OR, CONSTANT CRUSHING BLOWS DESPITE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE. AND PIGGY IN THE MAKING TO START THE YEAR WITH SOME BACON!!
Alert: Hello, you beauties. As you can see this is very late. A string of misfortunes kicked me in the crutch from when I started this post. Limping miserably into 24 I had a new horrible happening. On New Year’s Day, I was running around doing positive stuff like you do when I swallowed a clove whole in my parasite-purging tea and it acted like a bomb to my system. I became terribly ill a couple of hours later with pains all over my body like gnomes with pickaxes assaulting me. I also flopped weak like a rag doll into bed and then had terrible chills, I was also semi-hallucinating. I would find out later these are indeed symptoms of clove poisoning. For the next four days, my body went into total detox and I coughed like a navvy as well as fluctuating between being hot then freezing cold. My fever finally broke on the fourth night as my soaking bed bore testament. I’m much better now and feel mentally brighter than I have for months. , it would seem that a reckless swig of herbal tea is a cruel master but does have its benefits! There is always a positive side to all adversity.
Well hello, my beautiful old birds. Let’s dance naked around the Fire of the Dead 2023. Let’s exalt in its demise and hope to flush away the demonic entities that manipulated it worldwide. Let’s spit on its war-mongering ashes for it indeed has been a beast.
I battled very hard for my mountain Utopia in Turkiye to be thwarted at every juncture, people I trusted betrayed me and stole money along the way. It seems this is the MO of the world now, and laws are changing at the turn of a dime.
I loved and worked in my garden despite it growing ever clearer that it would never be mine. So I did have weeks there in a bliss of denial but finally had to leave it in the hands of a lawyer to untangle as I indeed had to untangle the vines and ivy that had threatened to choke and smother the trees and ground. It all seems very symbolic in retrospect- I did things for the love of the place and humans denied me to make a thing of beauty out of hatred.
As I spent most of the year over in that beautiful mountain paradise I had wonderful times but also a series of body blows including the unexpected death of my sister at the end of my three-month stay in Turkiye. That’s all the time you are allowed without a resident’s permit at this stage, and it’s a bugger to get one now as they have tightened up the immigration on an already harsh system.
My ex had suddenly cut off my allowance (I hadn’t even realised he was ex until that) so I had to live on nearly nothing and went down to 60 kg from 73kg in a short period of time. I lived on very little except cheap Turkish fags, red wine, and hope despite there being very little.
Wars raged around the world and my escape plan was thwarted from the insanity. My hopes for growing organically, drinking mountain spring water for the final years of my life, and breathing that pure mountain air in my lovely village turned to ashes.
Coming back was a dystopian nightmare and I had a physical and mental breakdown refusing to see anyone and just scurrying out for groceries when the store cupboard was empty. I could see no way out and had to wait until December until I reached pension age. Trapped and desperate I did what I could just to survive while watching hopelessly the world unravel around me.
Finally, we had the final assault of Israel’s genocide which continues unashamedly and belligerently. The demonstrations have been huge and regular and Turkiye along with many others have shown their disgust and correctly labelled it a crime against humanity.
THE POSITIVE BITS
Despite the long drawn-out battle for the garden in Turkiye, I enjoyed great times in making friends with the villagers so finding the beautiful nature of other human beings despite the language barrier. I met museum managers and archaeologists to break into the quest for more involvement with the actual movers and shakers over there. This I probably wouldn’t have dared to do here but luckily over there they have more empathy.
I also visited places of magnificent beauty (Pamukkele) and huge historic value(Miletus and Kronos) went to as many museums as I could squeeze in and swam in the Aegean at a very secluded beach.
I jumped around like a billy goat back and forth from the UK to Turkiye learning about traditional cookery and home crafts to prepare me for my off-grid life. I added natural cloth dyeing and was wearing mostly yellow clothes from my turmeric experiments, bread and biscuit baking, soap making, body butter and salves, Kvass and sauerkraut, and all things akin. I grew stuff and healed with crystals and Zen music. I danced, laughed, and played the fool. I rose to many challenges and met them head on but still, the year could in no way claim to have been kind to me!
Sorry this is so rushed but it will be next year if I wait to do it properly. I am now writing my book so that’s going to take most of my energy!
Old Bird Travels Solo! 