It was that summer I was wandering around Romania on my bicycle. I had spent the past few weeks in deep isolation: pedaling across broad plains or up and down lofty mountains during the day; sequestered in my tent, pitched in some vacant field or deep woods, during the night. That feeling of isolation had become further intensified throughout the last week I’d spent high up on the ridge of the Transylvanian Carpathians.
Humans lately had become quite an alienated notion to my mind. That’s why an intense desire to see and speak with some of them had taken over me while, toilsomely pedaling through a mad rainstorm, I was that day approaching the Transylvanian town of Sibiu.
Water dripping down from all over me, I finally made it and settled in a hostel in the town’s center. I remained there for about a week and took plenty of advantage of the amenities I’d lacked recently: mattress, shower, kitchen, internet… But most of all, that brief sojourn in civilization was a great opportunity to see and socialize with my kind afresh.
Every day, I unremittingly indulged in extensive walks and long sessions of people-watching. The town was abundantly vivified by a sundry agglomeration of folks, varying from begging gypsies to high-class international tourists.
Out of them all, there was that Japanese dude who formed a notable contrast to the general commonplaceness of the crowd and particularly ignited my curiosity. Right there, on the exact same spot, at the busiest part of the city’s most frequented pedestrian street, from early morning till late night, he always was there. He always was there, dressed in a hippie outfit, sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, fondling the surface of his hang drum.
Music-wise, the chap wasn’t a genius. He invariably played the same one-minute-long tune, round-and-round in endless repetition, only the tempo gradually quickening as the day progressed. However, insofar as a street musician’s value is measured by the volume of dough landing into his instrument case… phew, he was a tremendous success!
I don’t know what he did – he did nothing basically; he rarely even opened his eyes at all – but something in his calm, meditative demeanor, perhaps, attracted people to him like mice to a cheese bit. A thick assembly was perpetually stationed before him, and a constant stream of coins flowed into his hang drum case.
Even more astonishing than his ability to attract people’s attention by doing nothing was the very fact that he could bear staying there the whole day doing nothing – nothing other than sitting in the same still, rapt pose, only moving his arms in the same repetitious pattern. This definitely is a pretty extraordinary skill that requires patience, strong nerves, and supernatural composure.
Although his body was present, his mind was evidently absent, sailing through some far-flung, extradimensional cosmos of its own. I doubt whether he registered anything at all of what happened in our world during his performances. He was in a deep, abysmal, unfathomable trance.
It seemed to me quite impossible that someone could achieve such a trance state by meditation alone. He must have been tripping on acid recurrently, day after day. Or if not, his brain must have remained imbued by LSD since some past trip, in pretty much the same way it happened with Obelix when he fell into the magic-potion cauldron.
The principal reason that had brought me to Sibiu in the first place was the Transylvania Calling psytrance festival, which was to take place inside a secluded gorge of the nearby Apuseni Mountains. While I was at the festival, that Japanese guy and everything else related to the world outside the party was temporarily erased from my mind.
But then, somewhere near the main stage, there he suddenly appeared in front of my sight, his eyes wide open, a joyous flare beaming out of them, oscillating between this and another world. He gestured a cordial greeting as if we’d known each other forever, perhaps from the other world.
The story you've just read is a part of my "Real Stories of Real People" collection, wherein I narrate my encounters with various remarkable characters I've run into while traveling around the world. The entire collection is published on my blog and may be read here. But if you'd like to get them with you to the beach in your ebook reader or as a physical book, and very appreciatedly support my creative activity, go ahead and grab your copy from Amazon for the cost of a cup of coffee.
