pics #1976 -  #2018

Monday December 12th to Friday January 20th
Red Lunar Skywalker to Yellow Lunar Human
Monday morning, after waking up early, meaning earlier than other days where I became used to take a "brunner" after my yoga session. A "brunner" is my contraction of "diner" and "brunch". Well on this morning, I pack my bags after a brunch and leave on a lightly loaded bicycle, -clothes, toiletry and what to read- to go to discover the organic farm that I am in contact with through Magi the yogini. It goes slowly on the regular slope of the Vitosha to reach this farm settled at an altitude of 1100m. The route goes through a cloud between Bistritsa and Zheleznitsa. A cloud that condemn Sofia to a grey weather. At the sign that indicates the farm "Elata", there are still 800m left. Dogs bark as I pass close by the stable. A last straight line before meeting back with Vesselina and her son Spartak. He has the name of a Bulgarian hero, more precisely of a Thracian one, a hero who lead the third servile war against Rome, who is named Spartacus there.
At night comes the husband, Rosen, with the evening milking. As he lived many years in Latin America, we talk inespañol. As this Bulgarian couple met in The Netherlands, we add Dutch words here and there. But it is needless to say that in snow and cold, it is neither by using English nor Dutch that we will attract the Sun! The only shadow on speaking so many languages, nearly a different one with each person, is that I am less aware of what is going on as they all speak Bulgarian together.

           Vitosha
My communication with animals improves as well, cats understand me very well despite my French accent. They are stubby cats, a race sized to stand rigorous winters. Same with the Karakatchan dogs, an autochthon race that my hosts have for shepherds and guards. They are about form and size of Colley dogs, with two colors of hairs among brown, black and white. By time they all get used to me and it is a pleasure when I go to the stable or back to the house, to see them running to me. Until now, dogs mostly intimidated me, but Romania changed this! Two bitches give birth during my stay and it is a chance to witness the puppies growing in a few weeks. The other animals, cows, horses and sheeps are also from native Balkanic races.


The farm is well situated, the place is calm, the scenery is breathtaking: I can finally see the Vitosha clearly, while only its silhouette can be seen through the pollution in the capital. The farm started a few years ago, but there is still some work to extend the housing quartes and welcome more volunteers. Despite the season, three other volunteers are helping besides the two workers, Not to mention the many visitors.


Working outside, I soon find again a healthy rhythm of life, to witch harmoniously integrates my yoga practice, in two sessions. One in the morning before breakfast, one in the evening after the suns has hidden behind the mountain and cold falls. My hosts make cheese, butter and ghee, and of course yogurt. The later is the ultimate Bulgarian specialty: the bacteria is named Lactobacillus Bulgaricus. Of course food is delicious. Then there is the satisfying feeling of coming back in a warm house after a day of work. We dug a canal to evacuate the filthy water from the stable, we built barrier for the enclosure of the horses, and when it snowed we had to shovel the path clear.

           Vitosha
During these days I do not wear my glasses, as when at the Romanian eco-village in the Appusins mounts. Even strongly near-sighted I can make the difference between a cat and a cow. Besides I have done research to reeducate my eyes, in the hope to let go of glasses in the future.

In the week-ends I come down to Sofia to teach my Sunday morning yoga class, attended by a few regulars students. I also spend some days at my host Dimitar and his room-mate Georgi, and with the cats of the flat. I lose at once my farmer´s routine that follows the cycles of the Sun.

          Stara Planina in the background
More generally I appreciated my time in Sofia, surprisingly I met quite some people speaking a very good French. It is good to have the opportunity to speak one´s mother tongue, then one´s mind becomes clearer and one notices how speaking foreign languages makes like a cloud around the head which masks the sun.
I collect bicycle components, getting some shipped to me: I take advantage of Bulgaria being the cheapest country of the European Union. Seeing the level of life however, these specific components are actually very expensive to afford for locals, more than in Western Europe. Sometimes it has its positive side to have been living in The Netherlands. I also ask for maintenance tasks, the cost of labor is amazingly cheap. Besides workers are well skilled and sympathetic. especially at the post office. First, the opening times are long, next there is little waiting time, and despite a few remarks about not sticking to the rules of making a package- place of the address, re-using a box to send other item- employees are helpful. With all this done I am getting prepared to leave Sofia and reaching the end of Europe.

           Rila

I found an interesting balance between two opposite lifestyles, in a city and in the farm. It is unnecessary to write a long article about it, it lays in the difference between a healthy lifestyle in a natural environment, that contrasts with a lifestyle in an artifical and unhealthy surrounding, where one needs to relentlessly struggle for a quality of life that would hardly equals with the countryside´s. Of course working at the farm seem harder and we are far from the 40 weekly hours, as cows do not stop from producing milk during week-ends! But this work has a meaning contrary to the city´s. In the countryside, I breathe pure air, working with people, among animals, being in nature, eating healthy food, following the rhythm of days and seasons, to which my yoga practice naturally integrates itself. In the city, even if I do not work, it is hard to find motivation and to stay away from screens. Viciated air, noise, stress, agressivity are constantly present ...



In my readings I also find a contrast. I loved the auto-biographic tale of a buddhist monk, named Lama Anagharika Govinda, who wandered through Tibet before its invasion by RPC. It has been deeply inspiring me, by its picturing of the landscapes, of the Tibetans´ life, of his spiritual quest. Then I read the latest book by Noam Chomsky, that makes my feel angry again. Through quotes of leaders from ZeYounightedStates, he puts in perspective their idealism and reality. Or rather as one of them says, on one hand there is "reality": namely that they have the mission to defend and promote freedom and democracy... and on the other hand we find "the abuse of reality" with examples such as: the murdering of Chilean democracy on September 11th 1973, the destruction of Iraqi culture in the beginning of the present millenium... Arguments that are exposed and complimented with similar behavior from big imperialist powers such as the French Republic and The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Bloody Sundays.
More game of contrast, for my last meal at Mitko´, we invited friends who had different lifestyles and ideas. It is with playfullness that I offer the above-mentioned books to the one who knows least on the subject. It is important to share books, even more to inform people, and ıt sounds crucial to me not to waste one´s time to convince already convinced people.
Same at my host, we vary in music and movies,between a documentary and "Night of the Living Dead", between a Edith Piaf vinyle and a anarchist punk band. I share with them some great names of the French anarchist music scene, namely Leo Ferre and Trust.

Question #1: How do you earn your life? What is your job??
This is a regular question when people hear that I travel for a long period of time. For the second one I happily answer that I am jobless although I teach yoga at times. Or that I have been sitting behind a computer scree, but this is not precise enough, a lot of people do that. To come back to the first question, which will be the subject of today's pamphlet, I find it ridiculous: I earned my life about 30 years ago already. My only certainty is about losing it sometime, hoping for it to happen far from now, and that I have been happy. It is in time that life is measured, isn't it? But we consider money to understand if people can live? Strange.

Looking closer, we lost some values ("some" to stay positive). Take the saying that "time is money" and apply a materialistic distortion upon it. The result: stressing on money, time is converted into money, into numbers on a bank account. This conversion operation is usually taking place in a employer/employee relationship, a soft version of master/slave. Basic principle stay the same, namely that the result of the slave's work/time benefit the master, who will give crumbs to his servant. So the week of the "lucky one" from the North (the political North, not the pole) becomes: five days work to make money, one day shopping to expense it, one day to rest in order to re-up the next week fresh.

          
If instead of converting my time in money, I use it as I want? My time, my energy, in a word, MY life. Instead of working all my life to pay my tombstone. Was the prehistoric man punching in his card at Ford? He probably was, more than us, spending days in bed with lover, strolling in the countryside, potlucks with friends... In short, time of happiness, time really earned. And what about being dedicated to one's passion, develop new skills, quench one's thirst for discoveries? Isn't that the time we want all the time? But in deliberate madness, Human sacrifices his happiness and his time, in short, his life to "earning money". And that is what we mean for " earning one's life". That must be a wink to old Georges (Orwell).
This saying that "time is money" is always present in western thinking, especially inyounight'dstates-ofamerica thinking, as this country represent the extremist accomplishment of materialism -but I wait for the Chinese to catch up and refine my opinion-. What 's written on the former's green banknotes? "In God we trust". And in the Bible, on which solemnly swears the president ofZeYouNightedStatesOfamerika, it is written "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (Matthew 6.24). Despite centuries of reading the Bible, we remain far from understanding it! -or I should turn into a prophet, what do you think, does it makes good money?-

          

Without earning my life in this common sense, for the past year, I had time to gain new skills, in particular working in farms. Also the more I maintain my dear panzer-farrhad, I become more efficient, more expert, and I need less time for it than previously. While in the logic of an employee receiving a salary, I would need the services of an expert, in order not to spoil the little time I have left. With time, the expert rises its prices, thus I need to earn more, thus to work more, thus to lose even more time. All of it to buy the experience of the expert that I have no time to build myself. In this view that time = money, of course if one needs money, one needs to work more. But one has less time, one must go faster all the time, taking a faster vehicle, dishes ready to re-eat in microwaves... which adds costs absorbed by the gain in money. But there does not stop the preposterous: the more people earn money, the more they live packer in cities, full of responsibilities, in a word stressed, and never having time because they are too busy. We throw oneself from an activity to another, filling one's agenda for the forthcoming months -add the cost of an electronic organizer- : work, meetings, dates, parties, sports, transports each time, etc. For each activity: PAY! After that we're thrown the excuse that "I did not have time". Fake problems! Misleading paths! "I did not TAKE time" is the real reason. Oh, I was forgetting: stress diminishes immunity. We often find stress as a contributing factor in serious ailments cases (cancers ...). Were we speaking of earning one's life, or of losing it?
But it doe not end there. In a scientific world where attention is only given to what's quantifiable, we choose money as a quantifier for our happiness. I often read in the French news and I bet in the English speaking one we'd find it too: "The mood of French people is down", under the title it is explained that "they consumed 0.3% less in February than in January". In this, happiness = consumption. Following such statement I must be in a deep depression, without any chance of finding a lift at the bottom of the abyss. Besides, I am homeless and jobless.

          
Such sadness is not my case though. To the contrary, I use 100% of my time, as I want it. I really don't care about not having a salary in exchange! I am more interested in doing something I like with friendly people. Money is only a consolation prize, and it should be put back in its place, as a useful tool that improves bartering. Albert Jacquard suggested that every one should take a sabbatical year every 6-7 years. How wise!
Text freely adapted without their permission, and with clumsy translation from some words by Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine, Bernie Bonvoisin, Jesus Christ and Nicolas S. son of a b... (no that's his wife!)

In the beginning of this year, I do not wish you to become rich of money, which is anyway not likely to happen in the current economic situation. But sincerely I wish you a happy and healthy new year. May 2012 be rich of experiences, happiness and wisdom.