travel dreams – amaryllis

25 in the Himālayas

November 21, 2023 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

i turned 25 in the Himālayas, on the resplendent Khaliya trek, and camped in a remote meadow that can only be described as the land of the apasāras.

hiking, i reflected on 24, which was the year of the great heartbreak: of fierce grace. the path burned through what i had worshipped as truth and held most dear, and violently pushed me to transform.

on last year’s pilgrimage to the Himālayas, i had prayed on a trek to Gomukh: “free me. i will do whatever it takes.” when the whatever it took came, it was not what i had imagined, and it broke my heart. i had thought i had known heartbreak, but all paled before the pain of facing the untruths i had clung to under the name of God. seeing through your own deceptions is a harsh business.

as the projections i had built my spiritual life around began crumbling, i was left feeling disillusioned, and i was tempted to renounce my search for God. one of the darkest nights of the soul of 24 was one of doubt, in which i doubted everything. i bitterly cursed my trust, and felt repulsed by the dynamics of modern spirituality. i reasoned, if such power dynamics can be built on spiritual teachings, then the teachings must be false.

and yet my intuition, which i had cut myself off from, arose gently; a tiny voice silently telling me that the truth i was seeking does exist. it is pulsing underneath the mirage. my intuition told me not to close myself. to trust the play and uncover the teachings. to keep moving and follow the energy.

diving deep into disillusionment paradoxically opened my system to increasing expansion as well as to a love of an encompassing nature that i had not tasted before.

followingly, one thing i have experienced, is this: freedom rests in autonomy on the spiritual path. the teachings, the dimensions of God, such as the Mahāvidyās, the Devas and Devīs, are real – only not in the way we tend to think about them and not in the way they are taught in modern spirituality. you have to experience them for yourself. you are intrinsically worthy of it. keep moving.

my motto for 25 is: whatever it takes.

i undulate

July 17, 2023 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

i undulate
with the sun in my teeth
and with my hair braided on salt

put my head on my mother’s lap
and listened to the birds

yes i have spite
but i also have love

my longing for myself is my song

dissolved in shades of blue in the dreamy lecco! #bellaitalia

de paris avec l’amour

July 13, 2023 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

#1: dreamlike to experience l’atelier des lumières! they are showcasing three exhibitions at the moment: Marc Chagall’s “paris-new york”; Paul Klee’s “peindre la musique”; “convergence: sounds and colours” by cityshake.

🌌 Chagall’s wondrous, russian folklore-inspired paintings are displayed on tunes of mostly classical music. the explosion of melded sound-vision coaxed tears, thrill and joy out of me, and it was fascinating to observe how the music manipulated my emotions – and yes, i chose this word very pointedly! by ‘manipulation’ i mean that my processing of the imagery, in the split-second that rested between the display of the paintings and the advent of the music, was often overturned by the music; an image of a woman with braided hair that i first registered as serene rendered me tearful when wrenching music sank in.

🎇 in the second exhibition, which stemmed from the premise of painting the music, the dynamic was overturned; it was the paintings that conferred meaning to the music!

🎆 as for the third exhibition, it was an exploration of synaesthesia (once upon a time, i wrote an article on this!) which invites you to listen to the colours! 🤍 fills one to the core.

the interplay of the senses 😍 would highly recommend a visit here to anyone who finds themselves in paris or in a city where branches of the atelier exist! 🌌

#2: i haven’t visited paris in many years & i’ve been remarking how fresh everything feels, as if i’m here for the very first time! then again, i was thinking to myself that even though the obvious cause-effect correlation would be having not been here in long, still, every place & experience could be fresh & new if i don’t fall in my modus operandi complacency of having been there before, having already seen etc!

there was a beautiful share i saw on here a few weeks ago, about a professor telling his students that even going to the supermarket, if experienced fully “without the goggles of habit and categories”, would make one “go crazy with pure sense and joy”. credit for this: alice in honeyland 🤍

iele and strigoi magic

July 13, 2023 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

this summer, i had the opportunity to present my beautiful homecountry to two dear friends of mine, and, in this process, to myself experience romania with freshness and openness, and rediscover its magic.

romanian folklore is so incredibly rich, and it has been so profound to experience the stories of mystery and magic that i grew up with in the heart of Transylvania this summer. ielele are my favourite mythical beings from our folklore and i’ve been mesmerised by them since childhood; they are female mythical creatures who dance in forests naked, disheveled, with bells on their ankles, and carrying candles. their dance maddens those who encounter them and the earth on which they dance becomes scorched by the heat dripping from their feet. in the dead of the night, remnants of the tingle of their tunes resound in the forests – heard by those who brave their hearts to listen… 😊

i had a strained connection with my homecountry for a long time, having remained blind to much of its beauty out of my own contractions and feelings of inadequacy emergent from absorbing limited beliefs about my nationality that are sometimes propagated in western europe. however, in the past years i’ve been falling more & more in love: i’ve been falling in love with how alive bucharest comes at night, with how delicious it is to walk with my friends on the streets we used to stumble on our wild escapades in high school, with how melodious our language & music are, with treading the journey from universitate to my place to clear my mind & connect to myself, with how hearty our traditional food is, how mystical and complex the folklore is, how vast and abundant the mountains and forests are – with how there was never a moment in which i was in need in which i did not encounter kindness.

so healing, to let go & see how beautiful it all was, all along.

mândră că-s româncă! ✌️

p.s. how cool was our accommodation in predeal? they’re called the palo cabins and the hosts are truly lovely people. would highly recommend!

the grief of women: reflections on Strī Parva

May 27, 2023 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

spent today absorbed in the père lachaise cemetery, and one of the things i was struck most by was seeing the many sculptures of female figures towering over tombs: almost all tearful or in distress. it made me think of Strī Parva, “The Book of Women” from the Mahābhārata, which exclusively focuses on portraying women’s grief and tears, who break upon seeing their men & sons slaughtered on the battlefield in the aftermath of the war. one of the distressed female characters, queen Gāndhārī, lashes out at Kṛṣṇa and accuses him of murder, declaring that he could have stopped the war as he is both omniscient & ever-powerful.

Kṛṣṇa rejects her blame and retorts that he cannot override the cosmic laws. he himself is subjected to them; the massacre was ordained, no one is exempt from death, and the cycle of life is definitive.

my understanding of this exchange is: he is not telling her that she should not grieve or that her grief is “wrong”; he merely offers her the opportunity to place it in a larger context and to use her distress to understand deeper herself as well as the web of nature / existence / cosmology. there is no one to blame or resent or victimise; life unfolds as is. and,

even what we understand as ‘negative’ feelings therefore can be utilised as a stimulus for self-reflection. i myself have spent a lot of time simmering in grief without considering what it could teach me, so this particular scene is very profound for me.

and, how beautiful is Kṛṣṇa’s revelation that he himself is subjected to the cosmic laws once incarnated! will elaborate on this in a future article or post 😊

*my retelling of this dialogue is not based exclusively on the critical edition but also on its variations, as this is one of the instances in which i find referring to multi-versions valuable.

photos: some of my favourite sculptures seen in the cemetery!

Morocco: immersion into beauty and devotion

January 22, 2023December 17, 2024 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

“The Universe belongs to God.” is written on the walls of the Hassan II Mosque. Morocco weaves beauty and devotion magnificently within itself, and it has left a profound mark on me. seeing those splendid lands filled me with joy and almost recognition, as if i had been there before, perhaps in another life. what was most significant for me was witnessing the calls to prayer. it moved me to tears – to see people drop their everything to join prayer, with fervour and innocence. from truck drivers parking their car on the side of the road and kneeling before their devotion on the land, to workers kneeling on the pavement on busy streets with folded hands… truly a most touching sight for sore eyes.

what is more, the scents, the architecture, the nature, the monuments – deeply satiating the senses.

photos from Casablanca, Rabat, Essaouira, Marrakesh, Fes, including captures of… tree-climbing goats!! 💛 a romanian custom is to caress a lamb on the first days of the new year for good luck & auspiciousness – hopefully holding a goatling baby is a close-enough attempt!

and, finally, photos from New Year’s Eve, spent in the electric Marrakesh! 🖤

“I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves against the night.
I lean back, lip-read the heavens talking on in light, syllabic stars. I see, at last, they pray at us. Time falls and falls through endless space, to when we are.”

🎆 Carol Ann Duffy 🎆

haunting beauty

December 23, 2022February 18, 2023 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

Roma – the haunting beauty of marble! the sculpture of Artemis (#2) is her incarnation as “Lady of the Animals”. the close rows of overlapping breasts, interpreted by some to be bulls’ testicles, signify fertility & abundance. spellbinding to see the sculptures coming to life in the city & mesmerising to face Artemis. tears upon seeing Mary’s beautiful face in the Pietà.

*sculptures of Ponte Umberto I, Artemis, Pietà, Vaticano, Ponte Sant’Angelo, Fontana di Trevi, Pantheon.

cresciuti sotto un fiore
nascosti con i segreti
creati da Dio
sparsi nell’universo

[blanco]

gratitude to have celebrated mammina in the beautiful citta eterna. thank you for your out-of-this-world support, for bearing with me through my times of casual cruelty and immaturity. i owe what i have built and what i am building to your generosity. i love you.

She dances me to her call | bhakti poem by Téa Nicolae

November 6, 2022 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

in the depths of my being, She dances me to her call:

“come to me. I want all of you, my child. no part of you is too dark, too gritty, too cruel for me. I claim all of you.”

Māiyā! your waves carry your call and roll it against my chest. i seek you with my breath, eyes, hands, and knees. my lungs seek you like they seek air.

Ya Devī! soothing her tears,

Kṛṣṇa told Pāñcālī

that just as you, Śrī Gaṅgā, hold and wash all pollutions yet are ever-pristine,

so does the fallen empress remain untainted by her shame.

aches bathed in your luster,

i plead:

take all of me, Devī.

leave nothing of me behind.

establish me in knowing

that despite my wrongs, fears and corruptions, i, too,

your fragment in the microcosm,

remain unmarred.

may the holy flow of your untamed waters

sweeten the harshness i bear towards myself and the world

soften the rigid corners straining my being

loosen the knots hindering you from coursing within me.

Śrī Mātre Namaḥ. 🙏

photos: before & after bathing in the waters of Śrī Gaṅgā in the auspicious Gangotri. Śabda Yātra. 🙏 the blessing of blessings. 💙

The Call of the Himalayas

November 3, 2022October 9, 2023 Téa NicolaeLeave a comment

by Mahārājñī’s grace, my dream of India came true! 🥲 for five years, it has been an ardent wish of mine to see these lands. the answer to the call of the Himalayas came as a magnificent and expansive yātra which began in Rishikesh and traversed Uttarkashi, Gangotri, Bhojbasa, Gomukh, Barkot, Yamunotri. we trailed and trekked the mountains in worship of Devī in her forms as Śrī Gaṅgā & Śrī Yamunā. it was a journey of cellular transformation: explosive insights, breath-taking beauty, moving softness, immersion in the love and flow of Gaṅgā Devī.

most miraculously, we completed the arduous and most fulfilling trek of 36 km from Gangotri to Gomukh, the source of the Holy Gaṅgā, in two intense & magical days! 💙 i have never felt more alive than on this trail, immersed in the hum of Devī Gaṅgā and held in the lap of the mountains. every step taken was a challenge to my self-imposed limitations and ideas of myself – of who i am, of what i can do and achieve. every step taken taught me resilience and determination, as well as showed me that my strength springs from my longing. it has been most sacred to complete this trail and to come to be at the Source with my saṅgha. imbibing in Her exquisite vibrations, we worshipped Her through pūjā. we breathed, we smiled, we cried. i will remember this experience for the rest of my life with all the gratitude & awe my being can muster.

Śrī Mātre Namaḥ! Har Har Mahādeva! Hare Hare Gaṅge!!!

what is more, in Gangotri, we hiked to a cave where it is said that Draupadī and the Pāṇḍavas spent time while on exile, and had the fortune to meet the sādhu who has been living there, entrenched in tapasya. ♥️ i have felt the Mahābhārata vibrantly coming alive for me on our yātra; from being at Gaṅgā Devī’s feet, arguably the precursor of the Mbh’s unfolding, to reaching Yamunā Devī, whose shores welcomed Ambā, who burned herself on a pyre at Yamunā’s banks to gain Lord Śiva’s boon… these mystical lands are unparalleled in beauty, significance, power and history.