I just celebrated two big birthdays, both my own! Ten years in the order and forty years on the planet. I was in Spain with Padmadharini (see groovy pic), which was plan B. Plan A had been to spend my 40th birthday with Manigarbha, as we share the same day, same year and we’d been planning a birthday holiday to which we’d invite all our mutual friends…then she got invited on the ordination retreat! Hurray… but not so good for birthday plans so the party is postponed until 2008, our 41st, or the end of our 40th year, assuming we get there.
So this year I enjoyed a quiet birthday with Padmadharini in a little wabi sabi house in a village called La Fresneda. It is small and built on a very high hill. Behind us were two churches with bells and in front the town hall, which also had a bell. They all rang their bells on the hour, but they were not synchronised and one of them rang the hour twice. So in each hour over the course of ten minutes the bells would go off 4 times, which at midnight was a lot of ringing. Saturday was a festival day and at 8 in the morning a diva was broadcast out of the loud speakers and through all the streets, all the dogs in the village joined in with this woman, howling away, while she sang her heart out. It seems easy in the sun to do very little and to do it slowly and this was the perfect place!
This picture is the light coming under the door at the bottom of the house, the door opens on to a narrow street down which were blowing dried rose petals, under the door was just cobwebs, dust and a few of these petals but the light made it so beautiful. On the whole the wabi sabi aesthetic is much more in evidence in Spain, I guess at least in parts, it is a poorer country, which means that things are mended, reused, loved, and far less disposable. It is a hot country, which means that everything can be more permeable, buildings can be allowed to come apart a little at the seams, and nothing has to be so tight, so sealed up. Also with the sky so blue and the field full of fruit and vegetables, olives, grapes for making wine, life is already rich without all the things that money can buy. I guess this is rural Spain that I am talking about.
When we weren’t in La Fresneda we were mostly up at the Akasavana community. I enjoyed learning how to point the outside of the house, which involved chipping out all the loose mud and cement from between the stones then throwing handfuls of wet cement into the cracks, later cleaning it all up with a wire brush. I know nothing about building British style but it does seem that Spanish style everything is softer, rougher, more organic… and therefore I guess easier to do (though to do any of it well is still an art).
I did a little sunbathing up at the yurt, found this arrow on a plank of wood. I love shadows, often think that I would like to make a shrine entirely of shadows, shifting in the breeze ever so slightly. Reminds me of Cornelia Parker’s exploded shed. Recently I have had much more of an urge to make shrines again, something I used to do a lot of. Then this blue heart I found in Oscar and Zarzu’s house, unluckily my battery died and I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I would have liked, I always think there will be other times, but I should know better than to count on that.
