Archive for the ‘on pilgrimage’ Category

« Older Entries

killer whales surfacing from the subconcious

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

That was the caption of my dream two nights ago.

Yesterday, encouraged by my partner, some of the bigger ideas of my subconscious, like in my dream, began to surface.

I don’t know, yet, what they mean. Even in my dream, it was too bright. And I shielded my vision with my hand, gifted only with a glimpse. A silhouette. Of something big.

But this morning I woke up early, ventured into the tiny, closed-off,  one-windowed room in the garage, and scouted out the direction of the sun and the corners of a room, that might better womb some creative writing and whim chasing.

This week I captioned some images and wrote a few paragraphs for the purpose of entry into a photography contest. You’ve seen these images before. But not the captions….

****************************

India, Nepal, Tibet: borders and names, created and defined, only by the intruders that needed them.

Hindu. Himalayan. Buddhism. Hindustani; dimensionless cultures boxed into, and under, the convenient labels of Religions & Regions; paragraph entries into encyclopedias that finally fit into the narrow minds of the Western explores that claimed their discoveries. Names, filtered through the deaf ears of ego, clumsily wearing the clothes of the Western alphabet, pronounced and spelled, to this day, incorrectly.

Masala means, “mixture of spices.”  Curry is an British-invented word for a pre- mixed and packaged power of the spices the invader could never quite sort the individual ingredients out of, or back into. Correctly, anyway. Those three mystery ingredients are: Coriander, Cumin, Tumeric.

India, Nepal, Tibet.

Can we let it simply be.

A way of life.

And a masala of people?

****************************

As I was asking for permission from a family to photograph some young children playing within a bicycle school bus, these three boys pulled me and my camera deeper into the tent town (located near the Ganga river in Varanasi, U.P.) Inside this concrete section, they proudly presented their community gym; a tiny room full of heavy weights and furious fans to combat the equally furious Indian heat. The posters of Hindu gods, flexing their multiple sets of arms, alongside American WWF champs in strikingly similar costume, charmed me to no end. I returned later and handed out the photos. The next day, as a cycle school bus whipped around a corner, a known smile and muscled arm waved me onto the bus for a complimentary ride home. It was the highlight of my week.

********************************

Varanasi’s Ghat’s, or steps of stairs leading into the sacred Ganga-ji (often mispronounced, “Ganges”) is the one place in India where I can begin to comprehend the number 1.1 billion (the population of the country). However what astonishes me most about the staggering turn out to these regular river festivals, is the amazing fluidity and organization of what, in any other country or culture, would constitute utter chaos.

*******************************

Westerns love to say, “thank you”; To which I often get the response, in South Asia, “but why? It is, of course, my duty.” In the shadows of the pictured homestay, I finally stepped out of my American shoes, and leaned that “content”; is hardly a bad, but blessed word. That to do, “one’s duty” is an honor, that needs no added expression of worth or appreciation outside of its simple doing. In the Dolpa of rural Nepal, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, at 15,500 feet, I found simple crops, simple structures, simple landscape, simple doing, simple being and simple understanding of what comprises simple beauty. And learned that just as essential as exploring, is breaking it down.

Image: Young Tibetan woman in the Dolpa of rural Nepal, grinding barley (the staple food) grown in the fields outside the clay house. Barley powder is often eaten dry. When sitting down to lunch in the fields, each person pulls our her own bag. Before taking a handful of the dry power to your mouth, however, it is custom that every person in the circle first eat a handful of your food. And so all bags are rotated, handfuls taken, a few playfully straying onto the faces of others, till your bag finally returns to your lap, before heading around the circle again.

******************************

Travel. Words. Images. Story.

In that order, I picked up the elements that have come to define my way of life, my personal culture if you will; or at least that which was left, as the common denominator, in the absence of any other society- or country-based.

Travel. Well that now, is too easy for me; my brier patch. Drop me off in Mumbai, but please not Manhattan. Let me homestay in a rural village where I know not a word of the language, but don’t make me navigate the foreign language of an extended family reunion. The path of the pilgrim graduates to elevated levels of challenge, and back home, congruently. No one promised it would be the same. Or that I would. It took me 7 years of of movement to teach me the profound beauty in the words “compromise” and “contentment,” which are only found in stillness.

Words. I’ve promised myself that I will write a book by the age of 52, the age of enlightenment by the Mayan calendar; the only age at which you are finally allowed to teach and speak as if you actually know something. In the meantime, I promise to practice. To practice stringing words together in ways that glimmer at truth. To compose sentences with notes of harmony. To pick up my pen as would an oil painter his brush. Thank god I am far from 52. For I have, only, so much more practicing to do.

Images. A later addition to my backpack, as evidenced by my work. I have something. But I need help. I’ve learned to photograph purely by experiential education. By trial and error. By tried and trusted intuition. By a few moments of bravery. But I have lost all my greatest shots. I don’t shoot a face unless I know his or her first name. I am afraid. I am afraid to shoot the shot without the story. Yes. To some degree this helps my angle. But I think by many degrees it also hides it. By my nature as a writer, I am an introvert. I hate hearing my voice. To express myself, I listen, then contemplate, compose and create a reflection of that which I truly feel is not adequate for the spoken word. Pictures, for me, are poetry. But in neither subject have I ever had any training. None. Blindly I both babble and search through my images for something that speaks better than I do. I know I’ve got it in me somewhere, warming, nesting, waiting for the necessary tension to build up, and crack.

Story. Oh story. And subject of the sentence that is my life mission statement. Even if my pictures are poor, I bet you can still feel it; my connection to, and profound love for, the story of my subject. The Buddhists have it right on Compassion; which, for me, is nothing less that the spark of recognition of you in me, me in you. Story is that link; the mirror that holds up the reflection. The more stories that can been narrated and seen through the first person, the more lifetimes we can live within this one, and the more momentum our species will have towards its highest evolution.

If I am one for whom travel is easy, connecting is fluid, stories feel safe to unravel, and compositions come together, well then I have found my “vocation,” where the term is defined (by Frederick Buechner) as, “the place where your great gladness and the world’s needs meet.” It only took me 7 or 8 years to gather the ingredients. Now, how to put them together….

Posted in divine chaos, on pilgrimage, photographic journeys | 4 Comments »

an orange american dot in a sky of tibetan clouds

Friday, April 24th, 2009

How can almost a year have flown while my words still stumble?

It’s a messy thing. Catching the processing of experiences down to something real, that happened, while at the same catching experience up to something, well, describable.

I hold the photo in my hand and wonder, without it, what evidence would I have?

Oh yes! A journal. Let me see here. Let’s see if this brings anything back…

In black pen I’ve squared a box that says, “18th,” supposing, at the time and wrongly, that at the very least, of this trip, I’d remember the month. Ha!

Anyway. There are bullet points:

* We stop at a goat and sheep herder’s tent, fold our legs and huddle in. We break and share Chinese military cookies, cook noodles and accept or reject, endless cups of salty butter tea.

* When we walk again, we collide like a creek into a stream heading downriver, and become part of a train of young and colorful pilgrims. Mothers with babies in baskets. Men with red ribbons on ponies. Young boys, as always, self-entertaining with sticks and stones, as they stumble along behind.

*One boy watches me carefully. I’ve fallen behind my group and I can see he’s concerned with how I’ll cross the river on my own. In a sagging, leather-belted and weathered jacket lined with animal fur, with a dangling earring of turquoise and coral, he approaches me. With childlike disregard for our obvious difference, he speaks fast and fluently in Tibetan, never doubting that I might not return the same. When I only smile in response, his world, for the first time, widens to contain more than one language. Finally, he points to my pony crew and motions for me to follow him over a carefully chosen course of river stones.


* We pop up our tiny tent. An orange American dot in a sky of Tibetan clouds.

* Children play. Adolescents flirt. Some are fighting. Some are fleeing. All in what I gather to be a rare event of permission to tumble, unsupervised, with each other. There’s a lot a grooming going on.

* We make soup on a propane burner underneath an audiences’ hushed and cross-cultural murmur of, “magic.”

* We make tea, and in answer to the pointing fingers, we dip a spoon in honey and drip a slow drool across a dozen fingers. Eyes and smiles light up to the universal language of sugar.

* I make the mistake of sharing my sweet biscuit with a small one, and as a rumor spreads of handouts, we slip underneath the zip of our tent. But it’s too late. The thumping of muddy boots ends at our door. A dozen tiny fingers and eyes start pulling at the corner of our tent. And even an arm or two manages to sneak in. Sangeetha freaks out. She yells for, “Gombu!” who is unusually talented at schooling unruly children. But he doesn’t hear or come. Instead a chorus from outside our tent picks up in the exact same tone of desperation, and in faux American accents, begins chanting…”Gombu! Gombu! Gombu!”


I try to lay down a game of Gin to secure parameters for our thoughts smaller that the walls of our tent. Thirty minutes later, we can still hear the new foreign word, in foreign intonations, being echoed off of Himalayan walls and returned with laughter….”Gombu! Gombu! Gombu!”

*The Gin score is: Kavita 546, Sangeetha 410

Posted in dolpa pilgrimage, on pilgrimage, photographic journeys | 4 Comments »

Pilgrimage of Poem & Music: Day 3, in the ring of the wind

Friday, October 31st, 2008

A shortage of ponies keeps us, with bags packed and stacked at the doorway, hesitantly stationed in the tiny trail-head town of Jomsom.

Today, Sangeetha and I follow our whim through the the alleys and to the corners of this little sand and stone town.

We also weave our way in and out of the veins that sustain this community; the food, trekking equipment and hiker miscellaneous stores touting the treats one more often wants than needs.

In a Tibetan antique shop that my curiosity, running out of corners to investigate, leads me into, I greet the two men in the entrance in Nepali.

“Oh?! You speak Nepali?” one asks with surprise.

“No. Some Hindi. Only a few words in Nepali,” I shyly correct.

He switches to English and inquires as to what I’m doing in the area. I explain that we’re trekking into the Dolpa, but are stuck for lack of ponies. When he asks for what purpose are the ponies, I explain that we decided that if we’re going into such an off-the-map area, we might as well bring needed goods; in this case, some 200 pairs of shoes and socks. I then turn the question back to him, “and what do you do here?”

To this he states, “Well I don’t live here. I’m just travelling through as well. I build schools and plant trees in Mustang.”

Mustang is an equally remote corner of Nepal and I reply, “Oh? You’re doing good work!”

He squints an eye and says, “but you don’t actually know that, do you….”

And I wink back, “No I don’t. But doesn’t my trusted enthusiasm make you feel more inclined to do good work, even if you’re not already?”

He laughs and claps his hand on the table, “You’re right! That’s the right kind of optimism!”

He then spies the pendant around my neck that I had silversmithed in India. As he quickly scans the Devanagari script, he poses to me, “Parvat, huh? And where is Shiva?”

While most people immediately read and interpret the scripted word to mean that which sits across from it in the dictionary, “mountain,” I have not missed his reference to the Goddess Parvati and her relationship to her consort, Lord Shiva.

I answer, “Shiva’s at home.”

To this we both laugh out loud together.  I then leave the store, as one should all good jokes, in the linger of laughing.


The Hindu Lord Ganesha, remover of obstacles and god of all good beginnings.


There is an appropriately dusty and crooked sign at the entrance of Jomsom that identifies itself, proudly, as being the capital of a windy valley. And as evidence of this claim pushes me around on the street, I muse to myself just how fitting this trailhead town trait is….

How many times have I heard a noise, turned around, and found a whiplash of footsteps haunting my own. This quick of the eye, evidenced only by the tail of a shadow ducking behind door or bush, makes my heart stutter with the question, what exactly is on my heels? Is it a guardian spirit? Or just the over-excited realizations of my immediate future rushing ahead to catch up to me? Is it deja vu running up to the door of my reality, knocking and fleeing, leaving only its ominous giggle? Questions unanswered, I conclude only that the wind is powerful. It seems to sweep our skin of any secreting soul, assuring the only state in which we are allowed to pursue this quest: naked. If uncomfortable, it still seems only right that we go through this purification ritual before our pilgrimage; it’s a gentle reminder that for all the stores touted “necessities,” and supplies with which we might stuff our sacks, nothing we can carry will protect us more against the forces of nature so much us our naked faith and trust. Yet this wind, as much as it is kind and cleansing, it is equally brave and daring. And at the same time as it purifies and prepares us, it bullies us around. Shoving our shoulders back and shouting, “Are you really tough enough? Are you?” Luckily, in our, perhaps naive, joy, all we can do is nervously laugh. And this good humor dismantles the push in the Wind’s shove as it does the power of all bullies. So we take our beating in the ring of the Wind, accepting that this practice, of cleansing, of submitting, of toughening, of trust and of good humor, will all, in the Dolpa, serve us well.


Tags: , , ,
Posted in dolpa pilgrimage, nepal, on pilgrimage | No Comments »

re-defining home

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

(The following question was posed to me by the editor of TravelBlogs.com)

What does home mean to you after traveling for so long?

When I first left the country, I was an angry girl; ashamed of my country, annoyed with American tradition & culture, disregarding of my family history, disappointed with my education, and I was no longer on speaking terms with religion.

It was the story of the young shepherd, Santiago, in The Alchemist that filled my spirit with an insatiable fire to move, and specifically to buy my first open-ended ticket to what would eventually accumulate into seven years of adventures abroad. But I still vividly remember the moment when I closed that little book and said, with noted disappointment, to myself, “Wait. The boy ends up where he began?” It was foreshadowing on my life that I was just barely smart enough to note with a squinted and suspicious eye.

Of course, I ignored the winking omen. And picked up the challenge of the chase. Home? I don’t need one. House? On my back. Family? They can live without me. Country? Never belonged there. Religion? I’ve got big skies and starry nights to answer those questions now.

Over time, my notion of home as an outward place harboring social detest, devolved into something much softer and closer. For somewhere along the path, I picked up meditating. And I remember, for a few years, telling people that “home” was that warm little nook in which I centered myself every morning, with my eyes closed, about ten minutes deep into sitting.

But this version of home is lonely. And, as every long term traveler eventually learns, the charms of a transient life are, mockingly, transient. I began to feel myself scrapping; the surfaces of cities, the shallowness of temporary friends, the stereotypes of a culture, the Lonely Planet highlights of a country. Feeling my travels weighted too heavily on the side of quantity, I added a few stones to the quality side, by slowing down my itinerary and stationing myself in small communities for 3-6 months at a time, usually working with this or that NGO with the goal of fostering the connection between local and international circles. In this way, I did finally learn full names, foreign languages, local bus routes, and the best street food stand in town. But still, I found myself in the strange position of never asking a person his or her name before finding an above-par answer to the question, “How long will you be staying?”

And that is perhaps when the big “C” word entered my mind and vocabulary. I decided that I did not care WHERE in the world I lived, so long as I was surrounded by people with whom I shared like values, trust, mission, curiosity and intentions; Community. One in which I could foster my new understanding of the concepts of interconnectedness and interdependence. A place and people in whom I could invest and connect. For just as I, in my perpetual pilgrimage had learned that my travels were less about the goal than the journey. SO had I learned that my relationships were less about the people, than my interactions with them. And I needed a circle. Of brothers and sisters and parents and lovers and extended family and community with whom I could exchange: trust, teachings, experience, dependence, beliefs, challenges, support and, of course, love.

But before I continue, I must also include the most noble, impacting, profound and beautiful lesson that my travels have BEATEN into me – and that is of Humility. The thought of the arrogance and ignorance with which I set upon my world “stomp,” today, changes my cheeks to shades of shame. That I left my country on the spit and snarl of these two charges, just emphasizes the depth of my personal projection. Such self-righteousness we assume in the task and name of seeking change! The world IS change; it’s the predominant characteristic of nature and the Earth and nothing but comical to presume that we need seek it out. We human beings, both individually and cumulatively, will constantly be presented with the challenges and opportunities to evolve to our higher selves regardless of the continent upon which we happen to find ourselves born or standing. I need not cross the world on a jet engine to either solve the puzzles of the planet or recognize the mystery of life. But perhaps, like Santiago, we just have to make the physical journey to come to that same, mocking-with-good-humor-at-our-humbling-expense, conclusion.

A few months ago, I drank yak butter tea in an underground stone house at 15,000 feet, on a shelf of the Tibetan plateau. And as I watched the children playing with puppies, and the women chatting happily over the meal cooking on the fire, and the father spinning yak wool while checking in with the teenagers coming in from the fields, I realized that every community is precious, none more or less than another. Be it a tiny village high in the Himalayas or the park of a busy urban city street, the challenges, lessons and connections are the same. We don’t need to cross borders, but only to venture into the unknown. For only by leaving all that we know, do we discover exactly who and where we already are. And there, sipping tea in one of the most remote corners on the world, I concluded that the joy of travel, is not where it takes us, but the new awareness of where and who we already are. Very little does it actually matter where we go and, thus, where we began is the only place in the world in which we can end.

In the end of The Alchemist, Santiago returns to the sheep, fields, trees and family of his upbringing with a smile. Santiago’s community did not change. But his awareness and appreciation of his interwoven role within it, did. Home, to me, is defined as the circle of people and places in which we choose to foster kindness and love. It’s a community: of friends, teachers, lovers, mentors, family, students and every messenger met along the path. Home is the web of our interconnectedness. And once we realize the degree to which we are interdependent, the rest, I believe becomes irrelevant. Home is left, and returned to, as being nothing more than a new awareness of what’s been there all along.


Tags: , , ,
Posted in on pilgrimage, on transitions & "home", q & a, travel philosophy | 24 Comments »

pilgrimage of poem & music; day 1 in the Dolpa: dilation

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

We wake and jostle our belongings together in haste; today, as we have long planned, we will begin our journey into the Dolpa.

Sacks stuffed, teeth brushed, packs on back, we descend the steep incline of wooden stairs and emerge on the lower deck of our guesthouse. Gombu, our “English speaking guide” is on the phone. He hangs up and sighs, starring at the phone like it might change its mind.

Finally, he lifts his head, but not his eyes, and carefully states,

“No porters. No ponies. Not cheap.”

Gombu speaks only in negatives; a style which tends to bump up roughly with our overly optimistic American angle on language. This is only one of the many communication challenges that we will encounter with our local guides; the first, and most glaring, being that Gombu does not understand English.

“But Gombu, we were told that there would certainly be ponies available. And that they would be cheap with your contacts. Well, we’re flexible. So how long do we have to wait? What are our options?”

To this, Gombu nods his head up and down and says, “Yes.”

When we furrow our brows in confusion, he furrows his.

Then he swings his head from left to right and says, “No.”

And the distinction between speaking and understanding English becomes clear.

Over the course of this adventure, we will come to adore Gombu with tender, constant and unconditional love. But his “yes” and “no” answers to our open ended questions will never stop testing our patience and compassion.

It’s our turn to sigh.

Sangeetha turns to me and says, “I’m convinced that everything that happens is good for us, even this.”

And I respond, “And that is why I chose to travel with you.”

We laugh and surrender ourselves to a situation in which we have no influence aside from attitude. We retreat to the roof deck where Sangeetha picks up her drawing pad and I my journal.

“Divots carved in the sandstone walls string together like the chunky coral strands that the Tibetan women tie around their necks. Lower teeth jut from caves, which, with squinted eyes, I am surprised to recognize as stupas: the Buddhist crosses of the Christian world; shaped monuments marking sacred sites. My eyes, adjusted and attuned to stupa spotting, suddenly spy dozens. But then, when my eyes relax, I realize that I’ve misidentified a natural pile of rocks for the sacred stupa shape. Confused, I realize my eyes are lost; confronted with that wall and question I’ve encountered in the midst of lucid dreaming: But which part of this is real? And which a symbol? And is this state, of un-focus, the intention? To blur the line between the sacred and profane; that one may become the other, not physically by shape shifting, but rather in the dilation of the witnessing eye? Is this exercise in the bardo, between the physical and metaphysical, an unnamed medium of every religion? A task in which we may further practice, aside from our nightly REM cross training, in preparation for the navigation our final traverse of life between lives? Is that the goal of all our sacred symbols? Well if the intention is confusion, then I am there. Pinching my understanding along with my leg.”

We put our pens down and wander into the streets on a mission. We have one map of our destination, but figure an additional pictorial perspective could do no harm. We weave our way through the street stores, but are consistently spit out of shops, short of our objective: “No map of Dolpa.” “Sorry. No map.” “We don’t have any.” “Of the Dolpa? No. Not that.”



Funny that the trail head for the Dolpa hasn’t a single print of its own mugshot. We’d note it as fair warning, if we weren’t so wrapped up in the cozy blanket of our own naivety. But at least we got out of that bed. The preceding day, as our bare-boned bus teetered over beckoning mountain cliff ledges, Sangeetha and I decided to define the word, “precarious.”

“likely to fall”

“dependent on chance”

“insecure positioning”

“teetering on trouble”

“bound for natural disaster”

“on the edge”

We take dibs on the things that we will grab should we plummet. She calls the seat in front of her. I call her. She’s envious of my window. I remind her of the things that could jut through it as we roll. She says that if we die, our disappearance might make a great movie. She claims Carrie Russel. I, Wynona Ryder.

And so, acutely aware of the precarious state of our lives on this pilgrimage, we are perhaps more accurately labeled stupid than naive.

And there is fear. Great fear, of which we speak little. Sometimes we poke a little fun and nervously laugh, but we’ve chosen each other for a serious reason; that in our moments of self-doubt and true fear, we may ride freely on the other person’s (presumed) faith and (assumed) sense of security. Afterall, isn’t that the most common function of couple-dom?

Ironically, or not, that night I have a lucid dream: In the commotion of typical non-sense, I turn and face a wind and hear myself say in my head, “I’m dreaming.” My perceptive centers itself. And I wake up. But into another dream. Where I can hear my voice but am not speaking. The voice I hear is story telling. It’s speaking of this very adventure in the Dolpa, but in the past tense. Talking in the future of a tale all but done. Then the voice becomes my own and I AM the story teller, speaking with confidence of events long experienced and gone. I wake up. This time, not into another dream, but into my twisted sheets. And when I awake, the taste of certainty is still so strong in my mouth, that I have to shuffle through a timeline of events to convince myself that I haven’t yet finished this trip.

And only then do I realize the severity of my unspoken fear.

That my subconscious felt it necessary to provide me this favorable omen means, indeed, a fear was brewing into a less-laughable and quite formidable threat. It’s as if a third person has joined us, in whose past tense story of our present tale and in the voice of timeless and all-knowing perspective, presents a faith upon which we feel confident placing our bets.

Sangeetha awakes. I tell her my dream. We confess the most formidable of fears. We laugh a little. And sigh more.

We will return. We’ll live to tell our story in the past tense. And to this faith, we suddenly cling.


Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in dolpa pilgrimage, nepal, on fear, on pilgrimage, on spirituality & religion | 2 Comments »

a new revolution ’round the sun

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

The Himalayas are a holy place.

For a moment, I forgot this. And remembered them only, as big mountains. But slowly crawling along the valleys and ridges of the Earth’s crust had the effect of a pumice stone on my soul. For 15 days I walked. And for 15 days I was scraped. Scraped of the thick residue of petty life details that had settled onto my body so sneakily that I had not realized the extent of the accumulation until I looked at the floor and saw the scaly pile of skin I had shed off.

And then I kept walking. For that is the nature of a pilgrimage: to walk, encounter, and keep walking.

I kept walking. And with layers undressed and pores unclogged, my skin, for the first time in a long time, breathed. And my pores, for the first time in a long time, wept. Big salty tears for all that had passed that I had not mourned. And for all that I love, that I had not appreciated.

And then, one day, many days deep into the range and peaks of mountains tops and thoughts, I kicked a rusted, fallen, horseshoe. I leaned over to pick it up and, at that same second, someone yelled and pointed a finger to the clouds. I looked up and two white wingspans, the length of my own arms, swept silently over my head. As their shadows passed over me, I fell in awe of the grace of those wings: requiring the will of not a single muscle, but hitchhiking a breeze and riding the wave of the wind; cutting through space and air utilizing (only) the power and momentum of the play between elements, earth and air.

Could I do the same?

Could I stop fighting gravity? Stop pulling up and pushing down? Stop submitting to pressure and exerting my strength on the immovable mountains of my life? Could I catch my own wave, with the bend of a wingtip, and ride the will and wind of the universe?

I stood on that cliff and looked out. And suddenly I saw.

I saw a thousand paths. I saw a thousand lives. I saw a thousand dreams. And I saw that they were all mine. My eyes watered and my heart wanted to burst in bliss.

“I’m staying in India,” I whispered to myself.

I turned to my friend walking with me and said louder, “I’m staying in India.”

He smiled.

I ran up the hill to the rest of my companions and shouted, “I’m staying in India!”

They hugged me and said, “Really? You’re not coming back with us? How long will you stay?”

With the confidence of the sun, I smiled and said, “No less than a year or two. With infinite options.”

Two weeks later, with the essential blessing of my loving boss, I have officially been granted my wings for a few revolutions around the sun in this beautiful country called India.

****

Friends and family, it’s confirmed: I’m here for all of 2008. It was as much a surprise to me as it might be for you. Only my soul knew. And it just took “some big mountains” for the secret to surface. A special “thank you” to Chris Yager for his precious support of my life path and permission and encouragement to pursue it.

The new India album is now open.

———————————————
*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in on pilgrimage | 4 Comments »

following a pilgrim songline

Friday, May 4th, 2007

So where were we? Ah, yes. Eluding the croissant-pusher.

In Australia, I once learned that the Aboriginals used to track their way through the vast bush by secret songlines; riddles, in song format, of which each individual in a tribe held a single verse, and (only) when strung in line and sung in harmony, were these verses laced together to present an intricate map and lay of the land.

Now really, have you ever heard of anything so beautiful?

So while I’m certain our voices were never as skillfully in synch, we pilgrims also sang a song; more to the tune of rumor and gossip, but none-the-less, still an elusive code passed from pilgrim to passing-pilgrim, that functioned as a compass directing us, as a tribe of nomads united by common destination, across the country.

Having no maps, it was only on the note of one of these pilgrim songlines that, upon finding myself standing in front of a large painted arrow that clearly directed all down the hill – I turned right and walked up and away instead.

Having spent many months of my teenage years grounded and confined to walls of my dungeon-ous room, there was definitely a satisfying sense of trouble giggling somewhere inside my stomach; I had no food, no idea of the distance to the next town, no idea where I’d stay, and hadn’t yet seen even a single marker confirming existence of the rumored deviant route I fancied myself to be following. Yet something born of the womb of these unknowns was wailing with simultaneous relief and exhilaration; something whose unexpected cry led me to wonder if freedom was perhaps less about granted permissions, and more about emptiness of expectations.

But I have diverged from my divergence; let me get back to getting off track. :)

Sustained by this strange energy source, I walked with suspicious speed. Occasionally a colored marker and matching number would, in another tribe’s songline language, tell me — in a code I couldn’t read — exactly where I was. But as I have learned to be the grammatical structure of many universal languages, it is often less about the letters than it is the pattern they follow. And so on this pattern I focused, in faith of the rule of the universe — that every path leads somewhere, and where ever that was, would be where I was supposed to be.

About a dozen kilometers later, and on top of the dozen I had already walked earlier, the satchel of my enthusiasm for wandering without sight of destination waned. Approaching the summit of a significant little hill, I — hungry, tired and feet arches threatening to collapse — hoped desperately for a glimpse of something habitable on the horizon.

Now I am quite convinced that Southern France’s Chemin de Saint Jacques de Compestelle’s horizons present the originals of that which inspired the artists to sketch such likenesses into fairy tale picture books. And at the top of this hill, it was exactly those pointy church steeples, looming watchtower tops, windy cobblestone streets and chunky white-block walls – that made the 7-year old in me want to reach my hand out and touch the page.
In my awe, it took me a minute – before I noticed that what really made the colors of this picture pop with vividness – was the darkly shaded, indigo blue, of the heavy looking clouds laying low in the sky, directly behind the image.

The sky was threatening to cry at any moment and I knew that if I didn’t pick up my pace significantly, I would soon be soaked in one of its more infamous expressions of emotion. A strong wind swept my way from the picture book page I faced, and with one huge ominous teardrop of water left splattered on my forearm, added the dot to the exclamation point following its clear warning and command.

(sorry! super busy! to be continued!)

———————————————
*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in Le Chemin de Saint Jacques, on pilgrimage, on transitions & "home" | No Comments »

la petite fille

Sunday, September 24th, 2006

I try to hunch into the longer shadows cast by the spotlight. Then I try turning around and searching for some speaker or spectacle that might give me more shade. I quickly realize that all my efforts to remain anonymous are about to abandon me when, my head still turned towards the back of the church, I feel two very eager hands clasp mine with a squeal of recognition. Knowing the inevitable is about to happen, I grab her hands back – “no, no, no, no” – I chant to to the receding tune of my last chance to keep the flag from rising. But I’m too late. One of her hands escapes my desperate grasp, flies into the air, waves my protests away as frantically as she petitions immediate attention;

“La petite fille! La petite fille!”

(“The little girl! The little girl!”)

As if Jesus himself had commanded it, the sea of shadows parts, a bright light blinds me and a microphone the size of a small animal is thrust under me, chest level.

The priest, as unfazed and natural under the eye of national television as he is under the adoring attention of his parishioners, smiles at me. There is a slight surppressed laugh under his grin, and as he knows both me and my story quite well (having found me homeless the day before and offered me a free and cozy room in the church’s youth center for the night), for the camera’s audience and curiosity only does he inquire, “And you pilgrim? Where do you come from?”

(I want to kiss his sweet feet for switching to English!)

Blinking, deer-like, under the camera’s headlights, I answer, “The United States.”

“And where are you walking to?”

“I’m walking to St. Jean Pied De Port.”

“Thank you.” But he relieves me of duty only temporarily because when I find him after mass as we had, earlier, agreed to meet, the cameras are still following him. And as I am his chosen lamb, he waves me over and says, “We’ll eat together, yes, but first, the camera will film you getting your first stamp in your pilgrim’s passport.”

There is little room for negotiating with a priest and so as I am ushered into a backroom, the bright light and furry microphone again attach themselves to me. The news anchor turns on his English as well; “Why do you walk?”

Now I am an introvert, and I write because I hate to talk, especially to the population of France, but I give it a terrible go: “The Camino, for me, is a metaphor for life. It sounds simple, but I walk – because I love to walk.”

This is a very poor summary of the understanding that I consider each step on the path, a day in the life – and that walking is the ultimate practice of presence – not living for a beginning, ending or destination, but a surrender to the simple act of stepping; living.

Whatever. Cameras could care less.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

(Thank god for an easier question!)

“Are you afraid?”

With this question, my faith obliterates the bright light as I, overcome with such confidence that I almost laugh out loud, reply…

“No.”

Later, over coffee, bread, butter and jam, the priest and I realize from where our affinity stems:

After my confession that it has been a very long time since I have been to a mass, he says, “Neither had I spent much time in the church before I chose to become a priest. I travelled for five years around the world and then I walked the Chemin de Saint Jacques. At the end, I came to the inner realization that priesthood was my path.”

To this I question, “But it is exactly my travels that took my religion away! Not brought it to me! I’ve seen so many people, the world over, worship in so many ways, none less sacred than another. So how is it that this same route brought you to yours?”

He shrugs with a smile that hints he knows more, “Each pilgrim has her own path.”

For one second, looking at our matching paths prior, I am scared; What if the same thing happens to me!?

And then with a sigh of sarcastic relief, I laugh at the ignorance and petty discrimination of the Catholic church and say to myself, “I can’t! I’m a woman!”

Phew. ;)

The priest walks me back to the church – where a special staircase is literally RISEN from the floor – and a hidden entrance to the chemin opens the path to pilgrims. With two kisses (as is French custom)from the priest, I am thus blessed, and on my way.

I descend. And, thus, my pilgrimage begins….

———————————————
*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in Le Chemin de Saint Jacques, on pilgrimage, press & media, single/white/female, travel (uncategorized) | No Comments »

love, picasso, parades & pilgrimage

Saturday, September 16th, 2006

So for the record, I am now officially giving exact change, correctly ordering vegetarian food, and making it three or (sometimes!) even four sentences deep into conversations. It’s probably not particularly exciting for anyone else, but these are achievements I’m eager to lean over the cake and blow candles out over.

When I was about seven years old, my older brother and sister came up with most ingenious idea to rid themselves of their pestering younger siblings; they made a fake “treasure map” that plotted out the forest behind our house as well as the locations of a number of secret, buried surprises. I’m pretty sure that our subsequent absence was barely noticed (as the nature of discretely disappearing annoyances usually is) until the day, months and millions of holes later, that we actually DID find a buried box, and to my mother’s horror, and our dogs delight, unearthed the bones of a former pet.

The digging stopped that day, but not my fascination with maps. And so I still, perhaps out of habit, ripped one of Paris out of a guidebook and delicately taped it into my journal. But out-out-of-habit, I haven’t taken a single glance at it in my three-day wandering walking tour of Paris. And this is what I have learned; to “stumble upon” the Royal Palace, Bastille, Opera House, Louvre, Notre Dame, Pointe Neuf, Eiffel Tower, Arc De Triumphe, Red Light District and the thousand other bridges, cathedrals, parks, museums, fountains, playgrounds, markets, tunnels, walkways, etc., is to add miles of magic and majesty to the unearthing of a destination. Paris is a gold mine of mind-blowing beauty. One would be challenged to dig anywhere without hitting. And, in three days aimfully wandering, I have yet to find a dead cat. ;)

If Paris and Parisians have the reputation for being arrogant, it’s only because they are rightfully so. They have mastered the recipes for the most aesthetic courses of architecture, food, drink, pleasure and love. Ah love. Today alone I must have seen a thousand thoughtful kisses delicately distributed to the foreheads, fingers, cheeks, noses and, finally (because I think the French know everything is done better in five courses), lips. I love lovers. For this reason I snuck up on a few…

I couldn’t help it! I spent only one day with my camera before I quickly and miserably resigned myself to agreement with the Mayan philosophy that, “taking pictures steals a piece of the soul” and since poor Paris, with all its too-obvious beauty, has had every angle shot more times than Kate Moss, it has resultantly been left flatter than the super model herself. But Paris would never stand for such pity; so I’ll stop. My point being only that the above shot was the single vision I captured with any warmth (still, I added a few lackluster attempts to the new France Photo Album).

I snuck up on a few more lovers at the Picasso museum.

Museums and churches, by the way, are generally not my up my agenda alley, but back when my imagination was bigger than my body, a particular Picasso hung in my bedroom that inspired a wave of reoccurring nightmares. And as is my approach to all fears – even those under the thick dust of years passed – I investigate. What I found in Picasso, was a passionate man with a mission in accord with all great artists, teachers, prophets and musicians; “to recreate the complexity of reality.” The question, as I see it, that we’re all struggling to recreate with either note, curve or word is, “what is it, the single element, the essence, that defines?” For if we can isolate that element, we will find it to be a single letter of the language of the divine. Picasso, by my interpretation (only), put the hologram of objectivity on canvas. He saw the multidimensional, and summarized it in a few, but scattered the pieces as to provide us only clues to the enlightened view. A scavenger hunt of secrets are our scattered perspectives, at best clumsily pieced together, as Picasso, a humbled man, knew.

A more modern glimpse of Paris blew a whistle in my face, when the ground started shaking to the tune of a mid-morning Techno Parade. The partakers had quite obviously started at least a day (or two) earlier in clubs that gathered their crowds while I was busy sleeping off my jet lag…

If you didn’t notice the headbands, Mohawks, legwarmers, colored hair, piercings, hi-tops, legwarmers, mesh gloves, day glow, ribbed leather jackets, rattails, shredded shirts, and plastic jewelry; let me just officially report from the front line that Paris is leading the charge on bringin’ the 80’s back. And I wave a jelly sandal in FULL support of this movement.

Now I kiss Paris’s two cheeks adieu, as my pilgrimage calls.

I will not be carrying a computer, or have regular internet access for the next five weeks, so please be patient with responses to any emails. I will have a journal to which I’ve committed to jotting my every observation and revelation down; these I will share here, at each opportunity afforded. Along with the pictures to match.

Now would be a very good time for me to send out some gratitude and good karma to WorldNomads Travel Insurance, who, thanks to their continued sponsorship of my travels, have so kindly replaced the camera that I had stolen during my last adventures in Guatemala. Pictures and video over the next few months are compliments of a Cannon S2, of which I’ll eventually give a review. She’s shiny, new, full of optimism and has no idea what’s become of the nine digital cameras before her; shhhh…

I leave with a quote from the one book I’ve chosen to bring with me on this pilgrimage;

“Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” Joseph Campbell, Hero With a Thousands Faces

Thanks for embarking on this journey with me.

sol

———————————————
*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in gratitude, on love, on pilgrimage | No Comments »

singing

Saturday, September 2nd, 2006

10 days left before I leave for Paris to start my 5-week pilgrimage across France; Mr. Whitman walked into my life right on time, whistling a tune I, now, simply cannot get out of my head.


Song of the Open Road
by Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the
illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the
drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the
town, the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined
side! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d facades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to
yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces,
and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.

4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is
not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not–if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all
free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever
beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.

5
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me
I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not
astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all
authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the
spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied–he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love–if they are vacant of you, you
are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates,
ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight
expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always
drop fruit as I pass;)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by
and pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what
gives them to be free to mine?

8
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of
man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day
out of the roots of themsel
ves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet
continually out of itself.)

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the
love of young and old,
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude
and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling
we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must
not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted
to receive it but a little while.

10
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper
speeds by under full sail.

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage–the burial waits no longer.

Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,
No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)

11
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an
irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those
who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands
toward you.

12
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road–they are the swift and majestic men–they
are the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of
children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious
years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded
and well-grain’d manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights
they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you,
however long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without
labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one
particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant
villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and
the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter
them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave
them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments–all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners
before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of
the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best–toward something great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though
you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and
bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom,
everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the
breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

14
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well–it is provided in the essence of things that
from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm’d,
He going with
me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies,
desertions.

15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe–I have tried it–my own feet have tried it well–be not
detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the
shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the
court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourselp. will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

———————————————
*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in books & travel recommends, on pilgrimage | 4 Comments »

« Older Entries