i looked down at the squished snail on my thumb as i was taking down the borrowed tent, and thought, "oh". i had been thinking that i would get a tattoo of a snail on my hand recently, partly because i love snails, partly because i am a snail, with my home on my back, and also to remind myself to slow down, and take things one moment at a time. But i guess i don´t need one, as long as there are enough snails around for me to absent-mindedly squash, although he was mostly intact, so it was more of a pinch.
i was leaving the dragon festival because my festival buddy had abandoned me for madrid, and i had just spent the last night feeling a little sick, very uncomfortable, and wishing that i were out dancing to the awesome, and really loud, irish music that was played live for st. patty´s day. i met some irish people, and they told me they don´t waste time worrying about what color to wear on a day like this. every minute is needed for a day made exclusively for getting as pissed as possible.
people came from all over europe, england, portugal, czech republic, france, germany, holland, probably more to come to this free festival with so much music, good people, and in such a beautiful river valley in southern spain. after two good nights, and one sick night, and my new friend gone, i decided to hitchhike back to the valle de sensaciones. this is the beautiful place i had been wwoofing at for the two weeks previous to the festival.
the first person to pick me up was the guy who had taken all of us wwoofers to the festival in his van. mathias used to wwoof at this place a few years ago, and still lives in the area, so he visits a lot. he was on his way back to the festival, so he dropped me off at a better spot to hitchhike from. 10 minutes later, a nice man from barcelona, picked me up and took me all the way to where i needed to go. it is so nice to know spanish well enough to carry on a conversation with someone. no uncomfortable silences or sign language, although that can be fun sometimes too, but not after this weekend.
so the snail, which i apologized to and then sleepily flicked onto the wet grass, the snail reminded me that i don´t have to see the whole world in one year, or even all of europe in one month, or the rest of spain in one week. i had been trying to decide whether to go to this beautiful beach called san pedro, which is in a beautiful national park near here, where some people are living in caves, or whether to go to a rainbow gathering in northern portugal, or the rainbow community near the dragon festival, or walk the GR-7 from southern spain to greece, or go to another wwoof farm in northern spain, or go to a raw food ecovillage wwoof farm in southern spain, or just go home and hug my mommy and get a job, letting it drive me crazy. So when i got back to homebase, where i had left a lot of my stuff for the weekend, the people there reminded me what a horrible situation this is, to have so many wonderful options in my life.
In the end, i decided to stay at the valle at least until the end of march, which is when i am hoping to meet up with another american wwoofer i met, the festival buddy who left me, and we can hitchhike to vienna to meet the two austrian wwoofers we met, and we can ride bikes down through italy.
So, this... along with gardening, falling in love with funky the cat (sorry sebastian), living in a circus caravan and a hexagon house, eating really good birthday cake for my birthday, meeting really great people, climbing mountains, helping to build living houses, wondering if i can really grow a chair, planning to wash my clothes tomorrow on the bicycle-powered washing machine, learning new constellations because i can see so many stars every night, finding myself surrounded by people speaking german and wondering how this happened, eating knudel, running out of money, wishing i had all of my clothes, missing all of you, and thinking about finally learning how to play chess but probably not but maybe... is what i´ve been doing since i last wrote on this blog, which i´ve recently updated to the new version. hopefully you can tell the difference.
oh, and the invitation still stands for anyone who wants to come out and join me on my travels. you don´t need that much money, because i´m alive and happy without it, which means you could be too. but join soon because the offer may end--who am i kidding, i could be doing this for years. especially if i get that tattoo, or stay away from catalunya where they were eating all those snails.