Yoga Monasteries in Misty Mountains
My first five days overseas were at the D’Alijo Yoga Retreat in Portugal, way up near the top of a mountain an hour north of Porto. My date was finishing up a project there, so we had housing at one of the bungalows. It was the off-season, so the place was otherwise pretty empty (aside from the caretakers).
We were sleeping in separate beds almost immediately, which meant I had a whole lot more personal time than I’d planned for. Good news - a yoga retreat tucked away on a mountain is an absolutely amazing place for self-reflection and exploration.
The sunrises are amazing. Sunrises near home never feel very significant, but foreign sunrises are a spiritual experience. The world starts black & white and slowly, slowly gains colors. Never while you’re looking at a thing, only when you glance away and look back. Nature is shy that way.
In the quiet, you watch and you think.
In the dark, I listen to Who By Fire (Bayesian Choir version) again. I want to be able to sing this. My end is stalking, and I don’t know if I’ll outrun it. I (possibly) only have so many experiences left. I’m glad I’m cashing in my time for experience now. I will remember these days, unlike the thousands of days I drove in to the office.
I listen to Transmissions From The Satellite Heart as the sun rises. One of my favs, I got it after hearing She Don’t Use Jelly on the radio one time. I remember when I was 13, playing this CD as I was playing MagicTG with a friend. He told me to turn it off, it sounds like the guy has a fork stuck in his throat. I got 13-year-old-offended, and said it was my house and I’ll play what I want (it was my parent’s house). Now The Flaming Lips are enormous, and I wonder how that happened.
I wonder what it means for 20-year-olds to be making this sort of stuff. How does that happen? Thinking back to my own 20s, I suppose they must just be fucking around, trying to make something that broadcasts their souls via music, fumbling and grasping and against all odds getting it right. I wonder what it means for 13-year-olds to love it. How does that connection happen? Would we have things in common if we met? Teen-me and 20s-ish-Flaming Lips, I mean. Not life experiences but… souls. “Neuro architecture”, as they say.
I look up when they got big while writing this post. Fuck, Wayne Coyne was 32 when they made this album? Had been at it for 10 years already. They started really drawing acclaim when he hit his 40s. Huh.
I got their next album too, and then drifted away, musically. Before they got super big. Maybe I should go back and listen to everything they’ve done. Except… would it mean all that stuff, going back to it now, trying to grasp for something? Maybe better just to let it lie. Feels pretentious to go back after they got big. Poser-ish.
Might check out Zaireeka tho.
When the sun is up the world feels different. Time to leave the porch and explore.
Super-low density spread across insane natural beauty is extremely seductive. It’s so awesome that humans used to live like this. But you can’t sustain modern populations and modern economies on Retvrn To Nature living. There would have to be much, much less humans living, and doing much less thriving in addition. The anti-humanist degrowthers have a stunningly beautiful aesthetic, and it’s a damn shame it requires so much poverty and death.
At least, for now. O’Neill Cylinders for everyone, some day. Or even multiple earths.
Sometimes Pico comes along. He has a backwards-bark that sounds like the typical “I’m injured!” pain yip of normal dogs, which is very alarming at first. But it’s just his way. He is a serious Rescue Puppy, was not raised properly, had never had barking modeled for him by older dogs, and has passed the point in his development where he can re-learn socially-correct barking. This is a metaphor for everything. But he is a very good boy.
One of the days I find an old rope-bridge (steel-cable, technically), and decide to cross it. Full write-up (and awesome pics!) at This Blog Post. I’m glad I was alone when I found it, because I likely wouldn’t have crossed it otherwise. Rude to leave a date behind like that. It was thrilling and I feel alive after. Yes, good, more like this! Sometimes the thinking is too much… re-centering in the body and being reminded how deeply my self is one with this flesh is humanizing. Weird that I feel less human when I’m just my “mind/soul” rather than my “blood/body.”
A later day my date guides me to a pool in the river. In between her last visit and now, it has been named for a friend of the group that recently died. This is good.
The water is a lot faster and deeper than during the regular season. Colder too. Still plenty safe though. We embrace the river, though I do so for a much MUCH shorter time than she does. It’s so friggin cold! We planned to come back at a later day, when I planned to stay submerged longer, but the timing never quite worked out. I’m glad I decided to go all-in the first time, even if only briefly. :)
Video is on Twitter, since there’s brief low-res nudity that YouTube would frown at.
A later day we drop acid at the top of the mountain. We chat and watch the world get very profound, and after a while we go on our separate journeys. I find a winding mountain path that takes me deeper and deeper into misty darkness as I re-enact the Campbellian descent into the underworld. The path terminates at the foot of a mid-sized waterfall in the thick of forest. It was damp and cold there. Fortunately I had brought a couple blankets in my backpack, cuz I’m a goshdamn rationalist and I’m always prepared, so it was fantastic. The journey in + reflection took about 1 hour, 13 minutes, and 56 seconds, not by coincidence.
I then retraced my steps, climbing back from the underground into the light. After I broke from the deepest of the shadows I was greet by Pico again, cuz gosh darnit, he’s always there to bring the wayward home! Blümchen accompanied me back into a very sunny day. The retreat is really gorgeous, a great place to slowly ride the downslope of an acid trip. Lots of tucked away little places to wander in, like this:
And this:
And just random prettiness all over:
I totally recommend D’Alijo Yoga Retreat if you ever need a place to meditate on life and self while in Portugal.
Scattered between these events there’s cooking food, a lesson in how much the US FDA is a bunch of turds, being introduced to formative sci-fi of my friend’s youth (I think we can solidly move from “date” to “friend” at this point, right?), neat sci-fi from the Ex Machina guy, an adventure with a delivery pick-up and confusing customs documents in a foreign language, and a rather stinky good boy getting a very well-deserved bath.
