The Caucasus Mountains, northeastern Georgia.
Barely breathing, legs bleeding and burning from a cocktail of stinging nettle, thorny bushes, and arthropods. I push my way up the mountains towards an ancient monastery; I intend to get there before the earliest tourist arrives. Two hours later, and I am stepping in the enchanting world of Narnia. A magnificent cross stands before my eyes, reaching the heavens, a witness that the sacred is still alive and kicking. A tear escapes.
I cover my head with a shawl, nudge the door open just a crack, then step one foot hesitantly inside, I’m careful not to disturb a monk lost in prayer or meditation. Empty. I enter fully and close the door. Stillness, so profound, an unearthly calm that hushes the very air, like a black hole. It’s as dark as the night sky in here, except for the flickering candles. Their soft light breathes life into the icons, the faces of Mary, Jesus, and the saints glow with a formidable beauty. How easy it is to find God here, for He exists in the very air.
I walk to the Holy Icons. I bow deep before her gentle gaze, my lips find the painted hand of Mary, cool beneath my touch, my lips linger. I light a slender beeswax candle and place it beside her image. I bow again, kiss her hand again. I recite the verses of Mary I know by heart.
I drop to my knees in full prostration; forehead pressed against the stone-cold floor. I whisper to God, and the invisible guardians of this magnificent place. I clutch the Theotokos as I murmur, and a surge of electricity runs through my bones… I do not want to leave; I want to hold onto this moment, away from the corrupt world lurking behind the door.
But then, a commotion startles me, breaking the spell. A man and a woman – clearly tourists – are yelling. I wait, hoping they’ll move on. I peek outside only to find them knee-deep in what looks like a photo shoot. The woman poses next to the cross and holy water fountain, while her partner shouts instructions from afar. I stand there, stunned. I ended my deep spiritual communion for this?
I flee the area before more tourists arrive, shattering the morning’s sanctity with their loud voices and big SUVs. A few meters down I find this ramshackle resting on thick, rough-hewn columns, providing a sheltered space underneath. A hint of movement catches my eye. Curious, I take a closer look. Eight horses, and God be my witness, are cowering underneath. I’ve seen it before: animals as a tourist attraction, just another form of entertainment, another piece of Instagram fodder.
The horses see me and shrink further. I immediately step back, respecting their right to this hidden space, their privacy. I sit on a rock nearby, just within their sightline, careful not to make them uneasy. Up here, my backpack is always loaded with carrots and apples. I’m constantly watching for them, even following their subtle trails, simply drawn to their presence. Expecting nothing, asserting nothing, and owed nothing. The profound beauty of their “being,” that silent, communal co-existing, is all I need.
They begin to shift, peering from afar. A kind of soft, unspoken understanding passes between us. They rise, one horse at a time, one careful step at a time, slowly and on their own terms they come hither. They send an emissary, the bravest or most reckless, he timidly checks me over. I extend my offering, and the rest is history. It must be quite a scene: me, surrounded by twelve large horses, nudging me from all directions.
But like all good things, this too shall pass. I hear familiar voices – the same man and woman from earlier, eyes gleaming, walking towards us. They must have died and woken up in Instagram heaven. Without a word, they barge in, extending their hands like claws towards the horses, who naturally react with instinctive fear. The couple lunge back, terrified. I close my eyes savoring their horror, wishing it lasted longer. Karma. And again, those two aren’t going anywhere; to miss out on such photo potential is unthinkable. I’m the one who leaves, but not before I take one last look at those beautiful creatures and murmur “Sorry. Sorry for what humanity has become.”
The museum:
A grand silver building that catches sunlight like a beacon, the Georgian Museum of Fine Arts. I decide this is a full day affair, put in my earbuds, let classical music flow through me, and float through the galleries, taking each piece one at a time.
Georgian art won’t coddle you. It’s born from Georgia’s deep, rich, and often brutal history.
I stop before Karlo Kacharava’s ‘Sentimental Journey.’ 1993. The year Georgia was tearing itself apart.
A winding hilltop road cuts through a frozen landscape of greys and blues. Pallid figures – ghost-like, almost translucent – stand scattered along this road to nowhere. The figures don’t look at each other. They stare past each other, trapped in their separate despairs.
Text sprawls across the canvas in Georgian and Latin script. Dedications to sentimental travellers. Names I recognize: Ida Applebroog, Karen Blixen, Bertolt Brecht, Carson McCullers. And Helena – his beloved, his muse, the one constant in Kacharava’s short, feverish life.
He died the year after painting this. Thirty years old. Brain aneurysm. Maybe he knew. Maybe this frozen landscape, this road of isolated souls, was his prophecy.
The painting is not large. Maybe four feet across. But standing before it, it devours everything. The cold seeps off the canvas. I feel the weight of that smoking cannon. That lamp swinging in nothing. Those figures who will walk this road forever without arriving anywhere.
I don’t know how long I stand here. The museum disappears. The other visitors fade. There is only this frozen road, these trapped souls, this artist who painted his own death a year before it came.
Then the clicking starts. Heels on marble, slicing through everything.
I turn. A woman glides past, phone raised, recording. She passes ‘Sentimental Journey’ in three seconds. Records. Moves to the next painting. Never stops moving. Her eyes never meet the canvas.
She’ll scroll past it tonight. Double-tap. Maybe add a museum emoji. Gone.
The theatre:
Every sunrise I walk in the park with my pack of stray pooches, six dogs who’ve adopted me as their human pet. Air cool and crisp, city still in slumber, just me and these stooges who’ve mastered the art of simply being. We move at dog pace, stopping to sniff interesting smells, investigating mysterious rustles in bushes, pure bliss.
As we approach the gym (both gym and my flat sit at the park’s edge), I spot her, sticking out a mile, a woman positioned in the park’s very center, wearing what generously covers nothing… Bending. Tripod angled with surgical precision to capture her moment of…. bending. She performs like two or three exercises, one rep of each for the camera, again all bending and perking. Two minutes of ‘fitness’ before she packs up and leaves.
I look down at my furry companions, eyes sparkling with simple dog joy. ‘Did you see that?’ I ask them. I convince myself they did. Happy dogs, they know they are dogs, and they live 100% as dogs. I need to learn to do just that.
I enter the gym. Tripods, cameras, a choreography of girls rotating for the ‘good light’ selfie. This place was always my sanctuary, a zone where the world’s noise dissolved, leaving only the rhythm of my breath and the gravity of the weights.
Now it’s a stage.
But old habits die hard and just like that, I drop into my routine and the world shrinks to the weight.
An hour later, I leave every bit elated, every bit at peace. For a decade, this well of happiness has run deep and pure, and I wonder: Do they even grasp the magnitude of what they’re forfeiting? Do they know what it means to be utterly lost in something larger than yourself?
Now, everyone is outside, looking in. They record the sunset instead of letting its colors wash over them. They photograph the art instead of letting it shatter them. They perform presence instead of simply being.
The camera has become our new deity. But a god is supposed to bestow gifts; this one only demands tribute. It strips the monastery of its silence and returns a photo op. It takes the wildness of the horses an8d returns fleeting content. It confiscates the moment and deposits a memory we never truly owned.
Yet, we kneel. We offer everything. We wait for its affection. It never arrives.
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