L'Evangile de Jimmy by Didier Van Cauvelaert.
Travellers,
One of he best things about travelling, besides seing the sceneries and experiencing other ways of life, tasting foods and smelling unknown scents, is the people we meet.
From young to old, straight to straight out funky, travellers come in all ages and forms. They each come with their reasons for travelling, their searches or lacks of them. From the young idealist ones to the sheer adventurous ones, the ones looking for a better life through new and improved gods, to the old and jaded waiting for time to pass in a country where they can be who they want to be as excentric as it might be, to the ones running aways from things, the stoned and lost eyes ones, to the various soul searching ones and those that need healings, travellers break all the rules of what is supposed to be "normal". Some end up staying in the travelled countries, even marrying, having kids who smile with the faces of the world. Others pass by like the wind, not even seing what lays in front of them.
I am not sure why I travel, as I am not looking for anything anylonger. The strangest thing i am finding on this trip is how familiar things are. Mainly I am faced with my solitude, this old friend which through the years has taken a new coat with a bit more lonely colors, yet still fitting me well.
As if even to the other side of the world, things remain the same. It is still people, everywhere I go. Economics change the way of life, economics change the shape of countries, the education of it's people, their hopes and aspirations, but underneath it all, lies the simple human, looking for a form of happiness.
The god forms pass on, from the Ganeishas, Shivas in their kaotic and wild temples, to the golden Buddhas in their most refined shapes. A muslam from Kashmir tells about his side of the story with his views of the western world gone mad, another beats himself up with a bead necklace as a german woman tells me about her finding Bouddhism through her thick glasses making her eyes look like fish swimming in a fish bowl...years after years as the song goes.... The Catholic mess goes on in the other side of town, in the austere St John Church, made of stones in shadowy woods. The little ndian priest has not missed a mass in 20 years he says proudly. Everyone has their own gods and as an outsider I can only observe the many shapes of faith. As an outsider I can only choose to preserve those many forms, as the Great Art they are.
No matter what shapes the gods take, we can never take this away from man. Man loves stories, man needs shapes onto which to project it's doubts, it's emptiness, it's pains and it's joys. Those shapes are called gods, and ideally they help people to heal and be good with one another. If those shapes would be taken aways from man, other shapes would be created, to replace the old.
May all travellers find what they are looking for, even if it is nothing.
May they all find their ways to the forms that can help them through this life.
"Suffering is to be recognized, but there is no suffering that can be recognized;
The source of suffering is to be abandonned, but there is nothing to be abandonned;
Cessation is to be acheived, but there is nothing to be acheived;
The path to cessation is something to be meditated on, but there is nothing to be meditated on."
Buddha Shakyamuni.
