Rush Hour

What does your rush hour look like? Mine looks like this:

The long and winding road...

At first glance, it tells you that I live in the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, the maddening crowds, the urban pollution, the sprawling suburbs, and the stress of modern life. It implies a certain quality of life that I am able to enjoy around the rural environment: oodles of space, no crowds, little to no noise, panoramic views, closeness to nature - not to mention low crime figures.

But a rush hour like this comes at a cost.

It means either I live far from the town and city, and still endure long commutes to work - not an enviable option. Or my work is land-based: farming, agricultural - and what should be a labour of love has turned out to be hardship because this is how the State rewards those who feed the nation: crazy legislation (especially under the EU), heavy taxation, red tape, long unforgiving hours, and low pay - because the food distribution channels have squeezed out your profit margins. That means added pressure on your land for it to yield more (using fertilisers and hybrid GMO-ready seeds) and for your livestock to yield more (demanding more milk from the dairy cows to make up for your losses, expanding your chattel, taking up loans and moving the farm under an industrial model, while pumping your animals full with antibiotics and growth hormones). On your side of the game, there is no winner: your land wears itself out, your livestock wears itself out and you eventually wear yourself out. You'll consider yourself lucky when the State finally catches up with you with a cash lump sum for your farm, rase it down and have a motorway built through it.

With a rush hour like mine, one might assume that I am a stay-at-home mum or I work from home, maybe as a freelancer? Would money be no object? Either because I am financially secure... or I parted ways with the rat race!

Tickle is up for it!

I parted ways with the rat race years ago. A rush hour like mine comes at a cost maybe more to you than it does to me. Firstly I gave up on the lure of the materialistic way of life I used to enjoy. A carefully thought-out and wise decision because those material mirages were taking me nowhere down the road to happiness and fulfillment. In many ways, I feel happier now: no longer a slave to the wage, to the mortgage, to the loans, to the designer apparel.

This doesn't mean I am now living the life of an ascete or I am destitute. It doesn't mean I do not treat myself or my husband, or buy things for the home. It just means I do not follow the whims and craves and fads and trends of the market that influence life all the way to the check-out. This is a lifestyle choice.

It means I do not keep up with the Joneses either. What Joneses? We are the only residents in the hamlet for virtually half the year. What Joneses anyways? We live on a flipping island!

How about feeling deprived? Because no matter how much I sugar-coat it, a rush hour like ours comes at a cost. We live in an old family house where comfort is rustic and certain modcons like gas central heating and a fitted kitchen are lacking. This is the price to pay when you come off the rat race: it depends upon what you can now afford and adjustments inevitably have to be made.

We are cut off from quality services and conveniences that we took for granted back in UK or USA or mainland France. We live in a system that is politicised. And living as virtual hermits is in no way healthy. Humans are naturally gregarious. Birdsong is divine, and silence is golden - but too much of it rusts your spirits away.

A rush hour like ours may be a blessing to stressed-out urbanites seeking refuge from their urban shortcomings but beyond the eye-pleasing scenery, the reclusive life we live sooner or later takes its toll. A change of scenery would be most welcome.

What does your rush hour look like?

Lisbon, Portugal

Your Own Personal Jesus (Part 1)

I never once imagined as a blogger that I would one day contemplate to dedicate a post to All Saints' Day (celebration of the dead, 1st November), and then from there dig into the religious theme further... You see, life is full of surprises and it's amazing how you can surprise yourself sometimes!

I am a christian by birth and family tradition, only not a practicing one and my faith has had its share of ups and downs in tune with the critical moments of life stages. My relationship with faith is complicated, and not one I understand enough to attempt to discuss openly here. My belief in God and what it encompasses, from our purpose on earth to redemption, good vs. evil, and the afterlife, is still a collision of contradicting ideas, and I have to confess on this that I am not passionate enough by the subject to spend time on it, question it, research it and forge an enduring opinion. I admit that my understanding of the christian faith is limited, but I have been to mass enough times to go through the basic prayers by heart, yet the évangiles, the apostles, and Jesus's detailed chronological life events still flirt with confusion and mystery in my head.

However the one constant that I have remained loyal to since reaching adulthood is over the non-practicing christian's relationship with religious faith, from a sociological perspective: the (increasingly loose) interaction (interference?) of the religious element within personal obligations in the name of society tradition. Here I will attempt to shed some of my views on the subject.

Our increasingly secular society still maintains a loose christian connection to life events, although some of the ceremony aspects may be masqueraded as a 'second-hand' approach to religious faith, with hypocritical undertones in the name of through-the-motions tradition. The major moments which punctuate the life of the modern day christian and, in the same breath the only times when they will be likely to step inside a church and engage remotely with their faith are 'traditionally' down to: christening day, communion day, wedding day, funerals, and possibly Christmas mass and Easter Sunday mass.

Corsica, like other South European regions (namely Italy or Portugal), still displays a more pronounced religious ardour/ fervour than other parts of Europe, although parishioners and priests numbers alike continue to decline. In an interesting parallel, Corsica is also reputed for traditionally maintaining stronger family values and ties than elsewhere in France, although those values are now being put to the test by a more urban and individualistic lifestyle.

St-Antoine

Besides Corsica and its Southern counterparts have maintained the ceremonial/ visual aspect of catholicism through the traditional street processions. One not to miss is the Catenaciu, a Corsican re-enactment of a hooded 'Christ' carrying the cross down the village streets on Good Friday night, where the cross bearer is a local man in effect hiding his identity from the parishioners by wearing a hood, while seeking pardon from the church for a sin he has committed.

Other processions punctuate the religious calendar to celebrate a particular saint usually associated with a local church and/ or trade (ex: the fishermen's patron saint). Those processions gel religion and community spirit together by coming down the streets into the community. (to be continued)

Walled Gardens in Stone Silence (Part 1)

In my Land of Labour/ Land of Leisure post, I touched on one of the features of Corsican landscapes: the old stone walls and stone terraces. Of course, these features are not solely restricted to this part of the world; they will be found anywhere that is mountainous, hilly, rocky, from the Peak District of England to Madeira, via Tuscany, the sweet potato fields of Nerja (Spain) and much further afield. They didn't only act as boundary posts, their purpose was to contain soil and level land to make it cultivable, and prevent natural erosion...

My dad has always commented on those walls that we would spot by the roadside, or boldly erected on desolate hillsides and inhospitable mountains. He is fascinated by them, by the difficult and hazardous feat of engineering and logistical challenge they would have represented at the time of construction. But neither harsh topography nor primitive tools hampered builders' enthusiasm, it seems! Huge chunks of rock would have been hammered into more manageable pieces that would have been transported by cart, on mule-back/ donkey-back, or by hand to hard-to-reach places, then laid out into those dry-stone walls.

Today it is so easy to ignore those humble walls, to see them without giving them the time of day, no second look or a mere mention in a tourist guide, yet I would ask you to pause for a second and think of the thousands of man-hours they would have swallowed, and the human toll even. These walls facilitated agriculture, pastoralism and peasantry. By providing anchorage, they provided boundaries, enclosures, shelters, land division and soil retention. They allowed the local population to survive, live off the land, prosper to an extent and stay on the island as a result.

Walls were also found in the fertile plains, on flat terrains, sheltering cultures against the winds and providing welcoming shade for the more delicate crops. Stone structures were not solely aimed for cultivation. Some pictured here epitomise civil engineering: roadside parapets (sturdy stone walls built to reinforce mountain roads and to buffer traffic against lethal skids), minor stone features strengthening mountain paths, and stone bridges that linked river banks and enabled roads to bypass the deep curvature of mountains.

The build material used for the walls is also a good indicator of local available resources. A rather peculiar example will be the well-camouflaged WWII German blockhaus built by the roadside in the Ponte Leccia area. A more classic example will be the proximity to a waterfall, a river, a brook. They will have provided a readily-available source of pebbles and polished stones, some of them incredibly decorative.

Talking of the more recently-built walls (probably 100 to 150 years' old), the mortar used for their construction will have been based on sand from the river banks, and you will notice small white stone incrustations (see above picture as a perfect illustration of plant intrusion). Likewise seaside proximity will have enabled our ancestors to build walls using pebbles, as seen in La Marana seaside area, nearby the beautiful cathédrale de la Canonica, an imposing country church. (to be continued)