Squatters and the Concrete Cottage
1 Dec
Life with Alessandro and Katrin has been supreme.
I have beautiful hot german meals (sometimes italian),
a warm bed to sleep in,
and tons of free time in which to play with bamboo (i designed a roof for the WOOFer bamboo house, which was really shoddy when i got here),
my roof:
ales testing my roof to see if its waterproof:
play music (Ales has a guitar!), and commune with the locals. It seems every time I go to walk somewhere theres another random Italian (both male and female) who stops and drives me wherever I want to go. Its totally safe here (BREATHE MOM) its a small town atmosphere where everybody knows everybody and their business. (Some people heard I was coming before I even got to Italy!)
So Ales and Katrin, I have recently found out, are permanent SQUATTERS on this property! They want to start a commune of sorts, and I am invited to return back at any time (and am encouraged to bring friends who dont mind squatting, literally, and who have progressive sort of ideas…. any takers!?)
While I was cooking ‘supper’ yesterday I scoured the kitchen for pesto or grinder. I couldn’t find either – but I did find a small sticky glass bottle with a pesto-like substance. I didn’t try to eat it, since, after much force it was stuck closed. It’s a good thing too, cause it turned out to be PROPOLIS, some homegrown bean-antiseptic-paste for skin injuries.
Anyway, it was Friday and time to test the character of Julio di REGGIO. He claimed he would take me to dinner and show me around the greatest town of southern Italy. As the night wore on, I realized… Er hat mich versetzt! Oh well.
I had a nice dinner stew concoction that included little black hairs, some twigs, a licorice flavor, and something pink that was supposedly a vegetable but appeared to be raw flesh (I didn’t eat it, but the cats loved it.) Stupid old Julio.
In place of a romantic Italian evening, I taught Katrin and Ales to play poker, which was, to say the least, mildly amusing. Ales loves to bluff and cheat. Katrin tries but never has any good cards to back it up. We had a fun game and passed the evening with no trouble.
I MUST admit, OKAY, I was sort-of looking forward to a lame evening of alpha Julio talking about himself… but I guess not. Just Germans over here at the concrete cottage.
I learned that Ales used to work in a car factory back in Deutchland. HA. So much for his nonconsumerism ideals. What a liar/fake. He talked today about the ‘feeling of places and people’ with the air of an all-knowing sage. But, here he is, still receiving unemployment from the motherland, unable to communicate with anyone (especially Katrin), hidden away, claiming he doesn’t want this ‘consumer’ lifestyle… yet contradicting himself at every turn. Yes, these nonconsumer-off-the-grid-hippies have cardboard boxes of instant mashed potatoes on the shelf, and those nifty plastic individual tooth flossers. They have a washing machine and some half-ass unneccesary kitchen utensils (egg slicers, etc.) My thoughts: If you are SO against consumerism that you buy a donkey and move yourself to an illegal and already owned bit of land in Southern Italy, why do you need these commodoties? Why aren’t his ‘inventions’ so entirely efficient? Everything is shoddy and hardly rigged. I could totally fix this place up using his same materials and make it badass! Bamboo furniture (that doesn’t wobble), shelving everywhere, comfortable seating, a sink that is connected to the ground by a foundation that won’t fall over with the lightest touch.
Mother said to me
Take my advice please
And stand
For one second up off your knees
We are not the competition
But we strive!
We strive!
To be number one
After I wrote these lyrics I stripped naked in the kitchen, mixed some hot water from the teapot with sinkwater, and bathed in a small blue tub. At 10 pm. The electricity goes out at 11, and I almost died trying to make my way through the darkness to pee. I accidentally did so on a plant in the garden, amidst my sleepiness. I scared the hell out of myself when passing by a mirror; I had a green and yellow ogre propolis face staring back. Ah the concrete cottage.
MRumianowski
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