Follow the Journey ☩𓀙𓃦☉
Egypt, like so many thousands before me, has captured a piece of my soul. I would travel here a hundred years if life gave me time. Gold, dust, shattered statues, pillars of light in shaded halls, ribbons of fading paint cling to grooves in chiselled walls; so remote, so close. Old colonial buildings slowly falling into ruin, bustling streets, cacophony of noise, cogs of human industry grinding against the ephemeral glitter of life.
"...And now your eyes see it... layers of memory are ushered away to reveal kingdoms tasted in dreams long ago... Canyons of orange and beige roll down into empty dells of rust and bone; dusted staircases and shattered statues licked with gold. Pillars of alabaster split the horizon and strange mountains rise like chiselled breasts, mocking the sky. Kingfishers glide across braided ripples of copper and blue; crown of Ramses emblazoned by the fire of a sleepy star. Finally this land reaches out a hand to you, as time itself stops... a secret mark passed from the heavens kisses your brow. You have held all of this within your heart from the earliest days of boyhood. Even you had forgotten! This magical place. Land of kings, sand and stars. Your dreams upheld, an offering to the righteous sun; arms quivering. Swollen and full, you gasp. This is really happening. You are really here. The inner river finally reaches the outer shore; all tributaries aligned with the wide arms of the great valley..."
Deep, in the Bush, this kind of Africa still lives, where children run barefoot in the dust to the pounding of stone and millet, where the voices of ancestors still echo across the sunburnt hills, where the red sun hums like a glowing ember behind the billowing grey choke of campfires, blades are sharpened each morning to the tremble of the dawn chorus, arrowheads are delicately rolled in poisonous weeds by thick cracked hands, and grounded bark and pollens remain the cure-all for every disease and ailment. Here, fading gently with time, the cradle of mankind's legacy on earth waits, waits for hungry passengers of the cosmic drama to dine on its forgotten nectars and deliver its message to a world bereft of a spirit...
"...Once you live in love, once you embrace and go into the world open-armed, ready to give yourself to all people you encounter without judgement or fear, then loves comes to you, love finds you in all places. Love, always, finds the beloved."
Recent times have given me the chance to swim a little in that great wide pool of remembrance, and, especially, to move a little through my time in India ~ a strange, wonderful, and wholly mysterious land.
I thought, there, where all this began, I might find something of before. Some treasure, some sign... some relic of a former life. In a way I was totally right. In a way I couldn't have been more wrong. I found a skeleton, all flesh decayed and returned to dust. It seems time does not preserve [...]
So they say that blood is thicker than water. And whilst that may be true, I have recently developed my own saying ~ Spirit is thicker than blood. 2017 has been a very interesting year for me. 2017 has been a very difficult year for me. And yet, 2017 has been a year of great [...]
Read Part 1 of my Journey through Ghana here Kpando lies close to the vast Volta Lake. Leaving the orphanage behind we began our journey one day, into the Bush... You see I'd heard a whisper that beyond the lake lay a huge area of protected and untouched 'original Bush' where nobody usually goes. There [...]
Boom! That's the feeling you get in your chest when you first step off the plane and feet touch the land of Africa. The heat, the chaos, all the faces turned towards you as you make your way through the crowds and find out how this new place works... the feeling as your toes curl, [...]
On Infiltrating the Vatican City, and Chasing Roman Skies... It was a hot, bright and sunny May day when I stepped over the boundary of Rome, and entered the smallest country in the world - the Vatican City. It wasn't my first time in the Vatican, I'd spent many an hour wandering through those white, [...]
"One who lives for and affects a keen sensitivity toward the subtlety and complexity of truest beauty, in nature and in art." One who LIVES for beauty - for that journey, to that place, for that view... In Nature... And in Art... Life is supposed to be beautiful. We are supposed to live through the beauty of [...]