Travel notes

As I was reading these travel notes, it seemed as though I was in an immense picture gallery, where, next to idyllic paintings, there were also intensely realistic ones that could shake you out of the usual torpor that our western world has accustomed us to.
Today it is difficult to let ourselves be moved by anything. Because when "our own tears do not bother us any longer, we are also indifferent to others' tears."

But there is something more in these pages written in a clean style without any trimmings. It seems as though there is an attempt to discover and approach distant worlds, or an intention to lead the reader to appreciate cultures whose existence he or she often knows nothing about.
Snapshots of a rare force and beauty. It often happens that whoever is used to traveling does not have the time or the desire to stop and think.
These lines force us to go beyond our "poor" horizons and discover in other worlds a quality of life a that may be poorer materially, but certainly richer spiritually.

In the newspapers, we often read the lines that journalists write as they pontificate and bellow their judgments on deeds, realties and people they do not know. Here instead, the writer has experienced the reality he describes with sensitivity and a sense of sharing. These pages offer the possibility of writing at length, but it is right that the attentive reader discover the intensity of these concise messages for himself. This is a stupendous occasion to "know, observe, understand and think about" life - a life that is different from our own.

Angelo Sesana

Como, 1 November 2003

Jung said that our mind loves to work through symbols .

Awe and curiosity; two themes that are very dear to me.
Travel is not only physical displacement - it is also interior movement.
An immense container of symbols and emotions.
Action and movement transport us to the "here and now". Thought stops, the senses lead us and accompany us. Chance, wonder and fear become opportunities - tools of knowledge of the soul in its universality, representing the path of life itself.

" The moon affects her as it does a woman. " wrote Hemingway about the sea.
"That light swaying of the head" wrote Pasolini about the nature of gestures in India.
"Friend, life is a question of luck" says Paco, laughing, of Costa Rica.

To know how to walk around in the streets and be awed by what is new, unknown and different is to be present in the world. With a sense of wonder.
And so the horizon broadens and gives way to benevolence. A different way of traveling, feeling and communicating with the unknown. Time expands, haste disappears.
The senses lead us lovingly and everything becomes familiar.

A long trip, any trip, forever starts with one single step

Maurizio Paoli