waking up after a good snooze, driving through the night into Portugal

Dearest Friends and the Living In Gift Community,

A hectic month of packing my 15 years’ Italian adventure into suitcases and a car… A week of travelling by car, ferry and foot to this cottage far up a glen in Portugal…. And a handful of days putting things in place, cleaning and tidying, and squeezing my dynamic creative life into spaces in Vincent’s pre-chosen home…. Followed by resting, playing, foraging, Scrabble, films, wood-burning stove, delicious food, compost toilets, mushrooms, off-grid water and electrics, making up the bed beautifully…. plus tons and tons of lovely intimacy.

our first breakfast together in Portugal, getting towards Barril de Alva

My new life in Portugal is taking shape rather beautifully; we are following the elements, our mindbodyspirit needs, and the small but necessary daily rituals, as we co-create a new sovereign living together.

We’ve been finding the natural rhythm in myriad ways, from cooking to kissing to bathing to tidying up paperwork. I feel renewed in my inspiration about how life should be, about where my attention should be placed, and about how I can tweak the everyday to have everything be more symbiotic, enjoyable, free.

It seems like Suddenly I Have Arrived. Like before was playing and this is grown-up. As if I was dozing and meandering, where now I am simultaneously laser-focussed, and calmly surrendering to what is unfolding.

unpacking the car at our new home, up the (Portuguese) glen

It can be the most lucid I’ve ever felt, and then suddenly as if we are co-existing in a multi-dimensional ecstatic dream-world. Spaced out after waking throughout the night, and then heavily landing on a beautifully soft reality, with homemade quiche for lunch in the tent in the garden… Such a spiritual rollercoaster, that it feels almost like living in the city!

our first breakfast in the nearest big town to where we're now living: yummulicious!

But we are well outside of the norms here, and outside of the hectic, the striving, the tension-based systems and structures. Here there is birdsong and wind, bee-buzz and occasional visits of a flock of sheep to the field below the house. At most, a stronger breeze in the eucalyptus forest which crowns this amphitheatre – creates a louder than usual shushery. Or the wee burn that flows down the edge of the field, if one approaches it, filling the air with yummy crisp rushing sounds. Everywhere I go, I’m rewarded with a new, lush, green experience, and feel daily more connection and calm from being here.

breakfast at home; porridge and Earl Grey - heaven!!

Increasingly I’m looking back at my life, and at my decade and a half in Guardia, in respect to coming here to central Portugal. And this doesn’t feel like all the other times I’ve moved ‘countries’; it feels like coming home after being somewhere else for all my life. Being with Vincent (@vincentnijman) obviously helps, and as well there is a strong sense of having stepped out of some controversy or impossible puzzle which I couldn’t figure out no matter how hard I thought about it.

amanita caesarea!!!!

Having a partner in the challenges of regaining sovereignty is most certainly very different. Particularly, being a woman ‘alone’ in the Mediterranean can arouse extra challenges; not just the paperwork and the rigidity of ‘authorities’ who claim power over us: a strong woman asserting independence, Rights, or superior intelligence can bring out extraordinary reactions from all kinds of folks believing themselves to be ‘authorised’ to condemn or oppress – the more so when a man in authority is faced with a natural woman who does not stand under/ ‘understand’ conventional hierarchies.

amanita caesarea!!!!

Now my mindspirit is in harmony almost wholly unexpectedly: I simply walked away from all that I didn’t agree with any longer – I’ll be podcasting about this subject very soon – and will not return to it. My Italian ‘residency’, bank account, taxes, bills – are all on the other side of Europe, quite far from where I currently Live. It is debate-able as to whether or not a system in one country has the capacity to activate any kind of search for someone in another (if they haven’t committed some heinous crime), and with the added security of knowing what is Right, I no longer feel that looming darkness which hung over me as a ‘non-complier’ in an authoritarian country. I feel instead, all this freed-up energy, inspiration, time and energy, which comes with letting go of what we do not believe in (or consent to).

frying up onions, garlic, pumpkin and amanita caesarea with noodles - mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!

A few kinks to iron out: physical symptoms rearing up, as my tightest, oldest, most-deeply-held beliefs soften, and as what was behind them expands into being… Potent headache as I give up caffeine too. And some weird whole-body pain that occasionally comes up for me, signalling a change in my very fabric, as I embark on very new life patterns. This is the biggest of alterations to my path, and the body vibration upping – ironically – can bring more drama before it settles into a higher level.

our multi-lingual shopping and to-do list

Our days are calming to a gentler frenzy though; we are super-blessed in our love of the spontaneous and chaotic creative approach, and our disdain for the dead-line or the limitations that some others feel are ‘obligatory’. We love cooking and cleaning for/ around each other. Our wealth and resources coming together are making everything feel safer and more secure, and the possibilities – our symbiotic dreams and vision, which we’ve been sharing with each other online (before we met in real life just a month and a half ago) – seem so very much more attainable, together.

yet another almost-identified mushroom, hehe!

Our loneliness without each other falls away as a distant memory, and our solitary lifestyles (reminiscent of monk and nun) now combined, make One very great Company. Aloneness has a wholly different quality, when we are thinking of the Other not so very far away.

the bellississimo Vincent, playing at the breakfast table.... 😍 😎

I’m so intrigued as to how Life will evolve now. And I have no expectation, other than knowing it will work out beautifully, and that my Life Partner is by my side for once and for all. And that all the things I love are within my reach, and with no barriers to them. It will be wonderful to begin podcasting again from this spaciousness and ease – and to see how my needlework will unfold.

Thank you for witnessing my big new quiet adventure!

With Love and Happiness,

www.claregaiasophia.com