"Just enjoy, lose all assumptions and preconceptions and find your calling mate"
"Don't start wearing beige, don't join a cult and watch out for worm tablets"
Both equally inspirational in their own way. Keep the messages of support coming in they are wonderful.
I am writing this under the shade of an olive tree to the soundtrack of birdsong and dutch people cleaning. I have finally arrived in a place that I would like to call home and it feels wonderful. I am in a very small community of around twenty – thirty people called El Morreon. The land belongs to a wonderful man whose name I can only just pronounce and have no idea how to write. We will call him Melkeor. He has lived there for years and bought as many caravans as he can afford and made this a wonderful place for like minded people to come and live together. My first night here there was a night of singing. The second day was a day full of the most inspirational conversations about humanity and the soul, yesterday afternoon I cooked on an open fire for around fourteen people as almost the entire community pitched in to help level the ground so they could begin building a house for a wonderful Dutchman called Rolan. It’s quite a wonderful atmosphere made by astoundingly beautiful countryside and the generously humble people that populate it. I think I will stay here now for the next year or so if the community will allow and start to build a home for myself. Just writing that phrase on it’s own is a weight off my shoulders. I was preparing myself to wait for months maybe even a year until I found somewhere that felt like home but everything about this place feels right. With the wealth of expertise from metal work, woodwork, agriculture, art of many kinds and how to live sustainably as a community I have so much to learn here. I feel like a child again, every day I am waking up anew and re-defining what it is that makes me tick, or as an inspirational man who has been living here Tom put it, ‘finding what gives me my wow factor’.
It’s always amazes me how several people can come and give you the same piece of advice in several different ways. Each filling in different colours of the same picture. Over the past few days this same theme keeps bubbling up; find what fills you with love and then do it as much as you can, find what gives you your wow factor and then dive head first into it and trust that all your needs will be met. There was a wonderful old man called Gert who came to play guitar for the singing night. He was the closest to a guru I think I have met in real life. He was around fifty years old, very slim, long greying hair and long grey beard surrounding a warm and child like smile. He could take the most complex of ideas and condense them down into the most simple of images. He told many stories but the one that stuck in my mind was the one of his life. He was working in his mid twenties in an old peoples home when he realised whatever he was doing wasn’t for him. He quit his job and started travelling and working as a musician, he lept into the unknown and let go of any fear that his needs woulnd’t be met and he said for the past thirty years he has always had everything he needed. Money, love and food had always arrived at the right time. It filled me with hope. I still live with fear, fear that I might not eat enough, that I might run out of money, that I might get so worked up in the excitement of all these new discoveries that I might get lost in them. But to speak to all these wonderful people who are here living the proof that if I relax and trust what I am doing then all my needs will be met. Oof. It’s a hard thing to trust but I’m closer than I think I have ever been.
Before I arrived at this hidden paradise I was in another one. One with equally marvellous scenery but with much more negative and sceptical inhabitants. People either wanted my money or for me to leave. So I left. It was an experience I didn’t particularly enjoy but it did teach me a lot about the potential pitfalls of trying to create an alternative community. They preached an escape from Babylon/capitalism but really they had just created the same structure under a different name that is funded mainly from dealing drugs to tourists. I hear it started as a beautiful place built with foundations of love and then over the years is has evolved into a very negative place. I saw a few special groups of people while I was there who I have since heard are desperately trying to leave.
I woke up this morning looked out of my window at the sun kissed mountains and I heard children laughing and birds singing. I knew I was home. I have a safe space to make work, process and explore ideas, the ability to create solitude and also access a warm and thriving community. We are talking about building a communal kitchen and a sweat bath. I am equally excited about both. I know it will not all be communal kitchens and hippy idylls of love and equality, to give birth to anything can be a painful process but I know what I have found here is worth it and the pace of life is so different here. There is no rush and no manic desire to finish things, just to let them happen in their natural rhythm. It's great.
Now we come to the wonderful point of my Novel. The votes are in and there is overwhelming consensus for the recorded version. However my recording device has broken….So we are caught in what I believe is known as a conflict of interests. So ladies and gentleman you may have the written version but you will have to wait for my dulcet tones a little longer until an alternative recording device materialises. I have tried to attach the chapter as a document and post it as a website etc etc but I'm terrible at computers. A friend of mine is constructing a website for the remainding chapters but this first one I simply add below. Please enjoy and share.
Much love to you all and I hope you are well.
Katius
By Gregory Bartlett
Chapter 1
How do we begin a story such
as this one?
A simple story.
A story of a woman.
A story of epic proportions.
A story that deals with some
of the most basic of human instincts.
We will begin at the
beginning.
Once upon a time, in a place
not yet heard of in a time not yet conceived lived a young woman called Katius.
A tall woman with about as much appetite for life as a Swamp Droogler for anger
or a Mushy-trog for sleep. Sometimes she would thrive for life so much that it
was all she could do but sleep for months on end to recuperate.
She enjoyed her existence
greatly and if it wasn’t for having to keep up with various part time jobs, the
task of looking for a life partner and what seemed like never ending pressure
from the upper parental department of progress then she would have undoubtedly
told people “I live a very happy life”.
But little did she know that
on the 45th of Desmember, year four, fifth cycle all that was about
to change forever.
It was an ordinary day, a
day like any other, the sky was it’s regular purpley green and the mushy-trogs
were busy sleeping by the side of the road. Katius had just finished teaching
Smarmish to foreign students and was now in the entertainment district where
she helped a man maintain robots. She had just started sanding down some of
those hard to reach places when a young man kicked the door, threw several
looks of terror around him, spotted Katius and cried.
“You have to hide me!”
They both stood stock still.
There was a wonderful silence that cut through the air, the kind of silence
that imprints itself upon the brain with alarming clarity. She took a look at
the young man. She felt from his face that he hadn’t eaten in a while and from
his clothing that he had either very little money or very little fashion sense,
possibly both. She could see he was completely out of breath so whatever he was
running from was probably close behind. But these were minor details, he also
had a pro Mushy-trog emblem on his shirt. In Katius’s mind anyone who supported
these wonderful creatures had to have a good soul. She leapt to a decision that
would change her life forever. She hid him.
Within moments she was back
sanding robots with a young man hidden in a box of spare body parts just behind
her. With the young Mans trustful gaze in a spare part box, Katius’s brain
suddenly had space to contemplate what was taking place. Doubt was suddenly
streaming through her mind faster than she could comprehend.
“Why have I just hidden a
complete stranger in a house that isn’t mine? Why is he on the run? what if
he’s a rebel of the state? What if he’s
a murderer?” An image of him bloodied and confused flashed before her eyes.
Amazing what can course through your mind in heightened states.
She had swept herself up
into such a confusion that she had given herself a severely troubled look and
had nearly sanded away this poor little robots crotch. Now is the perfect time
to introduce this poor little robot. It’s name is Pinny and is a now very
outdated early prototype of the first robot child. Very emotional, very
dependant and easily frightened.
With a head almost entirely
made of a similar substance to Wood called Urdu he wasn’t the brightest of
children and panicked easily. With this in mind it’s understandable that after
seeing a strange man hide in his spare part box, followed by Katius turning a
strange tone of panicked green while franticly sanding away his crotch, Pinny
was a little out of sorts. So it’s equally understandable that when two large
smelly Swamp Drooglers walked in it was all just a little too much for him.
What he desperately wanted to do was to communicate to Katius, a woman he
trusted, that he was uncomfortable with the situation and would like it to
return to normal, or at the very least a little closer to normal with an added
clarification that everything was going to be ok. What he actually did was to
hit his survival mode. He jumped off the table threw his arms in the air and
begin to run blindly round the room screaming “help me, help me”, changing
direction only once he had run into something. After hitting two walls, a large
chair, knocking over a light and the food dispenser he finally knocked himself
out by running into one of the Swamp Droogler’s large protruding stomachs.
Swamp Drooglers: They are
very large creatures from the same genetic family as Humans however millions of
years of working in swampy conditions have left them somewhat warped. They are
about twice the size of a standard humanoid with thick purple green skin, which
is not only impenetrable but has no sense of feeling. They have two hearts; one
for circulation, one for heat. They also allow various bacteria and fungus to
live on them in return for cleaning their tough outer layer. They have short
legs with wide webbed feet, long arms with wide webbed hands, large chest with
and even larger protruding belly topped by extremely small heads. Wonderfully
bizarre creatures with a very short temper. A great way of telling whether a
Swamp Droogler is about to kill you is that He or She will change colour, He or
She will turn from a purpley green to a dazzlingly intense scarlet red. On this
particular day both of these particular Swamp Drooglers were the most intense
of scarlet reds. Katius was petrified.
“Where is he?” One of them
gargled in a thick swampish accent
“Who?”
“The humanoid” The other
gargled back. Both the Swamp Drooglers ears pricked up, listening for any
tell-tale sign of a stow-away.
Even to this day Katius
doesn’t quite know why or how she did what she was about to do. It was one of
those magical moments that happens to you as opposed to the other way round. Katius
practically ran at them both and screamed.
“What in Barbles name do you
think you’re doing?!” still marching towards them, she chickened out half way
and started heading for the now imobile Pinny.
“Pinny, Pinny!” She cried
making a fairly useless attempt to resuscitate him. The Swamp Drooglers were
stunned for a moment.
“How dare you walk in here
unannounced, you know my son is on deaths door!”
The Swamp Drooglers ears
softened the scarlet lessened.
“We never” One of them
gargled
“Don’t play ignorant you big
oafs, you should be ashamed of yourselves”
“We were looking for
somebody” Gargled the taller of the two
“You were looking for
somebody! You were looking for somebody!” Katius wailed, boldened by how
convincing her performance was “Is that an excuse to come in here and frighten
my son to death, and look at the mess you have made, and it’s his birthday!”
the words were pouring out but they weren’t hers “I wanted him to have one last
special birthday and you’ve ruined it!!” Whatever autopilot had taken over was
doing a brilliant job, there was nothing Swamp Drooglers loved more than family
values. The more anxiously she feigned the role of mother the more the scarlet
began to drain away from the Swamp Drooglers skin.
“Is he dead?” the one
gargled
“Very nearly, just get out”
“We’re very sorry madam”
“We didn’t know he wasn’t
well”
“Really we were looking for
someone, it’s our job you see”
“Yeah well, not really our
job, I’m a postman”
“Why are you telling her
that?”
“Well it’s true isnt it?”
“It’s got nothing to do with
it Eric. Why would she want to know that you’re a postman”
“well I am, I’m just here
cause you asked me. He’s got a bad back you see”
“Why are you telling her
that?”
“I can’t help it, I’m
nervous”
A confused silence hung
between them.
They both turned round and
began to leave.
“Well that was bloody stupid
Eric”
“I didn’t know he was sick”
“You’ve killed a boy today
Eric I hope you’re proud of yourself”
Katius sat by Pinny in
shocked stillness. Not quite sure what had just happened and not quite sure
what to do next. Fortunately a voice from inside the spare part box took away
any element of decision making.
“Have they gone?”
Katius looked at the box for
a moment then looked around the room.
“They’ve gone.”
The spare part box began to
open very tentatively. Out came the young man preceded by several arms, legs
and a bizarelly lifeless wooden face. The young man stood there in a calm
stillness, one of profound gratitude. Although he said thank you to Katius
atleast 100 times that day he didn’t need any of them, she understood it all in
that one moment and no amount of thank you’s ever would have said it better.
“Thank you” He said
“That’s ok”
“No really thank you”
“It’s fine”
“You saved my life”
“Yeah”
“We should go”
“We?”
“Yeah”
“I know nothing about you” She blurted back
“I’m fourteen cycles, you
just saved my life, I like the colour blue, I’m pro mushy trog and I don’t own
a single pennydrop, we can fill in the rest on the way but we should definitely
go”
Katius was full of
adrenaline and drawn to this stranger in a way that she neither understood nor
had space to explore. Convinced but not quite sure why she quickly hung Pinny
up on his wall bracket and they both set off into one of the best purpley pink
sunsets Katius had ever seen.
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