When we left Carmel, on July 26th, a week ago the wildfire was 3 days old and 5% under control. Just imagine living with this constant danger of fire! Hang in here to see a couple of my photographs from the day, as soon as I decide which ones to share..
The photos in this post aren’t all my favourites, nor the best from their sets, but what I could easily, without placing too much attachment on perfection, upload to share some of the scenes I lived within, for a brief moment in time. {above : an average street scene in Mysore, India.} {above : a large pebble rock, on top of one of the hills I climbed, unfortunately I am not sure if this was during a temple visit near Mysore or later in Hampi, India.} {above : an average street scene in Mysore, India.} {above : an unusually quiet street scene in Mysore, India.} {above : a typical street vendor in Mysore, selling household goods, India.} {above: photograph from a trip we took to Bylakuppe, Tibetan Settlement, 3-4 hours by bus from Mysore, India} {above: photograph from a trip we took to Bylakuppe, Tibetan Settlement, 3-4 hours by bus from Mysore, India} {street scene from Mysore: Man helping himself to water and struggling turning the tap off again}{street scene from Mysore: Man helping himself to water and struggling turning …
It is a sunday afternoon, time is closing in and once again feeling limited. Our 6 months in England (for me interspersed with a stay at an Artist Residency Program in Finland) is drawing to it’s close. The time was just long enough to recover from the extremities of Adrenal Fatigue. This is something they don’t tell you in other places: traversing the globe, surviving in far away places can take it’s toll on health; sometimes in a profound way.. But here I am, more or less put back together, the fractals reorganised into a comprehensive shape that somewhat resembles myself as I remember her.. Yes, it feels so long ago that I was last settled in one piece that I am no longer even sure the complete ‘me’ ever existed. But I do recall that in summer 2007 I felt: “I am whole in myself’. Just before a forest fire descended on my life. This is about 9 years ago! Incredible. The time. Can it be this long!? How did I survive this turbulence …
I finally made steps to return to my routine of caring better for my soul.
It is definite! It is official! California I am coming home!
In these photographs you can see Jason creating the beginning of a glass project that we are hoping to share in it’s full glory with the public soon.
After being told that this cat didn’t like being petted and that she is rather moody I was ready for snappy attitudes and a lot of aloof ignoring. Yet within days she was purring on my lap, sleeping in my arm and resting her paws on my right arm as I typed emails and social media posts.. We made best friends! And this just has to be one of the coolest cats that I have every had the pleasure to be friends with! I teasingly called her ‘Zippy’ because I (wrongly) assumed that she would be slow and laid back.. Instead she had so much beans and it was a lot of fun seeing her chase invisible mice from time to time and bounce up and down the bed. I truly fell in love with ‘Zippy’. If we had a San Francisco home of our own, an owned one, I would have pleaded with her family to allow her to come and live with me. What a super, super cat! Daisy the dog was much …
Our housesitting appointment is drawing to a close at the end of the coming week. We by chance got asked to take on another house-pet-sitting gig from the 1st – 4th of August and I said yes minutes before I found out that we likely have lost the (stationary) RV that we were schedule to move into that weekend. So that was a lucky decision. It leaves a rather big question, especially considering that this is the Bay Area with incredibly high rental costs: where do we go from there? We have a grace period of another 9 days or so before I really have no idea where we will go. I had this wild idea of buying a school bus as an art-workshop venue, I prefer to teach lessons and classes in small settings rather than bigger ones, even if I take a pay-cut as a result. I had come up with a school bus when I couldn’t think of anywhere where I could teach, especially with me being new to the area I just don’t …
– keep a diary and look away from any screens – learn a local skill or language – are you bragging or are you sharing? I mean: are you just consuming the landscape, the culture or are you participating and can you feel the difference? – What can you learn that you have not read in any guidebook and that therefor you can not tick off of a list that offers 10 stages to travel satisfaction. Is travel a supermarket to you or an opportunity to create something meaningful for yourself, those whom you meet and those at home whom you will share your experiences with..?
I made 2 so far: 1 – ask to be paid for every service I provide. Do not offer anything for nothing. This is in part to get a better response from clients as well as improve my self-value. 2 – lead with optimism not fear. This relates to my financial reality, stop beginning every conversation with how precarious my financial status is, how I earned not quite 50% of what I need to cover my minimum costs. Instead be optimistic and trust that people will also want to support me if I am not presenting financial fears.. 3 – get on the Yoga mat 3 times a week because it makes me feel great 4 – invest in thai language lessons in Thailand. Because going on souvenir hunts or spending money snacking on surplus snackables will probably cost almost as much as language lessons while not giving me an in-depth view of the place I am in the way language can. 5 – be courageous and create opportunities for myself, find 2 customers per …
Being in America I felt pretty angry and helpless a lot of the time. I was there as a guest, with no space and not a lot of small change. I was holding back getting involved in anything because, I realize in retrospect, because I didn’t want to connect and get stuck in a country that I don’t understand. I mean they do things like pour fracking water into rivers.. What crazy people would do this? Don’t even get me started on all the insane rhetoric logic or lack thereof that gets prime airtime in this country. And this wild patriotism, it all astounds me. As does the apparent lack of terms like solidarity, social care, social security nets… I don’t really understand how people live there. Is everybody blindly stumbling around, is this why the media is so dominated by the mantra of: “live for the moment, be happy”, because you better be happy now because ultimately we are all somewhat doomed with threatening poverty in age etc… Well. I don’t know. I simply …
So it is official: since Tuesday we are house sitting and looking after one lovely dog and two super soft cats, right in San Francisco. The animals need special attention and a certain amount of company which is why we have the opportunity to swap pet care (and basic home care) for a month of fe accommodation somewhere not far from Golden Gate Park, the Golden Gate Bridge and even a glorious beach. It is quite a commitment that we took on, acting for animals can be a bit like caring for children, in as far as you really can’t casually neglect them because you would like to go and follow some impromptu plans instead. So our lives for the next four weeks will be planned very much around the animal needs. It’s good practice for thinking about having pets again ourselves in the future ( or even small humans). So far the dog is the impersonification of well behaved and the cats, well we have a hard time stopping cuddling them, they …
Birgit Over 7 Seas 