Here is a recolection of the day one of the Labverde program and the beginning of the love for the place and its ambience.
With understandably tired mind, and the biological clock slightly out of balance (I have arrived in Brazil that late night of the first day of Labverde), I was eager to start the art/ nature immersion and meet the organizers, and all the participants of the program. The first two days were planned to spend on the boat, on the river in and around Manaus.
The heat from the sun was strong, my mind was open and ready for the adventure!
That very morning there, I was thinking about how astonishingly our bodies can cope with the huge changes, long travel, lack of sleep. how strange and amazing that we can actually travel such vast distances in such short time!
I wanted to stay with that highten body awareness, the embodied feeling and cognition, staying in and with the body and with the excitement and curiosity.
I concentrated on that what can emerge from such highten awereness, I am putting that at the centre of my practice/ methodology. Focusing on the flow like experience, and observing what unfolds.
To situate myself in this new and unknown landscape and context, in a manner that is sympathetic to the existing structures, at the same time holding to the openness and attitude based on respect and wonder, is crucial to research that deeply rooted entanglement between mind/landscape/body/culture/nature.
For the first few days I was keeping reflective diary, more sort of scribled reflections, poetic encounters and observations. The days were loaded with activities, all new and stimulating. So much to take in, and to take away, to absorb and then to release, and make the experiences visable through shared fragments of it!
Many views, loads of eyes, and important note to myself- what emerges is crucial and of value!
The moment and movement in the spectacular meeting of the two rivers! The Amazon River-Rio Solimoes meets the Rio Negro!
The Phenomena that makes sense, that connects and persist!
One white, one black, the symbolic encounter,
The forces that shape the landscape!
The poetic encounter, one river forces into another to establish one, the unity, one flow, one force. The focus of the eye of the mind in the landscape.
Five meters long alligators, friendly monkeys, circular giant lily pods, captured sloth, people and their land,
Precious wild observations,
to many words drown in the black river, setting off with the sunset!
How we talk about things, about that nature culture continuity? How we throw our gazes? How we research and gather images?
In the Amazonas, so much stuff is the grandest, biggest, largest, special, everything is a ‘wow factor’ ‘image’ to take,
I will offer a bit of myself, breath for a jungle exchange,
The size of lungs to fit the organism!
The growth that enables! The human beings that can conquer their minds, to break away from the narrowing logic and the reductionsts hegemony of knowledge we too used to!
To think with the land!
The size of things never seen before, the smells, sounds and the atmosphere!
Trees that are growing in the water, abundant life of different shapes and sizes. The insects difficult to comprehend!
the white bird bigger than limited gaze in the familiar biological cycle, the whole bigger then me!
Dream like experience of diversity, overwhelmingly imprinting the patterns into the living mind!
Enveloping in the feeling of some strange return.
The happy forest of abundance with the species I have never seen before, unknown names in that perfect ecosystem.
Undomesticated wonder. The flowers on the trees, life size mimosas, yukkas in its place.
Lovely company, amazing food during the long journey on the boat up the Rio Negro. Amazonian dreams in a rocking hammocks, the night sky and the stars! Humbled mind was listening to the sounds of the nigh jungle!
