Movimento
There´s something about being in motion, about seeing new things, experiencing new places, that is a fantastically enriching shock to the system. All your senses work overtime, assessing the alien environment. It´s not just the physical differences in location that is apparent, not just the temperature, climate, or immediate environment. It´s the new sounds, lingual, animal, or mechanical. It´s the rich, fullsome smells, a jumble of fumes muddled together by the humidity and heat. It´s also the feel of a place, that indescribable sense of atmosphere that is a heady mix of every potential possiblity, fed into one ripe location, at one point in time.
Travelling also gives you a sense of yourself, what you truly need, what you simply require, what you possess through a need to consume and own, rather than simply what keeps you going. It gives you a sense of what you use most, what you don´t need at all.
Seeing street kids in Rio, living truly hand-to-mouth, with no thought for the future, no sense of planning ahead or a potential for anything other than the immediate need that the present demands, brings this home to you with a thud. They live only for the now, and as a result, they are disparate, hopeless, angry, and confused.
A future is a true luxury.
This entry was written by , posted on April 27, 2009 at 10:22 pm, filed under Words and tagged movement, opinion, pop-up philosophy, travel. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The Knot
All being well, in less than 48hrs, I’ll be in Rio de Janeiro. I’ll have flown at least a third of the way around the world, after catching a train to London and attempting to sleep in Heathrow. I’ll have struggled to get comfy in economy class, (Mr Jason Finn, you know nothing of this torment) attempting to tuck my knees behind my ears, my head onto my shoulder, and (if I’m lucky) managed to get a jerky, awkward, surreal few minutes sleep.
Not that I’m complaining, about any of this. Galatea and I have been planning this trip for over a year, scheming, dreaming, and willing it into reality. Now that it’s less than two days away from being real, I wouldn’t change anything. We’re going to see Brazil, the country the size of a continent. We intend to play, train, and watch, the beautiful game of capoeira. We hope to mooch our way up the coast, swimming, sunbathing, mucking about, and generally enjoying ourselves. Sounds fantastic, no?
There is a massive knot in my stomach, one that has sat there for a week or so, gradually getting bigger and bigger, more and more domineering, like a spiteful unborn fear, wriggling and twitching it’s mean little dance inside my stomach, beating out the jumpy rhythm of its fear on my torso, and manifesting my apprenhensions in a tight, ropey ball of the unknown, wedged in my midriff. Ironically, the only times I have appeased this little black hole is by playing capoeira, in the two rodas we played to celebrate our departure. The closer I get to flying, the bigger the fear gets. I don’t know that much about it, other than it is borne from the unknown, from a thousand decisions as yet unmade. Brazil is (so I have heard) a dangerous country, especially in the cities. Armed gangs, muggings, robbery, scamsters, etc, are all prevalent. But it isn’t this I fear. (although I might be wise to fear it)
It’s the thought that I, and I alone, am responsible for my journey through life. It’s the thought that I am padded, insulated by the country I live in, and that I might well get a short, sharp shock as to how life is. I’m aware that I’m naïve, but exactly how naïve is yet to be told.
Wish us luck, we’re about to be beach bums for a few months, and we need all the luck we can get!
This entry was written by , posted on April 22, 2009 at 12:00 pm, filed under Words and tagged advice, lifestyle, nerves, philosophy, travel, worry. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Illustrations are just ambitious doodles.
Doodling is a wonderful source of relaxation. It’s escapism, therapeutic distraction, and a very instinctive time-killer. When it comes to drawing, my sense of depth or perspective is pretty limited, my aptitude for anatomic proportion is childlike at best, but when it comes to abstract, organic shapes and modular forms, I like to humour myself by entertaining the idea that I’m not that bad.
“Anyway”, I tell myself, “If I was any good, I’d call myself an Illustrator. I don’t lay claims to that level of greatness. Doodling isn’t even a real hobby, I don’t have to be good at it, I can just scribble away and hope it looks nice”
Whether it’s to kill a half-hour waiting for a train, to clear my mind of the busy busy to-do list at work, to zone out for ten minutes, or simply as a brainstorming aid, doodling needs little more than a pencil stub and any sort of paper…and even that’s not strictly necessary. Doodles are time-fillers, little visual panaceas, and the catalysts for countless unborn inspirations. (more…)
This entry was written by , posted on April 7, 2009 at 9:24 pm, filed under Images and tagged design, doodle, draw, etch, illustrate, Inspiration, scribble. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Death is Awesome
I woke up at an indiscernable point in the night. My toe throbbed like a fleshy, vicious alarm clock, warning me into awakeness, waking me up with dull but unrelenting pain. I had inadvertantly created a tourniquet, a little cotton valve, and turned my toe into a minute bloodbank cul-de-sac,a little sacco di sangue. I unwrapped the thread gingerly, and at that moment I experienced something; then, it felt fresh and blunt, but now, while not common, is certainly not unusual.
It’s hard to describe the sensation I had; it was more a lack of sensation, combined with a huge awareness of self. I couldn’t hear anything at all apart from myself, I could only just make out shapes in the darkness, and only felt the cocoon of my bed and the duvet. I felt sensory deprivation as it should be; unexpected and brief, without immersion tanks and salinated water; without. Above all, I felt a sense of dread; a feeling of instant and unshakeable mortality. I understood, albeit for a short second, that I wasn’t unbreakable, that I wasn’t God, and that I was lacking in any sort of immortal superpowers. This intense realisation caught me unawares and sleepy, and I think at the time, I was more aware of the sensory deprivation that was felt than the realisation of my mortality. I went to sleep with wild thoughts and a toe that tingled with new oxygen.
The two distinct senses, one external, and one internal, continue to strike me from time to time, always independantly, but one often tinged with the insinuation of the other. The feeling that grabs me most, now that I understand it more, is the one that I cannot quantify. Sensory deprivation is easily acheived and explained; the sounds of your various biological systems keeping you alive can be repeated ad infinitum with a stethoscope, or even with the naked ear, if you reduce the background noise of the world around you (by the way, technological “noise reduction” systems can’t acheive the same effect). No, the feeling that stops me dead (har, har) is the one I can’t replicate, the one I can’t explain away; the feeling that, yes, my thoughts are bigger and grander than the fleshy vessel that contains them, and no, I won’t be having them thoughts forever. Yes, the casing of my abstract thought is temporary, and no, I can’t replace it. The marvelous wonder of evolution and biology that allows me to do so much, to acheive such magnificent acts as the use of tools, the creation and grasp of the abstract, (and fuck, the ability to create life) is also so cruelly restrictive. The simian shroud that I call “me” is seemingly so enabling, but god-fuck-a-monkey, it is also the swift and definite disabler. (more…)
This entry was written by , posted on April 5, 2009 at 2:29 pm, filed under Words and tagged death, dying, eternal, finite, human, life, mortal, mortality, sense, sensory. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
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