Ana Raspini is a traveler, besides being an English teacher, and a writer.

Minha foto
Brasileira, professora de Inglês, escritora, mas acima de tudo, viajante.
Lyrical Travel Journal

A personal, slightly lyrical, point of view on the places I have been to.

domingo, 19 de abril de 2015

WHY DO WE TRAVEL?

From time to time, I feel like my body, my brain, my moral were asking me to wander.

About four times a year my limbic system screams for never-ending roads, unexpected glances, unintentional beauties, intimate strangers.

Why do we travel?

The bug bites you, or the addictions starts in the first long trip, in the first path taken with your own feet, in the first personal and unique decision you make between turning left or right, in a foreign country, in a street whose name you cannot pronounce.

But what really triggers the addiction are the epiphanies. The constant, multiple epiphanies about the human condition.

To glimpse at the lack of importance of the everyday matters which corrode us, such as professional success, material purchases, personal image… When we travel, all those things lose their very sense of existence, they lose their importance, they lose the capacity to burn us up. The question about if they really mattered one day makes us restless, and then soothes us… No, they never really mattered.

Another epiphany is the notion of your own culture in a way you never experienced before. The conscious and reflection on your own culture is much more intense when you compare it to others. It is outside Brazil that I feel, irreversibly, Brazilian.

But the most important epiphany there is, the one that makes me spend all my money and free time in a way my family disapproves of is the realization of my own smallness.

Traveling, learning new languages, knowing new cultures, meeting new people and the way they face life, death, troubles, that’s what makes us feel so small.

I feel truly useless and unnecessary in the world when I travel the world. I understand that the world functions without me and, at times, better without me. I remember Fernando Pessoa saying “The reality does not need me”… In fact, it doesn't.

I see people so much more content than me, or not. More artistic than me, or not. So much more human than me, or not…

I feel unimportant. It reminds me that I will never do anything truly timeless, I will never be able to change the Earth’s rotating shaft, because the world is infinitely bigger than me, more important than me… And that is liberating!

The peace that comes from having no pretensions, of not claiming anything, and still having the privilege of wandering this Earth and witnessing its crudity, its beauty, its imperfection… That is why I travel.





terça-feira, 14 de abril de 2015

RIO DE JANEIRO

Landing at Santos Dumont Airport is an adventure, but also a delight. Be it for the fear or for the beauty, there will be shivers down the spine. To see, from up there, such unique geography promised by the television is memorable.
Seeing how such natural beauty walks side by side with such urban occupation is impressive. More impressive still, is observing the banality with which cariocas treat such beauty.
We, outsiders, think that there can’t possibly be sadness in a place like this, that a long face would be a true sin when you look outside the window and see the Sugar Loaf. However, cariocas allow themselves long faces and bad moods, especially if they need to serve others. Cariocas were not born to serve, not a piece of bread, not even lobster.
Nature is, without a doubt, the city’s protagonist, but the carioca also thinks s/he is worthy of an Oscar. The mountains are astonishing, and they are always there, like a frame, being the beach the center of the masterpiece. There will always be someone exercising by the shore in this artistic performance which is the carioca and his/her landscape.
The beaches have their own personality. Every attitude of the tide, of the sand, of the breeze, brings a different type of visitor. However, every local knows where their friends meet. And they meet there every day. “Weekday” is just a term, right?
boteco, cold beer or a caipirinha make every bohemian happy. Add something deep fried to that mixture and you get a tourist who doesn’t want the night to end.
The sun sets on the mountain this time, not on the ocean. Earth’s rotational dance makes every sunset unique. The lights of the houses at the favela turn up and shed a light on Ipanema. Or is it Ipanema that sheds a light on the favela?
Rio is like a Bossa Nova song: a careless joy, because it is really unnecessary to complicate life.