intimate walk with Catalina

Catalina, a guest student from Uruguay, asked me to be in her video project. I was impressed by her way of working. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted, had a very clear story board and was very simple and precise in giving directions.
In return I asked her to participate in my intimacy project. We first went for a coffee after a shooting. I had a chai, she had a cappuccino. I explained her my project. She seemed interested and told me about a meditation teacher in Uruguay from the Sufi tradition who once said something to her about intimacy: "You shouldn't worry about losing your intimacy because your intimacy stays always with you."
Maybe I didn't understand exactly what this Sufi guy meant. Why would I be afraid of losing my intimacy? Although yes I can relate to a feeling of losing my balance and groundedness if I make too many appointments with too many people and feel exhausted and empty at the end of the day. So the fear of losing one's intimacy is a fear of spreading oneself too thin.
I don't know if it was the chai or Catalina. But I suddenly found myself talking a lot. So many words and sentences and concepts coming out of me. I hardly recognized myself. I was bubbly and energetic like a volcano. And this just a few days after returning from my Vipassana meditation where I had learned noble silence. I apologized at the end saying that this was not really my usual character and that it must have been the spicy chai tea which made me so excited and talkative. Or maybe it's just that I felt very connected to Catalina. She is a great listener. I think I tend to feel connected to people from Uruguay. I have two Uruguayan friends who are like Catalina very receptive and calm in their energy. They make me feel super at ease and welcome to share my ideas and thoughts freely. According to Jan Ritsema this is what intimacy is all about. So let's say I felt intimately connected to Catalina right from the start.
Today we went for our walk. It was a sunny, beautiful autumn evening. Again I found myself talking more than usual. Catalina told me she was a gymnastics teacher. And I told her about my brother who is now studying to become a sports teacher in Switzerland and is teaching gymnastics to children. In fact both my brother and my sister teach gymnastics and do gymnastics. And I also did it when I was younger. There was a connection already.
First we talked about our day, about our plans for the holiday, about things maybe not so related to intimacy. Yet there was definitely a strong connection and a strong appetite for sharing.
I realized at one point during my walk with Catalina that intimacy to me is about connecting - with people, with the environment around me or with myself. I thought about a book by a British author I once read or started reading. I think it's called Howard's End and it's very much about this concept of connecting. "Just connect" is a key sentence from that book.
Then I remembered that I would like to read more books by British authors like Jane Austen or Oscar Wilde or Virgina Woolf. I like their sophisticated way of writing and the high teas and mannerisms of their characters. I wondered if intimacy was more difficult to find within this stylized, formalized way of behavior. But then I thought that each society has their own codes of behavior and maybe intimacy is about dismantling these codes and connecting through them or in spite of them.
To Catalina intimacy is mostly a feeling or concept related to herself. She says she believes there is much more to Catalina than what she knows about herself or how she sees herself. And this unknown territory of herself is what she calls her intimacy. She also confessed that sometimes she puts distance between herself and other people to protect her intimacy. But now she is trying to change. She realized that this distance is actually unnecessary because her intimacy will always stay with her no matter what, like the Sufi meditation teacher said.
Maybe I am simplifying her concept of intimacy. I am sorry if that's the case. What I am sure of is that Catalina's way of thinking about things is very sharp and subtle at the same time.
She asked me a lot of questions challenging my view on intimacy. I found out that actually I don't have a single, clear view. Although I feel I have a lot to say on the subject my idea of intimacy is still very much in-the-making and undefined. While passing under a bridge I said that my wish to be more intimate with people is actually a wish to show my emotions more freely in public. It's a desire not to stay in control of the situation, but to let myself be affected by what's happening to me. That's it! Catalina found this very valid. And it made sense to both of us.
On a small bridge we found a big heap of small, brown pellets. To me it looked like food for horses and for some strange reason I had to jump into it and take a handful of it as though it were a pile of fresh snow. Catalina told me to be careful. To her it looked like rat poison. And I promised to wash my hands. My childlike attraction to these strange pellets was a perfect example of how I would like to become more intimate! It's about appropriating something (a feeling, an object, a person) without first analyzing it. It's about diving into something without knowing what it is.
After a long, sunny walk across the canal from Artis zoo(Catalina saw her first live zebra) we walked back towards the central station and went for a power chai and cappuccino at the Star Bikes cafe. It was my idea to take Catalina there and I was very happy she liked the atmosphere and the music. I love Star Bikes cafe! It is a bike shop and cafe all in one. So it has this working atmosphere. But it's also very cozy and intimate. Catalina and I sat on theater chairs and pretended we were watching an improvisation performance. We noticed a lot of details and the performers were so amazingly natural!
I had a lot of fun with Catalina. I also felt intellectually challenged and alert. Usually I am not so much into conceptualizing and intellectualizing. I get easily tired of intellectual talk. But with Catalina it somehow happened. Maybe we share the same intellectual wavelength. Maybe we share intellectual intimacy as well.