Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet, Letter #4

We dream. We plan. We expect. We intend to “do” and we try to make “it” happen. But hey, sometimes things just happen to us. In a pretty much random, chaotic way. The world as such flows in an insanely complex manner and this complexity drives us often mad.

We use our senses and minds to somehow boil that external complexity down into more or less tangible, manageable chunks. Sayings like “it was meant to happen”, “everything happens for a reason” just show how desperately we are craving for meaning and purpose. We are often forgetting that what we see or feel is merely a poor reflections of reality to begin with.  We tend to divide this endless complexity further into name-able colours, sounds,  tastes, ideas, we try to cover them up in values, see them as karma, destiny, meaning. We categorize things as good and bad. Meh. There are no innately good or bad things. There is no happy nor unhappy. There is no white and black and extremely speaking there are not even colours.

The world, in its original sense, just is. It simply flows. And everything else is our perception and interpretation.

I don’t believe in any rule, law, nor a transcendental order of things that would keep things in shape, bringing justice to the world, helping the poor and smacking the bad guys on their fat asses. While we strive for these feelings, the world simply is, and it is only the fear of not being able to grasp it that gives us the urge to define it and to give it a shape.

The same holds for our lives. Our lives are not necessarily good or bad. Lives just flow. Change. Develop. The rest is up to our perceptions and interpretations. How do we see what happens to us, how do we react. What context we create and how we judge things in this context. How much pain we cause to ourselves and how much pain we cause to others. What is the value of that pain to us. What values do we adhere to and how we see our own fit with these values. In the end, we die by and for ourselves anyway – it is up to us which meaning and purpose do we choose to put to it all.

I have decided that the purpose of my trip was to enjoy solitude.

To breath deeper.

To bring freshness again to my brain.

 

Yet on day one, “freshness” was the most inaccurate way to describe anything.

 

It all started with a long, alcoholic, and tiresome Friday night. The next morning on my day of departure was really tough. And by really tough I mean hell yeah really tough. I felt like being hit by a rhino that was going just about to die of obesity. After finishing packing my things early in the morning, I have left the flat after some 2 hours of sleep. The sun was still hiding somewhere behind the skyline of old buildings. My shoulders felt like a stone, pulled down by a heavy rucksack borrowed from my lovely mama and the camera gear bag borrowed from my lovely papa.

Both of them had some history – mom bought her back-pack back in the 80s as a university student. Apparently, at that time there were only two types of back-packs in the stores – red one’s and blue one’s. Of course she chose the red one.

The camera gear back was even older – 36 years old, made of old-school black Polish leathercloth that was miraculously not falling apart.

Needless to say, I loved them both.

The moment I made the first step towards the city, my knees expressed a strong statement of discomfort with the weight of things they were supposed to carry. At that time, my shoulders were already dead didn’t say a word.

But the moment the chilly air filled my lungs, my eyes become wet. This was the moment in the flow. The moment, when the perception changes. The aha moment, the one single moment in time, where I knew that I have no clue what the next month will bring me, yet I knew that I will enjoy it nevertheless.

That was the moment when the perception changed. The feeling of fear of the unknown became a feeling of pleasure.

I can barely remember how I managed to arrive at the airport. It was six or seven in the morning. Just before boarding I called my mom to assure her that I am leaving the city in a relatively healthy state and after I threw my body against the aircraft seat I immediately fell asleep – even the raving engines of the plane taking off wouldn’t wake me up.

I opened my eyes few times during the flight. My mind consists of flashbacks – stewardess with a heavy make-up looking with suspicion at the even heavier bags under my eyes, random child sitting in front of me playing peekaboo for so many times, I couldn’t help but to think that it has either a really quirky sense of humour, or is completely retarded. Random chatter in random Slavic languages. It all became a cosy mixture of beautifully chaotic elements.

I arrived at the airport, successfully finished the immigration procedures and boarded the train towards the city just few minutes before 2pm. I looked outside of the window and saw something which would I automatically connect with the idea of “typical Russia”, whatever that subjective idea might be. Snow. Birches. Cars. Discoloured scenery of washed out concrete and old buildings had an amazingly calming effect on my sleep-deprived mind.

I was constantly thinking of one thing – “I am not prepared enough for this trip.” I didn’t read anything about the places I was going to visit, I had no idea where would I stay and what would I do. I was not sure if my clothes would cover the temperatures ranges from -25°C in middle of Siberia to +25°C in Tokyo. Didn’t I forget a document, visa, ticket confirmation, anything that would cause me being stranded in the middle of nowhere?

All this uncertainty, all this stress… was somehow making me smile.