Goodbye Nanín: Random Photos from 18 Months in Allariz

I’m sitting in two shipping containers converted into a small 30 square meter house. They’re installing drywall in what will be the bathroom. I’d like to be outside, but it’s raining off and on. I’ll use this time to share photos from the last eighteen months in Allariz.

This was one of the first houses for sale we looked at. I’m very happy to report that we didn’t jump into this and spent more time feeling out the area and where we wanted to be.

Our rental in all her glory. Refreshing and cool in the spring and summer, freezing and unbearable in the winter, but better than an apartment in a city for a global pandemic and the ensuing quarantines.

Like the house, the fig tree was a mixed bag. It gets messy and attracts bees.

The fuente of Nanín, according to locals, gives some of the best water in all of Allariz. Indeed, we’d often see people with many glass jugs of water filling up for the water .

I never tired of trying to photograph nature. As is the case, it never comes out how I saw an felt the landscape at the time, but the the colors of this one from December 2019 is special.

What’s left of the castelo de Todea at the strategic top of a hill in O San Salvador, another village close to Nanín.

The Arnoia river from a walking path close to Vilariño do Río. Monforte also has a river running through it, the Cabe.

Then a pandemic came and I started noticing that Allariz gave me a different feeling. Yes, it was small, that hadn’t bothered me. But only heading down for a weekly market trip was a bit surreal. For months, I would walk up the monte and see what Allariz looked like that day from afar.

I started escaping to the monte much more than usual, usually with Alqo, many times with Patricia. I saw the changes in season and the cycle of vegetation on the same worn paths. Further down from the above image, I saw the tail end of a big boar running from us.

I named landmarks and paths to differentiate them, and to recount what I saw to Patricia if she hadn’t come with me. This is Nanín’s Uluru, aptly named Big Rock by me.

Nervous of the longevity of the quarantine and bored of being cooped up inside, we decided to spruce up the ignored small patch of garden in front of our house. Back up the monte to collect sticks and soil, we made a small raised bed where we planted carrots, arugula, strawberries, spinach, and beets.

With the two-person hammock our friends gave us when we left Germany, the small space actually turned out relaxing. As relaxing as the first months of 2020 could be. The better weather helped immensely.

Last Ramadán, en plena pandemia, felt strange and familiar. As a convert, it reminded me of my first year, fasting at home, trying to explain my decisions to my family. Patricia fasted a bit in solidarity and helped provide us with amazing vegan or vegetarian iftars every night.

Patricia kept up the garden, Alqo did his part and mostly watched, not trying to lay down or dig it up.

And I continued my daily after-lunch walks with the pup, admiring what I hadn’t noticed the day before.

After a strange summer of house hunting, a few weekends at the beach house, and a quick trip to Portugal, fall arrived again. At the peak of summer, the monte was too hot and full of bugs to enjoy. The weather cooled, the bugs disappeared, and we were back to exploring.

In October, we found our spot and the rest is history. I’ll miss a few friends in Allariz. They know who they are. But after talking with a friend yesterday, I realize I don’t have bittersweet feelings about leaving. Here near the Val de Lemos, I’m reinvigorated to explore, keep improving my castellano and galego, meet local and foreign residents, and work on skills and habits I’ve been cultivating. So, Allariz, ata logo!

I’m Not Ready

There’s a vegetarian restaurant in our town. We don’t eat out very often and not at all during the pandemic, for obvious reasons. It re-opened a week or so ago and we decided to get a few pizzas as a small reward for completing our dietary detox. I took the van down the street to pick them up and saw an acquaintance at the bar.

While talking to her for a few minutes waiting for my order, the inside of the restaurant began to gradually filling up. Soon, it was almost completely packed. No one was wearing a mask besides me and the workers. Right before I left, the acquaintance saw a couple she knew and introduced me to them. I felt awkward but resolute in not giving dos besos.

After leaving the restaurant, I realized how unready I am to “go back to normal”, to forget any semblance of social distancing or precautionary measures. My quarantine circle has expanded from just our household to one other couple with two children, and another friend. We know they all take it seriously. But this is as big as our circle gets, probably for quite a while.

Luckily, having a van, preferring the outdoors, and not eating out frequently allows to go on vacation without needing to think three steps ahead to prevent contact or crowds, other than the occasional market.

We’ll see what the summer brings.

New Tightrope

A silver lining of the quarantine, the intentional go-slow of the Earth’s populace, is the chance to see something new in the everyday. A quotidian walk becomes utterly fascinating if I see the neighbor’s kitten in a tree, whose hunter’s gaze is fixed on a bird out of range. Or the new colors in the horizon at sunset that I haven’t been aware of or seen yet. Moving here in mid-autumn, every week has brought changes to the monte, the agricultural activity of our neighbors, and my feelings of staying put.

I tested out my microphone yesterday, recording a little bit to experiment in Ferrite. I plugged it into my phone, used Røde’s Reporter app, and used the normal white earbuds as monitors. Strangely, I don’t mind the sound of my voice, only the occasional cadence it takes. But talking to myself down in my basement is something I’ll have to get used to. I do want to have conversations with others as well. We’ll see what comes out of it. I’ve decided on the name Left Abroad. Hopefully a short episode #0 introduction will be released in a week.

There have been rebrotes, new outbreaks here in Spain. The Alcoa plant in Lugo is shutting down, en plena pandemia, laying off over five hundred workers. There is an uprising across the United States. I have a tendency to be digitally swept up in the fervor. But I have to remind myself to stay grounded, even in uncertainty. The future will be strange. But I’ll keep enjoying the new colors of blooming flowers, the shape of the clouds, and the warm air at night, because I’ve gifted the circumstances to be near to them.

Unified Veranda Theory

It’s my Saturday today. I’ve been out on the terrace, watching the fig tree away with the breeze. There are more insects buzzing, snails crawling up the stone walls, and birds darting between the electrical and phone lines that surround our house. I’m also playing around with the vintage camera app Vooravo for some retro-looking photos around the house. I’m bored of photographing the same trees from the well-worn paths of the monte.

This is one of those weekend mornings that reminds me of my years in Sierra Leone; the unhurried day, the privilege of watching time and life of the village pass by from a veranda, the warm sun on my body, the ability to read as much as I want to.

Grateful and guilty, which has been a recurring tension during the lockdown. Grateful to have had the privileges and opportunities to organize my life in this manner, and guilty knowing that not everyone is so lucky. But I know I’m in my head a lot, and that guilt will lead to paralysis or unnecessary suffering.

I misread a quote from some article a few weeks ago. In my head in went something like;

The best safeguard to life under late capitalism is withdrawing from it.

But it actually wasn’t that, at all. It was a critique, that the privileged ones, the ones with an inessential, work-from-home job are the ones who can safeguard themselves from coronavirus.

I recently talked to a friend, a madrileño musician from West Africa with a similar practical philosophy. He mentioned the protests in barrio de Salamanca and the incessant material desires that nag certain classes of people in the capital. It feels foreign, otherworldly. That wasn’t always the case, but a product of half of my life, maybe started after they extubated me. Who’s to say. But I think it’s possible that most can come to the conclusion that infinite growth on a finite planet is illogical.

We can thread the needle, withdraw from the capitalist mentality without completely withdrawing from society like Christopher McCandless; plant a garden, reduce costs and discourage consumption habits, prioritize immaterial experiences, read books, go for walks, re-valorize the countryside, or enjoy voluntary frugality in the city. Flatten the curve of coronavirus and of climate change by socially distancing and driving less, flying less, removing animal products from my diet, eating seasonally and locally. Prefigure a better world by thinking, talking, and planning other ways of organizing life and social relations. Want less, need less, and perhaps work less because of those priorities and that organized withdrawal.

For now, I’ll “do praxis” by non-participation, as much as I can, and theorize by writing into the void, ruining conversations with family and friends by talking climate, and reading Bookchin in my hammock. And I’ll never forget to enjoy the conference of the birds on the phone lines.