Three focii (plus one): Body

The main advantage I've found to being pregnant is that it allows me to clearly prioritise my activities and stay focused. The pregnancy itself is one of the focii I have, extanded to the whole of health and body hygiene, perhaps slowly bordering on esoteric beliefs... I've discovered that Hatha yoga - a combination of exercises, breathing and focusing on how the body reacts to it all - is a wonderful way to sustain the calm I've found over the past months. And probably also to prepare for birth. After reading bits of the Tao of Health, Longevity and Sex at Jacq's, I've been thinking about getting into Tai Chi, which I expect to be slightly similar in effect. I've become addicted to Indian type nose showers and have developed the belief that I can now no longer get a cold. I've found a relatively stable, relaxed day rhythm - slow getting up, yoga, nose shower, absolute healthy breakfast with porridge and three fruits, herb tea, and by the time I start into the day it's already 11, but I need only three times one and half hours of concentrated work to be happy with my work progress. It's a bit like constant meditation - staying concentrated on how my body feels and what I want to get done that day. But without strain.
Unless my womb is growing and requiring more energy than usual, I feel pretty stable.

Of property and possessions

I gave away all my possessions (except certain books and clothes). Which wasn't much but more than I had actually realised. My room is now for the most part empty - a few shelves are still waiting to be picked up by those who said they would be happy to have them, two boxes full of paper rubbish are waiting for the paper bin downstairs to be empty, and a hill of clothes are calling for my attention to be sorted out and packed either in my rucksack, in a box for the winter, or in bag to be carried to the Freebox at the Bethanien, where other people can use them.

On Friday morning, I sent an email round to 30 people in my address book, hoping that some would need some of my stuff and actually be able to pick it up within a day and a half. I hoped, but didn't necessarily believe it would work. But it did.

I gave away my bed and mattress, my two armchairs, my sofa, my shelves, my desk, my lamps, my plants and all sorts of titbits. The only thing I'd originally bought was my bed and one set of shelves - the rest had come into my hands randomly - an armchair from Kev, another found on the street, a sofa taken from friends who didn't want it anymore, shelves given by friends, other shelves that had accompanied me from France.
Giving and taking - Staying in my room while people take it apart and take away what they want. There is a fine difference in the behaviour of takers that either makes me perfectly comfortable and happy about them taking my stuff or slightly displeased.
Take for instance A+C, who are opening a cultural cafe soon, or K+B, who are starting up their solar engineer office: they looked at the list I emailed, saw they could use some of the stuff, came round, looked at what they knew they needed, took it. And I was very happy to know I was helping them set up their projects.
Similarly, M came and was absolutely enthusiastic about my teapot and my little table, and I felt happy that my teapot would be in her hands for a while.

Now take young G, who came because he needed a mattress - and left with all sorts of plants, office material, CD shelves, lamps and all sorts of other titbits. He stood in my room and acted like a child in a toyshop where everything's free. He grabbed everything with shiny eyes, then held it happily, then realised he probably didn't need it and put it back. Hesitated. Took it again. Back. Again. Back. And eventually, the thing would wander onto the little hill that had started accumulating near the door. I felt he was taking a lot of things mainly because he could and because it was there - and that, I didn't enjoy, because I didn't have the feeling he actually needed or really wanted the stuff in question.
I otherwise like him very much though, so I didn't mind that much. In any case, I wanted everything to leave my room anyway, so I was pleased for every item to disappear.

Giving my stuff away also allowed me to meet up with people I hadn't seen in a long time and wouldn't have taken the time to meet up with before I left. We chatted, sitting on my floor, and caught up a little with one another. It was good.
And as it was, most of the stuff went on Friday already. Those who called on Saturday were interested precisely in what still hadn't been taken away. The randomness of it all always seems to work for me.

I was originally planning on leaving for the farm today, but I ended up spending the whole day sorting out papers. I refused to let myself be stressed out, so I took my time, and eventually realised I couldn't do everything I wanted and still catch the last train. So tomorrow it is that I'll be leaving.

The thrill of honesty

My email provoked a certain amount of interesting reactions. Those that were made visible and openly directed at me were in nearly every case positive, sometimes even thankful or slightly amazed. One paragraph particularly interested the people who will continue to work at the institute:

I've spent four years here, during which a lot changed in my life (as well as here). During those years, it became ever clearer to me that my conception of life was not compatible with a job such as at XXXX. I find environmental resources, social justice and an open, honest way of dealing with other people important, so I decided to be consequent and (radically) change my life, step by step. The production of reports at XXX or in similar institutions - continually locked up in an office, with a hectic work rhythm, with a constant paper and energy consumption, with conferences in the protected social sphere of the educated elite, separated from the empirical matter on which the reports are written, and with regular flights (!) - is incompatible with my views, because, I find, it has a rather negative impact on people and environment - whether it says "environment" on it or not.
Don't get me wrong: I don't mean to judge you as people working here. I rather want to make my decision transparent and perhaps also initiate a few thoughts on life, work and personal priorities.

In a way, a relatively harsh paragraph, and I feared that some people would take this pretty badly, as it attacks the basic justification of our work - "we're doing something for the environment". And probably some people did feel attacked by it, but I haven't heard back from those. Instead, I had reactions like "I was sooo pleased to read your mail! At last someone who really says what we're doing here!". Another person also thought that most people worked there without real convictions, and that most would be happy doing something else other than sitting in an office. A few other people expressed their envy at my having "found my path" - as they are obviously unhappy with theirs so far. I wish them all luck and a bit more guts perhaps...
The personnel manager did not react to my mail. She acknowledge that it'd been sent, but did not comment in any way its content. I realised though that my boss had put her in blind carbon copy in the (positive) email he sent me - she would otherwise probably have been very unsure how to act with me at all.

did it at last!

The day has come - I sent out the email officially and publicly announcing to my colleagues that I was leaving my work, why, and what I would do next. I spent a lot of time today at work rewriting the text, fiddling around, asking friends there for their opinion on whether it came across as aggressive. The text ended up way too long, and I was unsure whether to send it before or after the appointment with the personnel lady tomorrow morning. All in all, I was a bit scared what the reactions would be. But then I pressed "send", with sweaty hands and a nervous belly. It was out, I couldn't take it back.
Except it turned out not to have gone out at all, because I mistyped the address of the mailing list. So I had to go through the same process once again (do I really send it today? Sweaty hands, nervous belly etc), and sent it out again. This time, another technical problem ensured that it hadn't been distributed. I resolved this issue and without thinking about it anymore, sent it out a third time - this time for good.

And I've received heart warming responses from some people already - the most heart warming message of all being from the boss, who wishes that I keep a critical eye on the institute's work, and finished with "every path is good, when it is consciously chosen - and you seem to have thought a lot about your path". I feared a little that he would take my decision to quit personally - in a way attacking as I was the product of his life's work. And I really didn't want that.

I'm curious to see how the personnel manager will react tomorrow, seeing as she has less self-respect than the boss.
Walking home, I felt good about the fact that I'd at long last written and sent this email which had been in my thoughts for years now... A page is turning.

We Travel For You Ltd.

Nearly two months ago, Johannes and I started spinning around the idea of our summer trip through Eastern Europe, and decided we could try make a photo and text documentation of the political projects and people we get to meet. So we got our acts together - at first Johannes more than me - and did some first internet research to find some eastern left wing presence. We asked political friends for contacts and ideas. We discussed our conceptions and Johannes started writing a draft application to get funds from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for political education (the name should tell you which political landscape the foundation belongs to) to get a few euros to finance the costs for films and development and book layout. We reworked his draft together, and I gave it its professional final touch thanks to years of experience working in a company where a report's good looks matter more than the contents. And off it all went to the foundation.

Last week, we heard back from the foundation. Our project description had been forwarded from department to department to eventually reach the eastern Europe section, where, they said, they could not finance the project. But... they had another offer to make.

And so it is that we now have this perfectly unexpected, random offer from the foundation to travel through Bulgaria, Romania and North Serbia and find projects and organisations dealing with conflict mediation, strengthening women's rights, offering political education and such. They would actually pay us for that and cover part of the travel costs. Our travels would then officially be "research".

The "problem" is: we would hardly have any travel costs, hitchhiking as we would, and do not really need the money. So why would we take on the offer? I'm not sure we will, but we both see positive and negative points in it and need to talk with the foundation before we can decide anything.

• positive points
  

- we would have a Very Random Job
- we could give the projects and people we meet a contact to the rich west and its money reserves,
- I would get new work contacts through the foundation, which is always good when one has just quit the safety of regular employment,
- I'd have a little extra money for my still unplanned autumn and winter.

• negative points

- we would be traveling in the name of the foundation, and not as free travelers,
- the temptation of getting traveling costs reimbursed could take us away from the challenging (but more interesting) path of hitchhiking,
- we would be potentially working towards the integration within the system of social movement and other extraparliamentary groups.

These lists are not exhaustive and probably too sketchy to be fully clear, but that's all you'll get for now, for I'm tired from all the work on the women's straw bale house construction site (today and yesterday, plastering the walls with a mix of clay and cow dung. Now that was cool work. Really.)

lots of mud

Today we started covering the inner walls of our straw house with clay. There will be three layers in total, and the first rough layer is meant to cover the straw with structure, so that the following plastering layer holds well. The process and material are, once again, wonderfully easy, clean and freely available.
We got the clay from a gravel pit where they produce sand. The rich clay is a by-product of sand cleaning and the site doesn't need it. We drive over for about 20 minutes, load the trailer with clay, say thank you and drive back. Free, aside from transportation.
The clay was stuck into a bathtub with water as it apparently changes its structure when it's left for a few days to soak. And then, off we started massaging our straw walls with the mud and lovingly sticking a mix of straw and mud into holes and dents. The mix of straw and mud is very similar to some of the walls in the Brittany house, and I'm starting to have an idea how they were done. (I'm really sad that we built this cement wall there last year where a clay and stone wall used to stand.) We worked with bare hands and feeling the rich, creamy smooth clay is gorgeous - although leaving it to dry on the skin is a bad idea, as it dries it up. It can be used as a beauty mask if put on very thickly, though... Which I would definitely not advise to do with conventional building material.
The second layer will have cow poo, not horse poo after all, mixed in it. I'm / hm / curious to see how that will be.

lots of straw and a nomadic vet

I'm once again on my friendly farm two hours north of Berlin and have spent the last three days building a straw bale house with a bunch of other women. The actual wall building went incredibly quickly: Friedi, our trainer and architect, explained us a bit of theory and the basics of straw bale building techniques on Monday, a little more on Tuesday, and today, all walls are standing and waiting for the anchoring ring to be set up on top. Straw is a fantastic building material - so easy and clean and fast. The big blocks stack up quickly, it is relatively easy to shorten or separate a bale in two, saw bits out to go round poles, they are relatively light to carry, and there is no back-breaking work involved. What's more, straw comes from nearby farmers and is a by-product of cereal production which is produced anyway - so no factory, cheap or even free, and short transportation ways. And the only by-product of construction is - logically - straw, which lovingly covers the ground with a golden touch.
The complete opposite of working with, say, cement: cement is heavy, messy, dries up in the most awkward places, the rests cannot easily be disposed off, it is polluting, dries up your skin, is transported over long distances from the factory, expensive...

To have an idea of what the construction of a straw bale house looks like, look here. Ours is much much smaller (only one room), but it's the same principle.

This weekend, we'll start covering the walls with a mix of earth and horse poo.

I'm so thankful to be able to learn all I've learned in the past three days. And a construction site of women is a great way to learn and empower myself too, as I otherwise tend to step back and let "those who seem to know better" (usually men) take over. As ridiculous as it may sound, I wouldn't have used the electric saw, or the drilling machine, or tried out all the different bits of the construction site if men had been around to take over these tasks. It's a lot about fighting my own instincts (he must know better), and about men having to fight their own instincts too (i probably know better) - not that all men are like this at all, don't get me wrong.

But I see what has happened on the other construction site that is running in parallel, with a mixed team. Those who plan and decide and do the machine work (and thus learn more) - are men plus Lisa, who boxes herself into all male decision circles, come what may. Those who end up unsure of what there is to do and step back are for the most part women - who are thus pretty frustrated. Discussion has taken place, but apparently to no avail, and specialisation tendencies have continued to develop, or so I've been told (by a male observer).
We on our construction site, made sure that the other women did what they wanted to do, learned a bit of everything and could take part in each work process. It's a world of a difference, and I don't think I would have thought saying something like that a year ago, but having only women on the site is a form of protection.

One of the women is Nini, a nomadic vet, who has been without a "home of her own" for the past eight years. She works three or four months a year as a replacement vet and spends the rest of the time doing what she wants - such as learning about strawbale building. I can relate very much to her life style, hitch hiking from one place to the next and being where she wants. The most surprising about her (so far) is that she looks so - normal. Hehe.

In any case, it's good to be back on the farm in spring - it looked so dreary this winter, so sad, so impossible to master, so much like a dark hole of work. In spring, it appears full of potential and beauty, and those are the moments when I think - aha, after all, perhaps I CAN imagine moving to this project. Which I would only definitely definitely do if my friend Anna moved there too.