Tried to force myself to go back to sleep…but that ain’t happening. Oh well, jet lag will be my companion for the next (hopefully only) couple of days.

But on the other hand, I got to experience sunrise and hear the country of Tel-Aviv (yes, it has it’s own unique energy not found anywhere else in Israel) wake up. Doesn’t help that the big trucks carrying whatever ungodly loads just screech and slam under my window…but that’s a minor detail.
A good, hot and sweet black coffee should do the trick to get me started today, as well as a nice walk along the boardwalk.

So glad that Aba is feeling well. I hope all goes as planned and that he can leave the hospital today.

mainPage | 1 Comment »

It’s the last day of July, almost 8 months to the day since I finished walking El Camino de Santiago. It seems like a distant memory now, done in another time, another life.

I’m in Tel-Aviv right now, having just arrived for family reasons. The jet lagged - i.e. eyes popping open at 4:16 a.m. - seems to have bested me tonight, and since sleep is now a losing proposition, I’ve decided to delve back into that chapter in my life and try to make some sense of it now.

For starters, I want to do the Camino again. I feel I haven’t gotten what I needed from it. I’ve walked only 2/3 of it (having had to detour the last “official” third and return to Madrid to meet my siblings and Yvette). I think walking it again from beginning to end fully will allow me to go deeper into that meditative state I began to feel in my 2nd week of walking. Also, and this is probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned…I must walk it completely alone. The first 5 days I walked with Nicholas, Christophe and Jean-Luc (my French contingency). It was a great experience, sharing the road with them, but I think it developed into a kind of dependency amongst ourselves. Only after I’ve struck out on my own, did I truly begin to feel the power of the Camino. By being alone with my thoughts, the road marked with the passing of my feet, did I begin to notice something that I can only sum up as The Glory of Creation. A single tree in a barren field, with the light of a rising sun hitting it just so, the soft swells of hills interweaving with one another dotted by small tree copses, the all-encompassing muted hush of sea waves hitting a hidden shore at the end of the world…maybe it is divinity at play, maybe it’s just a release of the grasps of what we perceive as “real” in our modern lifestyles. I don’t know, all I know is that it’s there to be discovered and experienced. And it’s unlike anything else I’ve felt in my life.
I just touched the surface of it, skimmed it’s vast potential, but had to end it - feeling now unfulfilled.
I must go back and reconnect.

El Camino | No Comments »

A little bit of sibling promotion…Keren has submitted a T-shirt design to threadless.com. Here’s the link to the design:

Feel free to post comments and vote for it.

Ramblings | 1 Comment »

Looking outside from my 12th floor apartment towards Spadina Rd, at the incessant snow falling from above, its easy to imagine that the world just stops to exist a few dozen meters ahead. The last time I experienced that feeling was in Finisterre, at the end of the Camino de Santiago, where a thick wall of fog surrounded that lonely piece of land jutting out towards the Atlantic Ocean. Finisterre, on that windy, rainy January day, was a very appropriate name (literally meaning “end of the earth”). There was wonder and magic and hope and a connection to life and the world that is so rare to find these days. It was easy to imagine a time when nobody knew what lay beyond the waves of the great big sea, and where imagination could take you on wondrous trips and create uninhibited worlds of amazement.
But now, back in Toronto, it’s hard to capture that magical feeling that pervaded so much of the way of the Camino de Santiago. Too much concrete, too much noise, too many sad people starring at their shoes and not making eye contact, or talking on their cellphones but not to the person beside them. Too much fast fast fast and not enough step back and breathe. Life in North America 21st century-style. It sucks. Was that too abrupt? Oh well…It reminded me of the Blue Man Group show I saw a couple of years ago. One of their skits showed people talking to other people - via the internet, in a crowded internet cafe, but nobody was talking to the people around them. They made it look entertaining, but there is sadness in that picture.
So the blah weather is making it feel a bum day. I agree…but…look at the snow, and how white and clean it’s making the world look. And how quiet it is. Is that a stirring of that same magic as above? I’d like to believe so. Do you?

On another note, I’ve started working at Elliott Animation a couple of months ago, as a Lighting/Rendering/Compositing Technical Director. The show is called Rollbots, and it’s looking like a winner, people!

Cheerios, and stay warm.

mainPage | 2 Comments »

Been walking the Camino de Santiago for the past week. You can follow the updates on the link on the right, under El Camino.

mainPage | No Comments »

I’m in Burgos. It´s been a week since Ive started walking along the Camino de Santiago. My first steps of this journey began at the early hours of December 7th, in Pamplona. It was an exhilarating feeling, to be able to take whatever I needed on my back and start walking towards an unknown journey. By unknown I mean exploring the inner landscape of my being, without the distractions of the world. Just me and the road.
Since that morning I’ve walked over 200 kilometers, at times painfully so. My body is still adjusting to the rigors of the physical act of placing one step after another, tens of thousands of steps a day over mostly uneven terrain.
Slowly though, I´m beginning to feel that I have to think less about walking and instead catching myself (my thoughts rather) go off on their own. That´s where the true journey begins.
To visually describe what I’ve seen so far would be a bit useless. I´ll post pictures as soon as I can, along with descriptions.
Instead, all I can truly say is that this so far has been an incredible journey of self-discovery. Life is so full of little moments that unfortunately get missed because it seems that there´s always something to see around the corner. There is, but there´s also something right in front that begs to be admired. Slow down and breathe. Something I should have done years ago. It´s never too late to learn though, and for that I´m grateful.

And so the journey continues. Buen Camino.

El Camino | 2 Comments »

I will be leaving to Spain shortly, and set my feet on the Camino de Santiago. Looking forward to the journey.

El Camino | No Comments »