Monday, December 5, 2011

Jerez for two days. Zambombas - Jerezano parties in the street, Christmas parties. 12 hours long. Saw one famous singer sing, in person (Juana la del Pipa). Saw my friend Kim from Toronto's teacher dance (in a tablao).

The 3rd night (second day) slept in an attic (nice) without running water inside. There was a kind of water source, you had to undo it from a tank and switch it on, then put a jug quite a ways away. Out on the rooftop. Boiled an egg Kim or somebody else had left in the fridge.

Sevilla. Stayed at Mara's place. She already had a guest on the couch, so gave me a mattress in her room on the floor. I walked Faro, my sheepdog friend, around Sevilla last night. Christmas lights were hanging between the buildings on the main shopping streets. Decorating the orange trees. Walked him in the morning again. It was warm enough to be in a t-shirt and the perfectly blue skies had returned.

Nearly missed the last possible train to Malaga before my flight out, this evening. I got on the train to Jerez/Cadiz. Someone had the same seat as me, and suggested we check the tickets to be sure everything was okay. Then noted that my ticket was to Malaga and told me I was not on the correct train. I thought I had missed all my flights home. I did not know that the two trains coincided at Dos Hermanas, the next station (after that they go separate routes). I got off and waited for my train, which was 2 minutes behind.

We'll see if I make it tomorrow.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Al

My uncle died. I am sorry for not contacting anyone in person.

I will hear the specific circumstances of his death soon enough. They don't matter. All that matters is that he is gone. The connection we had is what matters, and whether his spirit (if it still exists after death) is at peace.

Last night my heart was heavy and weak and breath came with less ease than normal. He was too young to die. I don't think he has been very happy.

What he told me before I left was some of the best and most incisive advice I've had - he had no patience for senseless suffering people inflict upon themselves or let be inflicted upon them. Across the table at the Peaceful Restaurant he passed me several hundred dollars to help with costs of my trip. In typical style, he tried to stop me thanking him excessively or making any fuss receiving it. An attitude that said, "just shut up and take it". He told me not to let anyone's choice as to how to live their life cause me to suffer. He knew why I was going on this trip. He told me he loved me - not an easy thing to say in a reserved family.

There are some people whose death feels wrong; untimely, and I feel the need to do something for myself, so that their death does not feel in vain. Last night half awake in the middle of the night something changed. I could carry a heavy weight on my heart (my literal, physical heart, problems with which run in the family), or I could remember what he was looking for and what he encouraged me to find.

This morning I told him he could come with me. In some cultures they believe in the presence of their ancestors. It's my opinion that we struggled with the same thing, from the same family background - I already know that same heavy baggage and I felt it physically last night. But what I came over here to do, and he knew that, was to leave it behind. So I will continue, not for his sake because I can only carry my own burden, but for mine, in his memory and with his memory.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sitting in front of palm trees, sunset over the beach, moon. Canadian guy playing his guitar. Other Canadian guy who helped get me back to normal life, talking last night about the ravages of our respective travels.

It was a shock to enter civilisation, especially the Costa del Sol. I read long ago that it is not as desireable a place to go as it used to be, due to massive construction of big and tacky houses all over the coast. It is quite ugly between Estepona and Malaga. English, Germans, and a mix of Europeans from everywhere else have invaded this area.

But Malaga city center and beach is heaven, at least in the winter. 23 degrees at 1 pm today.

Last night I collapsed into a wicker easy chair on the patio of the Melting Pot hostel. I couldn't handle talking to Peter, the Swede, and took only one look at Franco, the Torontonian and said Hola, and judged him to be a safe enough person to sit in the vicinity of without being bothered. To be quite honest, what I have just been through has been somewhat traumatising, for several reasons: Homayoun's character and criticism, the harshness of life there (made more difficult by his attitude of challenge to those who come "let's see if you have it in you, tonto city person!") and the remoteness.

I am somewhat turned off rural life, though this was an extreme. The other problem is that I continue thinking, possibly stronger than before, that it is ethically, as well as strategically one of very few wise choices as to how to live these days.

Be that as it may, I feel in the lap of luxury in this 10 bed mixed dorm, with clean sheets and some manner of blanket not mired in dust and sweat, soap in the washroom.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

More news for today because I have to come down to the mill (which reeks of alcohol freshly distilled), and coger my portatil, which I left on in here. It's 8:00 but as usual seems like some late hour. We just got rescued by Rainier and his Spanish girlfriend Victoria. Ranier is a long time friend of Homayoun, tambien German, who has also lived here 20 some years. He visited today with Victoria, her brother Adolfo and a friend of Adolfo's, Mirian, who got lost with us.

We have been encerrada in this place far from everything for three weeks, we have not even salida de la propiedad, really. Delia was desperate to go to Genalguacil, and I wanted to get out today, being Saturday. So after a late lunch of expensive (if you had to buy them) wild mushrooms, wild boar again, potatoes and salad better than any 5 star restaurant guaranteed, no joking or exaggerating, we decided to walk to the pueblo. I told Delia that 10 km would take longer than 1.5 hours, and that starting at 4 pm we should take a linterna. She pooh-poohed my suggestion and so the three of us started off, luckily with Mirian's cellphone, as Delia's and mine have both broken (yes, we are both incommunicado with the outside world, rather much). We got lost on the way, as the road has a lot of turn offs (gravel and dirt road - not much of a road really) and had to turn back after stopping a guy to ask. A family of mother, son, and grandparents squeezed us in and took us all the way to the pueblo, upon which we all realised we could not have arrived before dark, and didn't know what we would do to get back. But we looked around anyways, and then started back on the road. The only thing I was really afraid of was the cold. Though Delia and Mirian were not very comfortable with walking in the middle of nowhere in the night. It is also a new moon. Luckily, though Mirian had no coverage (yes we really are in the middle of nowhere) she managed to get coverage for other parts and we could contact them here. Two men going out of the pueblo gave us a lift to one particular cross in the road where we started going down to the river, and took wrong turn, ended up having to climb all the way back up and so on it went.
The funniest was the two men telling us we would get lost for sure (which was totally obvious thinking about how many possible wrong turns were on the way (all dirt and gravel roads with few differences), and then asking us where exactly we were going. We had already told them "Alharia, Homayoun's place" because other people in the pueblo know him. These men didn't, and the only other way we had of describing it was, "over there in the mountains," with Delia waving her hand in the approximate direction. We hadn't even a clue as to how to describe which exact road.

Anyways, suffice it to say I have found a relatively wild part of Spain... (I suppose it goes without saying that there are no taxis or busses around here).

I don't know if I said, but Delia and me saw patches where wild boar dug. The group that came last night saw a big one.
Change of plans, going to Estepona with them tomorrow and going to take a bus to Malaga. A ver what happens next. I don't know. Going to meet Sachiko at least sometime early December.

Today collected a huge bucket full of Feijoyas. No se como deletrearlo. Some kind of fruit from South America supposedly.

Friday, November 25, 2011

We had a few rainy days on the weekend and Monday. We got on rain clothes (knocked the dirt and spiders out of old rubber boots) and crossed the valley to pick apples. Delia picked more higo chumbo (which Bijoyini says is prickly pear) and Siri (from Sweden) and her made mermelada out of it.

The boys are gone. It was us three girls until Wednesday and then Siri went too. There was a cold day, where I wore tights under my work pants and a skirt on top, lots of layers. But yesterday and today have been back to long sleeve shirt while working. We've picked more olives, picked madroñas (red fruit that sometimes ferments on the tree), sewed cushions covered in old Afghan woven cloth. Today we spent the first half of the morning hauling what looked like runny pig feed down to the mill where we put it into an alambique (still). A beautiful, huge old clay pot, inside the cauldron holder, fire underneath. Put a copper thingy on top with two spouts. We had to connect it up to some copper tubes going through a wall into an arched pool area. Connections were sealed with bread dough and an old rubber tired was put around the top for insulation. Hours later distilled alcohol is running out the tube that goes through the pool, into a pail below.

Pretty much every kind of fruit or jam that went bad has been put into two blue 45 gallon drums in his crazy scientist room behind the kitchen at the back of the courtyard. That's where we sacar-ed the mushy fermented stuff, into mas o menos clean pails and hauled them down here. Everything in this place is like something out of an ancient story. Homayoun himself, his way of doing things, the stuff he does, and the equipment he uses. He mentions sterilising things, but then on the outside of his bottle that's bubbling away with fermenting madronas by the fire, it is so covered with dust and grime that he can't see what level the ferment is at inside. Our jam that we made goes bad because we didn't put enough sugar in it and left it out on the table in bowls covered with plates. He tells us we are irresponsible, but pretty much everything around here is done in a kind of half-assed way, as far as cleanliness is concerned. People eat right out of the serving dish if it's something that is like a bowl of pomegranate seeds being passed around. Probably lick the jam spoon. Everybody talks about natural dirt not being dirty but then things go bad... hmm...

We still eat lunch outside. It's really quite warm here. Not warm enough to wash your hands under cold tap water in the morning and evening. I have chilblains. I am leaving tomorrow. Going to stay in a hostel in Ronda, and just put it on my credit card. Not sure where to go next. Am a bit exhausted from everything. I think of home lately, but am not sure whether that is the right decision for me.

Yesterday Diego was here with his mules. He brought us a mo-ca de caballo (horse fly - but not the same kind of horse flies we have), to prove what he'd told us: that they can take out slivers. You grab the horse fly by the body and put it over the sliver. It grabs out the sliver with its legs. I didn't have any slivers (amazingly) at that point, so the fly actually pulled out some hairs on my hand! He told us he once use a fly to get a sliver out from the inside of his lip. The slivers you get here are not nice ones like from wood or something. They are tiny, nearly invisible, break easily and cannot be dug out easily with a needle - I dug twice and ended up with only infection for a week. It is not nice working heavily with that. You end up getting slivers from all over the place.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Work has not been so hard the last few days. That is why I find myself with enough energy to go on the internet in the afternoon. Yesterday we cleaned up a gross outdoor kitchen area (Delia and me), and then did some planting of onions. This morning we prepared soil and then planted more onions, and then we whacked the seeds out of pomegranates. There is a very specific method for opening a pomegranate and getting the seeds out. By the way, you probably have never had a pomegranate this good unless you've had it somewhere other than Canada! We sat on a dirt path looking out over the valley doing this.

Last night Merlin made a bath in a bathtub outdoors, raised up on blocks on each end, with a fire underneath. After he finished, the two other guys took turns (in the same water). Homayoun encouraged us to all use it. I didn't think I would but each of the guys in turn raved about how amazing it was so I went for it, laying in a bathtub full of water, dirty in the first place, and after having three grubby guys already in it. It was amazing. Pitch dark, under a sky loaded with stars. So as not to burn your bum, there is a piece of cork you sit on. But when you lay your head back on the edge, the cork makes you float right up. Talk about amazing experience.

Things are not all paradise here. Hygiene is one of the biggest annoyances. I think I've done incredibly well, learning to wipe myself after doing number one, with my left hand, pour water over it (if there is any in the pitcher beside the dirty squat toilet) and then running to the washroom, a ways away to wash my left hand off with the grubby bar of soap floating in dirty water. For number two, Delia and me have so far refused to try the hand-water method, and have rationed our kleenexes to one a day until Delia stole a roll of toilet paper from the boys, who have been more bold about whining a bit until Homayoun relented and gave them some. I have also done very well using an oily, grimy sponge to wipe my dishes under cold water, and have tolerated grabbing a "clean" plate with beads of oil around the rim or greasy fingerprints at every meal. Sometimes I give up and just eat off it if it isn't that bad, other times I quickly wipe it a bit more vigorously with the oily sponge and then dry it on the grimy towel. When I first arrived, I did not think I should wipe oily hands on the dishtowels bit quickly noticed that they were filthy anyways, so now at least I wipe the oil off my hands after doing my dishes. Anyways, I've gotten mostly used to this procedure, and I think that is quite admirable and a very good concession to this lovely, "natural" way of life.

I also have tolerated very well not showering even after days of hard and sometimes dirty work, going for up to 3 days without washing my hair at times.

Homayoun eats the peels or rinds of practically everything. He gives people lectures about it if they are peeling something that need not, in his opinion, be peeled. This would include avocados, apparently. As much as I would love to gorge myself on them, for that reason I am somewhat happy they are not yet ripe.

Basically, Homayoun and the other boys and to some extent, Delia tambien, espouse the philosophy that if it is natural, you don't need to worry. In other words, if the dirt is soil, bugs, mold that comes from this natural place we are in, why bother worrying about it? If it is natural your body's immune system will deal with it. I have to say that while a small bit of this philosophy is a welcome relief to the dorkiness of some North American wrapped-in-plastic, antibacterial stupidity, it is a bit extreme for me. I have often made jam from strawberries that were starting to go soft or a bit bad, like my grandmother did. I get annoyed with people back home on facebook that feel the need to tell me that if the sausage is pork I have to put it in the fridge. Um... duh! Well first of all I am in Spain and it is cured, and Spanish people are not in the dark ages. And anyone outside the darkest part of Central Asia knows that raw pork needs to be in the fridge, for heaven's sake!

I have coexisted quite well with a shower full of dirt on the floor always, that doesn't drain that well, with dust covering the floor of my bedroom, with bed-"sheets" that are totally raunchy with dirt and probably sweat and body grime of previous users, because I have not yet been able/permitted by weather to launder them.

So it kind of gets my goat that people here see me as too clean. I know of people who refuse to pee in the bushes, or sleep in a tent. Who can't handle being without makeup or high heels.

Taking the seeds out of pomegranates this afternoon I felt that it was necessary to try to save parts that were contaminated by rotten stuff. Homayoun is not someone you take the initiative to do things your own way with. But at this point I am guessing as to the standard for things, because so many of his ideas of what is edible, or rather, clean enough to be edible is to put it politely, quite "new" to me. From my knowledge, eating mold is not very good for you and sometimes is the cause of serious illness, depending on the variety - peanuts, for example. Parasites are not all that desireable to ingest. From what I've read, they are even suspected by some as being at least partially responsible for cancer.

He harvests incredible mushrooms, the likes of which I've never seen. All his food is delicious - I can't complain. But I screamed once when he gave me a mushroom to cut up that had a maggot in it. I got a bit of a lecture about nature, so yesterday when he brought in several incredible mushrooms of a size and weight never witnessed by me before, and which appeared like storybook mushrooms with polkadots in them, I obediently cut them in appropriate slices, although they were swarming (literally) with tiny spiders, ants and one other kind of bug. No joking. There were three types of tiny bigs. The polka-dots were big spots that were either bug eaten or slightly bad. But they had dried and weren't all that rotten or whatever. So I sliced these without too much disgust, or maybe ignoring the disgust. But one mushroom was a bit slimy on top and going kind of bad. It wasn't bad enough for Homayoun to get rid of it. All of these went onto drying racks and were put atop the wood stove to dry them. He said if the drying didn't stop the rotting then they would be thrown away after. The dirt on some of the mushrooms is minerals - why brush it off.

When we cleaned the pool/jacuzzi without jets the other day, nobody wanted to bother with the huge and disgusting cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. I insisted. How can you put your arms on the side of the pool, lay back and enjoy looking through the skylights, with huge cobwebs hanging down over you. I was also not to touch the dead plants that hung off the rock walls...

Nobody has a problem eating off the same spoon or cup as the others, and for the most part I don't either but it isn't something I really do totally readily...

Anyways, I just needed to get this all off my back!!!! It is still incredible here and the people are awesome in every other way. Homayoun is mostly awesome but I believe I will have to leave soon because he struggles with a bit of a temper and impatience which I am not dealing well with. We'll see...

Monday, November 14, 2011

I am sitting here in the pitch black again in the olive mill. This time on a log end on the floor by the cauldron that still has some heat in it from the fire we built today under the bucket full of mushed olives. We have the rest of the afternoon off since the olive oil extraction was a completely engrossing job that lasted past our normal break time. For the first time since being here, the sky was dark this morning and during the milling a storm broke out. Water was coming through the roof in some spots as the mill is really old. We cleaned up the channel around the millstones the others did some cleaning of the press, and readying of the cauldron. Then Homayoun started up the motor which turns two giant cone shaped pieces of granite, that revolve on a bed of rock, with a channel around the outside and brushes to sweep out the crushed ones. The motor is an old motorcycle, with an adapted front wheel that rides around on a belt to turn everything. Merlin loaded the sacks of olives in through the top and they fell down in the center of the two cones, which gradually crushed and due to the shape of the surface, pushed the crushed olives out to the edge to fall into the channel. Probably every city person would be surprised at the hygiene (or lack of it) involved in an operation like this. Homayoun has a different attitude towards dirt. In other words he co-exists with it nicely, as long as it is natural - out here in the middle of nowhere. Delia did sweep up the dust and leaves on the rough concrete floor while I scrubbed the channel with an old brush. Tom stood at the spout where the crushed stuff was coming out and helped pull it down the funnel to fill buckets, which were then passed off to Delia, me and Iacopo. We delivered them to Falker (or Vulcan, because some of us can't pronounce his name properly), who was up on top of the cauldron, stirring the bucket of crushed olives with his whole arm. This is necessary because you need to keep the olives on the edge and bottom from burning but impossible to tell what the temperature is all the time with an implement. These olives will still be cold-pressed. The optimum temperature at which to get the oil out is 30 degrees or something like that. (Non cold pressed means they heat it up way more). When this vat was full we filled another one, and started spreading small bucketfulls onto round hemp mats that Merlin and Tom brushed clean of the dried remains of previous crushings. Homayoun and Delia attempted to spread layer on layer of crushed warmed olives onto these mats, piling them up under a press (of 1910 vintage). After a bunch of layers, the juice started running out under pressure of the mats above, into a channel in bare, rough and not incredibly clean looking concrete, and out into a 45 gallon drum with a sieve on top. I think it is supposed to take 70 layers. I don't know how many we did. We added more cold crushed olives into the cauldron to keep it from overheating, as this process went along. When all the crushed ones were in, we all concentrated on layering the mats and by this time were hungry, so stuck some potatoes directly onto the coals below the cauldron. Homayoun went out for a bit and we dipped the roasted potatoes into the fresh oil. The oil separated out with water running off into another bucket.

As the storm went on, our light went off and on. There was enough natural light but it wasn't bright in here. Quite a few times I looked around at what seemed like a black and white image from a previous time in the past. The light was dim and everyone was dirty and working away with ancient looking equipment in an even more ancient building.

Anyways, I went and made pesto out of lemongrass, tarragon and basil, with oil made on the premises (not today's yet), and we ate it over steamed chestnuts.

I have never used a pressure cooker and am trying currently to get over Homayoun being impatient with me for not operating it properly. Hopefully I will be able to deal with him or recognise when I should leave here... I really want to get off the internet and go hang out with everyone playing music in the house.

Saturday, November 12, 2011


Today I feel the need to communicate with the outside world. It is 9:15 pm and it feels very late, as it always does here. Tonight it is just Tom, Iacopo, Merlin, Delia and I. The guys are improv-ing as they prepare their next joint. I really like these guys they are very sweet. They have a fresh lemon and sugar habit, using Homayoun's bread that is ever present at the end of the table. Merlin just went out with a flashlight to pick about 5 fresh lemons.

Now we are all making animal noises of all types as Tom plays some chords.

My work often involves being a monkey. I do acrobatics in trees.
There are several methods we use for harvesting the olives. Only one of them actually involves “picking”. The traditional way is to hit the tree with a pole, and collect the olives from a tarp below. We have done this only a little. Nowadays in commercial operations they don't use poles, they use mechanical shakers. The pole method can be rough on the olives and make them start letting out juice/oil before you are ready to press them. Generally harvests have to be stored for a few days at least (we've been laying them out in the upper floor of the house for a week) before you start up the mill (which we will be doing tomorrow). During this time, the oil can start oxidizing if they are already crushed.

We go to a tree and take anything good off the ground before starting. A lot of pruning has to be done, so we take the olives off the pruned branches, which of course is the easiest. Then we go and pick directly off the tree, which I believe is very rare. Normal olive groves are planted in rows and have nothing growing on the ground underneath – it is plowed with machinery. Very easy to harvest. We live in a wild spot. There are pines and oaks between the olives, and I don't know if there is any order to their planting. There is all manner of brush growing below them, including several varieties of terrible prickly things, thistles, wild lavender, mint. (All on steep hillsides).

I enjoy the tree climbing much more than the burning. We have done that several days now in the morning. It is hard work. Dragging cut branches or brush down and sometimes up steep hillsides to a bonfire. Sometimes we have to hack stuff up with these curved devil looking tools, like a mini-sicle. I have fortunately left that mostly for the others. The tools are also useful for dragging large piles of stuff, or getting it to roll down the hill, hopefully not on top of you, especially if it is full of prickles. I have been exhausted by the end of every morning and evening. I started learning to pace myself this morning. I can't throw large branches around, even though I may have been able to once. I nearly hurt my wrist and ended up wanting to cry. Homayoun is a totally awesome guy, but he can be quite strict. In other words he may be a hippy that smokes a lot of weed, but he believes in working hard, and doesn't appreciate people sitting around. I don't think he is going to be displeased with me but I tend to be sensitive to these things. Besides, my body doesn't wake up very fast in the morning, and after several days of hard work, even less. I enjoy this work more than the gardening at the other farm. That was worse, because it involved nearly all bending down and was fatal for the lower back. Also, a normal garden in a flat spot is just less interesting. If we take time to look up, we are looking across a valley at spectacular mountains. This morning after being slightly traumatised by nearly wrenching my wrist, I was happy to hear Tom singing away while he hacked at the trunks of olive trees in the distance.

Uli left this morning, and for her despedida Homayoun made deep fried mushoom caps, at 7:30 am. Picked by him the night before. They were truly amazing. There are quite a variety of wild mushrooms. We have them in stews for lunch sometimes. He cooks excellent food. The first spicy food I've had in Spain. Salads are like nothing I've ever had. All manner of strange greens picked on the premises. With a dressing of fig vinegar made also on the premise, from figs from the numerous enormous and twisted fig trees which you can walk under or could maybe live under, and oil, squeezed on the premises, garlic and tomatoes also of course grown here.

During the afternoon, I've been laying on the grass soaking up the sun. During the day it is like Vancouver in June or September – long sleeved t-shirt and light pants weather.

Tonight my job was cleaning the pool in the large sauna area, along with Merlin and Tom. I insisted on cleaning enormous and numerous cobwebs from the ceiling first, and then convinced the guys to do a decent job. The cobwebs were not simple ones – they were full of dust or rather, dirt, and loaded with dead bichos of all sorts. Cleaning the pool was not very straightforward, as there was a large and heavy bunch of boards with metal set on the bottom, which had to be moved around to get at the filth which was still an inch deep with water, and no hole to drain anything. The guys normally dive into another (filthy) pool out in the front of the house, after working. Nobody worries much about showering except me. I've gone 2 and 3 days without, but the last few days I've been showering. Except that I haven't used conditioner or even shampoo – just regular soap. Add that together with having to push your head under or through tree branches often, and you end up with some raunchy hair. Anyways, despite the guys saying that they didn't think it was really dirty and that the dirt in the countryside isn't really dirty, or "bad" dirt like in the city because it's all natural, we ended up doing a pretty decent job.

I have managed to at least clean the pillow case and my weekend job is to clean the blanket I am using for a bottom sheet. Hopefully Homayoun will not mind me using the washing machine – it is a large blanket. He is very into minimal energy usage and not wasting anything. Moreso than most other people I know. This is understandable considering that he is partly self-sufficient and off the grid.

Now it is the next day - I saved this in Open-Office last night and am posting it now. We work only part of the day Saturday and have Sundays off. I have little motivation to do anything. 

So far along with the work I have described, we have also harvested Carob (aggaroba) which is in big pods fallen to the ground, planted beans, collected walnuts, and this morning almonds, as well as undoing a fence and turning over the soil in one of the many beds in the terraced hillside. We have eaten fresh pomegranates, persimmons, and a small persimmon they call a kaki, which looks exactly the same. They have no resemblance at all to any persimmon I've tried out of a supermarket at home. The granadas (pomegranates) don't either, very much. Which is to say these fruits actually taste good here. Homayoun has given us fermented pomegranate juice. He has a still here as well, and saves scraps of fruit to throw into it. The buildings and rooms in the buildings are quite numerous. I am still finding new ones - some of which he has to show us, like the still, because it is normally closed. The still, semi-open kitchen for making vinegar or preserving olives, in the courtyard, the olive oil mill, and other parts of the house are ancient looking, with ancient looking equipment and tools. 

Also there are madroñas, a small fruit with spiky things that are soft. There is the odd tabacco plant, auto-seeded. Homayoun explained today at lunch that tobacco seeds are very small, and get caught in drops of water in clouds. These get turned into ice even. They get carried far away and deposited. We have not seen Diego for a few days, but he also imparted to us some pretty fantastic countryside knowledge. If you have a sliver from a chestnut or some such thing, you grab a horsefly by the hind legs and put it over the sliver and it will grab the sliver out. We weren't sure whether to believe him, but he seemed quite insistent.

I have adjusted so far quite well to the lack of cleanliness. I have said in the past that if I am pressed, I could live fine as long as there is hot water and a way of making hot drinks like tea. Mostly this has shown itself to be true. I use the squat toilet because everything is dirty anyways, and I am used to is from China. Here in this place it is cleaner than the other one. There is hot water for showers. I have gotten used to grotty dishes, and a filthy tea towel on which I wipe the odd grotty spoon before eating off it. I attempted to tell the boys not to leave their lemons and sugar all over the bread board. They made a valiant effort for a bit, but I don't think it's going to work.

The only thing I lack is time alone. That is actually a good thing because I prefer having enough people and needing to escape for peace and quiet than being lonely.

Monday, November 7, 2011

There is really no sense in getting on the internet after a day of work outside in a setting like this. Not much reason and not much motivation to do it. I couldn't care less what my friends on facebook are talking about; sorry guys, what I'm doing is more than enough to take my full attention every moment of the day. But I do want to write a quick note to say what I did today and Dehlia and me wanted to look up a recipe for soap (seeing as there are only a few tiny pieces to be found around this house full of people), and recipes for higochumbo, the fruit of a huge cactus that we harvested a bunch of today, after our morning olive picking.
Homayoun said that a lo mejor, the higochumbo aren't any good but we can make stuff out of them if we want.

Last night I managed to attach my castanets onto the hands of a rather large German dude, danced bulerias for them, and sang too.

Today we "milked" the olives off the branches - in Spanish they use the same word as for milking a cow. I tried to stay out of the way of Homayoun as he waved around a chainsaw on the end of a long stick, to prune several trees. We picked fallen ones off the ground, stripped the olives off the pruned branches and then climbed up to pick them off the tree. All of this happens on a steep slope, with stunning views, if you take time to look up for a moment. Diego, a visiting farmer from down the road who stayed over last night and got drunk along with some of the German guys, helped make a fire to burn the unwanted branches. Homayoun told us we'd be doing a lot of burning. The boys got to take a break from picking to just burn stuff this morning.

I can't believe our good luck to end up in this place. What happened was at the other farm when we got the very clear signal that we were not wanted around there any more (they were weird - we aren't sure what was wrong but there were several obvious possibilities), we sat upstairs on a rainy day with their pitifully slow internet and started making calls to different farms of interest that we found on the list. When we couldn't get ahold of any of interest or they didn't want workers at this time of year, we just started checking any in a warm part of Spain that would take 3 workers at once. This was the only one that had work and told us to come. The atmosphere in Pepi and Manolo's house was such that none of us felt we could stand to stay there another day.

This afternoon we were on another slope, below a tree loaded with granadas (pomegranates). We are doing it much more by hand than normally is done these days. People in Sevilla (besides telling me that picking olives was incredibly hard work and that I should by no means attempt to do it), told me that they shake the tree with a machine to make the olives fall, nowadays. They used to use a pole, but you have to do it carefully enough not to make the olives burst and start echar-ing their oil, and wreck the tree. Diego did a little bit of that with a pole in the morning. I don't think he was totally expert at it though. He is a mulero (a mule driver). While we were working this morning he heard his team coming somewhere in the distance - they come to find him even if he goes into town and doesn't leave them tied up, I guess. He also traps wild boar and has sheep and goats.

I ended up picking all the olives off one particularly loaded branch, which took some acrobatic work. Some was looking into the lowering sun, and the whole time was balancing on the end of a cut branch and hanging by my left hand, while stripping olives off with my right.

Anyways, Dehli has quit cracking walnuts and we are going to look at recipes. Bye for now.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Serrania de Ronda

I am in the oil mill. A brisk wind is blowing. This morning I've planted rows of beans and attempted a bit of cleaning. I am far away from everything.

My two hardy amigas have come here to the Serrania de Ronda with me from the Sierra de Aracena. So far we have survived slivers from chestnut shells, heavy weeding of completely overgrown onion and leek patches, lectures on "el Universo" and the Cosmos and directions on how to live our lives, according to our hostess in Cortegana, in the Sierra de Aracena. We have dealt with lost parakeets on the Triana bridge in Sevilla and failed attempts to find friends with whom to stay in the city after our hosts strong hints that we look for other WWOOFing (basically kicked us out).

Now we are high in the mountains near Ronda, with semi-tropical things growing around us despite the cold. I am in danger of losing myself to a different life, here. It is dirty, but most of that is tolerable.

Dehlia, me and her guitar shared the backseat with a sack of flour, potatoes, various large sausages that kept sliding behind my neck, jars of beans, 2 flats of beer, and other supplies that have to be stocked up on due to the remoteness.
It isn't the first time I've travelled on winding mountain roads with a driver holding an open can of beer in one hand (in the pouring rain this time, hoping the car could pass some muddy spots, and one spot where the river was nearly flowing over the "bridge"). The old white Mercedes didn't have much suspension left, and in the last few of the 50 km from Ronda, we lost the exhaust system completely; it was lying on the road behind us.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Homayoun has lived in various other countries including Afghanistan for several years, where he did medical work and converted from Catholicism to Islam. When he picked us up he was wearing his skullcap. Long hair (and more than a few wrinkles after all this time) belies his hippy years in the 70s as a tour bus operator. There was one bus that he filled with people and drove from Amsterdam to New Delhi. He is a German citizen, but has lived in Spain already for 30 years, if I remember correctly.

Homayoun told me the house was 1000 years old. I have my doubts that the actual house is, but apparently this property had Arab owners back in the days when they were still in Andalucia, which is more than 600 years ago. Probably some part of it is, and there have been very old tools found here. On the property there are peacocks, pomegranates, avocadoes, persimmons, mandarin and regular oranges, and a large crop of olives which we will be picking, and other fantastic things that I have forgotten or haven't gotten to explaining yet. He has had a grant from the government to replant trees on the property after a fire 15 years ago. He survives on very little, and uses everything carefully, though his huge table is stocked with various bowls of fruit, fresh baked bread, walnuts (from the tree, that we help crack), jars of preserves, chilli peppers in his own vinegar, all to be self-served at any time.

We don't use electricity if we can distinguish a black from a white thread. That also indicates what time we should get up in the morning. After dark there is a fire in the main house and a lantern attached to the bottle of butane. There is nothing else to do in the dark in the middle of nowhere, and when you have a mixture of guys from Germany, Italy and Scotland, with a guitar and flute and drums, what you do is hang out for hours around the table, grab a fork and tap on the various ash trays, the plates, knock walnuts together, grab a grubby salt shaker, and join in. Homayoun grows "Maria" (marijuana) which is available in what seems like unlimited supply to his very happy workers. The guys sing a lot of reggae with their own words - whatever happens to pop into their minds, it seems. Sadie joins in with background vocals. Dehlia and me do rhythm with every possible thing available.

Also here is a German woman with her baby of 9 months. She worked on the property years ago and has remained a friend of Homayoun, and has now come for a break from the rest of her family.

This morning Homayoun and Uli made bread in the wood burning oven in one of the several outbuildings. The oven fit more than 10 loaves, and was sealed with freshly mixed mud from a bucket, to keep the heat in. Dehlia helped removed the bread, spraying it with water as it came out.

The washroom is an out building which does contain toilets, of both the western and eastern kind. They flush only with a bucket of water poured down. There are some ornate metal Middle Eastern or Indian jugs for washing your left hand. There is almost no soap on the property. We have managed to find a few pieces, but in the kitchen, you just scrub things. Much of the day not a lot of light enters, though there is a skylight in the kitchen, so you can't really see the dirt. As far as oil, which gets on your hands when you cut yourself a piece of bread and paint it with olive oil using a paintbrush attached to the lid of a jar of oil (pressed on the property), and eat it without a plate... well, you can't really wash it off your hands so you just rub it in... hands, face; it's good for the skin.

The only real trouble is the bed. Dehlia (23, from Barcelona, and the only other person I have ever met who goes around singing Jose Merce songs, and is also able to do decent enough palmas for me to dance a Rondenas - I am in the area!) sleeps on the single bunk above. I share with Sadie (48, from Lyon, France, a lab technician of the type that tests your blood, and also our comic relief...with several years training in being a "clown" - more like expressing yourself with comedy, not the traditional one with a red nose). Today we gave the mattress some good beatings, and shook out the blankets which undoubtedly have not been washed for a while (this is not a hostel). Last night Sadie and I shared the bare mattress with several blankets over us. We had no pillows, and the wind came in a missing window in our door, covered by only a screen. Our room is really cute though - whitewash with bare wood - a sort of loft with a slanting wooden walkway up to it.

Here are more photos:
We are 10 km from Genalguacil.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

I am outside of the normal world.
Until yesterday I didn´t even have my bearings on where exactly I´d come to - what the road looked like coming in, or what the neighboring farms looked like, what was beyond the hills.
I have dreamed of hairy green pods with three brown things sticking out (chestnuts) and of weeds.
I feel very, very far from everything normal, closed into a small little world with practically no connection to the outside.
Luckily, Pepi and Manolo are pretty cool people, and the day after I arrived, Dehlia came from Barcelona (another WWOOFer). Our hosts are only about 6 years older than me, and share a lot of similar views on life. They have a 20 year old daughter that moved out of home about 2 days before I arrived.
Pepi and Manolo love their country life, and try to do as much as they can by hand, and use organic, and lower their impact on the environment.
They have 3 large gardens, a hillside which we are starting to clear (pulling out small shrubby things) so they can plant fruit trees. Although that will be under the existing oaks. They also have chickens and 2 ducks, several dogs, and 4 cats that sit on the other side of the kitchen window looking in at the stove on all the rainy days we´ve had, watching them cooking.

Most of the week was cold and cloudy with a fair bit of rain - I felt like I was pretty much at home having a Vancouver type of fall. These two don´t like to work outside in the rain, though, partly due to health problems, and so we would race for indoors if it started to rain on us. We canned tomatoes and made tomato sauce one day. They make their own bread, yoghurt and soap.

Sachiko came to visit Saturday morning and stayed over till this morning. They let her work with us for the morning weeding in exchange for staying. Friday and Saturday were beautiful. We walked to town along a narrow cobblestone road high on the hill, with Sachiko yesterday, and finally I´ve been able to appreciate this area.

It is cork and acorn oaks everywhere. The cork oaks have the trunks stripped every 10 years. They make an idyllically beautiful forest. It´s 1-2 km down a cobblestone road with mossy stone fences at the side, from the nearest village (Cortegana). At night there are extremely starry skies and nothing but the sounds of animals. A lot of bells on the sheep and goats (there are none on this farm).

Yesterday we only worked the morning and Manolo made a big lunch because we had guests. An older man and woman, not a couple - both unusual people - who brought cheese and wine and olives, and a lot of joking and life to the place, which is usually somewhat more serious. Pepi and Manolo have told us their difficulties making friends here. They both were born in Andalucia but grew up in Barcelona and so are quite northern in their thinking. Besides that, they are somewhat ¨counterculture¨ being organic farmers and eating healthy and thinking a bit more critically about life than most of their neighbours, who I am told are extremely traditional and closed minded here in the sierra. This pair were a naturopathic doctor and a lady who formerly worked in a hospital and used to drive an extremely expensive Mercedes very, very fast around these roads. That´s all I know about them, besides the fact that although they are Andaluz, they are very open, liberal and think differently.

So how it works is they knock on our doors at 8 am. We sit down for coffee or herbal tea, along with homemade toast and olive oil and tomatoes from the garden, or else butter (in slabs) and homemade fig or apple marmalade. Then when we are all ready, we go out to do one of the various chores I´ve mentioned. We come in again for coffee and a small snack in a couple hours, then work some more till about 2 or 2:30 pm. We get lunch and after that have siesta. They knock on our doors at about 5 or 5:30 or 6. We have tea and then go work some more till sunset. Dinner is around 10. We help get it ready and after it we hang around a bit or just go to bed. Showering seems not to happen too often. That is slightly difficult for me.

Everybody here knows more about flamenco than the average person. Their parents listened only to flamenco when they were young. Manolo for his part mentioned his rebel years where they would wear pointy shoes with some certain other type of clothes and would go down to such and such a street or plaza and do palmas.

Monday, October 24, 2011

This morning under dark clouds and pouring rain I desperately tried on various kinds of fashion outback and fake hiking boots, of cheap quality with P.R.C. on the label. I tried on lots of nice rubber boots too. Amazingly many of these boots almost fit and some fit good enough. Never happens at home.

Manuel had told me my feet would go loco in rubber boots, even though we are expecting it to rain a lot in the next while. So I tried desperately to think how I could put vaseline on a pair of thin leather fashion "hiking boots". Finally I found a shop that had better quality boots and after my second visit there, told the girl I was going to go work in the campo.

For the second time in Sevilla I was extremely happy - unjustifiably so. By 2:00 (the bewitching hour when the stores all close) I had a pair of really good work boots that basically fit, and a bag of other ugly clothing: a Shiyu "high quality fashionable clothing has the sleeve raincoat", a shiny burgundy waterproof hat from the same venerable purveyor (the "Chino") that made me feel like an older Asian lady, and a 2 Euro crappy red toque with crappier "diamond" thingys pasted all over the front.

I have spent since 2 running around putting stuff in my suitcase and cleaning up. Finally I am sitting here looking at the Giralda which looks 10 times more stunning in this weather, with this light. It if sunny now but there are a lot of big white puffy clouds.

It is surprising what a change of light can do to a landscape. I have never noticed it so dramatically before. Probably because Vancouver changes back and forth all the time, so you don't really get shocked after 6 months of nothing but blue sky with no clouds ever, like has just happened here. I have used my umbrella probably 3 times since January. But I do believe I am in for some rain and probably would be better off with a proper Traje de Agua than a number one fashionable has the sleeve raincoat. I am desperately wishing there were such a thing as a de-materialiser that could send my goretex jacket and MEC rainpants over here without bothering my mom to send them. Besides, I will need them tomorrow, and not 2 weeks from now. I could probably have done with thick wool socks, some sort of other jacket beside a pretty pink one or a black one with beads on it in a decorative pattern. Something like a Macinaw. Anyways, I have the absolute necessities - boots, 5E worth of work clothing and something for the rain.

Sunday, October 23, 2011







I saw Sachiko anteayer. As I was crossing the bridge to go to the studio, I stopped and Oscar poured me a glass of wine so I hung out for a bit and left the last day of my studio practice late. Afrooz came over for lentils and the last bit of pie. My suitcase is nearly packed again after hauling a load over to Sachiko's and emptying it into her suitcase to be stored there.

I go tomorrow afternoon. I called Manuel today to work out when to come and he said he'd be in Sevilla tomorrow for an appointment so to come back with him. So everything got put in motion.

I've e-mailed Ben to tell her the news.

It feels like a milestone. I don't know if it is.

17 years ago I had a premonition that I would one day be psychologically incapable of working. That is how I've felt over the last year. I have felt it building for a long time. In that premonition, I saw myself in Europe, going to the countryside to work on farms. There was a lot of fear in seeing this - fear of poverty; of actually being hungry and having no roof over my head. I have struggled with that all along. I have for a long time feared whether I would be able to make it in the world, mostly because I would become intolerant of it, in a way that I would not be able to override with my mind. That has also happened, to a large extent. Hence my last minute refusal of the English job. I am not even sure how to describe what I have been afraid of and what has bothered me so much about the normal world of work. About what one must do to survive in the mainstream working world. (Or even some alternative ones?)

Perhaps I should not say it yet, but I feel that something huge has shifted, the moment I sat on the hillside in Aracena and thought to myself that I have been trying to force myself to do types of work that I have felt terribly uncomfortable with, for all my working life. And that right now I cannot work with people - with the public. And during the day the decision slowly was made to go work in the countryside. Since then something has happened. It may be small, but there has been a crack made in the bitter screen through which I've seen the working world and my place in it - what I "must" do in it.

I even remember being in the house on 12th Avenue in Point Grey realising this, that long ago. It wasn't long after that I was in Europe, and ended the trip with no money, and my gut feeling was to stay in London, and just make a go of it - find a job as a waitress or whatever. Live abroad as long as I felt like it, perhaps travel more after a while.

There are some things in life which you just have to do. You cannot avoid them. During this trip now, I had a feeling I would end up in the countryside. I couldn't really bring myself to make the move, and had a feeling I would be forced to do it when the money ran out, and so here I am.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

You can't be depressed listening to Miles Davis. It also makes me feel like I am in control of my life, even though it has never, ever been more uncertain and more scary.
It is music from a time before the world went crazy. Jazz from the 60s - 80s; when there wasn't as much reason to be so completely disillusioned with North American society.

Saw Sachiko last night, going to see Afrooz/Sherie tomorrow (she is going to come over and paint the view from my balcony). Mara has left for Brazil, where she goes to a conference, and goes to make possible business contacts for her grandmother's aviation company. Mara is a hard nosed businesslady. I prefer her direct and almost brutal honesty and "in-command" nature to the sweet and lovely people I keep meeting in my life who then let me down by changing the nature of our relationship and letting me know in an backhand way. I dealt with her question "what is wrong with you?" and her "if you are worried about getting a job, why are you sitting there on the couch?" (which was like a kick, but I am laughing about it now), better than Maria's offering or half offering all kinds of different sewing jobs and being extremely excited about my shoemaking ideas and then advertising for seamstresses in front of my face and saying maybe she will get someone in Elda to make her shoes for her, and telling me to be like the pajaros of the field that Dios will look after and not worry! There could be quite a number of good reasons why she doesn't want to give me work, after talking so much about it, but I don't know what it is and I'm in a somewhat uncertain position in my life.

What I would love right now is to start doing some small jobs that pay, of the sort she could have give me, while working in the campo voluntariamente.

It is amazing what the right vitamins can do. I believe I am suffering from possible adrenal mal-functioning (non-optimal functioning). After only a couple days of taking iron and vitamin B, and trying to take more vitamin C (also supposed to be necessary) I am markedly better. Unfortunately, the problem takes months to a year to solve for good. Caffeine is a culprit, and due to lack of funds combined with distance to the only decent tea shop, I have cut caffeine out. That is except for chocolate. I drink hot chocolate all the time now. It has a lot of minerals. Pure unsweetened, organic powdered baking chocolate, mixed with honey. There is no other decent way to drink hot chocolate as far as I'm concerned, except for the Mexican tablets which I haven't seen here. Vitamin C tablets were expensive and it is quite a stretch to put 30 Euros that I already put on my card for vitamins, so I bought oranges. I couldn't find any in Triana that weren't sold in huge bags for a pittance: 2 kilos for 1.5 E (some were even cheaper). Today I juiced 6 oranges, and was thinking about doing two more.

I am avoiding getting off the couch and packing all my things in order to see what gets left in Sachiko's suitcase in her closet, and what might need to be passed off onto someone else.

Yesterday I bought two pairs of pants and two sweaters for 5 Euros at a second hand clothing/antique shop. Those two seem to be mixed here. Actually both pairs of pants and one of the sweaters are decent enough to be worn every day. They are my working with the goats/collecting castañas, or repairing fences clothing. The ladies in the store were listening to some kind of evangelical Christian church music which sounded like the Vineyard, but in Spanish. It was a little bit of a double take... chanting "Jesu Cristo, Jesu Cristo...!" like it was a rock concert or something.

I feel like my life is starting to make sense. I hope that is actually true and I am not some kind of an idiot, going off with zero money in my bank account to embark on some foolish hippy thing. But things all make sense now. This last nine months were so that I could just spend my savings and get that money out of the way. Money is a problem sometimes. It keeps you from doing stuff you should do; or genuinely want to do. I feel like my life is beginning now. I hope that is true. Maybe I am the stereotype that life begins at 40. Not very much that I have done till now has made much sense. Not in terms of taking my own life direction into my own hands and acting like what I really want matters.

At least I walk down the street like that now, if nothing else. I knew what I was coming here for. To learn the things that no school can teach. The things that are required to make it in life. School can give a piece of paper that says there is a lot of stuff crammed into your head. School cannot give you confidence, it cannot give you emotional stability, if cannot help you know yourself and follow your true desires or intuition. All of these things are necessary if you want to do anything in life other than sit in a desk working for someone else. That is what school teaches you - how to sit obediently in a desk, churning through someone else's ideas. (Some people manage to have those other qualities apart from school, but not me).

Anyways, I am only starting now, at this point in my time here, to learn these things. I am at the very beginning. This last while of living off my savings has been dead time (mostly). Now that things are scary and all my weird problems with life and work have to be faced, things are happening.

I went out with Oscar the other night. This is a person who works unbelievably hard, and thinks through things in a logical manner. In some ways that puts me off, but he might be different because I think his soul may be in tact, under all that, and the logic is not the only thing there. Besides, you can't leave what he left and blaze your own trail like he's done without some kind of thing beyond pure logic and sticking to what is safe.

Well, that is my life right now and you get everything that is in my mind, not sure if that is a good idea.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

All the toilet seats in Spain fall off.
I met a guy last night who is probably fairly well to do. He owns an entire building in the Arenal district and has just renovated it. Buildings here often have to be gutted. He had to take the floors out, and there were pictures of iron rods holding parts of the house up. If renovation work is going on on a building, you would be likely to see a grader (?) or backhoe actually right inside the building. They sometimes dig down below it too. The walls are left standing of course, because that is the valuable part.
This guy's building has spectacular Moorish style windows with mozaics around the edges and tiny pillars/columns, as well as ceramic knobs here and there on top of the roof. There were a ton of old and valuable tiles inside, which they attempted to save as much as they could.
He asked my advice about how to market it for rentals. He wants to find the market probably of foreigners who are on the move. Very flexible - could be rented for a month, 3 months or a year. And the prices he's thinking about are amazingly good for something as beautiful as what he's done. But that is normal for a rental here - 500E for a 1 bedroom place is possible.

I do not have a home like this. But I have a temporary home for a few more days or however long it will take me to gather my things up, that at least has something remotely pie-plate like. It was a flan or torte plate, or whatever these people over here like to make instead of pies. I had to use an olive oil bottle for a rolling pin, but did not have to substitute olive oil for anything in the actual pie - lol.
This mammoth pie is finishing in the oven right now. It has taken a long time because I only remember that 200 degrees is 400, but not sure about the rest.

Now I am going to go read The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Mara has the whole set. This definitely makes it more homey.
I have become friends with Faro. Probably because he is not a harassing kind of dog. Well, all dogs are harassing, but this one doesn't jump up or lick (except for the first time I came over, he licked. And he licked my plastic bag yesterday).

About the only thing he does is want food (like cheese, while I am getting my own) or want to be taken for walks. But he is an animal and I can't blame him for wanting cheese. I also doubt the sanity of keeping any large dog in an apartment. Sheep dogs, for heaven's sake, should be running around in huge open country. And people who keep huskies in Sevilla just make me mad. This is pure selfishness. The only other thing to deal with is him shaking himself, which might send hair and dust all over, but at least it is funny. Anyways, he is a constant source of amusement.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

My friend Bill went home to Vancouver and sent me an e-mail saying he was having culture shock.
It made me think about how used to life here I have become.
I have a long way to go before I have absorbed all of the things I'd like to from this culture, but there are some obvious ways in which I have become Spanish.

I stare at people. I ride my bike on the sidewalk. If a man looks at me, I haughtily walk past as though he doesn't exist. I turn around and look at people speaking English. I look people in the eye that pass me on the sidewalk. I don't watch where I'm going or if anyone is in front of me, but move slightly at the last minute. I walk really close to people.

I play a game with myself sometimes; I try to guess if someone is an extranjero, if they don't look obviously Spanish. Most of the time I can tell if someone is Spanish or not. Sometimes older Italian people look the same as Spanish. Some English people (like from England) look so extremely English - they have English features. I sometimes get English and German mixed up. I do this guessing when I am in the core of the downtown, as there are quite a lot of tourists there.

I never have to ask myself where a person is from if they are wearing a certain colour of red. It is common to wear red pants, and a blue shirt. There must be a dye made by a Sevillan company, or made by a Chinese company but only sold to factories that make clothes for Sevillans. This shade of red, I have only ever seen people wearing here, and it is relatively common. It is a striking, bright red. Men and women both wear pants and shoes that colour. I believe the people who wear these type of clothes are "pijos" (well to do, conservative, supposedly right wing, so I am told). They also wear khakis and polo shirts and sweaters tied around their necks. It has been in style to wear riding-type pants with tall boots around the city, as if they just stepped off a horse. Not super common, but the occasional woman a bit older than me, earlier this year. Very funny - very European. At home you can't judge a person quite so easily by what they wear.

Sometimes it is really easy to spot the foreigners: if they have really pasty skin along with blue eyes. There are occasional Spanish people who have very light skin, but there is something different about them. Or if they have blonde or light coloured hair and a shy look on their face. If they are looking down at the ground as they walk, rather than boldly staring at everyone passing. If they have a look on their face, even if you can't look directly at their eyes because they are not looking at the eyes of passers-by, that says, "Oh dear, I think people passing might be looking at me..." I saw a guy with a typically Anglo, uncomfortable look on his face. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was not Spanish. It was just a catch-all look of general discomfort in the face of other human beings in his vicinity. Self-consciousness, I suppose is the best way to describe it. At home I probably would not even notice someone with that kind of a look on their face, because I think it is pretty normal. I am sure I have had it many times, possibly chronically, in the past.

But not any more. Occasionally my face breaks, but I've generally become pretty assimilated here, into the way of doing things. Which means that your face has a look of almost haughtiness at times, but not quite. Other times you might be just purely existing and rather vulnerable, and passing people may be able to glimpse some deeper aspect of yourself, if they were so inclined to give a darn.
At home, you have to be so concerned about everything all the time. When you happen to come across another human being, you want to make sure that you don't bother them, that they know clearly that your intentions are not bad towards them. In general, your face must be guarded. But those things are not an issue here.
First of all, it doesn't matter what other people think, or if you are bothering them. Secondly, nobody is worried about anyone else's intentions, and nobody expects anybody to have any bad ones - at least not concerning interactions between strangers passing in the street. Nobody is really bothered by very much.

I don't know if you can possibly understand me. Many of these things you would not even realise exist until you live in another place. It is like being unaware that you live in the ocean if you are a fish, because you've never been outside of it.

I am not saying Anglo saxon customs or ways of being are all bad. I have met people here who have told me critical things about their ways and positive ones about their life abroad in London, for example.

On the street, Spanish (Andalucian, anyways) people start moving first without looking around them. When something comes up right in front of them, then they do what is necessary to not crash. We (before all the Chinese came to Vancouver and messed up or totally ignored our system) are aware from quite a distance, who is coming towards us on the sidewalk, and we subconsciously move so as to be sure to pass politely and carefully with the least bother to all parties concerned, so there are no sudden, last minute surprises when another human being appears out of nowhere, smack in front of you. This would make a truly Anglo person angry. It still makes me angry sometimes, if I am having a relapse.

The difference between Spanish and Chinese people in this regard is that if a Spanish person bumps into you, they always apologise in what feels like a genuine way.

It is such a pleasant, wonderful, lovely relief not to have to wear a helmet on a bike. And that wearing a skirt or men wearing a suit riding a bike is not out of the norm. And that nobody ever wears spandex or any other special biking clothing to ride a bike, unless they are on a trip to cross the entire country or something; unless they are biking as a sport.

I ride the bike on the sidewalk, sometimes through tables where people are eating. I feel guilt about this, but it is normal here. I also ride the wrong way down one way streets ALL the time, because it would be literally impossible not to.

There is much more to explain about how to comport yourself on a Sevillan street but I am staying up way too late, and already have probably adrenal exhaustion or something that I was just looking up because I am always too tired and lack sleep.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Sevilla is not normal. But I found a place that is. It has a few evergreen trees, kind of "forest"-like area, and is hilly - well is built on a hill.
Sevilla may be the most charming and beautiful city in the world, but it is flat and in the middle of the land, and only has a river going through it. Even Mara says the soil is weird here, and that's what she misses most about Madrid: the soil has substance there, and moss even grows.

I got up really early and caught a bus that only took a bit over an hour. I had been unable to make breakfast beforehand, so I ordered a mollete and two coffees in a bar high up on the hill. The jamon on my tomate, aceite and jamon mollete was not the usual. There was something special about it. The price also told me so.
I started seeing advertising about jamon on various buildings and soon remembered that Aracena is a special place for jamon, and that the pigs are brought up there eating acorns, giving the meat an amazing flavour and costing a lot more.
The whole idea was to do a sendero (hike/walk) through the forest. But I had not brought any directions so I climbed up the hill where I was told would be the tourist office. Then I had to check out the castle at the top. By the time I went down the hill to find the other tourist office which had maps, it was much later. I eventually found the trail, but had to walk out the highway a bit.

What can I say... no matter how great any city might be it kills your soul. I just might escape forever into the country.

In the morning it was sunny but cool enough to wear leggings under my skirt, and a summer jacket and scarf, which felt incredibly good sitting on a rock wall with sun hitting me. There were normal clouds in Aracena too. White, vague clouds, and later, big puffy ones. A smell of wood smoke, complete peace; nobody doing anything on a Sunday between 10 and 12. I sat glued to a spot by the church looking up the hill at the castle crying for desperate need of being in a place like this. Three little old men sat at quite a distance from each other, around me, just looking out at everything as well, nodding to each other a few times.

I could only walk an hour each way so as not to miss the bus back. But there was shade, just enough of it, unlike the areas south of Sevilla. I tried an acorn but it was bitter and despite it looking whole, there were bugs in it. Everything was cork and acorn oak with occasional olives and other bushes. The occasional horse was wandering around, and a herd of sheep.

In the town, walking up and down steep streets, there are views through narrow alleys of white buildings towards totally green hills (covered with pine or oak or other evergreens).
I am looking down at the green river with a cold wind blowing in the window. Below 30 degrees means you wear jeans. Sometimes you sweat for a while, but it might cool down later in the evening, for example, and you don't want to get cold.

Fado is partially curled up below me, while Mara has gone to work. He is very low key, and doesn't get in your face most of the time. He doesn't have to walk in my room and scratch himself. Although this morning, the first morning I am here with him alone, he came to my door when I got up, looking excited. Then lay on his cushion and looked at me out of the corner of his eye the entire time I was brushing my teeth and trying to generally make myself presentable enough to sit in my own living room.

I have now aided and abetted the exact thing that annoys me: dogs peeing on every corner of every building and every post or garbage can. I think Fado is looking at me because I actually volunteered to take him for a walk the other day. I believe this might be the first time in my life I have walked a dog. Their world is very interesting. No... in fact it is extremely dull, but interesting that they are interested in it. It is a world completely revolving around smells, most of them urine. It was quite a feat, that he managed to retain or keep producing enough of it to keep peeing on all the various things on which he wanted to leave his mark. Amazing.

This is one of the very few types of dogs I could possibly genuinely like. It is believed to be part border collie and that is why. He is bigger than they are but has the same hair and white and black. Mara found him on the doorstep of a church in Portugal and rescued him. Anyways he is really cute and makes me laugh. My understanding of how to deal with them is a bit stunted though... he came into the kitchen and started to eat from his bowl, and when I was going to leave, I wondered if I should leave the light on for him or not. It felt rude to turn the light off while he was in there!

I did a circle along the river and across and back over the two bridges on either side of us. I took Oscar by surprise, as he happened to look up as I was passing the door of El Faro on my way back. (This crazy woman who goes off to Lebrija and can't decide if she is staying in Sevilla has now gone and got a dog?!)

Monday, October 10, 2011

I have a better house than the Duquesa de Alba

 This is the view from my balcón. It's not the pee house.
I left there yesterday.

I ended up crying in Maria's shop in the morning. Teresa (Therese) took me for a walk later. Then I got a call back from Mara, at the last moment before she was due to leave. I was in Triana Saturday night and knew her ad was the same place I'd seen in June. I knew it would only be a temporary solution but called on the off-chance she might need a temporary solution too, which she did.

Teresa (a Parisian with almost no accent in Spanish, and a friend of Maria's) came with me to get the deal sorted out with Mara, and to be sure I was not getting into another bad place - to take care of me!

After she left me and I was crossing the bridge, I ran into Bill coming from the other side and he took me for a beer. Then he cancelled his guitar lesson for the evening and helped me get a taxi and move my stuff. And then took me for dinner near my new house. Equally as important as his muscle (getting my suitcases up to the 3rd floor), was his wit. There were irreverent comments of various types for a lady that would be unhygienic and then insult me, and a new flamenco nickname ("pee-foot") he threatened to give me.

I love Triana. I wanted to live here when I first arrived in January. There is a lot smaller of a section of it than of the main city, that is really nice, as far as old buildings. But in that area, and near Plaza Altozano, the Triana Bridge and the streets close to the river, it is really relaxing. Much more like a small town. I had left all my food in the pee house, to be retrieved today, because I couldn't organise everything super fast with Bill waiting, and also because I wanted a reason to return the next day so I could keep the key, until she had the deposit ready to return to me.

So I went for breakfast at an extremely low key, small bar tucked into a side street, but one I've been to before. Bar Vargas. It is pure Sevilla, Triana. Traditional. The man who runs and owns it is a genuine server. Businesslike but kind, and runs his simple establishment in a quality way. There are pictures or collections of all the important things on the wall: pins of all the hermandades of the Rocio (pilgrimage likened by Maria to the muslim one to Mecca - LOL!), a signed picture of Manolo Marin (great dancer now dead, whose studio door is just down the street), bullfighters and old pictures of the neighborhood.

Then I set out to see if my suitcase could be dry cleaned (no). So I came home and soaked it in the bathtub. Since I am so close to the Triana market, I got tomatoes and other essentials, and went to my favorite bakery in all of Sevilla to get a proper Gallega (bread with pointy ends, lots of holes inside). Since my olive oil (along with the food of lesser importance) was in the pee house until 6 pm when Mercedes agreed she could be there, on the way back from practicing I stopped in at Flores (a surname and an expensive, fancy shop) and put a small (250mL) bottle of expensive (6.85E) olive oil on my credit card.

There can't be anything as good as this. It tastes like you are eating the colour green. Similar to very young, very fresh, top quality green tea. I didn't eat it in a manner worthy of its grand origin and fancy shop. It got snorted and oinked down!

Mara seems really cool, and the only reason I wouldn't install myself permanently in this place and refuse to ever move anywhere else the rest of my life, is that she smokes and has a big dog with lots of hair. I can handle that until she/me finds another person/another place, but not to commit to living in the same space long term. As much as I might dearly love some of my friends who smoke, I could not live with them smoking while cooking in my space for a year. Same with dogs. At least this dog is a cool dog - a happy dog. But similarly - can't commit to share the couch with a dog, full time for a year. Anyways, I have one more day to be alone on the internet in a cool living room looking down on the sparkling river between typing one word and the next, at 1:30 am.

I spent several hours at Maria's shop tonight after grovelling down some more olive oil, avocado, Payoyo cheese and wine mixed with water and lemon juice. It was a strictly fun evening. I went to pick up my portatil (computer) which I'd left in her shop. We talked alone for quite a while (about subjects you might be surprised I would talk to someone I barely know, and completely in a foreign language), until a Turkish couple came in. They spoke excellent English but no Spanish. I translated, while he bargained hard and Maria made him some small concessions simply because he was Turkish and she was being nice and accomodating his cultural needs. This went on for quite a while, with the girl adding new things until they ended up with 90E worth of earrings. They were quite entertaining, and Maria was enjoying herself even though having to attempt to stick to her prices. It all ended with the guy offering cigarettes and making a funny Turkish gesture of respect for Maria.

Plaza de Toros


Puente de Triana, yellow building is El Faro, the bar Oscar runs.




At sunset, the sun on the stained glass window. I have THE best view in one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world.

The only wine below 5E at Flores was a mix of Tempranillo and Cabernet. I have not drunk a Cabernet for a very long time. It seems like some kind of sweet, syrupy thing beside the ubiquitous Rioja. There are really only two types of wine normally available in your average bar: Rioja and Ribera del Duoro. I am not with it enough to have things sorted out this good, but I think Tempranillo are often used in Rioja, Rioja being the region and Tempranillo the grape.

The wine tastes better at 2 am than it did at 4:30 this afternoon. It is made over here of course, which is why it is decent and mixed with something with enough... whatever...to tone it down. Still tastes like I'm eating sugar-ed berries. One would not really want to add sugar to fresh berries.

Anyways, if I don't get a job soon, I'll be drinking my credit card bottles of wine on the street corner.

Actually, this wine is WAY better than 90% of what I could get for even under $25 at home...

Goodnight

Saturday, October 8, 2011

No more motherly Andalucian ladies

Apparently I have a problem with my mente (mind) for which I should go see a doctor, because I am too fastidious. That is what Mercedes told me this morning. She is very perceptive. Not about that, but that I was not happy. I woke up this morning knowing that I could not continue living there, that I need to leave as soon as possible but thinking I'd probably have to somehow survive till the end of the month. She asked me what was wrong. How do you tell a nice lady your mom's age, in another language, in a different culture (in which you call someone "you" in a different way, in order to show more respect) that you are not comfortable in their home because they pee on the seat always (and do a little bit of number two as well), and don't flush the toilet and their kitchen stinks and their dishrags are always dirty (and of course that the cat was the straw that broke the camel's back)?

I have learned two important things: 1. Your gut reactions are not always going to lead you in the right direction, especially when you are in an unstable state. 2. Some people (probably a lot of people) do not understand how what they do could be seen as uncomfortable or unbearable for others: most people think they way they live or do things is normal. (I am one of those probably few people who thinks practically everything I do might be seen as unwelcome or disliked by others!) In this case it probably was necessary to actually say what was bothering me, in order to have us both understand that we would look for another place/another renter ASAP. Otherwise, it does no use at all to tell people what the real problem is, if you are not going to continue an important relationship with them.

I am also not right in the head because I am nervous or scared of so many things. I am abnormal because it bothers me to watch reporters yacking on and on, questioning elderly people about the trauma they experienced when their home was broken into and they were hit; the cameras gratuitously showing the poor crying old lady over and over. I am not normal because I don't want to see blood smeared all over a car from a death, on TV. I have something wrong with me because I cried when they were broadcasting Steve Jobs' speech to the graduates the other day. That is not normal.

On the other hand, last night Maria's suggestion that I see a therapist included a "no pasa nada". She kept insisting that it is normal to be not in a very stable state after some of the things that have happened to me, and that it is very important to take care of one's mind.

I have had it with motherly Andalucian ladies. I should not judge them all by the two that I have lived with. Maria is awesome. Her friends are probably great. Concha is cool. My friend Adela is cool. But it is the ones who are not very educated, but extremely confident and never ever question themselves, but like to tell younger women how to cook, how to wash clothes etc. Those exact same ones I believe I could learn a lot from, about how to believe in myself and carry myself as if I were a queen, and how dare anyone question me. But from a distance, thank you very much. Without their cats, their pee, and their cooking advice. I am way too North American to be absorbed into the household of an un-worldly-wise woman from this culture. I need my own space, even if it is small.