Longing in Portugal
She was looking straight into the light, towards the only lightbulb that was kept on in a dim crowded space. Even the air conditioner was turned off, out of respect for this sacred work of art. In that quiet room you could hear an occasional cough, cooing of an impatient baby, gentle clinking of glasses being put down onto a table after a satisfying sip of green wine. Any voice daring to comment on the scene would be shushed. All eyes on her, bringing out the song from the depth of her gut. Her, experiencing the emotion of the song, and embodying that experience in front of the crowd. The crowd, who has abandoned their jumbled thoughts, inhaling the feeling in front of them, staying in it, and not letting anyone distract them from it.
Fado is a type of Portuguese music transmitting powerful emotions. The presenter said it is about the Portuguese culture, the Portuguese joy, the Portuguese suffering. She talked about it with so much pride, even when it came to suffering — especially, when it came to suffering. You can experience it yourself in Portugal. Late at night, you can wonder around the old town of Lisbon, letting the music carry you to the Fado houses, knocking on the doors, them letting you in once a song is over, before the next one starts. In a more contemporary version of it, we just booked a table to experience this part of the culture. Locals are so proud of fado as a unique way of story telling, communicating the soulful character of Portugal. Experiencing the joy deeply, experiencing suffering deeply, longing connecting the two. And saudade is the essential part of it.
Saudade is a Portuguese word describing bittersweet longing. It is graffitied on the murals of Lisbon, sung in Fado, echoed in daily interactions. Fernando Pessoa, one of the best known Portuguese writers, talked about feeling saudade while staring into the never ending spring rain flooding the streets of Lisbon. Saudade of summers that passed, saudade of life that is bound to pass as well.
“The feelings that hurt most, the motions that sting most, are those that are absurd; the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world's existence. All these half-tones of the soul's consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
While it may be easy to romanticise beautiful art sharing intense emotions, sitting with an intense challenging emotion of your own may be much more difficult. Emotions demand to be felt, demand attention to be paid, respects to be paid. Acknowledging them, expressing them the way a baby would - unapologetically and fully - and then letting go of them completely. Until a new wave rises.
We are used to talking about emotions in quite simplistic terms, as if sadness and happiness were mutually exclusive. Saudade merges these feelings, soft happy memories delivered in the undertones of blues, underlining the eternal truth, that sadness is there because happiness was there, the very same coin, the contrasting waves of emotions. It reminds me of some lines from a poem by Rilke:
Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.
When hearing people talk about it, one particular line stuck with me - saudade is a sentiment of love we don’t choose. A gift unasked for, a blessing by the chaos gods, a reward for courage to surrender control. If you ever fell in love, and I truly hope that you have, your body is familiar with the blessing of early-stage turbulence of feelings — of excitement, which may be suddenly flooded with fear, of being lulled into a deep soothing sense of safety, that safety being abruptly lifted, leaving you raw and vulnerable like a newborn. The emotions mix like paint on a canvas, and while we often admire the beauty of diverse colours in a painting, it may be much harder to appreciate those colours in a off-canvas realm. And yet, sitting in that bucket of mixed up paint makes the experience that much richer, not trying to avoid the pain staining your skin and clothes, or even control the lines on the canvas, but diving straight into that metaphorical bucket, allowing for a period of quiet incubation, a seed in the womb of the earth, shooting straight into the light of the daytime, the light of the stage, illuminating the face of the artist. When ready.
I listened to people talk about saudade on the street, disagreeing if it’s a good or a bad feeling. If it’s mild, it’s good, if it’s strong, it can be overwhelming, said one. But the majority believed it’s a good emotion. Emotions don’t have to feel good to be good — to be helpful, enriching, life-affirming. As long as experienced fully, they hold promises of a lighter life. A life, seen as a piece of art, so colourful, so dynamic, and therefore, so beautiful. A life lived.
Living with families in Japan
Yukie picked me up at Kamo train station on a chilly autumn day, my belly warmed by a bowl of ramen, my heart warmed by the thought of spending a few days in the Japanese countryside. The car kept climbing up narrow serpentines surrounded by misty mountains, until we stopped in front of a dark wooden house. Once I stepped out of the car, I was greeted by an enthusiastic jump, the way a dog would express its excitement - except that it was a goat. Yukie introduced me to her two goats, two cats, her husband Kevin teaching at a local university and their family friend Ben who was visiting. We shared rounds of green tea from the nearby Wazuka tea plantations, followed by rounds of Japanese plum liqueur, interlaced with conversations about the Japanese language and religion, climate change and poetry.
Ben said it's hard to write a poem a day. Writing is hard. Not writing is hard. Having written is amazing. So he writes. He writes poetry because he isn't sure what else to write. Poems give structure and boundaries. Haikus and sonnets. He writes about his divorce. He likes to reuse the same words with different meanings. His writing is soft and crackling and sparkling. Mochi mochi. Pika Pika. Sara sara. We talked about Japanese onomatopoeias as the conversation turned to food, sharing homemade gyoza dumplings, Yukie recommending to have udon noodles in Nara, as a perfect example of mochi mochi, this squishy and chewy and soft sensation. As the stories got more personal, she told me how she bought this 150 year old house when a burnout led her to leave a corporate job, going away from the city to countryside, opening her home to strangers. She recently started studying esoteric buddhism from a local monk, finally having time to dive deeper into understanding her own heritage. She gave me a gift of temari, a ball made of silk and kimono pieces, traditionally given to women about to get married. Each conversation felt like a gift in itself.
A soft evening fell upon us, and as I looked through the window, the goats were laying there cuddled up on the porch, half-asleep, their quiet contentment radiating towards us soft squishy humans gathered around the fireplace. Or maybe it was the other way around.
The next morning I was ready to explore the tea plantations, so after a miso-mushroom-egg-rice breakfast I caught a bus to Wazuka and started wandering around. The tea plantations welcomed me with their vibrant emerald green, having handled a rain storm that kept going for the whole night and the whole morning, clouds crawling through the valleys, threatened by the first rays of sun. I kept walking for hours, through tea plantations, bamboo groves and rice fields, bumping into an occasional shrine, otherwise not seeing anyone around. Until I did. Suddenly, in the middle of fields, I saw a tent, and a few people waving to me to come by. So I did. It turned out it was the annual art exhibition created by the local community, a couple of houses abandoned to become spaces for installations and paintings, sculptures and performances. I had to catch a train in an hour, so I thought I’d give it a quick look and be on my way, but the space drew me in, the sculpture of a dragon made by a 9 year old and a sculpture of a river made by a 79 year old. I let go of the idea of catching my train on time - what’s on time anyway - and slowed down my visit to deepen the experience, rushing ruins it all, a slow breath elevates it. So I listened to the stories, had chats, bought tea, and by the time I left those two houses two hours later, I felt in awe of this nature-culture, East-West creative integration in the middle of rice fields. I couldn’t help thinking that the best things happen without planning, without rigidity, without trying to control the situation that much. Just showing up with your mind open. This conclusion repeated itself over and over again in Japan. It still does.
I headed to Nara, hanging out with hundreds of dears in the park, hanging out with the giant bronze buddha in the temple, then catching a shinkansen to Shizuoka, seeing Mt Fuji for the very first time through a muddy station window on my way to the beach, and falling asleep with the sound of Pacific ocean waves crashing to the shore. After a few cycles of sunrises and sunsets, lunches of sashimi and dinners of katsu curry, I moved forward to lake Yamanaka, to meet the one and only Mt Fuji from up close. My key learning from this part of the journey became stillness. The stillness of the lake, the stillness of the mountain, the stillness of closing your eyes in an onsen bath, Mt Fuji on the horizon, with utter peace in my heart. There is so much to notice when you don’t do. No phone, no reading, no video. No writing. The way weeds float on the surface of lake Yamanaka. The way sunlight is reflected in glimmering water. Haiku is born out of this kind of observation. A pause before a reflection can be born, capturing a moment that you witness, rather than manufacturing a moment that was never there.
The chaos of swans
The stillness of a mountain
My fluttering heart
Paths from Mt Fuji led me to Tokyo, where I was about to spend a few days with Maya, a talented designer who built her own house, and a mother to Aki, a 7 year old boy who dreams of becoming a train conductor and watches instructional videos daily. We tried out a conveyor belt sushi - also called a sushi train, much to the delight of Aki - where you can select the proportions of ingredients - a half or double - Aki quickly gaming the system and ending up with plates of half rice double squid. It was perfect for our initial dinner of introductions, and yet it was such a different experience to my sushi lunch earlier that day, where a plate of fresh pieces - tuna and salmon, caviar and shrimp, omlette and, of course, squid - was arranged carefully in front of me by the sushi chef, on a short counter seating just a few people, the only other guest there trying to engage me in a conversation in both Japanese and glimpses of English. Where are you from? Are you a student? Ah, if not, you’re a teacher. That kept echoing in my head. If you’re done being a student, you become a teacher. He asked the chef to give me miso soup, he said it was good today. I accepted the miso soup. He kept listing all the places around Tokyo to ask where I have been and where I should go. I accepted the recommendations.
Maya’s house is a temple of motivation. Her goals of the year displayed on the wall, her mirrors lined with notes to act on your wishes now. Next morning Maya was telling me about her flamenco lessons and piano practice, talking about the urgency-importance matrix, and how often we’re good at doing what’s important and urgent, while forgetting what’s important but not urgent, getting stuck in the trap of time, the trap of manufactured urgency, rather than an organically unfolding experience. She invited me to her son’s piano recital on Sunday, where she would be playing as well, and, needless to say, I accepted the invitation.
I spent the days that followed wandering around Tokyo, visiting art galleries and traditional gardens, having soba noodles cooked in matcha and grabbing uncountable onigiris from 7/11, staring at the glimmering sea of Shibuya crossing lights as the sun went down, catching opportunities to learn as the sun came up. One morning I found myself on a tatami mat in the middle of gardens at Tokyo National Museum, in a workshop on a breathing method that got written about in the eigthteen century Japan, a method to improve physical and mental health by aligning the breath, posture and mind. My teacher Yuki (seems like a popular name!) insisted that adjusting the posture and focusing on abdominal breathing leads to natural adjustments of the mind, encouraging us to find postures of strength and to prolong our exhales, breath through our noses rather than our mouths, walk barefoot on natural surfaces. She also said that I am a naturally zen person. So, naturally, I want to believe everything else as well.
One of the more unique experiences was a classical music cafe, with vinyl records of operas, symphonies and sonatas blasting through enormous speakers, all tables facing them, all people listening. No talking allowed. No photography allowed. Tokyo prefers to stay a secret. Can’t blame him. Tokyo seems like New York City in a dream. Deeply familiar, yet inexplicably stranger. They both seem to know themselves, while simultaneously constantly changing and daring to figure themselves out.
I had less than 12 hours left in Japan and I chose to spend them in a long piano recital for local kids and adults. And I didn’t regret it. It was raining softly as we walked through East Tokyo suburbs to an old school, which had a big hall, which had a bright stage, which had a shiny black piano. And tons of restless kids running around and even more restless adults chasing them. The youngest ones were 3 year old twins, playing Jingle Bells. Older children and longer pieces followed. Disney prevailed. I was sitting there thinking how nothing really matters and it's important to just do your thing, without overthinking what it is, just starting it, working on it, becoming good at it. If you work on something long enough you’re bound to be great at it one day, feeling fulfilled. Echoes of Bhagavad Gita: do it well, let go of expectations, let go of the idea that you're the one doing it in the first place. If piano is your thing, amazing, play piano. If making sushi is your thing, amazing, make sushi. If conducting trains is your thing, amazing, go ahead, train, be it. The more time passes, the less I feel stuck in the paralysis of choice, the paralysis of what’s possible, and I just try to do things, consistently, to the best of my ability at the given time, without judging that ability too much. Action over perfectionism.
As I walked towards the train station after the final goodbyes, I bumped into the sushi master who had provided my first lunch in Tokyo. He recognised me before I recognised him, he waved, I waved. A school bus full of Japanese pre-schoolers passed. They waved, I waved. Every human interaction here felt like a blessing, a teaching, a reminder of this cosmic protection, regardless if it was from the families I stayed with or strangers I nodded hello to in passing. Every highlight of this trip involved discovering places through people, cultures through people, wisdom through people. People should be the highest rated attraction in every country. And in every life.
Staying with monks in Japan
The instructions were clear. You bow in front of the temple, you close your eyes, you pull on a long string of giant wooden beads, three times, and open your eyes to see which bead you are now holding in your palm. Its symbol will determine your fortune today. Mine was translated to Little Blessings.
I landed in Osaka the night before, staying at a hotel offering meditation services - on zoom, the heritage of the pandemic - and a book on Buddha's teachings in every room. In the morning, even my breakfast had clear instructions on how it should be consumed. With gratefulness, with the right words to be said before and after the meal (Itadakimasu! Go-Chiso-Sama!), making little noise when eating, using bowls and chopsticks gently, chewing well, finishing each dish to avoid leftovers. I was at a presence of a Shojin-Ryori meal, a vegetarian dish traditionally prepared by buddhist monks. Both preparing this meal and eating it is considered to be a part of training, following a strict etiquette - another set of rules. Each dish in the meal is cooked while balancing 5 colours of ingredients (green, yellow, red, white, black), 5 methods of cooking (raw, simmer, roast, deep-fry, steam) and 5 tastes of the dish (spicy, sweet, bitter, salty, light). I was in awe of tiny colourful plates on my tray and tried to honour the preparation effort by being as mindful of each mouthful as possible.
After breakfast, I ventured into the city, visiting the shrines in the neighbourhood. I used to associate Japan with buddhist temples only, not being aware of shinto shrines, deserving just as much attention, if not more - when speaking to local people, their beliefs often represent shintoism way more than buddhism, some would call it superstitions, but it can also be seen as deeply-engrained ancient wisdom, this magic, if you may, that the Japanese have not quite yet forgotten. The shrine around the corner has a plastic box full of white cat figurines, with a fortune reading wrapped around it, you can leave 500 yen right next to it and know your fortune of the day. And so I left a pile of coins on a wooden table, unwrapping the plastic packaging of my cat, and then unwrapping my fortune paper, tightly packed with characters. It reminds me a bit of Western horoscopes, with a bit more warnings. Yet another set of instructions. This time, on how to not get robbed.
My morning adventure leads me to the train station, as neither the intricate breakfast nor the shinto prophecy was my goal of the day, my goal is Koyasan, a complex of temples on Mount Kōya in Wakayama. My train passes green mountains as we speed South, away from Osaka. The carriage is full of advertisements for autumn colours celebrations. We pass many persimmon trees, the season of which seems to correspond with the reddening of maple leaves. I change to another train, then to a cable car, then to a bus, and before I know it I'm standing in front of the Jofuku-in temple, where I'll be staying for a few days with the local Japanese monks. That's when I notice the bead pulling instructions. That's when I find out that today is marked with Little Blessings.
I say Konnichiwa to a monk at the entrance, who gestures at a shoe rack outside. I take off my shoes, something that becomes second nature when staying in Japan, and step into the temple's lodging. There are more monks inside. And people visiting. We bow to each other, without discriminating monks and civilians, all deserving the same amount of momentary acknowledgement (I could write a whole separate piece on bowing in Japan and how it delighted me, and maybe I will, it's a game worth playing.) I sign some forms, confirming that I accept the fact that the monks don't quite speak English, and I do, smiling and nodding, the universal language. I'm told that every morning just after 6am there is a morning prayer ceremony, that I can observe, and it becomes my greatest source of excitement and anticipation. I'm given leather slippers to wear in the temple spaces, which keep threatening to slip away with every step, so I walk with my feet tense and stretched, desperate to keep them on. I'm sure there's a metaphor in it somewhere. Then I'm taken to my room, at the threshold of which I have to take off my leather slippers, as required when stepping on tatami mats, lining the floors of the space. Warm autumn afternoon light is flooding the room, filtered through green cedars and red maples, as the monk shows me how to use the heater - without which I can see my breath floating mid-air - powered by gas and an actual fire I can see blazing inside it, which feels like a bit of a risk in a wooden temple lined by bamboo mats, I got no choice but to trust the monks though - or freeze - and of course trust feels like the better call. The room also has a wide low table, a few flat pillows for sitting on the ground, a water thermos and some tea, and even a small TV in the corner. I turn the TV on and it shows news reporting on a sumo wrestling match. This whole episode feels like a parody of itself, a Japanese stereotype, that I indulge in with joy. A little balcony leads to a small bathroom with a traditional Japanese toilet, complete with a heated seat, water spraying from every direction, and some background noise you can use if you're feeling shy. There is no bath though. The baths are accessible only in the evening, and they are shared, onsen style. Which, of course, has its own set of rules.
As I go down the stairs to take a bath hours later, my clothes and the complimentary yukata clutched to my chest, toes curled up to avoid loosing my slippers, I pause at the bath entrance to look through some informational images. You are not supposed to put any soap in the bath, you're supposed to shower before entering the bath, you should not wear any clothes in the bath, your hair shouldn't touch the bath water. I go through the door, in a room lined with baskets and sinks, I grab a basket and undress, leaving my clothes in it, and enter the bath room. I can barely see anything at the first glance, a moment later I realise the room is empty, filled solely by steam and the sound of running water. The water in these Japanese baths is never static, always running in and out, constantly refreshing itself. There's a metaphor in here somewhere as well. After a quick shower I step into a hot bath, reminding me of a massive rectangular jacuzzi, and I finally start to warm up after the day spent in temperatures flirting with freezing. Once I'm warm enough I wrap myself in a yukata and go back up the stairs.
The evening highlight is the dinner, brought in by the monks, assembled from four trays, the meal following the same rules outlined by my breakfast instructions this morning. It has a pot of green tea and an open-flame soy milk stew, a pot of steamed rice and a bowl of pickled peanuts, a plate of steamed mushrooms and bowl of sesame tofu, a local delicacy. After a meal, I call a phone number indicated on the dinner tray, monks come up to pick up the dishes, and a moment later they come to unfold a mattress completed with sheets and pillows, my bed for the stay. This whole collection-unfolding process is completed in less than 30 seconds, including, of course, a number of bows as we say our thankyous and goodnights. Before falling asleep, I read Buddha's teachings, the very same book that I found the day before at the hotel. Here, it's laying at the table, appearing to be placed there just for me so I can continue my reading of Siddhartha Gautama's adventures. Siddhartha means “every wish fulfilled”, did you know that? He left the palace at 29 years old, and that fact hits me, as a 29 year old having left a secure job to pursue something way more meaningful. If he stayed, he was said to lead them all, if he left, he was said to save them all. My appetite for metaphors keeps growing as I constrain my wish to compare myself to troubled Siddhartha Gautama, falling asleep before my ego attempts to expand even further.
As I'm falling asleep, I am swimming in the delight of little blessings provided by today.
I get up in the darkness, searching for my clothes with numb chilly hands, soothed by the heated toilet seat and the prospect of participation in a buddhist prayer ceremony this morning. I walk in dark cold corridors (damn those leather slippers!), and I reach a door as I hear a bell ringing. I enter this dark space, floors covered in a red carpet, a gorgeous altar being uncovered in front of me as I keep moving into the room. Golden sculptures and incense, flowers and candles. A dizzying atmosphere, secrets hiding in the shadows. A monk in front me bows. I bow, and sit down. The monk who greeted me sits on the right of the altar, another monk walks in and sits on the left. And so it begins.
Things are often more than a sum of their parts, and as I’m writing this, I feel uneasy about the risk I’m taking, the risk to reduce all these beautiful happenings just to their appearances, tightly cut facts, emerging from an objective look. So when I’ll say that the following was a magical experience, you’ll have to trust me, even if you don’t see it in the details outlined. We can sign a contract of sorts. I know, yet another set of rules. But I promise, you can trust me. Deal?
The morning ceremony draws me in. There is chanting, ongoing chanting, that captures my mind and settles me gently into a meditative state. I notice my thoughts slipping away. Thinking thinking thinking. Worrying. Attachments. Thoughts feel important when you're about to let them go, I kept thinking. It feels like a breakthrough. During the ceremony I wonder if monks are able to feel my energy. My running thoughts, my emotions, my stillness. The more time passes, the more it seems to me that people sense more than they realise. So good thoughts will indeed shine like beams, and, indeed, you will aways look lovely. God bless you Mr Dahl.
The whole thing feels like one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had. Alone in this dark room, this womb of sorts, being in presence of something truly sacred. The leading monk puts ashes on the incense. And gestures for me to do the same. And I do. As the ceremony ends, he takes out a piece of paper from the pocket of his robes, reading in English, apologising for not speaking English well, telling the story of the temple, and sharing some teachings towards the end. Accept and don't judge your wishes, the monk says. And at that moment I’m sure they’re able to feel everything.
Later that morning I’m at the entrance of the main temple again, I’m pulling on the string of the wooden beads again, ready to face my prophecy of the day. Out of all the available options, high highs and low lows (and neutral neutrals), it comes back to me with the now-familiar answer. Little Blessings.
During the day I visit other temples and shrines, full of colours and stories and offerings. There, you can buy charms for every goal in life, charms for fertility and successful exams, good health and good driving. I walk to the edge of the town, there’s a temple dedicated to women there, as years ago women would not be allowed to enter this sacred place, having to end their pilgrimage at this temple. Koyasan is on the pilgrimage route. It’s called Kumano Kodo, and is one of the two pilgrimage routes registered by UNESCO - the other one being Camino de Santiago (you can read about my experience of walking hundreds of kilometres of Camino here). As I see the Kumano Kodo path in front of me, leaving just from the women’s temple, I feel a stab of regret for not choosing to walk it, and not ending up having walked all of the UNESCO-certified pilgrimages of the world. But I reign my ego in again, and decide to go for a taster session, walking up the mountain, through a forest, the roots of trees lined with little charms and figurines, arriving at a tiny mountain shrine, passing a couple of pilgrims on my way, being glad to have touched Kumano Kodo just a little.
As I’m heading back to the civilisation, I pass a small lunch spot, a woman taking care of five tables. I order yakisoba and a ceremonial matcha, scribbling some notes in my notebook. When four of the tables get filled up, she changes the sign on the door from “Open”, to “Close”, and as a new customer walks in and tries to sit at a free table, she explains she can’t serve them any time soon, and sends them away. I saw it for a number of times in Japan, and I admire it deeply, knowing your limits and knowing when you deliver your best work, so you don’t get overwhelmed, so you can prepare the food well and on time. Knowing that you can manage the intensity, and how to do it.
It feels like a valuable discovery as my thoughts keep running, regardless of the fact that I’m travelling Japan with seemingly no other tasks or responsibilities at hand, my mind comes up with things to worry about. I rush without need. I come up with a list of gifts I should get to my family and friends, which suddenly becomes a source of yet another flavour of anxiety, finding everything, finding it all on time. When there is nothing to worry about, you create things. And then blame the culture of rushing. So much judging. Accept and don’t judge your wishes, the monk says. As crazy as it sounds, sometimes it seems that our wish is to rush and worry, just because it’s so familiar, that it becomes comfortable and soothing. Ah, anxiety, old friend.
I go through another cycle of temple walks and luxurious dinners, shared baths and chilly sleeping, morning prayers and communal breakfast. As I check out and put my shoes on, rejoicing in finally leaving my slippery slippers, we have a small talk with the monks, about the weather, about how busy it gets in summer. We bow goodbye. We wave goodbye. I leave. Ten steps in, as I look back, they are still waving. I wave back, chuckling and smiling, keeping that smile on for the rest of the day.
On my last morning, I stand in front of the temple, at the fortune-telling beads, and I decide to forego this ceremony today. My little blessings have been massive, little big blessings, and I’m a clever human, I can sense the pattern. I’ll just assume that I am blessed with little blessings every day. Assuming so will be my instruction.
The temple keeps shining in the sun. I keep walking.
Welcoming stories in Korea
Seoul station is busy. I am busy, trying to find the right bus stop across a number of platforms, and my joy after suddenly spotting it wears off quickly, as I notice a set of lines spreading from the platform onto a street. I join one of them, fidgeting in the clouds of bus exhaust fumes and clouds of breath made visible in the temperature approaching freezing. I am approaching the limit of my patience, as I cannot wait to sit in a warm bus, filling my empty stomach with a kimchi snack freezing in my pocket. But the patience gods smile at me, when an older Korean gentleman waiting in the same line looks back at me and greets me, distracting me from my kimchi-driven hunger. I employ a smile-and-nod strategy as my Korean language skills are nothing to write home about, but he is really eager to talk, fumbling with his phone to find a translation app, and now we are talking. As soon as I pronounce and repeat the name of Lithuania, he googles it and then proceeds to read Lithuania's page on Wikipedia. He reads it for three or four solid minutes, with the kind of focus I haven't witnessed in a while. When his translation app doesn't take him far enough, he proudly introduces me to a Korean lady in a nearby line - she just arrived today! she is from Lithuania! - and the lady recommends another translation app, he downloads it on the spot, and off we go. He explains that he is studying English, shows me his English homework, confirms that he is a local. I only ask a thing or two, otherwise stepping back and observing this incredible dance of welcoming hospitality and kind curiosity. When I give up hope to board my bus after waiting for almost an hour, I say goodbye to my dedicated line colleague and set off to walk to a different bus stop. There, I finally snack on my chilly kimbap, having realised that eating on buses is not allowed, ready to give up at least a half of it just to get to my guesthouse before the last bits of warmth leave my body.
The evening at the guesthouse is quiet. I am quiet, listening to my Korean host sharing worries about his son’s career and issues that he sees in the Korean society. We talk about elections and demographic issues - it’s a similar story everywhere, after all - and as the conversation moves from global to personal, he reflects on challenges in parenting, wanting the best for children, and that very wish resulting into pressure, making kids struggle. He pours tea slowly, from high up, all his attention focused on it. He observes that the tea is too bitter. We drink the tea anyway. His wife comes back from a cooking class and starts cooking to show what she has learned, serving beautiful egg and bacon breakfast tacos with Korean spices for dinner, as her husband wonders why the hell all Western food is eaten by hands - why can't they use chopsticks? - while I gently challenge him on that as a reluctant representative of all the Western food, as he quotes burgers and pizza and tacos as examples. We talk for hours. Which feels quite different from the usual where's-your-passport-here’s-your-bill type of check-in.
The morning at the guesthouse is sunny. I am sunny, listening to my host's wife expressing deep gratitude to her ancestors for what she has, even though she didn't have much in her childhood and created most of her fortune herself. As she struggled with her health, a cancer that visited her still at the peak of her youth, she focused on the great gifts that she has been given. She says her parents gave her a lot of love. And you can sense that. She says you can lose things, but your health is what matters. We speak for hours as sun floods the room, with light jazz flooding pauses in between of stories. She says they had built the house so that windows would be showered by sunshine, especially in winter. The position of every door and window thought out carefully and deliberately. I feel at home in their house, in its cosy spaciousness, book-covered walls, a piano at a kitchen table - and a separate fridge just for kimchi, I kid you not. She serves a beef seaweed soup, it's a birthday soup, yesterday was their son's birthday, and that's what's served for birthday breakfast. When I ask about the origins of it, her husband replies that this soup is given to women who have just given birth, so that they can regain their strength. And so, it is served on one's birthday. As she places the bowls of soup on the table, she grabs a pair of chopsticks, takes some meet from her husband's bowl, and adds it into mine, smiling conspiratorially. They eat slowly. I eat as slowly as I can, and yet they laugh that I must have been really hungry.
Seoul welcomes me, my eyes full of wonder, I welcome the stories that it shares with me so generously:
Through its graceful temples with giant golden buddhas sitting comfortably on the heated floor, elephant-shaped flower sculptures decorating the entrances to the shrines, the scent of incense melting into crisp November air, candles flickering in the wind, the monks walking slowly towards the lantern-lit gates;
Through its traditional teahouses with floor seating, as well as intricate instructions on how to make a cup of tea - you can pour the water on the lotus tea leaves for up to seven times - while nibbling on a steamed pumpkin rice cake;
Through its colourful wooden palaces and foreigners running around them in the traditional Korean dresses, through restaurants offering bibimbap bowls and street stands baking steamy bungeoppang - red bean paste-filled pastries shaped like fish - that warm your hands when strolling down a road on a cold winter's night, through the grocery stores using cartoon characters to sell anything from cookies to electricity plugs; through an enthusiastic lady sitting next to me on the metro heading to the airport, insisting on helping me create an itinerary for my next visit to Seoul.
The night at the guesthouse is still, I am still, as a secret is unravelled in front of me. This glowing Korean lady, grace at every step, smiles as we sit at a table. "When my husband dies, I'll go to New York, to study. That's my dream", she says.
And all I can do is to welcome her dream, the dream to be the best host possible and the dream to live in New York, to welcome questions and grins, and a quarter of a persimmon gifted straight into my palm, to welcome curiosity and help, the airport worker abandoning her post just to help me find the way, to welcome stories pouring out of every person met, to welcome their worries and secret wishes, to welcome my own imperfect humanity unravelling in these dark chilly streets, around these enlightening warm human beings.
Walking 1000 kilometres in Spain
I woke up, realising I had a dream I overslept. As if starting a 1000km walk was something akin to an exam, restless excitement blocking any hope of peaceful sleep. It was still just after 5am, and I was about to start my Camino de Santiago.
I left the albergue — pilgrims’ lodging — as the sun was coming up over the quiet town of Saint Jean Pied de Port, after a meditative ceremony called Pilgrims’ blessing — a cramped living room, standing in a circle, Sweet Surrender playing in the background, everyone focusing on their intentions, then surrendering their intentions, and taking a deep breath in to welcome the excitement of the trip ahead.
And what a trip it was.
People carry different intentions. Ian was mourning his mother’s death, while writing the speech for his daughter’s wedding. Martin was changing his life around, and starting to do so with a walk from Germany to Spain. Some people just walked while they could. I met a couple, Kay and Malcom, and later learned that Malcom was 87 years old, while Kay was 78 (a baby, she said). People were carrying ashes of their loved ones, processing their breakups, processing their retirement, deliberating their next career move, exploring the world after high school graduation, searching for their identity after raising children, worshipping the nature by singing to it, walking the Camino for the dozenth time because that’s where they felt at home.
I set out to walk the Camino alone. Many people do. I was going to walk along plains and fields, cross streams and mountains, an idyllic postcard of quiet nature. And while I walked plains and fields, crossed streams and mountains, I often did so with other people, often nodding my first Buen Camino way before the break of dawn. That’s how I met Julien, emerging from a forest with his bright headlamp and energetic stride, responding to hooting owls (by hooting back), running his fingers through the bushes in passing, capturing leaves, investigating them, letting go of them. All while telling stories of staying in a tent while walking the Camino, rain or shine. All told with way too much energy for a pre-7am encounter. Before coffee, mind you.
After the 20–30–40 kilometre walks, sweaty and craving a shower (we all agreed that we always craved showers more than the comfort of a proper bed or favourite food – I guess showers is what, after all, makes us human), the pilgrims would arrive into an albergue, hopefully, with beds still available (I took the last bed a couple of times, and after a long long walk it felt like winning a lottery – especially if it turned out to be the lower bunk). Albergues often became the sources of the most social experiences, waiting in lines for laundry and striking a conversation, waiting in lines at a village grocery store and striking a conversation, cooking a dinner together and striking a conversation, laying in bed, at a busy dorm, and striking a conversation. You get the idea. Lots of people. Lots of conversations. Sometimes I would wake up and start walking, realising I feel socially exhausted, as I may have ended up spending the whole day around others, engaged deeply. And there’s so much to engage about, people carry fascinating stories.
Saleigh, an Australian anthropologist focused on indigenous pre-verbal wisdom, appeared in a hammock next to me on a peaceful afternoon at an albergue, and we ended up talking about plant medicine and philosophy, covering Alan Watts and Ram Dass, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. She was also a photographer. Her dog’s name was Buddha.
Nick, an almost-retired American military lieutenant, who sat next to me during the dinner in a spacious church garden, as we were chatting about the US gun laws and systemic racism (as you do), then running into each other a day later and covering everything from jiu-jitsu to aliens (it was a 33km walk, it took a while).
Jamie, yet another Australian who came into my life after little sleep in a loud dorm, accompanying me at a 6am walk to escape the snores and screams, to stand united against wild boars, and to discuss corporate culture, national identity and courage to love, while laughing into the Spanish dawn (corporate culture is hilarious, after all).
I met all these people over and over again. Unplanned, often unexpected. I’m saying often, because sometimes a wish to see someone would form in my mind, and they’d appear in front of me. Just like that. We called it Camino magic, getting exactly what you needed, when you needed it.
Camino magic was often facilitated by the connections with people. You’d meet someone, they’d point to your swollen ankle, you’d tell them about your ailment, they’d tell you about a physician they met a week ago, that physician would appear (magically, of course) a few minutes later, sharing no languages in common, and would start working on your suffering tendons, healing them in minutes. True story, by the way. That would happen in less mysterious circumstances too, people hearing about your need and providing all you need in moments. On the Camino you don’t carry much, you rely on the infrastructure of the way, yes, but you also rely on the infrastructure of kindness, giving away your anti-inflammatory jells, bandages and gingerbread to someone in need, knowing that you’ll be taken care of by someone else when the time comes.
And the time comes, often.
And the help is there, always.
Giving and letting go are big themes on the Camino. Most albergues have a corner with a box for things you may wish to leave. Those boxes tend to be full. Brand new sleeping bags, warm jackets, books and what not. Especially at the very beginning of the path, people carrying three pairs of shoes and a couple of extra blankets would end up shedding that weight, having realised how little they need. And I can’t help but think that in our civilian life we have quite the opposite tendency to crave more and to take more.
Take take take.
While on the Camino we carry so much, literally and figuratively, and when you feel the weight, and hence the burden, of everything you carry, so viscerally, you don’t really want much, so Camino becomes an exercise in letting go of all that we don’t need in that moment, trusting that it will be there when we need it.
Let go let go let go.
It is one of the reasons why Camino feels like such a unique place, a different dimension, really. It’s not only the scenery or the shared experience with others, it’s this sense of care that elevates it to an almost otherworldly experience. It is created by people around you. And it’s not just other pilgrims.
There are also all of the albergue owners, offering their unrelenting care for exhausted, grumpy, sweaty pilgrims day after day after day, greeting you with fresh water and sweet tea, breathing with you (yes, literally sitting you down and breathing together, until you breath like a human being at peace, and until you feel like one), cooking the food, lining their gardens with ropes for drying your hand-washed laundry, sharing their guitars (I’ve never sang as much of Bob Dylan as on the Camino, and probably never will), sharing sunsets, listening to pilgrims’ stories deeply and writing personalised letters at night, so that on the breakfast table sleepy achy walkers would find a hand-written piece of paper with enough encouragement to tackle another day.
There are pharmacists, willing to be your doctors as well, diagnosing pilgrims on the spot, with an unbeatable share of enthusiasm and support. I swear I met the world’s most upbeat pharmacist in Navarette.
There are also people working in the fields that pilgrims go along, a few of them saw me taking photos of grape harvest, and started encouraging me to eat some, picking bunches of purple and green ones, and pilling them up in my hands, until no more could fit. I repeated a dozen thank-yous in my humble Spanish and carried on, snacking on grapes and thinking how every single person on the Camino contributes to this ineffable atmosphere of it.
Just as much magic is created in a very mundane way. The body moving outdoors the whole day. Some days, walking through soft sunrises in the mountains, birds chirping, sheep waking to graze in the fields. Other days, walking through a rainstorm in the darkness of a land untouched by a sunrise yet, while sharp gusts of wind freeze your soaked body, I would end up singing Disney tunes, desperately trying to focus on something other than that very body that is experiencing this madness. And struggling to. That’s the thing, once you get used to focusing on the experience, distractions become way less attractive. I didn’t really feel like listening to music or audiobooks most of the time, I just wanted to be in tune with my step, the clinking of my hiking poles, sensing sun and wind, gazing at planetarium-level stars before dawn, thinking about showers or bed bug-less beds, thinking about nothing. So, not thinking at all.
Camino experience was grounding, it graciously allowed me to forget silly worries clouding my mind, that was bombarded by so many different stimuli in the day to day life. Camino days felt busy — you walked, you showered, you did laundry, you found food, you consumed food, by the time you were done with your chores, it was usually bed time. On the one hand, it could be called a distraction, you distract yourself away from thoughts, but on the other hand it’s simply the focused mindful experience, that doesn’t let worries in, because those worries never really arise in the first place. I could worry about getting a bed that day or finding food on an emptier stretch, but it would be even a stretch to call it a worry. Walking miles and miles a day, focusing on your body moving, focusing on very simple manual actions, allowed for a simpler existence, which allowed me to go back to the core. What do I actually enjoy. What feels right.
You can only experience it fully once you let go of any expectations, and in a way you do, focusing on the pain in your ankles rather than pain of your memories, focusing on the stories of others rather than your own narrative. But in the end, that’s exactly what brings you back to your intentions.
As my Camino was inching towards the end, I would often catch myself in bluesy mood, resisting the change of the last 100 kilometres, which became much more crowded with new pilgrims. The fatigue was taking its toll, more and more morning chats started with stories of stolen sleep due to noisy bunk neighbours, unfriendly pilgrims or other complaints. One morning I ran into Saleigh, she was telling me a sad story, and as I shared one of my own, she suddenly exclaimed, that this is our process of integration — we can’t just stumble straight from our magic Camino land into the real world, as we called it. We were offered these mild annoyances as an opportunity to remember what the daily life can be like. Take every trigger as an opportunity to embrace the world in all its imperfections, bit by bit, Saleigh said. It’s a privilege, really, a blessing, not to be overwhelmed with it all at once, to have a chance to readjust to it slowly.
Then we reached Santiago, and, of course, got overwhelmed (while being underwhelmed at the same time, as my friend Mathias put it). Then some of us went all the way to the ocean, some of us had celebratory gelato, some of us never saw each other again. Camino taught us to let go in more ways than one. Having fascinating experiences, encounters, interactions, gifts without craving more. And if you took only one conclusion out of this whole story, that would have to be it:
Let go let go let go.