“Just to be here and now - this is the true basis of human life.”
- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
I finally sat down to write. First thing this morning. But I got distracted by the ants walking up and down the terrace where I am seated. Their nest is at the far left side, under a plant with yellow flowers. I tried to find it in the Guia de Plantas Medicinales but it isn’t in there so I know what it is not. Internet is down so I can’t look for it. And it isn’t that important really to name it. Not now. But I can say it looks a bit like a tiny sunflower. The same dark yellow. A wide circle in the middle and lots of single petals forming a crown all around it. Inbedded in narrow green leaves that are longer than the ones around a sunflower’s head. The flowers are not much bigger than a fingertip.
The ants conveniently follow the lines between the tiles. Their main road leads from the wall on the right side to the nest on the left. It is always impressive to see how much they can carry. I notice that some of them transport the seeds I’ve been collecting as well. My favorite ones, from the tall grasses that move softly in the wind. You can see when the seeds are ready to leave and when you take the part sticking out between your fingertips and gently pull, they let go and the feathery part comes out, the part that carries them in the air. They shine in the sunlight. They look like arrows. I can hold dozens of them in my hand and some slip away without me noticing because to me they don’t have any weight. They are much bigger than the biggest ant though and I see them struggling to keep a straight path carrying just one of them, sticking it up high in the air so they don’t stumble over it while walking.
A week has passed. I haven’t been here, in the virtual world, a lot because the world out there kept me busy doing nothing. I sat on the roof taking in the views. I followed the river. I wandered around in the forest. I discovered where the bees make their honey. I listened to the frogs, at their loudest just after the evening has fallen. I slept in an old dry stone hut at the edge of a field. I observed insects, watched birds and bats fly, sat at the bottom of the old lime stone ovens, all three of them, looking down at the bottom at the plants growing, the stones not moving, the snails sleeping. Looking up, at the sky transformed into a blue circle, clouds passing, casting shadows.
I came here with a lot of plans but the first day I let go of them. They will come back if they make sense here. In the next weeks or next year or somewhere in the far future. Like seeds carried in the wind. Landing and sprouting, growing and flowering, or simply vanishing. But even when disappearing, they still add to the world. Seeds that don’t grow still become part of the soil and nurture it.
Doing nothing isn’t as easy as it sounds. And it doesn’t really mean doing nothing. You only do nothing when you are dead. Until then, at least you breath. Your blood flows through your veins. Your hair grows. You shed your skin. You see, you hear, you smell. You dream. You empty your mind and you fill it up again. You make space. And when the space is there, things happen.
…………..
(I got distracted for a moment now by the gecko walking over the stone wall, sitting still in the sunlight for a moment, then moving back into the dark shadows again quickly, maybe because it noticed me picking up my camera which is useless somehow anyway, this eagerness to catch what you see so you can see it again afterwards but all you see then is an image, never the real thing. And in the moment of capturing you might miss what is really happening.).
Some people, or actually lots of people, refer to doing things that have no practical value as doing nothing. Reading a book. Going for a walk. Daydream. Watch a movie. Listen to music. All the things artists have to do in order to create. Creation doesn’t come from inspiration, creation is hard work. It is trial and error, it is trying and failing. Finding new ways, doing things differently, loosing control, trying to not know but at the same time know it is the right direction, even when it brings you back to where you started. It is a lot of doing nothing and to some people it sounds like heaven, spending so much time just being, being aware. And it is. Compared to what those people have to do to make a living. “You are so lucky” people tell me often when I talk about my walks, my residencies, the books I read, the movies I see, my travels. Because to them, it is what they aim for, it is what they work so hard for, to have the time to do that. They don’t know about the artist’s proverbial hell though. The hell that comes after and during this heaven, not the other way around. The self doubt, the getting lost, the struggle to make visible, audible, tangible what this period of reflection - of doing nothing - has taught you, the thing you got a glimpse of, the translation of something that refuses to be translated until it has translated you, transformed you, until you are ready to let the things you made, the things that made themselves through you, speak for them self.
After doing nothing comes collecting. Collecting objects. Stones in different shapes and sizes. One round, with a pattern of dots chisseled into it. Two small bits of flint, pink, sharp as knives on the edges. They look like wings almost. Dead branches with bright yellow mosses on them. Bamboo branches. Feathers. Strange pieces of metal. Empty snake shells, bleached by the sun. Tiny wasp nests. Wild garlic about to bloom. Oak galls. The big round still intact remains of the yellow flowers I don’t know the name of, formed by the fragile parasols that will carry the seeds in all directions.
Collecting images. Photos of flowers, favorite places (the snail graveyard!), insects, the sun reflecting in a rain puddle, light falling through leaves. Shadows. Shapes. Collecting wild edible greens and flowers. Collecting information. Names. Histories. Meaning.
And after collecting comes playing. Making ink with the oak galls, pieces of metal and water from the river. Trying out ways to store other colours. Walking shapes, squares, circles, again and again until they are visible in the landscape. Sleeping in a dry stone hut that was built by reusing the stones that were taken out of the soil to be able to grow crops there and which formed a shelter for the farmer or shepherd. Making patterns out of seeds. Frying lamb’s quarters (that’s a plant, not a part of an animal), wild garlic and the sweet purple flowers that are everywhere.
And inbetween all of that, returning to the roof to sit on the wall, take in the landscape, see the sun rise over the trees, watch the birds carry twigs to build their nests, hear the clumsy may beetle approaching (they have a tendency to fly into you), listen to the birds of prey, feel the wind gather strength, wonder if the bats can fly any closer to your feet without crashing into them, see Venus appear.
Then collecting ideas. There’s no way to say which ones are good and which ones are bad. Which ones are ridiculous and which ones are amazing. It will depend on how they are executed. And if they will be executed. Here are some of them:
1.Organise an ant contest, which ant can carry the biggest/strangest object to its nest.
2. Walk the outline of the dry stone hut in the stone quarry (or in the field the stones came from?), again and again and again and again, day after day, then fill the circle with Cosmos Daydream seeds, leaving a space open where the entrance is. Watch the Daydreams grow. Spend time in the new shelter.
3. Collect seeds from as many plants and trees here as possible. Collect clay. Collect water from the river. Make two types of seed balls. One with a mix of all the plants that grow at CACiS. One with the Cosmos Daydream seeds I brought with me (ordered from Amazon). Return home on foot after my stay here, carrying all the seed balls (in my Wheelie walking cart, also known as C.) walking, spreading the Daydream seeds all the way (4 days walking) from the silence and nature of CACiS to the Barcelona city centre. Spread the other seed balls that all carry the landscape of CACiS in them around in Barcelona and the wider world (giving them to people who travel elsewhere and send them to people who are interested in recreating a bit of the soul of CACiS in a place that could use it).
4. Keep all the packing material (plastic bags, cans, wrappers, etc.) from the food I eat during my stay here and turn them into a copy of the dry stone hut I slept in. These huts are beautiful but they also bear witness of how human beings started to clear the land in order to grow crops in bigger quantities, the opposite of the nomadic way of living that was far more sustainable. In a way the packing material of the food we buy in the supermarket represents the same: we need food to survive and the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to do that is to buy it in places where they don’t care too much about how it is produced and handed over .
5. Make natural inks, catching the colours of the landscape.
6. There are more but let’s keep something for another time.
As I am writing this, the sun has disappeared from the terrace and it is ant rush hour on the main highway to their nest. (They might lead to some more ideas as well). The swallows are flying low again and the gecko, or possibly another one, popped up two more times. When I went to get some books in the workshop to check some plant names, I saw a dozen giant snails. Bigger than human heads. And actually meant to be worn as heads, as Gigantes, giants, in a parade, the ones they have in every village here and tells the history of a place. I didn’t have any snail ideas here yet, apart from being as slow as them, but they might come up.
So. What’s next? Next are words. They are here. And from here we’ll see what happens. The ink will turn into drawings. The seeds (I’ve started collecting, there are small paper bags and white sheets with seeds drying all over my room) will turn into seed balls. The route from here to Barcelona has had a first online inspection.
And now it is time for a little walk. And if you followed my words all the way here, maybe you want to do the same. Or maybe you didn’t read any of this and you were out on a walk or already. Even better.
“Actually, I think people would be better off without words altogether.”
- Masanobu Fukuoka, Sowing Seeds in the Desert
