Rambling Robert's Travels

This blog chronicals the travels of myself, Rambling Robert, on my next adventure to South America.

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I am a world traveller. I do not work as such. I have been homeless and unemployed since 1October 2003. I worked as a chef for 30 years in America.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Last travel update from Florida USA

hello everyone!
It has been a very long time now since the last update. I sometimes question if anyone cares about my travels or my search for enlightenment or if I am just writing these letters for my own satisfaction. As I looked deeply into this question, I realized, I was always writing these letters for my own satisfaction! I suppose one could say I have been sharing my travel diary with everyone. Sharing is good so here we go:
First I feel like I want to vent a little anger. I arrived here in Florida on 6 October 2011 to assist my father to care for my mother who was gravelly ill with the lung cancer.
She smoked cigarettes for 60 years and was convinced there was no scientific proof that cigarettes caused cancer, she was also convinced that marijuana leads to heroin addiction. She passed from the material world to the spiritual on December 12. I am still here hanging out with my father. We have always been good friends and it is a pleasure to be with him.
We just got back from a road trip here in America. We drove his car to North Carolina ( about 1,100 kilometers or 800 miles) and spent 6 days visiting some of my dearest friends from my childhood. We were warmly received and we had a great time.
Driving in America is very scary. One must constantly be on the lookout for the "bankruptcy" police. The government (local and federal) , here are more or less bankrupt. Out of money and deeply in debt. Unable to pay their bills or even their own salaries.
Part of the plan to fix this madness is to pay cops $100,000 per year and post speed limits everywhere that are below the speed one would reasonably expect anyone to operate their car at. The result is that IF you drive at the posted limit, everyone passes you and you greatly anger the other drivers.
One spends as much time looking in your rear view mirror as you do driving because the police are always giving people fines for driving too fast! This way the cops justify their salaries and the bankrupt government finances itself!
The whole deal here with the hospice and the medicines and the pains my mother went through, as a result of her being tricked by the government (we have the best health care system in the world, what you really have to worry about is the Taliban, thats what will kill you!) and the cigarette companies (tobacco farmers are subsidized by the government , cigarette companies who claim their product is not addictive and MAY NOT cause illness as there has not been enough research to draw conclusions) , and most especially as a result of her own foolishness and weakness (inability to put down the monkey), was very depressing.
I found it all but impossible to be quiet, to meditate, to feel good or happy. I felt weak, fearful,depressed, anxious and impotent. Watching and waiting for your mother to die is not a pleasant experience! Nothing I could do but try to comfort my poor old mom.
Too bad nobody from hollywood has ever had the idea of a reality show. I almost wished that there were cameras here to illustrate to the fools who smoke what they are buying from the tobacco merchants...Now to move on...
This coming Monday, 16 January, I have a ticket to go to Ecuador. I have a new albeit temporary travelling mate: My dear old Father (he'll be 86 in April) is going with me!
We will go together to Vilcabamba. He will stay for a couple of weeks and then he will return here to Babylon without me. I am very glad that he will come with me. He has an opinion about the rest of the world, (the world outside USA) based on the "news and facts" presented to him by the American mass media.
Me? Well, I just do not know. I will try to go through the paperwork necessary to obtain a resident visa. I loathe speaking to lawyers or having anything to do with any governments. Yet, to accomplish my aim, I must employ an attorney and beg the government to let me stay. This is anathema to me.
I will try however to get it all done and then I am going to live with the lovely and talented Estelita. She loves me and I love her. Sadly, I am who I am, and everytime in the past, I have tried to live with a woman I loved it has ended in disaster. Still they tell me that past performance is no guarantee of future returns...So i will try.
As for staying in one place...well, I love Vilcabamba more than any other place I have stayed. I have stayed in many wonderful places and would seriously consider living in about a dozen of them but Estelita is the "tie breaker". I miss her a lot and want to be with her and so, and so, and so it goes.
I look at my back pack, my life in a canvas sack, and the thought of strapping it on my back and getting on the road again makes me so joyous I feel like I will burst, like a pupppy running in circles and sneezing with joy!
Will I stay "forever" In Vilcabamba? Will I be able and content to stop my travels? There are still so many places I want to go to that I have not yet been and many places in my heart, I hold so dear and wish to return to, I can only truthfully say I do not know the answer.
I know that I do not need to travel to continue my search for enlightenment. I have read enough. I have been to enough classes. I have met enough wise men and women who have taught me enough. I can stay in one place and do the essential self observation, and come to soul consciousness anywhere I am. I know for sure that I am.
I am that I am. I will begin again and continue to write these updates. I think they will start to take on more of a theme based on my inner journey than the external movements of my carcass. Below as usual are a few quotes from people I admire and whom have in their way, have helped me to find my "self"
Peace and love, Blessings and Light,
Robert
"Human beings are the only thing in nature that needs correction" Rabbi Michael Laitman

"When one is alone, totally alone, neither belonging to any family, though one may have a family, nor belonging to any nation, to any culture, to any particular commitment, there is the sense of being an outsider, outsider to every form of thought, action, family, nation. And it is only the one who is completely alone who is innocent. It is this innocency that frees the mind from sorrow." - J. Krishnamurti

" Humanity is the earth’s nerve-endings through which planetary vibrations are received for transmission." Gurdjieff