a tribute to Lisbon’s favorite literary son, Fernando Pessoa
The best way to travel, after all, is to feel, To feel everything in every way, To feel everything excessively, Because all things are, in truth, excessive And all reality is an excess, a violence, An extraordinarily vivid hallucination.
~ Fernando Pessoa ~
This photo, taken three years ago while strolling in Lisbon the evening I arrived to acclimatize before walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino, is a modern homage to Portugal’s man of letters, Fernando Pessaro. His understanding of travel mirrors my own experiences, often reflected in my own poetry and photography.
This spring, SYNKRONICITI, the literary online quarterly founded by Katherine Grace McDaniel, again made a home for my creative expressions. In the current issue Identity, my poem “Ammonite Answers” and companion photo of the Moroccan mesa which inspired it, are but dozens of submissions beautifully curated by Katherine. As a poet who writes about the beauty in life’s imperfection and photographs its shimmer, often in response to my travels, I appreciate having my work accepted from among the many writers, poets, and visual artists from around the world who submit.
But what makes these acceptances all the more special is the time Katherine takes to uplift each contributor’s work by posting her often intuitive, always thoughtful impressions on her website’s blog and social media. In the case of my poem, she writes:
“Carl Jung recognized travel as a powerful tool for self discovery and individuation. Our interaction with unfamiliar parts of the outside world helps us hone who we are and often opens our eyes to things we didn’t know about ourselves, as well as confirming things we suspected.”
Hers is feedback as gift, both acknowledging, and inviting me into a deeper reflection on my writing and how it resonates with another. Thank you, Katherine.
Here’s the link to Katherine’s labor of love, that includes mine and that of many other global creatives.
I am home. Met by my husband in sunshine and mild temperatures last Saturday after nearly 24 hours awake, most of those masked in the minority, I arrived safe, sound, very tired and with my checked luggage. It’s taken about a week to recover from jet lag and feel my soul return to my body. I’ve been grateful for another prolonged autumn, warm enough to get back on the pickleball courts and try out my foot after trekking 220/237 km on the Via de Francesco, and close to another 100 km wandering through Florence, Assisi and Rome during the days bookending my walk. I played so-s0 after five months off court, and while my foot felt OK, I realized it’s too much, too soon to resume play daily. Saturday found me in our still colourful river valley walking with my Camino group. It felt wonderful to tie on the boots I’d worn up and down those paths in Italy, now with a much lighter pack, and gloves, toque and a down coat given the sudden shift in temperature…to be reunited with friends who, too, had trekked this past month in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe
Edmonton’s River Valley – Whitemud Creek towards Snow Valley
“Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us. In each person, there is a point of absolute nonconnection with everything else and with everyone. This is fascinating and frightening. It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself. They are at home at the hearth of your soul.”
John O’Donohue
“After this recent month-long journey, bookended by several days of solo wandering, I can assuredly say I am friends with both.”– posted on Facebook, October 20, 2023
Too, I can assuredly say that combining a small group experience with solo time prior, after, or both, is my favourite way to travel. I experienced it most recently in Morocco this past spring when I arrived solo in Casablanca and then extended my stay in Marrakech after the small group excursion. When I think back to having flown into Florence late that Sunday afternoon – finding the tram to take me from the airport to the SMN train station, to then making my way to the monastery I’d booked for the week (all first time experiences) – the combination of trepidation and accomplishment – in this case particularly so as I knew my way better than the local I’d asked – delightfully got me off on the right foot.
Having been to both Florence and Rome several times, I felt confident in my ability to get around. I’m “old school,” preferring paper maps – this trip using a terrific popup version that tucked away in my purse – and I’m quick to ask for help, understanding that in the encounter made, people enjoy knowing they’re needed. I loved wandering early in morning, and suddenly, for example, coming upon the Duomo to be enthralled by the sunlight breaking through the clouds. Countless moments of “moving at the pace of guidance” – going where I wanted, when I wanted – enjoying my own companionship, not missing a soul, the boon of solo travel.
early morning at the Duomo, Florence
That being said, I know, too, what a well-travelled friend had called “low pot” days: when fatigue, feeling overwhelmed, displaced and lonely create inertia, low confidence and anxiety. Its remedy: to acknowledge and either sit with and rest, let be or move through depending on the situation. This crept up on me during my time in Trastevere, when after two weeks of companionship, walking alone together, I was suddenly alone alone. And I was tired… from the exertion, not only of the actual trek in the glorious hot late summer, but too, from the hundreds of kilometers I’d walked in preparation. The inevitable “come down” from the accomplishment and all it took.
So yes, I am intimate friends both with solitude and its gifts of sustenance, renewal, rest and creativity, and too, with loneliness and its sharp edge of separation and self doubt.
A well-established practice of self-care, I’d spend at least an hour daily editing the day’s photos and writing a description to post on Facebook, this time to soothing instrumental Spotify playlists. While it became THE chronicle of my experience (as the very small journal I brought often remained empty for days at a time), in those moments of solitude and occasional loneliness, the comments from friends shored me up to remember the gifts that can only given to me, by me.
at the Trevi Fountain, Rome
Dear friends, if you were among those who followed my journey, and perhaps commented, thank you for the lifeline.
A Wabi Sabi Life 