Precious Ordinary

Like a book well loved on a turkey - monkey - lizard - building Monday

Lizards (lagartijas in spanish), tails curled, scampering across the window screen.

Builders up top sending plumes of dust into the jungle and my eyes. The sound of my top floor becoming a medicine making movement studio I can be proud of.

The studio under construction. And my builder Roman, with a piece of Laurel freshly cut amongst the field of turmeric plants in my garden

Monkeys (monos en espanol) are quiet today. Before this building project they were constantly in the trees around my house. They’ve retreated for the moment to the forest further back.

The turkeys (chompipes - the word for turkey - although if you look it up or know spanish you’ll find more commonly in other countries they are known as Pavos - but here in the southern Nicaraguan countryside the word Chompipe is more normal).

I have one boy chompipe and one girl chompipe - their names are Pasha and Jorge. Pasha has become broody recently but it doesn’t mean I’ll have turkey babies because her mate, Jorge, is young and hasn’t realised his reproductive purpose quite yet.

This is my monday (lunes… to continue with the spanish theme which is the language I’ve been speaking as I go about my farm duties and talk with the builders).

I have been attending to small things (cositas) wondering what I’ll write about. I have come up only with the ordinary. The normal day-to-day happenings. I like ordinary.

There’s a particular brand of ordinary I most love: ‘Precious ordinary’.

Precious Ordinary is the variety of ordinary that gives comfort and balance. It’s peppered with gentle day to day and work activities spaced out so they’re not stressfully stacked. Precious ordinary usually involves NOT leaving my house because as soon as I drive my butt hurts on the bumpy roads and I start sweating because my gear box kicks out too much heat. Precious ordinary therefore includes a day in the countryside at my home where I like to be. Precious ordinary is a day I do nothing extraordinary and do not have any Nicaraguan over-adventures (such as car breaking down or getting stopped by los transitos (traffic police) and having to pay a sort of fine that usually is just enough money to cover their gaseosas (soda). Precious ordinary involves taking in the changing seasons - the turkey brooding, the lizards catching insects, picking a lemon from a prickly branch, watching the little brown birds (pajaritos) make their nests infront of my window, taking in a hummingbird (colibri) at the mexican sunflower (girasol), and feeling like for today I can manage everything in front of me and that I am filled up with the sense of goodness my place gives me when I’m doing ok.

I wrote about ‘Ordinary’ in the memoire/nature book I’m writing - here’s what I wrote:

When I think of ordinary I think of a book well loved.  The kind you can hold in your hands and treasure turning every page because it’s a beloved story.  The kind of story that you want what comes next.  

I imagine it to be a book I’ve read before.  I know the outcome and I welcome every inky typeset letter.  The pages are a little thickened and roughened by time - well used, imperfect, homely.  

Ordinary can be precious. 

Life these days: my kids at market making and selling stuff, Jago with a lagartija, me buying fabric to hang for acrobatic stuff, the boa that got caught and released before it had the chance to eat Jorge, Pasha or any of their chicken friends, and a passion flower