CASUALIDAD NO ES TAN CASUAL.. AS INDIANS SAY, THINGS HAPPEN FOR A REASON, MAY BE YOU ARE NOT SMART ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND

 Things have a reason for happening. A colleague who seldom talks about travel, sent me this 

I am on my way to Israel. It is fully vaccinated, as close to full as it can get, but the local social and political situations make certain segments of the population hold out on the vaccine and thus they still averaging 11 cases per 100. 000 whereas it is about 7 in USA and France and less than that in Spain and Portugal. My family advised me against travel to israel at this time and the airlines after a long discussion allowed me to change my travels to another time.

Singapore Airlines to the rescue. I was able to get a ticket to Oporto using Frequent Flier miles and this would be the first time "tourist" visit for me as my visits are always tinged with some humanitarian medicine. 

The colleague who sent me the above information was indirectly blessing me on my location of travel (instead of Israel). Toda Rabah. 

Artigo XII.
Decreta-se que nada será obrigado nem proibido.
tudo será permitido,
inclusive brincar com os rinocerontes
e caminhar pelas tardes
com uma imensa begônia na lapela.

In the book of poems Caravanssary, a copy of which I have never been able to procure, author Alvaro Mutis describes my alter ego, Maqroll

and i would adopt that to my next destination: dressed as a travel agent, he offered miraculous remedies of powders and leafs from various continents while promising young women that their premenstrual cramps would disappear at the chant of a mantra in the Tagalog language.

I wrote the following in 2007. All I can say is that Maqroll remains unchanged, resisting all the efforts of others to change him.

Maqroll El Gaviero Judio

A tale of a wandering Jew. Dedicated to Maqroll the Gaviero, an imagination of Alvaro Mutis.
Though his life was devoid of danger, unless you call fifteen foot waves in the open seas off the coast of Funafuti smooth sailing, his desire to accept only his longings as his home made him dangerous to women who were always dreaming of becoming someone else’s wives. Once he casually asked an Ecuadorian who had relentlessly pursued him what her plans were for the morning, the suppressed fury of rejection in this Andean from a port full of black sands was to destroy his social standing all along the rugged pacific coast. He dined with the diligent bourgeoisie who carefully nurture the deliberate, mean spirited hypocrisies of their convictions. In reply to a question of a customs agent in the island of Hispaniola , he could not codify for them his imprecise profession and was suspected of running drugs while the actual purpose of his visit to the island was ignored. Abandoned by a mother who specialized in making others loose their power of speech, thus made a vagrant at birth at a distant corner of the Portuguese empire, he had traveled by trains along so many rivers as an adolescent. The forces of water pushed him into a period of wanderings among the small islands that dot the pacific ocean. He quoted about the frivolity of life, the morning after reading his favourite Norwegian author, the village was gulped in a wave that caused the island nation he was visiting to declare itself homeless.

Being free is not easy, but I recommend it for all souls who long for a little bit of fresh air from their golden cages where they are imprisoned. Let your wings which has been cut by your family, your education, your jobs, your country and your religion, grow back again and feel that air in your hair.

These thoughts are dedicated to a very very special person: La Poete de Côte Sauvage.