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.

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.

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.

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.

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.