Halfway thoughts
Currently sipping coffee and charging my phone in a cafe, mostly waiting for time to pass by so I can get to my ferry. I'm exhausted - last night was chaotic trying to find a place to sleep while in the harbour at 11pm and then at 2am trying to find a way to get to Napoli the following day. Again, things would have been a lot more difficult without other people's help. Turns out the most important phrase of all is "I don't know what I would have done without you." Yet to prove myself, I want to mention that I got the help I needed because I reached out to the right people at the right time and came up with solutions myself. See, Mom and Dad? I'm out here. I'm doing ok. And I'm clever enough.
I'm going to miss this a lot. It feels good to pass by places and cities knowing I'll soon be somewhere else again. Not worrying about anything that might be going on at home, because I'm too far to help anyway.
I haven't seen myself in a mirror in a long time. I've washed my hair with sea water and my face with hand soap, and I've worn five clothing items for nearly two and a half weeks now. I've come to think three would have been enough.
In a world that is so focused on material possessions and looks, it's felt incredibly refreshing and freeing to have everything in one backpack. The only thing I've worried about in weeks is catching the next train or ship or bus. I counted my money two days ago and I might run out if I eat too much ice cream, but I'm not really worried.
It's been 16 days on the road now, and if everything goes according to plan I have another 16 ahead of me. There's been a lot of time to think and a lot of time to let your mind go blank and sleepwalk through empty streets. In a way it's been hard adjusting from the Sardinian countryside to Palermo. Maybe it's a good thing I got an extra buffer day before Napoli to rest my feet and my mind.
I went to the Palermo cathedral. It rises above the city, looking so Middle Eastern in its sandy colour and intricate designs the facade could be mistaken for that of a mosque. In fact, I very much wish I could go to Tunis from here. It's so close. And I want to know what's under the palm trees there, because I assume it won't be statues of Christian... female saints? I looked at the row of marble sculptures surrounding the entrance. They were all of women. So were nearly all statues inside the church, too. Women in long, draped dresses with thick, curly hair with peaceful smiles on their faces, holding books and torches and pens and paper, all placed on pedestals in the most central place of the church.
I sat down to look at them. Christianity is very, very masculine. God the Father creates Adam - and Eve as an afterthought from a spare rib - and Eve the evil woman causes original sin from which Jesus the Son of God must free humanity by sacrificing himself. That's the story of Mankind. Catholics at least are lucky enough to worship Mary... as a vessel for men. It's tiring, and angering. Yet there they were, statue after statue, and it struck me because it was something I had never seen before, and had never consciously noticed before. I sat there for a long time looking and thinking and saved it to my heart.
Anyway. Napoli. They say lots of things about that place and I'm very looking forward to it. It'll be another overnight trip across the Mediterranean. I haven't really travelled by sea like this before to any significant extent, and it's interesting how it's changing in my thoughts from something passive that just is there into a very living, active being.
The nights on the Mediterranean are suffocatingly dark. There are no islands because the mountains make the shorelines very sharp unlike in Finland, it's just vast pitch black emptiness around you as though you were floating in space, and a light in the distance could as well be a ship or a plane or a star. The nights are also surprisingly cold as the wind rises, and the waves can get quite high. All the people crossing this sea for days or weeks on little boats or makeshidt rafts... it's scary. During the daytime the sea wakes up and turns gemstone blue, but there is still nothing to be seen anywhere. You might spot a large ship in the distance, but the vastness and the waves would make it impossible to spot a raft or a small boat anywhere further than one or two hundred metres away. How many people must have starved or drowned seeing a ship, unable to do anything.
Three kids are eating ice cream adjacent to me. They laugh as it melts and drips on their fingers. Last night I had a dream I was riding a motorbike through the narrow streets, I drove fast invisible to the people wearing long bright scarves around their heads and necks, and the bike grew wings and flew me over the orange rooftops and cupolas, through palms and olive trees to shimmering turquoise bays and rocky shores.
I'm going to miss this a lot. It feels good to pass by places and cities knowing I'll soon be somewhere else again. Not worrying about anything that might be going on at home, because I'm too far to help anyway.
I haven't seen myself in a mirror in a long time. I've washed my hair with sea water and my face with hand soap, and I've worn five clothing items for nearly two and a half weeks now. I've come to think three would have been enough.
In a world that is so focused on material possessions and looks, it's felt incredibly refreshing and freeing to have everything in one backpack. The only thing I've worried about in weeks is catching the next train or ship or bus. I counted my money two days ago and I might run out if I eat too much ice cream, but I'm not really worried.
It's been 16 days on the road now, and if everything goes according to plan I have another 16 ahead of me. There's been a lot of time to think and a lot of time to let your mind go blank and sleepwalk through empty streets. In a way it's been hard adjusting from the Sardinian countryside to Palermo. Maybe it's a good thing I got an extra buffer day before Napoli to rest my feet and my mind.
I went to the Palermo cathedral. It rises above the city, looking so Middle Eastern in its sandy colour and intricate designs the facade could be mistaken for that of a mosque. In fact, I very much wish I could go to Tunis from here. It's so close. And I want to know what's under the palm trees there, because I assume it won't be statues of Christian... female saints? I looked at the row of marble sculptures surrounding the entrance. They were all of women. So were nearly all statues inside the church, too. Women in long, draped dresses with thick, curly hair with peaceful smiles on their faces, holding books and torches and pens and paper, all placed on pedestals in the most central place of the church.
I sat down to look at them. Christianity is very, very masculine. God the Father creates Adam - and Eve as an afterthought from a spare rib - and Eve the evil woman causes original sin from which Jesus the Son of God must free humanity by sacrificing himself. That's the story of Mankind. Catholics at least are lucky enough to worship Mary... as a vessel for men. It's tiring, and angering. Yet there they were, statue after statue, and it struck me because it was something I had never seen before, and had never consciously noticed before. I sat there for a long time looking and thinking and saved it to my heart.
Anyway. Napoli. They say lots of things about that place and I'm very looking forward to it. It'll be another overnight trip across the Mediterranean. I haven't really travelled by sea like this before to any significant extent, and it's interesting how it's changing in my thoughts from something passive that just is there into a very living, active being.
The nights on the Mediterranean are suffocatingly dark. There are no islands because the mountains make the shorelines very sharp unlike in Finland, it's just vast pitch black emptiness around you as though you were floating in space, and a light in the distance could as well be a ship or a plane or a star. The nights are also surprisingly cold as the wind rises, and the waves can get quite high. All the people crossing this sea for days or weeks on little boats or makeshidt rafts... it's scary. During the daytime the sea wakes up and turns gemstone blue, but there is still nothing to be seen anywhere. You might spot a large ship in the distance, but the vastness and the waves would make it impossible to spot a raft or a small boat anywhere further than one or two hundred metres away. How many people must have starved or drowned seeing a ship, unable to do anything.
Three kids are eating ice cream adjacent to me. They laugh as it melts and drips on their fingers. Last night I had a dream I was riding a motorbike through the narrow streets, I drove fast invisible to the people wearing long bright scarves around their heads and necks, and the bike grew wings and flew me over the orange rooftops and cupolas, through palms and olive trees to shimmering turquoise bays and rocky shores.
