You can do anything!
Metamorphosis are waiting for you. Or just a cup of tea.
Either way, you are alive. And you can chose what to do tomorrow when you wake up in the morning. You can chose not to sleep just to see how the night embraces the trees, or the sea or the nocturnal thoughts of the sleepless beings.
Sit and look straight. What do you see? Is it what you want to see?
What is it that you hope to see?
Walk towards what you see and touch it. Does it feel as what you want to feel near you?
Again...
Take a deep breath and feel every muscle of your body. This is the body that will take you where you want to go, do what you want to do, feel what you want to feel.
Do whatever you can to understand how you can use it as a trampoline for the mind and soul.
In Ártún each day goes by as a special one, with something surprising happening. Probably it is because I am attentive to each event and searching for the essence of things, caring for every detail. It may not be like this forever (forever is a long time, anyway), but I trust that there are many ways for it to happen often, even when events will not be experienced for the first time.
The work with the milking cows is flowing better and better and I gain more responsibilities as I learn more steps and get more involved in all the process. We milk them in the morning, starting at 7am (waking up at 6h30 for a cup of coffee for Tryggvi and a piece of fruit for me, listening to the radio and exchanging the first thoughts of the day). First, I feed the calves with warm milk and cereals. Then, I set up the cleaning tools and at the same time Tryggvi is preparing the milking machine. As soon as we are ready, I start cleaning the cows' teats with wet, warm clothes and take a bit of the milk by hand, to finish the cleaning process. Sometimes we have to test some cows, to check the quality of their milk. For this, we use a pallet with four circles and in each we put milk from each teat and then add a substance that will indicate the quality (if it gets thick when adding the substance, it's bad milk). Now I've started to use the milking machine too, so I switch the tubes from places and apply the extractor, which has four ends, one for each teat. One has to be careful when doing this, because, no matter how much we clean the stable, there is cow poop laying around, so we have to prevent spoiling the milk with it. The milking machine sends the milk to a tank that has capacity for 200 000 litres! Each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday the milk truck comes to pick it up and when it's empty, I clean the tank. After milking, I feed the bulls and the cows with dry hay. I got it! Now I understand how the hay layers that fill a whole compartment of the stable work. I have to climb on a ladder to get on top of it, cut it with the machine (I'm a pro by now) and throw it down so I can carry it in my arms. The fork has got some free time on me, it is much easier and enjoyable to do it with my body, holding, pulling, hugging the hay to take it out of the pile and bring it to the animals. They eat a lot! When they are fed, I wash the cleaning tools and the milking machine with very hot water. We are using surgeon gloves during all the process. Then, it's time for breakfast with Tryggvi, listening to KK broadcast on the radio and talking about diverse subjects (one day he opened a book of birds of Iceland and explained; another day, he started scrabbling on a piece of newspaper some Icelandic words and grammar; we speak about farming, about Iceland and this region, with it's rivers and it's mountains, about the weather - it's an Icelandic obsession, about Portugal...). After a break, often spent reading a book, it's coffee and tea time, with kex (biscuits). Johanna wakes up meanwhile and has breakfast when we have coffee and tea. At 10am we go to the cow house with Busla (she is always there, always on duty, as the shepherd dog, even during milking time, although she has to be on the leash, otherwise she wouldn't let the cows alone), and we put them outside. They are now grazing across the road and I take them with the help of Busla. It's an interesting walk, behind 23 cows (one of them is calving soon so she is not being milked). When they are in the field, I go back to the cow house and clean it, first the poop and then the leftovers of hay. It involves a lot of scrubbing and often it comes to my mind phrases like: "you're full of shit", " bullshit", "you're shitting me". And quietly I laugh for myself about these associations). By the time I've finished cleaning, bulls and calves are hungry again and again I feed them with dry hay.
Time for lunch arrives soon. After lunch I help with different things. Potatoes were all picked after the 4th day, with the great help of Johanna's and Tryggvi's daughters. I cut hay, I move the fences so that the cows get more grass to eat, I clean the van so it could look better for inspection, I clean the house, go to Blönduós with them when they need to do something there. I was driving a van Mitsubishi 4WD. And I was running after sheep to take them to the right place. At 4pm we have again coffee and tea time and at 5pm I start my afternoon routine: feeding the calves with warm milk and corn, feeding the bulls with wet hay, getting the cows home, helping Tryggvi with milking (same process as in the morning) and feeding the cows with wet hay. The wet hay is also an interesting task. This week I saw them making the "rúla" (the bales of hay) with the tractors; they made 57 to add to the ones that were done already. Tryggvi brings a bale to the stable each time the last one is finished. Then I stand on top of the bale with the cutting machine and cut it until half, and it's ready to serve. Again, I've decided to use my body as a tool to put the hay in the "aparat" (a device with 2 wheels that helps me bringing the loads of wet hay to the animals). When everything is clean and clear, we turn off the lights, close the doors of the stable and call it a day! Dinner will soon be on the table and the evenings await me for whatever I want to do with them.
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Explore your senses.
Stretch your roots deep down into the ground and feel the seething Earth. Then, flap your wings and join the wind in the highest skies.
Ecologically speaking, you represents a really strange and rare case. Normally, in autumn all the living beings slow down their living processes, as preparing themselves for the long winter sleep. But it seems that, and this is surprising, you are now blooming as a bud touched lightly by a gently and vernal warmth ;-)
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