I can see clearly now the rain is gone

So yesterday I got a job and I got into a school for woodworking/carpentry! Just as my doubts started to outweigh my hopes, It starts to pour. What can I do but go with it? I have no fear now, today. I just finished my first shift of work, window washing. Done it before, enjoy it, worked up a few sweats. My school, which was looking to fill up its roster, starts on June 14th: less than 3 weeks from now! It ends sometime in March. Before it starts I will figure out a place to live, get government aid for lodging and food, go and check out the campus two hours north of here in the department Deux Sevres, finish planting the garden, save as much money as I can working, and train myself to read and write better in French, as well as study Carpentry. Time to kick it into high gear. Thankfully, I can take advantage of the French government social aid (before it crashes) and go to school for free and get reimbursed for most if not all of my living expenses during my studies.

My dad keeps telling me Europe is falling, that I should go back to Canada, where the future is more certainly successful with the huge natural resource base and the distance from the Middle East and Africa (don't call him racist, the problem is illegal immigration from these places into especially Spain and Italy, but also France, where it just takes a short boatride.) We will see.

Camping in the Pyrenees was sublime, snow capped mountains, green forests, grey rock, cold streams. And, believe it or not, I didn't encounter a single mosquito! It was 25 degrees warm, minimum 10 degrees at night, in the thick forests and along the water's edge, 1000 meters from sea level, and no mosquitoes! And the Pyrenees has this sort of weather for six months of the year! A few hours hike up and there is cold and snow, a few hours drive and there is the coast of the Mediterranean or the Atlantic, also world-class cities of Bordeaux and Toulouse, and Spain, for inexpensive shopping and practicing Spanish. To top it all, inexpensive housing and living. Hmmm.....

Anyway, gotta go wash this body thoroughly and eat some fruit.

Cheers,
Maurizio

Pyrenees look at these!

Started the heavy garden work. Digging, dragging a poorly designed plastic wheelbarrow full of forest soil 300 meters up a hill and down a hill to the house, rototilling all afternoon, Making beds. Gotta get those tomatoes in the ground, and all the rest too. Feels good. Making plans to build a solar dehydrator. Feels good too.

Going to go camping near Bagneres de Bigorre, the Pyrenees Mountains, on the weekend. Excited to finally meet the mountains which I may someday call home.

No luck yet finding a temp job, but have good chances to get a 3 week job with a local apple orchard starting in June.

It is getting nice and warm here now, and I have the chance to accompany Stephanie to the farmer's market at Chatellayon, at the beach, tomorrow! Going to enjoy the beach. Market too.

Not feeling particularly creative or humorous right now, so this is a 'Straightforward Factual Blog Post'.

Still unsure about where to go to school, if I can go to school, and my appointment with the councillor has been postponed to next week. It is getting late in the season of applying to schools.

Had a strong emotional bout of homesickness and instability monday night, but next day we started working in the garden and I felt better. I think the sense of ungroundedness can be cured by soil, not particularily Canadian soil. Also moving my body helps (helps everyone really, doesn't it?).

My future actions depend on Stephanie and her actions, my stoicism and emotional endurance, the prejudices of people who might otherwise help me if I had a good French accent, the French economy, and the unexpected limitation of living in the region of Poitou Charentes, when concerning carpentry school.

What will happen next? Stay tuned...

Cheers,
Maurizio

D

Driving all around Department seventeen
Digesting red wine, rabbit and white bread
Drifting into sleep and out of it
Depannage house-to-house
Determined to focus and learn
Digging a trench to lay cable
Dreaming of a place untouched, unplanned
Discipline myself to manage my imbalance
Drawing on my emotional strength reserves
Damn well fighting
Doing what feels right, sometimes
Dreading the wrong path
Drink coffee no more
Drying out my bank account
Droughts we threaten the world with
Drifting along without accumulating wealth
Dark future ahead
Diving deeper for oil
Doors open
Doubting which one
Draped in anxiety
Dumbed fields dressed in pesticides
Dividing land for fragmented people
Dinner party distractions from dying systems
Drizzle for the honest, drowning for the damaged rich
Do-it-yourself Dollar-dodgers
Disappointed with their inherited ways
Deciding to distill
Daring to detatch and make a dash
Dancing to the beat of my own drum
Dripping hardly distinguishable from the downpour
Dear friends...

Cheers,
Maurizio

Rolling

Hi guys and gals! Sorry for being so quiet, I came back to France and no longer had internet access. I am writing you from a cyber cafe in Saint Georges des Coteaux.

My trip back to France was easy and relatively cheap. Harassed by a big black prostitute within 5 minutes of breathing Parisian air. I knew the routine, been to Kenya. Got rid of her in 3 minutes. Bought mediocre strawberries and laid down in a nearby park. Observed ancient Middle-Eastern men sit on benches and speak at 1 word per minute.

Back in Charente Maritimes. Waiting to see if I get the thousand Euros towards driving school/licence. Nope, I lose. I do paperwork just in the nick of time to start my second two week volunteer period one week later.

The skinny, nervous, unshaven plumber manoeuvers through a roundabout while rolling his cigarette changing gears in a manual van. We eat at restaurants sometimes, appetizers, red wine, bread, main plates, cheese plates, desserts, coffee. The enterprise pays for that. Two hour lunches. Get at the shop at 8am, leave at 8:45, spend fifteen minutes drinking coffee and chatting with the guys at the plumber store. They don't have what we are looking for. Go to a second plumber store. Have a coffee, chat, look at newspaper, buy the part. Go to the electrician store, have a coffee, chat, buy a part. Get in van and drive 45 minutes. Work 90 minutes at the job site, have two hour lunch at restaurant.

Hubert, aka 'putain mierde' drank 3 coffees in less than an hour. He likes to swear to encourage his successful work. Actually, it doesn't seem like he has a choice, it is a habit that has become somewhat subconscious. He started working at 14 years of age. Maried at 19, child at 21. He once said the longest 'ooh la la' I have ever heard. I try hard not to laugh when he swears in frustration. It pours from his throat steadily and melodically: 'ooh la la la la la la la la la la la!' (the 'la's' alternate between high tones and low tones).

I don't do a whole lot, in fact my calf muscles get a great workout from standing for hours and hours watching. I try not to fall asleep while I watch the whole department pass by as we roll along here there and everywhere. We once drove 75 minutes one way to do a 10 minute job, and then 75 minutes back, and then 2 hour lunch.

Look into Compagnons de Tour de France, a world-renown school for tradeskills, but looks like I landed in the wrong region of France to learn Carpentry. Educational funding has become regionalized, and all the carpentry schools are elsewhere. Stephanie has family in Brittany, perhaps I can move there and go to school there...

Well I am not going to tidal wave you to try and make up for all the time lost, so I will leave it at that for now.

Cheers,
Maurizio