2: From Bergen, Norway

Beloved friends,

I tried to write this email while on the train from Oslo this morning, but could not take my eyes off the landscape that a kind, creative deity unfurled out my big, panoramic windows. Forests of snow-laden pines and bare-branched birches; fields of snow and ice with occasional dark, rocky protuberances; waterfalls half-frozen and half-flowing down granite walls… Staring out the window, all I could think was an occasional Hallelujah, and a line from the Psalms: How great are the works of Yah! The experience was like being bitchslapped by perspective and dunked into a cold bath of humility. In the face of this magnificence, my obsessive thought patterns faded to the background. My mental chatter has followed me across the Atlantic, and when I’m not paying attention, I fall into ruminating about either women or work (despite (or because of) having neither a partner nor a job), but with my nose glued to the glass, it was overcome by wonder and awe at the miracles of endless snow and the occasional red house (why are all the houses red or yellow here?!). For a brief portion of this journey, while my eyes feasted on nature, my ears ate up the words of Thich Nhat Hahn: “You do not need to directly deal with the pain, the sorrow, the suffering if you know how to eat an orange.” When we recognize that the orange is as much a miracle as the mountain, we will be overcome with awe and our monkey mind will be stilled. 

I’m not there yet, but while my runaway mind has joined me on this trip, there’s something about traveling that helps me find stillness, even when I’m not being bombarded by visual blessings. Things that in New York were so familiar gain a glimmer of the exotic: Buses whose announcer speaks in sing-songy Norwegian (to my ears, Norwegian mostly sounds like children’s lullabies sung by Vikings); street signs featuring letters like “ø” and “å” and double “k”s; back in Amsterdam, it was apple pie, bicycles, doors (they’re beautiful — Zoe, your mom would love them), and birds. Realizing that pigeons have been in just about every place I’ve ever gone — how did that happen?! Noticing the ducks that are still hanging out in the ponds. Watching swans groom for a good fifteen minutes, fascinated by how their necks look like downy snakes, moving of their own accord in what cannot actually be part of that bird. Discovering a respectable heron by a pond in a park and watching its whiskers in the breeze. Discovering in Oslo that the gulls of Amsterdam were here joined and aurally superseded by crows, except that these are not actual crows, but magpies, those smart, teal, white, and grey beautiful cousins of crows. Back in New York, or even in São Paulo after having left Knewton, I had to struggle to notice these little things. My eyes had grown veiled to the miracles that were literally all around me. And the only reasons I had occasional glimpses of this world were moments of meditative clarity and in response to the wonderful “On Looking” (highly recommended for those who either live in or are traveling through New York; Recommended to people in other cities; and not really recommended for people in rural or suburban settings). Which is why as I was drooling onto my lap on the train ride from Myrdal to Flåm, the guy in front of me was absorbed in a spreadsheet of some sort. 

This is why hanging upside down for the last week was so good for me. Don’t worry, I didn’t reconnect with my Transylvanian roots and embrace the vampire within (yet — that’s later on the trip), but I did spend most of the four days before the journey Westward (to the Western Fjords!) in an intensive lunar acroyoga workshop. For those of you not in the know, acroyoga is the combination of acrobatics and yoga, and the practice has two “sides”: solar and lunar, with solar being the fancy, show-off-y type of acrobatic poses that build strength, courage, and trust, and lunar being the side of the practice filled with tender love and care, made up of thai massage and therapeutic flying (which mostly consists of hanging upside down). I’d wake up in the dark and take a train while the sun rose from my gracious hostess’s apartment in Manglerud over to West Oslo (the rich side of town), where I’d spend the day caring for and being cared for by people who were initially total strangers. The practice invites you to surrender into the poses — to give into the Thai massage, to relax your back and neck as the person sustaining you does all the work, to trust that they’ve got you. And when you’re doing the work, when you’re the one giving the massages and basing, then you surrender even more fully, giving yourself to the beautiful human being who has chosen to trust you. Sure, there’s more to it that that: sometimes the base doesn’t quite get it and the flyer falls, which is a practice of forgiveness and trust; sometimes people get frustrated, and it’s a practice of kindness to yourself and others, and of gentle but honest communication; and sometimes you’re giving a massage and there are thoughts or feelings that are more carnal than karmic, which is a practice of focus and intention. Oh, and sometimes you’re flying and all you can think about is how much you can smell this person’s crotch — that’s a practice of compassion, and also of breathing (through your mouth, maybe). These are practices that help me come back to the same sense of awe and wonder as the fjord-walls of green lichen, red moss, white snow, and grey stone. They help me surrender into what’s really happening and fully enjoy the metaphorical orange. But only the metaphorical orange — As my gracious and incredibly kind hostess, Johanne, has learned, I’m not a huge fan of actual oranges.

I’ll leave it at that for now. Except that this time I’ll throw in some pictures, starting from the ones meant to go with the last email. They don’t do it justice, but they’ll whet your appetite, and maybe help you pay attention the next time you see the sun set, or at least give you something to be thankful for. 

With love, gratitude, and wishes for a happy thanksgiving,

Rafa