On the Path to Dance

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I still climb. My hands are harder and harder. I confess it is almost like the closest I´ve ever been to a pure meditative state. I have finally really rock climbed for the first time these days… and as I stood there in the rock with a rope holding me, and my brain sending signals, which did not mime my internal desire, I had dissonant thoughts. Though I believed with certainty I was safe, my whole body ignored my thoughts, the adrenalin was released in my body, and I shivered.

 

It all stood further, and further, the people, the stories, the preoccupation. It all became more and more distant. It almost did no longer belong to you, and you seemed to just not to belong to the world at all. Sometimes, I am back, and I feel both the complete certainty that climbing does not belong to this body,  with the certainty that in no other way could I now exist.

 

I thank the rock. I thank the beautiful Spanish girl who gently tells me the secrets into climbing. She who looks exactly like many of the travelers I have met around the world. She is the embodiment of movement and kindness. She does not get how much it means that she is there. Her gentle words. I think about that. How rarely do we actually know how our words do affect the world around.

And as I climb I am suddenly back to every single mountain I had once been before. What is it about mountains I have often wondered?

 

I remember the hardest and most difficult mountain I had once climbed. I was then in Ladakh. In the north of India. I had taken every single form of transportation, and all kinds of permits to arrive in a little village, which had been closed to tourists till some months before.

 

It was a terrifying journey, driving through roads that were always too narrow for two cars to pass at the same time. It always felt like magic when we crossed trucks horning and not having any of us fall down the abyss. It was a ride seeing the dryness of the Himalayas, and the Buddhism represented by monks, stupas ( Buddhist religious constructions),  and flags present all over. It was the beginning of this internal journey that I have started when I left my life in the UK.

 

I knew nothing of mountains before. They stood there.  They were part unthinkable world to me. They just existed and were never among within my thoughts.

I think the first time I thanked a mountain was from a plane. I was coming from the wetness of Delhi to Leh in Ladakh. I needed that absence of water. I needed their imposition, I remember getting out of the plane feeling a bit scared of it … and then seeing the chilly air hitting my skin, and the familiar well known Tibetan, Nepalese and Ladakhi faces. My immediate relief when seeing their soothing rosey cheeks with eyes that always smile.

 

I remember how I took one step at the time (like a meditation in a vipassana retreat) when I climbed the first stupa in Leh. How we all felt some kind of respect towards it. The mountains, the height, the stupas. We, who had just met there, coming from different worlds. I remember clearly walking out and seating in the edge of the mountain and feeling but thankfulness.

I remember seeing the stupas made by people. Stone over stone… representing them being there, and also the interconnection between it all. An opening of path. I remember the beautiful German boy who travelled with me incorporating daily more squatting meditations and building stupas, everytime we were some place more distant.

 

We arrived to that remote village together. He took me together with a rock climber to climb some mountain almost in Pakistan. We knew nothing of the mountain. Nor did we know the language to be able to understand the local people.

 

Being in such a distant place, the locals were surprisingly mixed. Some looked Afghanis, others looked like Mongolians, some looked more south Indian… and most of them had never left that small village. It was  a clear sign of war, rape, love… all that happens when humans from different groups encounter.

The place looked like true paradise on earth.

 

It seemed to have been painted  by an artist.  It was a little oasis in a little plateau between the middle of dry grandiose Himalayan Mountains. To get it there after driving thought the most amazing scenery, we had to climb the last part. There were no roads there.

 

In fact, they were totally living under a subsistence scheme since probably immemorial times. That village had been, since the partition of India, disputed between the two countries. It had sometimes belonged to  Pakistan and other times it belonged to  India. The people seemed did not particularly care about it. They were Muslims, and dressed very colourfully.

 

My friends decided to climb one of the mountains around the village. I offered I had no practice on climbing anything but they thought we could go till I could not go further. We climbed…. and climbed, and climbed while the mountain became meter more meter more corrosive. It started to eventually dismantle in our hands.

 

We passed an animal cemetery and using my anthropological thinking I thought that was probably the further they did go. My friends, did not care about this piece info, we looked at the carcasses and we kept going.

 

We had not ropes; we did not belay anyone, nor did we have proper shoes. We had to support each other at times not to fall using my flexibility and their muscles. And those who have been reading these since then must have remembered that that day I had sworn I d never go beyond my limits.

 

There seeing the village small below us I felt I could be thankful I had lived the life I had lived. I was thankful for it. Yet, I remember thinking that if my life were to finish there I would feel thankful for the life I lived, but if I could make it safe back down I would pay more attention to my own movements and limits.

 

I don’t know if I have. My soul has screamed many times since then and rather than gently taken care of it…I ran, I moved, I rarely respected the gentleness of existence. That day in the mountain I had decided I would not be convinced by anyone again to go beyond my limits…. I haven´t, but I had maybe not even dared to notice my lack of desire to live any further then, how complacent I was towards death. It was something I should have put more attention to.

 

It was not an isolated instance. How many times didn’t I put myself in slightly dangerous situations? Those of you who read me probably know it better than me.

There was one lady in the border of the Mekong who saw it all. And I have written about her. Carley, the lady who at 40 left her life and went to Kashmir living the Kashmiri war for 18 years next to the man she loved. Among the many gifts I had in my life she was one. She was that angel I needed the most.  She, saw my soul, and yet when I smiled she told me it was time for me to come home. As she put it she recognized her pain in me.

 

I felt naked. How could she see I was bleeding from inside though I smiled?  She repeated it to me several times. And I explained to her I was fine and I had no home to go to. And then I broke my foot. And she wrote me telling me she was happy it would make me stay still. Finally, once, still.

….

One of the people I most love in this world, my friend Maciek, who is a Polish yogi wrote me an email today. He talked of dance. He knew how much I loved dancing. And he after years and years being a yogi has started to discover ballroom dance.

 

He started his email telling me dance was now for him like climbing it was for me.

 

I had, for coincidence, gone dancing yesterday. I used to love dancing. And I wanted to tell him that dancing should not feel like climbing.

 

I danced and I danced and I danced last night. And though I loved it, it was in a sense for me like climbing… I was just connecting me with myself. I changed partners every song. I learned new movements; I modified myself but only temporarily till the next song. Then I was free to adapt myself to someone else.

 

Then there was one man who danced with me. He really danced with me. Though we did not talk about it, we knew fairly well we were dancing.

That is when I decided to go home. Because, I am only open yet for climbing. I am, though, I do not like admitting so closed…. I climb because I can trust people to be there supporting me from afar… if they drop me I ll die. And somehow I have no problem with death.

 

What I still need the most is to find this internal home. The one Carley told me I needed to process here were I came from.  And while I climb I start again to encounter who is that person who needs a home. As the people become further and further down the rock, I start to reencounter my breath,  my movement, my mind is more still, I trust them not to drop me down.   Once I do encounter the gentleness necessary, with the time it might take, then maybe I could start dancing again….

 

 

An Ode to Climbing

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I believe I am becoming monothematic . And as any monothematic person, I need to convince you, what it is, that makes this theme so important to me.

I now started climbing. And what is it  about climbing, that makes one not mind the skin becoming blistery, broken, then harder? Not care, that the muscles are always weaker than you expect, more sore than you anticipate? What makes one wear for hours- on- end shoes that are way smaller than your normal footwear?

It puzzles me. Yet, I know in my body I fully remember my sensations towards rocks when I first met them.

As a child I walked around the Big Rocks in the coast of Sao Paulo. I always squatted to make sure I was the most balanced I could. In Thailand, I stayed in the rock climbing centre of Tom Sai usually looking the beauty of a body that could climb a rock.

I remember going 4 days in a roll to a certain specific place. I wanted to arrive by a lake. It involved going up a hill, and to go down the other side to be able to reach that given lake.  The first day I took the little mountain up, and though I knew we would have to go down somewhere, I did not really know what it meant. I was wearing my bikini under  a summer  dress. I had flip flops on my feet. And after going up, I found once there, that I  had to climb down a rock wall (I could not see) to reach some kind of crater where was the lake supposedly at.

It was wet, there were ropes there, but they were muddy because of the south east Asian monsoon. I took almost half an hour to know what my body had to do. I went down slightly shivery only to find out there was another wall to be climbed down a few meters away. I went up, using my enormous flexibility to compensate for my lack of strength. There was no way I could reach that place, I thought.

But there is something about rocks: they stay on you. And so, the day after, I came back. Not in a dress but still in flip flops. The first wall had grown on my body and I needed no more than a couple minutes to go down what had taken me almost half an hour the day before.  Just like an announced tragedy , once, I reached the second wall, it was harder than the first. It had rained more that night and I again took almost 40 minutes to  find out how to go down the second wall.

I once again, discovered one more wall to go down, which I decided I could not possibly do. In total, it took me 4 days, to go down four walls. Four rock walls I did not know existed when I heard about the lake. Every single day I was more and more sore. And yet, though I ached I was drawn back, and every time I thought less of the lake itself, and more of the process to get there.

I was often puzzled: what was about the rocks? And right then I knew it was this total balance between body, mind, and breath that it required. This complete awareness that you can find climbing up or down, and that you could, only maybe,  find also in yoga or advanced meditation. There, without ropes, you know that any movement will change your balance. Any difference in breath can be felt and known in a way that not even in most advanced prananyana exercises you can. On that moment you are part of the rock. You are all that you are, and you don’t think about it. There is an almost loss of boundaries that you need to reach in order that your boundaries can remain existing. Any lack of concentration you might fall. I knew that day, I would love to know how to climb more often and better. Yet, that day it was a very individual, personal experience; I just wanted to be.

When I broke my foot in Thailand and I came back to Brasil, my dear friend Rodrigo Purga, took me climbing. Before that, he introduced me to the slack line. Something like a tightrope that is becoming very popular in the world. It was supposed to help me with restoring the balance I had lost once I broke my foot.

Have you ever tried walking on a slack line? It is hard! It is beautiful to see those who can, and how calmly they have to be to be able to float there. All that gentleness you see comes from a total consciousness of all body´s movements and breathing. A consciousness that is not actively thought about, but rather just known through time.

Eventually, they took me to do bouldering (climbing without ropes) in a beautiful place in the coast of Sao Paulo. I remember perfectly well, the exhilaration of being on a rock too far to go down, too scared to let it go and fall in the crash pad, and an entire certainty I could not go any further. I remember being irritated with all the advice the experienced climbers gave me.

Instead I let all their voices become mumbled in the distance, and focused on my breath. It was almost like a total meditation, a full awareness of what it felt like to exist. In that total awareness I was finally able to make the move I needed to go to reach the top which was an easy rock. I remember the amount of strength I had to put on, that it had made me cut my skin , that it had made me release enormous amount of adrenaline and not to be able to move for a long while once I had finally reached the top.

And then I left Brasil, and the rock climbing walls had become a distant memory. But once I came back I knew somehow I wanted to understand more about what made people rock climb. And that is when I joined the Casa de Pedra ( The House of Stone), the climbing gymnasium when I first arrived.

I have been going there 4 to 5days a week. And at first I spent most of my time doing yoga, and walking on the slack line. I climbed the walls like I had climbed the rock, in my world. Something changed these days, I started to let the people  tell me what to do.

It finally became evident what seems to be what makes us now not mind our blisters, or our sore muscles.

As I traveled the world, I have often been noticing what makes one happy is not material wealth. It seems to be related to belonging, to being part of a community. We modern beings are so desperate to be free that we have little by little slipped away of the importance to mean something to a community.  Our communities are mainly all temporary.

Our absence is barely noticed. And so, I have often pondered that the probable reason of the growth of new religious movement is probably related to the fact they can also give a sense of community to modern life. But I digress.

Back to climbing. I went to the Casa de Pedra to reconnect to myself. To reconnect to my body and to calm down my mind, but suddenly I feel part of a community of climbers. And suddenly I realize climbing touches so many of our evolutionary tendencies that it does not surprise me why it is addictive.

There is an obvious sense of accomplishment one gets once one can reach a difficult place. There is a sense of independence one feels in doing so. A sense of reconnecting to nature as mainly climbing is in nature. It brings you back to be aware of your body.

People do not work out to be beautiful, but rather to be able to move more precisely, more flexibly, more accurately. There is a meditative aspect of climbing because of the awareness and stillness you need to have to climb. There is an introspective side of observing the routes to know before you start a climb so that you can know what you should do.

But differently, what might makes Climbing so different to Yoga, or meditation it is the social aspect of it.

I have written before about  how important it was for me to let just go, and be held by someone else.  How profound it had been  to be there and to support a fellow climber, but now more and more this becomes clear to me.

In our modern world, where we are daily more and more dependent on artefacts to go about our daily lives, and where we value so much being independent of all other people, climbing works the other way around.  Climbing makes you more connected to the environment, more fit to arrive to get to un-thought places, but it is a communal effort and we all know it is so.

When you support someone who is climbing, you tell them you are going to keep  them safe. This is incredibly profound. In the total duration of a climb you are with someone else. You really are! Their lives hang in your hands, and their climbing belongs to you as well, so does yours to everybody who is down there, everybody thinking of alternative ways to make that route possible  for you. In a metropolis, where most people look so disconnected, who work too much, think about the unimportant things most of the day, have lost the sense of how social beings we are as a species, climbing makes it possible for one to reconnect to it all. It reconnects your mind, breath, and body, with everything and everyone that is around you. So who would care about the blisters?

Dasein on a tightrope

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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.

Courage to just Let Go- Sao Paulo, Brazil

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I have been told so many times by so many different people how brave they thought I were for travelling the world to places I barely knew anyone, or anything about before getting there. And so often I talked to other travellers about how misguided we thought that idea was. How we all felt it was easy to just go.

Never did I feel so certain about that as I did today. I have in the past almost 3 weeks been reconstructing a fix life. I cant even remember when did that last happen. When was it that I last slept in a place I felt I could be in for as long as I wished?

But as I took every single step towards this new life I felt simultaneously free and trapped. An exhilaration of happiness accompanied of fear. So many papers I should have for being a citizen of somewhere. And I, who had for years, just thought of my passport felt somehow confused by all those letters meaning so many different things, and roots to different people, and systems, and financial benefits, and debts, and I dont what what where. for whom… what? Again what?

And yet I signed.. paper after paper with this mix exhilaration of joy and despair. Thinking how much courage one needs to be tied to a system. A family, a religion, a job, a town, a country. How much information one should have about all these subcultures of being part of a system to “feel” part of it.

Of course, most people just do it. We are all born in it. Most people never think about how crazy it is in fact the idea that human beings must be tied to a recently invented territory, thtough so many rules for the system (chose who knows how, through the years who knows by whom) to reproduce itself.

And yet the calmness that came with it is mind boggling  ( and numbing). Which is so good sometimes. And it is without a doubt easily evolutionarily and socially explainable. I for once in years do not have the freedom ( which correlated with despair ) to be responsible for the place I will be tomorrow.

I will be here. If I go far I might take a plane for a couple of days to another state. That is it. My search for freedom is now within rules. So refreshing. And so strange.

I now climb indoor walls while being supported by a friend. I ll practice in this inorganic walls, the movements to climb the organic rocks, mountains.. sustained always by friends who are familiar to me. Whom I every time speak more consistently in Portuguese. The english words I mix in my own language are finally fading.

Yes, it takes much more courage to stay. Especially when you have gone for so long. And probably it takes a lot of work to keep the inorganic, the constructed as simply a key to keep one centered enough to still be able to wonder about the meaning of life.

Yes that is probably the hardest work of all. Not to be swallowed by the system. Not to  just enter in the “do mode” and forget that after all we all need some kind of meaning to the lives we live. Either being it a metaphysical, or a humanist one. Even the most hard core atheist evolutionary reasoners usually agreed that we are symbolic creatures… and in one moment or another we all probably wonder what is the point of it all.

To many this meaning might be in an inborn capacity for faith coupled with a very religious socializing world ( maybe the lucky ones), others  might search for it their whole life in different times.

And there are of course, those who are too busy surviving. And the ones who are too utilitarian who simply want to maximize pleasure by any means and postpone any suffering or any concern for the meaning of life.

I am however, almost convinced it comes to all. And that it does not good trying to hide from it our whole life.

So maybe after all courage is to resist the system from within. Any system you are so used to. Maybe courage it is to try new things. Stay if you have gone for so long that you are no longer certain anymore why you were going. Go if you feel that you are so trapped by the system that you are afraid to go and find out how others live.  Courage is probably having the strength to open yourself, expose your wounds, ask the questions you are afraid of the answers, it is to trust yourself and others. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the awareness of it.. and yet not let it rule your daily life.

I have been brave these weeks. I am doing all the things that scare me. And yesterday as I let go from the top of the climbing inorganic wall for the first time ever, I really did. I usually have always trusted my strength to go up those walls, but yesterday I completely trusted my friend holding me there in these ropes. I was surprised knowing how usually terrified of that moment I usually am.

Then something incredibly telling happened. I was asked by the instructor what did I fear most: climbing or supporting my friend. I told the instructor without hesitation that supporting my friend not to fall was way harder for me. But then we kept doing it. We kept climbing the wall,  going through different routes,  and in the end of the night I felt completely at ease.

And as I seat to write this, as I am about to go climbing one more day I stop to ponder about it. And suddenly it feels symbolic clear to me. How could I support someone not to fall if I never knew where I would be the day after? Now, I feel at ease. I can climb, I can let go, and I can definitely support my friend. Simply because I seem to have finally committed to stay. And in my world this is the bravest I have been in a long time. It feels good, scary, exhilariting, but good.

Different “Airs”- Campo Grande- Brasil

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” Ah. You are used to other “airs”….”

Smiles the beautiful black woman the other side of the counter.
I am in Campo Grande the capital of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. State that is known by different people for different reasons. It is known by some with admiration for being the state where there are farms, and cattle, and plantations of soy. To others with disdain for the destruction of the Amazon, the violence directed towards the indigenous populations, and discrimination in general. It is the passing by place for people who are going to the natural paradises in Brasil of Bonito and Pantanal.

I came to visit a friend who did not come from here. And as usual when I am somewhere I do not know I just look for possible new friends in Couch Surfing( CS). There was something intriguing about the couch surfing community here. It seems to exist not only to rescue travellers but to  rescue itself. I wrote a handful of people who live here and somehow they all knew each other. They had all come from different states of Brasil. They all felt incredibly lonely here. They felt they had not only complete different views about life than the locals, but that it was incredibly hard to be accepted by them. So the CS community here worked as community for friendship for those who came to live here from somewhere else.

I woke up having a strong headache and I decided to go walking to one of  the only two vegetarian restaurants in this meat loving city.  As I walked I couldn’t help but feeling the city moved in a different pace. It was slow. So slow that I myself felt I was in slow motion. The sun was blasting in the complete blue sky. There are trees but it feels they are not really there in this seemingly vast spread of low concrete constructions…There is almost no humidity in the air after probably months of lack of rain. And I just strolled as if I were in another planet.

It did somehow not feel like Brazil to me. None of the “Brasils” I had ever visited before. And as I walked by a pharmacy I decided to go in. I could barely focus considering the headache I had so when the pharmacist came to talk to me I explained very slowly I had a strong headache and asked her whether she could give me a suggestion for a pain killer. She took one and showed me where I should pay. As I waited in line she suddenly reappeared . She carried a glass of water. She had realised I needed that pain killer right then, and that maybe I needed some water as well not only to take the medicine but also because it was such a hot day.

I was flabbergasted. Was she one of the uninviting locals I had been warned so much about ? I was so impressed by how caring that lady had been that I decided I liked Campo Grande right there. On my second day, with a blasting unforgiving sun in the sky, my boiling confused aching head, and my lonely, broken soul I decided I liked Campo Grande for every single person I had met here so far. And then I strolled a bit longer till I realised maybe I should buy some water.

I walked by a simple restaurant and as I went in to buy some water I noticed the man who worked there was on the phone. I, as usual, stood sill waiting. When he noticed me he tried to find out what I needed while on the phone. I pointed to the water. He took  it for me.. I paid and thanked him. He smiled. And then as I was opening my bottle a black beautiful young lady showed up and asked me whether I was having a good day.

The question took me by surprise. I had definitely not been having a good day but I decided I was going to simply tell her I had a headache though  the day was beautiful.
She gently smiled and said

” Yes. It is hard this time of the year. Too cold in the mornings, and then more than 30 celsius in a couple of hours. No humidity whatsoever in the air. It is hard in anyone´s body.`”

” Yes, and I have only arrived here a couple days ago”

” Ah. You are not from here ? So that is what it is. You are used to different airs.”

I loved that lady right there. For taking me for being from here even though she was probably certain I was not. I dressed in white indian clothes… with glasses that are too trendy for the country side, moving in a different pace. And yet she was kind enough to in one sentence tell me I could have been from here, and that my feeling bad was maybe because I was used to a different air.

It was so poetic that I strolled the rest of my way in awe. I arrived at the Chinese owned vegetarian restaurant in the town and as I walked in I again felt like I was stepping in a different realm. It was a peaceful place. My new CS friend was there. He was a vegetarian coming from Rio. He worked in an UNESCO project to protect non material culture. He was also used to different airs.

I told him about my experience walking there and he concluded it must be me. That I always attract the nicest people. That it had been an unusual interaction. I did  not know. I knew he was nice and that I always am with nice people. I had managed finding a yoga place in Campo Grande where the Yoga Instructor knew more about Sanskrit, yoga philosophy, hinduism, and buddhism than most yogis I have met in Asia.

I in fact, can´t  speak much of Campo Grande. But as I am here and I observe the different “air” comes to me the Benjamim Taubkin words. The kind words he told me when he read my post explaining I was coming home. I had finished that post saying he had once told me Brazil had the space for the new.

In his reply he wished me “welcome back” and he followed by saying that It would not be easy. But that he had noticed lately in his life that what seems to matter it is not whether something is easy or difficult. But that it had to have meaning, light and purpose.

As I spend my last free days in a total strange place, I know that these different “airs” have to be over for me for now. I am about to go home. I am about to make a room my own, to start working teaching languages in the morning and evenings. I am about to be free at lunch time to eat with my grandmother and cousin every single day. I am about to have the time to find my yoga place, my climbing place in the town where I was born.

Air is a powerful symbol. For many traditions it is life itself.  As I seat in the yoga class in Campo Grande and I do the Pranayama ( breathing exercises) that I have long not done I realise I have been used to too many different airs lately, but that I had not really allowed for these “airs” to enter too deeply inside of me. As I feel a blasting headache the morning after my Yoga practice I somehow believe it is the air that I started to really breathe in. Benjamim was right, it is not easy. But I am embracing the difficulty and feel somehow a hint of metaphysical feeling that maybe it is simply because it is already sooo meaningful.

Joy the last form of Resistance?

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I arrived in the airport in Sao Paulo before 5 am. The airport was empty and I walked pratically alone to the imigration. As I delivered my Brazilian passport to a Brazilian lady who was working there that morning I said ” Good morning”. She looked at me and smiled and told me “good morning and welcome back.’

I pointed out that it was amazing for her to be in such a good mood that early. She explained she had been awake since last night, that her shift was about to be over.

“Oh, so you will be able to go to sleep soon :)”

But she was leaving in one hour straight to the university and eventually in the afternoon she would sleep for a couple hours before she would wake up to prepare dinner for her husband who would come home. She said all of that smiling and laughing.

The experience of leaving an Israeli airport where you have to get everything out of your bag, get asked several times the same question, that you are asked whether you are carrying a bomb, and why you have been to Muslim countries like Malaysia or Indonesia to arriving in Brasil where a lady sleep deprived who lives in a crappy neihbourhood where people probably get more killed in a weekend than years of Israeli conflict and still smiles (when she still has hours to go) is a shocking one.

Most of the time when I return to Brazil and I see the loudness and happiness of Brazilians I want to shout ” Why are you people so happy? Why is it that we laugh so much when it is all chaos?”

Not this time. This time I smiled inwardly and I felt an enormous joy to see that in spite of all Brazil´s problems people are happy.

As I am pondering about that my friend Jaafar writes me. He tells me he had just celebrated Eid ( the end of Ramadan) in Tel Aviv. I am puzzled. And I asked him how did it go. He tells me he was with friends and that they had swam in the beach. They made Israeli friends.

I ask him to tell me about it. And he tells me they were in a Restaurant  and that there were two girls that sat next to them. They asked whether they could join them. They asked in English. The girls were 18. They said yes. They did not know they were Palestinians. Once they found out they replied ” we are peace and love”

He tells me they did not know where Nablus was. I ask whether they knew where Schem is ( the Hebrew name for Nablus). They didn´t. In fact, Jaafar tells me he showed them the picture of it in the map on his phone.

They were surprised ” But that is Israel”. Jaafar tells me this laughing. He finds it funny they did not know where the West Bank was.

I wish I could have been there and seen all of this. I am not even sure what to think.

Jaafar is working with an Israeli IT girl in developing a new app. He asks me an opinion. I am not  an expert on it but I give it. And as this conversations happens through the internet I cannot help but think how small the world has become because of it. All the people I met because of Instagram, couchsurfing, and all the opinions I can now ask from far away on skype, email, Facebook etc. The fact that he can take his Iphone out and show where he comes from in a map to people who have long heard about Palestinians being their neighbours but who do not know the Israel they see is a huge part Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“How did you feel in Tel Aviv?” I ask him

” We had lots of fun. We laughed a lot!”

Strange. I had always felt Tel Aviv was a bubble for Tel Avivians. It was the first time I realised it could be a bubble to anyone.

Laughter seems to be always the refuge of the naive. Irony is said to be the only possibility when all is too painful. I ponder about that and realise only an intelectual could have come up with that. So caught up in ideas about ideas. Seriousness is always solemn and is seen as inteligence. In the world of the mind to laugh seems always frivolous, naive, out of touch with reality. But I am starting to think that those that laugh are the most in contact with reality there is. The most aware of the reality they can´t change. They laugh.

It comes to me the Tibetans. Always smilling. The Thai. Brazilians. Are these people so in contact with reality that they just refuse nowadays to let the harshness of it enter their bodies? Their minds? Is laughter after all the last possibility of resistance?

I am not sure. But it does definetely feel better to be next to those who laugh… I take my passport back and I wish the lady she will have a happy day. She smiles and says “It is already.”

A Small World

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The world it is a small place. Very small indeed.

Last year I was in the West Bank and I became friends with Manoel Ramos a Mexican who was studying in Bethelehem. I met Manoel when Jaafar my Palestinian friend drove me to Bethelehem from Nablus.

Manoel knew everybody. In his broken arabic he work almost like an informal counsel to taxi drivers, vendors, people on the street…  he gave family advice etc… I felt that Manoel could say anything he wanted because he was always smiling. Manuel once took me to see a couple of old men playing back gamon. In fact, we were just going to go buy something to eat but with Manoel it meant stopping everywhere to talk to everybody. So we stopped by these two older men who played back gammon every afternoon.

It was a beautiful image. Beit Sahour. The old old old Roman looking like buildings and men seating around this back gammon set. I took a picture of it. Some months ago I uploaded it on my Instagram.

Instagram for those who do not know is an phone app. It allows you to take pictures, put filters modifying them and to upload them online. Your friends can follow you and see what you are posting. You have also the option to see pictures of people you do not know. It all works by following how pictures are indexed.

For instance I took a picture in France and when I uploaded I wrote #France.  This picture will be indexed with everybody else who once wrote #France in their picture. You can index several times the same picture using several different categories. Ex: #France #Provence #Sunset #bicycle etc

When I take a picture and index it #Palestine and I click on the ‘#Palestine’ itself I can see all other pictures that were indexed this way. Depending on what you write there could be millions of pictures. If you write #cats there will be millions if you write a name of a small village there will be probably few. Depending on your patience and your interest you can browse as many pictures you want.

Sometimes I look into other pictures and if I really like  it I click on the name  of the person who took it ( a person who is unknown to me) and I am able to see what they have uploaded.

Anyway, I uploaded the picture of the two older men playing backgamon months ago. And I tagged it saying #beitshahour #palestine #backgamon. And one of these days while I was traveling France I received a message on the picture in Instagram saying “My grandfather!”

I was shocked.

“Did you mean he looks like your grandfather? Or is this your grandfather?”

“It is my grandfather!”

This girl’s ( who was unknown to me) had seen by chance a picture of her grandfather on my Instagram. I was amazed.

Then some weeks went by and I was already in the middle east posting pictures of Jerusalem and the West Bank when a girl I did not know started liking my pictures. She started to follow my pictures and one day she wrote me an email on facebook. It was a lovely email she told me she was Palestinian descendant but she lived in the US and that she was now in Jordan. I wrote her back and through Facebook we suddenly realised that we had a friend in common. Not only a friend it was Jaafar who took me to meet Manoel. Jaafar who I wrote about a couple emails backs, and who is not only her friend but it is her cousin.

I was amazed again. The world is so small!

Today as I land in Brasil I checked my emails and I got a message from Fernanda who I met because of Gabriel who i knew because he had once written about the middle east. I became her friend because she was going to Asia and I offered to give her tips. We met once. We exchanged several emails and today she had written me to tell me she was happy I was coming to Brasil.

She concluded in the email that the world was small. She had just met in Cambodia a Mexican that had met me in Palestine. I could not believe it. She had met Manoel.

Going Home

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Everybody who knows me, knows I am an impulsive person. Everybody who has spent some time with me knows I do things in the spur of the moment. For better or worse.

When I was in Brasil I arrived there against my will. I had broken my foot then.  I wanted to run away from inside. I wanted to go back to being a traveler in Asia. Listening and watching the stories of others. I could not see a place for me in Brazil.  My friends and family had the Brazilian inexhaustible joy and patience to put up with me always having existential crisis. They heard me buy and cancel numerous tickets back to Asia. And somehow I just could not ever go.

While I was in Brasil I went every week to the simple bar of Cidao. Cidao was something like a legend.  A tall black man that owned a small super simple bar that had great music every single day. I went numerous times to Cidao. I took dozens of different people there. I sat in uncountable tables with strangers. I knew his wife, his child, the musicians, and the people who went there as much as I did. I would often, stop there alone.  I was always certain it would be great music and there was always Cidao.

Cidao was nothing short of a legend. People had many different stories about him. He was a simply guy. An ex truck driver. He was never too customer friendly like people learn in Marketing classes. He was just Cidao and I guess that is why people like me went there.

As I flew to Israel almost a month ago I got dozens of messages via mail, text, whastapp, facebook of different people telling me that Cidao had just died. I was alone in an airport.  I knew no one. And I was quiet, still in total silence. I had competing emotions. Sometimes I felt really happy I had gone there so many times in this few months.

I also felt sad I did not go more.  I felt sad when I thought of his wife, and his now orphaned child. I wondered about the musicians, the bar.. And I tried several times to remember how was my last goodbye to Cidao.I could never remember it precisely.  It was probably a hug. And  I was sad it was not a longer one. I remembered that as I was leaving early, he said ” Ja vai?” “So soon going?” I explained I was about to go to travelling to France and that this was my last time there.

He replied that it was the last time on this trip to Brasil.

During these weeks so many times Cidao has come to my mind. I always pushed it away. I always tried to focus in where I am. Where I should go next. But yesterday morning it flooded me. And I decided to stop and think about it. And I realized that Cidao meant somehow a feeling of home for me. And that I keep going thinking that home will always be there. Cidao’s death represents for me the impermanence of life.

I noticed I would never be able to be there again. It is such an obvious statements but somehow I felt a cold shiver through my spine. And I suddenly missed not knowing about all the wrinkles I am missing the story of. All the children that were born in my family whom I will not mean anything to.

It came to me the image of me and my cousin seating with my grandmother one  month ago in Arles in  the South of France. We were happy. My grandmother described that state of  life like a dream. ” I can’t believe I am 88 and I can still travel to such a beautiful place with my two young granddaughters.”

We were all happy.We all found what we needed in that trip.

When they left to go to Brasil and I was left alone in the airport I felt devastated. Airports are the most familiar places to me and yet I felt they could not be anymore. I still took another flight and this time I came to visit those I already knew. I planned to go back to Asia to see the places I had not. But I just could no do it Not without first having a home.

Everyday I wanted to go home. And today  I impulsively bought my ticket. Was it an impulse. Yes and no. It was, in the way I bought it for tomorrow. But everything inside of me is looking to be home. And for the first time in a long time I know exactly where that is.

I have finally reconciled myself with the place I come from. As the great musician Benjamin Taubkin had once told me. It is a place where there is always space for creating something new. I am ready finally, for a new life!

Tel Aviv- Being a Bridge

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Tel Aviv. I meet Jaafar. I haven’t seen him since last year when I was in the West Bank.

I had met Jaafar in Nablus, because of Yahyah who is Sam’s brother. I had become their friend learning this way about all the intricacies of the thoughts of these young boys from Nablus.

They had driven me to Bethelem telling me they were already going there anyway. Which I realized quite soon it was not true, they were just being kind to me. I have written here before, about how difficult it was that time for me and my three Palestinian friends to be taken by my Italian friend to see the separation wall. I wrote extensively about how unhappy I was by his poor choice of making us walk inside of the metal bar corridors that lead us to the checkpoint. I wrote about how much I silently cried feeling like we were animals. How sad I  was to realize that my friends here could not meet my friends there. How much I hated that wall. I wrote about taking refuge in an icecream with them.

Now Jaafar is here in Tel Aviv. He works with computers in Ramallah and had been invited by Microsoft in Herzelya to go visit them. Microsoft had applied for the permissions for Jaafar and 2 other Palestinians to come to Israel. It is not the first time that he comes to Microsoft. This time however, he could not make it. They were held too many hours in the checkpoint.

I know nothing of this when I go meeting him. All I know is that at 8pm he would be free for not very long as it was a one-day permit and they have to return soon from Tel Aviv to Ramallah.

I walk the streets towards the place we are supposed to meet in but Jaafar sees me first. He is inside of a natural shop with his friends. I go in. I am puzzled by what they are buying. “Protein” they explain. “It is for the gym”. I laugh and walk around the shop. Being intrigued by the amount of health food they hold. They speak to the older Jewish Israeli owner in English. He is curious and wants to know where they are from.

They say they are from “Schem” the Hebrew name of Nablus. The old man says he had been there as a child. That it was a wonderful place. He wished he could visit. They tell him he should come. I am intrigued by how friendly the conversation is.

We walk out. And Jaafar and I go for a walk. Michal, my Israeli Jewish friend, is coming to meet us. I feel some joy about it.

We meet her, and walk while we talk about all that has happened since I last saw him. Who got married, changing of jobs, ramadan, etc….

I see in Jaafar’s face how happy he is to see me. I am happy to see him too.

I tell him about my settler friend. I ask him whether it disturbs him I had been out with a settler. He asks me what kind of a settlement it is from. I explain it was a neighborhood mainly consisting of Palestinian people. That I was told that there were Jewish people who had always lived  there. I ask him what he thinks about it

“I think it is ok.”

“Do you think they should be made to move back to Israel?”

“I think the new settlements yes. But people who have always been there no. Palestinians and Jews mostly lived in peace for years. The can stay.. but the new ones should go.”

I ask him what he feels about Palestinians Citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis). Should they move to Palestine once (if) there is a state? He does not think so. They live here. They are used to their lives here. They have always lived here so they should not have to move.

We are now seating in Habima beautiful square. Right in front of the Theater and right on the garden. We seat on a corner. Jaafar is to on the middle.

Michal asks him things as well. We talk about Nablus which Michal did not know it was the same place as Schem. We look for the etymology of the name. I tell him she wanted to come but is afraid.  He tells her she is more than welcome to come. She explains she does not have a different passport. She is Israeli and according to the law Israelis can’t go to the West Bankn ( unless they are settlers, or IDF soldiers). He tells her she could ask for a Permit like he had done it. She explains she feels it might be dangerous for an Israeli to go there. She says it politely, careful, as she cares about what he thinks, and because she also wants to know more, and is afraid. He suggests she does not go around screaming she is an Israeli and that she speaks English. But he does not believe she would have a problem.

She explains she is certain that most people would be nice but she is afraid of terrorists. Her mother, she explains, would be terrified if she went to the WB. She is curious but at the same time she is afraid of going. She does not want to have to conceal her Israeli identity. He understands her fear thought he still thinks it would be fine.

I love Michal. And I understand her. I really do.

She is so young and so different than most people I know. She always is honest and says whatever she thinks. I met her in India and through having an accident in a bus we became more connected than ever. We traveled India together till I flew away. We sat for hours sometimes by the Rishikesh  bridge in India just looking at the people. The saris. Saying yes to every man, boy, girl, woman, parents who wanted to take pictures with us. We must feature in hundreds of pictures. We found it funny. And because we always took pictures of people we thought it would be nothing but balanced to let people take pictures of us.

We once traveled to Rajasthan in a fully packed bus. We were 5 westerners in the bus. The other 3 did not want to have any contact with Indians. We gave one of our beds out so that 5 guys could go spend a whole night there rather than in the floor. Because of this they took cared of us.

And then when I broke my foot in Thailand she took 18 hours of a bus ride to see me.

And now I am here with her in Tel Aviv. She seats next to my Palestinian friend and I know she feels as sad as I do when she hears he missed the appointment because of the check point. Though we don’t talk about it I know it is hard for her to see him. It is nothing about him or her. But these meetings they are too human. I was once told by a philosopher I met in Jerusalem he could not deal with reading me. I pressed him to tell me more about it.

” It is  too human Jules. If you talked politics I could fully agree or disagree with you. But when you tell me of the lives of people then I noticed something that is unbearably painful that as much as I am against the occupation it still functions in my mind in a certain way because we draw lines of separation”

I was thankful to him for saying that out loud to himself and to me. I knew it was incredibly hard to get it out of him.  But when two human beings meet as humans. Not as a category of a specific group, all ideologies seem to fall. You cant possibly sustain an occupation of normal human beings. So we play with people’s minds. Some are convinced that all of those on the other side of the wall are dangerous. Others think is just a portion. And even  the nicest feel that the existence of one terrorist is enough to occupy a whole country…

It work both sides as well… and in many places of the world.

It is hard to be a bridge.

I ask Jaafar to text me once he is back to the West  Bank so that I know it went all fine.

A few hours later I get his message “Back to reality”

It hurts to be a bridge.. It hurts that the possibilities of encounter seem yet for all like a distant dream. It is hard to cross frontiers and internal borders. No matter who you are. Yet, I still think we must always do it. We must all embrace the pain. With it comes a silent more complex understanding. An everlasting faith that  eventually, all walls fall down…

Love,

me

Jerusalem, different perspectives

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“What did you do when you were in the army?”

Elick smiles and says Amit was an Engineer. Amit is terrified.

“I worked as an engineer because there is no theoretical part to the army! Everything is applied.. but I was NEVER an engineer. I worked temporarily as one”

He says it with disgust. I laugh. I am in Jerusalem. I stay with Elick who I traveled Kashmir and Mc Leod in India with. Elick, for those who remember, had been raised in a Yeshiva in a very religious family. He had quit religion through literature to study physics, and in physics he discovered math.

I stay with Elick and his girlfriend Tali now. Tali has her last exams while I am there. She who also comes from a family of mathematicians. She however, grew up in the  secular world in Haifa a city where Palestinians and Jews live together.

Amit is apparently a mathematics genius. Someone who does not sleep, and thinks the whole time of geometry. He loves mathematics to the point that anything else seems to not exist for him. He finds physicists are liars as they are always making approximation about everything. He makes jokes about physicists. So calling him an engineer was nothing short of an offense.

He despises applied use of mathematics, he cares about the abstractions.

I laugh. Listening to this highly educated men talking about abstractions of abstractions. I left the West Bank and all my partial fasting ( I drank water) to cross Jerusalem in a festival day. Mahane yehuda, the main market is packed with artists … and I went from hearing the love stories and practical reality of the occupied territories to now listen to music and have very philosophical conversations which I can barely grasps about religion and math.

How can I do it? Sometimes I wonder. What kind of cognitive dissonance do I need to be able to cross the wall and have everything change so much in minutes?. How is it that now I go out with Elicks ex-religious friends to the Muslim quarter when the fasting has been broken to see it. They ask me about the west bank, How is it that I ended up knowing more about human lives there in few months then they have in all of their lives? I am surrounded by the ex-religious friends of Elick. Some are mathematicians, others doctors, and one, in special was a settler.

I never met a settler before. And now I went out with one. A settler who lived in a Palestinian neighborhood in the Westbank. He takes me there to see it. He speaks fluently Arabic. He is a beautiful man. He has never believed. He can’t explain me very well how is it that he quit the Yeshiva. He seems to have no politicalopinions though he is a journalist and studies the middle east.

He has Palestinian friends, though when he explains to me about these relationships he can see the details that my left wing friends in Israel can’t. He explains me the intricacies of the languages. I am confused. I never thought I d be in the Occupied Territories with a settler… and now I swim in the springs among religious Jews, while I am accompained by an ex-religious who was raised in the occupied territories..not exactly a settlement, but a Palestinian neighbourhood where there are only 4 Jewish families living.

I dont know what to think about it. It is definitively a first.

I ask him about it. And I am not sure I can reproduce what he told me. He lived in an area where Jews had always lived. during the 48 war jews had no water and were saved by these Palestinians who brought water for them to survive. He says he grew up knowing that. That he was taught they had to respect the Palestinians because they had saved them. I listen without knowing what to think. I don’t even know very well what the word “respect” here means. He talks of a Palestinian  girl he would marry if it would not mean to loose both all of his family and for her to loose all of hers. We listen to the Lebanese band Mashrou Leila. A highly politicized Lebanese band and he can sing all the lyrics in Arabic while it plays. He learned about them through the Palestinian friend. I, as well, heard them for the first time,  when I first arrived in the west bank a bit more than one year ago.

“Jules, you dont understand. These hollywood stories cannot happen here!”

I hear. I  pay attention to his linguistic explanations. I am confused. I ask him about how did his very religious family react to him quitting the Yeshiva. They never talk about it. It is not the first time I am with the ex-religious and I am always intrigued by them.

I am in fact always so intrigued about the people who quit their lives, all that was familiar. Elik though nonreligious finds his friends who went to the Yeshiva more inteligent than his mathematician secular friends. My secular friends who do not know the ex-religious have despise to  the yeshiva people. It all goes back to an economical ( and ideological?) situation. And again I cant do justice to explain this properly here. It suffixes to say that through the years the right and the left have conceded more and more rights to the religious to get their political support.

They are now in a situation where the religious population grows exponentially. They pay less taxes, are paid by the state once they have more than 4 children ( which most of them do). Their Yeshivas is  fully financed. They usually ( but not all) are very right wing and were exempted from going to the army. Now, as the law has expired there is lots of discussion on the matter. Whether it is fair or not for the religious to not go to the army. What modifications would the IDF ( Israeli defense Force) have to do to accommodate for young religious  boys who already are married with lots of children and are not supposed to have contact with women. And of course, this whole discourse on “fairness” also rises the question whether Palestinian Citizens of Israel ( also know as as Arab Israelis- who are the Palestinians who are citizens in Israel and  not leaving in the occupied territories) should not be required as well. This is a moot discussion of course. They do not want the the Palestinians Citizens of Israel in the IDF but those are the kinds of debates that are happening here right now.

I dont know what to think. As the improbable bridge that I have become I learn from all sides…challenging always my certainties. I end up as the bridge of a  Facebook conversation between my friend from Nablus Ihab and my Jewish Israeli friend Michal in Tel Aviv. She is curious to know what they think, She wished she could also visit Nablus and meet them. He thinks she can. According to the law she can’t. He understands her fear to come as an Israeli. Though he wished she could just come speaking English. It is sad to be that bridge.

I also meet an UN manager here. He is cool. He came from South Sudan. He loves the life in Jerusalem. He also lived before in Togo. He is from Belgium and thought he seems to be a problem solver I feel he does not really understand anything about the middle east. He is kind. He wants to help the project. But the coldness and the mechanic way he looks at things both shock me and surprise me.

Who knows…maybe it is what they need in the middle east.. to be more practical… more clear….but at the same time, this idea alone, seems soooooooo foreign here…