Preoccupation

Israel is a massive culture shock for me, coming from Europe, which i now see in comparison as liberal and almost limitless. More impactful than anywhere i've been so far, a challenge.
I'm staying in the street pictured, in the German Colony,when i'm in Jerusalem. It's the home of the friend who invited me to the country.
I've been introduced to a build site in the northern Jordan Valley,literally overlooking Jordan.A stunning landscape to wake up to and watch the sun set over. It's a small new Jewish settlement called Rotem, an ecological-intentional community of both religious and non religious. www.rotem-yahad.org
I'm working on finishing a spacious mudhouse for a family who want to move in within 3 months. They have already constructed several mud buildings on the site, and us volunteers use them to sleep and cook and relax in. We are right on the edge of the hill forming part of the West Bank.

This is the Other mudhouse up the road - i dont get to play with this one, shame!

I've seen herds of deer on the slopes below us, and gazelles. Birds accompany my mud plastering on ladder-top in the morning as they sing from the metal girders holding up the roof. Lights of the Arab villages on the valley floor opposite shimmer in the nightime, parallel to the bright starscape above. There are bees in the blue and magenta bushes of flowers, giant black millipedes, and zaatar grows all around. There is a plant on the hill called Rotem akin to the cayumba burnt for the chiscos of Spanish fiestas, and the perfume of their white flowers is strong in the wind. At the bottom i see spiky purple bushes, what are they? Do they fruit?

8 hours a day i rekindle a familiar pastime; wall staring. Camels will know what i mean. Its when you apply fresh plaster to a wall, or have to destroy bits of wall and prepare them for such activity, or then spend days retouching the plaster to get  it smooth and flat and level... Anyway im paying alot of attention to walls, trying to get them perfect, at least pleasing to the eye.

And this is very appropriate because i just found out that my course in Italy,in April, will be going ahead! The one entitled; Natural Finishes for Facilitators. It means i will be better equipped to teach people how to use lime and clay for their self builds. As part of receiving funding from the EU for my place, i promised to hold workshops across the lands,to disseminate the knowledge and inform a better practice among modern self builders. This is super exciting to me, ive been waiting all winter for confirmation, and it helps me imagine a potential livelihood and future path for myself.

Because coming to Israel hasnt turned out quite as id dreamed. Ive felt alternately,trapped, lost, extremely uncomfortable, unwanted, ashamed, bored, out of my element, foolish, overwhelmed...preoccupied. Id like to maintain an objectivity for this place, 'the Holy Land' which is so struggled over and sought after, riven. Except i believe what ive read on International solidarity websites and seen in documentaries about 'the Conflict'. I see the grey innocuous snake of the separation wall on the east side of mt. Scopus and the mt of Olives. I pass through checkpoints on the road. There are giant yellow metal gates not just at jewish settlement entrances but also villages on the west side of the green line, operated by soldiers in guard posts. The bus to Rotem is entirely patronised by teenage soldiers on their way to bases, all staring into smartphones with earphones in. Opposite the mudhouse i spend the days plastering, in the same frame as a childs swing and a garden thriving on greywater from the kitchen and solar shower, i see a tall wire fence partially surrounding the village.

I notice segregation, between Arab and Jew, between Orthodox and non Orthodox, between the nationalities Jews living here previously belonged to, between men and women in the synagogue.

In response, i yearn to hear different points of view, see behind and beyond the walls, to go where i am told it is dangerous.  Where are the projects that unite, and illustrate our similarities? That prevent, witness, or ameliorate the effects of atrocities?

And as usual,these more worthy streams of thought lie beneath my main preoccupation; that of my own personal relationships. Who loves me?  Why is my love so often unrequited these days? Am i truly loving.

Ode to the aerial

This is prompted by comedian Louie CK, who i was introduced to last night. I haven't ever bought a flight of my own, as an adult, and am usually the first to decry flying as a means of transport. However last week i did, and in communicating this someone bluntly upbraided me for my sinful action - what a reversal! Anyway, the flight was truly awe inspiring and i'm going to transcribe what i wrote from the plane window:

There is heaven, above the clouds. A frozen stampede, innumerable fluffy amorphous clumps like an Ice Age herd of migrating herbivores - the sky-herd; herd of herds. Heading, seemingly sunwards, past me and the passengers of this airplane.
Some isolated, others stacked up, toppling over one another in their hurry, tails petering out behind. Yet, a silent, unmoving tableau, somehow operatic, classical. Forms found in biblical paintings, those of ancient myth and pantheons.
Gilded water below, a luminous skin on a hot milky drink, again removed from its assumed real state - it looks dry, still. I see the ripples of waves and  their white crests, but....frozen.
Now, above an island; Sardinia? Clouds are tall, great columns here, blown out of first cumulus shape, casting huge shadows on a land of sinuous contours. Green fields, few towns. Who will look up at me?
The clouds are finite, concrete, palpable. Pompous, joyous, curious and gregarious. another plane trails to our right, slightly behind - we race, toys.
Sunlight illumines the nebulous gases, bright lines of the child's landscape we traverse.  Suddenly a scalloped coastline of shallow beaches, and an ultramarine pristine surface again
The island behind silhouetted in shape, gold sea sharply outlines.
On the southern horizon banks of cloud appear as Antartica, as glaciers, and icebergs.
Humans are amazing to have created this mode of travel, allowing such privileged perspectives.
A wispy plateau of white obscures the Tyrrhenian Sea. Even more opaque white on the ground; snow on Italy's mountains. Long arched viaducts, bridges. Topography is blatant, some trickery transmittable in 2D visual form. Water finding it's way, always spreading, diverging, the fractal of leaves.
All Greece is a blanket of pale, mix of cloud and ground, impenetrable.
Reaching Istanbul is the most dazzling sight: descending after twilight succumbed to true dark, upon a bejewelled kingly robe cast over the land. A myriad coloured lights, strewn baubles shimmering, the wealth of a history of empire. And I myself am from Ruby; making sense of my own name, a precious jewel. I set myself in the city.

Delia's new warehouse for her tiles and workshop machines - we spent last Friday helping her clear the old space

a new wwoofer friend taking advantage of her height

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picking lemons wow

orgva's twin church towers

sunset from the ridge above our finca

and us gawking over the other side

Respite in spontanaeity

Now i'm in Espagna. I left Portugal, and readily admit i felt the saudade, the pang of remorse for a country i've grown close to. I don't know why but there's a bias in me against Spain, something silly and teenagery, about not wanting to like what everyone else likes. The language is easy enough to pick up, just the basics, but with my 'pouco' of Portuguese im quite bewildered about pronouns and conjugating verbs.
 The day after xmas, after the epic flooding, i fled Nagodinho on a bus south, through Lisboa and ending in Faro. My parents both gave me some money for a xmas present, so i decided to use it on a holiday in civilised warm cities, paying for my accomodation in cheap hostels. A friend called Galia, met in Tamera, was in Faro, and we frolicked together in bars and markets, trying on shoes as though we hadnt spent 3 months on farms under layers of grime.
Another bus took us across the border to Sevilla, a city of indescribable grandeur, a marvel of architecture round every street corner. We ate delicious  tapas every day, we wandered and gawped, drank tinto de verrano in Triana quarter. In the Plaza Nuevo we fed one another a grape for each chime of midnight of the last night of 2013, danced the new year in then stuffed ourselves on churros and belgian waffes dunked in chocolate. It was sublime, such a relaxing break. My estimation of the advances we've made as a race in order to provide hot showers in most buildings has skyrocketed.
On New Years day i hitchhiked to Granada, first with a moroccan who bought me orange juice, who i spoke french too, and then with a catalunyan couple. It was a great confidence boost to me, im a little nervous to hitch alone in a foreign country. I was elated afterward. The aim was to reach my friend Jons friends house, as he was passing the holiday there, him and his brother and partner. I got to celebrate it with them all, make a new friend for myself, and feel safe in the company of known parties again. And in so doing, found my next place; here, La Granja.
It makes so much difference to have met the owner of this farm beforehand, that she is a friend of the woman i stayed with, Delia, who introduced me to her. Instead of turning up at an unknown place with no idea how it is.
There are quite a few of us here, wwoofers - 9 maybe. And half of us turned up this week, so we have the chance to get to know one another and create a community. We're also largely the same age, but one couple who have been at the farm for months is in their sixties, and awesomely inspiring - they live on their bicycles, and tour europe very summer. In the winters they occupy a campervan in New Zealand. Another encouraging individual cycled halfway here from Sweden. I had to leave my bike at Fundao in order to escape rapidly on public transport, and i regret it now. Im sad to have left it behind, especialy here where the weather is so much better.
The finca is down in a deep valley in the Alpujarras, so - south of the Sierra Nevada, you can see the snowy peaks from our place. The sun doesnt shine on us till 11am, but on the other side of the sierra lujar, or in Orgiva, the nearest town, its been boiling all day these weeks - bikini weather. WWOOFers all have their own self sufficient accomodation, which is strange to me - we are provided a brunch and lunch which we eat together, but otherwise we cook our own meals on our own fires and are separated. The plus side to this for me, is that the first time i my life i am living truly alone. And way out from the other 'casitas' too, at the bottom, by the rushing water, and under 3 trees: sprawling smooth fig, ancient gnarled olive, and soaring eucalyptus. The moon shines bright 4 days from full, through twisty horror film branches.
The work seems nothing compared to last month: 6 hours a day, with weekends completely off. And much reduced urgency, no stress to it - a much more sorted and established place. Wow. Ive been skivvying on the build of a hexagonal solar shower block, at the stage of sawing and fixing canas - canes - to fit each underside of the roof. Today we put up the plastic membrane, just before it started raining, lucky. Ive done some hefting of olive branches for the future wattle and daub walls, where we will use the grey sand and clay extracted from the asequia - the giant Moorish-made irrigation channels bringing water from the snowmelt up top. This grey clay - lauma or launa - is the topping of the flat pueblo casa roofs here too, edged in broad stones, sometimes made entirely of these stones atop rafters of chesnut or eucalyptus. The roofs step down the steep hillsides, everybodys roof terrace atop the next lowest house. All the casas really are limewashed white, standing out against the scrubby dull mountain vegetation.
My casita is tiny, with a gas cooker and woodburner, table, chair and bed. All to myself. Ive taken in commissions for baked goods, including gluten and sugar free cookies, made of almonds i crack from farm grown nutshells, and dates and carob - algaroba. Squishy and yummmmy. Its interesting to discover what routines i make for myself, by myself, just the daily chores. I wash up after every meal, sweep up every day, - i want to cook on the fire so the landowner lends me a pot that fits the top hole, which i take up to her house every morning, bring down every evening. I read every night, and while i eat my fresh fruity muesli in the morning. Normal things, that reassure me, that i allow myself to enjoy, to notice in their simplicity. On Sunday i finished sewing a pretty bag i started in Lisboa, just laid in the sun all afternoon sewing the trimmings by hand. Plunged into conversation with a woman who has a parallel journey to me - hummed along to a guitar playing strummer. I still give myself a hard time imagining i Should be running about doing everything there is to do: climb a peak, visit Beneficio the hippy village, draw draw draw.
And I've bought a ticket to fly to Israel...

Wintrospection

My little support trio have departed...we were Uli, a German horse lady, and Ola, Polish, who worked in zoos and on city farms with animals before, she's a Demeter, they both are. I miss them, even though we only spent 3 weeks together. Now there is a new wwoofer with me, and friends of the owner, a German family.
Its also xmas. But i dont care.
This place is trying me, testing me, and i want to get to the bottom of it. Im uncomfortable - physically because i sleep in a van and essentially live outdoors, and now it rains and is COLD. Mist envelopes us here atop the mountain, entrancing me. Everythings wet. We didnt bring wood in, so fires are hard to start.
Im uncomfortable working with animals, when i never have before and i feel untrained and unsupervised. Im comfortable with the owner of this place, who is negative and expects so much and doesnt acknowledge my hard work or pay heed to my concerns. This is the crux of it - i know i have been in her position, i know i have acted like her. I want to know how i can help her feel more positive, less despairing and alone, because thats what i would have liked, before, at the housing coop in Ipswich.
Im uncomfortable making a decision to fly to a hotter, more conflicted, country, when the prime reason is to be with someone whose company i enjoy. It feels like betraying myself. I am invited to Granada for New Year by one of my closest friends, i spend ages online looking up buses - this also an outmoded inappropriate option for me. I thought i would cycle back up through Europe, camping alone, visiting projects slowly, taking in the land bit by bit, in ergonomic chunks. I am preoccupied by this indecision, the crisis of the FOMO (fear of missing out), too much possibility within my reach. And whilst im in the middle of nowhere, avoiding the decadence of consumer xmas, my brain is still full of this old, modern thinking, which i would never have had the chance for if i hadnt been born in england, now, 2013, soon to be 2014.
Ive discovered i am workshy, at the same time as having enthusiasm for manual labour and challenges.
Today i went up into the forest to clear deadwood. After an hour of making up songs about water in its different aspects, i was in abject dragging-heels-mode, straining my ears to hear the lunch horn, hoping for relief. Do i need a holiday from my holiday? Embarassingly, in the afternoon Dina showed me how to take the goat herd up onto the high campo, where you sit with them munching grass and acorns until sundown. But 5 minutes after she left me with them they galloped off, out through the gate and back down into their stable - whilst running after them the umbrella specially modified for goatherders broke - and then in pursuit of stragglers i got shocked by an electric fence! Haha, im the worst goatherder ever.
I searched for and snapped off canas for the rest of the day, weaving them into the stock fence to stop future escapes. By goats, who were probably smirking at me.
A few days ago i almost had my nose broken by a horse wheeling in the darkness. At solstice me and Ola finished plastering upstairs in the straw bale house. Its done by hand and the lime, much wetter than what i call a normal mix, splatters into your face. The sand and clay we use in and on the walls is dug from the site, everything is done by hand, you have to switch on a generator down below if you need to use a power tool; its pretty backbreaking.
On the upside, the sunrises are breathtaking and empowering, and the evenings spent talking by the Baldur (woodburner), learning to knit, as much chocolate spread as i want...singing out over the landscape, much banter, visits to the olive press to fetch oil whose ingredient we picked ourselves, day-trips top the city eating pastel de nata de cerejeira, sharing a van with someone i can stay up talking with... All very satisfying and fulfilling. Simple. I am learning, Jim, just not what id expected...

Contrast parallels

For years i didnt understand the allure of mountains, didnt visit countries with mountains. Didnt understand what made us humans in awe of them, instead of the plains or gentle rolling hills, the tame east coast british seascape.
It´s the contrast of sky and land, how incredible that the earth can fill up our view, rear up to hide the fundament. We are small, and we have no power. Theres something about a dynamic between, or synthesis of, sky and land brought into sharp relief, makes it more itneresting, breathtaking. The energy it takes us also, to travel across these mnountains. Especiallymeon my bicycle...

And now im cominginto my addiction to travelling, the actual movement and transportation of my being, and its similar: to be in one environment one day, and in the matter of a few hours to be thrown intoa completely different paradigm. The contrast makes it exciting, i have an overview of the differences. I can see more clearly how i prefer to be, whichway is my way. Contrast seems remarkable, yet upon more reflection similarity is more important, and theres alot of it! Maybe there is more worth in paying attention to how similar things can be, between countries, genders, people, systems, that theres an attitudinal shift to be had to resolve conflicts. Hmm. Fromconcrete to abstract, now back again.

I am living halfway up oneof the southern foothills of the SerraEstrella. On a farm called Sitio do Nagodinho, which untilrecently had just 2 residents, now they are joined by a ´Belgian equipe´ of three, and 4 of us WWOOFers. There are horses, goats and chickensto look after here, less horticulture than im used to, and several houses to hurry and finish. The one we helpers are focussing on is in a state of urgency, a straw bale self build which isnt plastered yet - and November is supposedly the rainy month of Portugal. Its 2 storeys, and on the edge of a terrace, which makes plastering a challenge! We´re using cal - lime - mixed with sand simply dug from the ground at the top of the hill, as well as cob, using clay dug from lower down the hill. The limeis half theprice here than in UK, but you only seem to find NHL 5.We use shovels tomix it, and our hands to apply it, obviously under several layers of gloves. A very primitive set up.
And actually the residents here arent experts on these methods, and i find myself knowing more about it than they do, consulting - this makes me uncomfortable! Why? Its a simple osmosis of information...yet, theres a responsibility attached to knowledge, and i hope to be told what to do,to learn from a teacher. A matter of expectations being too rigid or fragile, and an indicator i dont practice what i preach regarding learning being a 2-way process. See one do one teach one? Its a loop, learn and teach can be a single verb, apprendre, aprendar.

Talkingof teaching, i received an ´Approval´ email fromthe UK national agency, saying i was successful in getting a Grundtvig grant to go on a course in April. Its in Italy with the pioneers of the natural building scene, ´Natural Finishes for Facilitators´, so, using lime and cob etc,perfect for me. But the course provider isntsure theres enoughparticipants to go ahead yet. More waiting and nailbiting! If it goes ahead, this will be an opportunity for me to learn a trade. I can travel offering workshops, courses,expertise in this field, to the projects i want to flourish; and we´re back to teaching again. There´s a confidence deficit here to iron out,i think. Anyway, imexcited about it!

The group here operates in another way to those ive observed and been part of; lunch is cooked by one person, as in the sameperson everyday, and that meal is eaten together. But evening meals are cooked anytime; singly, of leftovers or whatever you want,in a normaldomestic size kitchen with gas. The washingup rota changes every3 days, so youre on duty for intense periods! This disappointsme. Not sayingthe cook isntgood- the lunches are lovely! I hadnt realised how attached i am to eatingtogether, and sampling different peoples styles, and...yes getting applause for creating a beautiful meal when all are sitting at table. Cooking individually always strikesme as a bit studenty...vying for the hob, its just inefficient,right?

Itsvery cold here! Groundfrost every morning, our clay pond freezes. Im sleepingin a converted van with a woodburner, so actually night-times arefine,like being in asauna. But themornings,oh - 3 pairs of gloves, 2 leggings...Trees turn their leaves to gold here, not just the evergreen oaks andpine of the Alentejo. I want the sunshine back,please! What about spending winter in a warmplace? This is a cherry region,and there are various cerejeira-flavoured sweet delights; bolo d´arroz and pastel de nata. The market in Fundao is more faux Italian designer clothes, than old  hand tools.
Orion still rises in the east and sets in the west, but he and his fellows aremirrored by neon city lights across the valley below.

Another contrast; modern human civilisation vs being just another creature strugglingto survive in winter. Here i am not as closely connected to my finitude.

Renovation detail text box

Whilst here:

Ive helped cement up a cavity wall made of the light air-bricks - tejolo - that are ubiquitous in Portuguese construction nowadays. Suggested a plank could be used as a lintel, inbetween 2 concrete lintels. This is a hzbrid build of trad and modern amtierals! We used expanding foam to actually fix the window frame, the only one so far that cn be opened. Then we cement rendered around the window covering up the foam

Ive spent days digging a drainage along the rearside of the house, against the mountainside. AMon Toibin, and Four Tet, on the M3 plazer were isntrumental in my effort. I cut steps at the end, past the chimney. The pickaxe i used was too short, but he enchada, which i hated using at Tamera for cultivation, was perfect.

Measured up and laboriously cut to siye 3 itnernal bargeboards to fit around teh rafters, intended to exclude drafts. They may need augmenting to actually achieve that aim! DRawknives are the best, i love them.

Told the hosts about glass bottles as wall brighteneners, or even windows, an idea they now love and have gone for. So i cleaned LOADS of vinho verde blue bottles, attempted to set up a jig with an angle grinder to cut the bottles, which blew the machine up! The bottles were cut elsewhere and then glue gunned together with tin foil wrappers. Made cob for the glass bottle windows, and helped fit some of them with Judith.

Housekeeping: clearing the guest room, cooking meals, washing u, sweeping and mopping, wiping down tile walls, fetching water from the well for drinking, building and feeding fires to cook on and keep us warm at night, picking up and hefting firewood and building materials.

Distilled eucalzptus oil on a rocket stove, fermenting prickly pear leaves as additive for earthen plaster, picked and pickled olives, started sourdough and made quince jam.

Cutting to size and rehanging a door for the guest room, all by myself, including remaking a latch.

Today i swam in the river for the first time, sang into its broad vista under the moon, almost full, and used solar energy to finish my popper-pants, of which you will see more later!

Tchau!