Sparks from the Fire » travel

Luigi

Peter Link — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:16:12 +0000

I have a new friend. His name is Luigi. He’s 5 years old. He’s growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, speaks Portuguese and not one word of English. Well, more on that later. When we were first introduced, he tried to pronounce my name and couldn’t. “Peter.” When I said it the second time he simply burst out laughing with the surprise and wonder of such a funny name. “Peter.”

On the third attempt he got it right and then laughed again in glee at the funny sound. “Peter. Peter. Peter.” He ran around in circles of joy over the humor of such a funny name saying it over and over amid gales of 5 year old guffaws.

As if Luigi isn’t a funny name…

Actually, Luigi is a wonderful name! Luigi, Luigi, Luigi! Say it again and again. An Italian name for a Brazilian boy.

But I digress…

I played with Luigi for about an hour and a half waiting for his parents to finish a meeting. He showed me his two-wheeler bicycle and his helmet which was too small for him. It was also too small for me as I tried it on amid more gales of laughter from Luigi.

When not climbing all over me he ran – up and down the patio, back and forth, for no obvious reason, just to run. Ah, the energy of youth! Then he rode his bicycle — up and down the patio, back and forth, for no obvious reason, just to ride.

Between each journey he would come back and talk to me. At first he was a bit mystified that he could not understand my words and looked at me curiously as if I had an unfortunate deformity. That lasted about thirty seconds. Then he just got over it. He would tell me about his bicycle and I would say, “Oooh” and “Aaah” and “Wow” and “Uh huh”. Then I would talk and he would listen and then laugh and go ride his bike again or run across the patio and back.

He told me about his new school, his new shoes and something else that I never got a word of. We were instant pals. We played Rock, Scissors, Paper and Battling Thumbs and then I hoisted him up on my knees facing me and held on to his arms and we played One, Two Three, a game I played a thousand times with my own son, where I say, “One, two, three” as I bounce him on my knees and then suddenly drop him through my knees only to catch him just before he hits the ground.

More gales of laughter. He couldn’t get enough of this game and even the next day when he first saw me came scrambling up on my knees saying “One, two, three” – only in Portuguese. I never told him what “One, two, three” meant. He figured it out with his 5-year old mind and remembered it in his own language.

Every time I saw him over the next few days we conversed like old friends and pals. He helped me set up my recording equipment and we talked at length about my laptop computer. The entire time Luigi spoke in Portuguese, Peter in English. The most amazing part of the experience however, was not that we conversed, but that Luigi, in fact, never even knew that we were not speaking the same language. He never questioned it. He just accepted it and moved on. Lesson for the world; lesson for the ages.

In the course of our three day friendship I did teach him one word in English. “Hello.” Whenever he first saw me, he would run up and say it – and then, erupt into gales of laughter – and then say it again, just to try it out.

I’ll probably never see Luigi again. I’m off to Cape Town and he’s decided to stay here in Sao Paulo with his parents. Yesterday when we parted, it was not easy. Somehow we both knew. When he came back for a second hug as his parents waited to go, he was a bit tearful.

As we hugged goodbye amid the tears, he whispered in my ear, “hello.”

For more inspiring thoughts, music you can download,
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

Relationship With A Tree

Peter Link — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:23:22 +0000

I took a long walk through Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo, Brazil yesterday. I’d compare its beauty and size to Central Park in Manhattan, the only two differences to me were that everybody was playing soccer instead of baseball and then, the trees.

There was one, especially, that was huge, whose roots went on above ground for 50 yards or more. The children stood fascinated and played under it and seemed drawn to its majesty, climbing its roots as if it were a favorite grandfather that they could maul and hang on to.

The tree struck me as simply patient with all these crawling little “bugs” and also a little proud to be admired so. I stood and gazed at the spectacle for several long moments and it reminded me of another old friend who was also a tree.

Many years ago, in my wild and ever-searching youth, I found myself walking alone in a dense forest in New Hampshire late one summer afternoon. The temperature was in the high 90s that day and so the shade of the woods was welcomed and perhaps about 10 degrees cooler. I came upon this tree. It wasn’t as big or famous as the Ibirapuera Park tree; it stood rather lonely perhaps among others.

Nothing in particular made it stand out except that it had several exposed roots that caught my attention. I stopped and stared for quite some time and as I was doing so, suddenly had the distinct impression that the tree might be as curious about me as I was of it.

I walked over to a patch of soft grass about 10 yards from the trunk and sat down to get into the experience. After a while, as the sun would cut through the leaves intermittently and warm the grass, I lay down on my back and stared up through its leaves and branches into the flickering sunlight.

Once in school someone told me that the spread and size of the branches were matched underground by the spread and size of the root system. I started thinking about this and imagining this root system beneath my body going on, living on beneath my body, reflecting the branches above. Then I considered the trunk, that central point between the two earthly and heavenly extensions.

I spent a long time trying to imagine where the brains of this tree were, if in fact it had brains. But something had to govern this magnificent creature. There had to be some central point of processing for this amazing expression of life.

This tree had stood there, alive, with its other tree friends for many decades here in this forest. This was not a well-traveled path, so it had probably seldom been visited or admired by the likes of me. So this was as special a moment in the life of this tree as it was in the life of me. My awareness of this newly found friend deepened and I began to consider the life essence that poured through it from roots to trunk to branches daily.

Year after year its leaves would drop and rot and become the earth that collected the nutrients from the water and other dead and rotting things around. This became its food and drink. In essence, it lived off of itself. It was somewhat self-perpetuating. How clever of you, oh tree.

I began to understand its food system, but where oh where did its life essence come from? It was then that I got it. As I lay on my back in the grass and dirt in the sun and shade, I realized that he got it from the same place that I got it. His life essence was the same as mine – not similar, but exactly the same. This tree expressed itself differently than I – I was mobile, he was not – its body looked different than mine, but then he had a different purpose than I. The possibilities and plausibilities were overwhelming.

It all became simply too much to consider for my young mind. But this one thing I knew for sure that day while I too was rooted in the earth: My friend, the tree, and I were the same. Essentially the same. He (it) seemed both masculine and feminine, but then again so am I. He was amazing in his processing power to grow, to change with the seasons, to weather the storms, to get along with his neighbors (do trees fight?), to shed his skin, to bloom and fade, to be born again and to die.

I deeply considered springing roots right there and then and staying. Oh, it seemed a simpler and better life in the moment. Besides, how could I possibly get up and leave this new-found friend? I considered a name for him… “Tree.” And so it was. Perhaps he lived by another name, but “Tree” seemed somehow appropriate for that day. What a concept! Why not just spring roots and stay, Pete?

I must have fallen asleep for a time. I only know that I awakened as the bugs began to eat me from beneath. It was then that I began to consider the realities of my choice. Would I really eat of the dirt? Would it not get cold when the sun went down? Would the bugs win? In my imagination my relationship moved from neighbor to guest. I realized that two and a half hours had passed. It was time to go home.

I said my fond farewells, promising to return again and again. Of course I never did. “Tree” waits for me still.

Perhaps not.

For more inspiring thoughts, music you can download,
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Peter Link — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:50:31 +0000

We came around the corner of the mountain range flying in at about 6000 feet. I pressed my forehead to the window as the pilot announced our landing. Suddenly there was Sao Paulo sprawling before me – city of red clay roofs, city of skyscrapers, city of poverty, city of joy. Here was a city like none other.

Flying into most American cities looks and feels about the same. The similarities speak to man’s tendencies to copy one another. Most of them lay out pretty much the same – some bigger, some smaller. Then there’s Rome. Now there’s Sao Paulo.

People, people, people. All of whom I do not know, have never met, will never meet – living down here in South America – a place I seldom consider. I am, once again, struck with the smallness of my life, the largess of the world around us. I have lived all these years; this place has been here all that time, yet we never knew one another. A new window opens to my life and my heart rushes in the excitement of it.

I spent the rest of the day in the hustle and bustle, the hassle and the traffic. Oh my god, the traffic — worse than L.A. Crawling across this sprawling city I am most taken with the creativity of the graffiti. Modern street art thrown up on ancient walls. Colorful, Latin, bold, fascinating. Wish I could stop and study it. Wish I could meet the artists…

There are too many poor people in this world. Nothing new here, but seeing it is experiencing it in a way we sheltered Americans seldom do. What will Cape Town bring? That’s where I go next. To the shanties of Cape Town. I must focus on the joy of the people.

The day had not the romance I expected. I didn’t fly all those hours to drive all day in traffic, but the corner turned this morning into the valley of Sao Paulo and those red clay roofs was a moment I shall never forget.

I’ll take what I can get.

For more inspiring thoughts, music you can download,
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

Family

Peter Link — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:21:46 +0000

I woke up this morning with a new family. Babies crying, five year olds running up and down the aisles, moms breast feeding, people sprawled all over the “house” in general disarray – some still sleeping, some just waking up, some already into their morning prayers, some stretching what they could where they could.

I’m on a flight from NYC to Sao Paulo, Brazil and when I went to sleep five hours ago, I was in a flying movie theater; now I wake up to this bustling family of man waking up to another day at 32,000 feet. The sun pours through the few opened windows as we ride atop a rich layer of frothy white clouds. There must be an ocean down there somewhere, but if it is, it’s hiding for the moment.

Last night I went to sleep among strangers; this morning we are surprisingly family. Well, after all, we did sleep together. We rode across the sky together. Few things changed, but now we’re talking to one another – some in English, some in Portuguese – we’re playing with each other’s babies, whereas last night their crying was just a nuisance to us all.

Breakfast is served by a particularly ornery stewardess (we’ll call her Mom, but not to her face). I’ve been watching her on this flight and she is definitely not a happy camper – clearly a woman who hates her job. The baby across from me delights not with her breakfast roll, but rather the plastic wrapper it has arrived in.

My banana seems very pleased to be returning home to South America after its life journey, but then I devour it, and it is no more. Ah, such is life – the transference of energies. The endless eternality of this life essence. I eat to live another day. It turns out that the banana’s life purpose was to take this trans-continental journey back and forth just to feed me in the sky.

I wonder if my own life has such a relatively simple purpose. Here today, gone tomorrow. How many of my family will make it back to earth? How many of this happy 230 will make it through another day. I hope all, but here at 32,000 feet, the gamble is a bit more riskier than usual.

I pray and know that God is in control, that Mind governs – not jet fuel or “2 General Electric CF6-80C2-BB turbofans each generating 63,500 pounds of thrust.” I focus on this infinite Mind that is the source of all right ideas, that invented this amazing travel craft in the first place and know in my heart and mind that the idea behind this 767 air buggy is perfect and in order. With these thoughts I protect both myself and also the precious lives of my new family.

And now the grumpy stewardess stops by to pick up my garbage. I say goodbye to what’s left of my friend, the banana (the peel), as Mom Grumps removes it from my tray. Suddenly, for she must have guessed the banana’s and my pre-destined relationship, she breaks out into the most endearing smile that brightens the flight deck. All is well with the world.

The cloud cover has vanished. South America lies below in its greens and browns and mysterious voices. Children play – up here, down there. Babies get back to the job of crying bitter tears over relative nothings. Brothers and sisters turn their faces to the windows in patient anticipation of further family and our sky captain (perhaps Dad?) announces that Sao Paulo awaits us on the ground in ten minutes. Uncles and aunts scurry about prepping to land. My other friend, the stewardess, Mom says, “Time to shut it down.” Wheels down.

It looks like I’ll live to post another article on this blog. The family of man returns to earth.

For more inspiring thoughts, music you can download,
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.