Rambling and Raving

so much life, so little blog... Stromboli, March 27

coincidancer — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 23:56:27 GMT

I have not written since January. So much has happened. I am sitting in my very own little house on the flanks of the volcanic island of Stromboli, in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea just North of Sicily. There is a lavaflow pouring out of a new hole on the other side of the volcano since the day arrived here, a spectacle I have been wanting to see all my life, and a week ago there was the biggest eruption the mountain has had in over 50 years and lava and glowing debris fell not 500 meters from my backyard. But let me go back a bit, to fill you in. I left Bali on the tenth of January and arrived in Vienna on the 13th after a stopover in Bangkok. Barely had time to find me feet, repack my bags and see my friend Bernie one evening, before I traveled with my parents on to Morocco. We had a flight from Vienna to Agadir on the 16th, switched to a rental car and drove about a hundred kilometers to the town of Taroudant, where we spent a few nights in the fabulous Hotel Gazelle D'Or. Spent the first week on the road, traveling in the South, around Mirleft, Guilemien, known for it's market, and over the Atlas Mountains, driving through breathtaking mountain and desert landscapes and staying in a number of atmospheric hotels in converted old forts and palaces. The second week we spent in Marrakech, the pink city, staying in old Moroccan mansion or Riad where we made friends with the very interesting owner. He is seemingly a Danish aristocrat who married a Moroccan noblewoman and has been living in Marrakech for over thirty years, and his wealth of interesting stories and useful tips made our stay and outings into the souks and bazar and the famous Djmaa El Fna particularly informative and fruitful for shopping. He also convinced me and organized the situation for me to perform a couple of fire sets on the famous Djmaa El Fna square, that is the focus of the old Medina and the only UNESCO Verbal World Heritage Site, honored and protected for it's human and cultural content, it's storytellers and musicians, jugglers and acrobats, soothsayers and mountebanks. Marrakech having or as long as history recalls a meeting and trading place and the most Northern stop on the rich Caravans traveling and trading goods from sub-saharan African regions. One of the boys working in the Riad, who's father works on and with coordinating the square's performances and spaces accompanied us and found me a group of Gnawa musicians who accompanied me. The performance was well received by the audience and an honor for me. One evening, while strolling across the part of the square that after sunset fills up with tables and outdoor kitchens and turns into a huge open air restaurant serving up all kinds of Moroccan specialties, I heard my name being called. Sitting at one of the tables were five friends of mine who I had met and hung out with last spring and summer, in Turkey and Italy respectively, at Soulclipse and Sonica. It was a nice coincidence and they are lovely people and I enjoyed spending time with them in Marrakech as well as Essaouira, where they traveled to on the same day we did and remained for two more, before heading back north towards Tangier and the ferry to Spain to return to Portugal, where they had come from in their bus. The last two weeks of our month long trip we spent in Essaouira, a medieval Portuguese built harbor town on the Atlantic coast. Here friends of my parents have bought a little winter house, a beautiful, rustic farmhouse in the olive groves outside of town, and another friend of the family, and the first love and lover of my life, Helen has been spending winters here and had recommended the place to us, for a pleasant and relaxed longer stay at the end of our trip. Essaouira is a charming town, with it's thick ramparts complete with canons pointing out to sea, it's lively harbor and fish-market and it's laid back medina, labyrinthian alleys and unsuspected little squares. For me it was a particular pleasure to spend time with my dear friend Helen. We met and became lovers nearly twenty years ago, and have remained close friends, once I got over the breakup, over the years, though we have seen little of each other. She became a close friend also to my parents over the years and we saw each other here and there in Vienna or Stromboli, and my wedding in Mexico, but this was the first time we have had a chance to spend quality time together and really catch each other up on each others lives in a long time. This was a lot of fun, because we have always felt very closely and intimately connected, she is my best friend from my youth in Vienna and it was nice to experience that our feelings were still mutual and strong. And I am glad to have friends in these times of increased change and uncertainty in my life. Pretty close to a month after our arrival we left Essaouira in the morning for a flight from Agadir to Vienna on the 13th of February. Though the time in Vienna was again short this time I managed to connect with the few friends that I am still in contact with in Vienna and drop in for the until now yearly evening or afternoon of chatting over tea or coffee. On the 19th my dad and I caught another early morning flight from Vienna, to Catania, traveled from there by rental car to Milazzo and from there by hydrofoil to Lipari, arriving the same afternoon, in expectation of our appointment at a notary public the next morning. To make things short, we spent the next week in Lipari, Stromboli and Sicily taking care of and expecting the final details of the purchase of a small house on Stromboli. The former owners were a German couple, him a trained engineer and passionate amateur vulcanologist and photographer, and they had approach us and offered us the house since the are going through a divorce and needed to liquidate some of their assets. This was in the summer of 2005, and we have been waiting for Sicilian bureaucracy and other circumstances since then. Over this time it became clear that rather than just buying the house as a possible vacation house for the colder seasons, when my parents' house down by the sea, where we stay in the summer is rather uncomfortable, it would be most useful for me as a main residence, seeing how I as feeling less and less comfortable in Bali and in need of a place to stay, wanting to return to Europe. I finally arrived here in Stromboli, with the house being legally mine, the contract in my pocket to move into the house, on the 27th of February. If I had any kind of doubt that I was making the right move they were in my mind definitely laid to rest when on the very afternoon I arrived the volcano started emitting a lavaflow !!!! It is now pouring down one side of the mountain into the sea, in a "safe" location and about a 45 minute hike from my pad ! It has only done the lava flow thing four times in my lifetime, and since I have been coming here, at 18 months of ager in '72 and I missed all the other three occasions, due to youth or absence and had always hoped to see it one day. Last one was in 2002, but although it lasted a few months it was off season and it stopped three weeks before my arrival, that time. This time they nearly did not let me on the boat to come here from Lipari, since I was still on my way from Sicily where we signed the contract, and they were supposed to let only residents embark. But I pulled out the contract for my new house, the ink barely dry, and so did manage to arrive the same afternoon. That evening I hiked with some friends to a place where you can see over a ridge down onto the Sciara del Fuoco, the slope of fire, where the huge glowing tongue snakes down the black slope, causing loud explosions where it pours into the sea, sending huge billowing vapor clouds up into the air. I have seen a few things in my time, and have spend some time around volcanoes, but there are no words to express the primal and elemental powers unleashed before me. The most amazing life fire-sculpture ever !! The house is the last one in a little alley leading from the main road up towards the mountain and behind my place there is nothing but some olive groves, broom bushes and wilderness. Two hours steep hike and you are sitting on top of the mountain, surrounded immediately by the blue sea, looking down into the crater and at the moment seven vents in front of you, ejecting lava, launching lapili and emitting smoke and gasses, erupting about every quarter off an hour, when the volcano is functioning normally. My garden itself, and I have some in front and behind the house, has two lemon , an orange, two apricot trees, a not very tall, but fat, palm, a cypress and a big olive tree, hibiscus, bougainvillea, oleander and a huge caperbush !! Loads of succulents. The house was not only left in great shape, but also fully furnished, though it's not all pretty, definitely useful. Stove, fridge, washing machine, dishes, furniture, sheets, blankets, stereo and a fully equipped workshop and tool-shed, and even a Huffy bicycle !! I have about five porches / terraces and three cisterns, which are important due to Stromboli's lack of freshwater spring. Have a bed room and a living room, each about 20 square meters, a small kitchen and bathroom. Heated by a terra cotta wood-burning oven. Also a separate guest-room, with small bathroom and outdoor kitchen and breakfast nook, which I plan to rent out during the summer months for some much needed income. There is one other room, next to the two main rooms, but for now without a connecting door that for now serves as a storage room or "magazino" that has a bed in it. Hope to make this eventually my bedroom, after some serious changes involving builders... Stromboli is a very young volcano and normally known for it's very regular activity, which involves frequent, several times per hour, eruptions of gasses, lava, rocks and ash that reach a height of rarely over 150 meters high, most of the ejected material falling back into the crater or closely around it, slowly accumulating to eventually slide down one side of the mountain, that is a barren slope of ash and rocks, into the sea. This slope which is in the other side of the island from the village is called the Sciara del Fuoco, the fireslope. In the rare case of a vent appearing on the Sciara, below the crater and a lavaflow continually flowing out of it down the Sciara into the sea, all bets concerning Stromboli's eruptive activity are off. Generally then there are no regular eruptions, which means the vents in the crater can cave in and get clogged. and then... The other night, I had fallen asleep reading in the late evening in my comfortable chair in front of the terra-cotta oven, I woke from the rattling of the doors and windows. At first I though a strong gust of wind or storm and only when it continued for over five seconds I understood. Within seconds I was on the roof terrace and before me a fountain of lava and incandescent rocks shooting from the crater at least 400 meters into the sky, huge black clouds of ash, lightening bolts of electrical discharges flashing around them and rocks, lava bombs and glowing bits raining down on the whole top third of the mountain and landing down to below 400 meters and no more than half a kilometer from my backyard. Fires started immediately, whole trees seemingly going up in seconds. though they died down soon and the fire did not spread, thanks to it having rained and being wet. I'd say I caught about the last 20 seconds of it, and there was definitely some moments where it was not clear to me if this was as big as it was going to get or if it was going to grow to engulf the whole island in a apocalyptic firestorm. ...is this too late to wonder about the wisdom of spending most of everything you own on a house on an active volcano...?!? no, seriously, I love it here and can't believe my luck. For now I am staying until the beginning of May, exciting, also because Easter is one of the times of the year I have never been here in before. I am getting comfortable in the house, exploring what is here and thinking of possible changes. Getting things from the other house, including firewood from our pile, since the nights have been quite chilly. Have received a package from my mom that had some useful items from Vienna, including covers for the cozy raw silk filled duvet I bought in Chengdu in spring 2005. Also brought some nice things, like a beautiful Alladin-like tea set in beautifully red glazed pottery, I bought in Morocco, including some beautiful candleholders Helen had made there. There are quite a few things I would like to do to this house over time, but it is very convenient that it was completely furnished, since it is difficult to get things here in Stromboli. Everything is perfectly adequate until I have the time and money to make the changes I want. Shipping the rest of my things, books, CDs, posters, pictures and stuff will do a lot to flavor the place. I think it will be easy for me to feel a home here. I am also in the process of getting residency here and of changing all the billing in the house, electricity, telephone, water, property tax over to my name. I have always loved and been fascinated by this little island, since I started coming here, and practically every summer since I was 18 months old. It is the only place, I return to, where I have early childhood memories and people have known me since I was a toddler and where I see friends I used to play with when we were little kids. So to me it is and has been home for a long time, but I know that living here basically all year round and outside the season is whole other situation, in amongst many ways also socially, since there are only about 500 permanent residents. I have some big projects involving me with this island in a more active way, for which having the house was instrumental, I will tell more about that, later By June I should be back here, also to help my parents around the house, my dad still being handicapped by his back, though it is slowly getting better due to twice a day gymnastics he does most rigorously. For now I don't have an internet solution yet, and it looks like for a while I will be using the achingly slow land phone-line once I can, since connectivity is one of the areas in which the Aeolian islands and especially Stromboli is very underdeveloped. At the moment I can only go online for a minute once or twice a day to load mail, but I will start to upload some images as soon as possible. So, that about covers it. Plenty of changes and new beginnings in my life. Hope you are having a good spring. Love, Laughter, Light & Lava .

P(o)ilgrimage to Pai, Nov-Dec 2006

coincidancer — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:32:31 GMT

I just returned to Bali after just about a month in Thailand. From Bangkok I made my way North by bus, first by overnight bus ride, first class, on a double decker, where the trip includes blankets, a snack and drinks, all served by a "ride attendant" in uniform. Arriving at 5 in the morning in Chiang Mai I changed directly to a little mini bus group taxi for the three and a half hour ride to Pai. Pai turned out to be a yet charming little town, although the changes wrought by a sudden increase in Tourism over the last three to five years are visible everywhere. Pai lies in the lovely green, relatively flat valley of the Pai river and is surrounded by at this time lush wooded hills. It's location has long made it a meeting and trading place for the many hill tribes, or ethnic minorities, that live in all over the hills in this part of Thailand, near the golden triangle of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. Lisu, Akha, Lahu and Hmong, to name but a few, most of them with cultures distinctly different from thai, in language, religion, social behavior, tradition, architecture and fashion. Pai has for some time been a convenient and a bit off the beaten path base for hiking and trekking excursions to what used to be some of the more remote of these, many of the classic three day, ride an elephant, raft a river, sleep in tribal long house and smoke some opium adventure for backpackers. Pai has about three main roads, most houses on these are either guest houses, restaurants, internet cafes or any combination of these. The numerous brand spanking new ATM machines and the seven-eleven were the first visible sign that things are changing. None the less the town retains a lot of it's charm and the pace and atmosphere is relaxed and friendly, until weekend tourists, many of them Thais from Chiang Mai. The streets are lined during the day with hill tribe women selling their exquisitely worked appliqué crafts, in forms of bags, clothes, pillow covers and place mats. There are many bars and funky little places to hang in and around town, many of them by the riverside and the typically thai funkiness and creativity never seems to finish to come up with cool architecture, designs and styles. The river itself is cold and fast flowing with sandy banks and makes a peaceful impression, though it caused severe and destructive floods, just a few years ago. It was here on the outskirts of town where I found the P.S. Riverside guest house, the base for Nick Woolsey's play camp and one of the main reasons for coming. Although Nick was at this time not there, having gone to Chiang Mai for a few days, which I knew through email, I quickly spotted and met his friends, Dan and Christa from the States, Ronan from Ireland, Maddi, a lovely lass from the Basque country, and Oren from Israel. Nick came back a day later, by which I had already made friends with the rest of the crew. He had been around for nearly two months and was well moved in. I moved into one of the available bungalows, though not right by the river and with out hammock, which I consider essential in a bungalow. It was great to hang out with this guys, they are lovely people and Nick and and Ronan both extraordinarily talented poi players, and to be able to watch them and see what they are working on was a great pleasure and inspiration. He has been putting in a lot of his energy into creating his website, www.playpoi.com , the filming and production of his DVD "The Scales of Poi" and touring all over Europe teaching workshops and spreading his poilosophy, and had come to Pai to relax, catch up with some work on his computer, and all kinds of projects and just slow down, recuperate for a bit and have time and space to practice and be a poioneer. P.S. Riverside is still being developed and we had the use of a fantastic roofed wooden octagonal platform with at least six meters diameter, Nick has bought a mirror and a basic sound system and the platform was a wonderful place to practice or watch others do so . I did not practice much myself, I have to admit, also because I hurt my shoulder some weird way, not even playing poi, but I obviously absorbed a lot and asked people for the right pointers, since my practice since I have been back is showing increased results. I had a very laid back time, socializing a lot, reading and scootering on little excursions to nearby waterfalls and, though it took me a week to discover them, to the nearby hot springs, which are piped into all kinds of big tubs in several little operations near the natural spring, which the government is asking 400 baht entrance fee now. Since the tubs are also nice, and the resorts ask only 100 baht for their use, that's where we went. It was pretty hot during the sunny days, but nights were much colder than I, or most of us, had expected and in the mornings it often took until ten for the sun to burn of the morning mists. The food was, as always and everywhere in Thailand, fantastic at most places in town and good parts of our days were spent ordering, waiting for and eating delicious curries and spice thai dishes. It was nice to get to know Nick a little better, since I had barely done so when I met him for just moments at the EJC in Ireland this summer. We had some good and interesting conversations. He even was so kind to lend me the book he has written "E-mails from over the Edge", which gave me a lot of insight into his background, motivation and aspirations and was an entertaining read and well written. Also available via his website, of course. A few days after me a french guy named Jay, Jerome, arrived and got a bungalow next door to P.S. Riverside, Pai River Lodge. Not long into getting to know each other I realized that he was a friend of a friend, who I had met with great pleasure in Turkey, who had spoken in the highest terms of him. Starting from this connection we went on to discover shared friends over the next week and became such ourselves. One of them, another Jai, who I actually had met working together at Soulclipse this spring, who also normally works with Jai, joined us just a few day later and it was a nice reunion. They are both excellent spinners and performers, working together as FireFantasy, www.firefantasycrew.com , in India and over the winter and Europe in the summer. They only stayed for a week, and when Jay moved, heading down to Kanchanaburi for a full moon party and the on to catch his flight from Bangkok to India, I regretted to see him leave, but moved gladly into his old bungalow, which was by the river, came with a hammock and was even a bit cheaper than the one at P.S. Also they had started working and doing continuing improvements to the platform and we had not been able to use it for practice for some days, while next door there was a sweet little breakfast and coffee place that we soon all started gravitating to. One evening there was a lovely little gathering and party at a place with an art gallery and lovely gardens, there was a tiny market with foods and crafts, live music, a big fire and a generally pleasant family atmosphere. There were several people doing fire, a Russian girl with poi, a Thai doing very fast action stuff with a staff and a playful dreaded poiboy. For me the high points were definitely Nick and Ronan each doing one burn, even though the band stopped playing in the middle of Ronan's graceful performance, which I found more rude than him. I videoed both of them with my little digital camera, in little 30 second clips, which Nick edited together and uploaded to youtube as "Nictator meets Ronopotamus", and I have pasted it into my profile. All in all my three weeks in Pai flew by, and soon it was time to head back to Bangkok. Conveniently several others were or had to be leaving before and after me, for visa runs and things like that, though others were just arriving, that made it easier for me to say goodbye to my new friends. All of which I hope to connect with somewhere again soon, in Europe next summer. Afternoon bus to Chiang Mai, this time in daylight, able to enjoy the breathtaking view over densly jungled slopes from the incredibly windy road meandering up and down the hills. An hour and a half hanging out at the bus station in Chiang Mai before boarding my night bus back to Bangkok. Tried to make reservations at my internet hotel too late and did not get a room there. Arriving there Sunday morning at five I got a terrible room, that I abandoned later after running into some friends and following them home to their guest house, took a shower and rested for a few hours, before dragging myself to the weekend market to buy some silks I want to have shirts made from. That evening I went to my usual park for sunset by the river and ran into Oren and Mafalda, a lovely goddess I had met this summer at Sonica, as well as, in Pai, and loads of other freaks already gathering for the upcoming international rainbow gathering. Moved to Oren's guesthouse, and old style teak affair by the banks of the river. Next day I did some further shopping, affording myself a pair of jeans, in view of my upcoming move to Europe, a pair of Converse and a wireless mighty mouse for my iBook, which I have been using with great enjoyment. Tuesday morning I caught my flight out of the new Suvanabumi Airport to arrive just four hours later in Bali, but that's for another time....

A Lacquered Jackhammer....Bangkok, Nov 19 2006

coincidancer — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 23:51:59 GMT

Sawadee khrap from Bangkok ! I am in Bangkok. Arrived here on Friday night and plan to be leaving on Monday evening. I am heading to Pai, in the Northern part of the country. I have never visited that part and am quite excited and curious to see a new place I've never been. Besides being curious what's there, my excuse for traveling there is play camp. Nick Woolsey, who I briefly met at the EJC in Ireland this summer, is spending a few months there, mostly relaxing, and has put the word out that it might be interesting for fire spinners to join him there. Check out his blog www.playpoi.com/why_thailand His whole website is lovely, and all the instructional material excellent. I am quite excited to spend some quality time with him. Bangkok being my travel hub in Asia I also needed to organize my trip to Europe, make bookings and buy planetickets. I am not staying in Banglamphu this time, which has gone a bit out of control, but at a centrally located hotel on Phetburi Road, that is very reasonably priced and has a hotspot ! I actually have wireless, high speed internet in my room ! It is, of course, extremely hot here and it seems much hotter than Bali, being stuck in between a bunch of builings in this concrete labyrinth. Last night it rained. Pai should be much cooler, being in the North, pleasantly cool in the evening, I have been told. So yesterday I made the usual stop at Phan Thip Plaza, the best place, as far as I know, to buy anything computer related, including of course the infamous pirated software. Managed to get out of there with nothing other than a new protective case for my ipod, which I actually needed, since the old one was broken, and four rechargable batteries, which will be good for my little speakers and the camera. In the afternoon I went to Kao Sarn Road, first of all to take care of the plane tickets at my usual and trusted travel agent. Then I strolled down to my usual late afternoon hang out, the little park by the river where the local Bangkok and transient juggle community meets at that time. But there was some form of Thai theather festival going on, the park was crowded and the juggling meet obviously not happening. So instead I walked back towards Kao Sarn road, browsing the amazingly stocked second hand bookstores along the way. Did not buy too many, since I still have to travel on and Nick has let me know that there are good ones in Pai, as well.... All I got was "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell and "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Must have been in an airy mood... If I understand Nick correctly there is wireless internet at the guest house he is staying at in Pai, also. That would be pretty neat, would really like to start uploading some of my photos, though I do plan to concentrate on poi and physical activity... Nick is an amazing spinner and good teacher, and I particularly hope to get some inspiration from him relating to my legwork. He has extensive experience in Tai Chi and some martial arts as well as some dance training I believe, and for some time now I have had the feeling that this is an area I need to work on. It's a while since I have spent any serious time hanging out at one of those little bungalow operations just playing with poi and friends all day long, and somehow it always seems to be in Thailand. I am looking forward to it quite a bit. Today I got a few more things, a sim card and a charger for my cellphone, strolled around MBK shopping plaza, went to the movies, had some amazing green curry... and tomorrow night it's off on the night bus north, first to Chang Mai, arriving in the morning after a ten hour journey, and then on to Pai ! I'll leave you with the description of Bangkok by one of my favorite authors, the amazing Tom Robbins, since he said it better than I ever could: "To call Bangkok a city of contradictions is worse than cliche, it's a trite superfluity, not merely because it's so patently obvious but because there's a sense in which virtually every city is a city of contradictions. That said, Bangkok's contrasts are just too immense, too dramatic, to be easily dismissed as the norm. Simulaneously a frantic, high-tech juggernaut and a timeless Asian dream, Bangkok straddles like no other metropolis the boundary between acrid and sweet, soft and hard, sacred and profane. It's a silk buzz saw, a lacquered jackhammer, a steel-belted seduction, a digital prayer. It's numerous temples and shrines are obscured by clouds of mephitic exhaust, its countless vices and crimes by smiles of tender delight, and through it all, Bangkok manages to maintain the most graceful balance, a grace no less genuine for being well-rehearsed and no less pure for being supported by con men and whores."

Samhain - Halloween Oct 31

coincidancer — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:27:02 GMT

Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year, for the Celts divided the year into two seasons: the light and the dark, at Beltane on May 1st and Samhain on November 1st. Some believe that Samhain was the more important festival, marking the beginning of a whole new cycle, just as the Celtic day began at night. For it was understood that in dark silence comes whisperings of new beginnings, the stirring of the seed below the ground. Whereas Beltane welcomes in the summer with joyous celebrations at dawn, the most magically potent time of this festival is November Eve, the night of October 31st, known today of course, as Halloween. Samhain (Scots Gaelic: Samhuinn) literally means “summer's end.” In Scotland and Ireland, Halloween is known as Oíche Shamhna, while in Wales it is Nos Calan Gaeaf, the eve of the winter's calend, or first. With the rise of Christianity, Samhain was changed to Hallowmas, or All Saints' Day, to commemorate the souls of the blessed dead who had been canonized that year, so the night before became popularly known as Halloween, All Hallows Eve, or Hollantide. November 2nd became All Souls Day, when prayers were to be offered to the souls of all who the departed and those who were waiting in Purgatory for entry into Heaven. Throughout the centuries, pagan and Christian beliefs intertwine in a gallimaufry of celebrations from Oct 31st through November 5th, all of which appear both to challenge the ascendancy of the dark and to revel in its mystery. In the country year, Samhain marked the first day of winter, when the herders led the cattle and sheep down from their summer hillside pastures to the shelter of stable and byre. The hay that would feed them during the winter must be stored in sturdy thatched ricks, tied down securely against storms. Those destined for the table were slaughtered, after being ritually devoted to the gods in pagan times. All the harvest must be gathered in -- barley, oats, wheat, turnips, and apples -- for come November, the faeries would blast every growing plant with their breath, blighting any nuts and berries remaining on the hedgerows. Peat and wood for winter fires were stacked high by the hearth. It was a joyous time of family reunion, when all members of the household worked together baking, salting meat, and making preserves for the winter feasts to come. The endless horizons of summer gave way to a warm, dim and often smoky room; the symphony of summer sounds was replaced by a counterpoint of voices, young and old, human and animal. In early Ireland, people gathered at the ritual centers of the tribes, for Samhain was the principal calendar feast of the year. The greatest assembly was the 'Feast of Tara,' focusing on the royal seat of the High King as the heart of the sacred land, the point of conception for the new year. In every household throughout the country, hearth-fires were extinguished. All waited for the Druids to light the new fire of the year -- not at Tara, but at Tlachtga, a hill twelve miles to the north-west. It marked the burial-place of Tlachtga, daughter of the great druid Mogh Ruith, who may once have been a goddess in her own right in a former age. At at all the turning points of the Celtic year, the gods drew near to Earth at Samhain, so many sacrifices and gifts were offered up in thanksgiving for the harvest. Personal prayers in the form of objects symbolizing the wishes of supplicants or ailments to be healed were cast into the fire, and at the end of the ceremonies, brands were lit from the great fire of Tara to re-kindle all the home fires of the tribe, as at Beltane. As they received the flame that marked this time of beginnings, people surely felt a sense of the kindling of new dreams, projects and hopes for the year to come. The Samhain fires continued to blaze down the centuries. In the 1860s the Halloween bonfires were still so popular in Scotland that one traveler reported seeing thirty fires lighting up the hillsides all on one night, each surrounded by rings of dancing figures, a practice which continued up to the first World War. Young people and servants lit brands from the fire and ran around the fields and hedges of house and farm, while community leaders surrounded parish boundaries with a magic circle of light. Afterwards, ashes from the fires were sprinkled over the fields to protect them during the winter months -- and of course, they also improved the soil. The bonfire provided an island of light within the oncoming tide of winter darkness, keeping away cold, discomfort, and evil spirits long before electricity illumined our nights. When the last flame sank down, it was time to run as fast as you could for home, raising the cry, “The black sow without a tail take the hindmost!” Even today, bonfires light up the skies in many parts of the British Isles and Ireland at this season, although in many areas of Britain their significance has been co-opted by Guy Fawkes Day, which falls on November 5th, and commemorates an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the English Houses of Parliament in the 17th century. In one Devonshire village, the extraordinary sight of both men and women running through the streets with blazing tar barrels on their backs can still be seen! Whatever the reason, there will probably always be a human need to make fires against the winter’s dark. ...

Midnight in Sicily, Italia, Oct 16, 2006

coincidancer — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 14:31:27 GMT

It is going on midnight, and I am on a train heading from the Sicilian town of Catania to Messina and the Strait, where the train will drive onto a ferry ship to cross the waters separating the island of Sicily from the boot that is the mainland of Italy before carrying me onwards and northwards through the Southern province of Calabria to Naples. I left Stromboli five days ago and spend the last four in the wonderful baroque towns of Modica and Ragusa, in particular in Ragusa Ibla, the historic old town, whose beautiful piazzettas overlooked by imposing baroque churches and palazzi are the location for the IblaBuskers, a festival of street artists, that has taken place here now for the twelfth consecutive year. I had had little success trying to organize a room in one of the many Bed&Breakfasts in the historic center, since it was unsure if the festival would come together until just a few weeks earlier, due to difficulties with funding, and since I was unable to make a informed decision with out knowing the town and it's layout, particularly relating to the festival. I was very fortunate to be hosted by a girl I had met in Stromboli, discovering that she lived in nearby Modica. This turn out to be a wonderful arrangement, since she, obviously from a very affluent family, had a whole, large, empty, fully furnished apartment, complete with a large soft bed, kitchen, television, a bathroom with bathtub, one of the simple luxuries I miss most in Stromboli, as well as a balcony affording a stupendous view of the old town of Modica and the steep valley it is situated in, that she and her family was kind enough to host me in. Since the festival and performances took place at night, starting at about nine and going on until well after midnight, I had the chance and luck to take advantage of Chiara's extreme hospitality, which included outings to the nearby town of Scicli, another baroque jewel, and visits to her family's country home, a large Sicilian farmhouse complete with old farming and equestrian equipment, and also site of a lovely Sunday lunch with the whole family, as well as introductions to many of her friends and local knowledge. All this afforded me a much closer and intimate contact of Sicily and local culture than I would have had the opportunity to experience on my own. Despite visiting Stromboli since my earliest childhood I have to admit that I had never gotten around to exploring Sicily and knew nothing of it except hydrofoil and ferry ports, train-stations and airports. Not counting faint memories of a trip to Palermo in my early childhood, mostly of the for me at the time very impressive catacombs. After spending ten relaxing, and weather wise stupendous, days in Stromboli alone, having returned from dropping off my parents at the airport in Catania for their flight back to Vienna on the 30th, I delayed my departure from the island by a day after being surprised by a message via tribe from a girl I had met five years ago in Bali informing me of her presence on the island for two days. Lena, who is originally from the U.S. and her new husband Chris had chosen Sicily and the Aeolian islands as the destination for their honeymoon. Remembering me having told her about Stromboli she googled Gusti, Bali, Stromboli and came up with my tribe.net page, using it to contact me and inform me of her presence on the island. We had last seen each other in 2001, at the Maha Kumbh Mela and in the time we spent in Varanasi afterwards, so it was strange and nice to meet there in Stromboli, in the cafe in the piazza San Vincenzo, and after spending too much time catching up and chatting it was obvious I would have to postpone my departure, to give us a chance to have a relaxed dinner the next evening at my friends' Andrea and Neva's restaurant, "La Locanda del Barba Blu" . It was nice to catch up and reconnect. Having closed the house up for the winter and against the sea, whose biggest storms launch surf and spray right on to the terrace and over the house, I melancholically caught the early morning hydrofoil to Milazzo on Sicily, and from there, with a chain of busses, via Messina and Catania, to arrive in Modica and be met by Chiara, who I knew only very superficially at the time, having met her as a friend of a friend, in Stromboli, who lives near Ragusa. Traveling through Sicily was particularly interesting since I have been reading "Midnight in Sicily", by an Australian named Peter Robb, who lived in the mezzogiorno for fifteen years, which, besides talking about the Mafia, is filled with many interesting social , historical and cultural background information on the area, and driving through the changing landscapes and towns my feeling for my reading was deepened by seeing the land it grew from. My final stop and arrival in Modica was in the Piazza Falcone-Borsalino, named for two heroic antimafia prosecutors, that lead one of the major inquiries into the Cosa Nostra and it's involvement on political levels, that were both, to no ones surprised, assassinated. I had just finished a chapter about them in my book. Soon I was very excited and happy, having discovered Chiara's hospitality and kindness, including the bathtub , having gone for a little walk, guided and commented by Chiara, through the fabulous old town of Modica, complete with a welcoming present of famous Modica chocolate, cardamon flavored, and in general thrilled at the sudden increase in stimulation from an urban environment. But I had seen nothing yet. After giving me a couple of hours to re-civilize myself, Chiara, and her friend and bro', Raffaele, picked me up and we drove about 25 minutes to Ragusa and, after having parked the car outside, walked up some steps into the historical old town of the city of Ragusa, Ibla. Ragusa is one of those towns built on the steep slopes on both sides of a deep ravine, the Valle dei Ponti, meandering back and forth through the arid, granite hills. It's houses are terraced along the narrow roads that follow the contours of the steep slope like altitude lines on a map. The buildings are made from the same grey rock that makes up the rest of the landscape and in dim light the town hugs the grey slopes so tightly that it would be easy to miss it at a sweeping glance, where it not for the shapes of the many opulent and massive cathedrals clearly standing amidst and towering above the more humble buildings. Many among Sicily's towns, amongst them Ragusa, suffered large scale destruction during a devastating earthquake of 1693, leaving many older, norman influenced, buildings in ruin and giving the chance for large scale construction in the then flowering Sicilian Baroque style. Money, in these times, being all in the hands of the aristocracy and the Church, was poured into the construction of the palazzi and especially cathedrals with their sweeping staircases and balconied facades, overladen with sculpture and decor, coming to resemble extravagant wedding cakes. While, in also not un-sicilian fashion, the poor, farmers and laborers, rebuilt their hovels in the same primitive fashion as before. As we were taking a hearty snack of a mixed piatto of "rustici", local rural products, cheeses, ham, sausage, olives and bread in one of the piazza's, night fell and we could see colorfully dressed and costumed folk darting about, making preparations and readying for their performances. As the stage was set the piazza and the surrounding streets started filling with spectators, as the artists launched into their shows. Right next to where we had eaten, we sat back down, on the ground, and watched "Otto Panzer" a supposed German circus owner gone bankrupt! He later on revealed himself to be from nearby Bari, after carrying off a pretty believable accent throughout the show, in which he very entertainingly mixed some clowning with simple, but charming, magic tricks and lots of audience participation. This was only the first of many magical shows we saw over the next few evenings, in the 7 different set up performance spaces, in the small piazzas and alleys and an enchanting garden next to a Capuchin monastery. Three of these spaces had rigging set up for trapeze, rope and tissue work, the last of which seems to be particularly popular at the moment, due to it's exceptional beauty and grace not difficult to understand. Nearly all the companies presented their acrobatics within a narrative, from delightfully whimsical to refreshingly social-critical , thread and many accompanied themselves musically, some even using projections on the fantastic facades that served as backgrounds. Over fifteen ensembles, Otto Panzer's act being nearly the only one man show, took part in the festival, some numbering up to eight members and hailing from as close as nearby Bari to as far as Argentina. That first evening, after Otto Panzer, we saw Mirrumba , a duo of women from Spain and Argentina that presented wonderfully playful tissue and rope work and some clowny dance numbers. These were embedded in a story of two women that are driven to play and use their imagination, when the normal center of their lives, their worshipped television, suddenly fails them. In the beautiful little park, some of it's pathways lines with "bancarelle", stands, selling all kinds of crafted wares, jewelry and leather-work, we caught Mi fa vo la re , an all italian trio of an accordion player, a mime and yet another aerial artist, working on the ring and tissue. Poetical, visually stunning and musically harmonic they enchanted us with their funny and graceful antics. It seemed when ever we passes a show going on we were drawn in, no matter where we had been heading. The performances went on until around one most nights, and on this first outing I was back in my cozy little apartment in Modica by two. The next morning, going on noon, Chiara picked me up in her car and took me to see her family's house in the campania, the country. After a beautiful drive out of the valley in which lies the town of Modica we arrived about twenty minutes later. A classical sicilian farmhouse, actually two adjacent ones, one now inhabited by Chiara's aunt as a summer house, the other by Chiara's parents as such, and by her brother the year round, though he was currently out and in fact both houses were empty. They were obviously ancient squat buildings with meter thick walls of granite stones, and the barn and out buildings were still full of old corroding farm equipment, ploughs and pitchforks, troughs and saddles, in midst of olive and fruit trees. It all felt very peaceful and strolling through the cobble-stoned courtyard with it's bougainvillea it seemed as if I was getting another glimpse inside Sicily. By that evening, being Friday, the festival was really starting to warm up. Obviously more people from the surrounding area had come to town and the streets were noticeably more populated and the audiences larger. Amongst the arrivals were three friends from Stromboli, and it was very fun and strange to see these guys in such a different environment, in fact one of them remarked to me "oh, so you do exist off the island !" when we first met. That evening I particularly enjoyed Theatro Agricola , a troupe of four that presented a medieval play, critically dealing with prosecution and inquisition. The were beautifully costumed, wearing comedia del'arte masks, some on stilts and others playing music. Their play included some skilled fire-play on diavolos and devilstick, though it relied and accented heavily on the actual acting and reciting . Seeing that the girl in their troupe, who portrayed a woman accused of witchcraft, before her emotionally moving closing monologue, did a bit of very simple and basic fire poi, I hung around after their show, as Camillochromo, a jazzy ensemble of tuscan musicians playing accordion, horns and percussion, started heating up the crowd. After introducing myself and complimenting Alice, as she turned out to be called, on their whole play, I came around to offering my help with some poi lessons, since she mentioned being a complete novice and wanting to improve. This was the opening I had been looking for to make contact with some of the performers and get an inside view of the organization and manifestation and we exchanged numbers, loosely agreeing to get together within the next days. The second evening ended in a general street party, to the sounds of the Brassmati Aw!rkestra Marching Band, a ten men ensemble leading a freeform street parade through the piazzas and streets. Until late night we were dancing and doing tricks, truly entering into the festive spirit. The next day Chiara, ever the perfect host, took me to the nearby town of Scicli, another Baroque jewel, where we had a tasty lunch, and then I took a bus to Ragusa around four, hoping to connect with some of the artists, or possibly Alice. Sadly it was on this day that the weather decided to turn, and when I arrived after over an hour Ibla was near deserted and drearily drizzling. I spent the afternoon mostly with my friends from Stromboli, after talking to Alice on the phone just to discover that she had been invited to a big Sicilian family lunch at the relatives of one of her troupe companions, in Modica. We did hook up when she got back to Ibla in the evening, and luckily the rain, that had remained a drizzle, stopped. I got to see where she and the other performers were housed, gave her some basic lessons on the three beat cross follow and some pointers towards the fountain and we went for tea. It was interesting to hear from her about the whole street artist scene and the many different festivals and places they had performed during the summer. Besides finding out about a lot of interesting things to do next summer, I also learned a lot about the IblaBuskers. Typical for Sicily it seems the Associazione culturale that has been organizing this manifestation for now twelve years has very little financial help from the region or any other government funding. They therefore have to woe the performers by pitching the festival as a pleasant way to end the season, connecting and playing with friends, in pleasantly warm Sicily despite little financial reimbursement. None the less the festival has been getting smaller in the last years, with less companies participating and some of the performance spaces having had to be abandoned due to dearth of funding. So if you are in the area in October, and willing to help out, donating your time and effort, by performing or otherwise, contact the organizers at www.iblabuskers.it What was definitly not missing on this Saturday night was an audience. The narrow streets and squares were thronged with people, also from further afield, having driven down from Catania and Palermo, and often it was not so ease as the other evenings to get a spot close enough to afford as intimate an experience of the performances as I had gotten used to. I managed, none the less, to catch a lovely show of aerial arts on trapeze and tissue,by Kanbahiota Trup from Spain. With their wonderful black and white costumes and make up they placed their show in a cabaret in Berlin in the 1920ies. Also about were the members of the Commedianti theater troupe, hailing from Naples, entertaining the crowd with their clever, satirical and funny sketches and hilarious characters. A duo of blonde girls, from Germany and the Netherlands, by the name of Nonsencirque did an acrobalance act, highly energetic and nearly frantic in tempo, with one of them remaining still in the middle of the stage while the other one ran endlessly around when not being lifted by, climbing and balancing on or jumping off her partner. The weather held until just about one thirty, when all the shows had finished and Chiara drove us home to Modica with the landscape being momentarily illuminated by lightning. Back in my sixth floor apartment it sounded like the thunder would rattle loose the windows. I was quite tired and passed out and slept deeply. The next day was Sunday and, as I found out when I got a call from Chiara, I was invited for lunch with Chiara's family in the county side. I felt honored and it was a classic Sicilian family scene with the obligatory friendly urging of "Mangia, mangia !" (Eat, eat!) . After the delicious lunch of typical Modica style Ravioli, grilled meats and sickly sweet deserts dad showed me around all the other buildings and explained to me how they used to be used. This being the last day of the festival we made it to Ibla in the early evening, knowing that this night the shows were planned to start earlier. In fact, when we met Alice for tea she told us that the shows would start around six and every troupe would only do their show once before all gathering in one of the piazzas for a big finale where all would do their show, or at least a little taste of it. Alice also invited us for dinner after, with her and all the artists, which she hinted might turn into a festa. Before the big finale I managed to catch Paramo Cero, a company from Mexico, Spain and Argentina. They presented a magical show, including everything from a electric band, dancing and singing original compositions and tango to projections of live footage on the facade behind and highly sensual aerial duos on tissue and ring. They, as well as Adrian Bandirali , an Argentinian Puppeteer that followed them were amongst the many high points of the festival. More on him later. By the time we got to Piazza Pola, where the big finale was happening, it was already so crowded that I climbed a couple of feet up one of the buildings to get a clear view. During the finale all the companies presented short excerpts of their performances and then everything dissolved into a pleasant street party with everybody dancing in the street. As this was slowly starting to drift apart I got a call from Alice, inviting us to join the artists back at their quarters for dinner. This was very fun, in a big room with domed ceilings on long tables, that were soon moved against the walls as the accordion came out and everybody started singing and dancing and smoking until the early morning hours. And as the sky began to brighten, Adrian, the puppeteer, speedily through up his screen and treated his fellow performers and us to an improvised, uncensored rendition of his puppet show, that none of us is likely to forget any time soon. His puppets have a way of expressing such a range emotions that nothing I have seen in the field can compare and his sketch where the Grim Reaper is mourning for his mother and asks her to sing him a last lullaby had us all in stitches. Then it was goodbyes and assurances of returning next year and remaining in contact in the mean time, and then the magic was over, though it surely traveled with us in Chiara's little car as she drove us safely home to Modica. The next day I woke just in time to pack my bag and say more goodbyes and thanks to Chiara, before having to catch a bus to Catania, and there board this train, that is speeding me through the night, now well having passed the strait, and ascending the boot of Italy. I should be in Naples by seven in the morning.... There I hope to stay with a friend for one night before catching my plane to Bangkok in Rome the day after tomorrow and head back to Bali.

Soulclipse part II, Turkey, March 2006

coincidancer — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 07:50:11 GMT

Before I, and I dare say many of us, knew it, a week had passed, and it was the 26th, the day before the official start of the Soulclipse festival including the music, and the day the gates and camping opened for ticket-holders. Also the day many of the performers arrived, who I had been expecting with much excitement. If I had until now been busy trying to divide my time between the installation of the main-floor deco and preparation of the performers' camp, I was now running around like a headless chicken, trying to track down, welcome, orient arriving performers and assist them in finding their camping area. Matthew had done an amazing job over many months of corresponding with and organizing nearly a hundred performers and fire artists, talented and inspired individuals and companies from all over the planet, that were kind enough to offer their participation, even though there was very little funds available for reimbursement. I consider having had the opportunity to meet, play and work with these wonderful people and artists a huge privilege and blessing and one of the most instructive and inspiring experiences of my life to this point, which I have my dear friends Hilla, Yogi and Matthew to thank for for entrusting me with and all the other wonderful people that were part of the Indigokids crew for making my task possible and lending a hand where and when ever needed and possible. By the evening the number of people on the festival site had doubled, more than once, and, despite of course being giddily excited about the upcoming events, I remember exchanging glances and words with other volunteers to voice the shared feeling of "what are all these people doing at our festival ?" The next day more and more people arrived and towards the afternoon the excitement was rising in anticipation of the opening ceremony that was scheduled to be held on the main dance floor at five 'o clock, which was surrounded by twelve tipis that had come in the anxiously awaited shipment from India . All morning I had continued to collect further arrived, and inform all, performers of a meeting in the early afternoon to generally brief everybody and specifically organize the big extravaganza for the opening ceremony. Matthew, who actually managed to free himself from his heavy load of other responsibilities and attend the meeting, and I had agreed to keep the performance plan as loose as possible, encourage everybody to play and perform where and when ever they felt the flow, with an eye towards somewhat equal distribution towards the three sound-systems (while yet having made and handed out a regular schedule for all that preferred to stick to a more organized approach), and to generally try to foster as much collaboration and cross-inspiration between the various teams of artists as possible. And what an amazing group of people we were, many of which I got to know better and feel a deep admiration for as performers and sympathy as people, all of them wonderful artists. There were the fantastic Firebirds, who had travelled all the way from Hungary with a small bus loaded with props and gear and lovely people, there was Magma, part of a larger performance troupe from Russia with great costumes that showed me the secret of making fire rain, Firedancer from Frankfurt with their well choreographed and yet free feeling style, the graceful duo of Flamba Saltatio, also from Germany, the powerful brotherly duo of Lightwarriors, originally from Austria, though operating out of Ibiza, Psycusfire with their wild abandon from far away Oz, Pyroptix with astounding double staff antics also from down under , Shambhala Fire, a lovely bunch of international travelers with some of the most technically flawless graceful poi and Brooke's delightful Indian dance moves, Julien and Maude from Switzerland with lovely stilt-costumes, Mayakara with their strong female energy from Germany, Nick and Gosling, who I had connected with earlier via the web and encouraged to come, with their can do-hands on approach and infectious goodwill, part of the magical Tepooka from Edinburgh, and a slew of fantastic individual performers, my dear friends John and Asli who, like me, live in Bali; Jessica, my effervescent swedish friend with whom I started learning poi with from the same guy, many years ago in Koh Pha Ngan and who now is married and living in Turkey; the seductive and tireless Charisse a.k.a Flaming Cherry, dancer, traveler and blogger extraordinaire of tribe fame, and the proverbial cherry on top of the cowgirl.... Along with Charisse there was a whole wonderful family of performers friends of mine from the West Coast Burning Man tribe, who were doing the Nectar Temple or chill out area, many of which also have their presence here on tribe, including Elijah, Lynx, Pema, Kat, Meadow, Carrie, Natalie, Amber, Heidi and Ben and Isaac and Jessica of Phoenix Rising, who now also live in Bali part of the year. There were many more that my mind was to full and overwhelmed to remember by name, though my thanks go out to each and every one of them for helping make this whole adventure an amazing experience for me and for being patient and in good humor with me as I attempted these, to me novel, tasks and responsibilities. Most of and first of all Matthew, whose trust, support and advice , as much as the example of his unwavering spirit in the face of adversity and his indefatigable smile carried me through many a challenging moment and made my task possible. As we finished our meeting and everybody went to get organized for the fire extravaganza that we had loosely organized for nightfall around the main dance-floor, after a video projection planned to segue the opening ceremony, the excitement for the upcoming events was palpable in the air. A quarter to five the, until now, wonderfully blue skies over the festival site started to cover with thick clouds. Ten minutes before the scheduled ceremony it started raining, with an increasing tendency, and I do believe it was five 'o clock sharp when hail corns the size of peas started pelting down on us painfully, making us cover under trees and take shelter where ever possible. I remember standing under a tree and peeking out at blue skies on all horizons , as the dark clouds continued to sit over only our valley, dumping all they had in them exclusively on us for over half an hour. Disaster had struck ! The deluge had lasted for less than an hour, but had left enough water, not to mention kernels of ice, to flood almost all of the site. Those whose tents had not flooded where likely to find them floating around a large, lake-like expanse of water like ill-equipped house boats. As I made my way across these flood-plains towards the central market, cultural area and Indigokids headquarter/central nervous system to assess the situation, I could not help but laugh, as I trudged through water that in places reached above knee-level when ever I chose the wrong path. I do believe this may have been the first of numerous times I slid out and landed in the mud, in fact so numerous were these occasions that I will in future omit them from the narrative, out of considerations involving literary style and personal pride. It all seemed desperately funny, including the lake that had formed at the entrance to the market area, that had to be bridged with blow up canoes, smartly taken from one of the stalls offering river rafting trips on the Köprülü, until my cellphone rang and my parents, who, awaiting the opening ceremony, had taken shelter from the storm in one of the tipis surrounding the main dance-floor, gave me the bad news. The main stage had collapsed ! The stage and sound-system, which had not been built by Soulclipse volunteers, I am glad to say, but by a company from which the sound-system had been leased, was the kind normally used for the largest rock concerts and reputed to be the best in Turkey. It had been covered with a big, relatively flat roof, and this had filled with rain and hail, the huge weight buckling the four towers, from which it was suspended, sending it crashing down onto the stage and all the equipment assembled there for the opening ceremony! There had been several people on the stage that had all been lucky enough to jump off the collapsing structure to safety in time. I quickly made my way to the few converted shipping containers that housed IndigoKids headquarters to try to find out what was going on, see what I could do to help and be there for Hilla and Yogev in their obvious hour of need. Finding them handling the situation as calmly and efficiently as possible, characteristically rising to the challenge, I found out that music would start as soon as possible on what had been the alternative sound-system. As the sun was setting, the temperature dropping and the site about to turn into a muddy swamp it seemed obvious what the element was needed to re-ignite the dampened spirits: FIRE ! When I arrived shortly afterwards at the shed where we kept the fire toys and the several barrels of the cleanest possible fuel available in the country, that Matthew had gone to such lengths to track down and IndigoKids kind enough to supply for free for all the performers, it was clear my fellow firefriends had quickly come to the same conclusion. As we grabbed our toys and decanted fuel in smaller containers I shared another kind of the cleanest possible fuel with those who were interested, an elixir send to me for the occasion from dear old friends of mine from the West Coast, from a another life that seems just a dream, guaranteed to keep at bay the cold and give us the necessary energy to heat up the dance floor... ...and so we did. All night long "my performers", as I had quickly, in the most affectionate and respectful way, come to think of them, and I, lit up the dance floor, pouring our all into energizing and hypnotic sets of fire and dance, again and again, into the early morning hours, as our flames light and heat together with the music and the fantastic light show's interplay with fabulous decorations rekindled hope and melted all involved into a pulsating gestalt of dancing bodies and fused psychedelic minds. To Be Continued.....

Flashback to Soulclipse, Turkey, March 2006

coincidancer — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:36:45 GMT

My parents and I spent another week in Istanbul, visited the major sights, strolled through the fantastic spaces inside and admired the intricate designs in the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, my personal favorite, visited the bazaar with it's domed halls crammed full of beautiful wares, from carpets to jewelry, fancy tea sets to water-pipes, fabrics to perfumes, bed-sheets to belly dance costumes. The opulent Topkapi palace with it's graceful buildings, luxurious harem and amazing exhibition of Sultan's treasures we visited on two separate occasions, deeming it too much to take in all in one day. Sadly the weather remained cold and became rainier to boot, and our visit lacked the lengthy strolls through pleasant neighborhoods on balmy spring evenings or even afternoons, and lounging in outdoor cafes watching Istanbul happen around us, which we had hoped for... Only nightly visits to the ancient, heated marble halls of the hamam, the Turkish bath, a most civilized tradition going back to Byzantine times , managed to rid my bones of the chill our daily excursions had infused them with. There I spent many hours in the steamy rooms, stretched out on marble tables heated from below, being soaped, scrubbed, kneaded and stretched by expert attendants, in a haze, imagining what these places must have been like, in ancient times, filled with Constantinople's senators and nobles, discussing politics and daily news while taking their daily bath, surrounded by the same noises of running and splashing water and it's many echoes bouncing of the domed ceilings and marbled walls. Finally the weather got to us, and we decided to cut our time in Istanbul short by a few days and to go ahead instead and fly south to Antalya, by the coast where the weather man promised milder temperatures and sunshine. And true enough, in less than two hours we landed in Antalya, on the South coast, and were welcome by sun and clear skies. Since we were a bit earlier than planned and than my parents had reservations at the Canyon Lodge near the festival site we got rooms in a pleasant little hotel in the quaint old town of Antalya for a couple of days. This, conveniently turned out to only minutes away from IndigoKids headquarters, the little apartment my friends Hilla and Yogev and the rest of the Indigokids had been using for the last two months as a base to organize and orchestrate the increasing flow of energy. Of course I made my way over there as quickly as possible and was happy to see and be greeted warmly by dear Hilla, and a group of some of the nicest, and surely the most tired people I've ever met. We spent the next few days in Antalya, a quaint little seaside town, now surrounded by a more modern part, me mostly at "the office", enjoying the electrifying energy and mounting excitement, being eager and happy to help where ever I could. After a few days, and a week before the official beginning of the festival I was finally ready to go to the land, about 90 minutes North East of Antalya, to join friends and other volunteer crew in preparing the site and getting ready for the show... The site itself was a beautiful green valley, formerly an organic sheep farm, by the powerful Köprülü river, surrounded by verdant hillsides and fed by the snowcapped mountains beyond. When I arrived on site there were about seventy volunteers already on site, a number that would to over a hundred within the next week. Amongst them some friends from Bali, with whom I had collaborated in creating some decorations that were to go on the main dance-floor, who I was happy to see and join in there campsite, on the banks of the river. My friends, and another of our friends were traveling in two vans, and they were so kind as to share there cooking facilities and skills and their precious supplies of espresso coffee with me. Having been in touch with Hilla, and her, and now my, friend Matthew for some time now, mostly concerning the performance and fire art aspects of the manifestation, and Matthew, who was responsible for the performers, healers and volunteers, being much too busy in the office keeping up cybercontact with everybody to come to the land earlier, I was awarded the responsibility of preparing the performers' camping and play area, and to be contact person and take care of and help coordinate all the performers and fire people. Having been given little more than a roughly outlined area, neighboring on the equally unequipped healers' area, Anäis, a lovely french woman, traveling with her son Yohan and also a friend of Matthew's and healer, having been made responsible for that area, and I, quickly decided to pool our meager resources and merge the performers' and healers' areas in form of two circles outlined by little stone walls connecting in the middle to form the eight of infinity, with big fire pits on each end and in the middle. We managed to rustle up a big tarp and some poles to build a shade structure for morning yoga and things like that, as well as a small dome for private healing sessions. All this, as well as the clearing of central circle of rocks and stones, in an attempt to create a stumble free performance area, which eventually had to be helped along by a truckload of river sand being deposited and trampled, we achieved with a small crew of enthusiastic and tireless volunteers. In general, for me the experience of working and being on the site for a week with all the people that had come together to lend a hand and donate their effort to making this manifestation come into being, the warm smiles and the feeling of family and of being part of something very special, as we gathered for meals prepared by the kitchen crew, served on long tables filled with beaming, despite tired, faces, was one of the highlights of the whole gathering. Soon after my arrival the structures surrounding the main dance-floor, namely six towers of scaffolding, were in place and sufficiently stabilized and tied down, thanks to a never tiring team of able and hardworking volunteers working in flawless cooperation, for us to begin the installation of the decoration we had designed and produced in Bali. Consisting of equilateral triangles made from nylon lycra, printed with three different islamic geometrical designs in six different color schemes, they needed to be strung and stretched in six circles, in turn in a larger circle, like some kind of mandala, and then lifted up to the top of the scaffolding towers to form an open psychedelic ceiling over the dance floor, in all stretching over a 36 meter diameter area in front of the main, or Baresh (turkish for Peace) stage. This was challenging and exciting to accomplish, especially since we had all, until now, only designed and imagined what this would look like, never even having seen our collective creation assembled in real life and in action until this point. Not only were we happy with the result of our work, but it also worked so perfectly together with the amazing decorations brought from another team from Hungary, that was even designed around the same geometric principles and shapes, not to mention material, that it all seemed to have come out of one mind and unbelievable that we had created our work independently without knowledge of each others plans. This should not remain the last time that we would be amazed at the way things coincidentely worked out in ways much more perfect that anybody could have planned. Things were unfolding at an unbelievable rate due to frantic effort, since many things has been on hold, due to the hold up of a container arriving from India that had been held up at Turkish customs for an unexpectedly long time that held many crucial supplies, and was only released to the organizers about when we arrived. Camping in this pretty remote natural spot for a week, with less than a hundred other people, yet already from all corners of the globe, working together to manifest a shared vision , was yet a wonderfully peaceful , spending chilly evenings around the campfire with tired but happy companions, waking in the early morning hours to a valley blanketed with thick morning fog and plunging into the ice waters of the fast flowing Köprülü under the hot noon day sun after working up a sweat.... Meanwhile my parents had moved into a little rafting lodge, rafting being a popular activity on the river, about 50 kilometers off site, but they came to visit, and to see what was going on and what we all were up to, everyday and I think they very much enjoyed the chance of getting a peak at the back side of such an event and all the effort and collaboration that went into it. And it was fascinating and rewarding to see things and people coming together and growing, often into more than the sum of all it's parts and beyond anything expected or possibly consciously planned by single minds... and to be part of it. All the people and my friends they met were particularly kind and friendly to them, and made them feel very welcome, complimenting me endlessly on having such cool parents, that would come and see what their son is up to, a fact I am very aware of and thankful for. To Be Continued....

Juggling on the Emerald Isle, EJC, July 2006

coincidancer — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 09:34:26 GMT

The European Juggling Convention was a revelation ! Though, as you know, if you know me at all, I have been messing about with poi, staffs and balls and some of the associated disciplines of object manipulation for a decade and have become quite apt at quickly tracking down and connecting to local juggling people and scenes where ever my trip takes me, I had never before attended a juggling convention, and the EJC turned out to be the cream of the crop! A week long gathering of some of the most passionate and expert enthusiasts from all over the world, gathered for the sole purpose of indulging their obsession, days filled with too many workshops and classes to attend even all of the ones one is interested in and good or brave enough to, covering every possible form of object manipulation, balls, clubs, staffs, chains, whips, hats, cigar-boxes, being tossed, rolled, contacted, swung, spun, isolated, stalled and mostly caught. Nights filled with nightly stage shows giving professionals the chance to present and test out their new acts in front of an enthusiastic audience of peers, fire area going off from 11 onwards, as well as the infamous renegade shows in the Massacre tent starting at midnight, latin night, live bands and general fun and mayhem all night long. All this in the midst of the lovely Irish countryside, close by the little village of Millstreet, in the county of Cork, camping and mingling with over two thousand lovely people from all over the world, on the grounds of a converted horse jumping track, with showers, some even warm, in the nearby school. The main building housed the stage and arena for the nightly stage show, the market area overflowing with sensibly priced products of all the major suppliers and manufacturers of juggling props, the bar, as well as a huge carpeted gym room that was filled with a sea of practicing and socializing jugglers and friendly conversation nearly 24 hours a day. Besides some of "the greats", like Kris Kremo, Jay Gilligan and Stefan Sing I had the rare chance to see and met many unknown, young and inspired artists, from as far as Japan, South America and the U.S. performing their amazing, funny, moving and enchanting acts for an audience of peers, giving them the liberty and confidence to push the envelope, rightfully trusting in the sympathetic, appreciative and forgiving spirit of fellow jugglers. I met a huge number of lovely people, and wonderful artists, amongst them the graceful Nick Woolsey, of www.playpoi.com, the fabulous and vivacious Viv and gentle Gine, part of www.dasspielvolk.at ,and, together with the ever energetic Luke part of sadly now defunct http://projectsolar.co.uk/ , Drew of the www.ministryofmanipulation.com and the astounding Pich of www.maniballe.net , ever cheerful Paolo of www.lunaif.com and to my greatest delight I had the luck to catch a perfectly timed and smooth ride to Dublin airport with my long time hero, and in the flesh even more charming Greg Maldonado, www.gregmaldonado.com , who's Contact Juggling DVDs I had been watching all year long, and his lovely companion Jaine, http://people.tribe.net/jaine_is_good_juju, both of which have since then also joined my network of friends here on tribe and are keeping me well entertained with their lively blogs.... I do hope to join all of them, as well as the lovely group of Italians I camped by, that kept me drinking lovely neapolitan coffee and eating delicious food, including my old friend Luigi and his delightful partner Maria, together www.juls.it, and the many other new friends I made again next year, when the EJC is to be held in Greece! I hope that in the future in general to reconnect with all of them soon and often and am looking forward to the many interesting opportunities and adventures that are sure to arise from connecting to so many great new people. On the last day we had us a colorful and joyously noisy parade down the mainstreet and all through the little town of Millstreet, to the surprise and delight of it's friendly inhabitants. And no, it did not rain, except a light sprinkling one morning, just enough for the morning sun to project a lovely rainbow over the emerald isle that had us all ready to go running off to find that pot of gold and a, surely juggling, leprechaun at the end of it. Top 'o the Morning to ya! Eire!

Napoli in World Cup fever, July 2006

coincidancer — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 01:08:54 GMT

It is late afternoon, and I am sitting at one of the tables out front of a little cybercaffe on the charming little Piazza Bellini in Naples. When I arrived here two weeks ago from Bali, via train from Rome, I noticed quickly that I had coincidentally arrived at an interesting time. All shops were closed, though it was in the middle of the afternoon, and there was something afoot. It didn't take me long to find out that I had arrived on the very afternoon of Italy World Cup match against Chekoslovakia. Neapolitans being a big fans and patriots, as many Italians, this meant that the whole city shut down and everybody got serious about the business of watching "la partita". People were rushing about to get to their respective preferred places to watch with there friends and every TV in town, including many, more or less, portable ones appeared in the streets and quickly attracted small crowds of enthusiastic spectators, waving flags, tooting horns and smiling excitedly. I have never been a fan, but couldn't help but sympathize with the general high spirits. At this time I was making my way to a little Bed & Breakfast place I had noticed on my last time in town and decided to try. It turned out to be quite nice, in one of Napoli's typical palazzi courtyards, in the apartment of, and run by, a nice couple. He is an architect and the place is nicely fixed up and furnished. It is perfectly located on Via Tribunali in the centro storico, a stone's throw away from my world's favorite pizza parlor and close to many of my favorite Neapolitan haunts, like Gianni's juggling shop, Piazza Bellin, Piazza di Gesu, San Domenico Maggiore and the always lively Spaccanapoli. I am staying there again this time. Since then I have been to Stromboli, for barely two weeks, received the shipment of the clothes we made for a little boutique there, and made sure they were happy with there order and we get payed. All that went reasonably well, the things arrived in time and in good condition, they were happy with the clothes and were planing a fashion show with our things when I left, and they payed me a good part of the money. I had a nice taste of Stromboli and my parents, saw all my Strombolian friends and got a chance to touch base and swim in the crystal clear Mediterranean, before setting out again on my current adventure. I left on Thursday, on the overnight ferry, which left some hours late, which is not unusual, this year's ship schedule being particularly erratic. The night time departure gave me a chance to ascertain what several of my vulcanoe guide friends had told me, namely that Stromboli has been very active lately. In fact the mountain was erupting unusually tall fountains of lava, from at least two craters, and nearly every three, never more than five minuted apart, not like the more usual ten to twenty. The ship arrived in Napoli after nine in the morning and I made my way to the little B&B by taxi. I was pretty tired and after a shower I only stayed out for a little while, visiting my friend Gianni at the juggling shop to ask him about his recommended location for buying a tent, which I need for this trip. Then I went back to the room, having scored an even nicer one than last time with a little balcony overlooking one of Napoli's typical little alleys, and dozed for a while, waking up to thunderclaps and a short but strong afternoon summer storm. On my way out in the evening my host Gaetanto stopped me on the way out for an apperitivo, and once we were joined by the other guests I was urged to give them a taste of my juggling skills, having revealed the nature and destination of my trip. Once I made it out of there I just had a plate of pasta at a nearby trattoria and went to bed pretty early around midnight, wanting to rest up for today. This morning I set out to find the area my friend Gianni had indicated to buy a tent and to check out the train station and schedule for trains to Rome, where I am catching my flight tomorrow morning. As usual for me in this city I was soon enjoying myself immensely, making my way through the lively alleys, where the caffeinated Neapolitan passion for living life out on the cobble-stoned street is always in evidence . I love this ancient town, with it's history encrusted and earthquake cracked buildings, narrow alleys dwarfed by massive church walls or many tiers of balconies and adore it's loud and passionate people, that seem to view life as a play in which they are articulate protagonists, were the melodic sound of Napuletano, the town's own language that sounds more like Portuguese and is just another clue to the city's colorful past and myriad of influences,is never far and were the simple act of buying coffee at the corner store can include the grocer bursting into sudden song in praise of "la femena" inspired by a particularly lovely and graceful member of that gender, ubiquitous, one has to admit Today is the day before the big finale, in which Italy will play against France,and Naples is in football fever, everything being decorated and many alleys spanned in red white and green decorations and parts of town seeming downright pixelated by flags in the national colors. The excitement and anticipation is everywhere, tomorrow's game is on everybody's mind, and some walls are already affixed with the traditional black framed death announcements, complete with the picture of a little coffin, "mourning" the death of "Signora Francia" following 90 minutes of agony on the evening of July 9th.... I regret that I won't be here for the match tomorrow, but my inquiries resulted in my decision to take a train in the early morning hours, at four, in order to reach Rome Termini before seven, connect with the half hourly train to Fiumicino airport, in turn to catch my flight to Dublin at little after ten tomorrow morning. Managed to buy a little tent for 25 € n front of the station. From Dublin airport, where I should arrive at a quarter to one I will make my way to the train station and hopefully catch a train at three twenty for the three hour ride to Millstreet and arrive in time time to pitch my tent before the opening of the stage at the 29th European Juggling Convention! www.ejc2006.net Am very excited about this week of spectacles and workshops, and if you take a look at the site you will understand faster than if I go on about it. Also they just sounded the kick off for the match between Germany and Portugal, and I will try to chose this time to have pizza at di Matteo's, an unmissable stop on every visit to Napoli, and take advantage of the hopefully shorter line to be seated for what remains in my opinion, the world's best pizza! I will probably leave my ibook deposited at Rome airport, camping, festival life and possibly rainy weather making Ireland sound like the wrong environment for it, and me likely to busy to need it, but I will try to write again and post some images when I get back to Rome after the week in Ireland.

The Whirling Derwishes, March 12, 2006

coincidancer — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 04:46:53 GMT

It's been a while since I last wrote and put down my thoughts on cyper (that's cyberpaper...) As planned my parents and I arrived in Istanbul, the magnificent city straddling the Bosporus and thereby the border of Europe and Asia on the 11th of March. We moved into a small hotel of several converted old wooden houses, surrounding and affording magnificent views of the ancient church of Hagia Sofia with it's impressive domes and graceful minarets, which was beautifully illuminated at night. Despite our hopes of escaping Vienna's enduring winter the weather was less than fabulous and quite chilly. On our first day we strolled around exploring and old quarter. which is made up of beautiful old houses and small alleys, though now some of it having been turned into a fashionable shopping district, and during our wandering came upon a sufi monastery, or tekke. Having been intrigued by the "whirling dervishes" for a long time I, and my parents, were excited to read on a notice board at the front gate that on two Sundays a month, one of which it was that day, the sufis allowed members of the public to attend and watch their sema, the ceremony of worshiping the divine principle and attaining an altered state and religious ecstasy through spinning entranced in dance. I had always heard and believed that sufism was an islamic sect, and was fascinated to learn that their existence and practices actually predate Mohammed and the founding of Islam. Derwish means doorway... The ceremony is held in a beautiful octagonal hall with with a dome, illuminated by a beautiful crystal chandelier,decorated with the in islamic countries ubiquitous graceful calligraphy rendered in gold inlay and with a hard wood floor, lustrous and worn by centuries of devotional dance.It is presided over by the venerable patriarch, or sheikh of the cloister, adorned in black robes and the brimless conical camel-felt, symbolizing the tombstone of the ego hat, worn by all sufis, and accompanied by lovely live music by a small ensemble of percussion, string and wind instruments played in a gallery. Once the audience had assembled and quieted down, while studying the leaflet we had been given, about a dozen devotees or semazens, clad he aforementioned conical headgear, black cloaks that they cast off at the beginning of the whirling to symbolize their spiritual rebirth, to reveal the brilliantly white skirted robes , a bright red or green sash of fabric, tied around waist or neck, and evidently beautiful and surely comfortable soft soled shoes, that immediately invoked my dancer's interest and envy, entered the hall and seated themselves on the outer edge inside the octagonal dance floor, while the orchestra , which had been playing there, retreated to the gallery. Everybody rose respectfully as the venerable patriarch entered and ceremoniously and slowly crosses the hall and took his position in the circle, at kiblat, or the side closest to Mekka. One after the other the semazens, after each bowing to the celebrant next to them proceeding in the circle and bowing deeply, paying their respects to the sheikh, launched themselves into devout yet obviously joyful spinning, counterclockwise, assuming the traditional position of both arms outstretched, the right palm turned to the heavens and the left downwards to conduct blessing, until the hall was filled with whirling dervishes, their skirts flaring, symbolizing the lifted shroud of the ego, trailing their sashes, eyes closed and with beatific smiles on their faces. The combination of the hypnotic music, the mesmerizing turning of the semazens, the atmosphere of spiritual devotion and the wonderful air movement created by their faring skirts combined to create an experience that, I dare say, transported and uplift the audience, as well. During the Sema itself there are four selams, or musical movements, each with a distinct rhythm. At the beginning and close of each selam, the semazen testifies to God's unity. The first selam is the birth of truth by way of knowledge. The second expresses the rapture of witnessing the splendor of creation. The third is the transformation of rapture into love; complete submission and communion with God. The fourth is the semazens coming to terms with his destiny and his return to his task in creation. Near the end, the sheikh enters the circling dervishes, where he assumes the place of the sun in the center of the circling planets. It was a moving experience that should not be missed if the opportunity to attend a sema should present itself. To Be Continued.... http://people.tribe.net/coincidancer/blog/5288327a-a77b-4321-aa94-0d4fe3ee04cd

Full moon in Vienna, February 27, 2006

coincidancer — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 03:22:59 GMT

New Moon.... ....and twenty eight days until three heavenly bodies enter into a syzygy, and will align in such a way that Luna, traveling in Sol's bright light will cast her shadow on Gaya's surface , who holds her enthralled, as they circle Sol, ever spinning, making Luna's projection describe over time a dark line traveling across oceans and continents, the line of totality Beginning on the east coast of South America, as the sun appears to rise, sweeping across the Atlantic ocean and land-falling in Western Africa on the Ivory Coast, crossing Ghana, Niger, Chad, the great desert and finally Egypt, crossing the Eastern Mediterranean before land-falling yet again in Turkey and continuing into Northern Asia, Georgia and finally Kazakhstan the line of totality will plunge things into darkness and reveal the suns corona and allow the planets and stars to be seen during the day... I am sitting in Vienna at my parents' place, a converted attic, watching ever original snowflakes swirl slowly from a pale sky and slowly cover the roofs around me in a silencing blanket of white. It is the first time I have been in Viennese winter in over ten years, and it is not half bad, for a short time engagement. Though it is minus three degrees outside it is warm and dry in here, there is 24/7 broadband internet, including skype for free internet calls with Hilla and the rest of the crew setting up in Turkey, and Heather and the rest of the world. There is my dad's great CD collection to rip through, cozy fires in the fireplace in the evenings, pleasant times with my parents and reunions with old friends. A steady supply of herbal remedy...time to think and correspond... Have even made some new friends in the local fire community, through a girl working in a troupe here, who I contacted through her address on their website. As I mentioned it has been a while since I have been here, and my last visits were all so short and my attitude in such a way that I only made an effort to see and catch up with my old friends from high school and the time when I actually lived in Vienna, between being ten and seventeen years old. The girl, Rebekka, actually quite a goddess, turned out to be extremely cool. We met in a "Wiener Kaffeehaus", and got along splendidly. Turns out that Austria has quite a reputation and lots going on in the European fire circuit. Rebekka and her crew of friends, who are actually based in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria and about two hours from Vienna by train, have even, so far, put together two annual fire festival that were attended by quite a few performers and troupes from neighboring Switzerland, Germany and Hungary. Basically they invited all these people to come play and create and exchange ideas for ten days at the farm outside Linz that they are lucky to live in, and financed the whole thing with two large performances they put together in that time and sold tickets to. www.firecircus.at Sounded like great fun, so much so in fact, that it has encouraged me to think more seriously about a dream I have of manifesting something like this on the magical little volcanic island of Stromboli.... Rebecca has great energy, and in fact turned out to be a enthusiastic tantra practitioner and talented musician, and able to indulge all these interests whilst being a teacher for mentally challenged kids. She also invited me to come and check out a newly opened Bikram yoga studio in Vienna, that had a great offer of ten days for ten €uro, which was about exactly as much time as I had left in Vienna at that point. Conveniently they had several sessions per day, mornings, afternoons and evenings, each ninety minutes long and with the intro-offer, one could attend as many of these and as often as one liked in the ten days after signing up. Besides being an opportunity to spend more time with the lovely Bekka it was perfect for me to get a bit in shape before the festival I will be attending and performing at in Turkey, as well as being a way to escape the arctic Viennese temperatures for ninety minutes, since Bikram yoga is practiced at temperatures around 30˚ Celsius, heartwarmingly reminiscent of Bali, my chosen home. http://www.bikram.at/ One day at yoga I also couldn't help but notice another graceful goddess, with a stunning head full of fiery red curls, my weakness, and an adorable little prince tattoo, who turned out to be called Rebecca, also. Coincidance,or are the multiverses trying to tell me something...?! After exchanging some friendly glances we started chatting for a moment at the bus station in front of thestudio and when I mentioned living in Bali she revealed herself to be a frustrated Gudang Garam lover, since these clove flavored cigarettes from Indonesia are difficult to impossible to get a hold of in Vienna. When I offered, always the helpful gentleman, to send her some she gave me her card, and upon checking out her website on my return home I discovered that she is a professional singer, and a damn good one at that, judging from the samples on the site. http://www.rebeccamusic.at So I dropped her an email stating that I would be very interested in obtaining one of her recently launched CDs, "The Bliss", though preferably directly from her and signed by the artist. Since a originally planed rendezvous at yoga failed to come together she was sweet enough to make a date with me at yet another Kaffehaus, the very last day of my stay in Vienna. We got along famously and she brought along and presented me with one of her CDs, which turned out to be excellent, and I renewed my promise to send her Gudang Garam and we both agreed to stay in touch via e-mail. All in all it was great to meet some new, creative and active people outside my shrunken circle in Vienna and to see that the city seems to be awakening from her stagnant slumber she seemed to me to be in during my teenage years spend there. I think the Europe being unified and the resulting migrations and energyflow have put Austria and it's capital a bit more back into the position of being in the center and a crossroad for many cultural currents, as it hasn't been since the end of WW I and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire... The visit to Vienna was perfect to collect myself and my props for the upcoming journey to Turkey and the eclipse celebration in Köprülü Canyon, where the line of totality will grant us 3 minutes and 33.3 seconds of darkness in the shadow of the moon on the 29th of March, a little before two in the afternoon. www.soulclipse.com As the celestial bodies and old and new friends are moving into conjunction, as Hilla and Yogev and the IndigoKids team are working away in their little headquarter in Antalya, as the first volunteers are about to move to the land to prepare the site, as decorations are being created and shipped and teams of performers and artists preparing and planing and and other pre-sequences unfolding, I feel the quickening, I hear the call..... Thanks to my parents, who will be traveling with me, I have my travel-plans well worked out, flying to Istanbul on the 11th, ten days there to explore the fascinating city and bazaars, encounter the people and be drawn in by the city's mystique... smoke the nargyle, sample the famous Turkish delights and maybe get a chance to witness the whirling dervishes do their ceremony.... Hopefully pre-connect with some soulclipsians, local and/or transient . On the 21st we will fly to Antalya, where we will pick up a rental car and be in the National Park in the longest canyon in Turkey and on site of the festival the same afternoon. From then on I will be launching myself physically into the preparations, connecting with Matthew who is responsible for the performers, meeting up with Nick and Gosling arriving from Edinburgh to create some fire-sculptures and installations, help set up the Arabian lycra mandala that I was involved in creating in Bali with Dara and Rabia and the rest of the Bali crew, that should find it's place over the main dance-floor and do what I can to lend a hand and connect and organize things, especially in the juggling area. Though my parents have reserved a room for me at the nearby Kanyon Lodge, a simple rafter's place, where they will be staying until the 30th and their return to Vienna, I expect to be camping on site most of the time, at the most escaping occasionally for a hot shower or to check my email, if possible. Maybe a cozy evening in front of the fireplace.... We will have a week before the festival officially starts, on the 27th, though most people will arrive the evening before, when the site opens to the public. And then, let the festivities commence.... Until the climax, anounced by the phenomenon of Bailey's beads, caused by the last rays of the suns light falling through the valleys between the mountains of the moon, when the sun will be totaly hidden by the moon and for 3 and a half minutes between 2nd and 3rd contact we will be able to see Saturn, Mars, Mercury and Venus, as well as more distant stars like Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, while marveling at the rare sight of the sun's corona of electro magnetic storms and flares, only visible to the naked eye in these precious moments of totality. And the diamond ring effect will be our signal to avert our eyes or put the eclipse viewers back on as the sun emerges from behind the moon and the earths rotation carries us out of the shadow of the moon and sun's life-giving light becomes once again too strong for the human eye to look at directly, for another 18 months! I can't wait! Link to sky above festival site during totality: http://newton.physics.metu.edu.tr/~aat/TSE2006/Manavgat.jpg

Chengdu May 2005

coincidancer — Tue, 30 May 2006 14:28:37 GMT

Modern travel is a curious thing! A week ago I was driving through blizzards and having snowball fights and finding crystals on mountain passes, in the toehills of the Himalayas, and now I am sitting klong side, by one of the little canals, in Bangkok, sweat running in rivulets down along my spine. Leaving China seemed very sudden, I had just started to get the hang of it... though I am very happy and excited to see Heather tomorrow. I miss her very much, and Bali as well, and Bangkok is a funky and loveable place. Chengdu was very interesting, and an interesting contrast to what I had seen so far in China. Chengdu, now the capitol of Sichuan is an interesting city with over 2300 years of history, having been of varying importance in the Middle Kingdom through that period, also known as the city of hibiscus. Though nothing remains of the ancient city physically, old traditions seem to be alive and well. Tea, opera and beautiful women have made the city reknown all over China. Today it is a bustling, modern, energetic city by a river with a population of over 9 million. Yet the city center is quite manageable and can be explored on foot, there are lovely parks, with the typical little Chinese island, bridges and pavillions, teahouses, occasional bonsai and the ever tai chi practising and tea drinking inhabitants. In fact Chengdu is famous for it's tea houses and tea culture, and these are once again alive and well, after having been frowned upon by the regime during the cultural revolution. Well beyond being places to just drink tea this are social meeting places for old and young, where one can easily and pleasantly while away an afternoon, chatting, listening to songbirds brought out, in their cages, by their often elderly owners, to seemingly enjoy each others company and conversation, or "fixing the Great Wall" a.k.a., playing Mahjong. In fact, Mahjong is very popular, the constant clicking of the stones against each other, while they are being shifted around according to seemingly complicated rules, is an integral part of the tea house experience. As are some of the snacks that Chengdu is rightly famous for, or some generaly highly spiced and tasy Sichuan cuisine. And an often extensive variety of teas, the everpresent greens, the local specialty; the jasmines or flower teas, the stronger oolongs and the truely intense, treasured, and on occasion even aged, puers. In fact, Chengdu is full of lovely aromatic tea shops, one of which I spent probably three hours of my last afternoon in, tasting and learning about many different teas and the correct way of preparing and drinking each of them with the help of a lovely, English speaking female salesgirl, who was very knowledgable, answered many of my questions and was eager to chat. Meanwhile several other costumers came in an tried and bought teas, some sitting with me for a while and starting and holding converations to the best of their English abilities, which seem generally a lot better here, than in say touristy Dali. It was a fun and interesting afternoon, in which I learned not just about tea, but about Chinese in general and Chengdu culture in particular... ...and bought an assortment of teas, tea ware, and beautifully hand crafted, ever so aesthetic, utensils. All at ever so ridiculously low prices. Another specialty of Chengdu is silk, and in another store I got to see for the first time, how the silk is harvested, meaning I watched a lady peel the cocoons of the pupae of the silkworm, after they had been boiled, collecting a few worms worth and then with practiced and efficient movements stretching the resulting silkfibers over a wooden frame to dry. They then used the unspun silk to fill comforters, that are incredibly light and soft. A king sized one was 500 yuen, that is about 50 Euro! The first two days Sam and I spent just wandering around, enjoying the trappings of civilization, internet, good coffees, expat bars and convenience stores, and searching out some sites in the city, and stumbling over others. But Chengdu also offers some fascinating sidetrips, some of which, alas I only just found out about here in Bangkok, but one bearly missed by anyone is the panda breeding and research center. We started out in the morning with an organized minibus from our hostel, since early arrival is crucial to get some good panda action. There are I believe 14 pandas living there at the moment, among them several babies, evidence of the success of the breeding center. I doubt that anyone could resist warming to the sight of one of these funny creatures, and seeing them in groups, sitting in quite human like fashion, munching their bamboo and interstingly checking out the visitors staring at them and wildly snapping away with their cameras, is just too much! Morning is definitly the best time to come here, since after there morning feeding session they spend the rest of the day dozing, needing all their energy just to digest all that bamboo, supposedly one of the main reasons they do not procreate enough, even in the wild. They used to be much more successful when they still ate meat, they are a very old evolutionary branch, actually quite distant from other bears, and seem to have made a unfortunate diet choice at some point in der development. For an extra fee one had the chance to hold a baby panda, and have a photosession with a baby panda, a temptation I just could not resist. It was the cutest. And Sam took some nice photos for me.The center also has the less famous, but also adorable lesser or red pandas, that are more like a bigish, round, brown racoons. That was a half day, and the same evening we had tickets to see a Sichuan opera performance, an entertaining mix of stunning costumes, some seriously Chinese traditional music, dancing and acting, as well as internationally funny comedy and acrobatics. Here, as most places and things in Chengdu, it was nice to see that this seemed very popular with locals of all ages. One act, called changing faces involved dancers inexplicably quickly changing masks while covering their faces for just split seconds with their sleeves or other objects, leaving no trace of the old masks and leaving Sam and I, as well as the rest of the audience astounded, though I am sure we were all watching closely trying to figure out and see how it is done. Despite it's size Chengdu is a charming city, with friendly and open inhabitants, and relatively tasteful development is everywhere in evidence. As everywhere in China things seem to be gearing up for the 2008 Olympics and a feeling of optimism for the future is everywhere. And with it's vibrant culture and fascinating sights and excursions, including some beautiful, well preserved buddhist caves with stunning sculptures in nearby Dazu, the holy mountain of Leshan with it's large buddha carved in the mountainside, as well as being a jumping off point for all kinds exciting possibilities in the direction of Tibet, Chengdu's future in tourism is looking bright. One of many feelings and thoughts I have come away from this trip with, is that the giant has woken! China has a near untapped potential, in just about every sector I came across, and it's people, shaking off the effects of comunist rule are well convinced to realize that potential. Watching the occasional program on English channel CCTV 9 I have the impression there are few markets in which the People's Republic does not stand to be number one producer and market within the next ten to twenty years. And an endless potential for travel. But that, for me, will have to wait for another time, though I do hope to return to the Middle Kingdom! I definitly had an amazing time, and can recommend China for the adventurous traveler, since it seems quite easy to get away from backpacker hordes... After biding Sam good bye, who had been a great and cheerful travelcompanion, off to catch a train back to Shanghai to continue his studies, I flew to Kunming, where I stayed for one night and continued on the next day to good old Bangkok.