Novi Sad, Serbia

clean skin and white clothes. Sitting in sunlight, leaf shades crossing face lines. Look up to sky and clouds, the only view from the seat on a 12th floor. Cherries in syrup, eat with a spoon then a glass of water. A welcome to new guests. Follow traditions, meet the family, feel the warmth of a happy home. A buzz of movement, no-one in the same room, trying to keep one conversation. Changes, children, movement of people.

Skin on sheets, heat of an August night. Boats in the park and the walk to a tower block. Shower to cleanse and a bath to relax. Talking for communication, communicating for love. Clean clothes, not mine, tshirt tied for a skirt and sandals on brown legs. Watermelon 20c a kilo, fresh peaches and fallen pears. Scrambled eggs for breakfast, cooked with dried bacon and onion. Strong coffee, served to me in the bath. Water comes up through the drain on the floor, I mop it with the ragged cloth. A child eats solemnly in the kitchen, a conquered breakfast, a newly mastered skill. The morning sun shines on his face.

One day rest in Novi Sad

Diary III

6.7.11

Sunset and the sky flows pink and delicate. We arrived early, 4.30ish so first a lazy afternoon and then a walk. Crouched under foliage, squatted on boulders, eating cherries straight from the branch.

Today I paddled alone. It was great, I was part of the flow of kayaks on the river, passing, resting, smiling, chatting. The sun shone on the high banks of pine trees, I pulled my feet from the musty pit opf my kayak body and lolled them either side of the boat, hairy legs to the sun, paddling from the front of my arms. Slowly we all talk to each other, slowly we know each other. There is a couple in a green kayak with the most beautiful paddle motion, an almost imperceptible pause in the change from left dip to right, an elegant twist, always perfectly in time.

I saw M coming from a pirateship cafe, we paddled and chatted then after a while I floated and ate peanut butter, finger-smeared on brown bread. M called me to the side and we picked cherries from a treee overhanging the water.

While we waited for the lock, all arriving one by one, hanging around as giant coal barges passed bym, I talked about walking. That's what's great about being here, everyone has a story. When I say I will walk to the UK from the Ukraine next year, the answer is "Yes? Last year I walked 2800km". We are all adventurers. The Bulgarian national rafting team are here. T starts stories with phrases like "When I had a coffee farm in Malawi". Everyone is special.

We all paddled into the lock together, a fleet of tiny boats, ants in the water, paddle legs dipping and rising. It felt brilliant to be part of this. The fat body of my kayak bobbing and rolling with each push of my arms. I know how to do it now, how to use my shoulders, my sides. First 10km is an achy warmup then the next few hours are a forgetting of muscles, only free flowing movement.

Rain came as we left the lock, I paddled circles around Y as we floated down the final 4km. He had saved me chocolate and I had saved him cherries.

Diary II

4.7.11

In a tent by candleight, side of the Danube in the city of Linz. Saucepan of free food filling the tent with smells of fried chicken and bread. My shoulders ache and my legs are damp; it's amazing how long you can be wet for once you stop noticing it. Serbs outside, chatting. I have retired, tired. A 20km stretch this morning to chatch the first lock, weather with low hanging cloud, floating through the tops of the pine trees in the high, steep banks of the river. The water was still and slow and gave no resistance to the paddle. As I dipped through it and glided, I could have been flying, the gurgles of water the swish of my wing beats.

I am in the water but not of it. I am of the water but not in it.

Sitting comfortably on the surface, but unconnected until I trail my hands in the water and feel a spark of life flowing from the river to me. This water will run 2000 km, down to the sea, winding through countries connected by culture.

As I lie here now I feel the rocking within me still; when all is quiet I hear gurgles and splashes. Land sick, they call it.

5.7.11

Already the dark has stolen the details and I have only hazy images to recall. Soft wet rain falling on me, Y and M as we drink Romanian brandy under a tree. M's fat little body bobbling around under the umbrella he stuck down the back of his neck, yellow fishermans trousers covering his stomach. Paddling away so fast as Y chased him to rearrange his flag, shouting No! No! No! and I laughed, the rain streaking my face and only Y's warm wet lips to tell me I am cold.

When rain hits the water and all is still, there is no sound, only gliding water all around. The ever widening circles of droplets coming home.

Songs, sausages and beer at the side of the river, a sweet Austrian singing river songs and playing guitar.

Diary excerpts

2.7.11

Days are running away with me. Each one an intensity of life, brimming with beauty, cold rain or hot sun. There is no time to stop, to write. I am in constant reflection but it never gets collected, outpoured. We speak to oneanother, share our days, our hard times and our beauty.

The river is alive, when I put my hands into it I feel beauty, slick silken water I forgot we were floating in. Like slipping underwater when swimming, twisting downwards from the hips, the water envelopes me. Each paddle blade dip a pleasure, a sensual twist through the water, swirl of bubbles following the curve of the watter pressure. Over and over and over and over again; the paddle dips, the shoulder pushes, the wrist flicks. Each stroke a balanced, measured amount, designed to keep me in motion, no more no less, and so I will make it through the 8 hours of paddling. Sometimes floating but never sprinting.

3.7.11

Tent is shaking with wind, soggy silver sides bowing down in the gale force, touching the squat gas stove upon which I am shortly to prepare soup.

The river days are paddling and sitting, sometimes together but really, as soon as someone is 10 metres away, you are alone. Pladdling and sitting and looking, watching the swallows fly low over the water, the high banks of trees, dead branches floating and small duck families dabbling. Float carefully under fishing lines, bob in the wake of passing ships. Paddle in rain, in wind, in storm and in sun. Carefully ease out a piee of food from behind the seat, not moving too much so as not to topple the boat, a banana, a radish, some seeds, a piece of bread. Eat as we go, on the cheap. Yesterday Y and I went for a walk to look for food, we gathered ears of wheat and handfuls of blackberries to chew as we walked.

wind blows

dazed days of river and sun. hot air in my face and shoulders working. Feet press gently against either side of my boat as I push with each paddle stroke, arms, shoulders, wrists.

White beaces and green trees, lazy people reclining at the waters edge. There are a lot of nudists in Austria. People use this river in many ways, an orgy of sport. An exuberance of health. Bikes, boats, canoes, fishing, picnics, fires, families.

It's so much. Never have I lived SO MUCH in the moment. By the moment I mean, what happens today, what happens tomorrow and that's it. When I arrive in Romania I will have nowhere to live and nowhere to go....but I will start thinking about that when I arrive in Romania, right now is just the daily paddle.

Wake up, pack tent, bring boat to river, a slow slide into the water, balance myself, get in and paddle. Swish and slide the paddle into the water, each stroke a small push forward until I gain momentum and am gliding. For the day. Sometimes a stop for a swim, sometimes to squat beneath bushes in the company of crackling dead branches and eat thick peanut butter smeared on good black german bread. Sun gets too hot in the afternoon, arrive in camp tired, dazed. crawl into a tent and kiss. Talk, chat, make new connections and tentative friends.

Today is a daze, as soon as I sit in front of a computer my head is spinning, I can't express this, it's too much all at once. Every day is a universe of pleasure. I am tired and I am angry and I am in love and I am trapped and I am happy and I give and give and give and then receive tenfold in return. Massage and songs and kisses and food.

Wild cherries, apricots, nettles, flowers. Squatting on boulders eating cherries from the low hanging tree branches.

Diving into cold water, current pushing insistently at my body.

Drinking schnapps in the rain, learning Russian toasting rituals.

Endless sun and endless river. Coal barges flowing past, dwarfing us, we ride their wake, floating up and over the swells of water.

Paddles dipping and rising as we paddle together into a lock, like small insects, struggling in the water. We are the ants of the river, slow swarming, ignored by the huge iron ships, the cruise boats with golf courses atop them, making it.

Everyone here has the spirit of adventure, an open heart....in whatever degree....we are all good people here. And I am one of them.

Today I am in Bratislave, capital of Slovakia. I have paddled 680 kilometres to get here. Another 1800 or so to go. More or less.

Tour International Danubien 2011 this is where I am....http://www.tour-international-danubien.org

Tour International Danubien

This is what I#m doing.......

For the next three months I will be kayaking down the river Danube, all the way from Germany to Romania. I lack the space and time to descibe exactly how I feel about this. Gibbering panic would be two. But inner steel would be another two. I won't go on. Blethering is something I've been doing a lot of recently.

So, when you come to my blog and there's nothing new here, it's because I'm out on a river, paddling furiously, or stretched out in a tent exhausted, or trying to reach round and massage my own shoulder blades. I will get occasional rest days but computer access could still be out of reach.

http://www.tour-international-danubien.org/pdf/Schedule_2011.pdf

Mindfulness of body

That's what I've learnt this week. When you spend 10 hours standing at a bench, poking holes in compost pots and delicately shoving in little strawberry plant spiders the body starts to tense, to tighten. Lift two trays of pots, place on bench, arrange, prick plants left hand, make hole right hand, plant pinch, plant, pinch, plant, pinch. Pick trays up, walk up the polytunnel, bend to floor, put them down, align with others. Strighten up, walk to pallet, lift 2 trays, sometimes from floor, sometimes from 5 foot height. Place trays on bench. Repeat, reapeat, repeat, repeat. And each step of bending and stretching anf lifting and planting must, I've learnt, be accompanied by an awareness of your body. Where are your shoulders? High and tight or low and relaxed? When they are high your lower back will hurt....breathe out, lower shoulder blades, stetch neck, plant. Move hands quickly along the row of pots, right hand, two fingers in compost, left hand plunge plant as fingers come out, both hands press earth. Then next. 8 pots in a tray. 2 trays on a bench. 500 trays on a pallet. 1000 strawberry plants in a box. Twenty boxes delivered each week.

A year ago I learnt mindfulness of place, to look at where you are now and be in it, not only think of where you will be when you move on, escape, do imaginary, as yet uncreated, better things.

Now, here, is mindfulness of body, it's smaller scale, it concentrates me minute by minute, it's helping a lot.

Where are the trays? Are they placed so you lean forward and put your weight on your back or closer to you so your arms are close to your body and your weight is in your hips and legs.
Where are your knees? Are they locked and twisting or relaxed and bending? When you turn to your left for more plants, bend your knee as you lean, don't twist the joint, it makes it ache.
When you stand with your shoulders down and your neck straight, try and tense your core muscles, stomach, womb, pelvic floor; it will help support your back and, in time, will strengthen these muscles.
When you walk from bench to pallet, take deep breaths and relax your body, shoulders down, head up. Don't hunch and stoop. Be strong, feel upright. Work.

Notes..............................................

A man walking the sun dried street with a cheap plastic wall clock, offering to sell it to passersby for 5 euros.

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A drunk man, hair falling in his eyes, lazy town square on a Sunday afternoon, trying to take my picture, giving me 10 cents. Fumbling for a lighter with a hand that has a needle stuck in the back of it.

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The sand is grey at the end of the world, charring winds have dried it to a crust.

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Festooned and forlorn with hanging strips of weed and rag, swinging limply in empty breath. Swags of green anchor down to the sand where they spread out like dead hair. Underwater dreamworlds that swim so freely, dry out and die when washed home on rocky shores.

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Children ran round the fire, through floating sparks that swam down through everlasting air. For luck, for bravery, for the future.

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The thing about travel is to go and be alone until you don't feel alone any more. Until your sense of the world replaces your sense of self.

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You see, the problem, my love, is that actually, there is absolutely no point at all. If you want one, you will have to make it yourself.

From a book

Accustomed as we are to live in a world of partitions and frontiers, modern man's mentality tends to consider as natural the appropriation and occupation of living space which is, however, something artificial, the maximum expression of the civilising process which one day detained the nomads and hunters and connected them with a territory.

To become sedentary and end their lifelong pilgrimage, which them from one place to another in search of the sustenance which nature spontaneously gave them, man was obliged to define and defend his territory, give it identity, differentiate it from the land occupied by neighbouring peoples and to lay down the foundations of a legitimacy which would dominate any conflictive issues. And man did this with such ability, and gave such value to the site of his home, that he eventually inverted his perspective, finally reasoning as if the starting point were the land, and not mankind; as if the earth had the responsibility of transmitting to each social group its identity, way of being and way of life.

in my heart your image still shines.

Funny story

A few days ago Osama Bin Laden was killed. In my staff break room I saw the report on the front page of the Daily Telegraph....."He died cowering behind his wife", it said. "That's a lie", I said, brooking no argument. We joked about how it was because I knew him so well. The next day, the Telegraph printed the White House retraction....he did NOT die cowering behind his wife, they said.

This is why I said it was a lie.

Once upon a time I was hitchiking, it's not important where or when. A car stopped, an impressive, fast car, driven by a man with a sharp shirt and even sharper eyes. The kind of eyes you see in a nightclub shining with frantic sweat and amphetamine frenzy, old eyes, that have seen years before you and know your type, before you've ever opened your mouth. No question unanswered, never embarassed, always got a comeback. Eyes that miss nothing and tell less. He had a memorable tattoo and the air of a genuine Bad Boy, all grown up. Forties, I'd say, lean legs and a desert tan, the kind where skin is shocked by the sun, doesn't have time to bronze or glow, just goes straight to brown over red, oven baked. An air of total confidence.

We talked, chatted. Telling each other who we were in the way you can when you're hitchiking. Sometimes it's open, things you never share with someone else, sometimes it's showing off, all the best stories come out, impessing each other with equal adventures. We bonded on freedom, me and this man, freedom of lifestyle, of movement and freedom from fear. My fearlessness a tenuous thread compared to his solid streak but it existed, nonetheless, and he saw it. So life stories came out. And jobs and work and things we do. So he was a soldier first, Special Forces, Marines. Then later a bodyguard. High up. Parliamentary. Then to the president of Iraq. As you can expect, this dominated the rest of the conversation.

I was disbelieving at first. He handed me a business card, phone numbers in New York, Kuwait. Shiny silver logo and a company name that was later nowhere to be found on the internet. His company does not exist on the internet. I found one mention of it, on a Special Forces notice board that said that the poster had been offered a job with said company and asking for information. Another poster said they would message him off board. That is all.

We talked about many things, about corruption, about bribery, about the large scale movement of masses of people to make space for oil pipelines, about how I could not possibly realise how truly insignificant the ordinary person is. It's hard to relate now, years later, the things that he told me, there are no specific stories, no memorable facts, it all blew away as I got out of the car, like sand in the wind, leaving me clawing for truth like a jabbering mind lost in conspiracies and delusions, bleared eyes imploring you to believe.

There was one story he told me though, and I can tell you that here.

Saddam Hussein was not discovered cowering in a bunker. He did not have his secret bare hiding place where he lived alone on tins of beans and bitterness, the fallen emperor. He was living in gated luxury, surrounded by bodyguards. One of whom sold him, received a reward of millions of American dollars, gave him to the conquerors. The American army came to his house, they took him, captured him. Exchanged his uniform for ragged cloth, did not allow him to shave. Then they took him to the hole and put him in it. Called the media and discovered him all over again.

Saddam Hussein was not discovered cowering in a bunker. The Americans put him there and took his picture for propaganda purposes. The ex-bodyguard of the President of Iraq told me.

Now I know that one thing is true, he really was who he said he was. How do I know if I couldn't find him on the internet? Well, a year or two later, one year ago from now, a friend sent me a newspaper clipping. The same man had been in court, a memorable crime, concerned with the gathering of money. The ex-bodyguard to the President of Iraq, said the paper. Independent, verifiable. So he was who he said he was. And it makes it all the more likely that his stories are what they say they are. So I retell it. A conspiracy theory all of my very own.

Now you may be wondering whether this actually matters at all. Does it? The wars continue; millions of people, moment by moment, continue to do unspeakably nasty things to each other; we are still, collectively, through our massive greed and apparently incurable blindness, destroying the earth we live on. Who cares about another piece of information propping up the conspiracy riddled internet. But this really did happen to me. And so I'm sharing it. My story is a grain of fine sand, rolling on the bottom of the ocean, pushed by tides, dragged to shore. If you look away from it, you will never see it again. Concentrate, remember it.

time is never with me oh internet....I am sorry

forest

I´d forgotten what it was like to sit silent in a forest; something deep rises up inside me, turns over and settles again and I let out long breaths and watch the trees. The eucalyptus branches curve for no reason, they just twist in the air, undulating elegantly, swaying in the breeze. The wind changed today, it has something new in it, like the restlessness of a full moon where small shining clouds sail, glowing in the black sky. Small flecks of snow settle in the dogs coat. He is barking a lot today, he knows that the breeze is but a brittle, scraggling string, held taught against a sail full of booming snow. Me and the trees, we sit and wait for it to break.

more photos

two months of time, running from autumn to winter.

Mixed media

The day I left the village they killed the pigs. We passed Jesus, the husband, scraping anxiously at the old ice under the new snow as we walked through the concreted street to see if we could make it to the road, tractor next to him with an attachment on the back, just a long, thick spike sticking out of the back of it. Throaty, high screams rose out of the cluster of grey houses and floated down to us, the last house on the edge of the hill, the churchtower view falling all the way down to rolling hills and a forever snowy mountain. We waited for the postman. If he came, we had two cars, if he didn´t, everything got bundled into the orange van and we left the car here, squat, bereft of numberplate, an unwanted connection to the place that was spitting us out. We wanted to fly away, free, released but instead we were spiralling out on a thin thread of misery. The pigs screamed and we packed our final bags. The pigs screamed and we waited for the postman.

We drove the car to the edge of the village, in case the snow came again. We passed a wide barn mouth where they were chopping heads in half and pouring boiling water over huge prone bodies.

They were touching death and nothing we had ever done would ever come close to that. Their eyes looked on us and through us at the same time, so charged and so brilliant. The dogs snapped at fleshy neon-red tatters hanging in the grass at the edge of the road. And the water ran red beside us as we walked down the hill. I was carrying the bread machine and she had a bag of wool and the mustard and ketchup from the fridge.

___________________________________________


Sehr geehrte Frau .......,

Sie schreiben mir auf Grund unseres (ich nehme an, Sie meinen den Verein ........ e.V.)
Umgangs mit Ihnen.

Ich darf feststellen, dass wir mit Ihnen keinen Umgang hatten. Ich weiß bis heute nicht wer Sie sind, nur soviel dass Sie ......... heißen und von dem her weiß ich auch nicht, was Sie vom Verein ........ e.V. wollen. Ich weiß desweiteren nicht, was Sie für ein Verhältnis zu Frau ........ haben, jedenfalls wenn ein solches vorhanden, müssen Sie sich mit Ihr auseinandersetzen.


Mit freundlichen GRüßen

.........

Sehr geehrte Frau ........,

eigentlich wollte ich Ihnen nicht mehr antworten. Ihre dreiste Argumentation und Aneinanderreihung von unwahren Sachverhalten bedarf jedoch einer letztmaligen Klarstellung.

Sie schreiben mir nicht als Hospitalera, dafür haben Sie keine Legitimation.
Ich verbitte mir, von mangelndem Respekt Ihnen gegenüber zu sprechen. Sie ernennen sich selbst zur Hospitalra, fordern irgendwelche Dinge ein, die weder mit der Vereinsführung noch mit irgendjemandem sonst vereinbart wurden.

Da am 16.11.2010 Baumaterial im Bereich Padres eingelagert und Vorbereitungen für Renovierungsarbeiten getroffen werden, fordere ich Sie auf, diesen Bereich bis dahin zu räumen.


Mit freundlichen GRüßen

.........
Präsident

the car and the caterpillar

this is a story about how, once upon a time, I was walking down a sunny country road, a back road, no cars, no traffic, when I saw a caterpillar squirming onto the road in front of me.

No, it´s not. There are no stories right now. No flights, no words. Just grit and teeth and tiredness. No energy for flights of fantasy, just enough to keep living, day to day, waiting for the end of this particular piece of my life.

lost my mojo....my centre. Never assume, I think this phrase forms part of general received wisom about the state of things. I think I forgot this. Also, blinkers will blind you to the entire world behind you, it´s just waiting to receive your tired mind and body with its open patient arms.
Focusing too much on the bad energy, putting more of yours towards it to try and get your centre back. Ugliness is not yours to keep, whether received or taken in recompense, let it all go and you will build yourself back again, clean, refreshed, slowly.

Or, in literal terms. What a shitty two months. Working for nothing when I thought I would receive money.

"No, we won´t pay you. Because we never were going to pay you. We just didn´t tell you."

And so, to fight on after the final bell is to cling to an assumption, the assumption that I entered this situation as an equal. But it never was that way. Not this time. And there is nothing I can do about that.

No contracts, no legality, just word of mouth and I am invisible like a squashed fly.

So I have to walk away and breathe and look to where I can feel free again. I´m only writing this because I haven´t written anything in two months. And this is the only collected stream of thoughts that I have. All my writings go into letters, I don´t keep things with me. I send out fragments of a picture of me; a jigsaw, never to be completed. Each friend has a different piece.

It´s not that things are different now, it is only that I have forgotten that they are the same. I am still strong, I am still free, the mountains and the sea are all here, ready for me. So I walk away, and I breathe, and I remember to think about Now, again.

the space inbetween things

this is how I feel when I am tranquil in the city, taking other spider threads of whirling lives and spinning story webs around me.

It´s one thing to be white and rich, dreadlocks and bars, laughter and living, gritty urban beauty; it´s another altogether to hawk roses to strangers in kebab houses at midnight. Where do you consume your culture, you sad middle aged man, scratching a desperate living, thousands of miles away from your birthplace? What happens if noone buys a flower? Do you have food? A safe bed? A pension? A woman? A future?

A city is built on layers and layers of humans, there is much a tourist does not, cannot see. When I want a beer at 3am, an anonymous human will provide one, so I can return to a scratchy, sketchy hangout for lonely people, walking though a city that noone can take hold of.

There will be no more walking, for a while. No more uncertainty, no more hard physical effort. I have the prizes, a better body, a better head, memories of owls and moonlight and grapes and water and the silent sounds that fill the spaces where humans aren´t. Now I must return to living. I have a place to stay, I have a future, I know what will happe to me allllllllll the way to next April. An expanse of the same bed, of the same view, of a kitchen shared with a friend and of time. Time and time and time is what my winter gives me. Nothing to do except fill empty pages. I am ready for this. I will create a chrysalis of rustling paper, page by page and emerge, next year, skin shed, new.

deep thoughts

There will come a day, one day when I will tell you my stories. I will tell you the story of Dulcelina and our tears in the town square, of eating tomatoes gone to seed, of facing wild pigs in the night, of crying in churches, accidentally attending a funeral, drinking wine with peasants, all the animals I hear in the night.

But what I´m not sure I can tell you is how it feels to realise that you are alone, deep in the forest. Suddenly I looked again at the huge trees that were slowly burying this ancient church and I thought....I don´t have a map, I don´t have a compass, I am following chipped and faded stripes of colour painted onto stones and trees and if they don´t appear then I don´t know where to go. There are no humans, no villages, no shops and no phone signal for miles. And I am not afraid.

Should I be afraid? Maybe I just Think I should be because I know that many people, many women would not be able to be here alone. But I feel fine. There is no particular pleasure in this self-imposed isolation, I´m just doing it. I know that if night comes, I am carrying shelter. I know that when hunger comes, I have food. I know that when problems arise, I have the wits and the strength to deal with them. I have scared off wild pigs in the night, I have nearly drowned, I have climbed steep slopes of granite boulders, slowly boosting the rucksack up a step then clambering up myself. I am alone and I solve my own problems. I have walked and walked and walked - 200 km and counting. I have done this alone.

I am starting to believe that what people tell me is the truth, I am brave. I can do this.

I used to be waiting for the worst to happen so that I could test myself, see if I was strong enough.
When I was young, too young, I used to know that my mum and dad were fighting downstairs. I can´t remember hearing the blows but I remember being there, all of us gathered together in one room and thinking that if he kills her he will turn to us and kill us next. And I must be the one that stops him because the others are younger than me.
Could a child face down an angry man? Probably not, no. But into my psychology came the fact that I had to try. It left, I think, a sense of a challenge to be faced, a monster to fight and my strength unproved. It´s not about the fight itself but the thought of whether I could stand up and face it. Could I be strong when the time came?

But he never did kill her and I never had to face him that way....and I grew up and discovered, after many years, that he wasn´t a monster after all, just another man with no emotional intelligence, too weak to express himself except in anger.

Well I think I know now that I can face tests, I have. I don´t have to wait for the worst to happen because I know that if it does, I can cope. I am calm in a crisis. I am strong. I am brave. These are good feelings. It´s good to know myself this way.

The River Miño

On being content

On being lonely

On being alone.

Oh yes, that´s what I came here to do. I forgot for a minute. I think i should provide a clear paragraph about what I´m doing. No fluttering, absracts

I´m following a river from the sea to the spring...all 300 km of it. It´s not a tough task, Spain in the autumn is still hotter than a British summer....in two months I´ve only experienced 3 days of rain, lucky me.
I could do this a lot more quickly than I am, I think it´s because it´s so amazing that I don´t want it to end. Walking every day and then sleeping outside, wherever you find a nice place. I´ve been keeping a note of where I wake up every morning, always different. Abandoned houses, forests, benches, churches, on grass, on rocks, tops of hills, by the river, in vineyards.
I´ve also stopped, a lot. 3 nights in a handbuilt forest shack with a curly haired cynic, 2 nights in hot springs with punks and their children. Now I´m here, in a city. 2 nights with a nice guy in his house of gadgets. I´d forgotten what it was like to live with money, in civilisation. We went out for a meal yesterday, I´m meeting him and his friends for another meal in an hour - the two together will cost the same amount as I´m trying to spend...per week....on Everything. But to most people it´s a flutter of cash, a flash in the wallet, here today, gone tomorrow. There´s always more coming. And look what I´ve discovered my Iphone can do.
Not for me, any more. But it´s interesting to visit. Somehow I don´t have the anger to tell them why they´re wrong. I don´t want to contradict people, tell them why they´re killing the earth, why they´re killing society. It´s their path, not mine. And my path does not include anger and protest, for now anyway.

But the river. Oh the river. So cool and cold. To slip into running water when you´re hot and sweaty and tired is, I´ve found, the best thing Ever for inner peace. The water calms me, it cools me. I don´t even swim. I just submerge myself, walk in until I´m standing up to my neck and then stay there, still as the current pushes past me, wavering frills of water flicking up and down me. I watch fish jump for flies. I feel little dots on my skin as their smaller relatives come and investigate my body, to see if it makes good eating. I stretch my feet, slipping over rocks and pushing into sand. I just stay there until I am chilled, inside and out. Then I go and eat and sleep.

I want to do this for longer than a month. I want to walk everywhere. I want to go to Eastern Europe and walk back. I want to Kayak to Romania from Germany, all the way down the Danube and then walk back. I think it would take me a year. First I need to learn how to kayak.

But for now, today, here, this month, I am walking this river. And it is fucking brilliant.

spinning wool from ether

it´s only my way of marking the day, to put a date in a list where before there was nothing. Time passes so slowly that by the time I notice the internet again, entire months have gone past.

And, have you noticed that the interent never changes? Every time I return to The Internet, it is always exactly the same....this blog only talks about sex....that blog only talks about plants....the next one only talks about babies. There is no news. Fashion is still debating over the shoulder bag or the satchel. Nothing has changed, or maybe it´s only I that have changed.

I have discovered life outside. I have found that I can survive outdoors for weeks at a time. I have almost stopped reading. I have almost stopped writing. I have very little contact with the internet. I have discovered that we don´t need to wash every day. That clothes smell good after 3 weeks without water. That it´s ok to have animals crawling on you in the night. Little tickles of ants will not kill me. That when my muscles hurt I can rest and carry on later. I am not dying from over exertion. I am not living in fear. I am not in constant search of comfort. I am tranquil. Sitting on earth is comfortable.

Somehow I am doing both nothing and everything at the same time. But I suppose all that really happened was that I walked into an empty bar in an empty village in the hot heat of a Spanish afternoon and ordered a coffee from the grandmotherly owner. She thought I was Spanish at first then was amazed when she realised her mistake, even more so when I told her my story of walking a river and sleeping outside. Aren´t you scared? she said. Of what? I replied. It´s not that I have never heard other answers to my question, I just want her to say them out loud. Maybe we should talk about what we are scared of and make it go away. She realised that she hadn´t given me the glass of water I asked for and, when I said it didn´t matter, was, I think, overcome with a rush of feeling for me, this gentle stranger, and gave me a packet of biscuits and some chocolate, telling me, If you ever return, pass by here.

Nothing is happening to me but I am experiencing everything. I have light shining out of me. I am slowly learning to live outside of my head as well as inside. That probably sounds more mental than it actually is. One day, when we meet in real life, we will talk more about it.

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Stretching out, icecream luxurious.
Dappled sun circles have streamed out towards me for thousands of miles just to break into my beleafed cocoon.
Inquisitive wings flutter when alarmed.
I explore my skin for overnight intruders. And lie, becalmed, allowing existence to wash over me. Awaken.

these are the things of now.

Dear mosquitoes,

Please stop eating my face. Thank you.

In beaches and woods there are no clocks so really my day could be three hours long. Breakfast, beach, evening meal, bed. Is this really all there is to life? It seems so.

Writing things down, trying to separate something from the flow and immortalise it doesn´t seem to have meaning for me at the moment. Just trust that I am having a good time. The best in fact.

I have changed colour. I have changed shape. I have changed my clothes. But I think you would recognise me from the light shining out of my face (even the bits with mosquito lumps). I am myself and I have transended myself.

I told myself I would write for 5 minutes. That 5 minutes is over now.

Update

When you find youself, after 3 weeks of solid festivals, squatting an abandoned castle with professional vendors of psychadelic chemicals; you can be assured that the direction your life is taking is both satisfactory and enjoyable....although neccessarily temporary in nature...for the sake of your precious braincells.

My Day

The story that follows is a true record of the events of the 2nd of July 2010.

My day started early with a 7.30 alarm. I pulled myself out of a broil of untucked and twisted sheets, off a mattress that was so old and so soft that I sank deeply into it overnight in a curve that made my spine hurt. I started a shower but the water was cold so i padded downstairs - whitewashed walls, odd artistic adornments and richly patterned tiled floors, different in every room - to look at the water heater. Damm, the gas was out. So, a cold shower it is then. I soaped myself and slowly inserted each piece of me under the freezing water. Most bearable - head. Least bearable - breasts. The rest was OK, I got used to it after a while.

As I was packing my rucksack I could see out of the window, paint peeling off blue shutters, down into a dusty yellow street where my host was unlocking a garage door. I watched him as I idly folded clothes but, as his wife approached him and they began to argue, I drew back into the shadow of the room, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping from so obvious a viewpoint. Three displays of temper in the two days I have been here.....I need to think about whether this is a good place to return to for the winter.

I gathered my things, made a quick breakfast and packed into the van as the wife waited impatiently. Something was missing but I couldn´t work out what exactly until Disaster! My map! It´s gone! I must have left it in a car. My special, waterproof, really useful, essential for hitchiking map. The woman shrugged, she didn´t care. We drove to the nearest town and she talked the whole way about her difficulties with volunteers and the problems they cause for her. We reached the garage where she had picked me up and I realised I might have left my map there. Hurray! They had the map! I jumped up and down and got very excited. But then.....Disaster! The handle of my case broke as I was getting it out of the van. This was really bad, without a handle the case is impossible to carry and I can´t fit another five kilos of crap into my rucksack. I love this case, it was a present from my brother and I have painted it in thick blue daubs so that it reminds me of the sea. I tried to work out how to mend it while my hostess remained bored and uninterested until suddenly she handed me a strap to wrap around the case and left to get on with her day. I walked down the road to a good hitching spot at the edge of the village and thought about my experiences at this art project. Do I want to spend the winter there? To have space and time to create, to write in a beautiful place. This amazing opportunity is brought to earth by the impatience and anger of the owners. There is tension in this project. Unhelpful, boring volunteers, a hyperactive, rude six year old and an empty village, abandoned to holiday homes and a struggling art project. These facts float slowly, like lonely sticks on the river of choking, unspeakable sadness that is the fact that the man, the husband, the artist, the father is dying of cancer, his ideas unfinished, his body betraying him. For me to blithely, blindly walk into this project, thinking that what I want will come easily...I´m not sure that could happen.

But these are thoughts of the future and I can´t think about that for too long. For now, the hitching. It´s 9.30 already and I need to get moving. I didn´t have to wait too long before a lorry pulled up. The usual thin, brown, wiry little Spaniard, driving lorries for 36 years. He wore a travel cushion round his neck; nerve pain, he said and, as he drove me 50km, we chatted amicably about Spain´s economic problems and his plans for retirement, seven years away.

As we parted he asked if I´d like to come a bit further with him, probably enjoying the company, but it really was in the wrong direction and so he left me at a service station in an anonymous flat valley where two back roads crossed in an expanse of rocks and yellow dust. I waited for a while; not many cars but I was in good spirits, walking up and down the edge of the road, singing to myself. Eventually a BMW pulled up, a middle aged man, big round belly, pleasant smile. Going to the dentist in Santander, he said. Bonus, another 70km. We drove down the side of a montain in winding curves; the road lined by tall red and white poles, there to guide the snow ploughs in winter. We were over 1,000m above sea level and I could see miles of green hill ridges, the spaces between them filled with fluffy cloud; the soft white breath of the earth, returning water to the sky. Suddenly the man started to overtake the train of cars in front of us in breathtaking, jerky manoeuvres. I know the road, he said, don´t be scared. The powerful car could skip around the others, catching them unawares on short corners. Don´t be scared, he said (as I hung onto the door to stop myself sliding over to his side of the car), I used to be a rally driver. ¿Que?, I said. Yeah, in 1970 I was the number 3 rally driver in Spain. I´ve raced down this mountain four times. Heh, fucking awesome! We got to the edge of Santander in double quick time, talking about why he gave it up (too expensive) and what he does now (owns a hotel) and he dropped me off on the edge of the motorway where it branched off towards the west.

Motorways are a crappy place to be dropped, always meaning a long dangerous walk with lorries and cars speeding past touchably close and no guarantee of a good hitching spot any time soon; but I am at the mercy of the driver, as always. I walked about a km down the road, couldn´t find a good place for cars to stop so had to settle for a smaller, quieter slip road.

It was past noon and the sun was high and fierce. I waited as 30 cars drove past me then went for a rest under a tree. The sky was a bright, clear blue and I was lying in a clean, green landscaped space between two busy roads. Occasionally cars would beep at me but I ignored them and dozed for a while, ants tickling at me insistently. I awoke to find an amazing insect on my arm, struggling to keep balanced on six delicate legs. It was bright green, the size of my thumbnail, with a blocky body, all points and geometric planes and a blunt, triangular head.

But I can´t dream too long, there´s always a car to catch. A nice, motherly lady stopped and offered me a life to the next village, 3km away, but I declined. There´s always a tinge of regret as the car pulls away, should I have gone? Swapped this spot for an unknown quantity only a short distance away? I always say no to these offers, preferring to wait for a longer lift. One of these days I should start saying Yes, just to see what happens.

Another half hour wait and two older men pulled up. They were only going 10km but I accepted, it was time to leave this spot. I asked to be dropeed at a service station if posible and this triggered an arguement between them in true righteous old man style about where was best to drop me off. I stayed quiet on the back seat as they shouted and grumbled up front and soon enough they gave me a choice - side of the main motorway or gas station on the old road that runs parallel. I chose the gas station and, on arrival, decided to head for the grubby little cafe sign that hung outside the building. I clattered into a tiny room, just big enough for a single table, two chairs, a fruit machine and the bar counter. The four men filling the room fell quiet in suprise as I hefted my chunky rucksack to the floor. It was too small a space for me to smile politely and ignore them, as I usually would, so I gave them a big smile and a Hola; one made a joke about not being used to strangers and soon we were talking about England and lorry drivers. The barman offered me bread and chorizo and, when he could see I was hungry, considerately went into the back room and cut me some more. He also paid for my coffee and I left with a full water bottle and a free can of coke (which I didn´t want but couldn´t really turn down). I stood outside feeling exuberantly happy. The sun is shining, I have a wide open road in front of me and people give me free things that enable me to live!

I walked up and down the road, grinning and twirling in the sunshine, it was easy to smile at cars in welcoming expectancy. Two cars offered lifts to the next village but I said no, I was enjoying myself here too much. A van pulled up in the garage and two sharp eyed boys with over-gelled hair got out and started to fill tractor inner tubes with air. On their way out they pulled over and started making filthy suggestions - I didn´t understand all the words but the gestures were enough. All with the clear piercing looks that come when you have enough cocky arrogance to insult a stranger. I wasn´t particularly insulted, I just smiled and gave them the finger until they pulled away.

After a while, another man stopped, another 15km. He told me I was brave and dropped me in the centre of a village about 2km from the motorway I needed. Ok, so I have to walk it. Not easy when you´re carrying around 30 kilos....2km is about the maximum I can manage in one go. But I did it, non stop, first striding and finally plodding, reaching the motorway sticky in the humid heat. The sun had disappeared and, looking down the valley over factory roofs, I could see the edges of storm clouds peering over the hills about 20 miles away.

I was hot and uncomfortable but had to keep long sleeves on. Hitching in a vest is inadvisable, men tend to get distracted by my ample assets and so I try to keep my body covered to avoid encouraging uncomfortable situations. I tried in just a vest but almost immediately a great fat man in a lorry stopped and leered at me so I gave up and put an extra top on. Lightning strikes and thunder rumbles advanced towards me as I hung there, waiting on the grey road.

I smiled at a man my age with soft curly hair, he returned my smile with an open face, stopped his car for me and for a second I could imagine the gentle, tender sex we would have and how we would lie together afterwards, curled together. But he was only going to Torrelavega, 5km down the road and difficult to get out of, like all cities. So he left and we exchanged only smiles.

The sky was a great clamour of whirling pools of cloud, dropping and rising in strange circular dome shapes. Finally a woman stopped for me, looking like a great mix of hippie and punk. Long, thick black curly hair, big dark eyes ringed by strident black makeup, totally confident without any need to be aggressive. Big, curvy with pale creamy skin. Exactly the kind of cool that I want to be. She knew about hitching and said she´d take me to the other side of Torrelavega; as I got into the car, drops of rain started to spatter against the windscreen. Thank fuck I missed the storm. She dropped me at a posh, commercial service station where I sat upstairs in an empty cafe and drank another coffee. I also spent two euros on an overpriced, chemical icecream that, after 10 minutes of sitting in icy air conditioning, I didn´t even want so I put it in my bag to eat on the road. When I went into the toilet I looked in the mirror and suddenly felt fat and ridiculous. My hair was mad and frizzy, my breasts stupidly, cartoonishly large and the huge rips in my jeans that I thought looked cool with black leggings underneath now seemed obscene and ugly. I pushed my hair around and pulled my jeans a bit lower; best I could do in the circumstances, it made me feel a bit better.

On my way down the road a van stopped for me; two beautiful hippies inside. They were only going 20km, did I want to come? I loaded my bags into the back with their patient dog and squeezed onto the front seat. All of a sudden I was sweating and uncomfortable, somehow unable to stop talking. They were chilled and at peace; I had just had a coffee on an empty stomach. I found myself talking about the art project, about the scarecrow museum that´s being set up there and, as I didn´t know the Spanish for scarecrow, I had to describe one in terrible Spanish. They didn´t get it. I fet trapped. I had to swallow, take a deep breath and try again. (Here´s what i said, it´s all I could manage - When you have a farm and you don´t want animals on your earth, you make a man out of wood and clothing for the fear.) They understood the second time but it was awkward. I was horribly aware that I was rabbiting random bullshit but they nodded and smiled and the girl wrote down the address of the project. When it came to my stop it was raining again, the couple were paused and unsure whether to invite me further with them but I got out anyway. I put on more clothes, covered my bags and sat in the rain to eat the icecream that I had been too embarassed to eat in front of the beautiful people. Such self awareness my love, surely it can only hold you back. My hands were shaking, definitely too much coffee. So I stood and waited and debated with myself about what to do in the rain at the end of the day. 5pm. Two and a half hours of hitching left. I could keep going on the motorway or I could stop here and find a place to sleep. There were three roads to choose from. I threw a dice to decide what to do, it said to keep on this road, the motorway.

Luckily the rain slowed after a while and I could relax a little. I could feel that I was getting tired and tense so I experimented with different standing postures to do with chi and energy flow and found that after a while my face relaxed and I could smile clearly again at oncoming traffic.

After an age, when I was almost giving up, a car stopped. It contained a young, dark skinned man in a smart, striped shirt. He was going another 15km, this time to the coast. We exchanged names and pleasantries and suddenly he swooped for the classic Spanish greeting, a kiss on both cheeks - while driving along the motorway. Dangerous and a little odd. After a while he told me that I am beautiful and sadly, for the first time that day, there was the unpleasant whiff of an unwanted sexual advance in the car. He asked me where I was going to sleep that night and, when I told some hasty lies about calling friends, he invited me to come to his house for some sex before continuing my journey in the morning. I politely declined and, for once, he didn´t press the issue any further. We got to his junction but he drove past it and said he would take me a little further. As he drove he talked about how hard his life was, how hard he had to work and how, in his native Tunisia, there was no money and so he´d had to leave his girlfriend behind and come here to work. I was listening uninterestedly, my stomach clenched, waiting until I had shown enough lack of sexual interest for him to stop the car. The subject of age came up, he was 28, I am 30. He reached over and patted me on the knee - You are a little girl, he said, in a baby voice. I was instantly infuriated. I am 30 years old! I said and, on instinct, reached over and patted his knee. You are a little boy, I said, in a high pitched, singsong imitation of his pathetic comment. He wound his fingers against mine in a twisting, sexual kind of a way. I pushed away his hand which was making its way to my leg and turned away from him. It was a joke, he said, uncomfortably. I stared out of the window and didn´t speak, irritated by this man who thinks he can touch my body without first touching my mind. After a while he jerkily pulled the car over to the side of the road and I got out, relieved.

I was on the top of a high hill, about a mile from the next village. I put my bags down for a minute to prepare for the walk but then, five minutes later, found myself pacing in a circle, still irritated by the fact that some sleazy bloke, younger than me, can pat me on the knee and patronise the fuck out of me. Ah Christ, it´s just another five minute adventure, leave it behind, nothing happened, you weren´t in danger. Forget it.

So I picked up my bags and walked forward, down the hill, past the village until I found a turning for a beach. It looked quite commercial, there were signs for hotels and camping and I debated whether I would find the quiet, secluded sleeping spot I wanted. However, as it was another walk over the hill to the next beach and I was pretty tired by then I decided to chance it. The road led to a well populated beach and campsite, damm. But there was a river running alongside the road and on the other side was a flat tidal field in front of a steep wooded hill. Long grass and a pile of yellow canoes. Exactly what I was looking for, I just needed to cross the river.

The stony riverbed was slippery with algae and, wlthough the water was only calf depth, I had to feel each step slowly, carefully balancing the weight of my bags so as not to fall. The feeling of sliding my feet over the stones was incredible after the long day of walking and standing. As I got out on the other side there was a sudden flurry and rush in the water as unseen animals fled from the shallows into the deep centre river flow.

I walked slowly through the long lush grass, savouring my resting place. There was driftwood everywhere, perfect. I dropped my bags and, after a short search, found a little depression in the ground just inside the treeline. It was slightly under an overhang of earth and soft with layer upon layer of fallen leaves. I squatted for a while and waited, turned over a few rock, no sign of ants, nothing. Excellent, my bed.

I crossed the river again to collect water and, on my way back, realised I could see more movement underwater. The river was teeming with fish, gently feeding from the riverbed, flashing glints of silver as they twisted in the current. There were at least 50, not small either, you could only fit one on an A4 page I reckon. Wow, I could eat one. Could I eat one? I have fishing wire but no hooks. Do I have it in me to pull a fish out of the water, kill it, cut it and eat it? Five years ago I could never have imagined myself capable of my current lifestyle. Will I ever reach the point where I can kill my own meat? If not, shouldn´t I stop eating it?

I walked slowly into the water this time, no splashes and was able to watch the fish wallowing for a while before they took fright. Back at my campsite it took an age to decide where to have my fire, I really was tired by this point, but finally, as the sun went down, I had a nice small fire and was cheerfully cooking a scanty meal of rice, onions and garlic. I could hear an animal in the woods behind me, cracking sticks and for a while I entertained myself with fears of wild pigs but I knew really that it wasn´t wild pigs and, as the fire burnt low, I made myself comfortable in bed. I was happy and settled, about to go to sleep but....horror! When I reached up to adjust my pillow I found something sticky on my fingers and then.....a slug! An ugly, hard, button of a slug! I had a split second recoil of pure disgust but, before I could properly freak out, out of nowhere came a voice, deep and calm and it was mine and it was saying This is the life you choose. This is the life you are choosing. And the voice, me, is right. So I took a deep breath, picked up the slug and threw it away and settled down to sleep, content.

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.