segunda-feira, 6 de dezembro de 2010

Let go. Let God.


A while has gone since my visit to India (Sept. 18th to Oct. 2nd + 3 days in London).
With a clear conscience in my head that I haven't exactly met the goals I dared to publicize here beforehand, I prefer to report my travel for itself and not by comparison to expectations.
It's a good thing to let go of frameworks when they no longer fit your reality or your purposes; on the contrary, 'pre-concepts' may make you linger in a sense of frustration if you hang on to them for too long.

Well, that's probably one of the biggest learnings from my second visit to The Incredible:
Accept what comes.
Living the most out of an experience doesn't necessarily have to mean over-scheduling, running from one place to the other, meeting the most people or visiting the most places, finding a deep significance in everything, or even feeling that your deeper purpose is met and put into practice at every minute of the trip you planned with so much love and money.
Let go. Let God.
As long as you are open to the signs and available to act upon them, what comes is exactly what you need the most at that moment.

Well, there were many plans for my trip.
But my biggest mission was to be with my mentor. As my mentor needed me by her bed, reading to her or just giving medication, as I wanted to visit her in the hospital, as her needs and my need just for her presence were what mattered the most ; as she was operated while I was there ; my stay happened around her operation and recovery.

I did have the chance to travel, to do my yoga retreat, but I knew my priorities. I did have the chance to travel around town at least...
But two attempts were enough to realize that I am no longer the brave all-resisting Raquel from 1,5 year ago. I didn't bear the feeling of chaos, pollution, noise, complication, negotiation, cheating, being lost in slums, being stuck in traffic...
I didn't bear them psychologically or physically. I didn't bear nor did I want to bear. I literally rejected all the urban surroundings that I lived with for almost a year before.
Some aspects may have contributed for it: I was in an emotional state which was not as stable + My mind knew I was there temporarily, as a tourist, so it didn't find the need to actually adapt, to find excuses or bright sides to crude realities + I didn't have companions there, friends as before + I got there with a cold caught at the airplane that evolved into some sort of growing respiratory allergy.

What was my "Indian experience" this time then?
I read quite a lot, I rested more then ever, I slept whenever my body asked me, I was inspired by my Mentor even as She slept, I went deeper into Indian culture (as in a 2nd time I could ask questions after having stoped to think from afar), I lived life with them again, ever closer to my Indian family...
As my soul made me relax rather than go out, stay in rather then adventure, delay rather then try it out... As it insisted on having me just "be" and chill... After struggling, feeling like I was wasting such an expensive trip and thinking of the ridiculous of not visiting new places, living new experiences... After struggling, I finally let go: if that's what I was wanting, that's what was meant then.
And then I realized for how long I hadn't allowed myself that: that rest, that naturality, that spontaneous happening, that feeling of home...
And living that was more precious than having added more landscapes, meditations our colourful pictures to my portfolio.

That probably says it all: I TOOK NO PICTURES but of the home, to remember it. That's the house that I have ever felt more at home in.

Mr. U is no longer (here) and I missed him there. Sivnandan is a light in the house, the new-born.
I did find me a new family, and the feeling of blessing that both me and Mrs. U feel for having met and having each other overcomes any connection.

I feel like in a movie or a book when I say it, but it's a fact: I found my mentor, my inspiration in life. She inspires me even as she sleeps. Her simple presence fills me with joy and sense of priviledge and learning.

Having said that, of course I'll return. And again, "every now and then" won't do it. Hopefully in less than 2 years. What's money or 2 weeks of vacation to feel at home?*

* A post-scriptum is imperative though: after this "reality-check", I understood that while that corner of Palace Road is an island of "home-feeling", Bangalore and India are not. This time I reinforced my certainty that I wouldn't chose to live there again. That I prefer to visit, go to help, go to travel, go to fill my heart up, go to be challenged, disturbed, marvelled, what-so-EVER - NOT to live.

* P.S. 2 - In the end I went to London to be with my Mariana. Fast and lazy again, but great to reconnect to my sister, more and more sister.

terça-feira, 14 de setembro de 2010

Count-down for yet another Indian experience

Well, I decided to do a short post here because again I'm in count-down to visit India.
I am actually visiting my mentor.
This trip makes sense to me in so many ways in this moment of my life, and the only reason I am doing the half-public exercise of writing down my expectations is so I can cross-check them with the outcomes, which I believe will as usual overcome those.

Also because the expectations are realistic, and that's probably why I dare to state them... Or aren't they: am I being optimistic even in my realism?
  1. Be with my mentor, really be with her, listen to her wisdom, be there for what she needs, share our thoughts on philosophy, spirituality, sociology and "emotionality";
  2. Be with myself and rediscover the inner peace that that place once instigated in me;
  3. Find strength, self-preservation strategies and compromises with myself in order to keep the balance in this moment of my life;
  4. Work on an exciting idea that I had in August 4th, 2010;
  5. Try again some yoga hoping that the habit sticks to me;
  6. Do Isha's Bhava Spandana retreat, another if this one is not possible and/or hopefully some travelling;
  7. Rediscovering Bangalore with the Indian friends that stayed back;
  8. Meet the new member in Ubhayaker Bijur family;
  9. Have the time to actually get to know Archisman;
  10. Do some reading and some diary writing, and hopefuly some reporting here in the blog too.

Cute Girl Has a Catchy Dance


Guess who that one reminds me of? If only my parents read my blog... :P Do you?

The "cute girl": A true happy free soul influencer!
Apparently the story goes that they taught the little girl that dance, then she went to dance it having no idea that the others would join her... but that changed nothing: she kept happily doing her thing... and the clip came out.

Guys, let's all go for it!!!

domingo, 1 de agosto de 2010

I met Sweden in Sevilla


SWEDEN
Well I started Summer in Sweden and for the first 2 days I actually thought that, not only Could I live there, as I Wanted to.
So much perfectness!... - naturally speaking and civilization-wise...
Everything is thought for you which makes it easier to enjoy life.
Even if you do it with your own hands - be it painting the house or fixing the fence (which is their custom), the system, the tools, the common knowledge... is ready for that too.
Life-quality is incomparable to any I have witnessed before: I mentioned here before the freshness of the water and the air... But then there's the fact that you ride a bike to and from work, that you arrive at 4 or 5 pm from your job, do no unpaid extra-hours, still manage to have a full life outside work; that the simplest and cheapest supermarket is to the level of a gourmet here in Portugal, that they have the habit of eating early dinner and still go for [what we call here] "hygienic walk" along never ending beautiful -tree-paths and lakes... Furthermore, every car trip seems like a succession of paintings as the roads are paths which were stolen from forests.

... But then the weekend went by and the so common rain came to bless the Summer... and then for a moment it stopped feeling like vacation. Can you believe in some places in Sweden they get something like 3 weeks of sun per year?
I enjoyed getting to know Johan's family better, trying to understand Chess better... Taking it easy and resting...
And I can't forget the yet again amazing Sauna and Lake experience in Tolg with John's family... And this time my first experience of taking a bath in a peer, and taking the soap out of me in pure night, in cold lake water, to the light of stars and a set 1 am sun. UAU!
I loved watching a Speedway contest in Vetlanda. Apparently that small city where Anna, Olle, Karin and Mikael live has one of the World top teams in this sport.
It was fun Bowling with the family, other family get-togethers, going to that Island with Johan (what was the name again?), watching them cook candy, watching Granpa dance in National Day celebrations, trying to fish with Kent...
But we did want some better weather for more barbequeing, more fishing, more lake-bathing, more biking, more walking-around, more country-side activities...

So in the end, yes, I'd like to try living in Sweden because it is becoming such a big reference for me in what regards life-quality, in anything that doesn't depend from "Saint Peter".
Although I have to confess I know I would struggle with the little Sun and the certain rain... But I would especially miss the sun - I feel more and more my connection to it, my dependence of it.
THE SUN IS WHAT I HAVE CLOSEST TO THE FIGURE OF A GOD



SEVILLA
Then in July, the chance came to go back to Sevillha, where me and Johan met exactly 5 years ago (we disagree on whether it was the 31st of July night or the 1st of August 2005 morning that we met - the last is my version). There the Sun is definitely not missing.
The door in this picture used to be the entrance to Don Quijote, the Spanish school that is ultimately responsible for us being together. Yes, 'coz it was them who put us in the same apartment... Well and the rest is just details... :P
Anyway, Marta and Bruno were spending their sabbatical moth there doing Flamenco training, and it was a great opportunity to re-visit that city full of salero...

We loved it, Johan could almost picture himself living there... But with so much heat (we think it reached 50 dregrees during the day!!)... and no beach... Ufff! And how do you even have the energy to move around in such a warm environment? Plus there's no horizon as I'm getting used to again... : the Atlantic Ocean... And it's VERY touristic.
In the end, it's a nice town to visit every couple of years - exactly - as a tourist. It has a great spirit, it breathes Flamenco which I like more and more - the guitar, the singing, the dancing... there's something really transeunic about it... I realized this time (watching a breathtaking performance in Casa de la Memoria) that it probably is because it is so intense and that the music so often resembles the ORIGINAL SOUND, the tantric, the budhist, the hinduist "AUM" - or "OM", as trend tends to call it.
Of course it carries me to a level of vibration that is unexplainable...
But again: nothing to repeat too much so that it doesn't lose the uniqueness I still feel when I experience Flamenco.
Ready for more travelling? Yes! Preparing the next one. :)

segunda-feira, 15 de fevereiro de 2010

Alentejo_Travelling my own Country


Ir para fora cá dentro.
That's how the Portuguese expression goes for when you travel inside your own country. And if my memory recalls well that became an idiomatic expression after a national tourism TV add some 10 years ago (or so I think - - how long does it statistically take to integrate a slogan in a language?).

PORTUGAL. My country. And exactly the one I learned to appreciate the lesser. I am ashamed of that, of not taking interest for it, of always looking at the less brighter side when it comes to Portugal:
- Melancholic; - Nostalgic; - Pessimistic ... and many inevitably negative "-ic-ending" words.
Ashamed of always looking at it exactly in the way I criticize "the Portuguese" for.

Well I feel I'm for the first time really willing to know the country I've always felt like mine only in one third - along with CAPE VERDE and BRAZIL.
This is after having come from India (in which I found so many worse - not even comparable - conditions)... And after that Johan came. And now I have a Swede to introduce my large home to, great loving company for tourism!

So this time we went to High Alentejo, interior Portugal.
Our base was Portel, a small village in the district of Évora, which is litteraly the centre of a star when it comes to road access.
This is a quiet place where people stare at you (and still keep looking when you've given in and taken your eyes away... :) ) 'coz everyone knows each other and you're not from there. And they're curious: that's simply it. A simple place.
It is amazingly silent all day long, hardly any cars, small white-painted houses ('coz the sun heat is so strong in the summer), real darkness at night; cows, sheeps, goats... just near by; breakfast with home-made cookies . . . And here cold is cold, homes have an inheritance of hunting prizes hanging form the walls, bread is "alentejano" and comes in special colourful coton bags, and you greet everyone in the street. A van passes by in the morning issuing the sound of folk music and offering home delivery of bathrobs, pijamas and other housewear. Somewhere in the village pigs scream, chickens run, horses grass (so silent it is that you can feel Portel's heart-beat if you simply keep quiet). Plus the view from the castle is amazing, a mixture of plain greens, and you almost feel the smell of olives and grapes.

We ate well and fat, and in the meantime we visited the biggest artificial lake in Europe - Alqueva Dam, ate at Amieira Marina, drove to Reguengos de Monsaraz hoping to buy wine only to find a beautiful modern-shaped church, and enjoyed a great wintery sunny day where the sun insisted on touching the waters beautifully.
On Sunday, Valentine's Day, time for the ditrict capital: Évora. The place for lunch was tough to find but in the end "Almedina" surprised us with a cosy family environment. We had time for a stop at Arraiolos as the car this weekend seemed to drive itself while I didn't dare or felt like harming the calmness with any speed higher than 80Km/h.
We liked the pace in Évora and the fact that the centre of the city is inside ancient walls: it makes finding your ways a bit of an adventure, and being inside the walls have something of mysterious and tale-like. We finally bought the so-expected Alentejano wine, and after long walks, some sight-seing and visiting Roman Temple at dawn, we drove back to Lisbon with a feeling of calm, rest and peaceful-mindedness.

Johan ended the day pleasantly surprising me with great spontaneous generosity when we met our building's night guard (a man from Cape Verde who has switched nights for days for 10 years now) and offered him one of the bottles we had brought from Alentejo. A nice man of few words, Mr. Zé Manel.

sexta-feira, 15 de janeiro de 2010

LONDON - Biggest Party on Earth


D
LONDON EXPERIENCE

Life keeps treating me well.
I travelled earlier than I thought I would again, and to a place that hadn't seen me since adolescence.
Last time I was in London I was around 16 years old. 10 years later I remembered King's Cross Station, next to which I lived for 2 weeks, Millennium Bridge next to which I studied English, the view of Trafalgar Square from the National Gallery, the flowers in Notting Hill's Portobello Market, Mind the Gap and not much else.
From 1995 I remembered even lesser: there was the driving on the right hand-side, Hard-Rock Cafe and its expensive branded black sweat-shirt that I wore for a whole year after that, my long showers my trip companions complained of, Harrod's and my aunt saying to Jimmy: "(No, don't come in) - I'm not apropriated". :D

The turn of a decade was something else. I saw it with Raquel eyes and taken by the sweetest hand, and the warmest hug.
MARIANA. My forever trip companion, my forever big sis'.
Mariana is a Brazilian Londoner whom another one of those big non-coincidences brought to me in India.
We lived heaven and hell in that sub-continent of which I miss only some few people, some natural beauties, some exotic tastes and some laid-back experiences... and cherish the overall experience of.

In LONDON it was all about enjoying.
I left from a week stay there with the clear feeling that that's THE PLACE WHERE YOU CAN BE WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE.
The closest I experienced of that (but for sure far away and in a fully different perspective) was Thailand: Bangkok... and the marvelous Islands - place of wonders, place to get lost if that's what you're looking for...

'Nyway...
Mariana took me in a journey through not only some ex-libris of that gigantic glamorous organized city... but also through some untold secrets only true Londoners can share.

What I loved the most was for sure the diversity of people, the true melting pot London is, the extremes in looks and way of living that people can allow themselves to express there with no awkwardness feeling. That city has a place for all sorts and looks down on no one - but that's because you almost have it hard to find locals, British people - so much is the colourfulness!

In this context I have to mention Camden Town and its weekend fair, experience with which Mariana gifted the beggining of our journey together in Her Majesty's kingdom capital.
That place sells anything you may imagine and gets together punks, fifty's, rastas, posh people, brazilian "cochinhas", S&M material, motor-bike seats, piercings, lights, statues and drums..........all about fashion ... what results is an amazing experience to your senses in an authentic journey through times and options that takes place inside ancient horse stables.

Then there was "the Pub Culture" as Mariana would put it after an Indian comment.
I'm not much of a "go out for a drink" sort of girl, hence pubs apparently shouldn't be the place for me. Nevertheless, under Mariana's arm, I was guided through cozy, historical, fish & chips serving, old-school, out of the rain, beer producing, British only, dancing crazy, standing in circle, no non-alcohol beverages, checking out, with fireplace, nice . . . English PUBS which I really ended up enjoying.

Walking downtown through luxuriant streets, pin-pointing the tourist spots, was only bettered as an England experience by one full day of rain when we not anymore cared about how soaked we were and simply walked around with our feet and shoes flooded. So much fun!

Seeing a musical from 30 meters up far from the scene and adoring it. Finding a jazz concert hidden behind a mysterious door. Eating barbequed burgers in -1 degrees Celsius to come in to a bar where almost all had their Mac Book Pro, where DJ's came an hour later to play Chill-House and a door opened at 8pm to give way to another secret: an early night electronic disco. There I danced my brains out with hardly anyone on the dance floor just because I felt like it and no-one really cared. At 12h30 me and Mariana had finished my last night with a deserved Indian meal - one of the countable cultural features that we are really fond of in the country that was our home for almost a year.

But the perfect experience was that of seeing one of the greatest fireworks on earth from just across the river, right in front of London Eye. "The biggest House party on Earth" (as in House music) was well worth the 4 and a half hour wait freezing in happiness, dance, friendship and expectation.
I just loved it. Check this out.
Mariana, luv u!!!!