The change

It started. The first change has happened. While i was making my font in the land of Oz, the roof was pulled down in a little town called, Loksbergen. 

Being at the other side of the world, while they tearing apart a future world, makes you really impatient. A good thing something called whatsapp exist. From different private investigators, i received enough information about the change ,not to worry to much about it. The old roof was pulled off completely. I have a farm with no roof on top. 

Slowly, the little house changed. A new appearance between the already established environment.

A new living space created by demolishing a few walls and a new cover over it. It’s terrifying to strip the house completely. All the wrong things in the house are coming above. Instead of seeing a closer future , it seems to go further away. The money just keeps flowing, like a tap i did’nt close. I’m gonna invest in a donkey. Feed him more then he can take, maybe something wonderful will happen and he will start to shit money. 

Recovering from the first fear , i just start demolishing and stripping everything i can. instead of making it better , i just make it worst. But the view of the top floor makes it all worth. Putting the itchy insulation under the roof and covering with a plastic , brings the future a bit closer. The original plan is already long gone. I couldn’t find the right donkey. I’ll have to adjust and leave certain walls standing. But i remember, a plan just doesn’t exist. You just have to go with the flow and jump on it. To be creative and just not to be fixed on certain ideas and explore all the possibilities and new opportunities something gives you.

At the moment, Euralia is inhabitable. One big ruin, with a new roof. But the good thing is, i can start building . Starting to make improvements . Starting to make it habitable. It will take time, a long time to create something that you create on paper in a few months. 

At least, nowadays i have a double life, i’m having two battery drills, two hammers, two grinders, two teeth brushes, two shovels, two wheelbarrows, two screw drivers, two of everything. Except wife's, life isn’t that beautiful. I ‘m start to feel like a double agent.

Slowly , it all start to take shape . Starting with the most important rooms, bed and bath room. It’s not easy to try to put a square floor in a square building. But , i have a floor, The floor construction is laid down. In my mind i see my bed and bath already placed on a timber floor. 

Soon they start with the windows and door. The outside look is getting his final shape. The inside will not go that fast , but i still dream of finding that goose or donkey .

A few weeks more to go, trying to do what i can do. And then back to Aussie country, to earn a bit of money to get my bed and bath.

Mind versus body

Snow, I have seen the snow again. Just for a few days, but it s beautiful after seeing drought and the same landscape over and over again. It ‘s strange to say, but i never payed attention on it. When you live somewhere and every day when you stepped out of your door , the landscape stays the same year in and out, it’s beautiful to see how the landscape changes during a year in Europe. How everything has a cycles of dead and live, of sleep and awake, of emptiness and fullness, of color and greyness.

But my body wasn’t that happy as me. My body just didn't know it anymore. Where are you now? Do i need to go to bed or do i have to be awake? It was constantly fighting against the reality my mind was experiencing.  My jet lag becomes harder and harder to get over. Every jump in time , my body and mind need more time to recover from it. Every jump starts to feel like an assault on my being. 

This time it took me three weeks to really feel like my body ,mind and reality were working together. First you got the time that has to be corrected. Your body has to feel naturally that it s time to go under a nice warm cover and to disappear in a beautiful dream or nightmare. And not to start wandering around and annoying people at times nobody does. 

That’s the first problem you have to solve. The second is the culture difference. Dress codes and social rules you have to obey before you start to annoy people. Languages that have to be learned again, a mix of different non understandable dialects is very hard ground to cover. And that’ s the easy one. Let’s not talk about culture differences in a area of 5 square km. I feel like i’m on a mission impossible. Misunderstandings and wrong behaviour are my biggest enemies. 

My body and mind is constantly struggling in two worlds. One moment i’m living as a bloke called Hansy , with his strange foreign thoughts and  working and touring around in the outback. An immigrant from another European country , searching for the gold out of the legends . The other moment i’m living as the bush guy that comes from Australia, trying to reconnect with his past and his future.

While being a guest in different homes and interfering with their different life habits, my memory is trying to memorise which belongings are where exactly. Personnel stuff that’s gathered in different places and corners around the world. 

Slowly my body and mind infiltrates in the European lifestyle. Customizing his habits and behaviours. Following Mr grey ‘s world , the nearby Mayan end of the existing world and the future world of Euralia , i got enough worlds to live in for the last remaining days of my world. So , i wish you, my few readers, a great end of the world. 

Time travelling

Time for time traveling. Luggage that has been packed weeks in front were thrown in the cap. Again going to the other side of the world.

My baggage was packed with everything but luggage. My Euralia font weighted 6 kg. Drawing tools , working tools, and other stuff that i could use in my future farm. Even working tools to start working at Euralia. Even packed with different pairs of the famous UGGs. i was under by 350 gr. of the allowed weight. 

Another airport, another culture, another language, this time my in between stop was in Abu abdal, anyway , something like that. I wonder if i could start a new carrier writing recencies about airports and air companies around the world. Especially traveling Europe - Australia flights. i’m starting to be an expert in cheap connections between those two continents. I managed to buy my ticket for the half cheaper than my first airplane ticket to the land of Oz. I flew with every possible air company that flies this endless flight. Qatar, Qantas, Emirates, China airlines, Ethihad, Singapore airlines, etc. Yep, i know my planes, i know my hostesses.

Even if traveling trough times is exciting, it is not something you have to do frequently. It ‘s a circa 24 hour flight divided in three flights. A short flight from the centre of Oz to one of his main capitals. From there you fly between 9 and 14 hour to another part of the world , to get another plane full of fuel, that flies you to Europe .  That takes you another 7 or 12 hours. By that time you don’t even know what the exact time is anymore, let’s even say, your body and mind is completely fucked up by the time zones. You fly forward in time, to fly back in time. A certain moment hours are just to confusing. Day or night , it s just an illusion. Are you awake for two days or did you just had a black out and missed a day somewhere in between. 

And if you have bad luck, another flight of an hour is waiting to bring you to the place of destination, where the chance that your luggage is somewhere else on the planet becomes a reality. But he, this was the first time my luggage really was coming out that black hole. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Probably it was already passing by  several times on the running band before i even noticed that it really was my luggage. I was just waiting till the band stopped , so i could reclaim my lost luggage. 

There i stood again. Completely out of time. Where am i? Is it daylight or night? Maybe midday? What language are they speaking now? Which cultural rules do i need to follow now? Did ice age 4 just started?

 A zombie even looked better and more alive then i did. And i don’t even talk about the smell that i probably was giving away. An aboriginal would even smell better and run away from me this time. (oeps , i probably should censer that, just imagine a black line trough that sentence). But who cares, the end is nearby , another three weeks and nobody will ever read this line.

Twilight zone

Living in a time zone where most people have there REM sleep, I ‘ m walking around and drinking coffee by the liters. Still wondering in which part of the world i’m in. 

My daily rhythm is totally fucked up. Most of it , was my own fault. Waking up early, lets say in the middle of the night to start working on my plans and design for the future Euralia. It’s easier to work on it when you have a fresh mind then after a 10 hour working day in a heat  where your physical appearance starts to melt.

So the weeks are passing by, in a boring daily rhythm, Waking up between 2 and 3 am, activating the humming computer. Start moving around like a thief in the night, trying not to wake up the sleeping neighbor. 6 am. time to getted prept to go for a ten hour workday and drain the kilos of your body. 6 pm time to sit on the doorstep of my little homestead trying to replenish my shortage of body liquid by rum. Having a cool down in the shower and a meal of cheese with spag bol to close the day.

Once and a while , going bush to work from sunrise to sunset. The time that i was exploring the bush by working in different communities is becoming very rare. Nowadays, i’ m spending my days at the hospital. A job given by the devil himself. Every second something that was made has to be changed or modified. Pipes installed and laid down to change the other day.  Insulation installed and reinstalled, flanges forgotten and missing, bolts not tied up and wrong sizes. Even the engineer of the modern steam machine didn’t know what was happening around him.

In the spare times and dead moments, taking profit of my working environment. Creating steel fonts for my future home. Different sizes, different texture. A word that has a deep meaning . A word of a new future.

And once and a while , the daily chores are broken down. Being woken up by a loud noise in the early evening. A footy match that has nasty consequences. My neighbor was drinking wild turkey and his footy team was losing. Not a good combination. At the end of the game the bottle was also lost. He managed to struggle over the door step. He felt and and his arm get caught on a sharp angle line, leaving a 15 cm deep cut. Bouncing on my door , he tried to wake me up. Thinking the game was still on, i turned around in my sleep, till the donga moved like a little earthquake. Opening the door and seeing laying down with a gap in his arm, wakes you up immediately.

Time to go to the hospital again, but then in night time and for completely another purpose. Sitting down in a hospital room, with a working fellow yelling Why? Why? Why? Not remembering a thing, not even how he managed to get a cut in his arm, is a different way to spend a Saturday night.

But i have to confess, something is changed deep inside me. My mind always dwells off to another place. A farm, a dog , a home. After 7 years living in a home the size of Australia, i feel more like an intimate place , a castle of my own. A place of my own rules and strange behaviors. A world created in my own mind.