Lost in Space: Arriving In Amsterdam for the Festival IDFA

I just flew from Florence to Amsterdam for the International Documentary Festival (IDFA) where the film will premiere on November 18 and then have three more screenings.

My head is spinning. I still want to show you pictures of the gorgeous cinema THE ODEON in Florence (photos are being sent to me from the wonderful Italian photographer, Lorenzo Carlomagno, who was freelancing for the Festival dei Popoli).

But now I am in Amsterdam. Nighttime. Twenty degrees colder, foggy, full of canals, bicycles and mystery. My mind can’t absorb it all: This morning I was in Italy and this evening I am in the Netherlands, with all the cultural differences this implies. In the morning I will get up to go to IDFA to register, but I will still be expecting to have my cappuccino in the piazza. The speed of change leaves me feeling unreal and unraveled.

I always marveled when I was traveling with Chögyal Namkhai Norbu in the late 80’s and early 90’s, how he kept up his travel without ever seeming to suffer from it all. He never expressed regret or missing anyone or anyplace. Once in a while he complained when there was bad whether and his joints hurt. But that was the extent of it. I used to wonder if that was because his family were originally nomads in Tibet, and he grew up wandering. Was it his culture? Or his great practice? As we were flying around, I used to call him the “true modern day nomad”.

I wish I could only let go and flow the way Rinpoche did back then and still does — because he has never stopped circling the globe all these years. Now with the film MY REINCARNATION, pushing me back into this kind of wandering, the image of Rinpoche on endless planes helps me to relax a bit. After all it is only my attachment that makes it so hard to let go of one place or another…

I think Chögyal Namkhai Norbu would say I should just let go.

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