Two days in the life of a volunteer woodworker

Yesterday, I arrive at work with a fellow employee. We were expecting to go to a worksite in Poitiers, the capital of Vienne, the department in France. I live in Parthenay, 30 kms away in Deux Sevres, another department of the same region (Poitou Charente).

Instead, at last minute, the boss says we go to another worksite in the local town (Thenezay, where the Enterprise Soko Bois, who I am working with at the moment).

"comme l'habitude" Dominique (the experienced guy I am working with this week, the second week of my 2 week volunteer interim) says. Noone seems to have a good opinion about our boss (Jean is his name, and his attention seems to be scattered around, somewhere inbetween a cold bottle of good whisky and making money building and repairing and rennovating buildings. His issue seems to be a lack of ability to properly communicate, or he simply doesn't give a fuck about much except personal success).

The worksite ends up being a nursery school. They have their dining hall (cafeteria for little ones) with a problem. We walk to the window and notice that the floor is unstable and something is the matter below. We rip up the synthetic floor sheet and the panels of agglomerate (panels composed of wood derivitives) to find that the whole floor is rotten with huge mushrooms and the beams are totally devastated. So we spend the day ripping up and hammering and picking and shovelling and chainsawing to do a patch-up job (because the owner is reselling the school to the government in a year, and he doesn't give a fuck after that).

'On va cacher la misere' is what's it called, when you repair something in a fashion that only temporarily solves the problem, for someone in the future to deal with, somehow (considering the short-sightedness current in many people when they consider their actions and consuming habits, probably with exactly the same strategy).

So Dominique gave me a ride home (he lives 30 meters from my apartment I am sharing with two classmates in a low-cost housing area), and we went to sleep under the assumption that we will totally rebuild a section of 2x-6 meters of the floor, and dig holes and install a passive ventilation system (wood, whether it is in a wall or under a roof or the floor, if it is not subject to a current of dry air, risks to develop humidity, and following that fungus or termites, who both love stale, humid air).

This morning, i'm outside Dominique's driveway at 7:30 am, as he reverses out of his driveway with his 15 year old daughter in the passenger's seat. I hop in, we drop her off at school nearby, and we are off to Thenezay, where SokoBois is. In the workshop we run in to le chef d'atelier (the manager of the workshop).

He tells us we are to show two other workers (Allain and Patrick) what needs to be done for the floor at the primary school down the road, and after we are to load our van and go do the job at Poitiers. We ask for more details, like the address, directions, where we can park, if the workshop currently contains tools and materials we need.

We get a few things, but can't find a few things neither. We speak to the designer and he gives us a rough idea of where the apartment is, and then we get the secretary to find us a map on the internet of the downtown where the apartment is.

Ok we are off before we know it. Can't get a hold of Jean (the boss), and 'on part avec our bit et une couteau' (a French saying literally translating 'we leave with our dick and a knife', but means more or less that we take off towards a goal with basically nothing).

We don't know the address, Dominique hardly knows the city, and we enjoy the scenery and laugh it all off a bit during the ride. 'Il faut pas prendre la tete', we reassure ourselves, and say we will do what we can, and that's it, even if that means turning around and coming back to the workshop if things don't work out (the French phrase literally means 'you don't have to take the head', but means don't need to worry or stress about something).

We get to Poitiers and make a few circles on one-way streets and call the boss until we find it. There are loads of people all around (mostly students: university town). It is nice out, mounting towards 23 degrees Celsius. We avoid a huge bus on our little street and manage to park the van under the building. We call the boss again for the code to get in. He doesn't know (another example of his mastery of organisation). We call the designer who gave us directions (Jean-Paul), and he gives us a number. The number doesn't work, and the door doesn't budge. Dominique enters the store front which comprises of the ground floor of the apartment to ask a guy for the code to get in as I start unloading tools.

We quickly unload everything (seven big, heavy wood-framed windows, a perfurator for piercing concrete, big tool box, some big plastic tarps, a circular saw, cordless drill, and two buckets full of cartridges of silicone and wood glue).

We leave everything in the hallway, and search for the way to get to the fourth floor, where our job is.
 We climb the steep wooden stairwell, find an empty floor, get to the third, again, big empty room, could comprise of at least five apartments if it was divided up by walls. The stairwell ends, and so we find another one at the other end around the corner. This is a little old stairwell of wood planks. At the top is a door. An ungodly odour tingles the nostrils. We open the door and find shit everywhere.

Literally there is pigeon shit on every surface horizontal and vertical, up in the shafters near the roof, and there are pigeons flying about everywhere in a panic. Broken windows at ground floor. I count seven. Those are the seven windows we are going to replace with new windows. The floor is a 5 centimeter carpet of white grey and black pigeon shit. Dominique says he was told we are to clean it up, but he looks doubtful.

He passes a broom around and clear a pathway through the shit from the door to the stairway until the first window, and clears a square under the two nearest windows. He hands me the broom and I continue to make a path and squares under each of the five remaining windowsills, while he goes down to ground floor to bring the tools we need to remove the old windows (a little hammer, a  big flat-headed screwdriver, and a crowbar).

He arrives and I watch as he pops off the two window panes from the frame of the first window, breaks the two hinges on each side of the frame, and with the crowbar rips the window frame out of the opening in the wall. Behind is a little iron fence and a light grill, a sort of safety device, so people and things don't fall out of the window.

He hands me the tools and I continue on the next window. I remove it and start on the third. Here the grill is broken beside where I put the screwdriver to break a hinge. That means the hammer or a chunk of wood or the screwdriver could fall out of the window and down onto the sidewalk below.

And so the screwdriver skids off the surface of the wood frame as I hit it with the hammer, and actually falls out the window down into the streets below. I watch it fall out of my hand and down onto the sill and then over the edge in slow motion, but my motion was even slower. Too slow. I hear a loud crack outside and below the window. I recognise instantly that it is the sound of the screwdriver hitting the sidewalk. I register that this means that it didn't fall onto someone. Good. I immediately put down the hammer and peek my head out the window and look down to see what the result of the screwdriver. I see a bunch of shapes and colours down on the street below, and register the word 'POLICE' written along the chest of the vests of two men in blue looking up at me. One makes a complicated facial gesture, kind of like 'Yes, I saw that screwdriver fall out of the window you're standing at, and that was not a good thing'. A kind of mean smirk.

Dominique is nearby working on the window opening where I already removed the old window, and he says something like 'WAIT! (recognisingly) what was that noise? Did you drop something? (Yes, I made the screwdriver fall out the window) OH NO!

He pops his head out the window and sees people walking by but two cops in dark blue vests over light blue button up shirts, one bald and the other with a dark blue baseball cap. He makes for the door to the stairway and heads downwards. I consider for a split second to continue working and let him deal with it, but then make for the door through the pigeon shit and follow him. We get outside down on ground floor just as a fellow employee Florian (who was working in the area and finished his job, and had intended to come over and help us do ours, but also to bring a cordless perforator, because there was no power in the building (except for the storefront) and not even a plug).

We pass by him and approach the police. The senior policeman begins to tell us that we could have killed someone, that we should have taken safety precautions and put a plastic tarp over the windows so that nothing falls out (at this moment our plastic tarp is sitting just behind the door in the storageroom/hallway on the ground floor folded up in a pile). He says that we should immediately put up some tarps or something, and he demands our worksite permit ( a paper giving authorisation to SokoBois to work on this worksite). Dominique explains that we don't have one. The cop says they will return in the afternoon and if they see we haven't the permit nor taken the safety precautions, they will close the worksite.

They take off and Dominique goes over and explains the story to Florian, and then they unload the cordless perforator and a few other things, and Florian takes off. He ain't going to help us, he is needed back in Thenezay. Dominique explains to me that we don't have a worksite permit.

They cost money, and take time, and Jean doesn't bother with them, normally getting away with it. If the cops shutdown the worksite, our boss will be caught without a work permit, and that means he's screwed. Well, we will continue with our job anyway, and if we are shut down, we are shut down, and return home. It's eleven thirty am (half an hour to lunch at a restaurant!) and that means we have no longer the right to be parked under the building. We get in and search the streets around for somewhere to park. After ten minutes we find a spot outside of an elementary school. It is with a sort of parking meter, but we don't pay, and just leave the car. If it get's towed, its insured, and not my car, he says. We get in and drive off to eat.

Wood Wood Wood

I am doing fantastic! In the third week of a 9 month course on wood frame construction in beautiful historic mediaeval Parthenay. The teacher is totally a real-world person who is all about profitability, efficiency, low-fatigue, environmental responsibility. We are learning (theoretically and practically) how to build a house from A to Z, starting with making our own architectural designs (we worked a bit on his house, and are working currently on some simple cafeteria tables).
The course alternates between a few weeks at the school (class/workshops) and a few weeks with an enterprise. I was fortunate enough to find two enterprises in the same village (named Burie), and even more fortune to find lodging a hundred meters from the two enterprises with a friend I made at Vipassana France back in March. He sold his pizzeria in Bordeaux and bought a huge old stone and wood house in very poor shape for very cheap money, and is slowly renovating it. In exchange for my own private room in the house, I will help him renovate the house (for example there is a 1 meter square hole in the tiled roof). Wherever I turn, there is opportunity to learn how to construct and problem solve! Stephanie is still working at a vineyard near Cognac until September, and after hopes to do a year course in organic agriculture advising, advising farmers, supermarkets, cafeterias, etc. on how to turn organic.


I am in great shape, am helping out here at the youth hostel with the garden and also with turning an old busted piano into a bar. My French is great, and my ability to focus is very agreable!!

Stephanie is totally fantastic, I do not see a horizon to our relationship even from the top of a tower.

My social life has become lots more busy, and this is the reason I haven't made the time to write here more often. I haven't forgotten you! Talk soon!

Cheers,
Maurizio

Last page before next chapter

So I went to visit the school on Wednesday in beautiful little Parthenay, after practicing a motivation speech the night before, to find that I was already accepted, just need to figure out logistics. Great! New adventure is set to begin on monday (so soon!). We go and check out the student lodgement to find out that there remains just one chamber free for monday. Lucky me. It is two km away, and is a nice atmosphere, with people from everywhere, cooks who cook international foods. Projectors for watching THE WORLD CUP. Computers with internet (meaning I can write with you more often, actually have the time to put more effort into my writing). So this afternoon I finish washing windows for my final office, and it is a big job. Gotta run for now and hop on my moped!

Cheers,
Maurizio

The nooks only window washers see

Washing windows. Precision, speed, detail.

I started to destroy an intricate spiderweb in some left-behind top right corner of a window that, since it doesn't affect profits, lacks human attention. I stopped immediately as I observed a not small spider scramble for cover. I watched her disappear from sight and moved my squeegee elsewhere, leaving most of the web intact. I am happy there is little chance that my boss will find this blog post and translate it.

To be forgotten, to be useless. In reality, nothing is useless, everything plays a part in a big web, one way or another. But in the capitalist perspective, there are many things useless, many frontiers to the capitalistic consciousness. My first instinct is to think: good, leave that forest alone, for example. The less we are aware of, with our collective ability to make poor, short-sighted decisions, the better. But our effects on the world around us extend far beyond our narrowed consciousness. In some cases, our consciousness can be used to protect something or someplace from the negative effects of our perspectives.

Cleaning windows, I see many spots that rarely receive human awarness and care, like remote islands which rarely but excitedly receive seafaring travellers. The dust collects, and these remote nooks start to develop their own micro-ecosystem. On the visible level, it is often the entrepreneurial, adventurous and solitary spider inhabits these spaces, and the relative top of the food chain. The unfortunate flying insect that blazes an aerial trail into these nooks is next on the food chain. However life in the human offices and factories is hard for the insects, and often I find the dried exoskeleton of spiders, as well as their prey.

It is sometimes not easy to get a window clean. It requires a sufficient amount of soap and water, followed by a perfect swipe of the squeegee, applying constant pressure to push the dirt, water and soap all the way from one border of the window to another, on BOTH sides of the window. Factors such as muscle memory, muscle fatigue, position of the body of the window washer in adaptation to various obstacles, humidity, temperature, amount of water applied, amount of soap applied, sharpness of the edge of the rubber blade on the squeegee and lack of little nicks or irregularities, pressure of the squeegee against the window, angle of the rubber blade in relation to the window, speed of the swipe, dirt on the window, paint or other objects stuck on the window which cause the rubber blade to lose contact with the window momentarily. And the economy and such require that one works at a constant high speed, big windows, small windows, interior, exterior, ankle height, shoulder height, two story height, size of a computer monitor or size of a wall, sliding door windows, windows with manual or electronic screens, shutters, blinds.

I enjoy the little places I get to explore, whether it is a roof or some closet or corner. Sometimes it is hard to find the rhythm required to work at a speed that satisfies my boss. When it is found, I can sustain it for hours. Sometimes that rhythm extends beyond work hours, and when I have a lunch break I eat and drink and idle at the same energetic rhythm. Sometimes I return home and still have this rhythm, and so I go outside and work in the garden or go running or pushups, chinups, situps. When this frantic pace ends, I am usually quite low on energy, dragging my feet and my mind around.

This rhythm is the rhythm that many bosses in many different lines of work require from their employees. Whether it is harvesting, cleaning windows, packing boxes, sorting vegetables, cutting wood, making a business deal. This is the capitalistic rhythm. Most industrialized governments, including France and Canada, make a deal with their citizens: You find a career, or work various jobs, you learn this rhythm, you master it, and you maintain it for between 35 and 45 hours a week for 35 to 45 years. If you accomplish this, along with giving some of your salary every month for all these years to the government, you then have a pension. Then you can slow down your rhythm, stop working for your money, go at your own, natural rhythm (IF YOU CAN EVER FIND IT AGAIN), and get a modest monthly salary to live on.

We'll see where it all goes. What happens in the future.

Hey, you know, bees and other social insects like ants and termites keep a superiorly frantic rhythm until their last heartbeat. I haven't observed beavers, but I am sure they don't lounge about either. Neither do birds, nor reptiles. It seems to be the larger animals that exhibit more lazy and relaxed rhythms. However, animals that are food to many other animals can't afford to relax much. Dinner is the prey which relaxed at the wrong time.

Us humans, who eats us for dinner? The lion in the zoo? Why must we keep a frantic pace on the tips of our toes to survive? We are the top of the food chain, by far. No other animal can press a button and destroy everything. Is it a very obsolete instinct, one which helped us survive the savannah and the ice age and war?

Ah, right, we have to keep this pace because those other competitive countries are trying to develop an even more frantic rhythm.

How romantic, how balancing, how lonely it would be to be left behind in a nook, or on a forgotten island. To accidentily fall off the conveyor belt into the dark depths below, the Land of the Dust. How childish! Many of us had the liberty to go at our own pace when we were children. Before school started, when we got home from school, at recess. That is, those of us who could develop independence from the collective pace of our peers, or those of us who were ostracized by those peers and were left to our own devices.

Is the anti-society, anti-capitalist longing really a longing for a return to childhood? To no longer peform as a cog in a wheel, to create ever bigger and remote structures with ever more powerful leverage on the planet and on ourselves. To bring things down to the personal, observable, immediate level. To explore our imagination, not just while our bodies work our careers, not just distracting ourselves from our job, but exploring our imagination, uninhibited, with our bodies and minds, turning everything into an adventure.

I would like write here a thought that came to me about atrophy, or the inevitable decay of things. We are, constantly, in the middle of creating more clever and technologically advanced ways of extending the lifespan and maintaining and deepening the comfort of every atmosphere our body enters, and ensuring the fullness of the stomache and the satisfaction of our emotions. It used to be that only the physically strong and dexterous, disciplined people survived. Like other animals. In many cases in history, nothing short of heroism was required to survive. prudence, patience, determination. Strength of character, ability to sacrifice, stoicism, diligence, persistence.

Today, in our society, we don't need strong personalities to survive. We don't need patience, we don't need physical strength or agility. We don't need self-discipline. We don't need instinct. We just wait for the green light and stay within the lines. We just read manuals, we just call experts, we obey laws and rules and signs. We herd ourselves like shepherds herd sheeps, so we can maintain a level of immaturity and mediocrity until our body gives out, and ensure that our future generations can do so as well.

And this is atrophy, the atrophy of the human species. We don't need all five senses to live eighty years, we don't need maturity, we don't need instincts, we don't need wisdom, we don't need forsight, we don't need sacrifice (except, of course, if you will, the biggest sacrifice of all, that which we are in the middle of rendering obsolete), we don't need self-discipline, we don't need awareness. It is an urge towards an unfathomable collective laziness that drives us, a reduction and shameful simplification of 'human being' into a biological machine run by childish emotional urges.

And so, generation after generation, we lose attention span, we lose muscle development, we lose endurance, we lose instinct, we lose self-awareness, and we ensure that we can live longer and longer in these degenerate states. We are making ourselves into mindless meat machines.

Someone, feel free to discuss this with me, show me another perspective, because there are always others.

I think this is a attempt at a rationalization of a desire towards my personal independence from the state, my self-sufficiency, self-discipline, being able to survive by the efforts of my own wits and hands.

Stephanie continues to discovers new white hairs on my head. I love her.

Cheers,
Maurizio

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