Trip Notes: Night Carnival
I was traveling alone to a city I had never visited before—Maastricht in the Netherlands. Through Couchsurfing, I met people for the first time that day, and they invited me. “There is a night carnival in a small village in Belgium called Gellik. If we go by bicycle, I think it will take around 40 or 50 minutes from here. Want to go together?”
Various events had overlapped since a few days before, and I had been feeling something like what people casually call synchronicity or guidance. I hesitated for a moment, as any ordinary person would. I am rather curious by nature, but of course I was afraid. Going to see a carnival in a small village across the border with people I had just met, cycling together through Europe at night. The idea sounded exciting, but the risk inside the beautiful sound of the invitation was obvious. My head understood it. If someone close to me were about to do the same thing, I don’t think I would simply say “Have fun.” But sometimes people set logic aside, trust intuition, and choose adventure. With a feeling of exhilaration, fear, and the same reckless excitement as breaking a curfew for the first time, I straddled the yellow and blue rental bicycle.
If I go straight to the conclusion, the carnival was astonishing. Simply put, it was a powerful festival. Several dozen giant trucks decorated like an electric parade, shining blinding lights. Around them, countless people of all ages in costumes dancing wildly with beer in their hands. It was not the kind of volume you would ever expect in the middle of a quiet and cold residential village in the night. I could feel the vibration in my chest, synchronized with the explosive drum sounds. I even wondered, is something like this allowed? It was an extraordinary chaos. While watching that scene, I occasionally smoked ganja. And just like the saying “When in Rome,” I sometimes joined the locals and danced a bit. I kept dancing for a while and then stopping again. It felt like I blended perfectly into that unique atmosphere, but at the same time, as if I didn’t blend in at all.
Even with such an overwhelming spectacle right in front of me, my mind was deeply, deeply recalling the moment we came here by bicycle. A Turkish person, an Austrian, a Dutch person, and a Japanese person. The four of us were different in every aspect—our cultures, native languages, and ages. And yet, we met by coincidence and became companions heading toward the same destination. We kept pedaling through the cold wind. We passed the smell of burning wood and horse manure a few times. All around us, flat grasslands stretched to the ends of the horizon. Ahead of us was a wide salmon-pink sky, and behind us a pale blue that was slowly approaching as nightfall came. Only the sound of us pedaling echoed through the vast space. I thought it was funny, in a surreal way, and at the same time I was thinking about the probability of people meeting each other in this incredibly wide world, across such a long, long span of time. It must be an astronomical number beyond understanding. So with this strange group of people, heading toward a night carnival, riding bicycles like children on this road, under this sky, within this moment—surely something like this will never happen again. Of course, this moment exists only in this moment. I had always understood the phrase in words, but this was a mysterious moment where I could truly feel it as a sensation.
“Beautiful.”
A word that suddenly rose from inside. It was a response to the scenery and the situation. But at the same time, it was also an emotion. Humans can feel happiness or sadness, but I felt that “beautiful” must also be an emotion. It was a feeling where the heart released a radiant joy of light, but at the same time contained a kind of fragile sorrow. Like fireworks rising and disappearing into the night sky. Probably because life is always meeting and parting again and again. Thinking back, I realized that every time I traveled somewhere, I unconsciously felt this emotion of “beautiful.” And I loved immersing myself in that feeling. Maybe I, as a person, keep traveling to many places because I am seeking that emotion. No—thinking further, even in the larger frame of life itself, I have always been living while seeking the emotion of “beautiful.”
Cha, cha, cha. At some point I noticed a small, steady rhythm coming from far in the distance. That must be the carnival. Really? No, it has to be. We each said something like that in our own way. With shining eyes, we began to pedal with just a little more strength than before. A road that stretched on, with nothing but sky and plain. At the edge of the horizon, a small dot of light appeared. Zun-cha! Zun-cha! Zun-cha! The sound was clearly growing louder and larger. What kind of scene was waiting for us beyond that light…
When I suddenly came back to myself, the trucks blasting light and sound and the people dancing wildly were still right in front of me. I felt like I had been here for a long time. I stretched a little and slowly rolled my neck. A yawn came out naturally. At the center of the night sky ahead, the Big Dipper was quietly floating. When I stared at it for a while, little by little, but surely, it became clearer. Not only the Big Dipper—countless stars were twinkling across the night sky.
At that moment, I finally felt like I understood it. The emotion of “beautiful” makes me strongly, intensely feel “I am alive here, right now.” And that strong realization of “I am alive here, right now” is the greatest happiness and driving force for me. It is not something that can be measured in numbers. But maybe I, as a person, feel the sense of being alive less strongly than others. Or maybe when I do feel it, I experience it in an addictive, overwhelming way. That might be why I keep seeking that realization, why I keep traveling, why I am walking this unusual path of being an artist. But that is not something bad. Probably not something good either. It is simply my individuality, a kind of compass that allows me to navigate my life as a story.
PM 10:30.
We got back on the bicycles we had left at the church and returned along the same road. The roar of the carnival drifted farther and farther away. The wind was colder than before, and everything was darker. Each of us continued pedaling in silence, heading toward the moment of inevitable parting. The Big Dipper and countless stars floating in the night sky stayed with us the whole way.
