My 12 Steps: Novembre 2003

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13.11.03

Dhaka 2

I just came back to Dhaka from India, and am discovering that something strange is happening to me. I am developing a new obsession. Maybe it would be more correct to call it a deep fascination with obsessive overtones. Whatever it is, it is powerful.

It is with me when I wake up. It stays with me during the day. It follows me into my sleep, at times as a dream and at other times as a nightmare.

It forces me into conjectures and hypothesis. It stimulates my curiosity almost to a painful point. It evokes forgotten memories and revives old deep dormant emotions. It drives me slowly into re-evaluating political theories, philosophical believes, religious concepts.

It challenges my limited knowledge of physics. It defies my convictions about the relationship between reality and fiction, probability and possibility, logic and faith. It constantly generates in front of my eyes the beauty of chaos and the ugliness of human organization.

It makes me experience in brief intense moments the power of fears, the excitement of impossible challenges, the joy of the incredible. It reinforces my profound desire to accept the splendor of the mystery of life and death as an inextricable and intrinsic aspect of everyday life. Humanity at its peak in terms of creativity, imagination, destruction and insanity.

I am becoming obsessed with traffic, street traffic, the ordinary everyday traffic in this part of the world, with the desire of penetrating the logic of absurdity, the realization of the impossible, the fluidity of stagnation.

In my two days in Hong Kong I experienced the precise organization of the subways system, the impressive view from The Peak and the aring tram ride to it, the child-like joy of observing the city and the traffic from the second floor of a two decks roofless bus, the relaxing short ride on the ferry to the mainland. And the traffic.

In retrospect, I believe that Hong Kong is the preparing ground to the shock that is to come when one moves to Thailand. It helps a westerner to get acquainted with a traffic going the "wrong" way, but the little pangs of fears arising from the impression that the driver is drunk, are smoothened up by a sense of regularity and organization.

During the couple of weeks in Thailand I enjoyed the sweet kindness and the smiling ambiguity of the people, the disorganized charm of a huge weekend open market, the practicality of the sky-train, the complexity and simplicity of street vendors' food in Bangkok, the serenity of Koh Samed and its tranquil and clean ocean water, the romantic sunsets amidst the intense green of the varied foliage, the relaxed rage of the sudden and instinctual rain, the mellowing of the humid heat in contrast with the refreshing air-conditioned spaces, but at the moment all I can think of is the traffic in Bangkok.

Then it came Bangladesh. Everytime I mentioned to friends and acquaintances that I would go to Bangladesh I was asked the same question: Why? The only answer acceptable to the different degrees of disbelief accompanying that question was that I wanted to visit with my dear friends Sophia and her son Sohel. I believed that the joy of friendship would be the only excitement ot this trip. I stand corrected. Here I came into contact whith a much deeper meaning of the word hospitality and with a more profound understanding of the concept of social contracdictions and institutionalized poverty. Here I also discovered the existence of such different landscapes within the uniformity of the land, the charming beauty of century old tea gardens, the inescapable ugliness of unplanned urban growth. Here I kept exploring the intricacies of different social customs, religious behaviors, bureaucratic corruption. But what it struck me most here is what I believed to be the most chaotic, insane, surreal traffic. Till I went to Delhi.

My eleven days excursion to the northern part of India has been a fantastic experience.

Posted by Lucio, 13.11.03 20:50

05.11.03

Bangkok

Hong Kong Pictures

Bangkok Pictures

Posted by Lucio, 05.11.03 23:58 | Comments (0)

Tea Garden

Tea Garden Pictures

Posted by Lucio, 05.11.03 00:41 | Comments (0)

Koh Samed

Koh Samed Pictures

Posted by Lucio, 05.11.03 00:13 | Comments (0)

04.11.03

Dhaka Photos

Posted by Lucio, 04.11.03 00:04 | Comments (0)

03.11.03

Dhaka 1

Welcome, my friends.

Obviously you must be friends if you are still coming to this page in spite of my long silence and the problems in navigating the site. Only the love and compassion of friends can produce the patience to put up with the low speed of my learning curve -almost a flat line.

Anyways, considering that i was using perfectionism as an excuse to cover insecurity and procrastination, I decided (was pushed) to do something to correct this particular character difect and add something to the page.

I am leaving tomorrow for a seven day trip to India, and was strogly tempted to postpone this changes until my return, but the better part of me prevailed and I am trying to upload what I have so far done.

Not much but....

The pictures are untouched and still carry the nasty serial numbers produced by the camera; the colors of the different pages are not homogeneous and there are no comments or explanations ... yet.

Finally, the Dog section, New York and the last trip to Mexico and San Diego are still in the making. Soon...

But at least you can see some of the pictures ...

So, while I embark for my next adventure, I want to let you know that I love you all.

I will try to improve the pages a little at the time and follow Raoul's advise of putting things up and correcting them later (something like that).

(Following is the old page - its correction and revision has been in the making for the last two months and it's not ready yet ... if ever! For the moment just skip it and go directly to the pictures)

A few words about this page: it sucks!
But, considering that the choice was between leaving this page as it is, the basic, rudimentary, pre-beginner page of a computer-handicapped novice, and spending most of my vacation trying to learn and apply the basic concepts of "Dreamweaver" or some other "simple" beginner program, my decision has been inmediate and spontaneous: let it suck!

So, we can now move on.

This page is supposed to chronicle some parts of my trip, defined as an extravagant vacation by some and more ambitiously called by me a spiritual journey.

At the moment it's none of the above. The first leg of my trip actually is a camping/no camping excursion through Baja California, Mexico, with my dear Italian friend Sara. While there was no need to specify her nationality, the qualification of "friend" has become quite relevant during the trip. So, let me answer here the same questions which have been asked by virtually every man, boy and child we got acquainted with (I believe that a couple of women also -or so i whish to believe- asked some of those questions):

No, we are not married.

No, I'm not her boyfriend.

No, she does not have a boyfriend at the moment.

And no, she is not my daughter.

Yes, we are friends, just friends, only friends, so help us God!

Now, this is quite all in terms of text and narrative, at least for the moment. But ... there are a loooots of pictures, which might require a brief explanation.

Looking at those pictures, considering that Sara appears in almost all of them, it might bring you to draw the wrong conclusion about her: that she is possibly self-centered. I assure you- that is notthe case; in fact, among the several dozens pictures we took, there are many in which the subject is the scenery ... at least 3 of them.

Just kidding.

Posted by Lucio, 03.11.03 20:56