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.