The End is the Beginning

This past Saturday, on the walk back to Metro Villaverde Alto station from Day Four at MadCool, I saw this incredible mural on the side of building that I would later learn is the Palibex, a logistics company in the Villaverde Alto Industrial Estate. If you reside in Madrid but don't know where that station is, it is the last stop on the yellow, Line Three.

The mural is massive.

I have never heard anyone mention it so I did some research to discover more about it, which consisted of looking at the info associated with the picture I had taken, first. My photos are mapped and when I zoomed in, the name of the building appeared. I switched over to Google Maps, found the metro station, then followed the road down until I located the building on the map. Sure enough, the name of the mural 'Mo Evolution' appears next to a 'Tourist Attraction' symbol. Three reviews have been given and one of them is mine. There are now two photos of it that have been shared and a more detailed review with references to the website that taught me all about it.

I discovered that the artist is Okuda (Oscar San Miguel) and he painted it in 2013 in support of the Movember Foundation. He then restored the mural in 2021.

"Movember is a charity that raises funds for the investigation and prevention of prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and other physical and mental diseases that affect men." Palibex

The mural is inspired by the three most iconic moustaches in history - Charles Chaplin, Mahatma Gandhi, and Salvador Dalí.

"This art piece from Okuda, Mo Evolution, is very important for Palibex, not only for its recognition within the street art industry, but also because it marked the origin of PBX Creativa, a collection located within its facilities, and that currently has more than twenty pieces of art from contemporary artists such as Pantone, Daniel Muñoz “San”, Ana Barriga, Rosh333, or Antonyo Marest, amongst others ... From the origin, in the year 2012, the PBX team, integrated by employees, franchises and collaborators, grows their moustaches and organizes different initiatives (artistic intervention, talks, sports challenges, etc.) to raise money for the solidarity cause." Palibex

Who knew?

Being in Silence, A Walking Meditation

One of the few freedoms that we have as human beings that cannot be taken away from us is the freedom to assent to what is true and to deny what is false. Nothing you can give me is worth surrendering that freedom for. At this moment I'm a man with complete tranquillity...

What is it you're looking for in this endless quest?

Tranquillity.

You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there'll be nothing more to worry about, and instead you become a bigger and bigger slave to how you think others are judging you.

'You have priceless silver and goblets of gold,' said the philosopher, 'but your reason is of common clay.'

Thoughts arose while walking ... About ten years ago, I was offered what was at the time, my dream job, to work for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. I had been volunteering with the organization as the Corridor Monitor Coordinator for the Dartmouth Outing Club at Dartmouth College, and as a Corridor Monitor for the Green Mountain Club. I didn't take the job and ended up relocating my entire life to Madrid Spain instead.

They say you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth but there were a couple of things that I just couldn't reconcile. Aside from who would essentially become my direct supervisor, I would have to relocate to work on the property boundary lines of the southern half of the Appalachian Trail, leaving not only the life I had spent five plus years working very hard to rebuild for myself in that region, but I would have to start all over again in a place knowing even fewer people than I had when I began. The one who offered me the job said that she planned to establish her life in the North and I thought, "but clearly I'm already established here." People knew who I was, what I had accomplished. I had a carved out a place in this community and had some standing.

Oscar Wilde, once said, “There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what you want. The second is getting it. When you get the thing you think you want…you realize that it can't ultimately satisfy you.”

Not only did getting my heart's desire not satisfy me, getting it would mean going to a potentially hostile place with people whom I probably wouldn't have much in common with socially. I am not conservative or religious. I am woman who won't be quiet and know her place. On top of that, I am Asian, and would be heading into a part of the country where being those may not be well-received, especially if I would be mitigating violations that may be on property lines between federal, state and private land. Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, The Virginias. Four out of five are Republican states. I had moved to Vermont because I was a Socialist-leaning Democrat at the time. I simply could not reconcile putting myself in a position where I would be out wandering in the backcountry of the bible belt alone, and be safe. Not because of bears and other wildlife, but because of intolerant, ignorant, racist people and the choices they might make in interacting with me.

It felt like a cruel joke. That I would get what I had worked so hard for but essentially have to start completely over. That all my efforts had been in futiility.

I consoled myself with positive affirmations. I had accomplished what I had set out to do, which was to pull myself up by my bootstraps (with some help of course). I demonstrated by work ethics and I was considered at the very least, vauable enought to have been offered the job. It's still success, whether I take it or leave it. Then I thought, is this all there is?

Sometimes I dream of taking my hiking pack, putting everything I need to survive into it, walking off into the wilderness and never coming back. It reminds me of that Mad Men episode with the add of the shirt, tie and shoes left lying on the beach with footsteps leading to it, the representation of suicide. It's not that I long for death, I long for release, to let go, for change, to be in control of my own destiny.

I didn't want more in the same ways that some others want more - a better job, more money, recognition, prestige or accolades. I wanted, no, needed, to experience a different way of existing. I needed to know if there were people out there who thought and lived differently, like me. People who didn't fit so neatly into society's expectiations and be able to fulfill its demands. I needed to wander through different places and know different ways of living. I desperately needed my faith in humanity, and in living a life in that I would be satisfied with in this world, to be restored.

Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

I turned down the job and then made a decision no one had been expecting. I don't think I realized how disillusioned and on the edge of despair I was at the time. I don't think my decision was entirely conscious thinking when I kind of threw my hands in the air and decided I wanted to get out of the country.

Failed marriage. Estranged from adoptive family. Now, being pushed out by a woman who wanted what she wanted, regardless of how it would affect me and my life, offering me my dream job if I gave up everything for it.

When I make a decision, I go all in and all the way.

So, I made a one year plan to leave and move to Europe. I worked for respected businesses, owners, colleagues and secure employment. People said I was nuts to leave the jobs I had behind because I could stay and work them for the rest of my life. 

But, therein lies the problem...

A vision of a black-tarred interstate highway appeared in my mind and somehow, I could see my destination all the way at the end of it in the distance. That was a pivotal moment. The moment when I could have chosen to take the job, sacrificing my pride and self-respect to capitulate once again to another putting their desires over mine. Or not taken It knowing that if I stayed, I would shrivel up with bitterness and slowly die inside. The monotony, the sheer lack of any mystery, my life all laid out before me. Well-paved, wide open, straight-as-an-arrow. No, traveling that road was not the way for me. I knew I would definitely drive myself straight off that course, crashing myself, just out of sheer boredom, self-loathing, and misery.

On the first of April in the year two thousand and fifteen, I boarded an airplane. I simultaneously let go and took hold of everything. I left behind comfort, convenience, familiarity, everyone I knew, all my accomplishments. With me I took my freedom and independence, all the skills I had acquired, the talents I had been given, and faith that I would be able to find a way to deal with whatever the universe threw at me. I left the United States and with plenty of time to regret it, seven hours, I flew headlong into the unknown.

Some have told me that I am brave for doing what I did, but the truth is, I was in my death throes. That was me throwing my hands up in the air, giving up entirely, letting be what would be. And also me fearfully grasping and clawing at life with those same hands adamant that I would somehow survive and forge my own destiny through sheer force of will.

For a good part of the walk, I thought of nothing and existed in wonder, listening and looking at the world around me, soaking it all in. Then these thoughts that I hadn't had in quite a few years and the analysis of them, wandered into my mind, as thoughts are want to do when sauntering in nature. The mind is a muscle that wants what it wants - to be working. Like, the twitching spasms in arms and legs, muscles that have lain unused for too long, it dredges up things, synapses fire, and before you know it, thoughts that I thought had been long laid to rest popped back up. And, then, just like that, I was feeling all the feelings all over again.

I endeavored to persevere. To be a witness, an observer to those thoughts and feelings. To let them come and go, passing through me without ego, without judgement, and to see how deep I could go to find the root source of them. I realized and acknowledged some things about myself and am giving them pause by writing them down here for further analysis, combining them with thoughts of what I have accomplished since then and what I have now.

I think there is a lesson and something to be grateful for in anything and everything that happens in life. Is it unusual to be grateful to and for the people who cause us to make choices we wouldn't have, thus, leading to our current life and satisfaction? I may have looked that gift horse in the mouth and refused to accept it at the time, but ultimately, the horse gave me a gift anyway. It only took me ten years to be able to comprehend it. I simply didn't recognize or understand the significance of what that gift actually was at the time, and now, I do.

It is called "wisdom".

Synchronicity & Divine Retribution

"Dicen que la avaricia rompe el saco... y también que convierte las montañas de trigo en montañas de piedra."

"They say that greed breaks the sack... and also turns mountains of wheat into ones of stone."

Elena Moro, La leyenda montañera del Montón de Trigo, GranMadrid

The story of the Wheat Pile is about these lands where the mountain now stands. They were owned by a rich greedy landowner who saw his quantity of wheat grow and grow at the expense of exploiting the peasants who worked his farms. The grains collected in each harvest accumulated, forming an immense and golden mountain.

One day a beggar passed by the miser's house and seeing the huge pile of wheat, he asked him for a handful of grain so that he would not die of hunger. The miser refused to give it to him, adding, "All you see here is nothing more than a pile of rocks and sand. It is the rays of the sun that fall on this mountain that deceive your eyes and that is why you think it is wheat."

The beggar reproached him for being so miserable, and replied: "If this mountain is made of rocks, so be it." After he left, a terrible storm broke out and a huge bolt of lightning struck the pile of wheat, turning it into a pile of rocks.

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A friend has been telling me for ages to write a book, a memoir, of all my wild past-life experiences. Maybe I'll write a book about my life when I'm older, maybe around 80 (if I am blessed to live that long). I've decided to keep this diary instead.

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