Farrera, mi amor

I am back again. It's very funny. This time, I was packed up, sitting in the library, playing with the computer at 1pm. My bus was scheduled for 2:45 down in the town of Llavorsí. Twelve rich women from Barcelona were due in two hours, to take the entire centre over for a three day painting workshop. I was gazing out at the lump, which is what I´ve affectionately called the hill opposite--we gaze at one another all day, every day, and I'm absolutely in love with it--when in walked Lluís with a look on his face that made me feel like somebody, somewhere, had done something wrong, and perhaps it was me. Perhaps I had left a stain on the floor of my room. Perhaps the balcony was coming unhinged from my standing on it every afternoon, after a previous evenings of Cesca´s chocolate cake and avocado mousse. But then, 12 Barcelona women magically turned into 10 Barcelona women. He said, "You have the option of returning to your room, your same room, if you like. We would certainly like you to." I took it in very slowly, which may have made him say, "And if you need a reorientation, to say, 'you are still in Farrera, you are not currently on a bus to Barcelona' I can do that as well." I took him up on both offers. So that day, I packed up, they cleaned my room, I unpacked again. It was superb. Now I get to stay as long as I like (until near the end of April) and I am free to admire the lump, read, pace, go for walks and bother cuckoos, and generally fall even more in love. Imagine if the call from the missing women had come two hours later! So fortunate!

Other than that, there are only more nature stories of greening pasture, small flowers in the forest, brimming village fountains and sheep sent down to the crossroads to munch on the high grass in the lowlands while waiting for the summer pastures to climb slowly out of hibernation. I'm writing consistantly, and staying has made sense for the work as well as the heart.

That, and I found out tonight over dinner that the small pool in the river that I found, with a hand carved wooden spout that leads water down its small channel to cascade into the pool like a shower, was made by Cisco, the man I spend a day in the orchard with, learning how to graft fruit trees and, eventually, wild rose bushes with cultivated stock roses. (Whose house is a never ending work of art, a story I told last entry.) It makes perfect sense. Cesca said the pool is their version of going to the beach. Today as I was walking along a path to Alendo, the next village over, I came across one of the ubiquitous black water pipes, sticking out of the ground in the middle of nowhere and streaming water from its mouth. The irrigation complexities here are truly amazing. Beside the pipe, resting in the crook of two rocks, was a water glass, ready for use.