RIGA - Had a crazy Boxing Day yesterday with some of the craziest strangers-slash-instant friends I've ever been since my student days in Madrid. At least I got a taste of how the Winter Camp in Riga might be in a couple of days. Apart from my lovely Latvian hosts, there were a couple of Brazilian students and an American photographer.
One of the Brazilians, an ethnic Japanese by the name of Shinji now studying in Stockholm, promised to send me a copy of the photo he took at the Cuba Bar. Anyway, looking up his site right now I found some wonderful words to live by, uttered by Amyr Klink, a Brazilian explorer famous for rowing solo across from Namibia to Brazil in 101 days in 1984. He embarked on an even bigger challenge five years later (described by his site as follows):
It is not a little humbling that this adventurer, of Lebanese and Swedish parentage and of not inconsiderable accomplishments, is not only a man of action but also a man of letters and numbers.
Reared at an early age on Brazilian poetry and French literature, Klink has not only penned books about his experiences but has a grounding in economics, with a masters in Management at the University of Mackenzie. He has collected old canoes since he was 10 years old and in the process, helped found the National Sea Museum (Museu Nacional do Mar) in São Francisco do Sul (Santa Catarina state).
Were we all as accomplished and at the same time modest.
One of the Brazilians, an ethnic Japanese by the name of Shinji now studying in Stockholm, promised to send me a copy of the photo he took at the Cuba Bar. Anyway, looking up his site right now I found some wonderful words to live by, uttered by Amyr Klink, a Brazilian explorer famous for rowing solo across from Namibia to Brazil in 101 days in 1984. He embarked on an even bigger challenge five years later (described by his site as follows):
Foi em dezembro de 1989, que teve início o Projeto de Invernagem Antártica, em Solitário, a bordo do veleiro polar "Paratii", quando percorreu 27 mil milhas da Antártica ao Ártico, em 642 dias. Os livros: "Paratii - Entre dois pólos" e "As janelas do Paratii" relatam e ilustram este projeto.Klink's quote (*which I later found on other sites in my travelers' society) was taken from his 1997 project "Antarctica 360" - a rigorous circumnavigation of the frozen continent. In his account called Mar sem Fim (Sea Without End), he spoke about man's need to stretch his legs and experience the world for himself. The original quote in Portuguese is:
Um homem precisa viajar. Por sua conta, não por meio de histórias, imagens, livros ou TV. Precisa viajar por si, com seus olhos e pés, para entender o que é seu. Para um dia plantar as suas árvores e dar-lhes valor. Conhecer o frio para desfrutar o calor. E o oposto. Sentir a distância e o desabrigo para estar bem sob o próprio teto. Um homem precisa viajar para lugares que não conhece para quebrar essa arrogância que nos faz ver o mundo como o imaginamos, e não simplesmente como é ou pode ser; que nos faz professores e doutores do que não vimos, quando deveríamos ser alunos, e simplesmente ir ver.
A man has to travel. On one's own, not through history, images, books or TV. One has to travel by himself, by his own eyes and feet, to understand what's his. To one day plant his own trees and give them worth. To know the cold to enjoy warmth. And vice versa. To feel distance and unshelteredness to feel good under one's own roof. A man has to travel to unknown places to rend the arrogance that makes us see the world as we imagine it and not simply how it is or could be; that make us teachers and doctors of what we haven't seen, when we should be students and simply go and see.
It is not a little humbling that this adventurer, of Lebanese and Swedish parentage and of not inconsiderable accomplishments, is not only a man of action but also a man of letters and numbers.
Reared at an early age on Brazilian poetry and French literature, Klink has not only penned books about his experiences but has a grounding in economics, with a masters in Management at the University of Mackenzie. He has collected old canoes since he was 10 years old and in the process, helped found the National Sea Museum (Museu Nacional do Mar) in São Francisco do Sul (Santa Catarina state).
Were we all as accomplished and at the same time modest.
