Ultimate Freedom (eBook)
eBook Download:
EPUB
2023
|
1. Auflage
300 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-9008-1 (ISBN)
300 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-9008-1 (ISBN)
Ultimate Freedom is a travel novel of a trip taken by author Anja Kova?i? at the beginning of a world pandemic. She has lived in Australia for a year and started her Oceania trip from Hawaii to Fiji, and all the way to the Solomon Islands. She is a journalist, an editor and a curious traveller. Ultimate Freedom is a gentle, feminine version of Nejc Zaplotnik's effort of making sense of the journey and aimlessness of striving to reach a goal. A lyrical travelogue and a playful self-confession with the trappings of a bildungsroman. A book you want to take on the road with you. Literally. - Bo?tjan Videm?ek When observing nature, billion-year-old natural wonders, people seem irrelevant. Like the flight of a cockatoo, when it spreads its wings so spontaneously, completely freely, all the questions about life flew their way across the sky. When we leave everything behind ... A novel about a traveller who is trapped on the Solomon Islands due to cancelled flights at the onset of a global pandemic. Alone. In a tropical paradise. Among unknown people and their customs. Left to her own ingenuity. She survives a tropical cyclone on the islands, experiences a murder among the aborigines, climbs Uluru just before it's closed, dives with sharks and in the middle of the Australian wilderness, under a thousand stars in the vast sky, goes into the depths of her being. She embraces her vulnerability and discovers the infinite strength in freedom. 'If you truly know your hearts desire, trust that it will become a reality one day.'
EYES WIDE OPENTo travel. To experience. To explore. To be heard. Understood. Accepted and loved. To be free. To be happy, yet trapped. We live in a world of fast opportunities. There are gazillions of them. But rarely do opportunities come knocking twice. Therefore, I believe we should embrace the ones that come and welcome them. Coming back to my hometown to people that I know is a strong signal of me returning to myself. Returning to the road, where I meet my other half. My other me. The one that has been waiting for me at home this whole time. Perhaps already at the beginning of my journey. But on the other side of it. I have put down the thoughts guiding you to the innermost parts of my life, in the time of haste and hardship when managing my self-awareness and accepting the person that has been revamped during a fifteen-month long journey across Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, and the Solomon Islands. In the absence of the geographical attachment and left in peace I have begun to understand who I really am. What it is that makes me happy, what do I wish to do, who are the people that complete me, who are the ones I wish to have beside me, and what is the thing that smothers me and is redundant in my life?I have met many people whom I know crossed my path for a reason. The reason being the learnings - I learn from them and we learn from each other. About relationships, people, and about myself. They have showed me what happiness is, how to get to it and what life is like if you are happy or not, and what road leads to this freedom of thoughts. I have survived Australian wild fires, a tropical cyclone on the Solomon Islands where I had been stuck due to the pandemic not for seven but for forty-seven days. I have encountered a homicide in an Australian Aboriginal community and been a victim of a physical assault from Aboriginal renegades in the middle of the night. I have dived with sea sharks and enjoyed myself under thousands of stars in the endless sky of the Australian wilderness. I have met a man who showed me the basic struggles of a romantic relationship so (un)known to me and showed me what it means in simple terms - to love somebody. I knew then and there that I did not wish to have any regrets. And that I would be wiser at the end of my journey. But what I didn't know then, was the fact that the road would be filled with bumps, making me revisit and dissect my past. This bad road of self-acceptance was further damaged by the effect of individualization caused by the Coronavirus. The latter would cause my wounds to open up faster and more persistently. The challenges I encountered made me stronger. Therefore, my steps towards my personal freedom I've been chasing my whole life, would sound lighter, as I returned home. Ending my journey at the furthest part of the world has brought me to the beginning. I am what I am, because of the people that surround me from the day I was born. My thoughts are a culmination of everything I have seen, heard, and experienced. Of everything I have felt in my crazy, vivacious life. We are entering into an uncertain future by awakening our consciousness using high energy vibrations that are created on Earth through the channel of unknown conscious or unconscious spirals of emotions. Vastly clear resolutions will be required that will call on our time. This time we will have to make as well as all of the social and natural changes that await us. While inhaling and exhaling intensely. Being alone or not. In these times probably sitting at home, an antigen test placed in the drawer, keeping us company. Nonetheless, it is of utmost importance that we live life being aware of our true self. The true self that we so love. This book you are going to be reading is about my journey of experiences, new lessons, and rooted patterns that I had to face so I could in full honesty say that I love myself. And the beginning of the world pandemic in 2021.
EYES WIDE OPENTo travel. To experience. To explore. To be heard. Understood. Accepted and loved. To be free. To be happy, yet trapped. We live in a world of fast opportunities. There are gazillions of them. But rarely do opportunities come knocking twice. Therefore, I believe we should embrace the ones that come and welcome them. Coming back to my hometown to people that I know is a strong signal of me returning to myself. Returning to the road, where I meet my other half. My other me. The one that has been waiting for me at home this whole time. Perhaps already at the beginning of my journey. But on the other side of it. I have put down the thoughts guiding you to the innermost parts of my life, in the time of haste and hardship when managing my self-awareness and accepting the person that has been revamped during a fifteen-month long journey across Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, and the Solomon Islands. In the absence of the geographical attachment and left in peace I have begun to understand who I really am. What it is that makes me happy, what do I wish to do, who are the people that complete me, who are the ones I wish to have beside me, and what is the thing that smothers me and is redundant in my life?I have met many people whom I know crossed my path for a reason. The reason being the learnings - I learn from them and we learn from each other. About relationships, people, and about myself. They have showed me what happiness is, how to get to it and what life is like if you are happy or not, and what road leads to this freedom of thoughts. I have survived Australian wild fires, a tropical cyclone on the Solomon Islands where I had been stuck due to the pandemic not for seven but for forty-seven days. I have encountered a homicide in an Australian Aboriginal community and been a victim of a physical assault from Aboriginal renegades in the middle of the night. I have dived with sea sharks and enjoyed myself under thousands of stars in the endless sky of the Australian wilderness. I have met a man who showed me the basic struggles of a romantic relationship so (un)known to me and showed me what it means in simple terms - to love somebody. I knew then and there that I did not wish to have any regrets. And that I would be wiser at the end of my journey. But what I didn't know then, was the fact that the road would be filled with bumps, making me revisit and dissect my past. This bad road of self-acceptance was further damaged by the effect of individualization caused by the Coronavirus. The latter would cause my wounds to open up faster and more persistently. The challenges I encountered made me stronger. Therefore, my steps towards my personal freedom I've been chasing my whole life, would sound lighter, as I returned home. Ending my journey at the furthest part of the world has brought me to the beginning. I am what I am, because of the people that surround me from the day I was born. My thoughts are a culmination of everything I have seen, heard, and experienced. Of everything I have felt in my crazy, vivacious life. We are entering into an uncertain future by awakening our consciousness using high energy vibrations that are created on Earth through the channel of unknown conscious or unconscious spirals of emotions. Vastly clear resolutions will be required that will call on our time. This time we will have to make as well as all of the social and natural changes that await us. While inhaling and exhaling intensely. Being alone or not. In these times probably sitting at home, an antigen test placed in the drawer, keeping us company. Nonetheless, it is of utmost importance that we live life being aware of our true self. The true self that we so love. This book you are going to be reading is about my journey of experiences, new lessons, and rooted patterns that I had to face so I could in full honesty say that I love myself. And the beginning of the world pandemic in 2021.
PART THREE
IT IS TIME
I Wish to Move Here
(December 2019 – Hobart, Tasmania, Australia)
It was February in 1836. He was taken aback by that natural primal beauty of that astonishing island; just like I was.
Tasmania is an island where I would love to live. Without hesitation. After spending a month in the red, hot desert center of Australia, I landed by a plane into a cold, rainy and windy night. Fresh air, I had already forgotten that existed, had woken me after one-day of travel to this remote pristine gem of an island.
Unknown people, three bus drivers and friendly hosts Jane and Kevin who waited for me with dinner, until midnight, showed me really quickly that I’d arrived where I would feel welcomed. Where I would feel happy, at ease, content and most of all safe. After looking danger in the eye in Alice Springs, where I had experienced the unimaginable, the genuine and friendly Tasmania was exactly that what I needed at the end of the year. Tasmania has something that startled me. It has nature and vistas on the tall terrain, covered with greenery. Does it remind me of Slovenia? It certainly does.
Nothing more than just a simple “good day, I’m here” and already I’m relaxed and above all calm. Satisfied. The beach I walk along, merely, but still, reminds me of Slovene beaches. I find myself alone for a minute or two in the Moonlight Bay, when I’m walking on the rocky beach by myself and the wind just brushes firmly over the rocks. And in the next moment I’m in Ankaran2 walking over sea shells that the wild ocean has brought into the embrace of the bay, in front of which sharp edges of mighty rocks stick out thus creating two beautiful rocky islands. Seagulls of all kinds dominate these two islands. Similar to Slovene seagulls, but somewhat different. Some completely black while the others spotted.
I become aware that those are the first parts of Tasmania that were discovered by the historic explorers of the world, and those were connected to the first moments I fell in love with that island. In the center of Hobart, alongside of one of the English style parks, I found a written message of a prominent explorer, biologist, a great man with even a greater influence, Charles Darwin. I had met Charles Darwin already as I was on The Galapagos Islands eight years ago. Might I be treading or walking after him?
As he caught sight of Mt. Wellington, a mountain that one could see from any part of town, he said, among other things: “… Oh, you, picturesque beauty …”
Thus, writing to his sister and his colleagues that if he were ever to migrate, he would migrate to Tasmania.
Tasmania radiates with a special energy. With a warmth of acceptance, simplicity and a feeling of home. As the landscape, so are the people there: unique, vivid and colorful.
The Scent of Homeness
(December 2019 – Blackmans Bay, Tasmania, Australia)
They weren’t the first elderly couple I had met through the online platform Couchsurfing. I simply adore the elderly and they adore me. What can I do; I’m such an old soul. I get along pretty well with active, open-minded and bold retirees. Jane and Kevin have welcomed me, with their arms wide open, into their home at the amazing seaside town called Blackmans Beach. I could say that at that point in time, as I walked into their home, I was home, as Jane, completely awake and her eyes wide open and arms that spread even wider, awaited me with freshly baked cheese (because I’d informed them, I didn’t eat meat), vegetables and tea, perfectly warmed, at midnight. There hadn’t been such a house that I stayed in for a long time, that was so lovely, relaxed, full of love and understanding as their house was.
They were like a retired dream couple. Joyfully supporting each other for thirty-one years. No, they weren’t married.
“Why should we be? We love each other without an official document too. Maybe even more so.”
What is joyful, I often ask myself. And by doing so, I find the answer in their relationship. They are happy on their own and together. They both need quality free time each on their own. He plays Remi with his friends or does yoga, and when the weather permits, he goes fishing with a friend on a boat. She goes for a walk with her friends and they take their dogs too (she doesn’t have a dog, but there is always some friend who doesn’t have time or doesn’t want to take her dog for a walk and Jane volunteers) or she spends time at a gardening class as she chats with local women about plants, flowers, fruit trees and gives advice how to manage their gardens. I will always remember her big, juicy and tasty grapefruits.
They both enjoy spending time on their own. In peace. She likes to read books and does knitting or binge watches films. He likes to meditate or watch birds. They cook together and while doing so they give each other the cutest of nicknames. Like sweetheart, love, darling. They are so much in love, as they were on the first day they met. Their love is unconditional and radiates outwardly without any effort. Without the need to tell one another. Without any agreements, talks or heavy compromises. They simply are what they and they provide for each other what they can and they accept and fulfill each other. When they are together, when they are next to each other they feel the most joy. They are happy. Simply happy. Yes, they indeed became my role models. Role models for something that I, as a child of divorced parents, unfortunately never had. But now I found it.
Jane and Kevin are a couple in their late years. They are slim and have smiles so big that they go from ear to ear. They are gentle, relaxed, respectful, loving and generous. I don’t know the color of their hair, but now it seems gorgeous and perfectly grey. Jane was, though, born in England in 1950 and Kevin four years before her in Sydney. Sydney was the place where they had also lived, until they bought a house in Tasmania. The glue that keeps them together is the insatiable curiosity about everything that lives and breathes. Discovering new trees, people, customs, places, books, stories everything that fills them up with new, fresh energy. They opened their doors to me in the middle of a rainy December night and put me in their daughter’s room (she lives on the mainland of Australia).
Their tender, calm and playful look is something I could gaze at all the time. Their smiles go so easily across their lips. I went strolling on the beach with Jane a few times. Among the houses that rise on the hill with a perfect view above the harbor directed towards Hobart. We bought local honey from a sweet looking wooden shack in front of a farm where homemade honey and forest honey was sold. In Australia, especially Tasmania and rural places, it is perfectly normal that each farm or ranch has a stand, beside the road, it may be a shack, a box or a cupboard where they sell their homemade products in a trustworthy exchange of money. It’s called an ‘Honesty Box’ and it works.
We drank quite a few coffees with Kevin by the sea. And how they know how to enjoy their life! Together we cooked and learnt to prepare different dishes. They just loved štrudelj3 that I filled with mascarpone and an Australian version of sour cream instead of cottage cheese, that is much different that the cottage cheese in Australia. I also prepared roasted potatoes for them and a salad, drizzled with vinegar and spices beforehand. As everywhere abroad also Australians love to buy their salad cut and washed. Then they put a dressing on it or a sauce.
Those types of encounters, experiences, meetings as well as a taste of different bits and pieces of life help us to accept ourselves with empathy in our own skin that we were given. Those types of encounters open a new view of the world that we might have envisioned, but wouldn’t know if it really existed. If this world is real. If there are really people out there who accept one as a family member, it might be even with greater respect than their own children.
“They come and stay a day, two days and I can hardly wait for them to leave our house, and go back home. They are annoying, noisy and don’t understand why we want to live here in nature, in peace in this pristine environment that the earth is offering us,” she then swiftly explains how she loves her grandchildren and her daughter’s family, but that she loves herself and her peace even more so.
I understand them. As I fell in love with Tasmania at first sight, so did they also probably, they waited all their lives, living in the fast lane of their city life to indulge in the fruits of nature as they retire. To be living close to nature where they could be creative and take a deep breath of the fresh air coming from Antarctica and smell the blossoming trees each morning.
I knew that after two weeks of living with them, we wouldn’t say goodbye just like that, that’s why I left all the excess luggage in my room and I didn’t unnecessarily drag it with me into my rented car which Indiana and I used to take a trip around...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 25.3.2023 |
|---|---|
| Vorwort | Primoz Cirman, dr. Veronika Podgorsek |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Reisen |
| ISBN-10 | 1-6678-9008-5 / 1667890085 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-6678-9008-1 / 9781667890081 |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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