“Always everything plain and simple.  No fancy words, no allusions, no 
metaphors.
 No quirky phrases.
 No allegories, no analogies, no symbols, 
no anything standing for something
 else.
 No analysis. No conclusions.
 No grand anything.
 Just the common and the ordinary
 spoken in a common and ordinary way.
 Just this 
then that 
then the other…” David Budbill – I find myself increasingly comfortable listening to conversations I don’t understand. Throaty vowels, rusty consonants, over half a dozen languages being spoken at once; French, Spanish, Catalan, English, Austrian, Italian, Romani during the Gypsy Festival in Stes. Maries-de-la-Mer. I was listening with my heart instead of my mind because language often limits the art of being human.  When I close my eyes the excitement is palpable.  I want to remember this. This moment will never come again, but it will last forever in my heart. I recently returned from the Gitan pilgrimage to Stes. Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargue region of Provence which has been occurring since 1448, every May 24th and 25th.  According to legend, Sara, queen of the Gypsies, was already in the Camargue delta as early as the first century, when a boat full of Marys arrived. Sara waded into the Mediterranean to help them. Sara, a small black woman, or Sara la Kali, as she is known to the Gypsies. In the original language of the Gypsies, which was derived from an old Indian language, Kali means Gypsy woman and the black one. Black Sara is the Patron Saint of the Gypsies.  Gitans are French Gypsies. There were no sacred mountains to circumambulate, no spiritual blessings to obtain. I was jostled by tourists and pilgrims alike. The crowd swelled to over 5,000.  I have attended this festival twice before, but this year I was startled by everyone’s homogeneity, though I knew from reading Isabel Fonseca’s book, Bury Me Standing, that the Gypsies are still a marginalized, maligned, mysterious people. There was no Django Reinhardt or Urs Karpatz, just endless variations of Gipsy Kings songs. There was no authentic dress, just Chinese knock-offs of Flamenco outfits. Why must the world change like this? Walking along the Mediterranean to avoid the gathering crowd I saw a beautiful Gypsy wagon, roulotte, one of only 3 in an ocean of modern white caravans. An older Gypsy woman was speaking with 2 young women. As soon as they left, I approached. The woman looked warily at me, but I introduced myself in French as an architect from the United States and said I thought her roulotte was stunning. I asked her name, she said it was Jeanine. I told her mine. She remarked about my unusual accent and I gave her a brief history, telling her I lived in the Gers department now, in Gascony, and she visibly relaxed. We talked for awhile, asking questions back and forth. She told me her roulotte was her fifteenth and most likely her last. She said she needed to take special care of it because she was going to make a 2 month pilgrimage to Rome to see the Pope. I asked her if could go inside and take a photograph. Jeanine told me Evangelicals are converting many Gypsies and banning them from attending the Catholic procession. The local mayor, a socially conservative, economically protective, Front National supporter does nothing to encourage or protect the 560 year old tradition. I wondered aloud if the world wouldn’t be a better place if we had compassion for all human beings. Jeanine said we all need to do penance for something, we all need to heal. I couldn’t agree with her more. How do the Gypsies keep their heritage in an ever shrinking world? How do any of us? There is an intrinsic freedom available to us in each and every moment if we just stop struggling with our expectations and experience what is. I believe that the art of travel is seeing the sacred in the ordinary. Within each of us resides a wanderer, a pilgrim, a gypsy, someone who longs to hit the road without a map. I don’t believe tourism is the only problem. I put all of my change in the small box on the ground in front of Jeanine and her roulotte. With my money she says she will be able to buy gas to make the slow trek to Rome. We wink at each other.  I imagine she’s hidden millions in her mattress over the years – she knows I know this –  neither of us was born yesterday.  I kiss her on both cheeks and say goodbye. She pats her hand over her heart and smiles. Clouds begin to shift in the early evening sky.