For the past five weeks my life has been through a kind of smelter. And if one thing has been reinforced over the course of the adventure, it’s that I am wholly uncohabitable*. Solitude is my fresh air. Silence is my true love. Take them from me, and I soon begin to wonder why I’m alive. Yet would I change things if I knew what I know now? Would I have done it differently? I doubt it. Summer was long and generous this year, stretching over to the far side of September like a basking reptile. And this was fortunate, because we had a roof to put on. Roofs are never easy. The only ones I like dealing with are living roofs, because they’re nice and flat and earthy. This angular tiling lark, where you’re hanging on a sloping frame engaged in a battle of wills with tejas curvas? Nah. Not for me. Not for my knees either. So like a bandsaw-wielding knight, my neighbour Brian took up the gauntlet. He drove over the hills at some ungodly hour one morning with his sidekick Julia, and unloaded an improbable array of machinery. Suddenly my land was filled with scaffolding, tubes, saws, drills, bricks, a cement mixer (for limecrete, I hastily add), and the largest collection of angle-grinders the world of construction has ever seen. Not to mention dogs and horses (which were the best bit by far). My mornings, nay days, were not to be the same for a good five weeks. But sometimes you just have to suck it up, because a roof is going on, and time is of the essence. It was chaos. It was exhausting. But today I’m staring at that self-same roof, and admiring its subtle beauty. Yes, I am lucky and I know it. Good fortune can be a funny thing though, twisting this way and that like a greasy two-faced serpent, threatening to bite you at some indeterminate point. Hmm. More on that further down. Because although I was lucky, someone else wasn’t. Broken eggs It was a couple of weeks ago now that Gertie’s loss became apparent. And never have I felt so sorry for a bird. For over three weeks my least favourite hen sat on her nest, determined to hatch her chicks. But fate conspired against her, and the eggs didn’t open. It could have been the short cold snap in early September. Perhaps they were unfertilised. We’ll never know. But when after four weeks of waiting, one exploded in a stomach curdling mess, plastering the inside of the coop a sickening yellow, it became clear it wasn’t going to happen. Like most us when things go tits-up, Gertie the hen started her grief journey in denial. She sat and sat on her eggless nest, presumably waiting for a chick to rise from the ashes. Two days turned to three and four, and then early last week I spotted her leaving the coop, and making her way into the world again. She’s a different hen now though. Smaller. Quieter. And oddly, far more trusting of me than before. On one of our many hot, sun-drenched days, as Julia and I carried a few hundred foraged old roof tiles up the crag of my land, I spied Gertie the hen scurrying back to the coop, perhaps checking one more time if her eggs had manifested out of the straw. Stacking the curved terracotta scales on the rocks, I wondered why nature had been so cruel to her. Do we deserve our luck? As September inched forward, my roof grew and grew. A backbone appeared along the ridge. Then came the ribs, as joist after joist was hand-cut and bird-mouthed, creating a bone structure elegant enough to rival Grace Jones. Two skylights gave this new creature eyes. Ancient wood and new beams worked hand in hand. Brian slogged and slogged – I believe he hand-sawed for a week. Meanwhile I stomped cob and sculpted it into a circle, feeling marginally guilty. Soon the roof developed a taut layer of flesh as roofing boards slid over its skeleton. As the last board blocked out the sky, I entered my old barn and stared. It was then it rose from the deep, that greasy serpent of ‘good fortune’. Suddenly it all felt too much for a little mud hobbit woman. Did this antisocial, lonesome witch on a hill really deserve such magnificence? And how had it happened anyway? The whole thing was almost like magic, as though I’d drunk one of those potions that change you into the woman of your dreams, but with a series of disturbing side effects. I felt sick. I felt terror. Because surely I hadn't earned this roof. It was too good for me. That night I didn’t sleep, convinced something terrible was about to befall me. The cob coop Building the cob chicken coop felt like a kind of penance, a balance between giving and receiving. While my roof progressed, in turn I also slogged and slogged in the mud bath for my hens. I sawed door frames and engineered little portals. I poured a limecrete floor. Added bottle windows, roof beams, and finally cut the boards for the living roof. The chickens moved into their new home at the same time my barn roof grew a skin of terracotta scales. Were they enthusiastic? Hardly. As darkness stole up the rocky slopes that first evening, I had to pick my birds up one by one, and literally stuff them into their new highland abode. How out of sorts they were, huddling in confusion on the nesting balcony. They no longer knew who should go where, or which was the best spot. Nervously they peered this way and that, seemingly uncertain that this new chicken palace was an upgrade from their former wooden shack down the hill (and this despite the fact they now have split-level flooring, thick warm mud walls, and a chicken run big enough to actually run in). For the following three evenings they’d loiter lost by their downtown slum, seemingly unable to adapt to their new residence, until finally they began to accept that reality had changed. I studied their wrinkled pink faces but saw no trace of gratitude, nor guilt. They had no issue ‘deserving’ their new mud palace, because there is no concept of ‘deserving’ in Gaia’s kingdom. It’s a human invention, there to keep us little people in our place, while the CEOs and priests and dukes do what they like, and always find some justification for it. At the same time my own roof journey came to a conclusion. True to form, as the last tile was laid, I peered over the front gable to see dark clouds charging over the hilltops. The wind began to blow, bending the hazels this way and that. And then came the rain. It was a distillation of a dream coming true mixed with long-term fatigue, sensory overload, discombobulation, and the giddy terror that enters you when on the verge of success. Deserving luck No matter how “lucky” you are, you can and probably will suffer vertigo. When you’re stretching a long way out of your comfort zone, or trying to upgrade your life, you inevitably tread the slippery line where a dream can morph into a disappointment or a disaster. This is why people aim low. This is why we often don’t go for our dreams. Most of us are scared of heights, and like the hens, subconsciously believe we’ll be less happy with an adjustment, even if it’s an obvious upgrade. Resistance to change is fairly normal. Change is tiring. It requires adaptation and effort. But there’s more at play for us humans than that. Unlike the hens and Robin Redbreast and the Ash Tree, we have another cattle prod on our backs. It’s called morality, and with it comes the idea that we have to ‘deserve’ our luck. The word ‘deserve’ is as insidious as most of our other moral indictments. The English word deserve threads right back to the Latin deservire, meaning to be entitled to something because of good service. Those old Romans were maestros of enslavement devices, and thus like good little serfs we still subconsciously believe we have to serve and debase ourselves in order to have anything nice. Luck is a dubious gift in such a world. Thus history repeats itself on and on. We little people judge and blame each other, envy each other’s luck, and envisage the saddest, meanest, least inspiring realities where everyone loses. Meanwhile the string-pullers above laugh and laugh and laugh as they roll the dice with our futures. A Turkish Legacy Living in Turkey for 20 years broke down so many of my all-too British ideas of what I deserved, and how much pleasure I was allowed. When I first arrived in Antalya in 1997 I thought I had to work a horrible job all my life to get by, because that's what people did. I thought I had to live with someone too. I thought I needed a house with running water and power to survive. Earth plaster and chickens weren't even on my radar. The biggest chunk of our battles really is breaking out of the cages of our beliefs, most of which we're unaware of until something happens and discomfort is felt. I see how my mental scaffold is still there, albeit a lot more sparse than it used to be. And every time I remove a bit of it, along comes the vertigo. So today as I stare at my evolving barn, I choose (yet again) to throw this ‘deserving’ crap off the rafters, and raise the roof of my beliefs. We all deserve happiness and beauty and peace and joy and safety from aggression. We are humans. We were not made to be kept in boxes with some pseudo-digital reality pumped into our senses, nor were we born to graft 60 hours a week for some planet-devouring, inhumane multinational. We are a lot more valuable than that. But as with everything, ultimately it’s our story. It’s down to what we feel we deserve, what we believe we can have, and whether we are going to remain cowed little ‘good’ people hoping for a few crumbs to be thrown at us, or sovereign beings making our own worlds with like-minded people. May we all raise the roofs of our visions. May we all have beautiful, secure lives. *According to the Cambridge Dictionary and countless others, this is not a word. But it should be.
Much gratitude goes to my neighbour Brian for working his butt off for this roof all September, and going beyond the call of duty to make it original and special. I also want to thank Julia for her support and positive energy throughout. And last but definitely not leas, thank you to my dear Dad who lent me the money to get this done before winter. It was never going to happen otherwise. Do you enjoy these posts? Like most authors, I don’t earn enough from my books to sustain me. These words are a gift and come to you thanks to the generous support of the Mud Sustainers and everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. Have a closer look inside my world: If you enjoy my writing and would like to express that you want it to continue, please consider contributing. For the price of a newspaper, all mud patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my off-grid mud and stone project in Spain.
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Every day she cried. They were small, forlorn little warbles. I was surprised she didn’t put up more resistance to be honest, because she was always the most aggressive of the three. Neurotic in many ways. And I wasn’t doing it to be cruel. I felt for her. But it was a hopeless exercise, because she was crying for something that could never be. What Gertie wanted was to have little chicks. What she didn’t seem to understand was that her eggs were duds. Unfertilised. Devoid of the magic spark that could turn the small calcium carbonate cases into something holding life. So each day I took the eggs, hoping she would snap out of her broodiness until I made a bigger coop. But each day she just kept trying. And crying. And looking for her stolen egg. Despite the fact Gertie is my least favourite hen, my heart simply wasn’t hard enough. Sigh... Gertie, Frida, and Hilde are all very different in character, and they are lucky, not only because they live free-range on a beautiful mountain, but because their personalities work well together, like chilli, cumin, and salt. This means there’s little or no fighting, because they’re all pretty happy with their place. Hilde is the most sociable of the lot. Bottom of the pecking order, but top of my affection. She’s surviving on pure charm. Chatty and cheeky, she will happily sit in my arms and be stroked. The others use her as a kind of feathered minesweeper, sending her out first to investigate the forbidden zone of the kitchen, and leaving her on door duty at night. But Hilde doesn’t care, because she's one of those blessed souls who were born happy. Frida, on the other hand, is the zen hen, and the most intelligent, in my opinion. She’s the quietest and calmest, but by far the most adventurous, always last to enter the coop at night, dawdling evasively down to it each evening, determined to eke out a minute more of freedom. Frida is not really interested in politics or climbing the chicken status ladder, because she’d rather be striding out over the land, discovering new bug zones. I will often find her standing a short way from me, her large chicken eye rolling over me, pondering. “Who is this big caretaker? What’s her story? What does she do?” And then there’s Gertie. Hmph. I try not to dislike Gertie, because I know she’s just a hen and probably been traumatised by some mindless ignoramus of a “human.” But she is rather annoying. She scratched me badly on the first day, her talons digging deep into my forearm. Four months of excellent treatment have done infuriatingly little to increase her trust in humankind. Every time she sees me she puffs up her feathers and hisses. But who knows the underlying web of reasons? Perhaps a lifetime of thwarted brooding has turned her sour. So here we are. August is now closing, which means autumn must be waiting in the wings, and who knows what comes with it. The world is masked and mad (sort of The Durango Kid meets Dr Doom) with quarantine rules flipping so fast, and borders so tenuously open, you can find yourself stranded before you’ve even left your house. The southern half of Spain invaded the north because our Covid stats are (or were) low. The beaches are stuffed because the towns are boring. You can’t get a doctor’s / accountant’s / lawyer’s appointment for love nor money. My publisher closed down. And then in the midst of all this bedlam, my roof permit arrived! The barn gremlin must have enjoyed the notoriety of my last Earth Whispering tale. Sod it! All this time Gertie still kept crying for her eggs, relentlessly focused on her goal of motherhood. I looked at her, and then at my overflowing egg pile (because I just can’t keep up with the output). And then I said a quiet, “sod it,” because life is bonkers anyway. What difference will a few little chicks make to anything? “Hey, have you got five fertilised chicken eggs you can swap with me?” I sent a text to my neighbours up the road. The next day, I found a bag hanging on my gate with five muddy ova inside. Trotting up to the coop, I pushed them one by one under Gertie’s hot belly. Her eyes widened a little in happiness. She knew. And I chuckled because hey, as I always say, obstinacy will get you a long, long way in this world. And then all of a sudden the roof came come off. It happened so fast I could hardly take a breath. My big old barn - a structure built almost two centuries ago from the very limestone he squats upon, and that has survived the civil war, sheltered farmers, cows and refugees, and may well even remember Isabella II back in the 19th century - lost his head in two days. So the chicken coop had to be moved (with Gertie still in it, refusing to budge). Hillocks of tiles and beams and 20-year-old sheeps' wool have now transformed our little world, leaving my hens to clamber around them. Frida always casts a baffled glance at Gertie before striding off into the big green yonder, Hilde chit-chatting behind her. And I’m struck by the incredible array of what can only be described as personality in our world. Whether it’s trees, animals, humans or barns, we are all so beautifully quirky. Each of us different. Each of us unique. Each of us so utterly ourselves. How does life do that? I wonder. Something weird going on Many will say this is anthropomorphism of course, yet it isn’t simply a case of imposing our subconscious upon a blank slate of a world. Hilde does talk the most. Gertie is the only one who wants to be a mother. Frida is always the last back in the coop. These are objective facts illustrating clear individuality. But I’m aware I’m also bringing my own layers of experience and imagination to what I’m seeing, painting human faces I know onto chickens or huts. But there’s something much weirder going on, in my opinion. It’s as though the things I look at start to join in the game, exaggerating the very traits I project onto them. It’s a feedback loop. Hilde knows I like her the most, and just like the puffins on the Isle of Treffin, she plays up to it, sitting on the step, throwing me funny little looks in a way she never used to, and never does with anyone else. Frida too has become ever more Gandalf-like, standing stoically on her rock, studying me, asking the bigger questions (or at least doing a great job of appearing to). Even the barn is into it, his eccentricities now laid bare, he looks more gnome-like than ever. And because I see that character in him, I too work with it, enhance it, and highlight it. This myriad of character in the world around us is exactly why black and white rules, mindless administrative systems, the majority of 'education' facilities, and factory farms are so unnatural. There’s no place for personality within them. They can’t cope with the tiniest quirks, and actively seek to obliterate them. Unlike in the natural world, difference is the enemy. Yet simultaneously, this is why Gaia and questioning humans will always win in the end, (though for those that seem incapable of questioning, I'm not so sure). Because there’s something far more profound going on below the surface than the 3D world of tech and logic will ever understand. The soul of life is so creatively genius and untrappable, it has found a way around the rules before they’re even laid down. This is why I'm leaving a fat slab of the worry behind. The machine is only ever that. We, on the other hand, are both gods and their children simultaneously. Systems, robots, and old control mechanisms are no match for the intelligence and power of this planet; to think otherwise is sheer old school arrogance. Take a look around, Gaia is only just getting started here, and if we pause from fear long enough to hear her, she’ll tell us where to step next. Each of us is a cell in her body, a finger on her hand, a side of her personality, extraordinarily and unpredictably unique, and thus impossible to second guess. Good luck old paradigm, I say. You’re going to need it, because life is moving far beyond you right now. Do you enjoy these posts?
Like most authors, I don’t earn enough from my books to sustain me. These writings come to you thanks to the generous support of everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. Have a closer look inside my world: If you enjoy my writing and would like to express that you want it to continue, please consider contributing. For the price of a newspaper, all mud patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my off-grid mud and stone project in Spain. I’ve been waiting for a building permit for almost a year now. The speed of the bureaucracy stuns even me. I’m not an especially stoic individual but when it comes to paperwork, years of facing off mindless pencil pushers have hardened me into a mud diamond of obstinacy. Nonetheless, the sheer dogged incompetence of the system makes me blink. But let me not rant. There’s so much of that going on. Let me take you to another place, beyond ideological pugilism. Because whatever the reason, waiting is perhaps one of the most underrated pastimes we humans undertake. Each moment so full it holds worlds within it. Each drop of life so delicious, so unique, so vital. When minutes expand into days, suns set beneath a gaze, and stars blink one-by-one into being. So I’ve been waiting. And when the irritation creeps in, I take a short walk down to the rocky side of my land, where the ash tree feels the sky and glowing hunks of limestone gather. As I sit there – leaves rustling overhead, insects whirring in the grass – I feel my impatient mind soften. Slowly that Other World stretches out of the dirt. The spirits of the land waft out from the crevices, and something somewhere begins to sing. Waiting. For a permit. So while I sit here twiddling my thumbs, let me give you a quick tour of the very structure the permit is for. It’s an old Asturian barn, and its stone walls are fat and undulating, well-sunken by now into the mountainside they were dug from, as squat and affable as gnomes. The roof literally hangs on by a thread. A wire is tethered to the main beam, and wrapped around another ash tree to prevent the thing from sliding off! The roof is covered in a flaky skin of tiles, all warped and mottled by the weather, and held in place by rocks. It is, for all intents and purposes, a death trap. Yet having seen a fair few of these ancient stone cabañas by now, I know it will sit there for a good year or two more. The thing is welded together by habit. It’s a stony dragon with terracotta scales, clinging to life and form as anything else does. Is it waiting for the permit too? Waiting. Waiting. From autumn to winter, when the winds howled through it. And from winter to spring, when the rains pummeled it. A wren family and a finch family moved in, nesting in the dusty old eaves. Lizards and mice have roamed aplenty too. Other mammals wander in and out, some clearly quite large, judging by the poop parcels they leave. My wait is their opportunity. More things happen while I tarry. Bathrooms complete. Bedrooms turn cosier and prettier. Kitchens become fully functioning. And imaginations find the time and place to plant seeds. I have sat in that old barn a hundred times or more now, ideas popping open like boxes of treasure. Secret staircases, curvy cob walls, glass partitions, skylights, and split levels all wander in and out of the lobby of my mind until they eventually find their place in the barn and settle. Colours and textures wash the walls. Glass, clay, wood, and stone take their seats. My mind’s eye twitches. My heart flutters. It may take two years. It may take more. Who cares? I’m already living it. But that’s not all that happens while I bide the passing of the months. Other beings walk in and out as the land herself has her say. You see, my cabañas were built from the very limestone I’m standing on. They are as much a part of the terrain as the ash tree. And those rocks grow louder now, despite the efforts of the ever-growing pasture to drown them out. Limestone is one of the most plentiful rock types on the planet (which is one reason why working with lime itself is so sustainable). It’s a beautiful rock form blessed with many interesting properties, also called “poor man’s marble.” The word limelight comes from old stage lighting which used cylinders of lime, because this rock is almost luminous. When dusk falls, limestone begins to glow a curious iridescent white. It is at this time each evening I circle the land and listen. The Old Celtic Spirits Not many folk know about Asturias. Fewer still are concerned with her spirits. It’s a very different region of Spain, along with her sister Galicia, formerly Celtic. Just as with Ireland and Scotland, mythical beings are embedded in the dirt itself. They wander the forests and bathe in the rivers. The stories and legends are locked in the caves and gullies, where village folk still whisper of fairy goddesses (xana), dragons (cuelebre), and a funny little being called el trasgu. The trasgu is a kind of gremlin. Or is he an imp? Or a leprechaun? He’s a short chap with a red hat and, for some reason, a hole in his left hand. His haunt is human homes, where he’s always looking for fun. The trasgu is a bit of nuisance to be honest. If you’ve ever wondered where all your left socks are going, it’s not in fact because of a wormhole in the back of your washing machine sucking them all to the Delta Quadrant; it’s the trasgu. He’s the one stealing your pens and hair bands too. Your car keys that you know you left on that hook, but have now incomprehensibly vanished? The trasgu. El trasgu is basically harmless, and Asturians are quite fond of him. He’s a pagan symbol of chaos, a reminder that no matter how tightly you plan things, there will be disruptions and delays. His likeable character is a suggestion to make peace with disorder, and see the funny side of our human plans going awry. To take ourselves and our agendas less seriously. So with all this in mind, I begin to wonder about the trasgu of my barn. And I remember how the little stone chicken coop that became my bedroom seemed to talk to me, how it seemed to possess a kind of personality. Collecting my visions and plans from the building, I put them gently back inside me. Then I enter the old barn once more, inhaling the peaty aroma of decades-old sheep manure. My head almost scrapes the original wattle canopy that separates one floor from another. Cobwebs and dust flutter down. “You need to clean the top out first,” the old barn mutters. “Why haven’t you done that? You don’t even know what’s there!” I nod. I’ve heard this before, and done nothing about it, because getting up onto the second floor looks pretty lethal. But can a building really speak? Surely it’s nonsense to suggest a bunch of rocks have some kind of soul. There’s no brain, no cortex, no ability even to control its fate in any way. A barn is a passive thing, not a living being, right? Yet I’m still waiting, aren’t I? Waiting for permission to move in, very obviously not in control either, very clearly as stuck as the stones. Suddenly I sense the fingerwork of el trasgu here, reminding me that this barn has been here far longer than I. It was built by the ancestors of this land, quarried by hand from the rock it sits upon, passed from father to son, father to son, until one day one became a political man of the town with no use for a dilapidated outbuilding on a hill. El trasgu reminds me that the idea that things are ‘objects’ for us to act upon is a modern illness, and that in Gaia’s landscape everything is acting upon everything else, that everything has a personality in its own kind of way, rocks included, and that all strive to maintain their integrity. He reminds me that everything has a history, too. A lineage, and a story. That these myths and legends are absorbed into the very fibres of existence. That there is a mysterious crossover between our imaginations and our dwellings, where nonphysical ideas and entities embed themselves into physical structures, perhaps for centuries or more. I recognise the relationship. I see we are in this together. Me and the barn. So I log it all here in the Earth Whispering blog, and wonder what I’ll think a year from now. Then I shut the laptop lid, and walk down the hill. It’s hot today. Baking. I go to refill the chickens’ water bowl. And then I see it in the grass just by the barn door – a beautiful green-blue snake. It takes one look at me and wriggles off straight into the barn, hiding in the darkness and the stones. I chuckle, because I realise I heard correctly. El trasgu is definitely here. Do you enjoy these posts?
Like most authors, I don’t earn enough from my books to sustain me, or even this website! These writings come to you thanks to the generous support of everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. Have a closer look inside my world: If you enjoy my writing and would like to express that you want it to continue, please consider contributing. For the price of a newspaper, all mud patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my off-grid mud and stone project in Spain. Bruno came to stay a while back. Such a handsome dog he was, with long caramel fur and gleaming teeth. He had been rescued, or rescued himself, depending on how you look at it. For his entire life (three years) he’d been tethered to a chain under a granary. Not a great start. But sometimes you can see a soul is determined to create a better life for themselves. They are smart, likeable, and eager to learn. There is a certain willpower. They go for it. When the local animal rescue folks found Bruno a foster home with my friend Lonneke, he went for it. Bruno needed a proper home, though. It wasn’t the right time, and I knew it. Even so, I could see the effort he was making, and how snugably gorgeous he was. Soon enough the Atlantic coast of Spain squirmed out of lockdown, and into yet another strange reality imvolving plenty of face masks and hand sanitiser. My land squirmed with it, over the border of spring and into summer. It was a glutinous time. Slugs and snails marched duly out from the underside of many things in Hitchcockian pestilence. My saucepans filled with them every night. Even cheese-graters weren’t exempt. On one of those slimy days, I bundled Bruno into my car and decided to give him a try. Sometimes when destiny calls, there is a certain click. A cosmic cog turns, and the right thing falls in the right place at the right time. This wasn’t one of those times. The week Bruno turned up, my land, mysterious being that she is, pulled her usual guest-welcoming stunt. The sky disintegrated, the temperature collapsed, and suddenly our world was blended into an unappetising gazpacho of fog-rain. She often does this when a newcomer turns up, refusing to reveal her better side until she’s seen a bit of commitment. I opened the boot of my car and lifted Bruno out. His face fell as soon as his paws hit the dirt. His thoughts were as clear as the thickening mud. “She has brought me to hell. This is the place bad dogs go. I’m not a bad dog.” He stayed the night, refusing to approach the cushion I’d bought him, ticks crawling out of him and onto my floor. I scratched a lot. He sighed a lot. Neither of us slept. The next day, the only time Bruno smiled was when he saw my chickens. Yeees. I could see I needed stronger fences, gates, and a kennel for him to shelter in. The weight of it all sapped my enthusiasm. My infrastructure wasn’t up to it. My energy wasn’t up to it. I simply didn’t want to. And that’s the fact of the matter. “Oh you can’t take a dog from obligation, it never works. We need to live with lovers,” said a friend of mine when I explained my dilemma. How true this is. If there is love, then it’s easy. If not, it’s just a burden. So I said no to Bruno. Not the right dog. Not the right time. And as soon as he left I could feel how ‘right’ that decision was. He jumped for joy when he arrived back at Lonneke’s house. The relief and release of a tepid deal for both of us was palpable. It formed a magic cloud of higher expectation that expanded in the air. Somewhere in the Otherworld above, below, and beyond this one, our intentions met another one. A new reality was conceived. Within a week someone else adopted Bruno. I knew they were going to. Because Bruno was going for it. Time rolled on. Summer strode in without even knocking, the skies solidifying into a hot belt of azure. I hit the beach. I ate ice cream. June appeared, and along with it came Alice. It was an overcast afternoon when I first heard a galumph and the unmistakable pat-pat-pat of a tail banging the ground. Peering outside my kitchen hut, I groaned. There inside my gate was a dog. A big, too skinny, not particularly pretty mastiff. She was covered in army camouflage stripes too, which didn’t help her cause. I closed my eyes. No, not now. I don’t want a damn dog! I did my best to shoo her off, and pushed her outside the gate. She just nuzzled me affectionately and hid in the undergrowth, holding out for a change of mood. By twilight, I felt so sorry for her, I fed her, noticing her lack of dog-appetite. Perhaps she was ill. I called her Alice. The name wandered in from the wonderland of the hazel woods she appeared from, and it settled onto her like a garland. The moon was a grapefruit that night, and as I tossed and turned in my mud-clad bedroom, I could hear Alice patrolling the hills, woofing and chasing. She was made for these highlands, and unlike Bruno, wasn’t afraid of them in the slightest. The next day Alice ate at my heart like the smartest of her kind. She didn’t bother the chickens, nor wreck my garden, and learned to sit. She was easy. Again my land, mysterious being that she is, pulled over a veil of mist. The rain sank in, and we were pinned to the inside. Alice took one look at the cushion I’d bought for Bruno, and curled up happily on it. I sighed. This was the right dog, but the wrong time. Timing is everything, and waiting for the right moment is more valuable than people think. Try to yank a chick out of an egg before it’s developed and it will die. Pluck your seedlings before they have matured and you wreck your future harvest. Gaia’s time-space continuum is dotted with conception points and flowering points. Stretching between these two reality banks is a temporal bridge, a crucible where ideas, energy, and matter merge and fuse and melt into something utterly new. There’s no hurrying it. It was the wrong time. But I had fallen in love with Alice, which was in itself a mystery. Why fall for this big stripy mastiff, yet not for cutesy Bruno? I couldn’t work it out. But love is love. So I ignored the timing, bought her a lead, food, and wood for a kennel. She’d been with me for three days when her owner turned up and took her away, in a van conspicuously stuffed with dog food. Apparently Alice was supposed to be tending cows on the hilltops yonder and had run away. As I helped lift her into her “owner’s” van, this time I didn’t feel relieved at all. I felt bereft. Now I suspect as always with dogs and children and everything else, there could be a mountain of judgement. I shouldn’t have given her back. Or I shouldn’t care about the time, the dog is suffering. I should hate the owner because he’s “guilty” and “bad” and Alice is “innocent” and “good”. I should tell him off, wage a war against him, etc. But we all live in our own moral realities, and I’ve long stepped away from any perceived high ground. Finger-wagging and righteousness are an outdated human game. Very Old Testament, to be honest. As a lifelong educator, I know just how ineffective blame and shame are at transforming anything or anyone (take a look at the world if you’re in doubt about that). Hard as it is, I do my best to avoid basing my actions on the energy of “right” versus “wrong”. Alice left because it wasn’t the right time. If it had been, she’d still be here. There are three viewpoints involved. Three souls: mine, Alice’s, and the owner’s. Three intentions. Three energies. And they are still fusing in the collision, being boiled down or up into the potion that makes magic happen. The alchemy is in process, but there’s no certainty what will emerge or when. That’s creativity for you. As Alice and her “owner” trundled up the hill, I trudged heavy-hearted up to my old tree to watch the gloaming. The clouds turned the colour of ash, while the sky became an orange fire that burned the peaks cinder black. I felt the stalwart power of the tree, holding her ground as the day disappeared from the face of the Earth and into the pit of night. From way up there or here, I saw the world jumping off its own crumbling embankment too, a billion viewpoints thrown in the cauldron of the now. A meltdown. Everyone pitting themselves against everyone else, thrashing and kicking and blaming, as pieces of the old order start sinking. And as darkness stole the last remnants of day, it became clear that to try and pull anything out of that molten hole now is pointless. It’s not the right time. The potion is bubbling, distilling down into something new, and will be for some time to come. The birds had stopped twittering, and I could barely see the mountain ridges when my ash tree spoke. “Know well my Gaian friend, we are all contributing something to the broth. You and me. But what we add is of essence, not form, for no form will survive.” The words rumbled into me and out, along with the whole gamut of human expression: Sorrow, trust, love, kindness, anger, hatred, fear, conspiracy and distrust, pride, righteous judgement, blame, beauty, inspiration, support, empowerment, joy, peace, unity, honesty, inspiration, and grace. Yes. I suppose the only thing to ask is, what’s the nature of our contribution? Whether we’re sheltering a dog, blabbing online, or out on the streets, which essential oils are we hurling in the pot? Because rest assured, none of them is lost or omitted. And our futures are being forged out of them. I walked out of the laundrette to my car. A white van passed close by, almost clipping me. It slowed, and in it I saw a thin chap grinning from ear to ear. I smiled when I recognised the driver and threw in as much love as I could. The man was Alice’s owner. And in that second I saw him as Gaia did, free of the human veil of morality, and our old old system of good versus evil - the very keystone of the whole broken edifice. I sensed there and then the power in the moment, the see-sawing of possibility, that anyone can become anything at any time. At some point Alices' “owner” might cave. May be she'll fight to come back. Who knows? There are no certainties. If there were it wouldn't be creation. But for now the energies are all in the cauldron. Being distilled. Being brewed. Until it’s time. * Bruno ended up in a place far better than mine. Against all odds, within days of me returning him to Lonneke, a young woman saw a video of him online, and fell in love with him. She drove two hours to collect him. He now lives in a proper house with a garden and other human friends. He goes for walks each day, and plays with his dog friends. Yeees, realities aren't created the way people think they are. But hey, you know that:) ** Also many thanks to Yvonne for connecting me with the link below, which inspired the crucible image for this post. https://www.leadtolife.org/ Do you enjoy these posts?
Like most authors, I don’t earn enough from my books to sustain me, or even this website! These writings come to you thanks to the generous support of everyone on Patreon, without whom I would have no time or funds to keep the free material on The Mud Home coming. If you enjoy my writing and would like to express that you want it to continue, please consider contributing. For the price of a newspaper, our lovely patrons can watch my private land report videos, ask more questions, and get the inside story on my one-woman, off-grid, mud and stone project. Does anyone remember back in the 20th century when people used to worry about the meaning of life? It seems a long way off now from our rather more poignant 21st-century standpoint, a point in human space-time all too brimming with significance. Will we or won’t we wipe ourselves out? Will we lose ourselves to AI, or a pandemic? Will we cut all our forests down and lose all our fellow animals? Or will we instead evolve into beautiful planet guardians? Will we or won’t we make it? We used to feel like we were motes of random dust with little impact on anything. Now we are gods and we know it. The unbearable lightness of being has mutated into an unbearable responsibility. The meaning of life Ever since we became ‘civilised’ the quest for meaning has been an obsession for humans. It has provoked centuries of philosophical debate, and lifetimes of avoidance strategies, not to mention the reams and reams of literary masturbation on the matter. Attempting to give our earthly existences meaning has driven the most preposterous and destructive projects. It’s brought us inadvertently to where we are now. It dawned on me as the gates of lockdown opened here in Spain, and human civilisation with all its clamour for distraction began to flood through them once again, that without touching on the matter of meaning, few are those who will step off the consumer conveyor belt and into Eden. Because freedom weighs heavily on many. What’s the point, after all? We are born, we engage in some stuff, and then we die. The beautiful pointlessness of a mud hut Five months later than I expected, as the steam evaporated from the hilltops and a surprisingly gutsy April sun strode over the Atlantic skies, I added (the last?) rock to my mud and stone bathroom wall. Yes, I have a bathroom. A sink. A composting toilet. A place for my toothbrush, too. Only hot water evades me now, but its days are numbered. I’m closing in. I’ve been up here a full year now, roosting with each season. I watched the ash trees turn brown, and the rocks push their heads out of the undergrowth as winter yanked the grass asunder. I heard the wolves howl and felt the snow on my face while the stars moved across the night sky. The world disappeared into a pandemic, but my planet kept on turning. Wrens, thrushes, blue tits, and robins filled the hazel copses. Nests were built. Three darling chickens joined the team. First the air warmed, then the ground. New buds sprouted on my fruit trees, while vultures swirled in thermals overhead. Lo and behold, I came full circle. A whole year is now under my belt. As I scan my creation I see I’ve built a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. I’ve created a juicy vegetable garden, too. A universe has been born up here. It’s still a toddler, but it’s definitely up and walking. Before long I will start on my larger cabaña, and turn that into a new mud and stone realm too. “But why? Why put all that effort into making this bedroom and bathroom when you’re going to do it again in the big one? It’s so much work|!” A couple of people have asked me this question about what I’ve done so far. What’s the point, right? I mean I’m just going to move on. And we’re always moving on, of course. I moved on from Mud Mountain in Turkey and lots of people thought that was a tragedy, which was rather confusing for me because I didn’t. So many human issues could be solved with one small shift in perspective: that meaning isn’t an endpoint to be reached. That process doesn’t have to be irksome travail. That creating Eden is not about hacking through the sedge of minutes to reach a conclusion. It’s been said a thousand times already of course; it’s the journey, not the destination. But somehow it doesn’t seem to have sunk in to the human collective consciousness. Whether I’m beginning, continuing, or completing a project, it is all too meaningful. And I know when I move from one phase of this creation to the next, that with each gain, something else is lost (and vice-versa). When I first built my composting toilet, I was at once relieved not to have to effort to look for a pee place, but equally saddened not to watch the stars anymore. The more my veggies grow, the less I forage. Even a hot shower will mean I give up the invigorating cold one. None of this is bad or good, it’s simply a progression, a process, a moving through seasons. And I love each one differently. I’ve always said with mud building, the whole thing is a game for me. Yet it’s a pointed game, both as whimsical as pixies and as deep as a hickory taproot. It’s a game with decent footings. The footings of the game My frivolous game stands firmly on two feet: being and loving. It’s not about what I create, it’s about loving who I am. It’s not about where I’m going, it’s about being and loving where I am. Someone said, if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life. I don’t just love it, I’m in love with it, just as I’m in love with the skies here, and the wolves and the rolling green slopes and the rocky outcrops. I’m in love with the minutes as they pass (usually - though I'll freely admit, I was severely challenged by the roof tiles). When has a lover ever needed a reason? Lovers don’t ask about the meaning of life, not because they’re distracted, but because they already have it. Missing the point From Heidegger to Sartre to Kundera, the point has been missed. Completely. And stunningly. The meaning of life has been yanked out of the very soil it germinated within and stuck in some pot on a dusty shelf in a dead man’s office. Meaning isn’t ontological Meccano. It’s not something you stick in a computer to find the answer. It’s not ‘out there’ beyond us, or something to be ‘worked out’ or reached. If you are in the right place (here), at the right time (now), you have meaning. Meaning is felt, not thought. The depth of the here and now is awesome. It goes on forever and ever. To even posit that being could be inconsequential, meaningless, or ‘light’ is a good example of not actually being at all, but thinking instead. As the sky pulls its magic out of the Atlantic, and cloud worlds bubble atop the distant summits of the sierra, I watch my three little hens go about their business, scratching at the ground with their four-toed feet, pecking this, rolling in that. Striding out or hunkering down. Being. Chickens. And I can sense it in each fibre of my own being that life is most meaningful for them when they are allowed to be exactly who they are, when they are deeply and completely chicken. I follow their lead and wander to my ash tree. As I rest my back on its trunk and watch the grass stalks sway in the wind, I start remembering who and what I am too. With each pause, more and more pieces of me come rushing in, the earth and the sky meet, and I feel my roots plunging into the essence of it all. Things open and deepen in the most amazing ways and I realise I can embody it all. I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time. Here and now. And I know, that this is the point. MY NEW SHORT COURSE IS OUT!
How to structure your day outside the 9-5 and get the most out of your freedom. Many people dream of leaving the rat race, but when that glorious day comes some people find it's not quite what they expected. They sometimes feel lost, other times scattered, or have trouble organising their time in a natural and beneficial way. In response to some questions from our wonderful crowd of Mud Patrons, I’ve created a short but powerful course on how to structure your time more naturally, organise your creativity, and find real meaning in freedom. If you follow through on your natural rhythms, you'll soon discover you are strangely productive and creative without stressing out at all. Is your life valuable enough for you to create something amazing and original out of it? This course discusses the reasons why we often struggle when liberated from the 9-5, gives strategies for dealing with them, and empowers you to create a natural, fulfilling day and life for yourself. It's at the very special intro price of $25 plus digital tax for the next two weeks only! It's a valuable course, and this initial price is a good will offer to Mud Homers, so I hope you can take it up. |
Atulya K Bingham
Author, Lone Off-Gridder, and Natural Builder. Dirt Witch
"Reality meets fantasy, myth, dirt and poetry. I'm hooked!" Jodie Harburt, Multitude of Ones.
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