Curitiba - Where the sky touches the earth

"You are now going to be introduced to our fabulous bus system." Sabira informed us. "Curitiba is just four hours south and the airport landing can be very rough because of intense cloud cover. A bus ticket is a fraction of the price of an airline ticket and the next two groups had difficulty raising the money for our travel."

She had made reservations for the three of us on the Super Deluxe bus which meant plenty of room for our luggage, marvelously adjustable seats and headphones for the movie. It was a great movie, in English with Portuguese subtitles. The time and the scenery flew by. We did notice that the further south we went the clouds seemed to get lower and lower, reminding us of a native practice of chanting and dancing to keep the sky from falling onto the earth.

Curitiba is a large city. As dusk descended we disembarked in the heart of downtown. A small group was there to greet us. Not a word of English was spoken. Sabira disappeared with the young woman to buy our onward tickets. We were escorted to a very organic VW bus by two very counter culture young men. They were determined to communicate. One was a playwright who was involved in a large festival in the city (at least I think that is what he was telling us) and the other was a metal sculptor from Uruguay. Just as we were about to run out of significant gestures Sabira arrived and hopefully straightened out any misconceptions that our attempts at communication might have created.

It was a long meandering road through the city and into the outskirts. Night had fully arrived as we entered the gates of Ananda Achala. This retreat center is owned and managed by a Medical Doctor who had recently built herself, her adult daughters and son a home at the other end of the property. She herself was still at work, but her younger daughter, Anne, had just arrived from her job as a science teacher at the local school and was doing her best to make us feel at home.

This was a difficult proposition since the room Anahata and I was given was pretty funky. The family had recently vacated it, and it had the air of a little visited storeroom. I asked Anne to take Anahata on a tour of the place while I tried to make it comfortable. I found a cabinet to stash the piles of odds and ends that were laying about the room. I tossed the extra chairs that were piled on top of each other into the hall, covered what I couldn't hide with the extra bed covers that were lying about and attacked the spider webs. Just as I was putting clean sheets on our bed they walked in and Anahata screamed. There was a cane spider on the wall. Now cane spiders are not bad creatures, they eat the bugs and they don't bother humans. But they are as big as your right hand so for someone like Anahata who indeed has a delicate relationship with spiders they do not make good roommates. I could see a good night's sleep escaping me......but....just then Annes young friend came into the room and climbed up some of the furniture in order to capture the spider and escort it out into the garden.

This would have solved the problem had she not told Anahata that when she reached up, the spider, poor baby, had been scared and had jumped on her shoulder. A very vivid image for Anahata to take into dreamland.... jumping spiders.

The next morning one of the local women arrived to cook for us. Sabira has a number of very close students in Curitiba and they began to arrive for our afternoon class. It was charming to see the respect they gave her for leading them into the Sufi path. Anahata was quite moved when they asked her to lead some of her Sufi Cycle, "Calling All Lovers". It was a love feast indeed.

The workshop room was magnificent, with a hard wood floor and the most charming decorations. Anahata proclaimed the piano superb, and was most grateful to be able to prepare for the recording she was anticipating on our return to Rio.

The morning before we left I explored the facilities with our camera. Upstairs had been divided into the most adorable "Kutirs" for retreatants. Patricia had begged Anahata to come back to Brazil to lead a training for teachers of the Dances of Universal Peace and we were happy to add this facility onto our list of possibilities. Sans spiders of course.

Prema and Anahata

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Album #17 Curitiba