A railway station evening in the Andes revisits me

Sept 14, 2012. On a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt on our way to South Africa…  Why do I feel so inspired and so elated when I travel? In trying to fall asleep, I feel a sudden urge to write about Ollantaytambo. A stone, water and sun place, high in the Urubamba Valley, a starting point of Inca Trail, a mighty tale of glories past, this place that lies not only high in Andes, but deeper in my heart.

Why is it when I travel that I feel so different? So alive? All of a sudden my  entire being becomes a sponge. My eyes, my ears, my nostrils, my lips and taste  buds, my skin and everything inside… My brain and stream of being become  basic elements of absorption.

I love the process of absorption. Yet what I find more rewarding is this sudden  impulse, this sudden reliving of a moment past, this rich encounter  with time and emotion, with studded moments of personal life that make up the  sum of being. Don’t they say we are the sum of our relationships and our  experiences? I love the moment when one such particle of past springs forth and  claims its right to attention and reverie, out of the space and time filled sphere of vibrancy and dullness that is life.

Tonight Ollantaytambo claims the spot and nudges  at the muses and at my heart. It comes back in all its suddenness, its remoteness, its timelessness, and love. Ollantaytambo is a place, a spot in universe, a little railway village deep in the  Andes, but all the same is an eternal moment, is now, and past, and future all  together, is Inca fiber and universality, is heart and taste, and smell and  tear of feeling alive and eternal. And now is part of me.

I know my words cannot do justice to the moment and the feeling. Language is  but a poor conveyer of the feeling. If I was Mozart or
Tchaikovsky perhaps I would have had a better chance at telling you all this in  sound. If I was Leonardo or Michelangelo perhaps I would have had a better try  at capturing a glimpse of shiver in a piece of marble. But  I am not them, nor am I Einstein so I could most elegantly show you that we all are here and there, now and then and that my Ollantaytambo speck of universe lives in eternity.

Here is my humble recount in words of one of the most magical moments of  my life. Imagine this little village, tucked in one of the folds of Urubamba, shaded by stunning Andes, warmed by a Sun adored by its inhabitants. My place  of reverie is a train station, a dining room that opens to the platform, with  rustic rooms in the back, whitewashed two-story buildings, huge wooden terrace  and open windows to a garden of tropical bliss, with humming birds, and bees, and  streams of water. My memory is not cheating, it can  barely do it justice, I promise. Go and see….

Is evening,  we just arrived by car,  finally we said  goodbye to the wheel and ready to embark on our railroad leg of Andean
treading. I so much yearned to travel by train, so ready I was to leave behind  the comfort of four wheels and rail into unknown. Apart from the exquisite
beauty of the setting, the rich Inca imprint on everything in the village and  surrounding slopes, my first moment of deep emotion was the realization that
our hotel was in fact on the railway platform. Ah!!! How I loved the idea! We  had to go through iron gates on the platform to enter our hotel.
When I stepped in I felt in an instant that I know the place, deep down, somewhere in my most basic element of being. Almost like stepping into
grandmother’s little house in a remote village on the opposite corner of the Earth.

After a very warm and heartfelt greeting, when we step outside, in the interior  garden to walk to our room, I feel that my emotion and fullness in beauty is
tested to a new level. The garden is stunning, the flowers, the smells, the  sounds, the simplicity and truly rustic character of it… Ah… The place I
never knew I dreamt of….

My moment is built layer by layer, emotion by emotion, surprise by  surprise, all in an incredible concert of sight and sound and smell and memory.
Then comes the dinner. This unassuming hotel on a railway platform lost in the  Andes had somehow shifted something in my compass… My soul felt home and had  expanded amply that night. The dining room is small and unpretentious, one door  and windows open to the platform. From our table we can see the train coming  from Cusco, on its way to Macchu Picchu. We are going there tomorrow. But now,  I am all here, with every particle of  being absorbing sounds and smells, the view and the emotion. Four Inca-descendant cooks work skillets  in an open kitchen.  Ripe vegetables displayed on a  whitewashed ledge. How clean is everything! How beautiful the tomatoes and the  squash…

On the threshold of the door that opens up to the platform sat down an old  Qechua man, dressed beautifully in the bright colors of the Andes, he softly
starts to play a harp. Then he stats singing. Only later, after being lost  and found in his sound, do I realize he is blind. His voice connects me to the
root of his emotion, if only let yourself float on his thin air wave, he’ll take  you back to Inca times, his face transfixed in sound and condor flight, and sun
and moon, his fingers stroking gently the stings that have seen many seasons  and hold the countless stories of fight and might, and lights in dark-dawning  nights.

And tears are falling… My God! The train that stopped, travelers stepping on  the platform, looking around and carrying with them emotion, expectation,
weariness and dust, with heightened senses, so visible, so tangible… The harp  cords striking gently the air and pulling unseen strings of soul, the evening
falling calmly on earth, the smells, the colors, the wine, the sip, the toasted  corn, the candle on our table… I cannot help but cry from heart, with heart
in throat, in ears, in eyes, and in my skin down to my nails and hair ends. I  am alight; I am a flame of heart and time and love for being and of gratitude.
I fall in love again with my companion, my travel partner and my rock who is  the loyal witness of my love of life and of experience, who has become my
breath and light, who makes my journeys smooth and takes care of my feet and  worldly luggage when I am flying high on sounds of age-old blinding harps lost  in the endless colors and mystery of Andes.

My Salty Portugal

It has been a year since I have met Portugal. A secret love I have carried with me ever since… a place where I have felt that not only the people, but streets and sidewalks, buildings, crumbling churches and rooftops have a soul.  A place where the display of emotion is extreme and common place, where people are warm, the food exquisite in its honesty, and fado is just another way of inhaling and exhaling.

A place so rich in history one can get buried in ruins, and so poor in pretense, one can read through the veils, penetrating straight to the core. One simply needs to enter that state of mind.

A little country of vast culture, a place where I can happily get lost, crisscrossed from east to west and north to south, from the manicured hills of Douro Valley that the delicious sweet Port wine calls home, to the contrasts and conflicts of Porto; the rugged, mesmerizing Atlantic coast, to quaint little old towns on top of hills with age-old citadels and blooming vegetation. To unforgettable fragrant eucalyptus forests, and cork tree hills, to Lisbon and Sintra, the quintessential feminine faces of Portugal.

For me, the most impacting and impregnating of spaces and moments was Porto. A place with a tangible masculine personality….

Virile and rough, in a sailor shirt, bare breasted and sweaty, showing a tacky tattoo while throwing a cigarette butt on the street and spitting with gusto. That is my Porto in the light of the day. So rough and annoying, yet, I can’t escape its attraction.

At night Porto becomes a different story altogether. Warm, sophisticated, fedora hat and cologne, music and vine, it woos and grabs me, pursues me with unexpected moves, and I can’t help surrender to its charms… And so conflicted I am… because I vividly remember tacky tattoos underneath, but I see Porto is not even attempting to hide them. So assured and self-confident this place is in its crumbling appearance; Porto gets me at core, I will not even care about image or appearance.

First impression, second impression, getting into details, diving in, coming back up, looking down from a distance… whether right then and there, in its sweat and its heavy breathing, or looking back one year after, Porto is this man of many talents and surprises, of strong attitudes, resolute and unapologetic.

It is quite intimidating during the day and yet I fall for him at night, I surrender even though I’m not confident that I can trust it. What a paradox, because with Porto what you see is what you get.

When Porto smiles, he shows me missing teeth and I don’t not care; I simply fall in love with the gaps. There’s no pretense, no fake façade. Sleepy seagulls atop of crumbling roofs at midnight, or open kitchens under falling red-tiled rooftops at day, a cacophony of old riches and old ruin, of empire and despair, of stolen gold paid with the lost blood of ever-present generations, of sea and salt, of cod-fish and olives, of tramcars and sweet wine, of facades covered in stories told in exquisite azulejos – blue and white-painted tiles that I could spend a lifetime deciphering.

A place of poetry and street survival; seagulls and dogs, pigeons and cats fighting over the crumbs of the party that is a day in the life of Porto.

You cannot attempt to understand Portuguese soul without eating grilled sardines or baked cod drenched in Portuguese olive oil, without listening to a fadista from the depths of her sorrow while feeling the pores of your skin electrified and attuned to emotions  felt in the gut and pouring out through the eyes.  You will get better at knowing this place once you taste Portuguese salt and read poems and lines by Fernando Pessoa… You will get even deeper when you look at the hypnotic westward horizon from the strip of a land that Portuguese men construed as the margin of an ocean that they have  made home. And that is when you might understand Saudade – grey horizons swallowing men, taking with them the fragrance of round laughs in full family diners, taking with them at the bottom of the sea the meaning of fullness and simple contentment, leaving behind gilded cathedrals… tall but empty… the riches bearer and unforgiving ocean, whose salt is inexorably mixed with the tears of fadistas.

An unexpected union of being

This is a story from days of magic and lasting memories from a dream land that is America del Sur. Surprisingly, it is the day AFTER our Machu Picchu climb that becomes my first recollection committed to paper about our Peru trip. These have been days of incredible richness in image and color, in smell, sound, and emotion… a trip of personal discovery. So much to see, to hear, and to take in… there is so much to be felt, that it can easily become an overwhelming experience. After the HIGH of Machu Picchu one may be bound to feel depression the next day. No matter how great the hotel, how nice the staff, how tranquil and inviting the flower gardens and water streams, how still majestic the Urubamba Valley, one cannot help but feel a little underwhelmed, a little sad, a little lonely the next day… with Machu Picchu green transfixed on ones heart’s retinae.

In such a slow pace afternoon, after the high of Inca heights, we head out to visit the Maras Saline, a small attempt to bring back wonder and rescue the day. Maras is a town in the Sacred Valley, known for the salt evaporation ponds in use since Inca times. My lines below, however, won’t be about the beauty of the scenery, or the salt ponds, or the Incas. Not even about the Sacred Valley. These thoughts committed to memory and these feelings committed to heart are about humanity, empathy, and something of a mystery… As in most of our journeys, it is the human contact that resonate the deepest and the longest. The Maras Salinas, so majestic and impressive in themselves, will be forever shadowed by a little man that stole my heart in Urubamba. Truth is,  many encounters, things, and moments stole my heart in the Andes. Then again, my heart is too easily stolen. So, foremost, I have to write about my Maras shepherd.

Driving on a dirt road, on our way to the hotel in Yucay, back from the salines, while taking in all that wide-open eyes could  absorb of blessed beauty and tranquility, I notice at the edge of my view a small figure treading on the left side of the road, with a grazing flock of sheep and goats, looking as if he just stepped out of a bucolic painting of unknown memories.  We are driving at a very slow pace, he is walking as the sheep grazed, allowing ample time to contemplate the image, to let questions form, and to indulge in curiosity.

I see this silhouette in motion, becoming clearer and more colored with every passing second, up to the moment when the man gets close enough that I am able to decipher body language, interest. I feel an inner nudge for communication.

As we get close enough to him we stop the car. We roll the windows down and I look at him intently. He comes closer to the car and takes an equal interest in us.

We are on a road less traveled, in a region that does not promote car tourism at all. There is so much silence and peace around us, it makes me feel so disconnected from the rest of the world… just us, the sheep and goats, and vast expanses… I get out of the car and realize that I can see the horizon, or hint at it where separated by a mountain range, a puff of clouds, or by unexpected wheat fields at 3000 m altitude, in a 360 degree motion of wonder.

While keenly aware of  beauty all around, my focus is on this little man so curious, so colorful, so short, so different who comes out of his way to get a glimpse of us. I say Hello, Ola, Bon Dia… I sense a question on his face. I smile. He tentatively smiles back. I start asking him questions he obviously does not understand. He says something that I don’t understand. It is a very rough sound, perhaps the old Quechua language of the Incas.  He seems old. As with most people of the Andes we met on our trip, I cannot easily sense how old they are. Perhaps the sun they venerate so much, the wind, the altitude simply make them seem so. We are trying to communicate; I am smiling and he is almost smiling back fully. I signal him to come closer to me to take a picture. We go by the side of the road; we are taking pictures all the while I am speaking to him.

No need to explain how this encounter is etched on my heart. It feels so different and so special… Was it perhaps because how we communicated? Or the exquisite setting? Or the silence and tranquility? We had no language shared but something very deep and meaningful was shared in that moment.

I am sure that the sense of awe, curiosity and intent I was reading on his face was a mirror of my sense of awe, curiosity and intent. I felt a deep sense of empathy. All of a sudden I wanted to know everything about this unique and unusual human being. Where is he coming from? What language does he speak? Who are his ancestors? Why is he so short? Where does he sleep tonight? Does he love anybody? Is he loved?

So unforgettable the sense of curiosity and interest on his face… We communicated in smiles. Absorbed in the moment, I felt transported into a glimpse of meaning, a different sort of awareness. I started to blow kisses at him. By the time the car started moving I kept gesturing and he started gesturing back: we were blowing kisses at each other. He was imitating me, blowing kisses back.  I was burning to be in his mind, to see, to hear, to understand what was he thinking. Something however, I knew. I felt how he was feeling.  And that is an incredibly special kind of knowing.

So many questions… so many gaps to fill…

This little man is still a mystery; I’ll never know the answers to these questions. Yet, I felt I knew him. We share an origin somewhere. We have inhaled the same air. We have shared an intimate space in a vast surrounding; we were two adjoined dots on the canvas of an exquisite landscape for an instant. Together we’ve shared with sheep and goats, with mountains, clouds, and fields of wheat, one landscape of existence. This little man and I… we shared an ever-present moment in our landscape of being. I deeply felt that we have communed.

Moroccan cacophony

Finally in front of a blank piece of paper, conjuring up the muses to help me do justice to the tumult of feelings and emotions experienced in our December trip in what was my first contact with North Africa.

My Moroccan experience was one of people and humanity. Not discounting in any sense the surprising verdant beauty of the North part of the country, the soft and inviting green, rolling hills crossed on our way from Casablanca to Rabat and Fez, the stunning desolation of the Middle Atlas mountains, or the dramatic peaks, glittering in sun and snow, of the High Atlas mountains on our way down South to the gates of Sahara. Not to take anything away from the majesty of ancient cedars, or the silence and reverence of the palm oases, springing up wherever a trickle of water makes its way in the landscape. And of course, not to forget the exquisite architecture, wood carving, mosaic works of art that are in fact objects of use in daily life, the stone and marble fountains, and fascinating doors. Ah, the doors…

But this, to me, is first a story of a people; a glimpse into humanity and intimation of a style of life, bare needs, and feelings, and emotions worn on djellaba sleeves. Human contact on a personal level is unavoidable… walking the narrow streets of Medinas, life taking place under your eyes hits you at every corner. Here is the barber shop and two customers inside, grooming openly, almost on the sidewalk. Next is the baker, feeding the fire of an underground pit, displaying on his window little round loaves of bread so inviting. And then you see a cluster of women wearing baking dishes or personal grooming essentials and you know you’re close to a hammam, unmistakably next to a bakery whose fires also feed the hot water of the baths. Few more steps and you run into the man carrying the Moroccan tea, served everywhere, at every time of day… small silver tray, beautiful silver teapot, tea glasses filled with fresh mint and blocks of sugar awaiting the destination and the ritual of tea pouring (pulling), to aerate this much revered refreshment.

After another corner, here is the fountain, an ancient work of art, with carvings and mosaics, where women fill their buckets and containers for daily needs, seemingly oblivious of the beauty, and history, and holiness of the fountain. Yet, the reverence to water in this country is palpable.
And boys play football everywhere… If they are not harassing you, the traveler, to sell you something, show you the way, or take you somewhere for a change, then they play football… in every narrow alley, filled with cats, they run in ragged clothes after a ragged ball, shouting in joy, blissfully unaware of their poverty and yet their richness.

This is the trip where I have most interacted with people on a very personal level: from the woman who allowed me inside the second biggest mosque in the world, Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, to our host in Fez, kind and gentle Amal, a middle-age woman, manager of the beautiful riad we stayed at, who almost told us the story of her life in our first evening… to our teenage guide in Fez. And then… the Berbers of the South; Youssef, the owner of the Kasbah we stayed at in Merzouga, a candid and open-minded gentleman with whom we had a meaningful, long conversation on life and values, touching taboo subjects such as religion and politics. I will never forget my hour in the desert with two nomad women, Hadija the teenage girl and her mother; we visited with them, had tea and conversation, our guide Ismail helping with translation. I will come back, with or without the muses, to write about the desert. The tour we took in the morning, to see the colors of the day, to glimpse the life on the outskirts of Sahara, the lot of the nomad Berber tribes, the sub-Saharan African tribes’ settlements with their music and dance… And unforgettable and forever transforming is the time spent sipping tea and talking with Hadija and her mother, witnessing their bare existence and embracing their warm welcome and humanity… that morning in a forgotten corner of the world moved me to tears and deeply humbled me.

And then came the evening… this is my one story of the 1001 Arabian nights… We left the Kasbah, this ‘fortress-oasis in the desert’ in the afternoon, on camel ride, to spend the night in a traditional Berber tent. The colors of the dunes, the sky, the shadows on the sand, the soft pace of the hour, experiencing this incredible union with our two camels and our guide Hassan… And then, the night… the fire, the drums, the stars… ahh… the infinitude of stars, so far, so close… the sky was nothing I have seen before, alight and different from the sky at home, and all the other places on Earth I have raised my eyes from… This desert sky at night felt like another home, perhaps an ancient home, newly recovered yet always present within, perhaps the home of undreamt dreams. It felt like I could almost catch a star and dream the Dream with open eyes…

The infinite value of simplicity…

Raw palimpsest

It dawned on me on a lonely January night, while counting misty, silent city lights out of a hotel room window…

That one’s heart is but a palimpsest…

That we have been given one vellum… and that the lines some strive to write are infinite…

That there is this constant scraping of old lines… to make room on a smooth surface for new ones…

 But is that a smooth surface?

This constant chafing, this constant striving at putting away signs of the past…. Some of them so deeply stamped on this, the finest and most precious surface… which is not surface but all there is for one to care, and nourish, and protect…

 
The beauty of a palimpsest is that in time, one would be able to glimpse age old lines… when one was young, naïve, and innocent… impressed in memory and heart for its duration… and lines age new, if one keeps writing with the humbleness, and awe, and with devotion for what is one’s given precious vellum…

Palimpsest
In winter’s evening solitude
Tonight, I put away a piece of past
And I discover that one’s heart
Becomes a living palimpsest…

How fitting that I see this
Under the snowy glow of silent hours,
With shreds of time and hazy city lights
From my hotel room in weary Bucharest
January 10, 2011

Becoming a master jeweler of one’s heart

Ultimately one is fully responsible for what one becomes… For watching out that life experiences won’t result in one’s increasing sharper edges but rather in allowing one’s brightness to shine trough more beautifully…

Allow

Allow your hands to teach you skill,
Allow your ears to teach you song,
Allow your eyes to teach you unnamed colors,
Allow your heart to teach you poetry.

Allow yourself tireless journeys
in searching for your soul and your creation
Welcome the blessed teachers of this world
that point out Beauty in its countless ways.

While you are gazing upward,
While listening to outer wonders,
You may discover that your depth is endless
And you may glimpse your own amazing shores…

Imagine the potential of your arms to be
Untiring wings of hummingbirds
That feed on nectars of existence,
Creating flowers of the future springs…

The silver-lining of transatlantic jetlag

East of Atlantic – burning midnight oil, when body asks for sleep and mind is spacey… some other you awakens and in the silent hour of the still – unexpected connections happen… so you feel wiser than you think you are… as if your senex is poking you from depths…

West of Atlantic – bright eyed and wide awake before the night-lights switch off, rested and renewed, you go outside and witness a new mood of time – ethereal innocence of the world in unsuspecting backyard birds enacting morning rituals of feather preening and early sun basking… a new you thinks is seeing world for the first time, your puer coming out to play…