stuck on the road without petrol, yesterday
I’m having a small adventure on my own for some days: yesterday I made a very water-challenged trip in the car alone, back to Guardia Sanframondi. In part to escape the wet and cold infiltrating our beloved wee casetta on our land (Vincent is there, emptying buckets and making sure it doesn’t slide off the mountainside), and partly to get some essential supplies for sewing and art-making.
It is surreal to not be in the immediate vicinity of my Man, 
our gorgeous narcissi, which bring some cheer to our funny wee cement hovel
I needed some podcasting time also, and some time to organise my energetic body! Vincent and I have had a very dynamic relationship in our first year and a half, and at times this can lead to messiness: we are both super creative, very intelligent, talkative, and expressive. Mostly, we have a huge amount of energy (and heat) from being together – even a scalding hot water bottle and two duvets cannot match that!
our beautiful cherry blossoms.... 💝❤️🔥🥳
On one level, we are much advanced in relationshipping; we have come together having known each other for around 6 years on Hive, and managed to interweave our lives, work, spiritual paths and minds – with relatively little mishap: we have our values aligned, and have invested in the most important foundations for these times; land, basic tools, basic tech, books, seeds, supplies. We have a great deal more, together, than we had apart. Including this big house in Guardia Sanframondi (which we’re hoping to sell soon), which should eventually bring in some conventional wealth which we are currently lacking…. Life is rather positive, and we feel a certain mastery alchemising, as we work daily, in all weathers, on our land.
At the same time, on another level, I feel like I am back to square one, a spiritual infant just starting out! This is the first time I’ve had a real relationship, i.e. one in which there is reciprocity, cocreation, freedom and balance. Having all these qualities and aspects in a rapport, everything starts to unfold very quickly. The dynamic forces of the Universe align with our wills, and we are able to manifest rapidly – which means that we need to be careful what we wish for/ focus on/ preoccupy ourselves with!!
This is a very different and more intense dynamic than working alone, and it requires much commitment to Doing The Work (which is less needed, when in a non-twinflame partnership)! There is much more to be brought to the surface, and consciousness is required around what pace this happens at: to the unskilled, or at first, we might’ve felt like we are the fire-hose, barely containing a massive flow of past-present-future. It has taken us some time to rallentare and find the right rhythm.
a beautiful walnut tree that we salvaged from under high brambles - getting its first buds!!
My prayers lately have been around this, and around marrying our purpose. In past partnerships I’ve never had this possibility – the chance to build something together, and which is forward facing and new - a wholly new kind of direction and intention, with different priorities than the majority of folks: we are building spontaneously and intuitively, guided by a felt vision, quite alternative to conventional ideas of ‘lifestyle’, or even to conventional alternative visions.
more daisies, under our olive trees
We know that we have to be ready for anything: for all or no systems to collapse, for all local ammenities to be either removed or withheld from us, for fiat and/ or all other currencies to fail, and for new or never-before-imagined economic and other systems to birth.
identifying more plants from our land
It feels like both-and rather than one thing or another; or rather than one extreme or another, it feels like there might be multiple time-lines coexisting or running parallel-like at even different times... We have to be prepared, mentally, Law-fully, energetically, to create a safe space to flourish, even whilst the rest of the world might be floundering.
And this makes me think a lot around purpose. In my previous life and work, I was so very focussed on striving, pushing, pulling, straining. Now it is mostly about letting go. Just letting what is happening on our land, happen, whilst we tweak respectfully around the edges of it. And our worldly interactions off the land; just allowing conversation to come into our sovereign realm, as we potter about a town or visit an establishment: just holding our anchored and open stance of loving awareness, and playfully, happily, building energetically with whoever we come into contact with.
the full river, below our mountainside home
We often seem to be invisible to others, those who perhaps we are not able to or for some reason not meant to be, cocreating with. These days, there are so many people who are simply stuck in parasitic energy exchanges, and though we (often!) have a lot of energy, it is not that we like to throw it at vampirey folks like this… They have to learn that this is not the best way to exchange energy – so we do our bit by keeping a boundary and avoiding controversy.
more plants to identify....
Coming back to Guardia, I am working on this: on being invisible, and on not drawing any controversy. There is much to reflect on and to release, around why I had such drama for the 15 years I lived here.
the local river burst its banks quite dramatically this week, just after I'd been walking along it
Today I’ll just work at neatening everything: picking up a bucket of clay that can serve us back on our land for building, and the strap for my handbag project (which I left here last time), which will let me finally finish it. Tidying up the balconies and giardinetto, foraging a bit in the wild gardens here, taking some more cuttings for our land. Resting and getting cosy a bit, in a dry house! Having some respite from the hard-core homesteading… Making some connections to keep everyone’s energies on us selling our house, rather than keeping the ties here.
do you know this orchid? see the next photos
It takes quite a lot of effort to not keep on the same track, to not keep focussed on the old and on repeating patterns and rhythms. Being on our land makes it easy, because everything is new every moment of every day… But out here in the world, it is rather hard to make anything different or new: it thrives off of repetition and continuity. This will be the hardest aspect of the changes coming to ‘civilisation’: people’s attachment to everything being the same, no matter what. It is the great drug that keeps the majority so very, very, very dependent on the systems that are already in place – and unable to cocreate new ones – or even to imagine them.
Comunque: the times they are a-changing, friends. In Molise, Italy, at least; first there were massive winds of change – and now the waters… The new requires a lot of cleansing, for sure.
