Quarter Year

Veins of stone

by Mike

Who drew these lines across southern France, the lonely stone fences that melt in the woods, miles from homes, centuries from birth? This web holding trees to the floor of the forest, it twists and it crumbles, it picks itself up. Bordering paths that I’m sure are forgotten, they frame ruined houses which years ago burned. (more words and pictures)

Back to the olive farm

Mike carrying the kiwi branches. He hates kiwi trees now.

by Azure

This is long overdue and it won’t be very coherent, but this is the best recap I can do now…

When I got to the farm, Claude was the first person I saw. She was having a meeting with a guy from the Bio department and he was sort of checking up to make sure that her practices were on track with their standards. She wasn’t expecting me so early and had to put on her glasses to see who it was. When she realized it was me, she greeted me, not warmly, but as warm as she had ever been towards me. She directed me to Margarite’s house and as I was climbing the hill, I ran into Mike.

When we got to the apartment that we had shared the year before and that he was then inhabiting alone, it was a mess! There were dishes all around and he was obviously sleeping on the couch and had a “meditation station” on the floor, which consisted of a pile of blankets in front of the bathroom. The toilet seat was up and he ran around trying to tidy up, not unlike someone would do on a first date. He apologized for the mess and told me it was sort of his bachelor pad. I suppose this is really what Mike would do if he were single, you know, go crazy on honey tea and meditate on the floor a lot. (read more, I could lie and say there are awesome images here, but I won't, it is just a really long post)

The Shepherd

Jessie in blue, reigning.

by Mike

We visited a sheep farm high in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Jessie, a sharp Quebecoise expat, welcomed us and lead us down a slick, muddy path to a meadow where her flock was munching. I thought Jessie seemed like a nice woman, she was warm and interested in us. Their dog Harpo loped along smiling, but when the gate opened to the pasture he got low and serious, a well-honed worker.

All went well getting the sheep back up to the farm, except at the barn Harpo got sidetracked by a lamb when he should have been herding the main flock. Well. Jessie unleashed thunder, “HARPO! A PIED! A PIED!” It was an explosion of power, swift and pointed. Her veins bulged, her eyes narrowed, the whole valley would be startled. It was raw and pure power, there was no judgment attached that might make the dog – or a person – question whether she was right. The other wwoofers appeared to have seen this before, which is probably the reason they were on task the whole time. I was totally impressed. (more words & photos)

Let’s disgust you

All those pods are the eggs that were lined up inside the chicken, waiting to fully form. The pods you see are just yolk – the white and shell are last to form. Also pictured are the heart, gizzard, liver and some fat.

by Mike

I don’t know – maybe you aren’t as squeemish about those eggs, but I definitely don’t want to pop them in my mouth raw. Ew.

There was an attack! Yesterday, while we were cleaning out the chicken coop, I turned around to catch a dog with a mouthful of chicken. I chased him and he ran off, leaving the dying chicken on the walkway. (read more)

Peace in the sun, strength in the roots

by Mike

I don’t pay enough attention to a place’s ‘placeness,’ even though we travel so much, and quieting my monologue was powerful in letting me be present on the olive farm in Coaraze.

Here’s what’s there: Water on long grass that wets your shoes; dozens of bird songs from hundreds of birds; dry folds in the hazy valley; clay; upset chickens that sound like monsters; the echoing olive mill with its slick concrete floor; a shovelful of purple olives; sharp kiwi branch cuttings that sliced my arm; the cold and narrow aluminum ladder; greenish shadows of plants against the greenhouse plastic; scurrying spiders; dirt caking rotten tomatoes; the cold that descends when the sun drops behind the mountain at 4:30; honks that work their way up the valley’s tight corners ahead of the bus; barks from dogs down below calling to dogs farther on; the compounding smells of thousands of meals cooked in Marguerite’s kitchen, what became an average smell of food from this valley over 100 years; Claude’s cold fire; the jars and never-finished dishes in Claude’s cold kitchen; the peace of an olive tree in the sun; the strength of a deep-rooted sticker bush…

To know a place takes a while, and it takes attention, presence.

(one more photo)

Still Purple, Even Without Words

by Mike

My job was to prune every grape vine on the farm in Coaraze. Having all this time doing a task I understood pretty well, I decided to try something I called a “working meditation,” an effort at intense awareness while still doing my job.

I discovered that words are the vessels that allow my mind to wander. I kept having to remind myself, “No words,” and I’d be brought back to the vineyard from wherever I’d been thinking about.

These are pictures of grapes that didn’t get harvested last October. They were scattered at the feet of some vines.

(more photos)

How to ride a fox

by Mike

This is Amaya, proprietor of our current farmstay in St. Laurent de la Cabrerisse. She’s pretty rad. She does things we all wish we could do but are too self-conscious to pull off, like riding a fierce fox (above) or pooping under the dinner table during dessert, as she did last night (not pictured). This afternoon she managed to sneak a whole Coke and then spent the next hour running in circles screaming.

Amaya only speaks French and she speaks it better than we do, though I’ve been learning French for five times the length of her life. Occasionally she’ll bust out in a song she’s written.
“Do you want to hear my song? Do you want to hear my song?”
“Yeah! Let’s hear it!”
“Poulet poulet. That’s the song.”
“That was very nice!”

Amaya is friends with most people she meets, especially the old men in the courtyard who pass their days on the benches. They’re always happy to have her pulling on them, climbing on them or playing the guitar in the middle of the group. She’s quite a gutsy gal.

How I roll

by Mike

The first 10 days at the olive farm were my own private meditation retreat – Azure was still in the US and I had all the time to myself, except for when I was working and eating.

I would wake up before sunrise each day and put on some hot water for honey tea, which is my new favorite thing in the world. (Honey is the new sugar… er, the old sugar.) Then I’d write in my journal, meditate, make some breakfast, read, then work from about 8:30am to noon. Lunch was from noon to 1pm or so, then another meditation session, some more reading/writing and a nap. From 2-5 I worked again, then I had more time to read/write, more tea. At around 6 or so I would go into the main house and start a fire in the fireplace and Claude and I would talk and eat until around 8pm. At that point I would head back to my room, write a wrap up of the day, meditate and read until I fell asleep, usually before 9pm.

I learned SO MUCH in this time.

In the above photo (which was not staged for the blog, believe it or not) You can see all my body nourishment on the right, all my brain nourishment on the left, both culminating in the middle with my journal and my tea bowl (they drink tea out of bowls here). One book is “The Spiritual Emmerson,” which is so darn excellent that I can’t get through it because every paragraph is thick with insights. The other is the equally mind-blowing, “In Defense of Food,” (thank you Joanne!) which is my new bible. Needless to say, after reading that book, the nourishment on the right side of the table changed dramatically. Underneath that are “A Year in Provence,” which was almost unbearable, and “Against the Stream,” a Buddhist guide for people trying to live differently in the modern world (thank you Mathew!).

Next to my journal are two note books (one on top of the other). The smaller one is for random notes during the day – addresses and telephone numbers. The larger one was for new French words, but now I’m using it to take notes on sustainable living. In my journal I write about things I want to remember, things I’m trying to figure out, thoughts and feelings, etc. I write in red pen, always.

Also, there is a mini computer, which I didn’t really use, and a French-English dictionary that’s not very good.

On the right, for breakfast, is a baguette, some bread with grains, a tea cake, Camembert, marmalade and olive oil. There’s also water and tea. After reading “In Defense of Food” I switched to fruit, whole grained bread, olive oil and scrambled eggs with spinach (cooked in real butter), with honey tea (just honey with hot water) and water in the mornings.

That’s how I roll.

Cold Pictures From Coaraze

by Mike

I went for a frosty walk one frosty morning. Here are the frosty pictures. This is from the olive farm (the same one we worked on last year) above Nice.

These cold mornings tended to precede gorgeous days.

(more photos)

Misplaced Winter

by Mike

Claude looked younger in person than she did in my memory, though she assured me that she has, in fact, aged a lot in the last year. She cried on Christmas: her olives froze for the third time in the year, which meant that they’d be useless for jarring and therefore the harvest, and a large chunk of income, was lost. (What she learned while we were there, however, is that they might still be usable for some low-quality oil.)

This kind of winter has never happened before here: Margarite, 89 and living in the same room in which she was born, says the climate is changing. They were looking at the weather in Vancouver during the Olympics and saying, “We wish we’d had their winter.” This farm is on the French Riviera, need I remind you. There were a few toe-numbing mornings when I’d shuffle across my small room, peak out the window and see snowflakes tumbling through the olive leaves.

I told Margarite that maybe I should stop driving my car when I get back home. She looked confused. “I think driving is causing climate change.”
“Nahhh,” she said. Now I was the one that looked confused.
“Yeah, I think it is. It’s industry and chemicals in the air. The industrialized food chain as well.” I said.
“I don’t know…” she said.
“What do you think is making the weather so crazy?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it. But it’s changing.”

Made it!!!

Me and the Escort

by Azure

I got a late start from the Chateau and didn’t leave until noon. It was beautiful and sunny for the drive and in the car, it was actually a little too warm (this was a first). Being in a car versus a scooter made me more relaxed. Being warm, I didn’t think about the elements very much and having four wheels made it much more stable and I didn’t have to focus on every bend in the road. I suppose there was a sense of invincibility that went along with knowing I had food, water, and (since I had packed it) bedding from the Chateau. (read more)

Here’s the plan

I’m in Bangkok now (it’s hot) and Azure will be coming over in about a week. We’ll then fly directly to Bali, Indonesia, where we’ll spend at least a month, maybe two if we can get our visas extended. After that we fly back to Seattle via Bangkok on February 12. We’ll have a week or so at home, then head to France for Part II of the trip, as it worked well last year.

Enjoy!

Overwhelmed, Corsica, France

Azure gets her bearings in Corsican woods.

The stone walls aren’t ancient in my mind – that word reminds me of some movement of people, some civilization like Rome or Greece. I felt that these fences were the work of individuals who were living in the area and put them up for themselves. But I also doubt they’re prehistoric.

The sense I gather from them is that they’re expressions of people from a timeless era, of a pre-modern, non-progress-based time. They felt unconscious to me. Nietzsche wrote about how the ability to forget is the key to living in the present – you’re filled with wonder at the smallest things if they’re new to your consciousness. I don’t know if a circle-based time meant remembering everything or forgetting everything. Living in a circle, though, is definitely a more animalistic way of experiencing time, and that’s where these walls come from.

Anonymous in Les Tenieres, France

Three horses, one erased, Les Tenieres, France.

I spent four days on my scooter wandering this little region to the north of Tours, France, blown away by the access the scooter was giving me. When I pulled off the main highway onto this tiny road that might as well have been private, these two horses (and a third one erased) were just posing for me. I was realizing the dream of riding a scooter in the countryside with a nice camera and all the time in the world.

Nobody at home knows where I am; nobody here knows who I am.

Reading Winter Sunshine

2001
The night I returned home from three months in Paris I had a dream: I was arriving back in Paris and I said, “I’m back, I’m finally back.”

That winter I woke up in the evening, my roommates were gone for the break and I kept one room warm in the top of the house. Mine was the only light in the neighborhood. I would be awake the whole night, depressed, and during the day I’d sleep and I’d dream, “I’m back, I’m finally back.” I didn’t see daylight for a week.

But things got better, as they do, and I met a girl (read more)

Inspiring travel sites

A couple in their Pissos, France home

Bert Teunissen photographs people in their own kitchens and dining rooms in a series called “Domestic Landscapes.” The photos are gorgeous, shot inside by natural light, but they’re also uncomfortably intimate like we’re looking at the inside of a person’s skin, not just their kitchen. Most of the series are shot in Europe (it’s broken up by country on the website) but there’s one series from Japan during which I kept asking, “Why is he shooting these people at a restaurant?” I guess I’ve never been in a Japanese home….

I’ve spent a lot of time in people’s houses as well, but in the US I rarely come across a home that exhibits a personality’s corners the way Teunissen’s European homes do.

The other website I’ve been loving is the David Lynch Interview Project. The filmmaker has sent a team across the US to conduct four-minute interviews with locals and they talk on a variety of subjects, but often about themselves.

While window washing I’ve had a lot of four-minute conversations and though I don’t think such passing glances can give a full picture of a person’s life, it tells you what they want you to hear in four minutes.

We’ve had health care abroad.

If there is a god, then why do stupid things happen to smart people?

by Mike

Azure and I have had plenty of health care encounters abroad, so I thought I’d tell some of the fun stories about how we get treated when we leave our own country.

Chipped tooth, France 2001
I chipped my tooth biting into a sandwich (yep) and called a dentist recommended by a friend. (read more)

Here’re 20 tips for traveling Europe on the cheap (Dang that’s a lot of tips!)

You have to be pretty cheap to find places like this.

Y’all want to know about our finances anyway. I’ll keep it oblique so there’s still a sense of wonder and enchantment.

Az and I budgeted about 50 Euro per day for us as a couple this winter, which works out to about $1000 per person per month, not including airfare. We spend less traveling than we do at home.

Here’re 20 tips for traveling Europe on the cheap:
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Tip 1: Travel with a partner. Save on accommodation, split meals & taxis, free massages, share toothbrushes. AWWWwwww….. Stop paying strangers to hold hands while you walk through the park.

Tip 2: Learn the language. You’ll be closer to people’s hearts if you can communicate with them, and for that reason opportunities will knock. You’re also more likely understand when someone’s telling you about other/better options and it’s less daunting to get off the beaten path.

ACCOMMODATION
Tips 3-10: Spend as little as possible on accommodation. Unofficially, SEVENTY FIVE per cent of our daily budget went to accommodation when we were paying for it, in fact the price for a hotel room was sometimes so high that we would start the day over budget. Yucky! By spending one night in a free place we can halve the price of a night at a hotel.

And the math doesn’t lie: spend half as much and travel for twice as long.

There are a lot of ways to do it: Wwoof, Couch Surf, Servas, Global Freeloaders, Help Exchange, rent an apartment, stay in a hostel, stay in a pension, ask for a good price for a longer stay, offer to exchange services, visit places where you know people who would welcome you in their homes….

Tip 11: Stay in a place with access to a kitchen. So you can cook instead of eating out.

Tip 12: Get away from the tourist areas. The tourist areas attract money-obsessed locals (as is the case everywhere in the world). They’re good at business which means they’d punch their own mother to make a buck. Break the cycle of violence, try to deal mostly with businesses that don’t cater to tourists.

Tip 13: Rent/buy a scooter/car/bike. The more independent you are, the more options you have. Most of the places we stayed would have been next to impossible to find without our own transportation. It’s also possible to do this and save money on transportation, especially if you can buy & sell for the same price.

Tip 14: Stay in one place for a longer period of time. Develop a routine. You’ll learn what’s cheap, what’s a rip-off, where you can go for free. There will also be less urgency to experience everything before you have to run to your next destination.

Tip 15: Stay in one place for a longer period of time. Moving costs money. When you arrive in a new place you might need to take a taxi, to sit in a cafe to kill time, to stay in a too-expensive hotel because you didn’t plan well, etc. There are a lot of costs associated with changing places besides just wasting your precious time.

EATING
Tip 16: Buy your food from local markets. Some have the idea that it’s cheaper to eat crappy fast food, but in fact eating the absolute healthiest is the absolute cheapest: raw veggies, salad, pasta with tomato sauces, water from the tap. Our bodies & wallets love going vegetarian.

It’s hard to get past the pride of wanting to “eat bouillabaisse in Nice” just so you can say you did. But food doesn’t have to be your ego’s crutch every meal. Ordering vegetarian food in Thailand, one says, “Gin mung.” That means, “I eat like a monk.” We should eat more monk-like anyway.

Tip 17: Carry food staples with you. Have you ever been so hungry that you panicked and splurged on, say, two bottles of liquor for lunch? Oops! You’re less likely to repeat that classy performance if you have some snacks with you at all times. Our to-go bag includes jam, cheese and some fruit, olive oil, salt a bottle of water and some cutlery. To complete the meal we buy a fresh loaf of bread, some wine and a jar of Nutella, then picnic somewhere beautiful. See video below (it’s just 7 minutes of us eating in beautiful places. I won’t be offended if you skip it).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VThrBmX45FE&hl=en&fs=1&]

Tip 18: Eat at small local places if you do want to eat out. It’s best to ask locals where they go most often, as it’s usually a sign of good food at good prices. In France there’s almost always a plat du jour (daily special) which is the best deal.

Tip 19: Split meals. Our bodies & wallets love eating less.

GENERAL
Tip 20: Don’t buy crap you don’t need.

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An Ethnologist’s Take on Peasant Corsica

By Mike Goldstein

“Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica” is a beautifully written chronicle of Dorothy Carrington’s time in Corsica (which spanned decades). Even after the second world war Corsican peasants were living very much in the same way their ancestors had for centuries. In the following paragraphs Carrington, visiting from London, writes about her experiences living with a Corsican peasant family near Sartene.

“… I had not understood how far my daily load of anxiety was a craving for the things every peasant knows: space, silence, and food that is not stale. [expand title=(read more)]

“Yet this was man’s birthright, the world over, before landowners and employers got control of them and forced them, by threat of hunger, to labor all day long. [Native Americans] and other so-called savages lived like this before the Europeans took them in hand. The Corsicans may have missed many of the benefits of civilization, but they have also escaped its inhuman servitudes.”

When we were in Ajaccio there was a place selling pictures of old Corsicans. I asked if I could take pictures of the pictures and they said, “of course,” which seemed an odd answer to me considering it meant we wouldn’t actually buy them. Anyway, I regret that I don’t know who to credit for these photos.

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Bonifascinating!

Azure and I agreed that Bonifacio is one of the most spectacular cities we’ve visited – it’s built on a cliff that’s surrounded by water on 3.5 sides and it’s pretty much waiting to fall into the water, as you can see above. From Bonifacio you can see Sardegna, Corsica’s Italian sister to the South. Bonifacio is hundreds of years old, of course, and somewhere up here was found one of the oldest inhabitants of Corsica, a woman whose grave was dated to ~9000 years ago.

We found the town itself to be one of those annoying seasonal towns that’s a shell in the off-season, so there’s nothing to do, nothing that sustains people. Tourism keeps em going the rest of the year, of course, so when we were walking around the town our interactions felt uncomfortably artificial. We were much happier in Sartene where there was a university and some commerce and free wifi only half an hour away.