VII- A Brave New World

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.

- William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1

With the arrival of summer, hundreds of thousands from all over the world began their transition from the world of academia into the real world. After many years of studying they were to be finally given a sheet of paper stating they were capacitated to serve society as qualified workers. In his diploma, which he would soon receive, Leonardo would be able to read the words “Bachelor of Arts – Philosophy and Politics”.

Three years before that, the idea of studying such interesting subjects have seemed excellent to him, a considerable amount of thought having preceded the choice to study them. Now, however, he wasn’t sure if he had made the right choice any more.

            After all, what was he supposed to do with that specific degree? Which of the skills that he had acquired in the past 3 years could actually be employed in a pragmatic, profitable activity?

Philosophy, he considered first: the love of knowledge. Studying the works of the most important philosophers and having learned to argue his point of view competently had certainly made him a more interesting and cultivated person. Yet, it had brought him very little in terms of practical skills. In the modern world, unlike in Ancient Greece or Rome, there’s little demand for professional philosophers.

            And what about Politics? What is anyone supposed to do with a politics degree anyways? It’s a very interesting field of study, no doubt, but what can you actually do with it? Becoming a politician wouldn’t be a bad bet, except that it doesn’t pay any bills. Even more importantly, being a politician where exactly? In Portugal ? Maybe in Brazil? The idea of spending his entire life in one of those two countries displeased him considerably, which seriously went against the idea of becoming a professional politician in any of those two nations.  

            In spite of all this, Leonardo felt free, that’s for sure. The final results of his exams and dissertation were still pending of course, but he was fairly confident he had done well in all of them. He had made sure that he would pass by applying himself quite hard in the last few months. During that time, the idea of becoming finally free had driven him to work hard unlike anything before that. Now it was finally over, and he was free.

            Yet the joy of freedom often carries with it the responsibility of choice. His case was to be no exception. He had finally graduated and left the academic world behind, and now a new world presented itself to him.

            During twenty-five years he had been preparing himself for that moment. He had climbed the ladder, step by step, patiently and diligently. From the age of six to the age of ten he had learned how to write, how to count, a little bit of English, some fundamental mathematical notions, some history and geography, a bit of science… From ten to fifteen his training continued, he learned about literature and grammar, English and French, History and Geography, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology and so on… Then in high school his learning was directed into the humanities: History, Geography, Literature, Philosophy and Languages. Then he went to University, where he first studied Law and later Politics and Philosophy.  Along the way, he had learned to speak three new languages.

            So now was the moment to use all that. The time for learning was over and the time to act had arrived.  So where to begin?

            The truth was, he didn’t know where to begin. He didn’t know what to do. All of a sudden, his life seemed like a big sham. After that many years of preparation, so much money and time thrown into his formation, he really felt like he couldn’t do anything. Ironically enough, he didn’t feel prepared for what lay ahead. Worst than that, he wasn’t even sure where he was supposed to go or do.  

            That is, he certainly knew what he was “supposed to do”. Every boy in his generation has been told how they’re supposed to live their lives countless times: “Get out of your mom’s uterus – cry – breathe - learn how to walk, talk and go to the bathroom by yourself - go to school - enroll at university – graduate from university - get a job - get married - have kids – (get divorced - spend a good sum of money on a flashy sports car in order to find a girl half your age no brains and big boobs) - grow old – (be sorry for everything you’ve done wrong during your life - be sorry for everything you wanted to do but you didn’t during your life) - and finally: die.”

The truth is, we are all indoctrinated by our parents, by our grandparents, by our teacher, by TV, by our bosses, by our friends and even by ourselves, and everyone knows how it’s supposed to go.

            The thing is, what if you don’t wanna comply to the rules. What if you wanna be different? What if you want to find out for yourself what you REALLY WANT TO DO? Then what?

Then my friend you will probably have to stray from the “official” path and take your chances and that’s what. And this was what Leonardo started realizing. He began to understand that the journey to self-discovery was from being over, and that he was probably going to be alone during most of it.

The Traveller is Listening to:

Bitter Sweet Symphony (The Verve, 1997)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyu1KKwC74&noredirect=1

VI- Breakfast at Popina's

‘Hi people, I’m sorry we’re late….’ Says Leonardo as they approach the table.

‘Yeah… we got caught up in something… we lost track of time.’ Says Jean-Pierre in succession.

‘You’re late guys!’ Chiara points out bluntly. It comes as no surprise that she is the first one to talk. Yet, to Leonardo and Jean-Pierre’s slight surprise she doesn’t seem to be particularly mad. She looks a bit too tired to be really mad. From the expression on her face, it seems as if they weren’t the only ones to have been celebrating the end of an era well into dawn. ‘Come on, sit down and tell us what you did last night and why you didn’t answer our calls,’ she finally said, in a tone that was more curious than reproving.

Often when students move out to go to University, newly found friends become a surrogate family of sorts. This is especially true in the case of foreign students, often too far from home to go back every holyday. In the case of Leonardo, who wasn’t even sure exactly where “home” was, this couldn’t be any truer.

This was the seventh year since he had left Lisbon, his seventh year living on his own, his “seventh cycle” as a university student. As a foreigner himself, seemingly he couldn’t escape the tendency of befriending other foreigners, rather than being integrated in the “native” circles. However, the inherent problem of befriending foreigners is that they are a lot more likely to leave than locals. This fact was the reason why every year Leonardo had to rebuild his circle of friends practically from scratch. The fact that he had moved to a new country in three occasions in the past seven years also didn’t help.

So here’s Leonardo, saying goodbye to his friends, in some cases probably forever, for the seventh time in his life.

Technically, this is not a real goodbye. I mean, they will probably see each other many more times in the following week or two before most of them finally leave to go back to their respective home towns. Yet, to Leonardo, it really feels like a goodbye. It doesn’t matter that he still has a week and a half left in Leeds. This is probably the last time they are going to be all reunited for breakfast like they have done so many times during the course of the elapsed school year. The semester is over, the academic year is over and a whole stage of his life is over… It doesn’t only feel like a goodbye, it feels like closure. 

‘…’

‘So, come on, we’re all curious, where were you last night? You gotta us all a bit worried when you didn’t answer your phones and didn’t show up until this morning…’ insists Chiara, after Leonardo and Jean-Pierre fail to reply straight away. They are still feeling a bit slow, probably because of the alcohol in their blood and the hangover punching the back of their heads.

Chiara is a 24-year-old Erasmus student originally from central Italy. Jean-Pierre, Leonardo and her are the oldest in the group, but if there is a leader, it’s Chiara. Most times when they get together they do so in her house and she usually cooks for everyone tasty Italian meals. When the group organizes some special activity, she is usually the one behind it. She is for the most part the glue that keeps everyone together and everyone likes her and respects her. She exhales that “mum-like” quality that only a few women do, and that makes everyone want to trust and obey her.

‘We went to a party…’ says Leonardo.

‘We got drunk…’ mumbles Jean-Pierre.

‘Very drunk…’ emphasizes Leonardo

‘We ended up losing track of time you see and then I don’t know what happened…’

‘And next thing you know I’m waking up in some couch in some living room in some stranger’s house and a bunch of people are sleeping on the floor and I see Jean…’

‘… and he wakes me up and I had no idea where I was you see and this terrible headache and we were late…’

‘ And fifteen minutes or so later here we are,’ finally concluded Leonardo.

Chiara tries hard not to laugh, since she’s supposed to be the responsible one but a giggle comes out in spite of her best efforts. Most of the others laugh as well, almost all of them more enthusiastically. Yet, sitting across the table from Leonardo and Jean-Pierre, there are two cute English girls that don’t laugh at all. Most of the missed calls had come from their cell phones. Jennifer is blonde and blue eyed and has been seeing Jean-Pierre for the past three months. She seldom comes to Popina’s with the folks to have breakfast on Sundays, but today she’s there because she knew that was her best bet to find Jean-Pierre after trying to call her the whole night and morning without any success. She looks at him with angry eyes and he looks down avoiding making eye contact with her. When their glances finally cross, Jean fells as if an electric current has went through his entire body deleting any trace of dignity. He feels ashamed like a four-year-old boy caught stealing the neighbour’s fresh, home made, apple pie.  Chloe is a politics student, a brunette and has big beautiful amber eyes. She met Leonardo at a house party shortly after the second semester started and they started seeing each other shortly afterwards. Although she likes hanging out with the whole bunch, she came to Popina’s this morning mostly for the same reason Jennifer did. Unlike Jennifer she doesn’t seek eye contact, she prefers to let indifference and silence do the trick. Leonardo feels equally ashamed and almost wants to tell her he’s sorry, but he doesn’t dare doing it in front of all the others. He keeps to himself and orders his English breakfast, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, hash browns, fried eggs and two slices of bacon served accompanied by a drink, in this case hot tea.

Except for Leonardo, Jean-Pierre and “their girls”, the rest of the crew is Italian. For some reason, Leonardo always feels more comfortable around Italians than any other people. Maybe they remind him of his good Roman friends, maybe he just likes the language and welcomes the opportunity to practice it frequently, or maybe he enjoys the culture as a whole. The fact is that in seven years most of the friends he has made are Italian.

With the possible exception of Chiara and Jean-Pierre, his best friends in Leeds are Marco and Sara. He met Marco three years ago, in an IT Introduction class in their first year. Marco is the most eccentric of the bunch and could be described as a mad Italian philosopher with a very pronounced feminine side and yet resolutely heterosexual. His girlfriend, Sara, talks with a strong accento romano  (roman accent), loves English rock bands and French movies, is a good listener and wants to make the world a better place.

‘Come on boys, when are you gonna confess and finally tell us that you participated in a crazy bi-sexual orgy last night?’ Asked Marco, in his usual inconvenient manner. Sara, sitting right to next to him, elbows him violently, making him growl.

‘What?’ he asks gesticulating his arms as in “what did I do now?” Sara makes a subtle gesture with her head indicating the two glum-looking girls on the corner of the table. “Oh…”

‘Sorry Marco, I think the only person in this table that would participate in a bi-sexual orgy voluntarily would be you,’ replies Leonardo. ‘So what did you guys do last night anyways? It doesn’t seem like you had a lot of sleep either…’

‘ Cazzo, é stata una serata da paura!’ said Francesco. Leonardo realized he was wearing his jumper inside out.

‘Speak in English man, there’s people here that don’t speak Italian,’ told him Antonio.

Francesco was six foot four, was considerably thin and had long straight hair black as the feathers of a crow. Antonio was short, well built and had curly light-brown hair. They were both Erasmus students who had arrived in the second semester when they had quickly joined Leonardo’s group.

‘Yeah… I mean… it was a great night man! We all went to a house party. Antonio got so drunk that he threw up on himself, it was fucking gross!’

Everyone laughed this time, even the English girls. By then Fabrizio had already eaten his breakfast, half of Anna’s and was preparing to “help” Mara finish hers.  He was the crew’s best eater, proven through the course of countless meals shared together. He would mutter “buono! buono!” whilst devouring amazing quantities of food every time.   

            It was things like that that made Leonardo feel at home. After you spend enough time with someone you learn to appreciate their habits, just because they become routine. You appreciate every mannerism, every tendency and repetition becomes familiarity and that develops into friendship.

            That was not a morning for complex talks or amazing events. It was a bunch of people who really liked each other that got together to eat sausages and eggs. It was also the last time when everything was like it used to be. 

The Traveller is Listening to:

L'horloge Tourne (Mickael Miro, 2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9iYK91IKMU

XXIV - The Desert of the Real

A sea of sand. Leonardo floated across it, under the stars. ‘They are even brighter here than they were in Tangiers!’ he thought as he finally sat down. Hot sand, hot evening breeze… hot everything. Sweat ran down his face and neck and even down his bare chest. More than two hundred meters now separated him from the guide, the camels and the other couple of travellers. He was alone in the desert at last. 
The escape had finally been consummated. Society was left behind, albeit for a reasonably short, limited period of time. But this was what he had really wanted all along.  He had lived in Europe almost his entire life but he couldn’t stand European life anymore. He couldn’t understand what the point of all that was, all those parties, and drinking and shallow talk and weed and drugs and cigarettes and promiscuity and night clubs…  Were people really so uncomfortable in their skin that they needed to alter their minds so frequently in order to enjoy themselves?  What purpose did all of that serve?  It was just so disappointing. 

His mind drifted to the system, the houses, the big, fancy cars, the jobs, the materialism, nationalism and small thinking.  He thought of Maria, his cousin with whom he had shared so many great experiences.  She was the only person who had seemed to understand him when they were kids.  With her fiery eyes and mischievous smile, she could get him to do anything.  They explored forests and canoed rivers together, both in awe of the beauty they encountered away from the rest of the busy city.  She hated that people put so much importance into money.  She vowed never to own a car or buy new clothes or work a job that didn’t matter just so that she could purchase a big house with expensive furniture.  She was so passionate about it that she inspired him to give away half of his belongings so he could live a simpler life.  But she slowly succumbed to the lifestyle she hated most while she was in college and now lived in a stylish apartment with her boyfriend in Paris, working at a desk job like a zombie, performing meaningless tasks for an evil corporation so that she could pay for her €1000 wedding dress.  What was the point of it all? Was she truly happy?  She had turned into everyone else. There was just so much that he couldn’t comply with anymore and he wanted to escape from it all. He felt intoxicated and  wanted out, even if it was only for one night. 
Stars, billions of them burning bright, the sky sheltered from Civilization. He looked at the celestial corpses, placid in their eternity. Under the silver sky, feeling the hot sand caressing the bottom of his feet, he observed as beacons of light travelled millions of years at the speed of light, finally cutting through the black night above him, only to tell him how insignificant he was in the grand scheme of things. Like a grain of dust, he embraced his smallness carried by the nocturnal breeze.    

   

The Traveller is listening to:
Society (Eddie Vader, 2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy6iwP9Ux3A

XIX - Travellers

Sitting on top of his small bed, in his minuscule room, legs crossed in a yoga position, Leonardo reticently endured the torture inflicted upon him by the afternoon heat. He was shirtless, so he could see how the numerous sweat spots dwelled across all of his chest and stomach. He also could feel the sweat sliding across his cheeks, neck and forehead, sometimes finding a resting place in his big, humid eyelashes. This made him blink with a lot more frequency than normal. 

He spent many afternoons sitting in his bed, like he was sitting now, accompanied only by the incessant afternoon heat. He looked out through the window and saw for the umpteenth time the sight of a clash of civilizations: tall, western like buildings, meshed into the Arab city, crushing it. Maybe those buildings look modern once, standing as a symbol of progress and change, but now they were old and decadent, they denounced the country’s poverty, the inadequate route of change. Westernization didn’t bring progress or prosperity it seems. Leonardo much preferred the old Arab city, the Medina, with its Arab constructions and its Arab traditions.

Leonardo opened his notebook and decided to write yet another entry in his Travel journey, which now occupied at least a fifth of the black moleskin.

Today, he would write about people like him: travellers.

 

Traveller’s Log. Entry fifteen: Travellers.

Contrary to popular belief, not all travellers are alike. In fact, it is quite simple to distinguish between a few easily identifiable sub-groups.

            Type number one: the Novice Tourist.   Picture this: a white dude with a pot-belly steamrolling down the street, eyes wide, pointing out various anomalies to his cronies (a.k.a. his family), speaking loudly and never letting his camera take a breath.  This is the guy who has never left his home country in his entire life. You can see him coming from miles away. To the novice tourist, everything is new, and every single thing is to be compared with “how things work” in his home country.  “But in America, we put ice in our soda pop!” You will often find this kind of tourist in big European cities like Rome or Paris, but you will be hard-pressed to spot one of them lingering in an obscure Arab town like Tangiers.  This is because most first-timers prefer to play it safe (heaven forbid they go to a place where they can’t drink the tap water!), so they find it better to just follow the flock, and the flock will never choose Tangiers over majestic, first-world-country Rome.  Some obscure city like Tangiers (“Isn’t that in the Middle East somewhere?”) probably wouldn’t be at the top of a first timer’s ‘Places to See’ list.

            Type number two: the Occasional Tourist. Unlike the novice tourist (an overconfident first-timer), the occasional tourist has a few trips under his belt. In spite of this, however, he never really leaves his own world when he visits foreign lands. He is more concerned with taking pictures (to later post on some social networking website that substitutes real, live human interaction), than with enjoying the experience in situ. The Occasional Tourist is also the quintessential tourist, since he is the most common type there is. Walk through the streets of any major European or North American city and you’ll be sure to find plenty of these specimens roaming around. But journey to Tangiers and one of these little guys will be a rare sight, although an occasional pack of them will still be there snapping endless pictures and talking at 50 decibels above the normal level of conversation (especially if they’re “Americans”).[1]  

            Type number three: the Recurrent Tourist. Here we’re reaching the equator in what comes to be the continuum of traveller types.  At first sight, these people are not very different from occasional tourists. Yet, if you pay attention to detail, you can see they talk at normal decibel levels, they try to say a few words in the local language every once in awhile and their expressions are more serene. They don’t look so much like confused, bumbling Aliens on a distant planet, awkwardly finding their way through the complex infrastructure with a tattered map in hand.  They are also, as a general rule, much more respectful towards different cultures (Phrases such as “EW! I am NOT eating that!” and “What’s with all those women’s weird headdresses?” don’t exist in their vernacular). That is what travelling can do for you: it shows you that no matter how different we are from each other, at the end of the day we are all humans and, as such, we’re all made of the same core materials. In a nutshell, travelling often reveals a simple truth: we have more things in common than things that set us apart.   The trick is being able to see those things in common.

Past the equator we find type number four: the hardened traveller (or what may also be known as the “seasoned” traveller, if you will).  I’m sure you’ve all seen one of these guys.  They’re the stinky, scruffy ones, unaware and indifferent to the fact that their shirts might as well be used to clean a toilet and their shoes appear as if they have battled with a food processor and lost miserably.  All physical appearances aside, though, this is an interesting dude who can tell you crazy stories about “that one time in Thailand when I was arrested for being caught in a protest…”  This is the traveller whose spirit is to be found in the gaps between countries and not in one specific nation. He often feels more at home travelling than when he is not. Although his physical residence is in a stuffy flat in New York, a spacious apartment in Rome, a cozy cottage in rural England, or in a Victorian house in Kensington, his soul is far away, somewhere along the road. His mind can only focus on the next trip, craving the next boat ride, or bus trip, or trans-ocean flight. Once the travelling bugs gets you, you’ll never be left alone ever again.

            And at the end of the continuum we have the fifth type: the king of all travellers, the master of voyages, the prime minister of journeys, sitting on his wooden throne. Call him what you want, but I shall call him Nomad. His soul is often tortured, his spirit stretched across many locations around the world. Some nomads keep their original nationalities while others embrace new ones, and still some prefer not to have a nationality at all. Citizens of the world, Lords of the road. Eternal wanderers. They are the heirs to the Ronin of feudal Japan, to the Portuguese Navegadores, to the Pirates of the Caribbean, to the knights of medieval Europe and even to the Vikings, ancient scourge of the Northern Sea. They often forsake safety in the name of liberty; they are prisoners of their thirst for freedom and craving for adventure. Such men and women have been born to travel and they can do nothing to change that no matter how hard they may try.  

End of Entry Fifteen, Travellers.

---

[1]“American” is a term coined for people from the United States. It seems to be forgotten, however, that the term “American” encompasses a whole slew of people from the continent of America (North and South), not just those from the United States.

The Traveller is listening to:

Hit the Road, Jack (Ray Charles, 1961)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyVuYAHiZb8