well at some point.
After spending 11 days in hospital I left hospital only to get well worse.
It all started with me not seeing very well. I had had some visual things before so I decided to keep it to myself imagining it to be only temporary. In 3 days I could not see anymore at all.
The world little by little became unexplainable to me. Not only could I really see anything properly but I no longer could read. I could see at first letters separately and eventually  it all seemed like a “matrix” world desconctructing.
With it came a loss of feeling that I belonged to this world, and a total despair.
I slept a lot… could not longer make any sense when i attempted to speak to people.
In my mind came sentences that had mixed words of different languages that I no longer understood very well what they meant. I also could not really understand “who” was thinking those sentences These obviously, aggravated  enormously my angst, making it impossible sometimes for me to understand what people where telling me.
I woke up everyday hoping to be better… but it just did not happened.
There were sometimes that people could understand me… and I also had a feeling I did not want to tell people I were so bad.
Eventually one day, I managed to call a friend and  asked him to take me out… since I had not left my house in a week. Basically rarely ever leaving my bed.
He did. I  was exhausted by the time I went to his house in his car. I attempted to explain him what was happening to me. And he eventually understood it. When I was finally in his house, his mother asked me whether or not I was taking some pills against allergy. I was. She suggested it might be it. She had also had really bad reaction towards these pills.
I cannot explain to you how much relieved I felt that day. It meant it was not me. It meant it was just me being once again poisoned by some medicine.
It took me still more 2 days to be able to start being able to read, and I am yet to be better entirely but I only have 5 more days of cortisone to take more and I finally do believe I will be better again.
I still cant speak nor eat properly… my skin is totally changing like a snake… but I am happy.
This was one of the hardest years in my life, and I do finally feel I am going to be better. After having reached rock bottom
Being sick in Brasil is very relieving. The amount of love and support I get here is incredible.
The syncretism is everywhere. I get prayers of all kinds of religions and when people ask you whether they can pray for you they never ask you to become of that religion. They always simply say ” Do you mind me praying for you. It is always better more prayers.”
It is relieving and I accept and thank them all. I have in my room now all kinds of tradition things.
I always was given a book by the Mozambican  Mia Couto and a week later here giving an interview. I heard it all in admiration…. these celebration of it all as just as alternative possibilities of narratives of the human experience. Mia is originally a biologist but he understands the world in biology but also through poetry..
I heard him understanding finally what it is that is in me that is Brazilian. It is this syncretims. This relieving  feeling of feeling that it all is incoherently fine in these worlds where we mix it all. Neurology and magic. Poetry and love. And how it is simply understood by everybody..
I finally walked these days. I went to hear music at Cidao. And music alleviated me. Having people I do not even know putting my name in their churches relived me to un extent that I am incapable of explain.
The 75 years old masseuse whose parents are japanese came even on a sunday to spend 4 hours with me doing all kinds of things to make me feel better.  Just before leaving she told me she would come back for my birthday to celebrate life.  She explained me that when she decided to live in Japan she understood how Brazilian  she was. We are happy people, we love, and we are flexible.  Just remember this… it does not matter much more…. you just have to be loved and love the world around!”
It was that night that I could again think clearly. It was again that I could read better. It was that evening that I finally understood that it was time for me to stay here. To be from here and accept all these love I  have around me, and be for them when they need.
I guess it was that day that I started to believed that I will be fine,
Love,
Jules

In Hospital

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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.

I woke up a week ago with my tongue paralyzed and twisted. After having spent a wonderful weekend in the time of things. Respecting the gentleness of my internal movement. Re-learning how to dance I woke up twisted.
In seeing my tongue the doctors called my neurologist and so it was decided that I should be kept in hospital.
And so exams that once terrified starting from blood tests, to MRI’s to lumbar puncture had to be repeated now again 5 years later. I feared them not, or at least not too much.
From the day I came here my cousins came to stay with me, then my brother and Gustavo. And when I pointed to them I was used to being alone and that they could go my cousin offered that I no longer needed to know that. It relieved me from the guts, from the place where makes me keep crossing more and more borders. It felt like I could finally relax.
My parents on hearing about it 2 days later flied back to brazil from their trip. My aunts, and godfather came several days. To caress me, to massage me, to let me sleep. My 88 year old grandmother stronger than all of us stood there with me in hospital calling the 75 year japanese lady to give massages, and reiki.
And so I finally came home last night. I came to my room. I urged the neurologist to let me come home. I needed  to be home..
I dont know what I expected of being home. Maybe some kind of rescue, some kind of relieve,,,I still can not speak, I still have a massive allergic reaction, I am still shedding skin, and with it came a profound and total sadness.  A desire to cry the tears that have been floating inside of me for years on end. So deep and so profound is my sadness that I felt there was not words to write, nor to be spoken.
I watch my skin shed hoping that with the new skin comes a new life. I watch it shed and I attempt a braver attempt to swallowing food as it has been a week I have not eaten. It has been a week that all I felt was poisoned.
But I start to see the glimpses of joy. All the great people I have around me. I feel thankful for them. Even though I can t speak much now. Even though I still feel a sob that feels just as old as the vedic text like once I felt in India more than a year ago.
The cleaning lady in hospital called me little flower. Everyday she came in the morning telling me that all storms always led to to a beautiful day.
I cant wait for the beautiful day to come. I cant wait to be able to once again speak, and sing.  I cant wait to climb and dance. I guess this is already a lot.