pai january 2007

pensamiento

EARTH from ABOVE

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Casi todas las propuestas de ayuda al desarrollo me parecen insultos a otras culturas y otros modos de vida. No digo que la ayuda en casos de catástrofes naturales, emergencias tales como terremotos o inundaciones sea un insulto, en estos casos, me parece un gesto de compañerismo. Pero aquello que llamamos "ayuda al desarrollo" me parece, sí lo es.

Para empezar me planteo si alguien a preguntado a estas gentes si se quieren desarrrollar, y sobre todo, qué modelo de desarrollo quieren seguir, si se quieren desarrollar como "nosotros, los occidentales". Alguien se ha parado a preguntar y escuchar; a explicar las consecuencias de ese tan deseado desarrollo. Alguien les ha contado, la parte mala, negativa, la letra pequeña, para que en cualquiera de los casos se pudieran tomar decisiones informadas y consecuentes.

Todo aquello fuera de las necesidades primarias imprescindibles para la vida, como potabilización de agua, electricidad (quizás)...me parece se emprende con un gran paternalismo de base. Un mirar por encima del hombro. Un odioso "pobrecitos". Me pregunto qué haríamos nosotros si vinieran un grupo de indios, por ejemplo, a imponer sus modelos de desarollo, ¨civilización¨ a los países occidentales, si los aceptaríamos, sumisos y obedientes, o si nos levantaríamos y les acribillaríamos, exclamando al cielo que es una barbaridad.

don det 21.02.07

picture this

Yesterday morning on my way to the underground I saw:

1) An african guy yelling at people passing by about another guy who was in jail just because the colour of his skin.

2) Another guy peeing in the middle of the street and trying to utter a word that I did not understand at all.

3) A car stopped me. Inside there were two guys with the reddest eyes I´ve seen in a long time. They tried to flirt with me while enquiring about an afterhours....

This was 10:00 am. I was absolutely sober of course. It seems I was the only one...

madrid multicolor

En un Madrid multicolor y multiétnico vivo. Paso por la mañana por India y Bangladesh para hacerme con el incienso que perfuma mis meditaciones matutinas. Voy a Marruecos al mediodia para tomar un té con dulces. Por la tarde si tengo tiempo me dejo caer por el Africa Subsahariana; con su sonoridad francesa y su colorido y elegancia natural, básica, rotunda, no pretendida ni comprada sino heredada de la tierra roja y caliente.

Me voy de compras a China y encuentro barato y al por mayor de todo, desde linternas a cuadernos, cinturones, artilugios para mi cocina, sobres para enviar mis cartas... Esta China que habla español con accento oriental y sin pronunciar las ¨R¨.

En las oficinas gubernamentales, por fin también ¨Ellos¨, se han dado cuenta de que Madrid es multicolor y los carteles informativos, poco a poco, se van convirtiendo en bilingües, Español y Arabe.

soup

Some places are pleasantly inefficient. You order noodle soup and you
are brought rice.

03-04-2007 luang prabang, lao

¨Do you find the words to describe all this?¨ Lou asked me. I replied that eventually words come to you and you´re able to choose the better ones, to pick up the appropiate ones to picutre what you feel, what you see, what you hear...

These last days I find it more difficult than ever to choose the right words. My mind seems not able to do the right selection to put down in paper what is going on.

a gift for mike

Yesterday I was chatting with Mike and I asked him what he wanted me to send him to Indonesia, as he is still there teaching. Chorizo? A flamenco outfit? Some Spanish music? No! He answered he wanted snow! I don't think it will last all the way...

Picture> Europa Press

china

Poor Chinese! The fate of this extraordinary civilization saddened me. For literally thousands of years it had followed another path, had confronted life, death, nature and the gods in a way unlike any other. The Chinese had invented their own way of writing, of eating, of making love, of doing their hair; for centuries they had cared for the sick in a different way, looked in a different way at the sky, the mountains, the rivers; they had a different idea of how to build houses and temples, a different view of anatomy, different concepts of the soul, of strength, of wind and water. Today that civilization aspires only to be modern, like the West; it wants to become like that little air-conditioned island that is Singapore; its young people dream only of dressing like ´businessmen´, of queuing up at Macdonald´s, of owning a quartz watch, a colour television and a mobile phone.
Sad, is it not? And not just for the Chinese, but for humanity in general, which loses so much when it loses its differences and becomes all the same. Mao understood that in order to save China it had be closed to the Western influence; it had to seek a Chinese solution to the problems of modernity and development. In posing the problem Mao was truly great. And he was great in being wrong about how to solve it. But always great, Mao: a great poet, great strategist, great intellectual, great murderer. Great like China, great like the tragedy it is now enduring.
If someone is able to look back at the history of humanity a few centuries from now, he will surely see the end of Chinese civilization as a great loss: because with it ended a great alternative, whose existence perhaps have guaranteed the harmony of the world.
Not by chance was it the Chinese who discovered that the essence of everything lies in the equilibrium between opposites, between yin and yang, between sun and moon, light and shadow, male and female, water and fire. It is by harmonizing differences that the world works, reproduces itself, maintains its tension, lives. So in fact there is some reason to regret the end of Communism - not for itself, but as an alternative, a counterweight. Now that it no longer exists there is a great disequilibrium, and even the side that thinks it has won no longer has the tension that stimulated its creativiy.

A fortune-teller told me. Earthbound Travels in the Far East. 1993.

Tiziano Terzani.

cajon de sastre (14)

In Asia you can kill yourself easier and cheaper than in Europe.

Klaus, a German guy I met in Si Phan Don (the four thousand islands), Southern Lao, talking about the astohishingly cheap prices of tobacco in all South East Asia.

spring is here

It seems Gods have forgotten the calendar and even though, us the humans, are in the spring, They are still in the winter.

The clouds, the winds, the sky... All of them have forgotten that the Spring is here and they ply reminding us that there was no winter in the Northern Hemisphere this year. They are scolding us.

People are surprised. They moan, they weep, they shrug their shoulders...And yet, in their cars they go to work every chilly morning.

work, again

Today I start working again in what has been my professional career since I finished my university degree and that I left parked to go travelling a year and a half ago. I feel like starting a new journey, the same feeling in my stomach, a travel through a country already known and a culture that it is my own. A big challenge. To build every day like an absolute brand new thing. A big challenge, the routine.

jose luis borges (2) instantes

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida, en la próxima trataría de cometer más errores. No intentaría ser tan perfecto, me relajaría más. Sería más tonto de lo que he sido, de hecho, tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad, sería menos higiénico, correría más riesgos, haría más viajes, contemplaría más atardeceres, subiría más montañas, nadaría más ríos. Iría a más lugares adonde nunca he ido, comería más helados y menos habas, tendría más problemas reales y menos imaginarios.

Yo fui una de esas personas que vivió sensata y prolíficamente cada minuto de su vida; claro que tuve momentos de alegría. Pero si pudiera volver atrás trataría de tener solamente buenos momentos. Por si no lo saben, de eso está hecha la vida, sólo de momentos;no te pierdas el ahora.

Yo era uno de esos que nunca iban a ninguna parte sin termómetro, una bolsa de agua caliente, un paraguas y un paracaídas. Si pudiera volver a vivir, viajaría más liviano. Si pudiera volver a vivir comenzaría a andar descalzo a principios de la primavera y seguiría así hasta concluir el otoño. Daría más vueltas en calesita, contemplaría más amaneceres y jugaría con más niños, si tuviera otra vez la vida por delante.

Pero ya tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo.

two t-shirts

Volviendo a casa después de un largo viaje y recopilando cosas y cajas de trasteros de familiares y amigos, paso los primeros días de mi regreso.

Abro cajas y descubro artilugios guardados por la que escribe en tiempos pasados con objeto de recordar, decorar, retener, entretener. Con cada caja descubro partes de mi yo antiguo, pasado, olvidado, trocitos de mi historia que parecen no tener ya sentido pero que, sin embargo, me hacen sonreir. Cada nueva maleta saca a la luz ropa que no necesito ni uso hace años. Ropa también olvidada y cuando es olvidada es porque no es necesaria.

Cosas y más cosas para crear una ilusión de seguridad a nuestro alrededor, de hogar, pero sólo es eso, una ilusión.

Yo ya sé que se puede ser feliz con sólo dos camisetas.

*****

Coming back home after a long journey and picking up my stuff from my relatives and friends' storage rooms, my first days here go by.

I open boxes and discover items carefully kept by the writer time ago in order to remember, decorate, retain, entertain. With each box I discover pieces of my ancient I, my past I, forgotten, bits of my history that seem senseless but, nevertheless, they make me smile. Each new suitcase reveals clothes I don't need and I haven't worn for years. Clothes also forgotten and when somegthing is forgotten means it is not needed.

Things and more things to build the illusion of security around us, of a home, bu it's only that, an illusion.

I know now I can be happy with only two T-shirts.

answers

Travel makes sense only if you come back with an answer in your baggage. Have you found it?[...] Quite the reverse: along the way I have lost even the two or three certainties that I used to think I possessed.

A fortune-teller told me. 1993

Tiziano Terzani

Cuando creíamos que teníamos todas las respuestas

de pronto cambiaron todas las preguntas

M. Benedetti

same same but different

People keep on asking me "How is the return?" and I keep on answering "It's ok I am taking it really easy". The truth is that everything seems familiar but very different this time. It is really ok.

It is true that people do not smile at me on the street and do not say hello. It is also true that I can not eat delicious rice dishes with my hands. It is true that buying drinking water and checking if there's water in the toilet to clean myself does not make sense anymore. It is also true that there are many more cars and buses than bicycles and motorbikes.

But even in this part of the world there are good things. It is just matter of point of view being able to appreciate them.

metro underground

El viajero que llega por vez primera a Madrid se encuentra una ciudad soleada y friolera, urgente, con prisas, como que llega tarde a algún sitio. El cielo del Madrid de los últimos días de invierno es de un azul celeste poblado de infinitas nubes blancas. Uno puede pensar cuando se asoma por la ventana para ver qué día hace, que la temperatura exterior es veraniega, de tan claro que el cielo está, pero no ha de dejarse engañar y ha de coger abrigo y bufanda para cada aventura en el exterior.

Una vez sale a la calle poco tarda el viajero en volver a penetrar en recinto cerrado, autobuses, coches, taxis, pero, sobre todo y ante todo, los vagones de tren del metro, sin duda alguna, el medio de transporte más económico y rápido de la ciudad. El metro de Madrid tiene sólo un inconveniente, que es subterráneo y, lo que gana en tiempo, el viajero lo pierde en belleza, pues desde el vagón del metro no se ve el sol.

*****

The traveller who arrives in Madrid for the first time, finds a sunny and cold city, urgent, in a hurry, as if it´s running late for something. The sky of the last winter days in Madrid is sky-blue crowded with infinite white clouds. One could think by looking out of the window that the temperature outside is summery since the sky is so clear, but one must not be fooled and one must take the coat and scarf in every outside adventure.

Once the traveller sets foot on the street it takes not too long to get into another closed place, buses, cars, taxis, but, first and foremost, the underground, the cheapest and fastest means of transport in the city. Madrid´s underground has only one inconvenience, it is underground and what the traveller saves in time, loses in beauty, because from the underground wagons you can not see the Sun.

los molinos del quijote

En esto descubrieron treinta o cuarenta molinos de viento que hay en aquel campo, y así como don Quijote los vio, dijo a su escudero.
-La ventura va guiando nuestras cosas mejor de lo que acertáramos a desear; porque ves allí, amigo Sancho Panza, donde se descubren treinta o pocos más desaforados gigantes, con quien pienso hacer batalla y quitarles a todos las vidas, con cuyos despojos comenzaremos a enriquecer; que ésta es buena guerra, y es gran servicio de Dios quitar tan mala simiente de sobre la faz de la tierra.
-¿Qué gigantes? -dijo Sancho Panza.
-Aquellos que allí ves -respondió su amo- de los brazos largos, que los suelen tener algunos de casi dos leguas.
-Mire vuestra merced -respondió Sancho- que aquellos que allí se parecen no son gigantes, sino molinos de viento, y lo que en ellos parecen brazos son las aspas, que, volteadas del viento, hacen andar la piedra del molino.
-Bien parece -respondió don Quijote- que no estás cursado en esto de las aventuras: ellos son gigantes; y si tienes miedo, quítate de ahí, y ponte en oración en el espacio que yo voy a entrar con ellos en fiera y desigual batalla.

los sonidos de la ciudad / the sounds of the city

Sirenas de ambulancias lejanas rellenan la soledad de una noche ventosa de marzo, el camion de la basura viene a recoger nuestros desperdicios, cuidadosamente separados y seleccionados para ser reciclados, dicen.
En casa el agua circula rítmica por los radiadores estratégicamente colocados y programados para mantener una temperatura confortable, ni frío ni calor. Alguien ensaya con su oboe en un piso más arriba, ensaya y me transporta a los años veinte del pasado siglo, a clubs de jazz, películas de Woody Allen, New York.
La campana, dong, las siete de la tarde. Alguien llama al ascensor para escalar los escasos 5 pisos del edificio y refugiarse en su casa con una temperatura confortable a ver la televisión. Mañana se levantará con el sonido de un despertador atronador.

*****

Distant ambulance sirens fill up the windy March night, the refuse lorry comes to pick up our rubbish, carefully separated and clasified in order to be recycled, they say.

At home the water runs rhytmic through the strategically placed and programmed radiators to keep a confortable temperature, neither cold nor hot. Somebody rehearsals with their oboe on an upper floor, rehearsals and takes me to the 20's, to jazz clubs, Woody Allen's movies, New York.

The bell, dong, it's seven o'clock. Someone calls the elevator to climb the scant 5 floors of the building and refuge in their home with a confortable temperature to watch television. Tomorrow he'll get up with the sound of a deafening alarm clock.

my new game

De acuerdo, lo admito. Estoy enganchada. Me fascina. Me conecto solo para ver quien se conecta. Me encanta el invento este del mapa para saber desde donde se conecta la gente a mi pequenyo riconcito.

Hong Kong, Camboya, India, mi amada India... Juego a adivinar. A algunos os tengo controlados. Se quien fue el que se conecto desde Ecuador y el que chequea en Australia. Los de Singapur y Tailandia, facil, era yo. China?! USA? Argentina! Me fascina, lo admito.

*****

OK, I admit it. I am hooked. I am fascinated. I connect only to check who is connected. I love the little map to know where from people connect to my humble home.

Hong Kong, Cambodia, India, my loved India... I play, I try to guess. I know some of you. I know who was the one that was connected from Ecuador and the one that checks from Australia. The visits from Singapore and Thailand, easy, it was me. China? USA? Argentina?! I am fascinated, I admit it.

el campanario / the bell tower

Hace frio pero tampoco tanto. La ciudad es grande y bulliciosa pero ni comparacion con otras ciudades antes visitadas y vividas. El taxista que me acerca a casa, amigable y bonachon, me pregunta tal que padre que cuales son mis planes, que si voy a trabajar. Sonrio. Me gusta.

Anteayer me desperataba el sonido de un gong a las 4 de la manyana. Hoy marca mis horas el sonido que llega del campanario de la iglesia cercana, llama a misa. Misa de 10, de 12, de 7... la misa de siete, la misa de mi abuela. Hace viento pero esta soleado.

*****

It's cold but not that much. The city is hustle and bustle but nothing compared to many other cities visited and lived some time ago. The taxi driver that takes me home, friendly and easy-going, asks me, like a father, what my plans are, if I'm going to work. I smile. I like him.

The day before yesterday a gong would wake me up at 4 in the morning. Today the sound from the bell tower of the nearby church strikes my hours, it calls everyone to mass. The ten o'clock mass, the noon mass, the seven o'clock mass... the seven o'clock mass, my grandmother's mass. It's windy but it is sunny.

asia

"In appearance everything is fine these days in Asia. The wars are over and peace reigns, with very few exceptions, over the whole continent. Everywhere people speak of nothing but economic growth. And yet this great, ancient world of diversity is about to succumb. The Trojan horse is "modernization".

I find it tragic to see this continent so gaily committing suicide. But nobody talks about it, nobody protests - least of all the Asians. In the past, when Europe was beating at the doors of Asia, firing cannonballs from her gunboats and seeking to open ports, to obtain concessions and colonies, when her soldiers were disdainfully sacking and burning the Summer Palace in Peking, the Asians, one way or another, resisted.

The Vietnamese began their war of liberation the moment the first French troops landed on their territory; that war lasted more than a hundred years, and only ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975. The Chinese fought in the Opium Wars, and in the end trusted to time to free themselves from the foreigners who ruled with the force of their more efficient weapons.

Japan, on the other hand, reacted like a chameleon. It made itself externally Western, copied everything it could from the West- from students' uniforms to cannons, from architecture of railway stations to the idea of the state- but inwardly strove to become more and more Japanese, inculcating in its people the idea of their uniqueness.

One after another the countries of Asia have managed to free themselves from the colonial yoke and show the West the door. But now the West is climbing back in by the window and conquering Asia at last, no longer taking over its territories but its soul. It is doing it without any plan, without any specific political will, but by a process of poisoning from which no antidote has yet been discovered: the notion of modernity. We have conviced the Asians that only by being modern can they survive, and that the only way of being modern is ours, the Western way.

Projecting itself as the only true model of human progress, the West has managed to give a massive inferiority complex to those who are no 'modern' in its image - not even Christianity ever accomplished this! And now Asia is dumping all that was its own in order to adopt all that is Western, whether in its original form or in its local imitations, be they Japanese, Thai or Singaporean.

Copying what is 'new' and 'modern' has become an obsession, a fever for which there is no remedy. In Peking they are knocking down the last courtyard houses; in the villages of South-East Asia , in Indonesia as in Laos, at the first sign of prosperity the lovely local materials are rejected in favour of synthetic ones. Thatched roofs are out, corrugated iron is in, and never mind if the houses get as hot as ovens , and if in the rainy season they are like drums inside which the occupants are deafened.

So it is with everyone these days. Even the Chinese. Once so proud to be the heirs of a four-thousand-year-old culture, and convinced of their spiritual superiority to all others, they too have capitulated; significantly, they are beginning to find it embarrasing still to eat with chopsticks. They too feel more presentable with a knife and fork in their hands, more elegant if dressed in jacket and tie. The tie! Originally a Mongol invention for dragging prisoners tied to the pommels of their saddles...

By now no Asian culture can hold out against the trend. There are no more principles or ideals capable of challenging this 'modernity'. Development is a dogma, progress at all costs is an order against which there can be no appeal. Mercely to question the route taken, its morality, its consequences, has become impossible in Asia.

Here there is not even an equivalent of the hippies who, realizing there was something wrong with 'progress', cried 'Stopped the world, I want to get off!' And yet the problem exists, and it is everyone's. We should all ask ourselves -always- if what we are doing inproves and enriches our lives. Or have we all, through some monstruous deformation, lost the instinct of what life should be: first and foremost, an opportunity to be happy."

A fortune-teller told me, 1993.

Tiziano Terzani

scary singaporean facts

Some time ago I wrote about Singapore. I said I liked the city-state with its mixture of asiatic warmth and western efficiency. At that time I did not know some scary things that I discovered yesterday during my 6 hours waiting at the airport and talking to a couple of Singaporeans.

Here they are:

1. Men are forbidden to have long hair.

2. Strikes are illegal, if you go on a strike you can end up in jail.

3. Chewing gum is forbidden.

4. The ratio of policemen to population is among the highest in the world.

5. Anyone can be arrested and detained indefinitely without trial.

And I guess there are many other issues...

the boy sitting next to me

'Are you Buddhist?' asked the boy sitting next to me. I did not know what to answer. I doubted. My teacher at the monastery said to me that being a Buddhist means being good, therefore, I feel myself like a Buddhist. But I think the boy sitting next to me didn't mean that so I answered, 'No I'm not'.

'I ask because you are wearing Buddhist beads and reading a Buddhist book...so is it just for fun?' Suddenly I felt kind of guilty, no it is not for fun, I meditate, I managed to reply feeling yet something like ashamed. I wonder what it is that makes you a Buddhist, at least in the eyes of other Buddhists. Is it some kind of ceremony you undergo, some kind of baptism? When can you say without a shadow of doubt in your voice "I am Buddhist."

en el tintero

Con todo lo que escribo y, se escribe en general, sobre todo cuando se esta en ruta, raro es el que no lleva aunque sea un mini cuaderno en el que apunta pequenyas ideas, anecdotas quizas, nombres o fechas... con todo lo que escribo, digo, siempre queda algo en el tintero. Cosas pensadas y puestas en papel que tras unas cuantas frases se quedan estancadas, como atragantadas. O cosas que se escriben y luego se autocensuran, se releen y se descartan o se quedan con el apelativo de 'borrador' esperando una mejor ocasion, que casi nunca llega, para volver a ser releidas, repensadas y re-escritas. Aqui hay unas cuantas.

Pensamiento numero 1

Estoy en el anyo 2.550. Anyo Budista, calendario que se cuenta a partir de la iluminacion del Buda. Previamente estaba en el 1.427, anyo del calendario islamico. Hace menos de dos semanas celebre el anyo nuevo chino (que no tengo ni idea de por que anyo van ya). Y en el fin de anyo del 2.006 estuve tomando uvas con holandeses y tailandeses en la playa.

Pensamiento numero 2

El dia que deje Lop Buri los trabajadores de la companyia de autobuses llevaban una camiseta de color azul claro. Cada dia llevan un color distinto. En Tailandia son fanaticos de los uniformes, hasta los universitarios los llevan. Para el aerobic y el Tai Chi, deportes practicados al aire libre, se llevan camisetas de un color distinto cada dia.

Pensamiento numero 3

El Mekong seria navegable a lo largo de sus 4.500 kms desde su nacimiento en China hasta el delta que se abre al Mar de China en Vietnam si no fuera por las cataratas que se forman en Si Phan Don, frontera de Lao y Camboya. Por este motivo en esta zona de Lao es en el unico sitio de todo Lao donde los franceses contruyeron una via de tren para salvar estas cataratas y poder pasar las mercancias hasta Vietnam.

chinatown

Bangkok's Chinatown. Street.

jungle book?

Bienvenida a esta asquerosa parte del mundo, reza el subject de un mail desde Espanya. Gracias, pero todavia estoy en Bangkok. Con bienvenidas asi dan ganas de darse la vuelta y coger otro tren en direccion opuesta.

Bangkok, Khao San y el shopping. Estoy casi, casi en casa. Taxis drivers, rush hours, humos, tatoos, piercings, musica de moda?, pelos de todos los colores, texturas y longitudes. Carne y mas carne en exposicion. A la venta? Si, a la venta. Mas tatoos. En los craneos, las frentes, rodillas, gemelos, espinillas (uy! eso tiene que doler!) Me pregunto si se podran hacer tatoos en la lengua? Esto es la jungla.

******

Welcome to this disgusting part of the world says the subject of an email from Spain. Thank God I'm still in Bangkok. With such a welcome one thinks about turning around and taking another train in the opposite direction.

Bangkok, Khao San and shopping. I'm nearly home. Taxi drivers, rush hours, smoke, tatoos, piercings and music, hair styles in every colour, texture and lenght. Flesh on show. For sale? Yes, for sale. More tatoos. On the skulls, on the foreheads, knees, calves, shins (that hurts!) I wonder if they can make a tatoo on the tongue. This is the jungle.

miedo / fear

Hoy llego, llego pegando fuerte, a la altura de la boca del estomago. El miedo. Tan solo 48 horas y estare metida en un avion de vuelta. Comienza el panico de la vuelta, esto tambien es parte de todo viaje. Tambien es ¨disfrutable¨.

Miro las noticias en busca de nuevas acerca del pais que deje algun tiempo atras y al que vuelvo en un suspiro. Nada nuevo y sin embargo, todo parece extranyo. Una unica cosa llama mi atencion; En Madrid estan a 5 grados centigrados! Por Buda que alguien encienda la calefaccion central antes de que yo aterrice, no llevo nada de abrigo en la mochila!

*****

Today it arrived striking hardly at the stomach. Fear. In only 48 hours I will be sitting on a plane back. The fear of the return begins. This is also a part of the journey, also enjoyable.

I look at the news in search of something new about the country I left some time ago and to which I'm going back in no time. Nothing new and, nevertheless, everything seems weird. Only one thing catches my attention, in Madrid it's five degrees Celsius! I need somebody to turn on the central heating before I arrive, I don't have any winter clothes with me!

angelus novus

"Hay un cuadro de Klee que se llama Angelus Novus. En él se representa a un ángel que parece como si estuviese a punto de alejarse de algo que le tiene pasmado. Sus ojos están desmesuradamente abiertos, la boca abierta y extendidas las alas. Y este deberá ser el aspecto del ángel de la historia. Ha vuelto el rostro hacia el pasado. Donde a nosotros se nos manifiesta una cadena de datos, él ve una catástrofe única que amontona incansablemente ruina sobre ruina, arrojándolas a sus pies. Bien quisiera él detenerse, despertar a los muertos y recomponer lo despedazado. Pero desde el paraíso sopla un huracán que se ha enredado en sus alas y que es tan fuerte que el ángel ya no puede cerrarlas. Este huracán le empuja irreteniblemente hacia el futuro, al cual da la espalda, mientras que los montones de ruinas crecen ante él hasta el cielo. Ese huracán es lo que nosotros llamamos "progreso" ".

Tesis 9 sobre una filosofía de la historia. Walter Benjamin

*****

¨There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees on single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.¨

From Walter Benjamin 1940 work, "On the Concept of History,".

a silly solo thought

To get in a country, Lao for instance, you pay an entry visa, around 30-35 US dollars for a month. To exit the country you pay a departure tax , 1 american dollar overland, around 10 dollars if you fly out. If you overstay your visa you have to pay a lot of money per day.

And I wonder why none of the countries gives back money if you understay your visa. Imagine you get to the border and the inmigration officer says, 'I see by the stamp on your passport that you still have some days left in our country... Do you wish to enjoy them or you´re sure to leave?' You answer that you want to leave and therefore the officer gives you back the corresponding money. Why don't things like this happen?

persiguiendo suenyos / pursuing dreams

Mi viaje comenzo atras, muchos meses atras, tantos que se pueden reunir y denominar de otro modo, anyo y pico. Anyo y 4 meses en Asia, con breve interludio en Espanya, visita corta y extranya. En este tiempo, me ha pasado casi de todo, de lo bueno y de lo malo.

Lei en algun libro de viajes que Viajar es perseguir suenyos y cuando eso haces no quieres hacer otra cosa distinta de la que estas haciendo ni estar en un sitio diferente ni con otra persona que no sea justo la que tienes a tu lado.

Todo lo que he escrito en estos meses son apreciaciones unicas, personales e imperfectas de los sitios y personas conocidos, de las experiencias vividas. Los hechos serian interpretados de modo distinto por cualquier otra persona. Nada es un unico relato verdadero, hay millones de relatos verdaderos sobre los mismos lugares y personas. No story contains the whole story.

*****

My journey started way back, many months ago, so many that they can all be gathered together and be called a year and something. A year and 4 months in Asia, with a short and bizarre interlude in Spain. During this time, nearly everything has come up, good things and bad things.

I read somewhere that Travelling is the pursuit of dreams and when you are pursuing your dreams you do not want to do anything else nor be anywhere else nor being with a different person next to you.

Everything I have written during these months are personal, unique and imperfect appreciations of people and places I have got to Know, of my experiences. These events might have been interpreted differently by others. Nothing is a true story, there are millions of true accounts of the same places and people. No story contains the whole story.