Blogging the stories of our family life on a yoga retreat in the magical village and valleys of Amieira, Central Portugal. Everyday we are tending this beautiful land and its stone dwellings in our journey towards self sufficiency. Moses is the Portuguese name of this place, meaning many mill stones. And, providently, is also the name of our beloved golden retriever, without whom, we'd never have found it. We love you Moses.
If you're still interested in these type of stories not usually screened on average mainstream media, do check out George Ure's blog Urban Survival. Nice. If you're interested in official definition of what Quantitative Easing, check here on Wiki, before the net shuts down completely. Some day shortly. Unless the revolutionaries win. And we get more Diaspora stuff where information doesn't actually "live" anywhere at all so no one can control it.
Peace to all our friends in London right now with the Student Fee Rise just passed. We hear there are horses crashing through student protesters. Time for the peacemakers to make their stand.
As I keep saying, get ready. Be prepared to wage peace.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I don't really get what Thanksgiving is, but that's OK cos we have American friends who have showed us its about the best food and the best friends and family available getting together for a wholesome thankful time. So we're looking forward to popping over to our friends today for some of the good old American loveliness that exists in so many American homes right across the world today.
Big news in creative wonderland of Moses is that John is front page of the internet gallery Eyestorm. Purdays are also in chats over possible show in this Sintra gem, showcasing their new views of rural Portuguese life. Go Purdays!
Right, about baking your noodle. We've been pootling about on You Tube watching various lovely things. This one is for all those who have kids, work with them, or preferably are them. "Well bake my noodle!", as we say round these parts. We'll put more up over coming days. Get a cuppa tea and enjoy. It's an hour...
Finally a wee autumnal view from the road to castelo branco where incidentally I took my level 1 ECG Cricket coaching course last weekend. All the way out here in Portugal. In Portuguese to boot. First Cricket Coaches Course in Portugal to Portuguese speaking Portuguese. Twas most cool to have been there. At the start of a cricket revolution. The vid is of the trees not the cricket.
Just 3 links for y'all today based on my inklings over these recent interesting days. Will leave it to you to make up your own mind. Be warned. Engaging in this 3 part little journey may prove to be a rabbit hole that drops you out in Wonderland. Enjoy.....
"You got time to kill, ain't yer?", he said. A fair accusation I thought. Precisely why we're here and not there. Time to kill. Time to talk. Time to listen. Time to be. With friends. Alone. Time to imagine. And that peeps is where we are headed today. Imagination.
Lets start with a wee perception shifter that took place here this week. River and I went for a walk one day to the opposite side of the little valley on the north side of our house. We've been here 3 years now and never walked it. Mainly cos we didn't know it was there til a bulldozer went down it in the summer (as part of the biannual road cleaning they do here for ensuring fire engine access in the forest).
Now 3 years is a fair bit of time to spend in the forest. We walk a lot. Found many paths. Beaten a few clean only to be scratched to pieces by newly grown brambles on return the following year. Investigated. Stopped. Stared. Marvelled. Gave thanks. In many many places across the land. A thousand different vistas. Up down round. Thought we had a pretty good idea where we lived. Until this week. Until that path. Until a single view from 250 metres away blew us away.
We have spent all our days for almost 2 years gazing west and south. Never seen a sunrise over the horizon, only over the hill mid morning. We've consumed every single sunset down cascading far away valleys. But we've never looked from over there back up. Back east. Like this.
As you can see from the pic, our house is situated half way up, what is actually, a perfect hillock. After a series of other equally revealing views from along the 500m path, River and I had our breath taken away and simply sat on the edge of the path for a very long time feasting at the wonder of the eyescape that was laid out before us in every direction. Hearts and spirits wide wide open in absolute surrender to the majesty of this place, in awesome thankfulness for it all, and total utter gobsmacked surprise that we had no flipping clue for all that time where we had been living. We live here? We live here.
A return to the house for a cuppa and a quick look on google translate for the name of our houses, Cabeço. Always thought it was some kind of derivative of Cabeça which means head. But no, in fact it has one very specific meaning. It translates as "Knoll". I must have seen this translation at some point but ignored it cos it failed to resonate as a description. So seeing that we do in fact live on a splendid knoll, was a tremendous treasure to discover after all this time.
What was so outstanding for us about this little revelatory walk of ours, was that no matter how aware we think we are, no matter how well we think we are doing in understanding the context of who we are and where we are, a trip to another viewpoint, another perspective, even one that is very very close to where we have always been, can immediately reveal we never really had a clue! Truly a type of revolutionary perspective shifter. Now that one name, Cabeço, the name of our house, will always be for us inextricably linked to this wake up call that there is far more beauty in this world than we have yet seen. All we need to do to see more is change our point of view.
In the context of our new found titillating eyescapes, we have also been reflecting much recently on dreams. Our own dreams, those we are sub consciously experiencing while asleep and more interestingly those visions that we are consciously pondering in our daydreams. Night and day, day and night, these movies running in our minds eye somewhere, are our dreamscape. We commonly accept that dreams can often, particularly the lucid ones, feel extremely real. We touch, we smell, we see, we talk, we hear, we fear, we love. We reflect on the past, we try to resolve the present, we glimpse the future. But where are we doing all those things? In our dreamscape, of course. It's not real. It's just dreaming in it?
But what if our dreamscape is real. As real as the phenomenon known as the material world. What if? What might that mean? Could it mean we can actually imagine the future into being. Visionaries often do don't they. And artists. And writers. They imagine what is not there in the material world. They imagine it in the dreamscape. Then seek to bring that reality of their vision, into the real physical world. If the dreamscape is real, then I have a feeling I have absolutely no idea how to navigate my way in it. We just might have an extrordinarily powerful tool as human beings. Way more powerful than we have ever imagined to date. Our Imagination.
If that's true, then what a time we are in folks, to imagine our way through the coming days. Let's do it. Let's ignite a revolution. Let's imagine, seriously imagine, a more beautiful world for ourselves and those around us and for those further afield who really need to be able to escape their own physical realities right now. I know this sounds all so familiar. But again I say, what if it were possible? Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visionsand all that.
Anyhow, there's some perspective shifting going on around these parts. And I think it has something to do with all the wonderful friends we have been sharing time with this last month. John and Caroline obviously, with their elegant artistry with the brush and the camara, have both inspired with their enthusiasm and their work. (Their exhibition is on in town next week by the way and trust me, they will be putting on quite a show. Do check out their blogs - great photos, great paintings, great haikus.)
Also been hanging out with Ian and Merle and their tribe, Anna, Oliver, Jonny. Went up to the Serra da Estrella with them last week. Such outstanding beauty all the way on the winding roads through vale and ridge and villages and paddling in river beaches in hot sunshine, until you arrive at the summit, the highest peak in portugal at 2km above sea level, with snow all over the place and crystal clear views for eternity.
The light, the rocks, the moss, the colour, the magnificence. Almost felt like we were on another planet. And again, not very far, only hour and half. Took Moses and Perry for a walk into the snow. They rolled, they jumped, they frolicked and ate way too many snowballs. The dogs, just like me, were in heaven.
It's Autumn. It's breathtaking. It's where we live. It's been full of lunches and dinners and fires and music and conversation and games and laughter. So much laughter. And of course pumpkins. Lots and lots of pumpkins. Relishing the eyescapes that are our nearest and dearest. Taking note of what is passing through our dreamscapes. Waiting for the rains to pass.
Thanks to those who commented on the last post. Lovely to start some new conversations with people contemplating similar things at this time. Continuing on a similar note, there seems to be a central theme recurring in our reflections and dreams at the moment. That is the nature of energy itself. At the smallest level of what we consider to be the material universe, energy just keeps spinning to keep matter in form. At the largest view, the galactic view, the whole thing is spinning interrelatedly in ways we can't fully comprehend. Doesn't really matter which lens you care to look through, the microscope or the telescope, the data is telling us the same thing. It's all spinning in the same way: vortexually.
According to the Websters online dictionary, the word 'vortexual' doesn't actually exist, although 'vortical' does. However, given the prevalence of the phenomena on so many levels, the omission rather surprised me. Or maybe not. Maybe in fact it's a new way of not just how we are currently describing what we see in relation to the interconnectivity of all things, but also, just possibly, how we are seeing it. More simply, how we feel about seeing things move, including us, more spirally towards an unspecified moment in time.
Now, this all might be some random playback of influences, and I am happy to concede that the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy read in my teens, might just be affecting this.
The Total Perspective Vortex is allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected.
When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."
But I doubt it. Our new view of the entirety of it all I suspect is arising from what we are actually seeing with our own eyes at this present point in time, rather than through an inculcated lens. If that makes sense. Our eyes on the material world interlaced with images from our dreamscape, both in our sleep, and more interestingly, while fully awake.
What if, we all are spinning vortexually. Always have been, granted, but what if we are on the place in the vortex, (obviously in all the vortexes on every level all at the same time), where the spinning is getting closer to the centre, with exponentially increasing speed. The reason we might be more aware of the interconnection of things, more able to see past, present and future events with increasing clarity, is in fact that it's all getting much 'closer' together. Maybe this singularity at the centre of the universal whirlpool, feels a little more inevitably possible, because it might, of course, truly exist. If so, the notion of vortexualisation (OK stretching it here a bit but bare with me), of which as stated we are becoming more aware of and affected by, is indeed a developmental process leading to a moment in time evidently hurtling towards us with all its accompanying chain reactions, really rather quickly. At which point I assume, everything, including us, will have been vortexualised.
Alright enough. You get my point. "Vortexual" is, whether we like it or not, already here in our cultural vernacular at Moses. Arrived a week ago. But as you can tell, already pretty forefront. What I really want to know, is if this little word is resonating with anyone else out there.
Let me know.
Memphis.
p.s. found an online definition for vortextual, which ironically, is a fair description of my piece, but not in a way I would have imagined. suggests verbosity and annoyance for friends subjected to listening. so i have, obviously suggested the urban dictionary publish an alternative version for vortexual. once published, i feel a fair balance will have been made to the info cloud. but you can decide for yourself.
We have spent all our days for almost 2 years gazing west and south. Never seen a sunrise over the horizon, only over the hill mid morning. We've consumed every single sunset down cascading far away valleys. But we've never looked from over there back up. Back east. Like this.
A return to the house for a cuppa and a quick look on google translate for the name of our houses, Cabeço. Always thought it was some kind of derivative of Cabeça which means head. But no, in fact it has one very specific meaning. It translates as "Knoll". I must have seen this translation at some point but ignored it cos it failed to resonate as a description. So seeing that we do in fact live on a splendid knoll, was a tremendous treasure to discover after all this time.
If that's true, then what a time we are in folks, to imagine our way through the coming days. Let's do it. Let's ignite a revolution. Let's imagine, seriously imagine, a more beautiful world for ourselves and those around us and for those further afield who really need to be able to escape their own physical realities right now. I know this sounds all so familiar. But again I say, what if it were possible? Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions and all that.
Also been hanging out with Ian and Merle and their tribe, Anna, Oliver, Jonny. Went up to the Serra da Estrella with them last week. Such outstanding beauty all the way on the winding roads through vale and ridge and villages and paddling in river beaches in hot sunshine, until you arrive at the summit, the highest peak in portugal at 2km above sea level, with snow all over the place and crystal clear views for eternity.
