CONVERSATIONS

Inspired by hundreds of dialogues from the road. An important part of this post is an interview recorded and transcribed by Renzo Minotto.

How did your journey start?

I was sixteen when I got to know the Road. In the cradle of our relationship the Road showed me my country. When it considered my steps to be firm enough and my trust for it strong enough to take me abroad, I was eighteen. It allowed me to see different corners of my continent - Europe, touch Africa and even cross the Ural Mountains to Asia. All of these where relatively short trips that never lasted over three months - the time that my summer vacations from studies and work allowed me to take. In 2006 I was coming home from what was then my longest journey of 26 000 kilometres, from Estonia across Russia to Japan and back, when I realised that I did not want to return any more. After all returning meant going back when what I wanted was to go forward. Three months was too short to quench my thirst for the Road. For nine years I had only been allowed to take one sip from a cup overflowing with the living water - now I wanted to drink it up.

One journey begins much earlier than the traveller steps on the road: it is present in a dream, an idea, a wish, and then the will. Just like this after one journey I had made in 2001, I bought a small globe and placed it on my bookshelf. Then I took a red thread and marked with it the roads I had travelled. After I had finished I took a white thread and fixed it on the globe so that it would touch all continents in one continuous line – since then on, to make that line red became my aspiration. It was the moment of my engagement with the Road - I became a bride, but the groom had to be patient.

To leave or to stay - thinking back into it, the choice was not really there, taking one step at a time, I had naturally arrived to the point where I had to be – an exit. There was no argument to overrule what the past journeys had taught me, neither a voice louder than the calling of the Road. I left my home country on July 7, 2007. I was lifted up and carried away by the desire to always continue and never look back, to breathe in unison with the Road to wherever it would take me. My thirst for it had been its thirst for me – the journey, conceived nine years ago was then born and started growing as the Road unrolled itself underneath my footsteps.

How did you travel? Were you not afraid?

Security, money, languages that I did not know, alien cultures I would not understand, I hadn’t imagined what it would be like at all, yet I was not worried and did not seek a travel book to be my guide. I took the furthest point on the map, and directed my eyes towards that horizon. From Estonia to Japan, then to Alaska in the very North of American continent, then to Argentina and to its southern most point in the Land of Fire.

I travelled by hitchhiking, from person to person sharing the small space of their vehicle after our seemingly random encounter for a shorter or slightly longer period of time. I was coming from too far for anyone to have ever been or often even heard of the place, travelling towards a no-destination, so none could have actually taken me there.

To tell the truth, I felt each time I was asked where I was going, that I had already arrived. Free of prejudice or expectation each could give what they felt and ask or tell whatever they needed. I found people confessing things that probably their loved-ones had no clue of. I understood why it was easy – I was nobody, not even their priest could have had such a honourable position – a zero in their life. During such conversations I oftentimes felt that my “journey around the world” or whatever I called it, had just been an excuse to get to meet them.

Imagine 300 kilometres together with a stranger watching the horizon change; you are together but not facing each-other, feels as if each was rather looking into him or herself. You have four hours before the paths part again, till then it is up to you whether to speak or to be silent, to tell a story or an idea you had had that morning – anything is fine, the meeting is too short to matter, it does not have a past nor future, just the present moment.

You are brave, I would not be able to do what you are doing

I remember once one truck giving me a long ride from Regina to Winnipeg in Canada took me to a pig slaughterhouse in a place called Brandon, where he had to deliver some materials.

While the driver, John, was doing the paperwork, I got into a spontaneous conversation with a female receptionist on the gate. I was surprised that the plant was working at such a late hour looking at the flow of trucks with pigs coming in and going out empty. The woman explained that their labour never stopped, some 500 people worked on the plant and kept it functioning 24 hours for seven days a week. She then asked about my journey and I briefly told her how I travelled and lived. I saw her sincerely surprised, perhaps she had never thought of such kind of life possible. She then commented that could never live the way I lived – the phrase I repeated to her. We smiled to each other mutually understanding that everything was in place how it had to be, people doing what they were called to do or where life had placed them. As for me it would have been difficult, if not to say impossible, to work on a pig slaughter plant, for her a journey like mine seemed something unimaginably hard. So which one of us was brave then? Who is measuring and with what measure? Could a birch grow up to become a maple or a rose strive to be a lily? One should feel his or her nature and grow or act in accordance with it.

To explain this thought better there is a story known to have been told by one Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello (1931 - 1987):

“A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat on his strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked. "That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbour. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth - we're chickens." So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.”

For an eagle to act like a chicken should be difficult, and for a chicken it would be a suicide to jump off a high cliff, spreading out its wings to fly. It is dangerous and difficult to go against one’s nature. When you know yourself, you know your nature what you can and can’t do and even more than that – what you would possibly be capable of doing, your potential, then the one you will become would come after you and become your teacher.

You should be careful though, for just as there are good people who might help you, there are also bad people who can do you harm.

In all my journeys I have experienced a certain “human instinct” that united all people and was beyond the multitude of cultures and languages: one common place all came from, one direction all followed. That instinct allowed people to trust a complete stranger and give without expecting anything in return.

Although I live as a vagabond, most days not knowing what I would eat or where I would sleep, I have faith that what one needs is given and vice versa, what is given, one needs and thus has to receive. It would be also possible to believe otherwise – to say that there is a lot of evil in the mankind and that one can trust no-one but himself, that life is traitorous and unjust. Probably with that way of thinking I would never have left my home country. The way of thinking ought to help one live the way one wants to. So I put that faith into the temple - my body to be practiced through a religion – my life. As to evil, then I do not deny that it exists – but not in some or many men, it resides in each and every person and so does kindness.

Do you work to earn money for your travels?

There are things money can buy and then things that cannot be bought. I ask – what price could I put on my time, if that was my life’s time we were talking about? Imagine all relationship in the modern world going down to just buying and selling - what a thick curtain that would create between people conditioning them to give only if the exchange was fair or profitable. At the end of the day, perhaps their well would be full, indeed, yet they would find themselves dying of thirst in their spirits. When you give of yourself and not of your possessions, only then you truly give, writes Kahlil Gibran. Thus as long as you have yourself, you can give. Even if I walk with little possessions too worn out to be of interest to anyone, I can still give – I can give of myself. And that what I give I cannot put a price on, because what I have received has also come to me for free. I see a balance in giving and receiving but not quite like the salary-man giving to his workplace and receiving a check at the end of the month – this is exchange. Time to give and time to receive in my journey most of the time does not involve the same people or organizations, both are a need. By receiving a helping hand you gain one and as you have it, you shall also use it.

When the fruit has ripened under the sun and the bypasser wants to taste it - is that not a blessing to a tree?

When one’s field is as wide as the planet and the limit as high as the sky, then there is space to grow. As opposed to a seed planted in a greenhouse would have it’s security, no doubt, the artificial fertiliser would make it’s fruit bigger and the stem stronger, yet there is a price to pay – the scissors will come to cut the branches, and take all fruit away. The greenhouse – that source of security, could even limit one’s personal aspirations, for it has a plan of its own and an unquestionable schedule to complete.

An organization can be seen as a living body that one for a certain amount of hours in the day is serving with his life, becoming a part that organism – an eye, a finger, a toe, a foot, or the most desired positions – the lungs, the brain or the heart. Indeed the size of the salary of these three functions is much higher than anyone else’s – but one must think before he or she desires these positions: while a toe or an eye can take a rest while sleeping, the heart never stops working. There is nothing wrong with working for a pig slaughterhouse in Canada or any other place in the world if doing that one feels complete, benefited and satisfied – it is an inner feeling one can test before going to sleep. In any other case one has been enslaved and needs to take action to become free again.

Why people want money? I guess it is the power it gives – who possesses money, no matter how he or she has lived that day, what were their deeds or thoughts, could go to the best restaurant and receive a good service. A traveller who has money can decide where to go, what to eat and where to sleep. Money in that sense gives one a feeling of control over life.

When I was on the crossroads looking towards the road, I wanted to try to let go of that feeling of control. I believed that in reality people could only control very little. For example if one looks at those most important things like love, death, birth of the children, health etc. - these are beyond control of man yet have the power to completely change our life.

What did life have for me? If I stopped directing it, where would it direct me? Doing the things I had done many times before had put me into the state of blind automatism – I needed to wake up and start growing again through doing everything for the first and last time in my life.

Not only did I want to prove that life’s own current existed by entering it, I wanted to show that people were capable of giving without a thought of a personal gain. Four years depending only on people’s kindness – it is a testimony of how trust can win over fear and doubt; a story where one is not a master of the plan, but it is the other way around; and an experiment of what might happen if the lead is taken over by the creative power of life.

So you do not use money at all?

When I started this journey, I took along all the money I had, which was about 1500 US dollars. I had a scholarship to study in Japan, but had refused the plane tickets to travel by land. I started off with a friend from Belgium, we went across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia and China arriving to Japan in the beginning of September by boat from a Chinese port Quindao– the journey took us two months in which we hitchhiked, but also sometimes used a train or a bus, slept in my tent, in peoples’ homes or in a hostel. Naturally those four months that I later spent studying in Japan I lived without any economic worry. After that I joined a volunteer program called WWOOF that allowed me to live and help out a family doing organic farming for two months. When my Japanese visa was nearing its end I went to South-Korea. At that time I still had a large part of the money I had started with, but thought that I needed more to fly to America. I found work as a replacement English teacher for a period of three weeks, but when received my pay, felt a desire to return it – it was about 2000 US dollars. It was such a strange feeling as if that money did not belong to me. The road had to direct me, not the other way around – my heart understood it, my mind didn’t. I bought a ticket to go to Japan by boat and returned the rest - but had to ignore my mind to be able to do it.

As I then started walking, I suddenly felt an overwhelming feeling of doubt of what I had done. I walked slowly, didn’t hitchhike. At one point I sat down to take a rest on a bench when an elderly lady approached me. She asked if I wanted to take a taxi to go to the train station with her. I said I was hitchhiking. She suddenly pressed a 1000 yen (10 US dollars) bill into my hand and then disappeared in a yellow taxi. I went to a supermarket, bought provisions and started hitchhiking. It was strange that many people wanted to economically support my journey – I received 5000 yen even 10 000 yen donations as I was travelling North. I had never experienced anything like that – perhaps it was my doubt that triggered such reactions, I wondered. I never had to use that money though, just had it to comfort my mind “just in case”, because people also gave me food and shelter and there was nothing I needed to buy. My idea was to travel to the island of Sahhalin that is very close to Hokkaido – the northern most island in Japan, but the Russian Embassy in Sapporo refused to give me a visa as I was not a Japanese citizen. I still went up North, just to touch the sea in Wakkannai – the northern most point of the island. I was invited to drink a cup of hot milk in a small café when was told that a local farmer Watabe-san always needed people to help out on the farm. The owner of the café even made a phone call to make sure - that same day I moved to the farm. A few weeks later Watabe-san said he was going to organize a fund-raising event to help me get to America. I was to tell travelogues and cook Estonian boiled potatoes and cottage cheese cake. With two events we collected almost enough to get the ticket, I added everything I had as well and on June 26 , 2008 I came with a plane to Los Angeles, California.

It would be incorrect to say that I do not use money at all, I do when I have it, but when I don’t then it is also not a problem. I know how to live with little, but also realise that there is a long way to go to feel completely detached from material possessions. I cannot exchange anything for money – if people want to pay me for the work I do, then that sum could go through me to a good cause, but not to my personal needs. I do it because it feels right, no other reason.

How do you deal with hot and cold climates?

I have to give away the clothes that I do not need when I reach warmer places. In the same manner when I reach cold places people give me the necessary clothes. I do not really want to carry anything thinking of what I might need “tomorrow”. I have always received what I needed; the key is to know how to let go of these things when that need is gone.

In my religion we say that God has blessed you, but you say Life, Road, Destiny and other things…

Yet we speak of the same, no matter how you call it – it is a force that man cannot control, like a wind that blows into your sail and you can travel the seas. Then when that wind you feel is blowing against you, consider changing direction.

How do you manage with languages?

Although I have travelled 56 countries, the borders between them felt were man-made. The world is one, the understanding is beyond the language, religion, culture, racial or any other difference.

When I come to a place where I do not know the language, I begin by listening to how people speak. The sound of a new language often reminds me of a melody – all I need to do is learn to sing it. When people then speak to me I understand the meaning and in a short period of time learn to defend myself with a minor vocabulary. It is a time to simplify my thoughts and fit them into these words that I know – I feel like a child, each day I learn more and can express myself better.

Do you have a family? What do your parents say?

My parents and my brother live in Estonia. My parents have been a strong bow to my arrow, to use Gibran’s metaphor again. I am grateful to them and they in turn admire my flight. Do I miss them? No. If I missed them, I would want to return but I want to travel the world. When I am off the road for a while, I miss my journey.

My parents are like two birds who built a nest where me and my brother grew up, they themselves taught us to fly. Now I have travelled far and the only way for us to meet is on the Internet and sometimes when I have where to call me, we speak over the phone. They know me well and thus never would ask me to return. I respect them a lot for that strength. I know it is not easy especially during the times when they do not know anything about me. To go is always easier than to stay, I have experienced that on several occasions.

Do you think you would want to have a family of your own one day?

I could seek one hundred bricks to build a house. What is it that I have to seek and where to find it to build a home and a family? You say it a special person towards whom I feel in a different way. Yet that feeling is not born in my mind, but in my heart that does not follow logic. I have not found that person yet, I do not know if I will, neither am I searching. I rather want to learn to have a balance and a feeling of completeness and harmony of my own and if then someone would come along I would welcome him.

So often it happens that we seek someone to fill a gap, to help us balance, to give us happiness. And then when in these moments of personal imbalance we do find that somebody, then there are always problems. It is like standing on one foot and wanting another to support you – fear of losing that person is one source of problems and the other comes later when you finally know how to stand on both feet - the other does not match any more.

People are born alone and they die alone, they need to know how to walk alone. In fact all of our life companions – parents, children, friends, husbands and wives are temporary visitors, some stay longer some go sooner - one has to enjoy the moments together with them. If my turn will one day come, I want to remember that.

Four years is a long time for one journey...

Four years is neither short nor long, it is just time, I feel I have used it well. Yet it is a short time for a good education. I could never have learned what my journey has taught me from any book nor receive that experience through watching a movie. I love my road and my journey. They are full of surprises and always new, you never know where you are going to end up and what is going to be your assignment. But be sure that the place is prepared, the setting perfect for you to give or to receive. You come empty, no one waited for you, no one had expectations - you could become who you actually are in that moment. After a certain time you might hear an invitation to stay, if your heart agrees you can settle. But once you feel a part of the place and you hear “you can stay forever”, then it is time to go, to become a zero again.

Images from this post: 1) "On the road", North of Brazil, Amazon, 2009; 2)"Dreaming", Gulf of Mexico, 2008; 3) "Before the jump", San Blas Islands in the Caribbean, 2008; 4) "Eagle", Republic of Tuva, Siberia, 2007; 5) "Holding the world 1", Osaka, Japan, 2007; 6) "Apples from our garden", Estonia, 2006; 7) "The river", Palenque, Mexico, 2008; 8) "Folk costumes", Republic of Tuva, Siberia, 2007; 9)"Man with a music instrument", Beijing, China, 2007; 10) "A cup of tea", Kyoto, Japan, 2007; 11) "Holding the world 2", Guaitil, Costa Rica, 2009.