what is happening now

It´s a Sunday afternon, I´m lying in bed, feeling sad. All day I´ve been alternately reading and daydreaming. The reading is an age old method of escape for me. Forget your surroundings and lose yourself in someone else´s imagination, take on a reality that is not your own. My hopes and fears fade into the background when I´m reading, my life goes on pause, I can forget things. Yesterday I read a volume of Maya Angelou´s autobiography, about how it is to be a black woman at 19, single mother and already with a litany of temporary careers. The building frustration of unfulfilled expectations. Then, today I read a novel about death and families. About connections to land and our own past, about where we belong. All written in dreamy, multicoloured, feather soft language; relaxed and timeless, like a dog dozing in the hot, dusty shadow of a tree in some faraway garden.

I am lying in bed in a room which is a whole house which is actually a shipping container in a clearing in a patch of woods near my sister´s farm. My sister has gone away for a few days to some hot springs in La Rioja. The room is dirty and messy; clothes lie everywhere, there is dust on the floor and, as I lie in bed, I can feel grime leaching onto my skin from the limp sheets. The air smells musty and sharp, the tang of it stings my eyes and blocks my nose. There is a saucepan on the dresser containing lightly fermenting salad; I brought it here last night and ate half of it but it was already past its prime and now it´s plainly inedible. I stealthily opened a tin of tuna from the house owner´s secret stash and spooned it onto a piece of bread; now my hands are covered with an oily sheen. My fingernails are dirty. Every time I scratch my head I discover sand from a beach I slept on almost 2 weeks ago. There is a caravan across the way from my trailer from where, last night, came the knockings and moanings of two people having sex. Right now though, all I can hear is birdsong, the low whisper of the stream and the scratching of this pen on paper. Normally, all of these facts put together would make me feel calm and happy :- the little details of life proceeding in its natural, unplanned manner. The happy mess that nature makes. Today however, everything is tinged with hopelessness. There is no real reason why.

I know it´s time to leave Ixuxu, to set off into the real bit of travelling, the unknown bit. Where things aren´t safe and there is fear and loneliness and self-sufficiency. There will also be freedom and lightness and more beautiful things every day than I could see in a lifetime of office work. But right now, poised at the edge, about to jump, it´s the scary bits that are the strongest. I have no idea what´s going to happen to me. No idea. There´s a chance I´ll meet amazing people who will invite me to do fantastical things in amazing places - join a circus! live in squats and make jam with fruit out of supermarket bins! make art! join a community in the woods and live in slow breathing, long haired silent harmony forever. But this might not happen. There´s a chance, an equal chance, I´ll not meet anyone I can talk to at all. There´s a chance I´ll be cold and wet and hungry and not know what to do about it. There´s a chance I will be shouted at, thrown out of empty buildings and have to sleep uncomfortable nights in dirty places. There is a chance I will be lonely and have no-one to talk to and that, I think, would be the worst thing of all.

Right now, the thought of all these possibilities is keeping me frozen in place, unable to jump. Probably all of these things will happen to me, to a degree. Or maybe, instead, some new and utterly, brilliantly unexpected things will happen to me instead. I will get married to a farmer in Bosnia. Or maybe I will get assaulted and killed and my body will lie undiscovered in central Ukraine for 20 years. There is so much that could happen. A whole universe of possibilities, of myriad lives. And I have to walk forward into that, accepting that I don´t know what´s going to happen to me, only that it could be happy or it could be sad.
It´s incredibly frightening. Especially because I haven´t given myself an end to this. There is no home to return to, no job to pick back up again. There is no future, it does not exist. There is only me walking forward into the unknown.

Writing this makes me see that my time here, in Ixuxu is a kind of limbo. I have been procrastinating, biding time. It´s time to go. It´s time to jump.

First the balcony break

Feathered clouds fissure the sky

stretching in electric wisps over my balcony home.

I luxuriate in busy nothing, languid hammock ooze.

Dancing to myself, awaken oh sleeping hips, find your life in the radio.

Cold watermelon and a pile of books.

Blue sky and orange tiles.

Postcards home

Lazing away sunny days, my skin has turned a definite different colour. Surrounded by lovely chilled people. Dreads and guitars, fires and drums, beaches and cider, dirty hands and feet. Green trees and wild pigs. Sleeping in a hayhouse, handmade everything. Herding horses from one valley to the next. Planting beans in straight lines and finding them sprouting when we come back from the beach. Outside, every single day.
Nothing in particular on my mind.

Wide flat green and a huge blue sky. Down a streak of white road gallops a black bullcalf, snorting, pausing, trotting, bucking and tossing its head. Behind it, at a respectful distance follows a comically small white van, shepherding, implaccable.

The image flashes for a second and is gone. The train moves on.

I am rediscovering transience and stretching into it. This is where infinity exists.

Everything around me is free and in abundance.

My food is free, it is unlimited, it is varied. I do not shop for it. I do not cook it, I do not choose what to eat for my main meals; they are cooked for me by someone who is paid to do this. I can eat as much as I like at all times. There is always fresh bread, there are always chocolates, there are always biscuits, there are always cakes, there are always 9 kinds of cereal, there is always a bowl full of varied fresh fruits, 5 cheeses, coke, juices, wine, beers, alcopops are always in the fridge. Whenever something runs low it is immediately replaced by someone else who is paid to replace it. We never, ever run out of milk. It is all provided for me by people paid to do these things.

My heating is free. Underfloor heating warms my toes in the bathroom. Radiators gurgle in every room. I do not choose the temperature, I do not think about the bill, I do not think about maintenance or servicing. It is provided for me by people paid to do these things.

My car is free. I can drive whenever I like, as far as I like with no regard for cost. I have 5 cars available to me to drive. I do not pay for petrol. I do not pay for tax. I do not pay for insurance. I pay people to clean the cars for me (when I am told to do so). The cars are maintained and serviced for me by people paid to do these things.

My bed is free. I have my own room as long as I am here. I have my own private fridge, my own private bathroom, my own french doors, my own patio. I do not pay rent. I do not pay council tax. I do not pay any bills at all. I do not clean the house I live in, this task is carried out by someone who is paid to clean. When I walk into the beautiful garden, the lawn is mowed, the vegetables are planted, new fences are painted and everthing is neat, clean and ordered - all by people who are paid to be here. The management of my living space is carried out by people who are paid to do these things.

Many of the objects around me, inside and outside, in this house and in other associated properties - computers (10 of them), printers (8 of them), full sets of kitchen equipment, ovens (5 of them), washing machines (6), tumbles dryers (3), landline phones (8, for 2 landlines), mobile phones (3), ceiling fans, hi-fis, tvs (10 of them), dvds, microwaves, lawnmowers (7), strimmers (3), pond pumps, pond cleaners, statues, patio furniture (5 sets), fountains, drills, electric handwashes, showers, tools, machinery, portacabins, roofing, electric windows, air conditioning, garages, sheds, chainsaws, rotivators, spades - all have had money paid against them at the time of purchase to take out extended warranties for their protection against possible breakdown. The guarantees are filed in filing cabinets, their details carefully entered onto spreadsheets and their manufacturers warranty expiry dates noted in an electronic diary that will ping a warning against the possibility of any future breakdown going unprotected against company authorised repair.

When I eat, I eat with 8 or 9 other people every night. All of whom are paid to be here in this house or have come to volunteer their time in exchange for food and board. The person who pays us never eats evening meals in her own house. It has become something that is not her own, a machine, running and humming and cleaning itself. She goes out in the evening to eat at restaurants.

Every evening I am too tired from my all-immersing work here to do anything with the 2 hours I have to myself before sleeping but lie on my bed and watch TV. I have no time to read. I have no time to learn Russian. I have no time to do and think about nothing. I do not write anything any more - words and inspiration have spiraled slowly above my head, waiting for space to fly into my ears....when they found there was none available they disappeared......I think they are in the forest, waiting for me to find them again.

I am forgetting what it is like to be hungry. I am forgetting what it is like to need anything. As long as I am here I don't. Now I have dedicated myself to this place, it is supporting and looking after me but it seems that all my independence has disappeared in a wash of warm, buttery comfort.
I am forgetting how to survive.


This part of my life will end on the 7th of May. I'm not sorry that I was here - I chose it after all - but I will be glad to leave and renew myself again.

____________________________________


Welcome forests, welcome lakes, welcome open road and rucksacks. Welcome axes and knifes and cooking on fires. Welcome walking and sitting and sleeping outside. Welcome dirty fingers. Welcome tired feet. Welcome time, the starry swirl that is all and nothing. Soon. I will see you soon.

Yeah!

About a year ago I was hitchiking away from Stratford. I'd just spent the night at my granny's house and I was on my way to Portsmouth where I was going to catch a ferry to Spain to spend a month with my sister. A car went past me with a tall pole and what looked like a set of loudspeakers attached to the top of it. Is that the Google car? I wondered to myself. Looked like it.



It only Fucking was as well.




I am hitchiking on Google Street View! Look!!!!!!



http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=stratford+on+avon&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.335749,28.081055&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Stratford-Upon-Avon,+Warwickshire,+United+Kingdom&ll=52.181514,-1.700435&spn=0,359.996572&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=52.180561,-1.700505&panoid=gDQ9Ht-TW2PBO9BNMa0grA&cbp=12,145.52,,0,12.89



Or if the link doesn't work, go to the 1st roundabout south of stratford on the A3400 and click on street view. I am there. With blonde fluffy hair! And my old blue suitcase! Damm, I loved that suitcase so much, I even hitched to Croatia with it once. That was before the hinges broke. RIP beautiful turquoise suitcase, immortalised again my friend.


This makes me so happy!!!!! I don't even know why!

Judgements

Staying, going, going, staying. I've done it now, I've decided.



It's those principles see; I felt as if being here with all it's horrifically overconsuming ways - £300 Tesco shop every week, manicured, clipped and landscaped garden, print every email twice - was wrong, cos, you know, I'm a hippie and so I should be living in a yurt somewhere, plaiting hair and condemning places like this as a part of Babylon and all its horrors.

The thing that helped to resolve my thoughts was a drunken argument with a cocky 21 year old, one of the outdoor workers who lives here during the week. I've been trying to hold back from voicing my thoughts about the horrible, needless waste of resources that happens here, there's no point in going off at individuals about the small things that happen every day when what I'm actually angry about is the whole thing. But still, there's anger there. The other day, one of the guys in the office changed the inks in the printer before they were empty.....because the computer told him they were running low. I had to go for a ten minute walk in the garden to calm down.

Laughable? Probably. But still, I blurted out this story and others to C, the cocky fella and he got really annoyed with me. Said I was deliberately making myself miserable and if I hated it so much I should just leave.

Why are you here? he said, You're here for the money, just like everyone else and if you deny it then you're a hypocrite.

The conversation continued in this vein, back and forth, until suddenly, out of nowhere, he said 'You think you're better than me don't you'.
And the answer that came bubbling up from within me was Yes.

There's no point in me even describing this person. Why? So you could make up your own mind about whether I'm better than him or not. Pointless. My answer was yes, that's all that matters. My moral, ecological, hippie equality, beautiful world view point? Gone. Swept away. I woke up the next morning with a bad head and the knowledge that he was right. I have been silently holding myself to be some paragon of virtue but I am actually a judgemental hypocrite.

To judge something is to separate yourself from it and that is one of the states I am trying to get rid of on this thing I'm doing. Adventure, journey, whatever the fuck it is.
I can't be here at this place, hating it, waiting for my life to start when I leave. There is no better life, no greener grass, there is only my existence right now and I need to stop separating myself from it.

So it's for this reason that I've decided to stay. I can't just whinge and waltz off because this place doesn't fit my internal image of how my life should be. Should I go and sit smugly encased in my moral walled garden and tell myself I was right all along....never learning anything about myself or changing at all.

I'm signed up here until the beginning of May, I don't like it all the time; some days it's horrible here. Right now (actually 3 days ago now, I am terribly slow at writing blogs), I'm on day 15 in a row of working 12 hours a day, people are shouting at me for no reason, the cat pissed on the carpet and I had to clean it up, I'm stuck inside on a beautiful Spring day printing stuff from the internet about strimmers and polytunnels that will get looked at once then recycled, the list goes on.
But I am here, and I will take what I can out of each moment.
The sun is shining and there are nice people around me, if only I stop to look at them properly.



This post has been slowly coming together for a couple of weeks. I accepted the job ten days ago, it's the reasoning behind it that has taken longer to express.

Carrot Quinn's amazing post on living in the Now tells a way more eloquent story than I ever could.
http://carrotquinn.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/a-fate-worse-than-death/

But the amazing things that have happened today are....last night I opened for the first time, a book that a friend reccommended to me - The Miracle of Mindfulness. I didn't know what the title meant, I'd never heard the word before...and lo and behold. It's about living in the Now! Hurray!
Then, today, I met a lovely woman who has been living in India and Thailand for the last 5 years, she's going to come and work at the farm with me.....and out of the blue she mentioned mindfulness too and we had lunch together outside in the sunshine and talked about synchronicity. Hurray!

Balance

Because all things should be in equilibrium.

What are the good things about being here?

I love finding a connection with people - no matter who they are and how different they are to me. It's as if everyone has a key to their inner selves, the parts that are running them under the surface and if I am patient enough I will find it and understand them.
Every person contains something unseen, every interaction has something to understand - like the cleaner here who is a stone cold bitch to everyone, disliked and ignored by most people....last week, when she shouted at me at 7.30 in the morning and I decided not to get angry but to talk quietly in return, after I waited and negotiated and was quiet for long enough she told me about how she'd just come straight from a night shift at a care home where she'd been cleaning and laying out an old lady who died overnight. I don't like her any more for it, well I do a bit but not much, she can be really mean to people, but I do feel better that I got to the point where she said that to me. There are lots of different people here, a mix of nationalities to learn from, a mix of ages and viewpoints. People who grew up in the tail end of communism in Eastern Europe - if I can get through their anger and sexism, there are things to learn from them. Others, young boys, being kept out of prison by a benevolent employer - I can find common ground. And I do.

The woman at the centre of this craziness is a genuinely lovely person, she's just got some pretty wasteful ways. If she was even a little bit of a bad person I'd have fucked off ages ago but she isn't. She is kind, generous, compassionate and caring. She's just got some fucked up consumption habits that she doesn't know how to stop. In fact, she just doesn't know how to stop doing anything - working, being busy, buying things, having meetings, attending seminars, whatever. I never see her sitting down, she eats standing up. She gets up and starts working at 5 am. If she would only sit down and breathe for a while. But she never does. But that is a sad thing, not a bad thing. I like her, I want to help her.

It feels good to be organised, even on someone else's behalf. I'm pretty scatty in my own life, not really bothered by mess or lateness or schedules of behaviour. However, somewhere in my brain is this really logistical, organised part that I can switch on at will. When I'm given 20 little pieces of paper with notes scrawled on them and I can look at this mess and form it into something organised that is a week in the life of this house...it makes me feel good. It's as if this woman throws out a tangled, complicated web that is her life and I catch all the little strands and help weave them into something comprehensible called a household.

I'm getting some good work on the side as a life model, really well paid and really enjoyable. I'm doing yoga twice a week with a really good teacher, the best I've ever had. Because so little of my time is given to myself, the things that I do for ME are really, really meaningful. I am loving the yoga and how good it feels to be in my body, strectching all the little muscles a bit at a time. Then I can take that over to the life modelling work. On Saturday, while 10 people sat around drawing me, I walked naked around a room for an hour, slowly stretching every muscle in my body....then I stayed completely and utterly still for two hours. After the class I spent another 2 hours with one guy, chatting to him while he painted me. Brilliant! I felt great afterwards, there was a real calm and open space in the centre of my body.

It's safe and warm and I am fed here. I have no needs or worries about survival.

I am saving 90% of my wages - where else could I do that so easily? No rent, no bills, no worries. I just walked into this job and I will walk out again, easily.

I am using my skills here, I am learning about myself and about other people. This time is hard but it is not wasted.

If I take on this task and finish it - I will have succeeded at something really difficult for me to do. I won't have whinged that it wasn't right for me and walked away, I will have gritted my teeth and done it.


Maybe I just need to rant - it's been building for a while. I spoke to my AMAZING sister last night - she always gives me calm balance in return for my overwrought chattering.

The lady doesn't want an answer for a week, maybe I'll just let it percolate and see what answer comes out of my unconscious - I mean that's the part of me I need to listen to. Forget the rabbit brain that will keep talking and reasoning until the end of time, what about my inner tortoise? What does she say?

Dilemmas

I've been in a very uninspiring position recently - working as a PA to a very rich woman. I've gone from a beautiful caravan on a basic, off-grid farm in Welsh mountains to an over landscaped, overheated, over consuming household near London. This house is bulging at the seams, almost out of control....and every crack is papered over with money. Outgoings of £50,000 Per Month. Per. Fucking. Month.

I'm whirling round inside a hamster wheel that has been created by a person who has enough money to create such a busy and hectic life for herself that it serves to disguise the fact that she has no life at all.

I'm supposed to be here January til end March. Then I was asked to stay a couple of weeks into April until she finds a replacement for me. Every extra week I stay here is a week of the spring missed. A week of good weather where I can sleep outside, where I can find forests to make houses in and lakes to dive into. A week of wandering and wondering. But every week I stay here in Moneyville is worth 2 months of that outdoor existence. So I grit my teeth, and I compromise myself and I carry on.

If I was going to stick to my principles I would have left in the first week.
I should have left when I was asked to install an electronic drinking fountain for the cat - a little pump, plugged into the wall, sucking electricity 24 hours a day so a cat can have running water to drink from. What is wrong with a saucer?
I should have left the first time I was asked to log into Facebook and approve this woman's friends requests for her.
The first time I printed every email in her inbox for her to look at at her leisure - including all the newsletters from executivemanagement.com, microfinancedirect.com, landlordspropertynews.fuckingcom
The first time I did the weekly shop for £300 worth of groceries that I had to try and stuff into cupboards already bulging with uneccessary food.
The first time I realised the fact that this household is an overgrown puff of pointless air, completely useless yet consuming Huge amounts of resources for basically Fuck All.

But I didn't leave, I stayed. I compromised my principles for Money. The thing I thought I hated. It makes me sad that I'm still here, encased in plastic, slowly forgetting what it's like to be outside in bare feet.

My dilemma. I've been asked to stay longer. Until the start of May. Another 3 weeks added to my time here. In exchange for more money and a holiday in this lady's flat in Barcelona. What the fuck? I have family in Barcelona, I could see them, maybe get other people over here. What a great start to my travel, a paid ticket to Spain. But it means staying here for another 3 weeks.....when I'm already counting the days. But 3 weeks work here means 6 months in the forest out there. What's three weeks out of a whole life?

Is it better to stay, take the money and be able to finance over a years worth of life in exchange for this 4 months here. Or should I say No, fuck you and leave because I wasn't able to be bought. And if that's the case, why didn't I do that 2 months ago?

To take part in the system, even cynically, is to keep it alive. I am taking nothing down from within, I am just bending over and taking the money. Voluntarily locking myself into a gilded cage. Fucking, fucking, fuck.

a walk one day

Wrapped in booted bundles

Sheer breath hits red cheeks

Leaning full length against the grass hedgeside, the world flashes colours when I open my eyes. The walk is our neverending trundle. Hills so sharply white the stone ruins make soft relief for my eyes to rest against. We eat handfuls of snow.

Icicles hanging in thin trickles for our refreshment.

A curl of moss preserved in the root.

We silently salute ourselves, our beauty, our simplicity.

Eating. Apple. Candlelight.

I am eating an apple by candlelight. Each knife-cut slice comes away like the disc of a tiny moon. I admire the way the juice runs through the ridges the knife left, how the light shines through the thin end of each piece. The apple is so beautiful, each knife slice only reveals a new geometric plane from which to admire it. Yellow skin with a red blush, sweet juice. It's all I have eaten in two days. Thick fluids have lurched out of me in rough gargles, leaving me bereft of energy. The day passed slowly, time measured only in the languid shift of lying position. One long blank stare.
But now, right now, I am eating an apple by candlelight and I am thinking about how I wish there was someone here with me to rub my aching knees.

What decade is this?

Holding a Dairy Crest milk bottle under a waterfall of apple juice. Liquid streams and bubbles out of the pressured pile of mush until it topples out of the press into the barrel beneath. I watch steam curl from my hands as I pass the bottle to the farm owner for a juicy swig; he is replete in flat cap and tattered gaberdine. When I look out of the barn window I can see 20 miles of green hills.

i remember once

I walked a quarter of a mile from a house to a caravan, where my bed was. It was a country lane, no cars, grass growing in a thick mohican strip up the centre of the tarmac road. It was thick, black, pitch darkness. No moon, no stars, no anything, just thick blackness of trees and bushes and not so thick blackness where the nothing was. I could not see my hand, I could not see the road, I could only feel the difference between grass and tarmac when I was walking on it.

I started to get scared, in front of me was a wall made out of nothing and I had to walk through it to get to my safety, to my caravan cocoon. I am in the dark, I am all alone, I have nothing to protect me, there is no light to help me, perhaps, if I will walk forward any more I will walk straight into a Monster. I will bump straight into his fur and smell and I won't know what he looks like, only that he has big teeth from a bad dream and that he is going to Eat Me and I will die and not be alive anymore in this lane in the dark.

I can't stay here, I can't sleep here, there is no bed, I have to walk. So I gather my tension and I breathe it all out. I stop separating myself from the darkness and I remember that because I am in it I am part of it, I can become it. I am not alone in the world, I am part of it and so it can't hurt me. There is no unknown in this lane, just trees and grass and mice and sheep, all settling themselves in the darkness.

So I kept breathing and I kept thinking about how I am here now and this is all there is and this is all I am. I don't need to be scared of the dark, I am the dark and the dark is me. And I walked forward. And it was ok.

last seen

Soft dreams in a city; no hurried steps, just slim streams of me and other people sliding around each other. All faces and feelings are yet unread. Just another day, more food eaten, phones tapped and feet squashing their shoes into the ground. Layers on layers of living unwind themselves and float down onto the earth. Stories are trampled underfoot until all is coated in fine sedimented history.

the wind and its wiles

A knife, a tomato, scissors, Rizla, a red pepper, two novels, one notebook, one address book, a letter, a sprig of broccoli, a pen, a handkerchief, a mobile phone.

And me. I'm lying diagonally across this expanse of bed, my feet nestled comfortably in a thick wedge of feather duvet. The woodburner in the corner is roaring out heat, the delicately scrolled legs a benign camouflage for its angry interior.

I am in lovely home comfort, quiet radio keeping me company in this green caravan. Outside the wind is wild, it presses against the walls of my wood lined retreat and I can feel the structure shifting and bending in the face of these solid fists of air.

The wind turbine emits great swoops of sound, the frantic mechanic whines of a machine approaching maximum exertion. How long until it abandons this attempt to tame the air? Until it gives way to brutal shearing force, wrenching the tiny fan into the sky in a final exuberant tumble.

The electricity cuts out at intervals and suddenly the light outside is intruding into my private space. There is no happy yellow glow emitting from my familiar windows, instead, out there, tree bone silhouettes pop up like black paper scenery.

The light flickers on, the radio resumes and I am back in my cosy homeland; my heaps of woollen blankets and heavy sheepskin, my personal riches of blue velvet curtains and worn wooden floor.

Earlier I watched the sheep outside my window. I watched a ram trotting head down, now with purpose and now benign; stalking a ewe with stiff legged innocent steps until it was close enough to quickly move forward and push its face into the scent between her legs. She moved away, startled.

The wind has infected the horses, they run in short, jerking steps, tossing their heads. There is a moment of blowing; rushing and rising, as if they fly, high and outwards with this quick flick of energy, over trees and fences.

I have just returned from the main trailer, picking my way, candlelit, through the garden. One more thing.

In the main trailer there is a huge apple, the size of my two clenched fists. Picked like a prize pearl from a heap of sliding apples, saved from a mere mundane death, it sits in our kitchen like royalty. Blushing from red to yellow, this dappled prize is pert and perfect. It's a picture of an apple, magnified and made flesh.

I want to write across your skin oh apple. I want to engrave loving words into your flesh. Oh ideal apple, our adored exhibit, I will carve clear curling poetry that will stand fresh at first in a shock of white then fade and brown in your ageing; a slow hymn to your shrinking, your dignified descent into fold and decay.

There is no end to this letter, just a fade to sleep. The wind continues, unremitting. When I go outside it is as if I am caught within and dragged into the air. The wind pushes us and takes all within itself; we are no longer solid, only blown through like pieces of tiny leaf, nameless.

hot stream

This morning I sat for an hour in the grey dawn light, watching the rain laden clouds moving so slowly across the sky that I could barely see them change. I wanted to see the horizon clear and for the sun to rise free of mist and shade.
Eventually, when I had given up, laid down, rested again, yellow light filled my caravan, and I rolled over and said 'hello', then laughed at my welcome to the morning.
I walked outside, shivering naked and anointed the earth with a small cup of my blood.
Then I went tall and fresh into the open morning, my skin contracting all over me, my feet sinking into ice cold mud to a half barrel full of water where I filled a glass milk bottle to wash my feet.
On my walk to the computer I could see 20 miles into the distance, sunlight hitting multicoloured trees on lumps of hills.
Now I can see a clump of sheep, moving like a growth under a microscope, speeded up to where hours are seconds, spreading, colonising a hillside two miles away.

And it's only 9am. Hurray! Now I'm going to have breakfast and maybe cut some grass.

one day hitching

Thank you to the shy man who wouldn't meet my eye. Skip diving for a living, talking your madness out to your dog. I am the balance of your 17 year old Karmic debt.

Thank you smily Shabs for squeezing me into the back of your Toyota Celica with an equally smily child and headscarved wife. I would not have expected you to pick me up.

Thank you to the music producer, international traveller and unselfconsciously rich. I am your many opposites but equally free.

Thank you to the biker couple who halted my mile long trudge on a fast road. There was no need for you to stop for me.

Thank you to the crazy van couple, smoking poppies and talking of robbing people. I don't want any smack thanks but I still like you.

From angels to opiates in the twist of a thumb; all went out of their way for me, equally.

Certain flashes of Cardiff

Stencil mission, late night striding. Watching the streets for paint opportunities and oblivious passers by. Far ahead, too far to notice me, a man whirls around the pavement. Martial moves with a baseball bat, his shirtless skin glows orange in the late lights. I approach, slow, purposeful, not to be deterred or deviated from my path. Once seen he curls into defence and faces me, ready to whip out. I keep his eyes and keep my movement. His gaze is bright from behind his Halloween mask and I see the grinning skull face break into laughter as, when we are about to touch, he spins away and lets me pass. I smile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Candle burning in the window of an empty house. I sit, no fear of being seen, on a bare mattress. My room is cosy but if I open the door, hollow darkness looms beyond; only orange streetlight flashes lighting odd corners of corridors. I am on the edge of loneliness until I am conforted by a text from a friend. Even solo I am not alone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bike riding, cool cruising. On a BMX that gets headturns from kids and skagheads. I go all over the city, through street after street that looks the same. Only the people are different. I pass effortlessly through their many bubbles, a multitude of existences, many languages spring into my ears. Pedal pushing, no effort, eating celery in hot sun on my way past the prison. Beer in a park then find Gaz and we go to his allotment. More beer by the river, dirt on my hands and I'm floating on concrete in the afternoon air. Sunset clouds stretch ahead like a peacock feather quilt.

afternoons in the garden

Recent drops of soft rain are shining on leaves and all the plants around me are drinking from the earth. A shabby gate, old black boards slowly greening from the bottom upwards. I can see through the slats to three hens and their cockerel, picking and packing round their stony enclosure to discover what changed during their overnight confinement. Small, squat little birds zigzag from the trees, snatching grain. I turn up the radio and walk away; our defence against foxes is a quiet burble of Radio 4, talking to no-one but keeping alive a small human presence in a corner of the landscape. Discontertingly at first, until recognised, the sound drifts through the garden. Deep conversational voices, in their recognisable rhythym, soon recede into a low background murmur. A constant in light and darkness, the steady cadence of the radio, and I think the patient earth, is there, whenever you turn to listen to it.

Single lives like spent matches, their presence a flame.

Guano streaks down the rock face as birds drip off the sheer cliff and wind round the air in black and white semicircles. This is an image of a valley, a vista. In the centre of a rolling sweep of rounded mountains, two chunks of granite jerk, slab sided, out of the flat valley floor. The prehistoric shapes of cormorants fly above me, heading down for their fish supper. But first they must traverse, over road and river. Drifting like the clouds over sugarlump caravans and broccoli trees they swoop out to the sea, 5 miles hence. Waves crash no longer against this granite nest, it faces only the ripples of a sea of wheat. The water left 8000 years ago; the valley now drained and settled, only the seabirds remain.

another world, just a car park away

So here I sit in the Port of Dover, toes poking out of multiple holes in my socks and a proper fruity stink on. A fat Chinese man is snoring; he's laid out in a strange position on the always uncomfortable seats and his round little son has just gently slapped him awake. There's something intrinsically Oriental about the slapping gesture, I'm not sure what parts of my brain are firing to tell me that. A couple are conversing quietly in an Eastern European language. They have the wan pallour and faded, forest coloured clothes of the sensibly middle aged.

I can't stop thinking about the 3 boys I met in Calais. Arriving at the ferry port in the centre of a clamour of delayed ferries, striking fishermen and cars bulging with distressed Brits and the many many possessions they needed for a 2 week continental holiday was too much. I left my suitcase and walked, determinedly in a straight line towards the edge of the sand dunes. The 8 or 10 figures on the edges of the clumps of brambles melted away as I approached and I had to wait a while, even wave once before 3 giggling men came towards me, pushing and nudging each other. They were boys not men, no more than 19. I expected them to be from Morocco or the African continent but they weren't. They were from Afghanistan and suddenly their faces jumped in front of me and reassembled into the wild eyes and wind rounded faces that I've only ever seen in shiny magazines.

I gave them food and tobacco and my wind up torch. One of the boys put the cigarette in his mouth the wrong way round, fortunately, when I unthinkingly reached out and corrected it, he smiled at me with his mistake. I showed them my wind up torch and when I lit it and flicked it round to point at them, an inch from cigarette boy's belly he jumped and put his hands up in shock. What did he think it was?

They answered my stupid, frustratingly functional questions - where are you from? How did you get here? I had no way to connect enough with them to be able to ask why. Why do you want to come to England so badly? What's it like where you come from? Do you know that most English people don't want you in their country? Why do you still say England is good when we do so much wrong in the world? Who are you? Why are you smiling?

I walked away, across the car park and back into the queues of uptight people in badly fitting clothing, complaining because they'd been waiting 4 hours and hadn't had any free sandwiches and they're sure those French counter ladies are lying to them about the wait and isn't it a disgrace that this is happening to them. Their whole holidays are ruined. Fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking IDIOTS.

I am left frustrated and unfulfilled by my brief encounter and I've been trying to understand why. I think it's because all the things I actually wanted to give them were intangible - my British passport, my ability to go anywhere in the world and speak my own language, the help that is just a phonecall away, my freedom.

This morning I woke up in a wood in the south of France, near Bordeaux. I didn't have a tent so I found a fallen tree and crawled beneath the drooping branches. I felt very open to the earth and thankful. I awoke to a beautiful sunrise, steam rising from a nearby lake and a light frost on the ground.

Now I'm sitting in a ferry terminal under florescent light. There's a plastic plant next to me with a label in it that says "Asset Verification 2007". I just touched the pebbles at the base of the plant. They're glued down.

snow face

high up in the hills. A road winds below us but there are no cars on it. We are all alone, the only movement is the slow turning of the wind mills above us. Gigantic shafts of metal swoop elegantly through the air, they are slow and seemingly unstoppable. They pull energy out of the air and wind it over and over between the metal meshing of cogs until it is caught and changed, pinned into battery acid and potential. Everything is white. Snow on the ground, snow in the air, white towers of metal. Snow covers the 20 hill tops I can see when I turn in a circle. Our red faces and black jackets would mark us out as ants from the air. We are building a snowman that no-one else will ever see. He has stumps for hands, a face made out of sheepshit and a huge spiky mohican. We've been working on it for so long that we've stopped talking. The snowman has taken over, he's all we can concentrate on. The panorama of hills and snow reduces in focus to this small hilltop where we pack more and more snow onto our creation. Smooth his chest, whiten his face, pack his mohican spikier and taller. More snow starts to fall and it swirls delicately around the flushed face of the man I love. We work together on our task.

We are the only people in the world.

the time I was nearly royalty

so the piano playing in the previous post reminded me of a really good memory at the start of my trip to Milan.

Staff night out the night before. The usual boring meal, tinkle talk and compliments on the food. The boss gets over excited and flushed. Not her fault, she's got a kid and doesn't get out much. Then we walk down the street, strain off the parents and oldies and it's on to the main event - double rum and cokes and bullshit at the bar. Riff with the leather dreadlocks guy and flirt with the stripy hoodie. Would do either, might do both, will probably end up with neither. The bouncers don't like my mates face so we walk head first into the sea blasts and go to the castle. Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink more and I end up at a house in town at 7 am with the dreadlock guy holding my hand under the table while I watch the uptight office girl smoking weed through a potato pipe.

Wake up at midday. BAMM. My fucking head is split in two. Roll off the bed and roll into the clothes from the nights before. I can hardly see as I stagger round the house, shouting cunt at the top of my voice is the only thing that makes me feel better. Films, cameras, passport and tickets; in a bag with some pants and a hat for luck. Bristol airport. Fuck, I'm so late. I should have left at 11. Plane at 4. Fuck, fuck fuck. Drive like a mentalist down the motorway, screech into the long stay car park, all the stuff falls out of my bag. I'm standing shaking as the security guard pats me down. If she touches my stomach I'm gonna puke on her. Get to the departure gate. 5 minutes to go. Sleep on the plane, 3 seats for myself, 2 hours later and I'm in Milan.

I've gone through tired and into wired. Walking isn't an effort any more but I still don't know where I'm going. Not booking anything seemed like such a good idea when I was at home but now it's 22.30 in a big city and I've got nowhere to go. Hotel? First one I see? Fake wood reception and plastic plants? Starched white impersonal sheets and a pastel picture on the wall. Not worth my money. Don't know where you are until you open the curtains in the morning. Fucking rip offs. I ain't paying for a plastic experience. So where am I going to go then? Eat. I need food too. The only food place I've seen so far was the McDonalds by the station entrance. Fuck that too.

I'm walking towards a restaurant, it has a long piece of red carpet leading to the door - they do that in Milan - and a little lit up menu on the wall. Inside the door is a pyramid of fruit, dripping with grapes and a multi-colour feast of fish on ice. Damm, too much money. I walk away. Then stop. Then come back. Fucking insecure, indecisive self.

Walk in, I hold up a single finger and I'm ushered to my seat. I don't want to be English so I change into a mute. Point to the menus, point to the bread. Smile, make lots of eye contact. Point to the wine list. My stomach is violently rejecting the thought of more booze but I force down the start of a bottle of merlot. And sit. And look around. And realise that I'm in a beautiful, calming place. The room is white with a high ceiling. There are mad pictures of the characters from the Matrix made out of tiny, sparkly black and silver squares hanging all over the place. At the end of the room is a huge grand piano and someone is playing it. They're playing beautiful music and as I listen to it I feel all the tension of the last 24 hours fall away. My shoulders feel lighter, my head comes up and the crippling hangover, the drive to the airport, nearly missing the flight, not bringing any spare clothes, no hotel.......blah, blah, blah. They all float away. I sit for what seems like two hours, eating my meal as slowly as possible. I feel like a queen, I've never eaten a meal to piano music before. (What a fucking chav. I also used to think eating a Vienetta was a sign of class when I was about 12 or so). Anyway, so the beautiful meal comes to an end. The bill? Enough to pay for a plastic hotel room but what I got instead was better. Better than I'd have got from a snotty receptionist, tiny bottles of shampoo and wipe clean upholstery. I feel reborn.

I take the half bottle of wine with me as I leave the table and walk down the road. No idea where I'm going, I walk round Milan for a while and watch the nightlife. Black, white and beige. Monochrome and stylish is how people live round here. I sit down on some stone steps, scooted up against a pillar. People can see me if they look but I'm out of eyeline so they don't often turn their heads. My face is hidden under my collar anyway so I don't feel too exposed. I sit for what feels like hours smoking rollies and drinking wine. Then, when I feel tired I lean over and hook the PVC cover off the stairlift next to me. It won't offer too much protection from December weather but it will at least be some kind of windbreak. I get sleep. Of sorts. Once or twice footsteps come close enough to make me worried but the empty bottle is close enough for me to smash if I need to go psycho on their asses.

Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep, wake. Finally it seems light enough for me to get up. Empty streets and I walk in circles for a while until I find where I am on the map. Next step? Find an internet cafe and find a hostel.

Memory ends.

ten thousand meanings

In my cupboard in the kitchen sits a small pot. I am idly filling it with mustard seeds. There are some potatoes in the corner of the cupboard that have started to sprout pale shoots in the warm dry darkness.

It's a Wednesday afternoon and I am wearing my hair in a new style. It makes me nervous and I keep adjusting the band, pulling it straight, pushing it off my forehead - trying to keep it as good as it looked for that second of perfect pose in the mirror 3 hours earlier.

A boy comes into the thin, dimly lit room. He says hello to me but that's it. That's ok, I know he's shy. He sits down at the piano and starts to play. His fingers are long and thin and they are producing beautiful music. I am entranced. I slow my movements as I listen and half turn towards him. I've seen him a few times in the house and I kinda like him. Once I was reading a book on the stairs when he came out of the shower. He smiled really wide when he saw me. Once I saw him on the street and I winked at him cos I was in a good mood and feeling a bit cheeky - sometimes winking is a bit easier than saying hello anyway. Years of accquaintance can be distilled into a little head nod. This guy rents me the internet time that I'm typing this on - but we've never had a conversation because I know he's shy.

So I'm trying to think of what I can say about his piano playing, wondering what I'm going to say when he finishes, when suddenly he gets up and walks out of the room. That's it, he's gone; mid tune. Interaction over. How strange. I imagine a hundred different ways to interpret that scene. What if he was expressing his desire to talk to me by playing the piano. Maybe this is the start of a grand and beautiful love story, played out in the top and bottom rooms of a shabby shared house by the sea. How will we start talking? Where would we be when we first kissed? He's got nice eyes. Why did he leave so abruptly like that? Is there something he wants to say to me or is it just that I fancy him a bit? I think I fancy him a bit.

romance in red spray paint

So the fair's on and I'm invited. I come with my mates and he comes with his. Someone is fool enough to offer round a full pack of L+B. Gone. Hyena laughs and monkey punches. Street strutting and shoulder rolling but we walk a bit slow and everyone melts away. It's weird for a bit but a can of Stella makes the talking come easier. Lights blur, colours whirl and the waltzers make the world spin. I remember the poppers I nicked out of my sisters bedroom. Yes! Everything turns into a smear of lights and noise, all except the feel of his leg pressing against mine. The ground comes towards me and we're stumbling off; laughing away. Crouch down, skin up and now we're too fucked to hook ducks so he nicks me a fluffy tiger instead. Leg it round a corner pissing ourselves and all of a sudden there it is. Our first kiss. My heart goes skipping, jumping, banging and clattering so fast that i have to leg it again to keep up. Run. Cold lips, sharing chips, grease on my fingers and hot vinegar breath. We sit behind the car park and tell each other about our dads. Wind blows through me and hits the concrete. We're kissing again. My head spins and I am lost. Mouth, lips, tongue, fingers fumble, clothes rustle, belts clink. I can only feel myself in the places where we are touching. His knee is hard between my legs and I am pressed up against the wall. It hurts a bit but it's kind of nice. Hours pass but really it's only minutes. Damm, I'm going to miss my lift. It's really hard to stop touching him. We get to the car. One more second before I get into the back seat bubble of giggles, candy floss and fags. I love you. Yeah I love you too. See you tomorrow.

the man at midnight

Nightime in a square in Barcelona. The beautiful nightlife covered me like thick perfume. People walking, talking everywhere, in every direction, boys playing football in the centre, bouncing the ball off the big block of scuplture. Tramps sat around the skirts of the crowds, drinking the sweet cider with a sour taste that only hits you when you swallow - that's when you remember it's 8%. A tree in the corner slowly shed its yellow blossom, it only had a short time to cover the ground before the 2am street washers came round. A filled pitta bread was served to me on a red plastic tray.

My gaze moved left and I realised there was a man at the next table over to me. He was obviously one of the many street performers that line Las Ramblas during the day - each perfect mime enticing you to mimic their stillness by watching them for minutes on end. He was wearing a shabby black suit, had a strong Spanish tache and was smoking, slowly and elegantly.

How could I tell he was a street performer? Every part of skin that I could see was covered in silver bodypaint, it sank into his every wrinkle. The moonlight highlighted the plume of cigarette smoke rising above his head and made his silver skin glow.

A silver man in a square in Barcelona at midnight, smoking a cigarette in an oasis of silence.

Chip fat and hope

I met my new potential landlord in the lounge of his luxury hotel and we drove over to see the property in his brand new BMW. A laptop sized screen on the dashboard invited me to control the in-car climate. The new potential landlord had stains down the front of his white t-shirt, "he'd been working in the kitchens today" he said. The smell of over fried food in old, over used oil filled the car.

He let himself into the house by reaching through the hole in the front door, "the glass got broken yesterday" he said. I waited in the hallway as he searched through a hundred keys to open up my potential new room; I could see through a doorway into a dingy lounge. A fat man with a beard sat at a wooden table in the centre of the room, no television or newspaper in front of him. "Hello" I said. He didn't answer, just stared into space, his hand was on the table and he was rubbing his thumb and fingers against each other.

"Here we go" said the potential new landlord and he opened the door. The room was small and dingy. The window faced onto a stained grey wall so there was no need for the filthy yellow net curtains to be there. The woodchip wallpaper was peeling and the furniture looked like it had been rescued from a skip. "This isn't what I'm looking for" I said, and left.

I walked down the road, wondering what the fuck I was going to do. A sign gleamed out of a steamy window in front of me - Acommodation. A dented brass doorknob opened the door to the glass porch; peeling blue paint and full of plants and large pieces of tree tied to the walls. No answer from the doorbell so I pressed up against the glass panel in the front door and looked into the gloom. I could see an old painting at the back of the hall, a portrait in oils of a pale woman, more plants and a box of records shoved under a wooden bureau. I felt that if I walked into the house there would probably be a clock ticking somewhere in the background and all the rooms would be filled with books I've never read. This is a place I could be comfortable.

once upon a time in madrid

I was a tourist, walking the streets in a daze. I couldn't really tell you what was in front of my eyes, everything blurred into my peripheral vision. Narrow streets, little shops that sold everything you would need for your brand new imaginary life, windows opening into crowded, low ceilinged bars. Life swirled around me, I didn't need to look at it, I just absorbed it.

As I waited for some traffic lights to change a noise which had been tugging at my senses swung into the front of my brain. A grating, gritty, dragging noise. I looked down to my right and saw a girl. About 13, she had big, docile eyes like a cow; they looked around but no trace of her thoughts ran across her face. She was wearing a pink velour tracksuit. The lights changed and she set off across the street, beside her on the pavement she pulled a small, red umbrella. The tip of the childsize umbrella grated on the concrete, creating a constant high pitched scraping which slowly retreated into the distance.

I stood for a minute, trying to focus on the girl. I wonder who she was, what she was doing and where she was going. Then, shaking my head, I crossed the street.

I walked across a huge square, trees around the side and skyscrapers walling us in. It was dark down on the ground but when I looked up there was bright sunlight shining onto the yellow stone of the buildings. I sat for a while and watched the people with things to do. After about 20 minutes I heard the noise again. A slow scraping coming towards me. There was the girl, her vacant eyes looking at nothing. And now she had two umbrellas, the small red one and a bigger black umbrella with a curled wooden handle. She carried one in each hand, letting the tips trail along the ground behind her, a constant background of white noise accompanying her journey through the centre of Madrid.

The giant rollerskates

I walked across a bridge and found myself in a meadow. The sky was clear and deep blue, the grass was thick, dark green and came up to my knees. There was no sun in the sky, just the colour blue, but everywhere was light and warm and still. No birds, no trees, no animals; everything else disappeared and all there was in the world was grass and sky. And rollerboots. Giant rollerboots. Scattered, as far as I could see.

They were white with red lace and red wheels. Some were on their sides and some were upright. They were all about 15 foot high and lay about 100 metres apart. I walked slowly through the meadow, every step produced a different angle.

Blue sky, green grass, white boots, red laces. It was incredibly beautiful.

starting somewhere

sometimes I just want to run. to feel strong legs pushing me up off the pavement with every stride. my brain disconnects from my body, even if I wanted to stop I couldn't, my body has become a machine, functioning independently of me. I am being carried by myself.

And I want to go forever, nevermind hills, cars, roads, houses; I will run over them - pushing off the pavement with a strong lead foot, the next foot lands on the car bonnet, my knee bends to absorb the shock but my thigh muscles push me up and onto the roof then I run off the back, land moving and keep going.

I want to do the same with words, keep a flow of words going to carry my thoughts up, around street corners and over hills. Like the winds, always going somewhere. I hope my fingers can keep up.