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.

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