September 2024
I have a week in the house to myself, time to write for 25 days and shift and lift. We’ve cleared the olive press and brought the rugs inside, it's time to light the fire in the evenings and notice mould, falling masonry, new cracks in walls and how to use all the ripening lemons and oranges on the trees. Anyone know how to make marmalade?
There’s been a glut of visitors since I came back in August and having this little breather after the intensity and joy of collective living feels right. A week ago, we were still naked on the beach with Sian, Sara, Becky, Derek and Paul. Lisa dropped in for 3 nights too.
All around, the neighbours are collecting olives, and there’s a rhythm that I’m just beginning to get a glimpse of. Now it’s time to order wood.
Earlier this summer the posse included Marcus, Caroline and Rebecca and Nigel and guests from retreats at Buddha Hall. We gathered and we connected, around a new indoor table. Claudia has started painting warmth into the walls in the Corfiot colours of pink and orange. We’re colouring the white yoga bnb in, wall by wall (ignoring the mould at the back of the cupboards for now). Though Archan and the damp rods, which sounds like an ’80s pop group, might solve the problem. I’m learning about lime plaster too. Managing buildings was never on my CV - though there’s a level of trust here that someone will show up and all I have to do is hold the vision and the space for 56 shutters to turn blue.
Marcus did an amazing job of cutting back the garden, creating space and light. A bougainvillaea fell off the olive press wall, filling the garden and now it’s been made into a dead hedge. It was so great to have a practical right-hand man nudging me to buy a fig, a banana tree, a couple of vines, a plumbago and a cherry. Let’s see whether my loving neglect can allow them to flourish. It feels long-term to plant trees and its only when I imagine living here forever that all the dreams of making a stunning artists' residency feel possible. As they say in Greece ‘siga siga’ - slowly slowly.
My job title from Artemisia is the “keeper of the nexus point”. I had to look it up too. Nexus points are "places where destiny and opportunity collide where God's call and man's courage and will intersect, and transformation happens beyond". A tree of life showed up from a mysterious source, left outside which somehow seems apt as I hear of folx meeting back in UK after they’ve left here. I love that so much.
I went to Paros to work on a kinky workshop and came back to Mandala to a heart-opening Kundalini class in the olive press, with harp, yogis in white, and another long time since I’ve attempted fire breath. Life is sweet and contrasting, and it makes me smile at the wonder of it all. I’m reclaiming myself. When I was younger, I always knew I’d live abroad when I was older. I just had no idea it’d be this wonderful. Or there would be so many shutters.
