The Diary of The Unsaid

I should have flown to India. Instead I bought a diary. I called it the Diary of the Unsaid. I now seat in  a recently discovered cafe in Sao Paulo. It is now my favourite place here. I discovered it because of the Diary of The Unsaid.

I seat alone with a crazy idea on my mind, confronted with all its implications.

What is the Idea? It is a modern version of a message inside of the bottle that crossed the world to enlighten someone. The modern version, my modern version, is a Diary. I call it the Diary of the Unsaid. The objective (the initial one at least) is to have a secret message arrive in a secret destination, to a secret receiver. The message is something I had left unsaid. Instead of letting it float I decided to trust the people I connect the most to: travellers!

Would it be possible to have a diary passing hand in hand all the way across the world? I chose for a Diary because I wanted that the travellers who would volunteer to carry it around the world could also be able to write themselves a message they had left unsaid to someone important to them.

I then created a blog   http://thediaryoftheunsaid.wordpress.com/

and asked in the diary for people to send me an e-mail with the story of how it was that the Diary came to them. They should write their unsaid message on the diary and they could also write their unsaid message to me if they wanted me to post a letter to the person.

And now it is all ready. In about three days I wrote it all. I got lots of friends excited about the idea. And now, I seat again on the newly discovered cafe waiting for the first carrier to arrive. I wait for him knowing fully well it is him. What a great feeling that is!

Life is quite ironic. Once I told my friends about it I had very mixed responses. Ivana who is a psychologist said " Julieta but do you understand you have only the power to choose the first person? Once it leaves your hand you have to trust others. I know you are a control freak so that is going to be very good for you".

I barely slept that night thinking about this. It is true, I realized, I have but the power to choose the first person. And then when I had finally come into terms with that I decided it was time for me to find the right person. I knew it had to be a traveler. I am a traveler, I recognise them, but not here in my own town. Here I had no idea where to find them.

So I let destiny take me. I drove my car aimlessly and stopped in a trendy street. I entered a hostel and looked at total strangers realizing it immediately that it could not be them. I felt totally powerless. How could I find the right person?

And then I found this beautiful cafe. “La da Venda” it is called. It means from the store. It is a lovely cafe/old store themed place. I sat and told the story to the lady who worked there. She sympathized with the idea and said that maybe I could find someone here.

I turned on my Ipad to write and suddenly an Israeli friend of mine came online to tell me I was going about it totally the wrong way. I could not search for the right person. He asked me why did I not go there and deliver the message myself, why did I not say it to the person? And I explained to him what I had realised while writing the Diary. I did not simply want my message to be delivered. I wanted to connect to a sense of serendipity, a sense of fate. I wanted for the message to arrive through the blessings of the people I connect most to: travellers. And so he completed, “then you must wait for the traveler to find you!”

It was a poignant moment to be seating in the most bucolic place ever and to realise the irony. I did not even have the power to choose the first carrier. My power relied on recognizing the carrier for its specialness. Retrospectively, I knew exactly who they could have been in the past. It could have been Michal, Sara, Vesna, Francis, Caue, Fred, Nick. It could have been so many people I encountered. I would have recognized them.

What my friend statement seemed to imply was that not only I could not control things, but that I needed to do what I am the most disastrous at doing: I needed to be patient! 

I drank my last sip of coffee, looked around at the white wall, which is filled with green vases; I looked up at the blue sky, down to the pebbled ground. I looked at all the colours in the little cafe and felt if nothing else the diary had already given me a lot. It had given me a place in Sao Paulo!

I then drove home knowing it would probably take time till I would encounter the right person.

The irony of life never seizes to amaze me..... As I reached home I got a message from Ilan. 

When I lived in Nong Khai I became close friends with a Brazilian couple who were finishing a one year trip around the world. It was somehow rare to find Brazilians in the hidden places I go to. They came and I just wanted them never to stay forever.They had to leave, and were going to meet Ilan in Laos. They told me then that I should meet him since he was such a great guy.

I broke my foot in Thailand and came back to Brazil. One day out of the blue Ilan sent me a message saying that considering we had so many friends in common and that we had lived and had travelled so many similar places he thought we should meet. I replied jokingly that I d become friends with any Brazilian who knew that Laos existed.

And so when he randomly wrote me just as I had stopped searching for the right carrier I knew in my whole body it was him. I asked him if he wanted to be the carrier, and even before I explained anything he said yes!

And then, he had a million ideas. He was excited. He called it “our” diary.  He said it was “A treasure”. He wanted to write a book about. All that dismay feeling I had disappeared. What an illusion power and control are. The greatest gift that this diary has already shown me is that if we let it go a bit we can be witness of the mystery of the universe.

I seat here under a blue sky. I am back at La da Venda. Where else could I pass on my diary? Where else could the diary seize to be mine to be freed to do whatever is intended for?

In the mood of recognizing synchronicity everywhere I received an e-mail from the great jazz pianist Yonathan Avishai. We had spoken of this feeling of connection. We spoke of music. Now as I am about to let my words fly out there, I feel like a musician whose music transforms, and is transformed in the path. I remember again that cry of the of Rajasthan, I remember the klezmer. I remember that nothing is ours, but temporarily in our company. I am about to let go of the Diary of the Unsaid and I feel great joy.

6 hours later. We drank teas and coffees, we travelled through distant lands. We recognized a million synchronicities. The weather changed. And I let the Diary go… I feel a bit of hesitancy, a bit of fear, but yes, I feel great joy.

A Wondering Soul

I have not been writing that much. It always happens when I am quite uncertain. Which is often :) I am about to start a road trip with my brother in Brazil. My brother and I, even though we come from the same family, are incredibly different. He works crazy hours for the financial market, I travel. We have not lived in the same country for almost 15 years. We were always somehow in different places. It only happens for us to spend time together ( lately ) when he changes jobs. Last time he came to Europe, and I felt I was actually meeting him for the first time.



I shamefully confess, I knew little of what my brother thought, and never did I imagine in my wildest dreams he was so intelligent. Capable of always pining down a flaw in an argument in a second even if he had never heard  any of that stuff before. I took him everywhere I thought was interesting. And he tried his hardest to hear the stories of anthropologist, philosophers, scientists, and artist, but as he left me he confessed, though it had been an incredible experience, and though he thought the people he met worked incredibly hard to live what he considered  “ economically difficult lives”, he could not wait to go back to work, and to go back  to his comfortable life. I understood it. It was a nice time, but it had to end.



Now, he has changed jobs again to do something more important in some new important place in his world. And he has one week to travel. In his life, that is a lot. And so we decided on the spur of the moment to go somewhere together on a road trip. Could we even manage to accommodate both of our personalities in a road trip? Who knows, but I am looking incredibly forward to it as I wait for him to appear here in a second having signed up all papers he had to do before we go.



It is a road trip. And that is already me...It is in a fancy car, in Hotels and that is him :)



I spent this weekend listening to music. Music that spoke directly to my soul. In Sao Paulo some years ago started something called the “Virada Cultural”. It is 24 hours of music and art, and cultural events all over the city. For twenty-four hours people gather all over the city to do different things. It is an 18 million people place, a violent city, In that one night people go by tube (which works that day 24 hours )to places they usually don’t. Economically underprivileged citizens can afford to go to the expensive theatres they usually cant, rich kids go downtown to spend the night in the middle of all they usually don’t see.



I had never been in Brasil for a Virada Cultural. And I absolutely loved it. Though I confess I ended up joining before the virada ( which is only Saturday to Sunday) on Thursday to take part on a program called “music connections” organised by the Pianist Benjamin Taubkin. The project brought together Israeli and Brazilian musicians. For 5 days I spent time with these people which led me to feel again that I have such a strange connection to music, the middle east, and a wondering soul.


As I sat on the first night in the theatre inside of the cultural Jewish Centre I started my internal travel. It actually started when I entered the building and had to scan my things in a metal detector. It felt like I was in Israel. But back to the Music. I sat. And suddenly came together on stage Brazilian- out -of –this- world percussionists who played from traditional percussion instruments to pans and plates, with Israeli Talmudi brothers (Accordion, Sax and Clarinet) and Brazlian Tuba, Trumpet and trombone players. As I sat there and the Clarinet screamed I could see in my mind the Rajasthani musician singing the Kabelya gipsy cry. The joy and the wondering pain that comes with a wondering soul was there. I traveled in my mind from India all the way to Brazil. I saw Kashmir, Rajasthan, Mc Leod, Israel, Palestine, passing thought the Balkans, Turkey to arrive in northeast Brazil. What is it about music?



The following nights of jam sessions and concerts were stronger and stronger. Seeing the musicians who come from different worlds getting so excited, so moved recognising rhythms and melodies in music that apparently comes from another world was breathtaking. It becomes so evident this humanity that connects us all.



I sat there feeling home. In that essence. In that music. I was so moved that I wondered whether I was a Gipsy, or a Diaspora lost Jewish woman. I felt so at ease again in just being. I felt so thankful for these musicians. I then joined the Virada cultural in an unexpected concert at 6 am. In the centre with people of different social classes, listening to Beatles in the rhythm of Samba!



It ended last night for me in Jazz. I was back to New York for a while. The jazz pianist Yonathan Avishai played with a Joata, a Northeastern Trumpet player from Brazil.  And then in the end back were the Talmudi brothers to end it all up in a celebration of diversity and similarity.



Yonathan told me he was moved. He had not been used to exchanging so much. Usually he just goes for a while to play but spending so many days exchanging had been amazing. I knew all too well what he meant.



Reacquiring my gypsy soul I made peace with myself. It is time to go. I am going on a road trip with my brother, and then I ll follow the cry from Rajasthan, the trumpet from Klezmer. Yes, I guess I have not written before because I was postponing confessing I am going back to the Road. And I am not sure where it will take me.