Amar… o mar

Arriving in Brazil

Jan- feb 15

Quer dizer, hoje … eu fiz amor … com o mar!

The first rays of the sun were laying colors on the waves breaking all the way to the beach. The beautiful lines of the island were shaping slowly with grades of green of blue when I took my short off to start swimming away, to the outside breaks… where the sea embraced me soflty.

Entering my body, my soul!

Today I made love to the sea, soflty, without a sound either than the waves breaking.

And they took me back to the shore softly with the foam of a champagne day!

Another day of light, of the colors of life… Brazilian colors, light, alegria, sounds of mato, of joy!

Happpiiiii Noo Yer.... as they say here! ... and sometimes the poet is ... back!

When the poet is back, it feels like birds singing spring, when he has time again, in his heart, in his soul, to spread love with his words, to lay the notes he hears, share what he sees, nature becomes divine... again... reborn in his poetry!

The poet is back... Alleluia!

Today is going to sing, through your fingers flying on this guitar's strings, this year is going to rock through the rimes you find in any place, even mythical metallic bands!

Thank you for remembering... and reminding us...that beyond the pain, the sorrows of experiences, there is always life blossoming, and it is turned into a poem... 

Many blessing to come...
only a good year to be harvested!

Blessed to be....

on your list, my dear friend Deepak!

" it’s the same train. it’s the same mail. perhaps it’s the same evening too. they say that time’s an illusion. i think about that sometimes. sampath just  posted on fb a scan of a marketing examination that I had set for his batch more than half a decade ago. when I looked at it i wondered about the questions i had set. and smiled. when he looked at it he wondered about the answers he had written. and smiled. and for  brief a moment we had transcended both time and space. and become just two smiling ends of one thought. i think about that too.

it’s the same train. it’s the same mail. it’s the same mountain. the same buffaloes grazing nonchalantly while the sun sets gently behind them. it’s the same smoke lazily making its way up while the fires hug the ground. the same boys chasing the same soccer ball on them same fields, kicking up the same dust that shimmers like a muslin curtain in that slanting dusk. and it’s the same guptajee feasting on this timeless scene -  eyes bright, mouth agape, and the heart quietly listening . to this song of love eternal

it’s the same new year coming back again and again. the same new beginnings easing the same old pain. i am a child blissfully lost in the laps of the sages. i am a bird gone high on the rock of the ages. it’s the same old time but somehow its new. it’s the same old rhyme yet its different too. the river has flown, the cells have replaced. the heart has known, the mind has erased. time’s an illusion yet something shifts. loves a collusion and these are its gifts. the same train, the same mountain, the same sights for us to see. yet it’s the first time we are seeing each other and that’s the way will always be J

to paraphrase that “timeless” song that pink floyd actually intended to write J the sun is the same in a relative way and we are just bolder. longer in breath. and one eternal moment further from death.

they say a new year has come to be. here’s to all the new mondays of our destiny. may they be lived ever fresh, ever free"

Two days to cross the Atlantic, the mediterranean and arabian seas... and get to Bangalore

Back in India to teach in ASB Bangalore a class of 2 weeks called EMSD (Environmental Management and Sustainable Development).

TBC

And back in Brazil this time to work with UFMG one of the best univeristies of the country and implement a project in an occupation...

which concept I had only come across in France in cities especially when squatters where invading empty buildings to... get a place to live! Especially in winter times.
But here we are talking a few thousands people taking in charge a piece of private land, building on it and wanting to leave any more...living with free water and electricity.

TBC

Good old Europe, the great waves of october, and an amazing week of teaching in Italian top universities

What a relief to be back home, back in front of the beah in Biarritz and rest... tydy my stuff, leave my travelling bags for a while.
Prepare some courses in english for Intl Masters in Italy in some of the best universities, to share my research, some of my findings...
TBC

After anaconda stories that huge tarantula on my doorstep and a contract on my head it was time to go ...

Go away from this border life.... at the Bolivian side, in such a depressed area, plaiged by drug smuggling, consumption, such high levels of prostitutions...
or you may die!

I came here for a project which i strongly believe in: short impactful pragmatic implementation of waste decentralized management of waste. And it did work, raised a lot of attention and inspired a lot of people.
Yet I am exhausted, in a bad health and need some rest.

I thought that swimming in that beautiful lake in front of Puerto Suarez would help every day to cope with the hammering heat and polvo!

The this old guy came to me after a few days: "Gringo, que estas haciendo? No sabes que hay bichos en la agua aqui!!? Serpientes que vienen a tomar aere... Dos semanas atras un anaconda se comi una vaca aqui en frente!"
That was it, gone my dream to swim every day, to cross the Pantanal...
Those dreams of Anacondas taking me by the throat hunted me for weeks!
Then the sweet tarantula a few weeks later!
Way smaller but just as scary especially in front of your door early morning.

TBC

Did I save ...Don Sylvestre?

Did he want me to save him?

As much as his broad surprised smile seemed to thank me…after recovering… some long minutes of anxious times for his family… I am still not sure.

After passing out, the old man of 84, already followed for heart and bload pressure problems was back in the hot waters of Aguas Calientes as if nothing had happened, those really hot waters emerging from the ground… that almost had killed him some moments ago.

How weird did it feel to practice CPR techniques again… after 20 years. Each move came back quietly. Hours and hours of repetition during the firebrigade training in Paris, practice under very high levels of stress, in le corp des Pompiers de Paris must have marked my cellular memory for ever: pulse, neck, belt.

5 strokes on the chest, 1 breathing, after having laid him down properly and pushed away stressed and useless air makers around.

This time I was getting a pulse, and soon his breath came back.

His wax skin color started to turn back to normal.

While doing my stuff I was really calm… but some moments after, laying on the grass a wave of sadness hit me. I guess it made me think about my father, same age… realizing how much I did not manage lately to spend valuable, simple time with him, to make peace… and he could him too, just go…like Don Sylvestre…letting the engine … stop!

Without having had a real opportunity to tell him how much I love him and how thankful I am for what I learned with him, perseverance, courage and faith… all under high proof here in Bolivia! 


Especially this roller coaster of a week!

But who am I to think I can save anybody?

What if people don’t want to be saved, or cannot be… they just go when their time is… up?

I am just accepting humbly to serve to the best of my capacities. Accepting work, companionship, encounters… with love… be it an anaconda in the Lagoa I have been crossing at the peer of Puerto Suarez (some stories of anacondas eating cows lately are haunting me!) or this tarantula in front of my door a morning this week!

This combined to a high pollution in the waters stopped my peaceful daily swim, which was such a salvation time!

But a start of sinus infection toped the wild Pantanal stories, and my dream to cross the lake.

I miss the water though, especially in this desert.

The heat hitting Puerto Suarez like a wave of plague and the PILOTO changing every day put me on my knees again so many times this week.

One day… the project would pick up and show its potential....