WITH MAIA AROUND THE WORLD
With Maia it's forever like this, ever natural, ever sister-like.
It had been 4 years since we had met and I know you know what I mean when I say that really no time has passed: just stories, knowledge, maturing, relationships, trips, discoveries, experiences... all of that adding up to our closeness and mutual admiration... And which we easily share around subsequent home-cooked meals prepared by her with the most important ingredient: tenderness, love (tal y como con Tita - "Como agua para chocolate").
MAIA is hence not part of this blog's memory, but she for sure deserves a significant paragraph of this bible of trip registers. This "Mexican-looking" ;) small girl from the Basc Country is the best result of all my so said "lonely" trips I've been doing since I was 15 years old.
Maia and I happened something like my last night in long-gone Paris, back when "la grand canicule" (? - as she just put it) happened: the warmest summer, 2003.
Hours of night talk resulted in a timeless spaceless friendship, that has joined us in Lisbon, Donosti/San Sebastian, Ondarroa, Helsinki and now Reikjavik.
Maia is the example for me of an accomplished thinker, still living to the fullest ¡t her life, femininity and artistry, always going beyond the surface of peoples and their "arts", always finding the smallest reason to laugh, always strong-willed and defending justice; traveling, studying and singing her way through life in spite of all the learnings that she simply wouldn't let bitter her, not ever!
Maia, here's one of our hugs!
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Can't believe it's been more than one year since I last shared thoughts here. No doubt about it: it reflects the speed in which I've been living. Well the new year's resolution, I've been anticipating it for 2 months now - it's quite hard on me as it counters my forever pattern: running from "home" by over-scheduling, being a workaholic, resting on what I'm successful at and not leaving space for resting or simply "being"...
I share it here as this year I decided I need to make it public: something needs to change and I'm not sure I'll be able to inforce it on my own. Year after year I reach the "too tired", the "too far from living, from my health, from sleep, from boyfriend, from friends".... And being in love, loving tremendously what I do at Jason... can't be and excuse. It's in me.
That having been said, 2012, even with rising responsibility, must be the WORK-LIFE BALANCE finding year.
REYKJAVIK AND THE CHRISTMAS FEELING
Reykjavik was short in time and full in sharing. It is little and, all covered in white, what astonished me the most is the short time of light in Winter, the rain-dear soup in round opened bread at "Svarta... Caffee", the hot hot tubs, the Blue Lagoon, the dried lava that changed the landscape, how easy you are in -3 degrees if only you wear the proper clothes; the permanent whiteness of everything snow touches, and the home-like cafeterias where Iceland proudly exhibits the happiness and good life-quality of its people.
Even more: the Christmas feeling expressed in lights and decoration which miss no window, no building, no bridge, no airplane.
I now understand when Johan says he gets no Christmas feeling in Lisbon: truthfully the female chorus singing in the street while the smoke from street-cooked sweets embraces you and red christmas lights create the scenario, only further completed by lightly falling snow while you're in your cosy clothes... that's indeed a Christmas setting.
The most ZEN moment(s)?... For sure bathing in 40 degrees celsius waters in external spa pools while it snows and winds in your shy uncovered head, definitely the mysterious look of the hot smoking water while you indulge in the pleasure and relaxation of feeling no body weight and no cold against the open sky in plain ICEland.
Curious findings about this place?... So much natality!; in an Island bigger than Great Britain live 300.000 people; the surnames here are substituted by the father's name to which they add "son" or "daughter"; they're totally not environmentally-conscious: they waste energy, they waste water, they have no consciousness of the limitedness of the resources: privileges (and blindness) of who has the blessing of having enough to waste.
Taking it easy... Next to see upon return: well geysers, volcanos, auroras borealis... All that I had managed not to expect too much but still had the illusion of being in the presence of. It definitelly suited us better as it was: calm for me, Maia and Gunnar.
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