On the road: ARGENTINA: DIALOGUES

Friday, 11 June 2010

ARGENTINA: DIALOGUES

I am 28, going for 29. Still travelling around the world.

"There goes your youth," say the drivers taking me along the way, "you have given it to the road."

"How long is your journey? When will you settle down? When will you reach home?" ask others.

"In seven years. I walk slowly. Why do you ask? I do not know. All I know is that I cannot stop. I have to finish what I have started. And the journey is still long. I feel as if something was pushing me in the back and it gives me strength."

"Destination?"

"Here and now. Always. Yesterday has gone. It is nothing but a story. Tomorrow has not yet come. I like the road moving underneath me - the horizon always far and unreachable. As long as I am on the road I have made it."

"Fear?"

"I could travel with fear yet I choose not to. I find it quite inconvenient. My thinking - ought it not help me live the way I live? I rather choose to believe in God and have no fear. I feel protected for I am not alone.

"Are you a missionary?"

"No."

"What is the name of your church?"

"I do not belong to any church, yet at the same time I might belong to all churches."

"Is your purpose to get to know the world?"

"To discover it. To continually make new my senses. To be awake. To feel alive. To live my dream. To be happy. To be renewed every day. To empty myself from everything that was to be able to fill myself with everything that is."

"You are an egoist. You only live for yourself."

"So does an apple tree. Yet when it has matured and the fruit ripened it gives in abundance to all who want to eat from it. To saints as well as to sinners. It gives because it has without thinking who is worthy."

"What about love?"

"I cannot seek it. Yet when it seeks me I shall follow it. For now the only love I know is for the road. So I follow it."

"Your husband?"

"Yes, the road."

"Your child?"

"Our child - the journey."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: donde estassssssss!!!
atte Bren de AVA...del oncoloogico; June 12, 2010
Carina said...: Para Brenda, AVA y AFANIC:

No me dejaron entrar otra vez a Bolivia. Estoy buscando por otro camino...
Llegue hace unos dias a la frontera de Argentina con Brazil y Paraguay en Puerto Iguazu. Les extraño mucho y espero que nos volvemos a ver pronto! Carina; June 15, 2010
Anonymous said...: oh nena esperamos lo mismo los niños te extrañan mucho....
...cuidate y espero estemos en contacto.
^^; June 17, 2010
Anonymous said...: Lovely :) You've inspired me to start traveling too (as soon as I am a bit older and have saved up some money).

Take care.; October 08, 2010

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CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO SEE THE LATEST PHOTO ALBUMS

TO VILLA ANGOSTURA

This is the story of how I unexpectedly discovered another paradise corner of the earth. The truck driver Pedro was merciful enough not to let me out on an empty crossroad in the middle of the night and brought me home in Junin de Los Andes. When the next morning I was looking at the map, the idea of going back in itself became alien, even after Pedro and his wife Olga had said the road to Villa Angostura be empty and dangerous for the lack of pavement. These landscapes I saw when traveling from Junin de los Andes to Villa Angostura on May 12th were thus a true surprise present. The photos were taken thanks to my kind ride - Jorje and Lucia, who stopped every now and then to record at least a tiny bit of what we saw.

AS SOUTH AS POSSIBLE

A good-bye to Chascomus (in the province of Buenos Aires) on the 8th of May ment a new beginning - a return to a round zero where past was just a story and future a white sheet, yet to be written. I met people and got to know them for the given time - for however long the journey lasted. At night there was always a safe place to stay as if prepared, and not once I experienced hunger. I was on the road in total for seven days arriving to my destination in Punta Arenas on May 15th.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Confucius

Kenji Miyazawa

not losing to the rain
not losing to the wind
not losing to the snow
or to the heat of the summer
with a strong body
unfettered by desire
never losing temper
cultivating a quiet joy
every day four bowls
of brown rice, miso
and some vegetables to eat
with everything
never letting emotion
get in the way
watching and listening,
and understanding
and never forgetting
in the shade of the woods
of the pines of the fields
being in a little thatched hut
if there is a sick child
to the east
going and nursing over them
if there is a tired mother
to the west
going and shouldering her
sheaf of rice
if there is someone near death
to the south
going and saying
there's no need to be afraid
if there is a quarrel or a suit
to the north
telling them to leave off
with such waste
when there's drought,
shedding tears of sympathy
when the summer's cold,
walk in concern and empathy
called a blockhead by everyone
without being praised
without being blamed
such a person
I want to become

2001: Summary

Destinations: 1) Louvre Art Museum, Paris, France; 2) "where the green meadows reach the snowy mountain-tops, and in the sky you can see the weather forming", North of Scotland; Travel companion: Piia Taremaa (until Paris). In the second part of the journey I hitchhike on the wrong side of the road and end up in Italy. Scotland is cut off once again when I spend the night in a British prison in Dover, as I enter the country illegaly (unknowingly). After my deportation to France I seek to find the tundra in the North of Sweden and Finland. Duration: 6 weeks. Budget 100 DEM

2005: Summary

MY HITCHHIKING CV