KW-05 To be understood as to understand

The New Monastic Order of Get the Fuck on With It. And labradoodles.

I think Thursday this week was the day with the biggest change in temperature, night and day. Overnight, we had minus 8, and by 11am, it was plus 8. The snow had already melted at the start of the week, and overnight the sky thick with condensation froze in an instant, covering every surface with long, thick needles of ice.

So you might think that this is a collection of pebbles and splinters of wood littering the path just outside the Big House. Well, it might be. But what if I told you that it was a 200,000x magnification of the surface of gallium? You might believe that, eh?

It was one of those mornings when the ground and everything which touches it - from tiny pebbles and leaves rolling around on the surface to the buildings and conifers which have set deep roots into it - looks like a scan from an electron microscope. Properly surreal, and very beautiful. Also, bastard cold.

---

I had several conversations this week about the barracks, about our purpose, what we are and what we are not.

Now, one of the things that we most definitely are not is an entity which demands to be understood. Hell, that is basically impossible. In fact, coming here, spending a portion of your life here in your corporeal form IS understanding the barracks, and we know that any fundamental experience that you undergo is more or less impossible to transmit from your brain to that of another conscious being. But I do understand how I’ve not been hugely successful in getting it out of my brain and onto the page.

The best I have come up with is

and that requires

Radical Authenticity.

I have believed since the beginning that authenticity thing (shall I start calling it RA?. Maybe not) , is fundamental to being useful. The situation that we are trying to understand, to be useful for, is something so outwith out the experience of any human known or unknown of our recorded history that we have to totally free ourselves from current history to purify the frame of reference.

Or in other words: Self sufficiency is not an object. It is not the goal. It is a base requirement for RA (There. I did it). Table stakes for clarity of vision.

If you want to know more about this, stick it in the comments. I should write a blog post, really, but I find that so much easier if I am responding to questions from actual people (in my mind at least).

This might be a close up of a rhododendron bush. Or it might be a million-times zoom of the leg hairs of an eyebrow mite. Who can tell??

In actual work news, I cleared all the wood from the massive wood pile that I wanted to have cleared. There is still some left, maybe around 8m3. Which ordinarily would be a lot. But after the labours of the last weeks, it’s a decorative remnant of what was once a mighty heap of wood.

I think the work rosta for the week mostly comprises clearing paths.

There are literally tonnes of sawdust and bark lying around ready to be wheelbarrowed to the pumpkin field for slow rotting and soil improvement. Here it will be piled up and left for 24 months. Integrating that much woody material into the ground is not a great idea all at once

There are still some leaves on the grass by the polytunnel. They will be raked and removed.

And the path from the vineyard to the pig field is a mess. I would really love to get this all tidied up in the coming week. Here is a picture.

The path from the vineyard to the pig field. It’s a mess.

And with that, I think I might go and make myself some porridge. A friend of the barracks this week said “barracks porridge is the best porridge.”

It’s also the only one you get here, so that’s just as well!

Until then, me hearties, be excellent to each other. I mean that. I know it’s a bit of a Bill and Ted signoff, but do, please. Not just those you want to be excellent to, but everyone you have anything to do with this day. If you find it hard, pretend they are a labradoodle. It’s easy to be nice to labradoodles.

With love, your Pirate Ben

xoxo