Emotions and goat murder

Have you ever spent an entire day with no emotions?

I had, especially living abroad, in Toulouse, in Brussels, in New York, in Geneva, in Hanoi, in Phnom Penh, in Vientiane, in Kathmandu, new and fresh like a rose, attempting to explore the seemingly haphazard criss-crossed roads. Nobody was noticing me, one among others. Uni, office, supermarket, museums, coffee shops, bars, different mini-mart, shops, open mics, dinners, happy hours in place du Luxembourg, the bluebook trainees parties, the lake, the bridge, the CERN party, the barbecue, the picnic in the park, the papaya salad on the Mekong, the Irish pub lunch break, the cinema at the mall, waiting for the metro, waiting for the tram, looking for the right tempo, bargaining with the tuk tuk, looking for the best restaurant, the best spot to look at the sunset, planning a trekking, breakfast with the Russian, tea with the English, happy hour with the American, trip on the island, confidences with the Italian from the North, shopping in Bangkok, walking in the jungle.

The usual. The life.

Sometimes coworkers or friends I just met were barely looking into my eyes, sometimes I met the memorable people of the night that made the magic. I continuously exposed myself to such a high level of information, hunting for the right and the best (without defining it) that my elusive mind has been refusing any feelings and now I can say I haven’t felt anything “diverse” or “emotional” for a while. I think at some point I even thought I had a stone instead of a heart.

Has it ever happened to you? A positive absence of feelings and distractions for Buddhists, sadhus & epicures, a negative apathy for the tech generation of western borderline youngsters bored by smartphones, looking eternally for the counter-current underground ideas and 30/40 years young with Peter Pan syndrome for whom the mainstream is the devil and the contemporary art is the divine.

Here, the countryside life is surprisingly reserving me again a sequence of mixed intense feelings I never suspected towards simple things in life.

Yesterday for example, I walked for 3 hours in the dry and sunny hills to reach one of Jajarkot villages, Matela, in Nepal and I saw men surrounding a goat head. It took me a couple of seconds to understand that the head was already cut off from the rest of the body. The body was getting ready to be flayed and it was still breathing. At the sight of the vivid blood and the breathing of the chest, a retch came forth and I had to run away covering my nose under the curious eyes of the locals that couldn’t understand my horrified reaction.

After visiting a school, on the way back, I jumped in the chilled and cleaned waters of the river with all my clothes. How inspiring and stunningly touching on the majestic connection with currents, hills, trees and birds singing and the nature kissing me! Water and wind put humans in contact with the nature, like any other element.

With my spirit uplift in joyful peace, I took a bus to come back home and I felt the icey scare of the death. I could have died any moment, I saw my life passing in front of my eyes and no, I’m not exaggerating. Whatever I will write here, it is not enough to describe how dangerous and scary is to take a bus in the rural Nepal, on unpaved streets like rollercoasters, high mortal ravines on one side, risk of massive stones falling on the other side and crazy fast buses and jeeps running on the opposite direction. After the disgust, the pleasure, the scare, I came back home, I open a bed-sheet and a spider bigger than my hand was saying Hi! I jumped and shouted.

And yes, you can make fun of me.