Bewilderment. It refers to the state of mind of disorientation and perplexity..
On the crazy streets of downtown Kathmandu, in the hectic bus terminal of Oriente de Mexico City, in any lost village of the Tibet, on the ferry that one Helsinki with Tallin, hanging from a rope trying to climb a remote Ethiopian monastery… And on so many other occasions. Always bewildered, happily disconcerted.
Disorientation and perplexity are two words that scare but, the least in my case, I admit that the least I ask of a trip is that it disorient me and, as far as possible, amaze me. I'm not a shock collector., not a dealer of emotions to weight. Nor a dowser of chaos, much less a devotee of that risk who does not pursue emotions., but photographs to brag about. But when the confusion of an unknown city appears, of an inexplicable uproar, of a cultural immersion that shakes prejudices and spurs the desire to flee, my desire to continue traveling expands to infinity and, somewhere in my heart, a half smile is drawn.
I'm not a shock collector., not a dealer of emotions to weight
The day to day that instead of adding days subtracts them, the schedules and the merciless routine, watches and obligations, They often rob us of the right to be disconcerted. Is, course, just a fiction. The apparent order of our lives does not extinguish the inner perplexity, that disorder that runs through us minutely inside, delving into the tiniest recess of our insides., whispering the desire to leave and the pressing need for a few crumbs of wonder. The well-deserved disorientation.
The bewilderment of a new city that turns you into a stranger, or a landscape you never thought to be a part of, unravel the puzzle of who you are (actually, what you think you are) At the same time, it distorts preconceived ideas and places you in front of a mirror in which it is not certain that what you see reflected will please you.. Occasionally, truth, You would even want to smash it to pieces with the wrath of your stepmother. Snow White. Like when you stop the car in a remote place Ethiopia to photograph a procession of people with colored umbrellas and you realize that you are photographing a funeral. But precisely for that reason it is worth looking into that interior precipice of endless ravines and edges to explore..
That confusion in which you barely recognize yourself is one of the most pleasant sensations that a traveler can experience.
Walking through a crowd of strange people; dodging motorcycles that seem to want to accidentally kill you; looking for the safety of sidewalks that do not exist; trying to discover the order in an impossible tetris of pedestrians, “rickshaws” and merchandise that overflows the shops, Walking through the streets of the center of Kathmandu can make you feel restless.. Your shoes may even be pushing you away in search of some encouragement.. But that blessed confusion, that confusion in which you barely recognize yourself, is, at the same time, one of the most pleasurable feelings that any traveler can experience. No need for chest beating or feigned enthusiasm.. Just the satisfaction of being the other among the others.
to meet, first you have to get lost. There is no point in searching for oneself in the Cartesian order of dull days., of the nights that turn us off without offering us anything in return, when even the pockets are heavy with meekness. We are redeemed from all of this by the disorientation of a bus station where all the taxi drivers try to scam you.; the perplexity of a Tibetan fortress stalked by wild dogs; the amazement of a ship where the only objective of the majority of the passengers is a "low cost" drunkenness; the daze of seeing yourself hoisted by a monk to a monastery perched on a rock with a rope braided with cowhide…
to meet, first you have to get lost. There is no point in searching for oneself in the Cartesian order of dull days.
Those places that you would want to run away from at the first opportunity are, ultimately, the ones that help you the most to recognize yourself. In the ceremony of confusion we definitively get rid of our small baggage of fears and prejudices to try to delve into insecurities and attitudes/aptitudes that we did not even foresee.. And, when we catch our breath and sort out anguish that is not such, The way to survive the mirage gives us the measure of what we are and what we can expect from ourselves outside the masked ball of gray days. It is the infallible therapy of confusion.
