The holiday season is upon us and with it, for many of you, comes the desire to take a dip. In Myanmar, Inle Lake is breathtakingly beautiful. The blue sky merges with the waters of the lake. Speaking of taking a dip, the houses here are built on stilts, and people grow their vegetables on small plots of floating earth. It’s magical.
I never visit a tea plantation without taking a walk around the surrounding villages. It’s a chance to observe how people live, to meet the locals, perhaps to sit on someone’s doorstep and chat. And to be an object of curiosity for groups of children, who are often laughing!
I often travel in the Himalayan region, I’m very fond of those mountains and the people who live there. I have great affection for the Nepalese. I have many friends in Nepal and Darjeeling. I feel at home in these regions. I could live there, have my home there, my friends, my life. Happily, my friends who work in the tea fields are safe, but they are very worried, they are waiting for news of their loved-ones who live in the centre of the country. They fear the worst.
And then there are all those victims who have perished, thousands of people, and the immense pain and sadness of their families. I hope these flags flying in the wind will look after their souls, transport them, embraced and supported by our prayers, that our prayers will give them some warmth… I hope these flags will express our love for those departed souls, flying in the wind.
At school we all learnt to recognise colours, and because of this we can all agree that the dominant colours in this photo are green and blue.
For reasons that escape me, we don’t learn the same lessons about smell. This means that many people don’t know about the different olfactory families or how to name the smells they come across. This lack of knowledge stops us from using our sense of smell correctly and hinders the memorisation of olfactory notes. Question: why, in our country that is so proud of its gastronomic superiority, and is recognised around the world for its creativity in the field of fragrance, are we not taught about smells at school, at the same time as colours?
The beliefs of some do not prohibit the humour of others. While I’m often attracted to religious places because of their emotional force or architectural beauty, I generally don’t have too much time for religion. While I was out walking somewhere in the Himalayas, I spotted these Buddhist prayer flags (on the top line) alongside some laundry hung out to dry (bottom line). This juxtaposition caught my eye and I instantly took out my camera in order to record this amusing combination. A local woman watched me from her doorstep, bemused, as I took photos of her underwear.
Travelling to far-away places introduces me to unknown occupations. It’s said we should air our beds from time to time, and that’s probably because we don’t have a mattress shaker. The man knocks at your door and you give him your bedding. He begins by unpicking the stitching; then, using a stick, he mixes up all the stuffing – raw cotton in this case – before placing it back in the mattress, which he stitches up again. All ready for a good night’s sleep.
School is a place of learning: learning about knowledge, about language, but that’s not all. Learning about living life together, too. At school, we meet other children who might be different from ourselves, they might be stronger, weaker, richer, poorer, they might have a disability, they might have different opinions. They might come from a variety of backgrounds, they might have a different skin colour, a different religion. School is a place where we learn to live together. Language, tolerance and laughter helps form us as men and women.
Seeing in the new year can be an opportunity to celebrate, but also to take a look at oneself, to review the past year and make some resolutions. It can be good, sometimes, to look at the world with fresh eyes, to try and see the positive in things. It can be good to think how lucky we are, and to consider what we could do to make the world a better place tomorrow than it is today. I wish you a very Happy New Year, I hope you travel along some rewarding paths, and do some interesting and enjoyable things. I hope, whatever your age, that you have a good life ahead of you.
For anyone interested in Japan, I recommend reading “In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki. The author invites us not to view Japan through western eyes, but to take a wider perspective on what we call technical progress. He teaches us, beautifully, to look at the interior of a house. He talks about rays of sunshine that we in the West love to allow into our homes, while in Japan, they filter the light. This gives it a diffuse quality, rather than flooding everything with its intensity. It creates shadows, and gives things and people intimacy and mystery.
