Dry As A Bone

defiles.me

I've never been drunk. At least, I don't think so. Except one time after acupuncture when I drank cider and felt like I was on the moon. And sometimes I feel giddy after a Sunday roast.

But, we all have our vices, especially this post-Methodist boy from a non-practising Catholic family. What's mine? Cake. And not just cake, but pastries, cheesecake, polenta cake, gluten-free bullshit levels of cake. If it is flaky and buttery with a sweet edge, I will take it. However since it's Dry January, I thought I'd rise to the challenge of avoiding any kind of sugar plum. I have a will of iron. So, no problem, right?

 F is for FLOUR Failure

I've always wanted to be that cool guy...the hedonist, the rebel with the eager hand to receive any goodies on a night out with friends. He has a lovely colouring and wears flipflops even in Winter. But I'm a geek. Well, a more refined one - a pseudo academic, maybe. And with that comes with the self-consciousness that allows such keen observation.  So while the likeable cool guys are swanning around on the back of speedboats or hitchhiking across Patagonia, I'm usually to be found in my native habitat, perched on a chair in front of a screen or listening to a philosophy podcast. Thinking.

The Academic doesn't do drugs. At least not in my story. He summons an inventory from the cloisters of his mind about why it's implausible that he should. He tries to justify it with neuron ping pong yet in reality he simply can't bear the smell of weed nor the sight of people who have overindulged. His nose is tilted in the air so he couldn't possibly put anything up it. And labs are for rats, regrettably, not the playground for the invention of chemicals to be ingested while flailing around to 90s remixes. He can do that in the privacy of his home with his saluki. Wait, this may be The Snob.

Xocolatl

Alas this stiffness is too stifling after a while. So he reaches for some kind of chemical stimulation under the papery exterior and foil innard, pops a square of that innocent-looking glossy liquorice brown.... like a tiny photographic still... on to his tongue. And the popping continues until the entire moving picture is over. And then, the fun begins with all guise of civilisation in shreds on the floor with his clothes.

Addict

A friend is very open about his indulgence of carnal desires, different to mine, and yet his admissions leave him at the end of waggling fingers that spell A D D I C T, a word that has become ingrained in our every day vocabulary. So addicted to smashed avo on toast. So addicted to Netflix. Maybe he just likes it a lot.

Michael Pollan has a lot of curious things to say about the power of plants to transform consciousness. And not just the ones that your middle class friends go to see an Amazonian shaman for or that your dodgier friends whazz a text to the anonymous number on their phone for, but the ones you are probably digesting right now - the daily coffee, the afternoon piece of cake, the hot chocolate after that cold walk, the flapjack when we break from a long cycle. Apart from some of the obvious nutritional commentary on blood sugar dips and the like, what are those foods doing to our consciousness, our mood, our being...and do we really need them? Are we addicted? Or do we just like the feeling a lot?

It's Not Me, It's You

Screeching the wheels of dryness to a halt, the calendar has told us all that now is 1st February so contemplating the month reveals a bit of a train wreck. I see a notable decline in my humour, with seriousness bubbling up with all the grubby stench of ancient lecture theatres. January has been my angriest month, the most emotional, the most of everything... even more than when I first discovered journaling at 8 and thought all I should note is when my sister had unnecessarily but intentionally provoked me. I've once again felt torn from profound injustices even if my train was 6 minutes late. January was just too bloody much. And although I'm not solely pointing the angry cakeless finger at the Dryness, it hasn't escaped my attention. Cake. Such a great word.

I've attempted to be zen about the rainbow of emotions. I've studied and read about feelings, resilience, the transience, the importance of detachment. The semi Buddhist way. I have tended my spiritual garden. But it's been tough. And although I haven't craved the sweetness or frothed at the mouth when the person on the bus sits next to me eating a florentine, I've definitely craved the feeling it brings on its white wings. Baked goods are a 5 minute luxury spa break.

Another Dimension

The worry residue that it leaves me with is why do I find so many situations so stressful? Why did I scoff at the Java poster that said "Come inside and allow yourself to be transported to another world". I think I shouted, as if the poster was a private conversation, WHATS WRONG WITH HERE and I stomped off to the gym.

I made a pact with myself last year to slow down, to allow myself the time to act according to my intuition, to be more authentic with friends and family. But I seem to have opened Pandora's box because I have this bloated uncompromising idealism that the world can't meet, that I can't. And I'm not sure how to transform that except to float away on a toffee cloud.

A TED talk on addiction stuck in my mind, too and namely that addiction is the opposite to connection. Mindful of that, I am figuring out what am I not connecting to when I feel that stressed. And that's really tough. That makes me want to ride more toffee clouds and make the discomfort go away. But then comes to mind the mammal who eats lichen because he feels so good. So good that he eats it until all his teeth are gone and he dies quickly from hunger. Gulp. That'll learn him.

Honesty & Entitlement

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I read a quote a few weeks ago that said something like, "Breaking out of the prison only lets us into the slightly larger exercise yard of freedom" and it stuck. I likened it to my personal journey about developing a better understanding of my emotions and feelings, so they don't rule me, and so I understand what they're pointing to. What will that freedom bring?

I still find journal entries from when I was a teenager...describing how my sister's behaviour annoyed me or the contempt I had for my mum for sending me to my room. Pages and pages I would write. And I continued to believe that the more I was digging, the closer I would get to revealing a sense of transparency around the wells of upset, or happiness, or whatever I was feeling...in order that I could make sense of it all.

Underlying that assumption too was that a decrease in opacity around my thoughts and behaviours would somehow entitle me to truly communicate and level with another. So, the more I get what's going on and express that, the more able I am with another to make mutual sense of things and come to a rainbow happily ever after of a conversation. Fail!

Having been inspired on my travels by so many open-hearted folks, I have attempted in the 'normal world' back in my corner of the UK to speak as freely as I would in a liberal community. And I feel not only more ease but more connected to people, and more deeply connected to my closer friends. But those who aren't ready for that style of communication, I'm quickly learning that my honesty doesn't entitle me to theirs.

Living with my 90 year old grandmother, who was raised by her grandmother (born in the mid 1800s), I see that there's never been a grammar of emotional honesty, let alone an ease. Or the inclination to pursue one. Or the faintest idea of what I was talking about. Now that she has dementia and her memory has degenerated badly, the question of honesty and reasoning with her can, in a regretful moment, turn into a stick to beat her with. The frustration I can feel when she is unable to grasp an idea, repeated many times, is unbearable.

And yet, my honesty, my frustration, my disappointment, my impatience don't entitle me to behave any other way but kindly towards her. Feeling anger or sadness, or any way, doesn't entitle any of us to be rude, hurtful or disrespectful. I was brought up and rebelled much against those Methodist values of goodness, wholesomeness and morals. It's only now that I'm truly starting to understand those Sunday school classes.

The Shape of Things To Come

The Guardian.com

Wow gosh golly, what a year 2016 has been. And what a day it has been today. Rarely, I spent the entire day creating. It is wonderful and strange to re-visit that old sensation of exhaustion from a totally different kind of energy expenditure. In contrast the past few months have been so physically demanding, most often under the glare of the sun, getting to grips with gardening in the Mediterranean. Dealing with the dislike of the very thing that motivated me to find a new life abroad was terribly confusing.

I've been back home now in the UK with the folks, for about a month. Sigh of relief. And today the attempts at nesting have finally reached a climax - fairylights in my bedroom, a dinner for the family after a day using lots of the scraps of strange fabrics and materials from the little caves of the past.

It's been so wonderful and nourishing. I've churned out paintings, a futuristic sculpture inspired by the film "Metropolis" (the main image of this blogpost) as well as working on some simple designs for tote bags. The work sprung from inspiration offered by a theme from a friend's future display in her marvellous new gallery space. And so now everything is lacquered in metallic shades and catches the light wonderfully. Even the gelatin. Who knew the brittle leaves of gelatin could lend themselves to couture finishes? Just hoping the moisture of the North keeps at bay or the lucky buyer may end up with a slightly less couture finish...

It's felt so good to loosen the grip on finding the right path, the right job, the right vocation, the right place to settle. I left for Spain originally 4 years ago next month...trained up speedily in London, met my fellow interns (there were 7 of us) then spent 3 months living and working in a new place. That place was Ubeda, northern Andalucia and the rest is history.

I stayed finding any work I could, often sharing cluttered over-stuffed rooms with people from all over the world before finally settling at dreamy intense Sunseed for almost a year. Life-changing indeed..and then time to move on again. And through it all, looking looking looking and hoping for a place to settle yet never feeling settled. Always sizing up the new place for a quiet space to meditate or read or practice yoga. I was driven and determined to find this utopia I'd invented, and riding the gas of idealism. Yet a month ago, that gas began to clonk and chug. I didn't sleep well. My dreams lost their loveliness. I lost my resistance and my happiness for a bit. What was I doing?

It's not just in the eyes of social media that one wants a semblance of light-heartedness and fun; it's natural in any relationship to apply the best face. It's normal as we try everything on for size. During these 3 years of travelling an insane amount of kms and meeting an even insaner diversity of people, there were such life-affirming moments, life-long connections made, wild swimming, parties and of course sunshine galore...but besides those things, just a person and his simple desire to find a place to call home.

I didn't, and so I'm back at home...where I have spent most of my life. Such relief. The white knuckle ride is over.

It all still feels so new especially in the sense that I need to be back at Square One and loosen my idealist grip on finding something out there. Previously I'd never understood when other travellers have told me they've missed their home land but this time, I got it - I felt it in every cell of my body. I was sometimes checking flights on my phone in the middle of the night wanting to return. 

And after a drive to simplify, to go low impact, to release all the shackles of the modern world, I've realised that I need them. At least some of them. They created me and while I can be incredibly creative within those limits, I'm understanding why those limits exist. A major theme apparent in many people I met travelling was this sense of finding a new world, cutting ties with the old, sometimes with bitterness or despair. I think everyone can relate to that, at times. But I need to find a middle ground. Familiarity is the umbilical cord to the old world. As well as reaching out for something new, we can be running away and missing the nuances of uncertainty or interpreting them in a specific way which fuels our idealism. I certainly was.

I don't know how long this feeling of 'ahhhh' will last but I know that having such distance from Blighty has made me fully understand how lucky I am, and we are, to live somewhere where water is on tap, trains and buses cheaply take us anywhere, people speak my own language, I am warm indoors and I generally just know where to find everything like stamps or phoneboxes or good coffee...an appreciation of these things to a person who hasn't travelled must sound so cliched and a tad ludicrous. But the exhaustion that ensues when those basic things are consistently being re-arranged is very unsettling.

I used to think that in order to galvanise, toughen up, I had to keep testing myself. I had to keep on until finally, I'd be some kind of spunky modern adventurer that would have no problem with making a bivouac anywhere where I happened upon. I wanted that experience that so many young men crave, (think Brad Pitt's character in "Legends of the Fall"...the wild child who rides horses and takes ships to unknown lands). Fiction after all is today's myth-making and we are all looking to hook into the myth that fits.

Adventure means many things to many people. As someone who lives so much in imagination, through colour, smell, through symbols...and not the type who climbs trees or wild swims in January, I must befriend myself and be kinder, more accepting that crafting, learning, dancing, singing, practising yoga, making music, reading, cooking and studying are my kinds of adventure. That's the cloth that I'm cut from. 

Catch examples of my work soon at the delicious boutique, Arcanum, on Market Street in Hebden Bridge.

And...why not order a veg box and collect it from Veg Box People at the University of Manchester every Tuiesday? You will find awesome bread there, too, from Trove bakery in Levenshulme. 

Fast

Will a month's trial as a garden volunteer at a organic yoga paradise in southern Spain bear Winter fruit? Or will the reality of wet boots in a soggy rustique way of life prove one step too far?

Today is a day I've waited for since the end of summer. It's been a year of achieving some important dreams - taking my mum to New York City for her birthday, training to be a yoga teacher and finally learning how to garden in southern Spain. A trip to see a friend allowed a new connection where my excitement to learn about permaculture and ecological land management practices was met with a resounding "yes"! So I am now back at the impossibly beautiful Suryalila Retreat Centre, where I volunteered for 3 months last summer and cared for the chickens, and attempted to build a pond...

Finding time to study and learn about yoga has been a part of a hectic schedule. So this, finally, weekend has been the beacon of relaxation I've been waiting for. Seasonal torrents of rain are also encouraging me to stay put under a mountain of blankets with a flask of lemon ginger tea. Ah what bliss. Going through old photos and files is just what a soggy Sunday needs.

Where am I? About 1.5 hours from Seville, in the middle of nowhere where swathes of eager yogis come to learn more and a smattering of cityphiles and their families come for a slice of the good life. The centre has horse-riding facilities as well as a natural salt water pool and serves 3 meals a day that are fit for the King of Spain; I'm sure he wouldn't notice the lack of jamon. The majority of dishes are vegan while the cheese is sourced from local suppliers using sheep or goat's milk. There's also a juice and smoothie bar, so I know the little savings I have left will dwindle as my tastebuds go to the stratosphere.

This time I am volunteer in the horticultural team. The huerto supplies the kitchen with a small amount of produce and with the help of this newfangled team, that percentage will steadily grow. So far (I arrived on Wednesday) I've been preparing beds for kale, cabbage and more roquette. I've also been removing olive sprigs from around the base of the olive trees and making hot compost. There's also loads of faces from last year which is a fantastic welcome.

The soil here, having been battered by intensive monoculture for a while, has long since said farewell to the rich ochre earth that still supports a few oaks in the distance. Some are estimated to be more than 500 years old. Our closest village, Prado del Rey, literally translates as "pasture / meadow of the King" so if etymology is any indicator of history, that fact remains fossilised in the area's past.

This design inspired the chicken coop makeover last summer

I'm working with a great team of 5 guided by an ambitious plan to turn things around. And already the parched ground is providing the kitchens with some salad and greens, and when I visited last year, we had an abundant harvest of figs. There are citrus trees and of course olives, and to keep the place beautiful, many landscaping succulents, lilies and banana trees. There are plenty of herbs too with the parsley, coriander and basil doing well and kitchen staff embellish the Moroccan-style serving dishes with borage flowers, calendula, nasturtium leaves and rose petals. We're visiting the vivero this week and I'll be pushing for lots of aloe vera so thirst-busting "AloePops" can get on the juice bar menu.

Alongside growing, the project manager is keen to install plenty of ways to preserve the harvest, the most obvious one being solar drying. This is a really easy and quick way of preserving excess and when I used this method at Sunseed Desert Technology, the most successful eats were aubergine slices (great for rehydrating in curries and stews) and stoned fruits which were chopped up before drying. Figs can be tricky if the maggots get there first. He's not come across a hay box before so I am excited to build a simple one.

The pond in April this year

I'm on a month's trial here before I commit to an extended period. If things go well, I imagine leaving before the intense heat of late Spring kicks in. The biggest challenges for late Autumn and Winter are going to be maintaining a strong sense of personal space as so much is shared and meeting new people is addictive. I also need to be realistic in preparing for the wet, windy and cooler weather which is one skill I've never mastered hence my fleeing from UK. Temperatures stay reasonable and the Winter is short - last year, nearby Seville was still seeing 24 degrees at the end of November - but outside of the city, life is squelchier and damper. I'm hoping that when a room becomes available at the volunteer house, I can swiftly move there. Despite my dreams of wildness, I am a walls and hot showers / radiators / slippers / heated towels / wifi kind of a person.

At the moment, I share with 3 other guys in a large tent. One makes his bed every day to hotel standards which impresses me. The others move around remarkably quietly. There are compost loos and outdoor showers nearby, the more homely bathrooms inside the main building. I've learnt that I'm a fairweather outdoorsy type; this weekend the winds have been lashing around the canvas and the rain drops more than pitter-pattering all around. While reading novels about wild weather appeals, enduring the reality is less romantic. It's a far cry from camping exactly but I feel lost without hangars and a maiden for my smalls. Last month my adventuring friend tried to encourage me to loosen up my white-knucked grip on civilisation with a camping trip on the beach. That was truly wild...no tent, no camping mat. Just us with a sleeping bag against the Milky Way and concerns about being washed away alleviated by a Gin Tonic nightcap. I smiled and tried, I did.

All in all, I am excited to be following a very longheld dream of living in Spain while growing. I will finally have to get to grips with being realistic about bad weather challenges. Despite training as a Forest School Leader in the UK a few years ago, bloodcurdling screams emit from my insides in worse weather, so I'm lucky to be somewhere where the temperatures stay quite civilised. My suitcase has only allowed me to pack so much (read: shorts and evening trousers) so the rest I can borrow (or beg or steal?). As long as I remain looking reasonably civilised so as not to shock the gentle yogis, I will be happy at the end of the month.

I shot the evolution of a caper / caperberry by gathering the plant at its different stages

Disposable Reasoning

I follow the work of George Monbiot, a passionate environmentalist keen on re-wilding  as am I. His latest article, Disposable Planet, can be found here. As a Romantic as well as someone who values scientific reasoning, I find much to critique especially since his views are typical of many people I meet on my path to finding an ecological and sustainable way to live. The response I sent is below which will make more sense if your read his article first!

Post your comments below.

Hello George

Thanks for your latest article, Disposable Planet. Incisive as always...and also despairing and hopeless, leaving me with that unsettling feeling similar to the dread in the belly during a parental telling-off. "You're using the car again...despite the planet going down the plughole!" ..."Your shower lasted 8 minutes...do you know how much water that could provide to a drought-struck village on the African continent??" Forgive me, Father. I'm also about to critique your reasoning. 

De-capitating Logic

So, I recently discovered a new way of thinking thanks to constellations which, like most things, suddenly seemed obvious. The Plough, Orion, the Great Bear...and all such named constellations, despite being individual stars light years away from each other, make very sketchy outlines for us humans... although simply an abstract handful of white dots in space. Why? Because we are making sense of the world around us (note - not necessarily the world we are entrenched in, but that's another story).

This "constellation" tendency is how many mortals flex their muscles with the things they've come to know. And it's a shame that the tone of your articles, as much as I enjoy reading them, fall into the same trap: a dying population here, extinct animals over there, melting ice here...and then industry growth over here, and blithe consumers shopping malls or on futuristic devices with 1,000 Apps promising every convenience. That's cause and effect, right? Surely any fool would agree. And, then, wham! you're reasoning wings are stuck in the glue! 

The intellect, like the internet, makes bold promises of a world that's understood and relatively neat and organised...and seems to hint a glimpse of world without physical limitations. But we aren't just heads on legs, or fingers tapping at keyboards - we are absolutely bound to gravity, despite our spiritual yearnings. Yes, you, too. Sorry about that.

Any breadth of knowledge doesn't exempt you from the hairy contradictions and compromises we are all forced to negotiate in order to be, firstly, human and, secondly, as informed individuals, sane, happy and motivated to act from a courageous space rather than a fearful one. Not recognizing that can dislocate the relevance of your message since a reader could be forgiven for imagining that you are beaming your blogposts on fairy's wings from a self-sufficient idyll only the enlightened seers inhabit (they had accrued enough carbon-offset points).

And yet, here we both are...stuck in fleshy bodies while able to communicate without having met...through complicated technological platforms that govern and shape our lives/perceptions which make no more sense than a fairy's wing. But isn't that also a great metaphor for the sophisticated infrastructure that we're inherited from our ancestors...complete with its socio-psycho-cultural matrix? I think a writer who is full of idealism (that's my attraction to your work) as well as one who endeavours to make sense of the incomprehensible bonkers-ness of it all, has much more weight. Of course, I see all that you do, too - this is about relationality (even though Microsoft doesn't seem to recognize that word).

It's no surprise to me that The Guardian (or similar) at once recommends a healthy tuna salad and reports the abominable nature of the fishing industry; it's more shocking that you have reached this point and only highlight the paradox rather than have anything deeper to say. Informed readers aren't oblivious to the many contradictions and hypocrisies in which they can flourish or fall.

Your knowledge, coupled with your power as an articulate and well-known writer, offers you a responsibility to soften the potential blow ("real" facts about catastrophe reeled off in your article is simply that well-known journalistic tool, sensationalism). Can you offer solutions...come back to your fellow inhabitants...rather than beautifully present heartbreaking and bleak summaries of impending extinction, that leaves some of us clutching for the Kleenex and Seroxat, rather than feeling elated and aspiring for excellence and betterment? And not for the sake of sugar-coating and the nicey-nice, but for tenderness and a sense of "we're all in this together"ness? We all need a continued sense of wonder that you so elegantly express when in the presence of wilderness and the animal kingdom. We are as majestic as those phenomena and deserving of as much respect. It's not apparent in your tone that you agree...directly from the Pulpit of Doom.

....unless I'm being terribly naive and Monbiot has evolved into a brand whose USP features lamentation, sorrow and that last bastion of hope for mankind? I thought I could watch any new channel for that.

Awaiting a reply,

Mark