Sunshine in my face
A girl’s song
Everyday a miracle
I saw it first through the window of the rolling train. An enormous, towering peak poking through the mists of a daunting range that I could swear had not been there before that day. Although the mountain’s head and shoulders were shroud by towering, almost solid looking cumulus clouds, it was there nonetheless, for everyone to see it. But no one did.
The yellow, sickly faces of the passengers around me remained lowered, their brows furrowed, their teeth gritting, either watching at a screen or simply absent. How delightful it would be to find a small corner of this world where money has no value. We have accepted to live in a society that is little more than a pervasive money-making machine, with schools and universities as the factories producing the parts and cogs of this machine. If I became and behave like a useful part of the machine, the tacit promise was that my life might be a successful one. It was a nonbinding promise where I struggled to find meaning, though. Unable to entirely free myself from its strong tentacles, I often flee to the mountains to distance myself from it. Only when alone in the mountains do I feel the right balance of beauty and horror.
My fellow passengers looked like beings terrorized living in fright of their own nightmares. The mountain was clearly calling us, and the pale of our society, anxious, sorrowful and ugly, had chosen to refuse the call. We spend most of our lives oblivious of what’s happening around us, replacing active and engaged participation with mere, detached observation. I watched the mountain pass by, as it stared at me from the other side, until it was gone.
There I was, coming back to the city after months of solitary mountain climbing, wandering and pilgrimage, every one of my possessions stored inside the bag hanging from my shoulders, supporting myself by means of menial and sporadic jobs, playing games with and running races against the village children, eating smoked bamboo shoots, or pickled plums, or fresh slices of cucumber, drinking rice wine with the farmers and the homeless, writing of things deep inside my heart and of what I had seen and felt and thought during my walks in the little notebook that I always kept in my right pocket, sleeping most often than not under a roof, lulled by rain or moon, by the chirps of crickets or a chorus of croaking frogs, where and when darkness or exhaustion found me, sharing the little food I had with feral cats and stray dogs, with the birds who in the mornings woke me with their songs and the fish who lived in the ponds and rivers I bathed in, I was coming back after so long and the only thing I wanted after seeing the mountain was to get away again from the city and its people, which looked to me like a web of mold growing on the surface of something rotten, like fungi on a pile of dung, as soon as I could.
I realized with enthusiasm that I was not done yet. I had to make the length and breadth of this new journey. I longed to be free of tribulations, deep into life, fettered by neither belief nor convention nor tradition, drifting like a cloud day after day, neither rigid nor stagnant.
To reach that haven I was looking for, if there was one, I still had a long way to go.
Thought is indeed a tiny seed, but it turn into a deep-rooted, fast-growing, giant tree. The plain idea of the mountain being there was the coal that would fuel my desire and arise a whole conflagration within me. I therefore accepted her silent invitation.
After a night at a cheap hotel near the station, I visited a little supermarket, bought and packed a few things in my rucksack, as well as some food and water, took hold of my walking staff, and left again in a warm morning of the last week of the hottest month of the year without having had the time to arrive from my previous travels.
That day was as good as any other day and there was no rain in sight. Because you know, something or someone who is here today might not exist tomorrow, and once splendid natural scenes might tomorrow be sterile wastelands or even worse, a shopping mall. I refused to simply sit and wait for my own disintegration. Now that the mountain had materialized, it had become an inescapable reality I had to live and act in accord with.
Going on a journey somewhere new, away from this floating world, always made me feel awake, renewed. On the path of travel, effort never goes to waste and there is no failure. I had trudged for years the fields of fleshy joy until I exhausted and scorched most of them. For what I thought were then heaven-sent pleasures, I had suffered the worst torments of hell. At that point in time, in the middle of my life, only distant places and high peaks succeeded not to leave the void of meaning unfilled. The children I had been entrusted to father had played a similar role before, but they had also grown and made a life of their own, and for that and their lives and the time we spent together I was more than grateful.
I left without a map because all of them are in some way distorted. In some, for example, the center of the world is the country they were made in, in others Greenland looks bigger than India and even China. Once I realized every map I owned was prejudiced, I was liberated. This small liberation has transformed my way of life.
Nothing provides as much joy to my heart as rumbling somewhere far away from the over complicated world of men.
Particularly in my travels I have met many extraordinary things in the almost forty rounds of seasons I have spent in this world. I had yet to meet that mountain, though. The only way a landscape can be known is by walking across it with my own two feet and body.
The long rainy July days were at last gone and the blue of the sky looked magnificent. I knew at least that my intestines, by staying warm, would not turn moldy and rot. That sky felt familiar, it felt like home. I guess that’s how a bird feels about the clouds, especially the birds we have forced to live in cages.
My last waking thoughts shaped my dreams that night. I slept little. I had sat in the dark admiring the shape of a vast and eternal moon and thinking about the bygone days for the best part of the night. It sometimes happens. Things are no longer what they used to be, and I guess they never were and never are since everything and everyone is always changing.
Mountains, especially volcanoes, were considered the abodes of benevolent or angry gods, depending if they stayed dormant or erupted and wiped out the towns and lives below them. In November of 1985 the town of Armero and more than twenty thousand of its inhabitants disappeared after the mountain nearby went active and emitted so much heat that the perennial snow covering it melted and went down as a scalding avalanche of mud, rock and debris.
I remember to this day the story of a brown girl swallowed by the boiling mud while the whole world watched.
The mountain belched its rage around midnight. The fetid spit, loaded with boiling rocks, mud, and ashes erased from the map the village and killed over two thirds of its people. This one too, as it is the case with most occurrences we call tragedies, could have been avoided. We had been warned.
Geologists, experts from local and foreign institutes and many universities had sent their findings to the government drawing a clear picture of the hell to come if nothing new was done. There were earthquakes, explosions, dust clouds bloated with gas and sulfur, columns of smoke, a rain of ashes that covered more than once the crops and roofs and the crowns of heads of the peasants. The town’s major passed on the radio saying that there was no real danger. Civil defense members went on the streets to calm the people down, to tell them, There is nothing wrong, go back home and wait for instructions.
And so, they did. A bright green town of dust roads, grasslands full of albino cows, gardens, and mountains, a warm river where the townsfolk bathed and played and laughed in their leisure time, which was plenty. What was left after the eruption was a pool of caked mud and tens of thousands of rotting corpses. The mountain threatened no more. It spilled its scorching guts over the town as a man who has been poisoned. The children and their mothers were asleep. The morning after was a school day. The lahar swallowed them and the beasts and the men. It also swallowed the major who announced to all that there was no real danger. Hours earlier, ash had fallen in flakes big as crows, flakes big as open hands. Every single cat in town vanished a couple of hours before. Rats, moles, snakes, and weasels could be seen roaming the street, confused. Flocks of birds flew far and high. Horses snorted and neighed worried to the marrow. Mongrels howled without a rest announcing the end to come, the end of it all. Hours earlier, the Cumanday, as the natives the Europeans exterminated used to call the mountain, cried as an animal that’s been badly hurt. Cries and ashes.
Neither the blind nor the deaf could say they had not been warned. When the sun went down, ashes fell like never before. The few who knew better left the town on bikes, mules, and horses. One could see their mouths and noses covered with wet rags. All the rest cooked something and sat to eat and listen to the soccer game on the radio. The sportscasters asked the Red Cross spokesperson to wait until halftime to make his announce. Just minutes after he said, you need to go now, the walls trembled, and the flood covered the roads with a film of fresh mire. Many kids woke up from their dreams. Many curious ones went out to see the warm flow across their streets. The town’s priest, megaphone in hand, went out and said, Be calm, Be calm, do not Be afraid. God will save us. Fifteen minutes later he left the town alone in the church’s car. Some said they saw him, no longer a priest, in a city nearby.
White noise filled the night. The avalanche came from the river named Lagunilla and went into the town split into two crawling vipers. It could think, it seemed. One snake razed the town’s only hospital, the ill and their carers, the doctors, the dying. The other one buried under layers of mud and rubble the police station and the few men and boys who could offer some relieve to the injured and a decent burial to the dead. Once they were over, they merged again into a single monster of sludge and magma and rocks and bodies that whipped with all it had the main power plant. Darkness and gloom. Thick clouds. Deep shadows. Nothing but silence.
The heads of the living came above the surface looking for mouthfuls of hot air. Lungs, tongues, and skin burnt. It all tasted of sulfur. Mud got into the ears, noses, mouths, and anuses, it scorched their clothes and hair. A man wiped off lumps of mire to have a better view of Hell. Screams. Voices calling mom or dad. Voices calling children. Some asked for help. Some for water. Others not to be alone. Others only asked not to die that night. Stones large as houses, broken tree trunks, legs of cattle floating upside down, and the corpses of dogs, so many of them. The manes of the dead floated on the surface like the lilies of Monet.
And then it rained.
The living ones spent the night surrounded by the dead. The cries lost strength, turned scarce. The first helicopter came as dawn broke. Half a dozen of rescuers, young men, almost kids, dressed in orange overalls and black rubber boots up to their knees. They pulled body after body after body, caked in mud from head to toe. Most of the dead were naked, raped with rage by the strength of the avalanche. A second helicopter and a second group of rescue kids came some hours later. And then two more. And that was all. Two handfuls of children trying to save thousands of dead and living. The wait, the fear, the sorrow, the gashes, the fractures, the lack of air, costed the lives of many. The living spent too many hours buried to their necks. They cried and begged and prayed until they ran out of air. One more day had to pass before the foreign aid arrived. A couple of rescue helicopters from Mexico and Venezuela. Journalists and crew from all around the globe.
The images of Omayra Sanchez with her eyes black of hemorrhage went from shore to shore. Thirteen-year-old, pretty round face, skin burnt by the sun, short curly hair the tone of tar. Omayra was trapped up to her neck in mud, wreckage, bodies. The girl told the reporters and the curious that under her feet she felt the hand of her aunt still holding her tight. My dad’s too, she said, even though I am not a hundred percent sure it’s him.
To extract Omayra from her prison of ooze, to save her life, there were two choices. The first was to cut her legs from the hip down and stop the hemorrhage before she bled to death. The second was to suck out the mud with a motor pump and of course, in the whole town and the ones around there was not a single one of those. When they finally found one after hours of search, it was too late. Omayra was dying. They drew out the muddy water till they found the muddy aunt. Omayra’s feet were black and purple, too much time had passed. Cut off her gangrenous little feet or let her die. It took her three days and three nights to die. Not to dismember the girl, the consensus was to cover her dead body with boards of wood and tiles of clay and leave her there, in the same slough where they found her, among the remains of her childhood home and echoes of smiles and the dead body of her aunt and perhaps the one of her father too. The media told the news of a baby who was born in a pool of mud a couple of hours after Omayra died. A miracle, an announcer said, life comes after life goes, said another. No one really cared. No one knows if the baby lived or died, or what became of him or her. Omayra was the one, their selected martyr for that night.
The whole world saw a girl die a slow and painful dead, her mind give way to the pain of death, her heart and lungs followed, and the only ones to blame were all the inept citizens of the Nation. I forced myself to watch the images again three decades later. Omayra, holding a log that keeps her afloat on the feces-colored water with abnormally white hands, stares straight into the lens with bulging eyes, the lack of sleep made the flesh of her lids swollen. The pupils float in a pool of blood. She awaits her saviors, the ones who will not come, immersed to her mouth. Omayra, Have you always lived here? Asks her a Spanish journalist. Omayra pulls her mouth from the filthy water and said yes.With your parents? Yes, sir, she says obedient. She thinks for a while, trying to wash the mud from her brain in order to remember and then says, when we, when the quake started, when that happened, the flood, my dad, my dad, my dad came. A rescuer shouts, Hey bud! we need a motor pump, bud, come, come check this out, come. The well mannered Omayra waits until the rescuer stops shouting and continues saying, My dad came looking for us, and he was left behind, he was hurt, while we tried to reach for (she pants), and she fell before me, and I fell on top of her, almost, and me, being fat as I am, almost crushed her. Omayra died of a gas gangrene. In this type of gangrene, a deep sore or wound is the open door for a swarm of bacteria to enter the body, grow and multiply, belch and consume the tissue of their host. Omayra was eaten alive. Omayra says, I live because I must, I am just thirteen. To die, I can’t. It isn’t fair. And she was right. Omayra also said, I want that when I am free, when I am free, you take me with the camera, that I am shown, victorious. And before she died she said,
I want to say some words, can I? Yes, say them, answered the reporter with the Spanish accent.
I see a dark-skinned woman. A witch, an oracle. She calls me sugar. Can I send a message? The journalist nodded. Mother, if you hear me, I think you do, pray so that I can walk and these people help me. Mom. Dad loves you a lot, so does my brother, and me too. Goodbye, mother. Goodbye, Omayra. The mix of mud and magma started drying from the next day. The ones who went to bring some aid described the wastelands of Inferno. Armero. Fertile grounds bathed by the sun. The oppressive heat accelerated the putrefaction of the dead. The air reeked. The gases of decay inflated the wasted carcasses and pushed them up to the surface. Manes, hands, feet, limbs, and half-buried faces as far as the eye could see. Hogs, dogs, cats, and birds of prey rambled over the mud pecking at the open eyes, ears and fingers of the dead.
Pope Jean Paul II visited the immense graveyard seven months after the end. He approached at a slow pace the point where, in the middle of it all, a colossal cross made of concrete was erected. He knelt down and while gusts of wind played with his thin hair made of snow, he prayed to his God for the souls of the dead and the living.
We went through the vast emptiness two or three years after the events when I was five or six years of age. I remember seeing the cross, a river, and a never-ending expanse of dirt. Twenty thousand, Father said to no one in particular. Twenty thousand is a number hard to imagine. Down the road Mother sighted a female hitchhiker, young, short denim pants, white long legs, a white cotton tank top covering her tiny breast. Stop the car, said Mother, she needs a ride, she might be lost. Father did as told. Mother turned her head again and said, it doesn’t matter anymore. She’s gone.
In the distant past, not many thought of taking to the road unless insane or desperate or forced into exile. Only a few travelers ever made it to their destination. Now there are bicycles, motorbikes, buses, trains, private and public vehicles, and even ferryboats and planes and copters. Few travelers, if any, die under precarious conditions.
These days people travel hours and days for the strange delight of snapping the blurry smile of a Gioconda hidden behind bullet-proof Plexiglas. I needed and would travel for a different reason.
Please do not misunderstand, I am a big Leonardo fan. I once read the genial vegetarian, homosexual, Italian polymath wore bright, carnation-colored robes to take walks around Florence and Milan, like the one he gave to the apostle James the Less in The Last Supper. It is said that part of a mob hurled the apostle down from the walls of the temple where he preached after he refused to renounce his faith in Christ. More angry men waited below and, while he was still praying for their souls, stoned and clubbed James to death after he fell.
But I digress.
I had, without really thinking it, but undoubtedly willingly, been casting away my earthly possessions. I had thrown my material and personal attachments away, one by one, to water or fire or void, I had cast them to oblivion in the years preceding the journey, as if for this one-man procession yet to come nothing but myself and the sky over my head was needed. Only a certain joy remained with the last piece of that useless memorabilia gone.
Traveling on foot, someone once told me, is amply rewarding for those who take to the road. I had not decided if I wanted to come back home. Perhaps yes, but only after days or months or even years walking. It depended on how long it took me to dig deep and find some truth or wisdom. Under those conditions, it was highly probable I wouldn’t.
Whether or not I attained the peak was not important. Just walking upwards was enough. If I made it, what I would find at the top of it, whether a refuge for sages, a city of gods, or even a deep crater filled with beasts and other monsters, also mattered little. I would put all my energy and attention into it, and that was it.
On that morning, while the Sun beams above my crown transited Leo like birds on fire, I felt the need to learn and understand the mountain better. One must leave oneself behind and go to the tree if one wants to learn about the tree or swim with the fish if one wants to understand the fish.
I knew that events, words and encounters would only issue of their own accord when the mountain and I had become one.
This unity I longed for, invisible to the naked eye, is, or at least so I thought, the vital force that shapes the world into a meaningful whole.
It is also the only way worth living.
I wanted to waste no more time or words in vain. I hoped the moment I opened my mouth to speak again the summer heat would melt my lips and seal them up for good.
So, there you have it. Off you go, my friend. You must take to the road again.
I could feel the warm air rising to form the first clouds of the day as the sunlight warmed the Earth’s surface.
I shall hurry.
Some more hours and the mountain would be deeply buried in a sea of white and pink and orange. What a sight that would be.
I looked at myself for a last time in the mirror. All the glass and silver showed me was a little child gone somewhat old and sour.
Other mountains I had climbed had for centuries been home to the wise, the lonely and the crazy. I longed to live that way, away from the world of men.
A busy terminal filled with busy people. They made me think of chickens, always so busy pecking and scratching the ground, eating and eating morsels without cease only to end up being eaten. All the noise from the different announcements and instructions veiled from us the true face of the world.
My only memory of the hours spent inside the crowded bus is of twin girls in a seat in front of me whose black and shiny ponytails swung like pendulums
I opened the window and let the driver drive and enjoyed the views instead. I told myself I shall control what I could control and let life or someone else handle the rest. At the end of the day, the night train carries us even when we are sleeping.
The higher the bus climbed the colder the air was.
A large cloud which reminded me of a battleship welcomed me to this place beyond the realm of daily, human life. In this vast emptiness my understanding seemed to deepen.
At the station, more than two thousand meters above sea level, birds, moths and butterflies awaited our arrival.
I took careful notice of the sights and sounds and smells. A wise man had once told me: Wherever you are, wherever you go, master your surroundings. By doing this you shall not lose your way. And that piece of advice then saved me. I took a step back when I heard the racket and avoided being hit and stabbed by the gigantic horns of the majestic brown bull who ran in front of me chased by its enraged owner.
I regained my calm and continued my inspection only after the animal and the man had been out of sight for long minutes.
To the west, I could see all the myriad alpine peaks I had yet to explore. They looked like blue giants made of stone slowly walking through time, one moment there, the next gone. I longed to see my life this way, from the broadest possible perspective, one day at a time, until I had to go away and disappear.
A group of wild sparrows sang a beautiful birdsong in a patch of green and yellow rapeseed. One of them took flight and kept going up until it was swallowed by the sky. Two more followed the same path as if it were evident and clear to its peers while invisible to the rest of us. How I longed to understand their language and the language of all the other birds. Those sparrows, I thought, were perhaps hints of something more, a boundless, unknown world waiting to be explored.
In 1958, an ignorant, deluded, power-thirsty Chinese man decided that the sparrows of the country were a pest and that they shall all be eliminated. Kill them all, he said, and millions of angry adult men, some of them in police uniform, as well as children, women and the elder, took to the streets armed with pots, sticks, slingshots, bows, shotguns and rifles to engage in war against the birds. Shovels were needed to pick so many bodies. Eggs were smashed, nests destroyed, the few chicks left also mercilessly killed. Every spring and summer evening the garbage trucks collected bags filled to the brim with dead sparrows. Those who were alive then wrote that they could hear the sparrows cry and cry like little babies. Their plea was enough to drive some crazy. More than a billion sparrows died, and the species stood on the brink of extinction. Without a natural predator, locusts and other insects flourished and ravaged the crops across the Chinese land. Famine followed. Even Newton said, although he was not the first, that For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. People ate whatever they could find. When the animals were gone they resorted to eating mud which, once the moisture was gone, turned concrete hard and broke havoc to their innards. Before the humans died, their hair turned brittle, their eyes went dull, and their teeth fell rotten. Only the last-minute import of a quarter of a million sparrows from the Soviet Union helped turned the crisis round and allowed the species to survive. At different times and in different places around the world, the dodo, the great auk, the Guadalupe caracara, the passenger pigeon, and many more ran out of luck before a miracle could save them.
The sight of a string of horses whose life was spent carrying humans on their backs deeply affected my spirits. Noble and intelligent creatures, born to be free only to be miserably enslaved by men. My own father built a life profiting from them, forced to race in circles in a frenzy of fear, whipped by the dwarfish jockeys dressed in bright attires riding on their backs for the entertainment of patrons who knew of no better way to spend their afternoons and their hard-earned stipends.
My own father, a wealthy man in his best years, owned a dozen race horses. After the Latin-American empires of drug traffic crumbled between the eighties and nineties, the racing tracks were seized or simply went bankrupt due to lack of clients. The unemployed horses were sold to stables around the continent for a fraction of their price or were killed and sold for sausage meat if their age and health were no longer at their peak.
With the sun hitting my back, my shadow seemed to ride the back of the furthest one. I yearned to see many more like them, and cows and goats and sheep.
And, sometimes, less men.
Chestnut tiger butterflies danced and played around the horses’ hind legs. The pungent urine drove them mad with pleasure.
The blue mountain stood straight in front of me, looking like the mother of the world.
The world is round, they say. To walk eastward one step is then to go west one step as well.
Before proceeding to the trail, I paid my respects at the nearest temple. The path was shroud in mist, as if the mountain had let out her breath in a warm exhalation. It is most pleasant to visit a temple in the early hours or at night when there are no other pilgrims.
A solitary monk attired in black working clothes stood in front of the building. He was pulling the weeds around a plant of pale pink chrysanthemums and burying them around the stem to nourish it.
He did not look around or hum a tune or offered greetings to the scarce visitors. He seemed only aware of and fully concentrated on the weeds and the chrysanthemum.
I thought of asking him for gardening tips. I thought of asking him about so many things cluttering my spirit.
After wavering between thoughts and doubts, I said nothing, threw some coins into the wooden box, whispered a prayer to the enshrined gods asking for permission to enter the mountain and turned around to go back to the trail.
I could already feel how those thoughts left unsaid started festering inside me.
Today, both the sky and you seem terribly uncertain, said the monk.
I stopped and turned around and presented my apologies.
He seemed, as if I had without warning returned from the dead, overjoyed to see me.
There is nothing to be sorry for, said the monk. Nothing in this universe, and especially the human mind, ever has a fixed abode.
I smiled embarrassed, bowed to him and kept walking away.
What a pleasure it always is to meet a man or woman entirely devoted to one endeavor. The search for beauty, the search for meaning, the search for truth.
Quests worth spending one’s days on Earth on.
The monk trotted and caught up with me.
What brings you here? He asked.
I found something quite amusing in his voice. I do not really know, I said. A strong desire to wander, I suppose.
Going up?
That is the plan, indeed.
Mind for some company? The journey might be long. We can talk casually about the mountain, its clouds and birds and irises. We can talk a little, we can talk a lot. We can also walk side by side immersed in silence. I will be you and you can be me for a while. You might come to enjoy not being with your own self for a while. What do you say?
I simpered at the thought of a deity taking human shape to help me in my travels.
He said his name was of no importance since there was no one else but us, that he came from a remote village, that he was married and that he had been a monk for the last ten years of his life. My favorite things are mountains, seas, children and flying creatures like birds and butterflies, he said.
I already liked the man.
Did you have breakfast?
Not yet, I said.
Please follow me, he said, the affairs of men seldom reach me here, but I do think I have some porridge left from last night.
I checked my watch and confirmed there was enough time.
Moments later I sat on the floor, the monk placed in front of me half a bowl of warm congee surrounded by small servings of fresh yuba, dry seaweed, as well as sliced eggplants and tomatoes.
Please enjoy nature’s summer bounty, he said. It isn’t much, but it will truly nourish you.
Will you not eat something?
No, thank you. I already had today’s meal. While you eat, I will get some water for the road, a jacket and a pair of gloves.
The food was both delicious and surprisingly filling. Plain fare tastes better when one is really hungry or when food is scarce. In spite of being full, I wanted to ask for second servings. I surprisingly refrained and controlled my self-indulgence. I fleetingly wondered if the monk could hear my thoughts.
The monk brought back a small, black canvas backpack. I hoped he had in it, in addition to the gloves and jacket, a knit cap to cover his bald head. It was already cold at that height, and it would get colder. He served us warm tea.
Wait until the mud settles and the color of the water is clear, he said.
I wondered if the monk drank coffee.
May I ask what’s in your bag? He asked.
It took me a while to produce the contents stored in my trekking rucksack. Things kept coming out of it as if it were the hat of a magician.
Before we take the first step, he said, let us get rid of any excess. Before you put something in take something out, or else the container will be crowded with useless junk. If your bag is too heavy, you will fail. If your bag is too light, you will also fail. It is always better to find the middle way. I will keep these for you inside the temple until we come back, he said, carrying about half of my stuff cradled in his arms. Here is your receipt, he said, handing me a tiny, folded piece of yellow paper that I stuffed in my pocket.
It all looked strange when we stepped outside. The weather had changed, the light was not the same and the air tasted different. It was as if we had stepped into a world that had suddenly flowed and changed. I do not know how else to describe it.
I checked the time again. I had eaten, we had chatted, we had drunk tea, I had unpacked, he had taken my belongings to a different room, he had washed the dishes I used to eat, and we both had used the bathroom before leaving. All that had happened, according to my wristwatch, in less than seven minutes.
The wind blew in the hemlock trees that stood tall around the temple like long-haired, fragrant maidens. They are wish-fulfilling trees, said the monk, and right now hey say goodbye and wish us Godspeed.
Which trail would you like to take? He asked. I stared at him, agape and confused. There are, said the monk, at least seven or eight trails I know of, and for sure many more yet to be walked on.
Any suggestions?
I could answer that, but I will not. It is essential for each of us humans to choose and cultivate and even polish our individual path. This time I’ll follow you. Rest assured, I will whisper in your ear if we risk getting irretrievably lost.
We walked side by side immersed in silence for a while.
Then we talked a little.
Then we talked a lot.
The monk already felt like someone who had always been there, always on my side from the beginning.
I was so glad to be there that I started hallucinating. At times, I must confess, my eyes saw uncanny shapes and shadows, my nose registered scents that could not be there, and my ears heard the sound of drums and flutes coming from nowhere.
The monk told interesting, good-for-nothing stories that kept both of us entertained like:
Villagers where I come from used to guide their ageing mothers to the mountains and abandoned them among the trees or in the desolation of the rocks. The old women died of thirst, hunger and exposure.
Or, in bygone days, mounted warriors of the village used to train their aim by shooting arrows at frightened dogs previously released into a circular enclosure.
And also, in the center of the village there was a large, purple stone no one dared to approach. A cloud of poison gas was always wrapped around it. During the spring and summer months there were piles of dead butterflies, bees, beetles topped by the random unknowing bird or two.
His stories, for some unknown reason, made me regain my composure. Some of them were cruel, some of them made me laugh silly.
As we groped our way through the morning clouds, I felt calm and somewhat joyful. I felt like a vagrant without a care in the world. I always enjoy watching the clouds. Each one of them has a unique form, personality and expression. They remind me of humans.
The monk held a shiny red leaf from a shrub between his thumb and index. He studied it for some seconds, let it go and kept walking. Don’t you find it curious, he said, that the same force that enables you to breathe even while you sleep is the same that makes the fresh green leaves turn red in Autumn?
He repeated the process with a tiny purple flower. When the intermittent clouds allowed him to stare at the blue sky beyond, he looked at it in silence. While we walked, he studied butterflies and dragonflies, the thin rays of the sun on his arm’s skin, the different kinds of rocks on our path, the faces of the other mountaineers and even our own shadows. Everything and everyone seemed to grab his attention. Most things worth looking at pass unnoticed by man, he said. I find it a pity. I thought it was indeed a most terrible thing. For example, he said, look at that tree. Isn’t it elegant? Doesn’t it have the most beautiful shape one could imagine for a fir? Isn’t it a miracle that in this mercurial world, where people die and rivers dry, where forests burn and mountains crumble, that this small and charming fir is still standing? I wonder what would happen to this fir if no one noticed it, if no insect found refuge in it, if no bird landed on its branches. Would it cease to exist? I suppose we must all face that question at the end of our lives.
The fog vanished around noon. We had crossed the threshold.
The monk stopped in front of one of the huts scattered on the mountain.
You shall drink some of this water, said the monk smiling. You never know, it might make you immortal. Have some food and get some rest. Take some minutes to clear your mind as well. Try not to think. In some hours you will find the gateway to the clouds, and the paths the sun, the moon and the stars trace for us. You might also find what you came looking for. Not a small feat, if you ask me.
I obeyed and sat down on the ground and ate and drink and rested until I turned clear and almost forgot about breathing. Not thinking, for a change, felt like a miracle.
The monk also sat with his spine straight, ears and shoulders parallel, nose and navel in alignment, crossed his legs with each foot placed on the opposite thigh, formed an oval with his hands, rested them near his navel, and just breathed.
He sat there facing the void, looking like a human-sized version of the mountain, with nothing at all seemingly in mind. The monk had turned into an empty shell. Were heaven to crumble on his head, I was sure he would not blink. When looking at his face I thought that must be the way one feels just before one’s death, when all the colorful toys have been taken away.
The ground bore the color of time.
I looked up at the distant peak. It looked as if the mountain held the sky on its back.
Some mountains resemble beautiful, sleeping damsels. Others look like angry women with a troubled mind.
The monk prostrated once and murmured something before standing up to keep on walking.
I looked at him in wonder.
Before I could ask, he said: whether cooking, painting, writing, making bread, walking mountain trails, growing fruits or vegetables, brewing sake, studying birds or butterflies, being a brother, a son, a husband or a father, or simply sitting straight in silence letting life be life in the reality of the present, every one of us shall strive to find the perfect expression of our actual nature. And when doing that which you think is the simplest expression of your nature, do that, just that and nothing else, with your whole body and mind. Limit your activity and concentrate fully on what you are doing at the time. When you cook, be the food, when you bake, be the bread, when you walk the mountain, be the mountain. Do and let go. Just be alive and express your direct nature. To do that and only that should be the purpose of your day. Real calmness can be found in activity itself. It is like learning Japanese. You cannot do it all at once and from one day to another, but only by sincere repeated practice over and over. And then one day, when you least expect it, you are fluent. It’s like a mysterious power. But it isn’t. For a flower to bloom, for a bird to lay her eggs or for a woman to give birth is nothing special. Life manifesting life, and that’s about it. Do you see?
I did not.
I saw a black-eared kite circling above our heads looking for food, though. Perhaps one or two chicks waiting at the nest. An intelligent animal. Their attraction to smoke and fire used to be a mystery. As it happens, the clever bird is simply scanning the place for frightened, fleeing prey.
What surprised me about the monk was not his extraordinary personality. On the contrary. What intrigued me most was his common face, his soft voice, light frame, short height and his utter ordinariness. I also liked his large, fleshy ears.
I noticed that the monk not only bowed to everyone who crossed our path, he also bowed to trees and birds and rock formations, he even bowed to a pair of hunting dogs who came running, panting, barking from the opposite direction. He bowed to everything and everyone he met as if saluting a teacher. Everything and everyone he encountered was an important part of his life.
In some weeks, first hard like grains of salt, then soft like willow buds, snow would fall. The flakes would settle thick and fast and pile up and high longing to go back into the skies. The northern winds would come along, piercing like the breath of ice dragons. The mountain would be inaccessible and impossible to climb. Before autumn ends, winter comes. The rare intruder would meet magnificent blue skies, high winds, hard ice and the mountain’s upper half covered in a coat of glowing white snow. A most beautiful sight.
There is no gap between dawn and sunrise. And it is the fleeting nature of things which makes them wonderful.
One year of life is good. One hundred years of life are also good. What a luxury it is to be alive to taste life to the full, at least for a while.
The monk trotted some steps in front of me and came back carrying in his cupped hands the tiny corpse of a grey-green warbler. Its pale, yellow legs looked ready to break at the slightest touch. He asked me to hold it. The fragile little bird was stiff and cold.
Would you help me bury it? He asked.
We buried the bird under old volcanic rocks.
There, said the monk. Lucky little fellow.
Finding a dead animal always brings to mind my own dead. My godfather, some of my aunts, family friends, my brother, and especially my father. When we contemplate with care, we realize that there are many things and many people in our past that we can never see again. It is also true that the memories of the dead linger for a while and then grow more distant with each day that passes. That is why I think it is important not to completely forget about them. That is why I think it is also important not to forget that our own death presses in on us and we must seize, with this only body and in this only world, every breath that has to us been given. There is no need for us to think about the world to come, even if there is one.
We pierced the stubborn clouds at last and kept walking with a white sea of them below us. It was like flying without wings. I pictured myself in the middle of that sea, all alone, an island unto myself. A most wonderful image.
No matter how thick they might look, the sky above the clouds is always blue and the sun does not forget to shine. Both sky and sun are always there, even when we cannot see them.
From here onward please ensure to watch your footing, said the monk. A single disturbed thought created a thousand and one distractions. The trail looks easy, but it is precisely in the easy places that mistakes are meant to happen. If your mind is diverted, your steps will falter, and this can mean you will not make it to the top. Just remember, an unmoving mind and an unvacillating body. Your arms and legs and body know exactly what to do, they will move effortlessly as they tune in with this world, you just need to be attentive and meticulously observe the process. In other words, of the mind, do not be mindless.
How you came to choose this life? I asked the monk.
Setback after setback in my first decades. During my school years I promptly came to conclusion that ordinary education is the piling of bricks to make a building we call knowledge. When that building is completed, it becomes our prison. I could not rid myself of the thought that I would be a miserable fool if I spent my life involved in nothing other than wall building and other worldly affairs. I was convinced there had to be much more to life, a way for an individual to become a unified whole. I was sure that somehow, somewhere, if I looked hard enough, I would find something wondrous. So, in the winter of my twentieth year, I left my family home. Little did I know that from that day on I would I become not only a home leaver, but also a Wayseeker. Have you found the way to live your life?
I shook my head.
I understand. Most of us have not. It would be good to hurry, though, you might be lying in a coffin come dawn. But where was I? Oh, yes. During my third day on the road, and after almost dying of hypothermia, I went into a temple looking for shelter. The temple’s roof was covered with a thick layer of snow. The white blanket made it look even more away from the outer world. I asked the tall and handsome man sweeping the entrance, a much intriguing person, to tell me about The Buddha. A Buddha is what a human can become, he answered.
How can I become a Buddha, then?
I can explain you water, but you won’t get wet. I can explain you food and that alone won’t relieve your hunger. Simply follow his teachings and his practice, he said, it all depends on the depths of your own effort.
And who taught the Buddha what he knew?
The sound of valley streams, clouds, trees, a birdsong, the wind offered him an indication, said the bald man. He found the real answer, though, inside his chest after many years of searching.
You mean the answer lies inside me?
Impressive, said the man. You seem to be a fast learner.
That exchange was for me rare and precious. The handsome and tall man became my master and the bridge between mundane hesitation and a different reality. These few words have remained to this day engraved on my skin, flesh, bones and marrow.
I decided to take the tonsure a few weeks after our encounter and, devoted to the task, studied and practiced ceaselessly. After my first few days as a monk, I felt I had been in a dream since my birth until that point. During the monthly five-day meditation sessions, even though it was hard practice, I felt like I woke up from that dream for the first time. I also turned my back for good to the city where I had spent my childhood and youth. I had no wife, no children, my parents were not old and had plenty of support. I had neither salary, nor rank, neither wealth nor ambitions. What was there, I wondered, to hold me to the world? After my master died, I grieved for a while. Even though his death was calm and natural, like the fall of a tree that has stood for too long, it was a great lesson in impermanence, a subject he often mentioned. By remembering his words, I promptly realized that meetings always carry separations. I harbored grief and sorrow no more. The voice inside my heart also told me that even the Buddha had stood up from the lotus seat and started to walk. So, I walked. I was wide awake for the first time in my life. There would be no more waffling. I had found my direction. My master’s teachings have been for me like this great mountain, I climb and climb, but the mountain is still steep and high.
I made of the mountains my dwelling place and of the cover of the stars and clouds my bed, and this for the past twelve years of my life and countless pairs of straw sandals. Twelve years that have felt like planting a pear tree and watching it grow. I love the mountains. They look to me like Buddha’s body and the rivers they are the source of sound to me like his voice. By becoming one with them I’ve learnt to reach the stars, ride the clouds and follow the wind at night. It’s hard to explain to someone who has not made of the mountains his or her place of dwelling.
So, you are homeless?
That’s one way of putting it. I prefer to call myself, let us say, a traveler. A wanderer looking for mountains hidden in the sky.
What about the temple where I met you?
I am just passing by. Might stay a couple of days, a week at most.
It must be a hard and solitary life.
Not if you have found your refuge. To be happy, a man needs to live without hunger or cold, treated when ill, and sheltered from storms of rain or snow. I have all of that every day and night, and if I don’t, it’s because I have chosen not to. It is preferable to have few chains, be a home to yourself, and walk the world instead.
Have you ever thought of going back?
I have searched my soul often about that question. I’m still waiting for an answer.
How about fathering a child some day? Aren’t you curious? I am the father of three girls, I said. I still think is the only way to experience what true depth of feeling is. When my first daughter was born and I held her in my arms, she looked at me surprised, her gaze deep and unpolluted.
I felt a kind of love I had never felt before. It frightens me somehow to think you will miss that, to think that you will end your days unacquainted with that kind of tenderness.
I have children everywhere and I am the child of everything, he answered. I have spent a decade on the road, and I still can’t think of a better way to live. Regret them as we might, he said, there is no regaining of our lost years. I considered which among the many possible paths, and which of the many things in life were for me the most important. I renounced all others and dedicated myself to a life of walking. You can try a simple experiment. Cling to a ripe persimmon while grasping for another one and you will most often than not end up dropping both. Try to love another woman while already loving one, and the probabilities that you will lose both and ruin your peace of mind for years to come is very high.
That is why, to whoever asks me about my life I answer, forego the many to attain one great thing and be untroubled by the world. Lasting peace in body and soul is more precious than most people imagine. I think the best contribution I can make to what we call human society is to study myself every single day, to live my monk life to the fullest, and from time to time to go up a mountain with a fellow seeker of the way and transmit a portion of the little I have learnt through practice.
We were by then passing the fortieth station at almost three thousand meters of altitude, only twelve more stations to the top. Apart from moss and lichens, we were not supposed to see much life at that altitude. It wasn’t the case, though. Trees, shrubs and even flowers abounded, birds and insects were plenty. It was as if the mountain took delight in our visit.
Are you tired? I asked the monk.
Not in the least, he said. We must go up, higher and higher. And once we reach the top and meet the sun, we will go back and down to share with other humans what we have found and seen. Once we have reached the peak, the only way left is to descend.
And so, we did.
We wrapped ourselves in a second layer of clothing. The sun shone but the wind blew strong and carried a light drizzle. I enjoyed the fine drops hitting my face. Depending on when it decides to fall, sometimes we love it and sometimes we hate it, but in reality, rain has not a thing to do with our preferences and our conditions.
I once met an anma, said the monk apparently unaware of cold and rain, a blind musician and masseur, who worked at mountain resorts during the summer months.
An eye-disease had blinded him in infancy. His father, a tofu maker, used his meager savings and connections to send his only boy from Tokyo to Kyoto when he was ten to learn massage techniques under the tutelage of Moriyama Waichi, the famous master masseur and acupuncturist. Moriyama dismissed the child calling him incompetent after a couple of months. The stubborn blind child, instead of going back home, walked to the top of Mount Hiei and begged the temple’s abbot for a place to stay so that he could fast and meditate. The abbot, impressed by the child’s determination, not only gave him a place to sleep and rest, but sat with him for seven days. The abbot broke the silence and asked the child for how long he wished to sit. Until spiders spin their webs in my eyebrows and swallows build their nests on the crown of my head, he said. They had a light meal of gruel and tea before doing it all over again. And then again. And then again. Neither swallows nor spiders had enough time to grant the boy’s wish. Twenty-eight days of silent fasting and meditation, a willing master by his side, and some months of tweaking and practice afterwards, were seemingly all the boy needed to come up with the therapeutic technique that reportedly saved the then prime minister’s son from a weakening and life-threatening neurological disease. Patient and masseur were both twelve years old when the healing took place and remained since then good friends. When asked on live television about his motivation, the young anma simply said that from the moment he had heard the news and been told about the boy’s defeated face, he just knew he had to find the way to use his own body to heal him. He also thanked the abbot publicly and said that the time they had spent together had allowed him to calmly and thoroughly consider how to use the time and body he had been given. The interviewer asked him, trying perhaps to make the interview more interesting to an ever-more distracted and apathetic audience, what the most important lesson the abbot taught him was. To sit and grow, said the anma. That was his only guidance.
At times, being with the monk felt like hearing the echo of my own voice or watching my own shadow.
You know, sometimes I wish I were more like the masseur. He has since then brought back countless people from serious illness. But my nature is undisciplined, I delight too much in nature and doing as I please. My master used to say, transmit the message to one person, even half a person, it is not the number that matters. There is no need to collect multitudes. Do not cling to who you are or what you do. Be in one place at one time and do one thing at one time. Abide peacefully and in flow, and always walk without a worry in this world. If I were more like this blind boy, I could perhaps ferry more people between this shore and the other.
The color of the soil changed as we advanced. It turned from charcoal black to grey to brown to red. At that height, it seemed to radiate its own light. I wondered how minuscule we looked when seen by someone outside the mountain.
Do you fear death? I asked him.
I fear life more. It is an unbearable experience unless we discover the value of our existence within it and within ourselves. Both hell and heaven are right here, you know, it just depends on how we live. We shan’t expect ecstasy or pain greater than the one of our everyday lives. Do I fear death? Not really. I do not think that death is more traumatic than taking off an old coat. Kings and commoners end up the same. The same goes for travelers and monks like us. Like dusk and dawn, we meet only to part, and that is all well and fine. My legacy will be my robe, a smile and a pile of bleached bones. Now, let us keep on walking, said the monk. Perseverance, my friend, is where the gods dwell.
At last, above in front of us, we could see the top, and coming from it someone in trouble, hobbling and staggering in our direction. I caught the man as he tripped and was about to fall face first. The monk helped the man sit down and asked for his name. He looked into the man’s worn-out face with a warm smile, like a father looks at his own child when he they meet after a long separation. We got nothing but incomprehensible grunting in return. We checked his bag. He had no other clothes than the thin jacket he was wearing. He had neither food nor water left and only God knows for how long he had been walking. Peter Joe Daniels read the only document with a name in his otherwise empty wallet. The name of an elementary school was written under the photograph. Probably a teacher. By the looks of his dry, yellowish spittle he was dehydrated. By the sound of his rambling and the way we found him hunched and tottering, he was most likely suffering from altitude sickness. After he had drank enough water and eaten some of the crackers we had left, we carried him down to the closest hut, more than an hour behind us, and there paid the manager Peter Joe’s supper and overnight stay before we took our leave. Even though we had walked for hours and eaten little, I was surprised at how light the stocky man hanging from us felt.
I could not help but think that if we had not run into the man at that moment he would have probably fainted, been badly hurt or even died from exposure during the night, when the temperatures went well below zero.
Whoever I encounter is no other than myself, said the monk. He did not say much else as we retraced our steps towards the summit.
That moment made me think how we take most things, especially our own lives and the lives of those around us, for granted. And not only that. Most of us cannot fell a tree, let alone make planks or boards from it. We would not know where to begin if someone gave us sand, soda ash and limestone and asked us to make glass. We can neither spin a thread of yarn, nor weave nor sew, we cannot harvest our own food, we do not even know where most of it comes from! And yet, most of us today spend our days within firm and insulated structures, wear colorful clothes and have food in excess. And we assume all this is normal, as if it were naturally owed to us, without a further thought or question.
We reached the crater at the last station at the eleventh hour of our walk. It took us another hour just to go around it. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. The monk mentioned basalt and saponite, allophane and magnetite, and other names I had never heard before but now enjoyed as one enjoys a good song. There were so many colors in the soil. There are so many colors in the world.
The sun had not finished setting when the round face of the moon showed up in the sky and the first stars of the night introduced themselves as the best of remedies against utter darkness. Not only the misty band of the Milky Way, but also constellations like Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Draco and even Hercules were visible. I could feel the chill of the night inside my flesh and bones, but the sight was such that it made me cry in wonder.
I turned around to ask my friend to look at it as well. And then I saw the cloud.
A massive purple mass that resembled a whale pregnant with flash and thunder. The edges of its body gleamed blue and green and red and yellow, like a coat of oil on water or a cluster of soap bubbles and produced shafts of rainbow-colored light around it as the cloud glided. The air around it smelled of strong petrichor, as if a full season of rain had been compressed into a single space, mixed with the pungent scent of flowers growing and decaying in bogs. The sight and lights, as well as the smell and the sudden change in humidity and temperature, pushed me to my knees as I retched and vomited everything that was in my stomach. The cloud’s center was a silent vortex that sucked in dust and shrubs and pebbles. The members of the visitation were a figure wrapped in a billowing fire halo and a retinue of similar figures, smaller in stature and with halos only around their heads, some of whom seemed to be dancing in ecstasy to the rhythm of the booming voices of what looked like a celestial chorus. My nose and ears were bleeding. A thousand vibrant butterflies, a large colony of jewel-like beetles, blue herons, white cranes, toucans, macaws, long-tailed birds of paradise and other birds flew and cried and chirped and tweeted excitedly around them. The cloud was neither dazzling nor horrible to see, it was neither good nor bad, neither divine nor evil. It just was.
The monk stood under the cloud. I think he smiled, although I cannot be sure. His body started to glow as if his insides were on fire. As his blood boiled and his organs, flesh, and bones burned, a spiraling column of white smoke resembling a long snake ascended to become part of the purple cloud. When he passed back into the womb, he was at the same time forever gone and forever present.
The voices of the chorus stopped, and the animals went quiet. The cloud rose and headed towards the moon. It was slow at first, like such a large object shall normally drag itself, only to rapidly accelerate and be gone in seconds.
Darkness, a path of stars, the round lamp of the moon and the shadow of the selfless rabbit taken by the gods to live in it, a ghost, light bubbles, the promise of dew. A dream, a flash, music, and memories of a purple cloud. Thus, I looked upon what I had just experienced.
I recovered my strength promptly and was back on my feet, as if possessed by something new and foreign, something like a ghost or a spirit, scrambling down over the barren outcrops and steep escarpments. If I were to miss my step and fall, all my bones would break, and my name would be forever lost into oblivion.
It took me the whole night and part of the next morning to descend and reach the nearest town. An endless sea of delicately nuanced blue mountains unfolded and dissolved before my eyes, the gold and white haze of the morning sun hanging over them.
I focused on the task at hand with deep intent trying to ensure that the memory of the moment would not be easily displaced.
While I went down, I screamed and cried, talked to myself, prayed and cursed, and finally laughed like a madman before ambling along the last long stretch in silence.
Unequaled divine happiness.
My state was such that I almost missed seeing the owner of the large bull, now calmly whistling as he rode on the animal’s back, returning home. The struggle was over. Both of them had clearly reconciled and looked like the best friends in the world.
It all looked different seen at the bottom. Even the mountain. Especially the mountain. I beheld reflected, as in a dome-shaped mirror all around me, the last projected technicolor fantasies of my primitive will to live like other human beings. That stubborn fire was at last extinguished. It was then I realized that the mountain was the mountain and it had always been. And the Way was too the same of old. Verily what had changed, if anything at all, were my own heart and soul.
While looking for some change to pay the bus fare, I found the tiny, folded piece of paper the monk had handed me when he took most of my load inside the temple. It was not a receipt. Instead, there were just three lines written in black ink.
When the quarrel over water
Reaches its highest pitch,
Sudden rain.
