Since I'm already (recently anyway) on the subject of Canada, here's a poem I wrote a while back about my childhood there... Back there, I walked barefoot through broken down barns where moss grew in blankets across cracked cement floors. I was told to wear shoes should rusty nails sprout instead of muddy water between my toes, but all I ever got was dirty. I never cared much for shoes and my feet will never fit into slender glass slippers now, but any prince who hopes to win me will not care for such trivialities. You had to feel the earth under your feet to keep your head out of the clouds that your heart reached for. Back there, lucky horseshoes grew on toppled brick walls and cinder blocks held secret treasures to humble shipwrecks. Back there, the brightest colours I've ever seen were lights that danced in the sky on a cold night. I lay on the roof of a great hall and watched as my heaven turned to stained glass. Back there, all it took to be a hero was to battle demon...
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Thoughts
So what if I'm not travelling?! It's all still a journey in the end and anyway this is my blog and I'll write what I want! On that note here are some thoughts... 10.19.2008 The radical organization is often ineffectual because they adhere to a simple principle; no compromise. I too am idealistic and wish anyway that they would sometimes quit being so stubborn and actually try to accomplish something by means of the dreaded compromise. However, I applaud their refusals. It is my view that the corporation (evil machine if you will) is as evil as they seem to become because all these people running the show, with no one person in charge, are constantly making small compromises. This behavior, over time, whittles away all integrity with no one person ever having to assume the responsability. Sad.
On the subject of Canada: a wistful and fanciful account of a brief visit
Sunsets normally give me the feeling of being in slow motion so it strikes me as odd to watch one flashing by through the window out one side of a speeding airplane. A pretty stunning one as sunsets go even, somehow oddly like a pastry. A warm glowing red center sandwiched by the darkened and muted shades of earth and blue-black silhouettes of thin, swiftly shifting clouds. Out the other side, the day old full moon is giving an entirely different feel to the cloudscape. Instead of an intense and defiant setting sun, we have a softly glowing countryside of cotton hills. So much more the subtle and yielding, is the moon, and yet as dependable and powerful as the sun. Tonight it is the silent companion to this otherwise unseen landscape of clouds. If I sound overly romantic and dreamy, I am. I am in love... I am in love with the countryside where I was born, from which I am sadly returning as I write. So much would I rather be going there. It may be that all it needs to be is hom...
Two months later... (for Aviv)
Once I dreamed of the Sea in Springtime and the dream filled my soul with music and beauty, with impulse and desire and yearning for a different way. Though the Sea in Springtime was often unpredictable I loved it, too, for that. It could be rough and tempestuous at times, but it was all part of the spell. The depth and hue of the Spring Sea was so enchanting and captivating, none who dreamed the dream wanted to wake only to find themselves again on on hard, dry land. Those, like me, who dreamed this dream, found all they wanted to do from then was float in the Spring Sea again. She was always obliging, inviting. Anyone who dared enter Her domain were welcome to stay, to flow along as long as they could, or would. Welcome to shine brightly under the sun, glow under the moon, welcome to keep mystical secrets with Her, to speak Her language. The dreamers were welcome to surrounded by Her beauty if they were willing to taste also Her salt. I dreamed this dream, once, of the Sea in Springt...
...and that was it. after three months of cartwheels and landslides, three months of laying on our backs exhausted in all different sorts of dirt, three months of crushed flowers and foreign garbage, popcorn and coca leaves, eggs and tea - a hurried goodbye, girlish shouting in the airport, and a promise to see each other again in the cave, still decorated with all the samples of our affection for pachamama. morgan and i met in nicaragua, thousands of kilometeres north of where i am now, thousands of kilometers south of where she is. i remember being so confused, tired, and so happy to see her, throwing the pack which has since been lost to the ether on the ground and embracing her while i lit my triumphant cigarette of arrival. waterfalls, desserts, newfamilies, new words, jokes and joints, flashing the passport at everyborder and turnign that magic key to crawl into new lands, again and again. all those millions of hours like a bug with too many leggs spent turning into the weird bus...
Beautiful mountain view above Cuzco Dear all, it is diffficult to describe the events that have transpired since mylast email, it is as though another whole trip has occured in the lastmonth. Since leaving the farm in Ecuador we have been to beautifulbeaches, desert oasis, seen the most powerful sunsets, camped in avast desert under an eclipsing full moon, volunteered to clean trashfrom that desert (Peru is pretty much a vast desert until you get intothe mountains or over them into the Amazon), bathed in miracle greenwater, Aviv has gotten one beautiful tattoo, visited Incan ruins onhorseback, met amazing people, explored the oldest continuallyinhabited city in South America (Cuzco) and well, stayed there. Ifever there was a city that seemed to have all the qualities of a cityI could dream it was Cuzco. Cuzco is where the story really begins. I am not certain I am yetequipped to tell that story as I am still in it but I will be headingback to Quito tomorrow evening in order catch my fl...
Paradise found in Ecuador, complete with coconut balls. Since my last upadate I have been residing on a farm called Never Never Land that indeed we found by following stars! It was dark when we began the hike up from the tiny town of Tumianuma but the stars were shining brightly and the crazy quantities of fireflies were going off like flashbulbs or tinkerbells all around us, magical moment indeed. We were lucklily guided by a group of lost boys and girls who were returning to the farm from a San Pedro ceremony quided by a local Shaman (San Pedro being a cactus that grows all over the hills here, similar in this use to Peyote.) A bunch of really good people they were and as I write now we are on our way again from Ecuador to Peru acompanied by two of my countrymen (and women) from Canada who we met that very night in that very way. Never Never Land was a fantastic place to spend two weeks and we are intent on returning for another two weeks after we make the pilgrimage to Machu Pichu a...
The winswept coastal cliff trail to beaches near Tagonga. Following is an excerpt directly from my journal so you can get a taste of what it´s like to be here and now, and also find that I write to you very similarly to the way I write to myself. ¨January 16, 2008 To get to the non-fishing, swimable beaches near Tagonga, Columbia you must follow a narrow trail etched into a white limestome cliff. It is a bit of a precarious track, steep, loose rocks and directly above a drop of about 80 feet to the sea. My sort of trail. After following this very trail to Playa Grande, and then a bit futher along though the water until we found out own less populated beach, we spent a perfectly lovely afternoon lounging in the sun and sand. There were fishers about trawling (not my favorite) and we were cautioned not to swim too far lest we become entangled in their nets. Time passed, as it does, and it became dusk when it occued to us that we had come to this beach via precipitous cliff and thought i...
The streets of beautiful Cartagena, Columbia. I am in love with this city. Ta da!!!!! We have triumphantly arrived on the continent of South America and fallen under it´s most magical spell. Honestly right out of the airport, where a crazed Columbian customs officer made hilariously bizzare faces and sounds at me while he stamped my passport, we were taken in by the fabulousness that is Columbia. So far the two countries that I was warned against by the collective worries of the ¨West¨ (Nicaragua and Columbia) have prooved the be the countries I have most enjoyed/ am enjoying. Perhaps it is only Cartagena, because Cartagena is quite possibly the most blissfully perfect and beautiful city I have ever visited. You see, I love cities with narrow winding roads that have tightly packed buildings with balconies overlooking the street... and Cartagena has these in abundance and with gorgeous flowers hanging over the balconies to boot! It also sports carribean weather, delicious food, refreshi...