Cinque Terre Pt 2

Gosh I'm behind.

I'm gonna rush through the next few couple of posts, as otherwise my brains gonna be simply too overloaded from surplus words/pictures that my arteries will explode (this will have nothing to do with the amount of gelato I'm eating, I swear) and I will just be in a right fix.

Here goes: Cinque Terre, Part 2: (told mostly with pictures)

Manorola unfolded in front of us as we stepped of a train and walked on a path alongside the cliffs.

And with each step, the view got even more stunning.

Me and my friend Jamie got this great shot together just as the sun was setting. I can't remember what the joke was, but it was honestly such a time.

Even the streets here are beautiful. 

Watching the sun go down over the ocean was such a treat. 

The following day, me and 2 of the Sara's decided that hiking was a good idea. I mean, we'd brought our backpacks, our hiking shoes and everything, so why the hell not, right?

Despite this Italian pleading us not to go walking in what he described as a very dangerous storm - something similar to a hurricane, the hike was actually more than worth it.

I got zero pictures on the way up, and even from the top, because it was blowing a gale and raining a lot and I wasn't too keen for my camera to die on my second week into travelling around Italy. Managed to snap this beauty just after we got into the top of the town though, really love the light and storminess of it all. Even in bad weather, this place just took my breath right away. 

The two Sara's I went hiking with. We made it! 

We stared at the sea crashing against the rocks for way to long. The ocean never fails to mesmerize me, no matter what part of the world I'm in.

The cannon up by Manarola

Cinque Terre - what a place. I felt like I had asthma and I needed minor organ surgery afterwards, cos my breath and my heart had just been stolen by this wild part of Italy. We caught a train out - one of the last ones in what was to turn into a very long day of train strikes - and as we watched the view of the five towns slip away from us, I felt my spirit sink a little. We had so little time there, but as it is with everything in life, I'm glad we had that time. The bucket list has one item ticked off.

 

 Grazie millie Cinque Terre!

Cinque Terre: Part 1

 Ciao amici!

Sooooooo on the weekend just been I had the adventure of a lifetime at the most beautiful wee spot on the Italian coastline called Cinque Terre! Its a series of 5 villages built pretty much on top of cliffs looking out over the ocean, and its legitimately the coolest and most beautiful place I have visited in Italy so far. Not only was the views simply stunning but a LOT happened - I mean I think I pulled only 10 hours of sleep over 3 days, so each one was kinda jam packed. Because of that, and cos I have a gazillion photos to add + its already 11.47 and I have class tomorrow, I'mma split the adventure into a couple of parts. Who knows when they'll be finished but this ones number one so here goes!!!

So this was Riomaggiore, the small seaside town the group spent a night in. We arrived at 5.30 am after a very long and uncomfortable night train ride. Turns out trains are only slightly more comfortable to sleep in than planes, especially if no one knows how to find the air conditioning and your sleeping booth basically turns into the sauna. I don't really remember a lot from the journey, mostly because I was super dazed and half asleep, but there was this one moment when I was lying on my side listening to Fjogur Piano by Sigur Ros and watching the stars from the train window. The train was flying through the Italian countryside, with smaller and smaller towns sliding away behind us and I remember clearly counting each breath as it came in and out, and for a moment it felt like I was in some fairy-tale world.

Thankfully, that feeling wasn't just limited to the looooooong as train ride, as Cinque Terre did its best to steal my breath and drop my jaw with every second I was awake. It wasn't really hard with views like this....

Or this....

On some advice from a friendly traveler, the majority of us decided to wait it out to book into our hostel, then hit up some of the other towns. I was kinda gutted about this plan, because it involved a lot of sitting around, but on the plus side I got to soak it all in. I climbed up to this clock tower-esque building with two of the Americans, Jamie and Sara, and the view from there made it all worthwhile.

The other great thing about waiting around was we also got time to hit up the ocean, and I'm all about that! The beach here was super rocky, but the water was absolutely beautiful. Crystal clear, sparkling a little and extremely buoyant - what a dream. 

We took a boat to the last town, Monterosso, and it was only the best idea ever. As the overpacked ferry crawled out of the bay, the most beautiful view of Riomaggiore unfolded in front of our eyes. 

The views continued to be completely stunning as we stopped off at 4 of the 5 towns (one of the middle ones was unreachable by boat because it was on top of one of the hills instead of down in the valleys).

Everyone was taking pictures. We're such tourists!

The last town, Monterosso looked like it was actually out of a dream. Felt pretty #blessed to spend the day here.

It got super cloudy for a bit, and we were a little worried it was gonna rain, but thankfully it cleared up soon after this. Though the stormy clouds sure gave the place a more moody feel which I kinda dug. 

We went to this great restaurant, where I had a fantastic pasta with pesto sauce. In Italy I'm slowly trying to get through this MASSIVE list of great Italian food I have to try while in the country, so I was stoked to tick pesto off the list. Dammit Italy, why do you have to have such great food?!

The cafe was right on the beach with the greatest view, so quite a few people had their cameras out. This old guy kept taking pictures of our table though, which was a little weird, so I took one in revenge.

The beach here was like 100000x more beautiful than the one in Riomaggiore, and I got one of the best swims of my life in here!

I also got to try out a paddleboard because one of the Sara's (there's like 5 or 6 Sarah's on the trip haha) had rented one out. I now have to take back every single diss I've ever made against paddleboarders -those things are super hard! I couldn't even stand up on it in the middle of the flattest Mediterranean sea! It was great fun though.

A lot of the beaches here are private and you have to pay for the use of an umbrella and a deckchair. While we weren't into that (students gotta save their $ amiright), I think umbrellas on beaches are the coolest idea ever. Its so very European and very unlike back home - there'd only ever be the odd private one every hundred yards or so, not all symmetrically placed out in rows and files.

We spent the afternoon swimming and lounging around, and waiting WAY to long in a line for drinks at this random bar which played American country music set to Italian music videos. It was a weird combination, and not a place in Italy I thought I'd ever wind up (or for that matter, a place I thought even existed).

Once more I was reminded of how this trip constantly throws things at me I was totally not expecting. You never know how its gonna go until you get there! And that's kinda what makes it such a big adventure.

The Santa Rosa festival

The Santa Rosa Festival is only the biggest day of the year for Viterbo and its surrounding districts.

Of course living halfway round the world, I'd never heard of such an event before until uni orientation, and so, arriving clueless and more than a little lost in the city, I was not expecting such to be immersed in such a unique and joyous celebration within days of being there.

For an outsider its a little bizarre and incomprehensible to understand. I sent a picture of the festival to my family, and my mum's husband mistakenly took the Macchina of Santa Rosa for a lit-up fountain. To clear things up for everyone back home who might be unaware that such a festival exists, much as I was eight or nine days ago, I thought I'd write down my experiences of it to try and give you a better idea just what it entails.

First of all, a little background is needed to fully understand the significance of the ceremony. Santa Rosa is the patron saint of Viterbo, known for stirring up feeling in the town centuries ago for the inhabitants to fight back against outside occupation and return to under the religious influence of the popes. She did all this before she even turned 17 and as such was banished from the town and forced to wander around the small provincial districts around it. This didn't stop her fervour and she eventually was one of the main instigators in the people rising up and expelling their conquerors. She returned to the city briefly before her death at age eighteen, and after her body was found intact after several years of burial, she was declared a saint by the Catholic church.

While the Santa Rosa seemed to originate as a festival carrying the saint's remains through the city, since the late 1600s a "Macchina" or figure of Santa Rosa has been used instead. These have increasingly gotten more and more lavish, and the current statue which is carried through the town literally towers above the city walls. Its so tall it doesn't fit in a single camera frame from on the ground, no matter how wide the zoom and from underneath you have to literally crane your neck to see the top. The Macchina is carried through the city by a group of 100 men called "Fachinni" from near the main gate to Rome to one of the churches at the far end of town, where it abides for several days before being dismantled.

With the rest of the group, I was insanely privileged to be allowed a glance over the Macchina a couple of days before the festival. From underneath it was an awe-inspiring sight, made of plaster so white it hurt your eyes to look at it even under the shade of the cloth and scaffolding which hid it from the public eye. A few days later I was wandering into the city gates to meet my friends and it was uncovered for view. The square was literally packed and even the locals had their cameras out to take it all in.

The night before the parade there was already a lot of excitement in the air. I had ordered a drink at a bar, and in broken English both the bartender and an Italian couple beside me insisted that I have rose flowers in the beverage in honour of the Saint, as was tradition.

We got to the Piazza where we were gonna spend the next 8 or so hours super early as we didn't want to miss anything by getting a bad spot, but it was already pretty full. People had already been camping out since the day before to hold their spot. "

Whilst we waited for the Santa Rosa, there was a bunch of smaller parades running in and out through the square, with flag-bearers, music and historical outfits. I took as many pictures as my camera could handle, while still being incredibly impressed with the coordination of the people involved, locking in every aspect of movement to the music played by the trumpeters and drummers. 

When the red, white and green national flags were thrown in the air, it was genuinely the most Italian thing I've seen since I've been here, and I was lucky enough to grab this shot of it.

Photos and words can't really describe what it was like on the ground though. The crowd was enormous, stifling and at times very restless. With the relatively small group of American students, I witnessed a fight break out in front of us simply over getting a better view of events, and people queuing up outside a nearby restaurant just for bottled water. We whittled the time away in a similar restless excitement asking each other random questions and talking about music. However, even that was edging on boredom near the end of the evening as we'd literally been waiting for hours, surrounded by a crowd that felt like it was collectively holding its breath for the Macchina to arrive.

And arrive it did, all of a sudden peeking out from over the top of the surrounding apartments and then rocketing into the Piazza at a pace much faster than something that big should ought to move. The lights went off in the square, and suddenly the whole crowd was on its feet, clapping, cheering and otherwise completely losing it as the Fachinni laid it to rest on the ground of the square. I took three really average photos of the whole thing before my camera also decided to completely lose it and the little battery life I had left exhausted itself trying to focus on the enormity of the whole thing.

Then the barriers went down, and the whole crowd surged forward towards the Santa Rosa. I had been standing with my friends taking a picture on my phone (the next best thing) and then all of a sudden they were gone. I was alone left to feast my eyes on the sight, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and voices, just soaking and breathing all of it in. Having rested up, the Fachinni made their way underneath the Macchina and hoisted it back into the air for the final sprint up the hill to the cathedral where it was to be laid at rest. It truly was an inspiring sight, just completely out-of-this world and breathtaking to see it all lit up in the dark. Alone, in a city a long distance from what I've known as home, I was just swept up in the feeling of the moment and for a brief moment this wasn't just their culture I was celebrating, but my own - our own.

I took some visiting Kiwi friends to the cathedral today to see the Santa Rosa. It was broad daylight and once again hard to look at for a long time without sunglasses. But my camera was working this time, so I managed to grab a few final pictures to just show the enormity and beauty of the Macchina in a little more detail.

It definitely was an introduction to Italy I wasn't quite expecting, but one I'm sure glad I was around to witness. If you're ever in the region near the beginning of September, the Santa Rosa is unmissable. Head along and let it blow your mind like it did mine! 

Catch a moment

 Ciao! Hello! Bonjour! Or as we like to say in New Zealand, Kia Ora.

This blog's been used for many things in the past (all four posts) but for the next four months its going to be (mostly) dedicated to travel writing, some undoubtedly terrible photography and general musings on the strange position I occupy as a Kiwi surrounded by a bunch of Americans living in Italy.

I've been here in Viterbo, Italy for a whole week now, and every day my eyes are constantly opened, my ears are constantly tuned (for what little Italian I understand) and my blisters are constantly enlarging.

I mean its a pretty hard town to walk around. Those cobblestones and hills are pure murder, and buying a new pair of shoes right before I left wasn't really the smartest thing I've ever done....

There's only like a million and one beautiful things around every corner.

This fountain is my favourite because there's randomly all these apples and capsicums just chilling in the water and this one time I saw an Italian walk up to it with a bag and just pillage all the vegetables he'd need for the next week from it. As you do.

Every day this country continues to surprise me. I mean we were casually here this morning.

Things which look like something you'd put as your screensaver are just right in front of your face, and this fact alone continues to regularly blow my mind.

Ever since I've jumped on the plane, its been a whirlwind ride. Camping out in Auckland airport and using those last precious NZ minutes to call the family. On the flight to China listening to Conrad by Ben Howard and the line "Climb out to where you see the curl of the world" just hitting me SO hard as I looked out over the clouds from the back of the plane. Nearly dying in Shanghai airport, getting lost in Rome trying to find my hostel, meeting a few Americans and being just so happy to hear and understand a language again. Buying food simply by pointing at it until I learnt "Vorrei..." (I would like) and using that religiously to devour ungodly amounts of gelato, pizza and pastries.

Travelling certainly is a unique experience, especially travelling to study abroad. I love it, everything about it and it's teaching me new things every day but it sure is difficult at times. Not only do I struggle to function, struggle to even understand others at times, but I'm constantly finding my default state of being challenged as well. The adventurer in me wants to go and do everything, meet everyone and just spend my time to its absolute fullest - as I've joked about multiple times, I can sleep on the plane (back home) right? Then the writer in me just wants to soak it all in, to simply sit and observe, reflect on everything which has happened and find new ways of conveying my experiences through this one language I understand: through words (primarily English ones). Capisci? (Do you understand?).

I guess I'm trying to find a way to live life on the edge, but that's always a balancing act between pure grace and sheer disaster. Its like trying to catch a moment that is always slipping away from you - like most things in life I should be focusing on the tightrope in front of me - the next step, and the one after that. Like they say in my favourite Italian phrase: "Piano, piano" (Slowly slowly).

Here's hoping for the best in my tight-rope-walking travels, Ciao!

With one's heart like a leaf in Autumn

Dear friends...

I'm never quite sure where or when to start, or what I'm starting,
But "It's been too long" is a phrase I'm parting with because it's flawed,
Well-meant, but bored, kind of like yours truly who is spent from spending to much time on to little, Aiming for things which just slowly whittle away at my soul,
These monetary goals aren't making me whole, they aren't making me holy, they're just making me broke:
More broke than my bank account yet just as unspoken, my heart in a safe behind bars and locked doors and security systems just watching out for who's listening and not letting them anywhere near the blood which flows through my veins,
And yet this same blood is restless, needy and greedy for freedom outside of itself.

help.

When did my "safe" become my "cage", and why did I decide that to change was just to disengage? I'm cursed to never stay the same but I'm also cursed with indecision, to much precision is never a good thing because then you never get anything done: while you look for what is missing you're missing what you should look for.

Does that make sense or does it just expand what should be condensed?
Because I only ever get lyrical to cover my insufficiencies as if a multitude of words is more likely to make me be heard.
What I'm writing about is simply what I keep dancing around: living in the moment. It seems simple to do until you realise you have to choose to do it every waking second because life is in the PRESENT - but I've been fighting to keep it in the future.
As if two months is going to get me any closer to home, closer to knowing I can be known for something more than failures - no, the same things I fight with now I will be battling then,
All I will accomplish is writing with a different pen, not writing a different story.
See I just want to colour mine in, turn these black and white pages of work, sleep, repeat into something resembling the masterpiece we were all made to be

.... and that's where I wanted to start, not talking about me but talking about art.
The elusive subject we both run for and run from, we could study ourselves for twice as long as we have been and never understand its unseen mysteries,
Yet we treat it as normal, whats either in vogue or informal is the highlight.
And I've been frightened of it, shaking like autumn trees shedding leaves to prepare for winter,
The winter of creativity knowing I have things to say yet never putting pen to page because what difference do words make anyway?
I could string them in whatever order and they would never quite encapsulate all the things I feel or all of the real fears around my mind or the lengths I'd go to show you I tried -
So I write nothing instead, as if absence of words covers what ought to be said.
A starving artist or a man who is starving his art - which is worse?
Because I've lost heart.

But I believe we were created to create, to replicate, to duplicate all we see around us.
The mountains are granite sculptures, the sky is volumes and the sea is poetry beneath me, all with words of depths unsounded sharing another story, singing of His infinite wisdom and glory -
A story we are all tied up in and despite beginning with fear I somehow always return to here simply because it is worth returning to.
This is the only art, in God my end and my start, my hope and my heart, my future and past and this moment apart is only temporary, like the leaves in Autumn. 

Matthew 6:7, Proverbs 10:19, Bullet Soul (Switchfoot), Stressed Out (Twenty One Pilots) and Hannah Bates Pound's spoken word all inspired this post.

The journey starts here.

In slightly more than four months, I'll be here.

Its still like a myth to me, a dream so bizarre, that before I even leave the country I've caught myself questioning both my sanity and my ability to actually do it a million times. All of this self-doubt and restriction, this mass of great longing and great fear, and the thousand practical reasons why this shouldn't work driven by one thing and one thing only: the urge to just go.

I can't explain it out loud, though in my inner conversations I've waxed poetical about it since I first tentatively inquired into the idea. See to me, the process of traveling is bigger than the actual destination. Arriving somewhere only means starting another journey, an exploration into the foreign and the strange and, more importantly, how you deal with it. Which is why I say "I won't feel like I'm there until I step off the plane", but what I really mean is "I think I won't feel like I'm really there until its time to leave.". Or even more impossibly, when I say "Not to long to go now." I really mean "I've already taken the first steps on my voyage, because to me, my journey starts here."

Where is here? It is not where you're going, it is where you are. Where you go is less important than the steps it takes to get you there. We learn this as babies when a stroll across the room is a mountain crossing of impossibilities - yet its not about getting to the other side of the room as much as it is learning how to walk. Yet somewhere in the process of growing up, we forget this simple notion of an all-encompassing journey, muddling it with the more mundane idea of arriving somewhere. We lose ourselves in the process of it all coming down to where we're going as compared to where we've been, a vicious comparison resulting in feeling like we never made it. Lost dreams, lost hope, lost hours, lost love... not the destination we were looking for.

The things we never lose are the steps. Every one we regretted, every one we're proud of, it all got us here. And I can only speak for myself when I say I'm stepping back into my baby shoes. I will crawl, I will fumble, stumble, trip and get back up again until I eventually find myself on the other side of the room.

Of course, this time the other side of the room is actually the other side of the planet.

A very wise man and good friend once told me in the midst of a desperate situation that I needed to look at the bigger picture. He said we can only see the very small view that's right in front of us, and sometimes that's all encompassing. But he told me we know a God with a bigger view than whats right in front of our faces, and He is eternally painting the masterpiece that makes up you and me and the whole of the human race. At the time I didn't understand this, it seemed unhelpful and unwarranted to my situation. Why would the big picture help when I am so trapped looking out at such a small view?

Though it can, and most probably will, take the rest of my life to figure out the profoundness of this advice, I feel like I am finally now beginning to understand.

In this way then, the idea of leaving everything I've ever known and loved, the places I've grown up and the two towns I've only ever lived in, almost takes on a spiritual quality. I don't mean to get all zen here, but ever since I've made the call to go, I've learned and grown in so many radical ways. Which is why, once again, I state the importance of the journey starting here.

Two journeys of a different sort began last year, both relating to the oceans I will have to cross. For a long time now, and especially after the events of last year, I've been searching for a breath of fresh air. I wrote about this four years ago here, saying "I pause when held back from nothing, I pause because I'm trapped in this motionless bay.... And all I need is a breath of fresh air to put the wind in my sails, then I'll leave this bland cove...". And last year, for all the storm of emotion that it was, I finally found this respite that breathed new life into me: I started a band called Distant Oceans and started surfing.

If addressing a non-musician or non-surfer, once again it is almost impossible to describe the incredible impact these had on me. It was a taste of freedom from the darkness of my everyday, in music and surfing I found myself. After months of silence, I began writing again, this time for a purpose, and by the end of the year had penned what I considered to be the most honest and heartfelt song I've ever wrote. From a heart filled with breaking, I sang "I hope you find everything you're looking for, I hope you find everything right here". To hear a line written by yourself and then wrung out with even more emotion by someone else is to me one of the most miraculous things in the world. The moments where the music flows as pure as this have not been frequent, but they have been equally joyous and heavenly when they come.

On a similar wavelength of feeling is the peace and exhilaration I find every time I run through salt water out into the depths with nothing but a surfboard between me and the ocean. There's a feeling of freedom out there on the sea that is so rare in modern life that I just crave it. A few weeks ago I sat down with someone who'd been doing it a lot longer than me, and when he said "Surfing's like a drug.", I couldn't agree more. I'm still pretty rubbish at it but there's something about it which just draws me in no matter how many waves I manage to catch. Jay Z might say there's no church in the wild, but he's either wrong or hasn't really experienced the ocean.

In both these things, it seems so unfair that I've finally found my place yet already I plan to leave it. Who would undertake this moment of self-sabotage? Why do I have to have found these things now? Yet as I reflect on everything, I'm not angry. All these things have converged on me now to put me in this position right now where it all spills out of my mind and onto the (web)page, and that's why I say for the third and final time that is really why the journey starts here. In the continuation of music, in starting surfing and in deciding to take a plane across the world, I am but taking another step in my journey. As JRR Tolkien writes: “It's a dangerous business... going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

All I know is these things will stay with me both here and overseas. Music and words will always be my way to express and I'll ride them, and hopefully some waves as well, just as well as I do here when I reach the other side.

An unforced hymn

Today I wrote a worship song.

Though I used to be in a Christian band, I've never been one for writing worship. There's so much in the human experience to sing about - you can write a gazillion songs about love in just trying to capture that feeling alone. Its not that I try and cut God out of my art - I'd like to think that if you look deep enough into my lyrics you would see his influence on every line (or at least some of them). Its just to me a lot of worship seems forced. Its like songs about love, you rarely can write one which perfectly captures that feeling. And I don't want to force my worship on God. Worship to me is something which flows out of your heart, and a lot of other people's hearts are closer to God than me. So I prefer to sing their songs rather than my own.

And yet...
Someone somewhere once told me that you write about what you love.
And the flipside could be true, in that you love what you write about.

This is not what I love. This is WHO I love.

NEARER

Though despair conspires with the night
To empty day's new light
May I hold with shaking hands this truth
Be nearer my soul to you

Though every hope a sinner drowned
Though every sunset clouds
Still let me seek with every move
Be nearer my soul to you

Oh, Spirit flow

Through every deep and darkening storm
Let Your love be my warmth
Though brighter days I will pursue
Be nearer my soul to you

Though I may seek bright heavens home
NOW, Lord Jesus let me know
Nothing more or less than to
Be nearer my soul to you

Oh, Spirit flow

In my weakness you are my strength
In my silence you are my song
Lord I'll praise your name forever
In your arms is where I belong


(c) Jordan Gowan and Falling Movement Music 2014


Inspired by:
Edge Kingsland
Psalms 96:1-2, 98:1
2 Corinthians 12:9