Who Needs A Degree When You´re Schooled In Life?

WNADWUSIL

(/wanadwuzl/)

OK so I spent the best year of my life at an off-grid project which I encourage everyone to go to immediately www.sunseed.org.uk to learn about what it means to live in community, learn to deal with no electricity or running water at times, grow organic and biodynamic vegetables, learn what it means to compromise, learn what it means to be as close to nature as possible without giving up all the lovely human delights like regular meals and showers! I didn´t just learn them intellectually, like I convince myself about all the wonderful MOOCS that I study, but I embodied the lessons...which is a fancy way of saying that, like hairspray or yoga postures, they are now fixed in my body no matter how much I would want to forget. They ain´t budging. 

And to be honest, surveying my options to return back to my magical homeland, Kingdom United, my Kingdom (I heart you, UK), there´s no way that I´m working all the hours that God sends to I can afford a thimble in Zone 5 (I´m so not down with scratching my way through TESCO´s bins - yes, it´s a thing).

Do you guys remember the film, Mermaid? Basically, Bo Derek plays a temporary mermaid and finds love with a guy who shows her, like a baby, how to talk, how to be and go around the world. Well, this is the situation that we all face if we embrace it every day, except fundamentally without the fish tail when we get in the bath. Although that could be cool. All the people in novels, music and films that I admire have one thing in common - they have an innocence, a certain pragmatic naivety, a fierceness to live  and breathe the world, he-yyll - the galaxy--- not just survive, but flourish and thrive. That´s the quality I want to keep cultivating in my life. It´s bloody hard work but after 34 years, I don´t think I can compromise. That´s the joy (read stubbornness) of an Aries twit.

What does this mean in my life now? Thanks to all the wonderful people who allow me to indulge my absolute love and curiosity of life, movement, dancing, travelling, singing (namely, first and foremost naturally, my bewildered parents...then https://www.wwoof.org.uk/ http://www.workaway.info/ and http://helpx.net/ http://tinderwoodtrust.org.uk/ http://www.bearco-op.com/and the amazing pop lyrics and moves of Beyonce, Madonna and Mariah Carey, the sparkling gays), I can frolic around the most beautiful places in the world, meeting the most inspiring, the most open-hearted, the most understanding and accepting, the most welcoming...and learn through experience how I can best give to the world. In order to do that, I´m accepting that I need to feel safe - safe to explore out of my comfort zone, safe to be shit scared when I´m faced with a challenge, safe to know that, despite anything, I can push through and experience true growth. Safe = MP3 of all my favourite songs, ceaseless working out and dancing, daily yoga and meditation. Done.

I ain´t gonna let nobody´s drama bother me

Because it´s my life, no stress, no fights

Just making the most of life...

- "It´s Like That", Mariah Carey 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI2cwfluyNo

Why wouldn´t you want to be like this at 45? Shiny sing-y loveliness!

Instead of being safe and returning to the UK, I´m following my heart and my spirit - not  my bank balance, or my fear of it diminishing, not my fear of what happens if it all goes dreadfully wrong...what IF it goes right! What if I succeed? What if the world can be as beautiful as my own world often is? What if I can realise how to share my deepest truth with the world? How is it to be vulnerable (in a good way)? That´s a risk I can´t afford not to take.

First stop is a couple of week helping a couple run a beautiful retreat in the Algarve, then I´m hoping to get involved in EROLES, a shining beacon of curiosity in Tremp with a community trying to understand what it means to live in a time when our paradigms of thought are truly shifting from old sKool to new sKool. We are so powerful by constantly simplifying. Then, I´ll learn what it takes to be a children´s activity leader...then work in a queer circus with a friend from Sunseed in Amsterdam. And if they still need a lead singer, then my dream of performing could come true! I can dream, can´t I? Then, I´ve found an amazing yoga retreat back in Andalusia where I can learn more yoga postures, learn, learn, learn for real.

So, go and WANADWUZL and see how it feels! Oh, and if you want to sign up for The Joy Army, get in touch. First, I need to Crowdfund for uniforms. They´re gonna be awesome, you´ll die (in a good way).

Important Dates

An echo bounces in a tunnel of yesterday from 1989

Somehow, 2 or a million years ago – March, wasn’t it?

Soon you won’t recognise me because you didn’t really look;

Your face suddenly vacant and animal-like

Beneath a ladder to Act III, the poppies watch and listen

Blood red, small, harmless and violent.

I didn’t sleep well last night

On the wall I nearly fell off

You were too close, orbiting and perplexed

Lips dry like rings of ice

We needed that damp late-Winter earth

To ground us, to saturate everything in colour then remind us

of honesty and the necessities.

They were expecting the crescendo and your private story

Revealed. All we had to do was show up

As the sky, trees and flowers stood there

beautiful, deaf and dumb, the seasons

played chess with the constellations

The strings, the wind section, the colours

Moistened by loyal promises of Spring

And all I could do, flower-like

Was allow everything to flow from my eyes as

The path let us walk, and the brooms asked to be made

And the date allowed us to taste

As I trembled, blaming a chill in the early-Spring air.

Nothing does matter, we both concluded

As we were given a glimpse of something

Much bigger, much wiser then

We’d like to think we are

1,000 years ago, the brilliance of the gravity we lay in

Was already taken.

We almost looked at each other again like

Strangers in the grass, a green butter staining my lips

A peculiar lunch with a hungry stranger beside me

An absent-minded friend, a brother, lover

For whom bristled kisses are brand new and brushed

Away like yesterday’s crumbs.

Nil By Mouth

After feeling so good on the last fast, I decided to notch it up to 48 hours for Lent. Since being introduced to the effect of lunar cycles and their effect on us (used in traditional farming as well as biodynamic horticulture), I’ve been curious about how they can affect our every day lives, if at all.

Today’s New Moon, a time of waning energy and considered to be a great time to start new ventures and projects, inspired me to take time out from work, relax and just see what happened without expectations, to-do lists or judgements about how much time I may or may not spent in my bed. This is much more difficult than I’d anticipated. Surely, I needed some rules…about maybe having a digital detox at the same time? What would I drink? Fresh ginger tea worked really well and, as you can see from this post, a digital detox didn’t really. My world really changed when I bought my laptop 2 years ago. I even gave him a name and we go everywhere together – it’s my library, my study time, my phone (I don’t have a mobile) and my connection to friends and family. Hugh is the source of all power! Er, back to fasting…

It was also important to me to not think of these days as my fasting days – fasting was incidental to having time to myself. We all know that the moment anything is forbidden, the more you are inclined to fixate on it. I wanted to just let the day flow and not get bogged down with feeling obligated to fill my room with candles, panpipes or whalesong and some violent form of breathing. Without any rules, I was apprehensive. To-do lists are my saline drip.

For a long time, I’ve dreamt of the joy of not having to make a meal every day since I always tried to cook from scratch. I loved working in cafés because I’d get a nice hot meal after my shift. Finally, at Sunseed, the dream has come true - the communal aspect of living is the knight on shining grills and means we all eat twice a day and only have to cook once, or twice a week. Joy! But like all dreams, they are soon popped by reality’s brutal needle.

I’ve been eating like a King since I arrived with good and hearty meals and in the winter, we  usually have two cooked meals a day. With constant access to delicious, wholesome food and leftovers, it can be really difficult to have some self-discipline. We eat very well and only have a pudding once a week, but it’s still possible to eat more than I need. Being used to cooking for one at home, I’d never really consider seconds; that would be tomorrow’s lunch. And when the kitchen starts to become the communal hub of activity and occasional raves, a cheeky snack makes everything slip down a little more sweetly.

I’ve never been fat. Since 1999, with the exception of working full-time in an ice cream one very rainy summer, I’ve always weighed 68 kilograms and longed for a few extra pounds. I’ve always exercised in one way or another, so I’m in no way resembling a galactic black hole of appetite, awaiting a strong enough  air-lift to save me from myself by wiring up my jaw. No. But I do think, at any size and age, many of us can benefit from putting food in its place – eating when we’re actually hungry, not when we’re anxious, bored, uncertain what to do next, in the kitchen or because other people are. The last one’s pretty hard – we fundamentally want to belong and find our tribe. Express your emotions in a journal, book a therapist but leave the cheese, biscuits or [insert favourite food] alone. The truth is for most people who are able to access the net and read this blog, we’d have to try hard to starve.

 I absolutely and utterly love food. If there was a job which wasn’t drenched in shame where I could eat for most of the day, I would gladly send off my CV. If I have too much cash on me in a supermarket, I get a similar feeling – the shiny packets, the colours, the organisation of the shelves and the recipe shares..omg it’s all so joyous and wonderful. Waitrose is my very own Willy Wonka.

But what a bonkers situation. Having worked with producers and seen the provenance of many of these ingredients, I’m always reminded of the tremendous amounts of work that have gone into even the simplest bunch of carrots. And while there’s no use being too literal about the world and its things (because it is bonkers and needn’t be figured out), it’s nice to opt out every now and again to get perspective. On my fast day, I can get hungry. I get over it.

It’s no easy ride – sometimes, I get a real buzzy glow and I feel so much energy, I spend a lot of the day with my favourite music on, dancing around and singing. This time wasn’t like that. I felt quiet and asked myself questions about where I’m up to, how happy I am in my life and what my next step is. I watched a lovely film and read a book about Jung’s archetypes which I regretted. I studied and loved what I’m learning about biomechanics. I felt uncomfortable, ugly this morning, cold if I wasn’t careful and  I watched all this  -wondering what to make of it and if I like the way I was treating myself, if I could step out of my own way. Being kind to oneself is hard.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to eating in an hour or so. But 48 hours has taught me a lot about time wasted and minutes filled by filling my mouth rather than my life with much more important and nourishing things.

Everything Reminds Me Of You

for Jenny and Josi

I forgot to look out of the window

It was raining

And the puddles were black eyes on the ground

It reminded me of you

And I felt sad

I remembered that grass grows on wet fields

I was sitting on you

And you smiled as a harmonica played

I thought of you

As I saw your eyes

I was a piano on the train today

I was playing

All the melodies I knew because I was a bird

That knew I wanted to remember you

Everything reminds me of you

The plaited hair of children and the

Swing of a hat on its stand

Today when I ran and my muscles ached

I thought of you and the fibres in me ripped and grew

And I was reminded of you

Sunset Boulevard

Lyrics from "As If We Never Said Goodbye"

"M" is for Musicals - this is tragic name that I came up with for an as-yet non-existent blog in which I present what I've learnt about one musical per week and practice various singing techniques from the trickiest songs. Ambitious, much, and all because I can't get too of the loveliest songs I've heard out of my mind - "Send In The Clowns" and "As If We Never Said Goodbye". So far, all that has been invented is earworms for everyone around me. Sorry about that!

So far I've learnt that "Send In The Clowns" was written by Stephen Sondheim and featured in "A Little Night Music", a film I'm eagerly waiting to see. "As If We Never Said Goodbye" I only came across when on holiday in Sitges a few months ago. In a tiny bar in the backstreets, we all huddled in to watch Ria Jones' interpretation of the lead character, Norma Desmond, and her tragic hit from Sunset Boulevard. The film, made in 1950 and now a musical, is now considered one of the greatest American films of all time. My list of classics is getting longer and, alas, another Sunday has passed without me having struck any from the list.

This weekend, I've mostly found myself harassing the eardrums of my family at their lovely apartment near Murcia as I take a much-needed break from work. I've been at Sunseed now for a mostly-blissful 6 months but as the nights draw in and the sun creeps ever lower behind the looming mountains, the valley's becoming increasingly hostile to the near-nakedness I managed the whole summer; I've worn no socks and barely done any washing as it has mostly been too hot for anything other than dreams of ice cubes and gelato.

With my shrinking comfort (and warmth) zone, I'm working extra hard to remember my intentions, my values, my beliefs and my actual self. Learning songs from musicals, learning dances from the latest R&B videos and Indian Head Massages are definitely some key ingredients. Another important constant in the crazy equation of [{J(oy) & Ex(citement) 4 Everything} = N0thing D0ne] is a fruit and vegetable fast at the weekend. I've done it for most of the weeks I've been away and missed it terribly when I haven't. Even today when hot churros were tantalizing my nostrils, I found the strength in grapes, cucumber and dates to keep me going until 24 hours was up. During the fast, I find a supreme calmness in my thoughts, a steadiness in my mood and my mind feels as if it's been unplugged for a bit. Helping me on the way in the hotel complex is a sauna, a steam room, a pool as well as a private shower and bath (this may all sound quite normal to non-Sunseeders - apologies!) and in all of them, a very content version of me.

I've challenged many aspects of myself this year, some of which may seem miniscule to some - I have barely washed, and when I have it's been without soap in a very cold (and beautiful) river; I have eaten vast amounts of aubergines without complaining (I have never been so cosy with the Deadly Nightshade family and I still don't know what the fuss is about); I have never listened to the radio or any music when driving the van (except maybe once); I have squatted for every loo trip; my hair hasn't been washed for nearly 2 months (with a very nasty-looking comb to prove it); recently I've slept in the fleece that also keeps me toasty during the day (Grossville, Population 1 - You'll Never Leave!) and I brushed off from my shoulder the biggest spider on earth* (*unofficial measurement). Oh, and I haven't been to the cinema since January and I'm a complete film buff (I hear you - First World Problems).

So, this afternoon, not only was my microbiome was in for an extreme makeover but my dormant Westernised self was awoken from its quilted cinematic pupa to the sound of BBC Prom and Judy Dench's "Send In The Clowns". I have neglected small but gem-like parts of my personality that can still have a place in a low-impact project and sustainable lifestyle. I will never be the scruffy peak oil renouncing hippy who rejects all possessions in the name of the Great Mother - as a child, nothing would delight me more than flailing around to Motown, finding matching trousers or polished shoes and riding on trains. No amount of goji berry and chia seed smoothies will change these facts. I love the world in every one of its qualities and each one is defined by the eyes through which I see - there are no solid truths and right or wrong ways of appreciation. We are who we always were and will be... and when we remember that - everything's as if we never said goodbye.