Since I last blogged, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and bombed the moon, built an unbeatable coalition to drive sweeping health-care reform and utterly lost health-care reform, re-regulated Wall Street and stepped in to run Haiti. There can be no excuse- except perhaps my next post explaining the continents, organisations, discoveries, conferences and festivals that lay between then and now, and my deepest commitment to the Internet that I will never abandon it again unless the dice are running unexpectedly hot, in which case I promise to roll the windows down a notch and bring it back a Pepsi.

I will be visiting Colombia enticingly soon. The “Boots’n'all” Number 1 destination for Independent Travellers in 2009 has had a more than difficult tourism brand to work with after a number of violent decades, however this has all changed remarkably in recent years. A new Lonely Planet guide will be released in about ten days, marking open season on a new era of Colombian travel. Here’s an advanced edition of what they have to say on the matter.

“Colombia’s back.

After decades of civil conflict, Colombia is now safe to visit and travelers are discovering what they’ve been missing. The diversity of the country may astonish you. Modern cities with skyscrapers and discos? Check. Gorgeous Caribbean beaches? Check. Jungle walks and Amazon safaris? Check. Colonial cities, archaeological ruins, high-mountain trekking, whale- watching, coffee plantations, scuba diving, surfing, the list goes on.

No wonder the ‘magic realism’ style of Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez emerged from here – there is a dreamlike quality to Colombia. Here at the equator, with the sun forever overhead, the fecund earth beneath your feet, heart-stopping vistas in every direction and the warmth of the locals putting you at ease – you may find it difficult to leave.

Although international news reports seldom show it, Colombia is one of the most well-developed countries in Latin America. Universities here produce legions of finely educated, ambitious professionals and the country boasts a reliable legal system with low levels of corruption. World-class health care and hospitals round out its enviable social infrastructure. Its optimistic middle class believes hard work will be rewarded – and it is.

Colombian culture, like the country’s weather, varies by altitude. The essence of Colombia resides in the mountains in the alpine cities of Bogotá, Medellín and Cali, and the smaller cities of the Zona Cafetera. This is the industrial heartland of the country. Geographical isolation has kept the accent relatively unaffected by outside influence; Spanish here is precise and easy to understand. The infrastructure in the mountain region is good, the water drinkable, the roads well maintained. In the heat of the Caribbean coast, life is slower, and the culture more laid-back. The accent is the unhurried drawl of the Caribbean basin, and the infrastructure, unfortunately, is still in need of some attention.

Colombia’s role in the drug trade continues to play out in the back- ground. The improved security situation is due in large part to funding from Washington. This has made little dent in the cocaine business, however, which continues to operate in the deep jungle and the remote mountains. The great richness of Colombia’s tropical soil is both its blessing and its curse – huge varieties of tropical fruit grow here, and Colombia is a major agricultural exporter. It is also the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

‘Plan Colombia’ has successfully driven the violence from the cities and the main tourist routes, and brought peace to most of Colombia. While President Álvaro Uribe deserves great credit for this (Colombians call him their first saint), many are deeply worried by the election of US President Barack Obama. Without continued US foreign aid, the widespread fear is that the country will fall back into chaos.

In darker days people used to say, ‘if only it weren’t for the violence and drugs, Colombia would be paradise.’ Well the drugs may still be here but the violence is gone, at least for now, and it is, indeed, paradise. It is an easy country to fall in love with, and many travelers do. It may well become your favorite country in South America.”

© Lonely Planet Publications

In 1949, Campell, an autodidactic with an incredible journey of his own, published his seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It launched comparative mythology as a field of study and has been consciously applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists, including George Lucas in his Star Wars Trilogy. In fact, in 1986-87, over the final two summers of his life, Lucas hosted a six-part conversation between Joseph Campell and journalist Bill Moyers at his Skywalker Ranch in California around his core ideas and the ongoing role of mythology in scoeity. Aired in 1988 as Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth the insightful talks are available below on google video and highly recommended.

Episode 1: The Hero’s Adventure

Episode 2: The Message of the Myth

Episode 3: The First Storytellers

Episode 4: Sacrifice and Bliss

Episode 5: Love and the Goddess

Episode 6: Masks of Eternity

Minty Fresh produced an unexpectedly brilliant mash-up of this track with Jay-Z.

Only bigger… I wanted the participants to realise that their story was far larger, far more connected that they had possibly imagined. That their story was truly universal and loaded with everything that implies. The vast structure and interconnection that we are part of can seem so vague and unspecific. I wanted to get beyond that to a glimpse of a place that moves beyond the rational understanding of what is, and into the awe of what we are apart of- and even simply- what we are.  Director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson, expresses it perfectly in his journey of realisation- offered as reflections at the close of the “Beyond Belief” conference in ‘06.
(Start at 4:05)

And from this perspective, with these different kind of eyes, I attempted to bring the audience to  reexamine our world- and indeed ourselves. Astrophysicist George Smoot gave a TED talk that had struck me powerfully, pulling back the veil to reveal the design in the universe, for those of us with the inclination to see it. I borrowed heavily from his models and presentations, although I expanded into our planet, our history and our singular moment of existence.

It is a hard-line to walk between George as Scientist and Neil as Storyteller, and I probably hit too full an explanation before moving into introspective reflection and the later half of the session. Yet for me this is not just a tool to inspire awe, it is some of the greatest truth we can know. It is not just a metaphorical story, but a literal one, more intricate and complicated than can be imagined. And it is because of the fragility of our imaginings that I wanted to bring this content to the rather unsuspecting audience. It was because we were about to engage in deep self-discovery, that it seemed even more important to be well rooted in the real; to see our story as part of what we know the greater story to be, to see our conception of self in the context of the structure of our greater identity, to see our subjective limits and absolutes in view of true universals.

As Ibn Arabi writes, “Perfect knowledge of Reality involves seeing with both eyes, the eye of reason and the eye of imagination”.

Last weekend I took my family to see these grand monuments of Pharaohnic Egypt. It was my parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary and my sister had joined us from Istanbul. We ventured to Giza and found camels and horses with which to cross over to the Giza plateau, and thus come across the Pyramids from some empty desert- to taste more fully this feeling of discovery that so many have reveled within. Watching these three people I care deeply about, who were a world away in the months I lived here, now ride wide-eyed around the Wonder, to see their minds ignite in realisation of their experience and this intimate and overwhelming connection to an ancient story- this was a truly joyous and fulfilling moment and one that will live indelibly in my mind forever.

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems Volume Two, (thanks Rudi)