I did not anticipate that it would be this hard: none of it, but particularly not the practical aspects. It is a huge shock to my system to be being thrown in at such a deep, deep end. There are multiple times per day that my mind and body are stuck in the headlights like a rabbit, and I stand immobile for a moment or ten, trying to get my bearings. It feels like we are scrabbling to save our lives, battling with elements, using up the last of our resources and inner strength…
Then a moment shines brightly, like the crystal clear skies above us speckled with countless stars, as we nip outside after midnight for a pee. Every time I do this, the awe of being under this clear dark majesty calls me back to myself: my mystical Self. I am no longer the simpleton limping out of the back door in cumbersome slippers that are getting caked in mud and grass – suddenly I am reminded of who the Higher Self is, as the night sky seems to implode inside of me, instantaneous vibrational downloads coming in from all directions.
Downloads seem to come in a lot these days, from multifarious sources. I try to keep up with them, by talking them out with 
Vincent reminds me to be patient, and this like once per day is just what I need to hear. But often I don’t want to slow down! I want the world to speed up! I want what is unfolding in the collective conscious to match with what is coming through from the Aether. How am I supposed to stop it from flowing through me so freely??
Making things and repairing things helps a lot with this process of Being Inspired: yesterday it was our Vigilia Di Natale mini-feast, a washing line high up in the kitchen, and a great new series of masterful organisational systems (in our relatively small home, filled with all our stuffs from a relatively much larger home).
A break in our (relatively) manic home ‘improvements’ comes when we are down in the sodden cantina, looking for rope to hang a washing pole above our kitchen table. The toot of a car horn interrupts our search, very close. Cripes: who the heck is that?? They must be honking for us, because not even dear old Corado is here next door to us anymore – and there’s no-one else near enough to merit this kind of a noise; confirmed – our names are called at high volume – in slightly-comical Italianisation: Vicent! Clara!
We greet our neighbour who shares some of the same natural cart track as us & Corado (the last homes before the wild woods) – it's dear old Antonio, yey! We see him regularly, as we walk down to our car parked near his house (due to winter road conditions being inhospitable to our wee Suzuki WagonR), where he’s chopping wood or pottering in his orto…. He came by to give us some Christmas biscuits made by his wife. (Vincent later suggests that they appear bought, but I remind him that most older woman in rural Italy have skills at least matching or often surpassing those of a high quality pasticchieria: it is very normale to receive such an elevated standard of baked goods from an older woman here.)
We gladly accept these glorious treats, and then move on to chat about our roof – Antonio offers great advice, even climbing up on our antique ladder to have a good gander. He encourages us to get up on the roof – it’s quite safe - and to pour some of this roof salve you can buy, onto the parts where there are missing or broken tiles. The grey stuff which you can see was already used in the past to fill in the troublesome spots: like a kind of chewing gum poured on hot and melted into the fabric of the roof: a wonderful problem-solving balm which is just what we needed to hear about.
We chat on around how our other (even more elderly) neighbour is doing… Corado was quite unwell, and was unable to come and do his usual tending to his vegetable garden and chickens. The latter were taken by ‘chicken snakes’ recently, the last few surviving of them carted off in a cardboard box last week. Remaining is Mama Gatta, as we call her, a scraggy, needy beast, who is terribly sweet and persistent. Like all cats here, not really responding to shouting or throwing things at them (trying to deter them from coming into our house or perpetual desperate beggingness); they run towards things we lob, and they just mew harder when we raise our voices.
Our visit from Antonio becomes quite the event, when he informs us that our elderly(est) neighbour doesn’t intend to return at all – and in fact wants to sell his property. Though of course we sympathise about his predicament, we light up: in absolutely no position to grow our estate, we nevertheless declare our super-interest, and ask Antonio to put in a good word for us.
He proceeds to show us all around the even-quirkier-than-ours bothy-mansion next door, and our imaginations explode with the perfection of what it’d be to have these two funny buildings, rather than just one disfunctional one! Plus the fenced orto (the wild boar are eating our wild greens before we can get to them!) and the enormous archaic apple tree, and so on….
So our visit ends with hugs and handshakes, and our mind-body-spirits feeling hugely rejuvenated; all we have to do now is to sell our Guardia Sanframondi Arthouse, and all will be well….
house for sale in Guardia Sanframondi, Italy!
The rest of the day is not so easy: the cold settles in, the damp washing is still damp and doesn’t seem to want to dry even next to our lovely hot stovepipes. The light is already fading and so there’s no chance we’re going to get either of the window-closing jobs done today. We’ll be sleeping again in a windy and damp abode, and we didn’t get a chance to pick up more palettes to get our bed a bit higher up off of the floor… We philosophise, eat a marvellous Christmassy dinner as quickly as physically possible before it gets cold in the frigid room, and I spend some time doing a kind of improvised yoga standing super close to the stove to warm my aching bones.
wild boar hoofprints - they slip on the clay-ey path as much as we do!
We are blessed indeed. We need a lot more to be even remotely comfortable, and yet we have everything that we want in order to make each next step. Another night snuggled together against the elements (and the silly house!), and another sacred morning waking up on this wild mountainside…. Our adventure continues.
the very funny-faced, but under-performing clips that were meant to hold the big plastic sheet in place over the roof
