I dreamt of far-flung places along new coordinates,
warm winds of change,
and voyages of discovery that don’t entail geographic territories or maps.
I dreamt of salty air,
roaring waves,
rhythmic sunsets,
flamboyant crowds,
vivid laughter..
and hard-knock life
que saudade do Rio De Janeiro
The eccentric, controversial festival has gained quite the reputation, evident from the 55,000 tickets that were swiftly grabbed up, even after being offered on a raffle basis. The new lottery model was introduced after last year’s event was unprecedentedly sold out.
Even though it is organized in the desert, where space is not an issue, the limited capacity is imposed so that the festival still maintains some degree of manageability.
However, in the past few years its popularity has risen to mainstream status, and a level that, it can be argued, is no longer sustainable.
I jumped off the map of South America!
I couldn’t resist a visit to the “world’s most isolated inhabited island” – Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island / Isla de Pascua.
At about a mid-way point in the Pacific, between Chile and French Polynesia, or 1/3 of the way to the International Dateline (3800km, a 6-hour flight from Santiago), the island is a living legend.
Don’t worry, I meant that both literally and figuratively.
I don’t remember when I first saw the moai.. maybe a travel agency poster, maybe a National Geographic feature. But ever since, I just couldn’t shake the vision out of my mind. I’ve read about it, and it’s always the same bits of information told and re-told, but nothing definite. And then there were phrases thrown around like “the world’s unsolved mystery” and “a total enigma”.
I couldn’t contain my curiosity when I just found myself so (relatively) near.
Rio de Janeiro boasts a stunning natural location, the city sprawled along the coast and weaving in and out of bays and jungles, but that doesn’t exclude instability, crime, and poverty – and this results in a kind of melancholic appeal that may not be immediately recognized.
These are the same characteristics that give it its reputation and shape its main image.
In Rio’s peripheries you will find the infamous favelas (slums/shanty-towns), striking and quite scenic clusters of neighbourhoods that are speckled on the edges of steep hillsides all across the city’s vast territory. When first encountered it can be astonishing, as these examples of disparity indicate their transitional nature.
The visual aesthetic of these chaotic and unrestrained slums is a rush: a combination of cultural and visual symbols which personify it.
Rocinha, biggest favela in the Americas. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Cidade Meravilhosa is a city that can be seen as functionally disordered – confusing and messy, yet this anarchical functionality turns into a vortex of unabating energy that is not necessarily reflective of the realities of life within it.
It can also be defined in terms of massive social and economic contrasts: a vast gap between rich and poor, and a large number living in conditions of poverty. This resulted in many suburbs being made up of slums and situated on its hilly peripheries: hasty, disorganized, and fragmented city ‘planning’.
As it happens, the spirit of the favela is better viewed as a concept of contemporary art and a component of traditional Brazilian culture, where a connection between representation and experience show characteristics of the uncertainty of Brazilian cities.
It is fascinating how these architectural and planning patterns co-exist in Rio de Janeiro, which does have a structural plan and layout. That is also its uniqueness: their closeness to the wealthiest districts in the city, creating an image of striking social disparity and the marginalization of the urban poor.
Settlements in favelas are mainly informal, constructed without official permissions or building codes. The space is creatively negotiated by the residents, but it would have, otherwise, officially been dismissed as uninhabitable.
Favela dwellers, in other words, invent space. The settlements are never really considered ‘completed’, always in the process of progressing and spontaneously expanding.
CaRiocas, what Rio’s residents are known as, living in favelas build their own houses on top of already occupied lots, seeking to settle anywhere, however difficult it may seem. The huts are made of different materials and often use any scrap pieces of cardboard, wood, brick, plastic, fabric or any wayward objects that are found, and are assembled slowly, piece by piece. They don’t appear to be stable at all, but it doesn’t stop people from living there for years.
But the beauty of the favelas, the harmony of its people and their persistent energy can be felt – they are exhilarating places that grab the attention and curiosity with the kind of cultural energy that compensates for all the weaknesses.
People who disembark in Mykonos are very different but also very similar.
Applying the science of lifestyle, they shall be classified in 7 tribes:
The Jet-Setters
(who are fed up with Saint Tropez and Saint Bart’s)
Fascinated by the architecture and seashores of the island, as they see them from the sea, they usually refuse stubbornly to leave the wooden deck and step on the golden sand and the whitewashed pavements.
And if they get bored eventually of the Apollonian sun that shines above Delos, they turn to luxurious shopping to entertain their holiday boredom and their misery for being so rich.
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The Vacationers
(Landowners in a cosmopolitan Porto Heli)
They have sealed their relationship with the island by a multimillion contract; they buy a piece of land with a view (land without views is non discussable) they build, according to their personal taste, small rustic villas with design arcs and windswept embroidered curtains.
The virgin beach at Agios Sostis – they believe is their own secret utopia and they curse anyone for revealing to infidels the path to bohemian sunbathing.
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The Serial Mykonians
(They always say that they will never come back, but each year they reappear)
Each time they enter the ship to Patmos, they get off at Mykonos, as they harbour guilty love that binds them to this isle. They will appear with full bohemian chic outfits at Panormos, the beach that lonely riders used to favour, which has lately become a place to see and be seen.
Home to breathtaking Victoria Falls and spectacular Safaris, Zimbabwe is an exotic country with incredible landscapes brimming with diverse and exotic wildlife in their native and undisturbed reserves.
Eastern Highlands, the Zambezi Valley, Hwange, and Matobo Hills bear environmentally sustainable wealth due to the lack of mass tourism during in the past decade.
The people have realized the potential of their nation’s resources and their capacity, not only in making profit from sustainable tourism, but revitalizing that offer to build its reputation and establish a standard by taking pride and respecting their environment and their territory’s assets and attributes.
Certainly, it will take time for the country to develop new infrastructure and upgrade the existing deteriorated facilities but the changes that are gradually re-shaping Zimbabwean society are valuable and long-term.
Following that socio-political upheaval, the country faced a brief state of economic sanctions and national moratorium, which may have been a wake-up call as it has emerged stronger and refreshed.
A restored regard and respect for a constructive and efficient social order and promising future generated new collective and individual ambitions.
The music scene reflects a time-honored folk roots that people feel ties them to their heritage and spirituality, which they tend to celebrate and reinforce through communal connections, believing that the music strengthens it.
Many western travelers will appreciate the free spirit of Zimbabweans and their street scene where the warmth of people and the spirit of the community will be felt through music – its ability to unify and pacify people and create a positive attitude.
The caravan city harbors great books, mysterious letters—and a world of intrigue.
In the ancient caravan city of Timbuktu, many nights before I encountered the bibliophile or the marabout, I was summoned to a rooftop to meet the salt merchant.
I had heard that he had information about a Frenchman who was being held by terrorists somewhere deep in the folds of Mali’s northern desert. The merchant’s trucks regularly crossed this desolate landscape, bringing supplies to the mines near the Algerian border and hauling the heavy slabs of salt back to Timbuktu. So it seemed possible that he knew something about the kidnappings that had all but dried up the tourist business in the legendary city.
I arrived at a house in an Arab neighborhood after the final call to prayer. A barefoot boy led the way through the dark courtyard and up a stone staircase to the roof terrace, where the salt merchant was seated on a cushion, his head wrapped in a linen turban that covered all but his eyes.
The giant produced a sheaf of parchment, and in a rich baritone slightly muffled by the turban over his mouth, he explained that it was a fragment of a Koran, which centuries ago arrived in the city via caravan from Medina. “Books,” he said raising a massive index finger for emphasis, “were once more desired than gold or slaves in Timbuktu.”
He works for the guides, but there are no tourists. The problems in the desert are making all of them suffer.
During my time in Timbuktu, several locals denied that the city was unsafe and beseeched me to “tell the Europeans and Americans to come.”
But for much of the past decade the U.S. State Department and the foreign services of other Western governments have advised their citizens to avoid Timbuktu as well as the rest of northern Mali. The threats originate from a disparate collection of terrorist cells, rebel groups, and smuggling gangs that have exploited Mali’s vast northern desert, a lawless wilderness larger than France and dominated by endless sand and rock, merciless heat and wind.
Most infamous among the groups is the one led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Reputed to have lost an eye fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, he is known throughout the desert by his nom de guerre, Belaouer, Algerian-French slang for the One-Eye. Since 2003, his men have kidnapped 47 Westerners.
Belaouer’s men had assassinated an army colonel in front of his young family in that neighborhood a few months earlier. “Everyone in Timbuktu heard the shots,” he said quietly. He mimicked the sound, bang, bang, bang. ”The One-Eye has eyes everywhere.” And then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “I’m sure he knows you are here.”
Read the rest at the yellow square
Sword Dance and Shadowgraph, a live theatre performance with interactive computer-generated imagery, from Tokyo’s Galaxy Theatre, performed by Taichi Saotome.
Katana is defending himself against many (animated shadow) adversaries in a simulated fight choreography (shown as a CGI presentation). It’s a spectacular fusion of live theatre performance and computer-generated art, all broadcasted on youtube. New horizons in arts and media..
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts.
Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you.
This storm is you.
Something inside of you.
So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.
There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm.
No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades.
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive.
You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
- Haruku Murakami. Kafka on the Shore.
New York City is, in some way not measured in decibels, uniquely loud.
A remarkably complex machinery, it is alive with a constant flurry of activity and magnetism.
This is one city, bar London, that is so lenient and tolerant of every oddity that no one here must feel the need to suppress their quirks.
Who counts as a New Yorker? A person who, at that moment, calls NYC their home? Someone who discovered their true self there, who believes that they invariably belong there?
I suppose it’s open to more than one interpretation, although I will borrow from T.W: “one belongs to New York instantly; one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years“.
And this time I was on a quest to find the most beguiling and raw faces that hold all the honesty and all the deceit of this world in their eyes. View full article »
