Under The Juniper Tree

 So, during these days some things happened inwards and outwards.  Outwards I got a new client, had a good time at guitar lessons and ended the pepper season for good (we have been dealing with really bad weather and waking up super early to prepare things for the next harvest), and while I was doing so, I stopped the headphones, the noise, to, even under the rain, even with my full body covered in earth and spiderwebs, enjoy the last moments of peace and quiet; the sound of the water droplets on the plastic, the "petricor" smell, being able to just work with the sole goal of a warm shower and resting until evening. The office work has been bearable too; I've started using AI tools to modify my website and learn about SEO, the seeds are being planted, and eventually I get that stable money flow, or so I hope. The thing is that I also finished a book chapter for a law book and now all that remains for the week is to make a couple calls and a budget alongside keeping the wo...

I do not know how to start this entry really, lots of things happened and nothing happened at the same time. I am currently listening to Torija, from Torroba, one of my favorite guitar pieces ever. It feels like home. I even wrote a poem for it: "Allá en mi hogar, hay una flor, que se alza bajo el cielo añil. Ella me vio nacer y crecer,  hasta que del lugar me fui. Aquella flor, hoy ya no está, al yo no estar, se marchitó. Al yo volver a aquel lugar, solo su recuerdo pude encontrar".  This morning I woke up to my priest friend's messages telling me to just go with the flow, to allow suffering and offer it. I know his intentions were good, that he was giving me the very same theology I've been reading about and even posted here before. But I've realized that that's not for me. I cannot  bear the sense of lack of control, to leave my lie to other's choices, even if the Being choosing is perfect and almighty. I wore off my scapular for the first time in a rea...

 Yesterday I had to do a presentation in an international law congress at a college.It may sound like the big thing, and I pretend it is when it comes to relatives and people in general (it's a great way of advertise myself as this sort of intellectual-elite guy), but in reality they are really close to friend's gatherings and fires of egos (hogueras de vanidades). No one listens to anyone, the big fishes are away from the small ones, and if you do not know anyone (that wasn't my case this time, fortunately), you are pretty screwed because most people do know each other and the friend's groups are usually formed except for the outsiders. So, I went there, did my thing while people were doomscrolling, got a few pics from a friend and I then disconnected, as I had zero interest on what the rest of the people that usually goes to those sites have to say, since they go for the bare minimum, read the law, circle about the same themes or just puke words out of their mouths fu...

 So the greenhouse season is over until mid july, and those are... news. On one hand, I have more time for the law firm and the phd. On the other, now I do not have a reliable source of income, even if it was little. I keep waking up early and working long hours, but still, as I have lost focus and my whole self has relaxed due to the lesser stress, I've come back to some thoughts as silence has become a comfortable place to stay. These days have been a mixture of ups and downs; not much happened outwards, but inwards... it was like an earthquake; everything seems in shambles. I remembered my time as a wannabe musician when I was 18; the lack of responsibilities,  having plenty of years and opportunities to find a path I felt attracted to. I was able to express myself through music, and I loved to go to big band lessons and listening to Coleman Hawkins "Body and soul". Now all of that has vanished, not only due to the illness but to the passage of time and a rough positio...

A couple years ago I decided to start studying guitar to palliate the feeling of being a frustrated professional musician (started the sax degree at the same time as the law degree but I had to drop it due to my father). Thing is that amongst the joy of playing great repertoire such as "Torija" from Alejandro Torroba, Brouwer's Etude nº6 and Antonio Lauro's "Tríptico", I got to join a choir. How come? Well, at the start of the current school year at the music school, I had this "choir" subject, and as I am a  basso profundo , it wasn't possible for me to sing amongst the children that were there, so the teacher told me to join my town's choir. I spoke to the director and ever since I've been training my voice, making friends and learning/memorizing repertoire, mainly religious one, which was a plus (Pange lingua, lacrimosa, miserere mei deus, anima christi and so on). We usually perform at mass or in concert rooms, but today was differe...

I grew up in an small village; my family was somewhat poor, my parents tried to make ends meet with the help of my grandparents (mother side), but I never knew true scarcity, like yeah I wore cheap clothes and I can remember being mocked about it a couple times, but nothing besides that and having the constant remembrance of my parents coming to pick me up from gramps' when it was dark night. Still, those years before the greenhouse were happy ones; I went for long walks with granny and her friends or spent my afternoons watching Inspector Gadget with Miguel, my first friend ever whom I later lost the contact with due to... well.. reasons. I remember my grandfather making me toys from metal cords and my father building me a basketball basket, and the overjoyed I felt when I worked at 8 year old a whole day picking peppers at the family greenhouse picking peppers to get myself a memory card for the PS2  I got for Christmas. Those were simpler times, I was able to go outside without ...

These days have been interesting, not because anything interesting happened in particular, but rather due to the fact that almost nothing happened in the great scheme of things. But something has changed, at least a bit. I am willingly disconnecting my earphones now at the greenhouse; I feel the "noise" of youtube videos awful and stringent, so after my program is over, I just go for the silence and the usual small talk with my father that comes alongside it. And it feels nice; my mind gets blank, focused on the topic at hand, an idea that sprouts or just random thoughts while doing manual labor. It feels nice. Not only this, but I also left my earphones at the car for the first time in a while, and when I go through the street, walking wherever, I do not feel the urge to wear those or look to my phone. It is true that I do it from time to time, that there is still a battle to win, but the improvement has been monstrous.  And all I had to do was forcing myself through somethi...

These days have been somewhat tranquil; I wake up early, go to the greenhouse, do some work, then I get home, get a hot shower that ends with cold water (I'm getting used to it, it's starting to get easier after a few weeks) and sleep for 2-3 hours only to get up dizzy and get back to work at the office for a couple more hours and, with the time that remains, either socialize or get with my guitar studies/talk with my priest friend/fiancée. It is tiresome, but there are no other options. It is what it is. At first, when I started juggling with the phd, the greenhouse and the lawyer work I got immensely overwhelmed; I was working a lot of hours, even on weekends, only to find myself in a precarious economical situation while my peers were traveling, going to fancy sites and so on. I was angry and jealous about the people that got it easier, so I decided to quit social media and start looking inwards.  As time went by, I started noticing the bearing fruit of the seeds I was plant...

Today is the second sunday of Easter. I came home from my sister in law's house as I spent the weekend with my fiance buying stuff for our future "rented" flat and planning. I've noticed some changes since the last time I wrote a post. The first one is that silence became "quieter" at times, if that makes any sense; on friday I attempted to go to work without headphones at all and I kinda lost myself on my thoughts and light conversations with my father. The heat, physical effort and the chip of the birds alongside the feeling of fulfillment that inevitable comes with land labor were more than enough. Also, something similar happened with my fiancée. My need for stimuli was lower and I was able to be more present, even if I was a little uncomfortable at times.  I think this is something I have to get used to, not willing to expect a massive change but rather incremental improvements derived from effort and trial and error. Silence is more fair than I initial...

Finally the peppers are over. One more year we battled against weather, plagues and wild animals, and now there is very little remaining, just to clean the greenhouses to prepare the earth for the next cycle. I can remember clearly when I was a teenager, working under the summer sun, whining about it. It feels like it happened yesterday. Not because my life has been exactly the same during all this time, but rather due to an abstract feeling of nothingness attached to nature; the cycles of growth and decay repeat, everything feels eternal, the plants, the land, the sun,the effort we put onto it. Realizing about this brought me mixed feelings; on one hand, it feels amazing to be able to get lost in this ecosystem that has nothing to do with wars, societal changes nor bizarre politics, to feel the very same feelings my ancestors did while listening to the birds chirp, the insects fly and the spiders trying to run away from a olive-skin colossus. It brings peace, after so long, to be able...

On the contrary to Ice Cube's song, these haven't been good days. They weren't as bad, but certainly not good. The immersion on the silence kept going forward, my body wants to escape from all the noise around me, and while boring, it's starting to enlight me in a way. I tend to randomly remember embarrassing or dreadful moments from the past for no apparent reason; at first I was really anxious, but I've understood that those are irrational thoughts I cannot control, and, progressively, they are easier to get through. Still, I've been able to realize about something really important; the reason why I cannot rest is because I've been despoiled from almost every inch of control over my life, looking at the big picture of course, so resentment is eating me alive and not letting me progress spiritually and physically. Let me explain myself: As a somewhat gifted child, everyone expected great things from me, whilst I only wanted the peaceful life society seemed ...

Today I went to work to the family business as usual. I am used to wake up early and to put a lantern on my head to take advantage of the somewhat cold temperatures there are in my area, as the heat rises incredibly inside the greenhouse until the point where the humidity makes breathing a difficult work due to the air being substantially dense. I've been doing this since I was a teenager to cover for my expenses during summer vacations and more serious, like a real job, since I finished my master's degree, as I started a business as a freelancer and those things take time if you are not an extroverted person who is comfortable selling himself on online advertises like a buffoon. There was nothing special, I went in, started doing manual labor, my father and I were both silent, and time started passing. As I normally do, I put on my headphones to listen to the radio and videos, I like this spanish program called "Sinfonía de la mañana", which is about classical music ...

Today is Easter Sunday, and to celebrate it I made my bed, changed my sheets and cleaned the floor, as any other Sunday. I didn't go to mass; the church would be overcrowded and the other celebrations in the evening didn't happen. It is what it is I guess. But instead, I grasped grace again, randomly, like always. So, this evening, trying to prevent myself to fall into the dopamine loophole loneliness usually induces me, I went for a walk; the sun isn't as hot yet so my skin can tolerate it while recovering. It was a boring plan, but it was a plan after all. In order to follow the "resolution" -so to speak- I made yesterday, I tried to not look at my phone at first. I wanted to focus on the present, the streets, the trees, the buildings... and it worked... kinda, because I got bored, and then I started talking to myself, about the sun, what time it could be... I don't know, my mind just started wandering, but this time, it wasn't oppressive, my mind wasn...

Today I went to visit my grandparents. I like to do so at least once a week as they are somewhat old and I want to enjoy them as long as I can. I went in and gramps was sitting on the couch, quiet, calm. Gramma was out, so it was just the two of us.  At first I enjoyed it; the feeling of "silence", the time stopping, the sun getting through the windows. Some small talk here and there, and nothing else. However, that feeling of calmness didn't last long; I started to get anxious, and was incapable of dealing with silence, so I started checking my phone. It wasn't uncomfortable, it wasn't weird, on the contrary, the overall sensation I had was to be at a safe space with someone who has seen me growing up but to whom I have almost nothing to talk about, and it's not necessarily a problem. I was, in fact, tranquil, but at the same time, I wasn't capable to enjoy it, I needed some kind of stimuli. I've been trying to look inwards for a while now; the inner ...

The reason why I became a christian, alongside the ones previously exposed yesterday, was due to me feeling it was true, that Truth was present there. And I use "feeling", because sometimes human discernment goes beyond reason. I was interested in philosophy and knowing how the world works since I was a child; I remember myself devouring books at the public library, and eventually buying then with the spare money I had from birthday presents and working at the land. I read Hesse, Camus, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Plato, Rothbard, Hoppe, Borges, Kafka, Mann, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus... all the big guys, because existentialism was kinda my thing and stoicism seemed interesting.  The thing is that I always felt that what they said was incomplete to an extent or poisoned even. Just look at Kierkegaard projecting his resentment towards his own bad decisions on God, Abraham and Isaac in "Fear and Tremble". After being "touched by grace" for the first time,...

I was 22 years old, studying at college; everything seemed normal, I started going out with a woman who would later become my fiancée, I practiced sports regularly, and, even when the relationship with my close relatives was disastrous, everything was somewhat smooth. Life was, to an extent, good. Until it wasn't anymore. One day I woke up feeling a monstrous amount of pain throughout my body; I became unable to walk, and I didn't know what was happening; my whole body collapsed leaving me almost crippled;  my spinal nerves were severely compressed  and I wasn't able to walk at all even taking double or triple the recommended doses of painkillers. During those four months all I can remember is being alone in the floor of the rented (shared) flat I was living in, not being able to walk nor eat, with my relatives far away and my fiancée in United Kingdom. Every day felt the same, and I was starting to lose my mind as I had to crawl to the hospital relying on cars to hold myse...

There once was a man named Job who lived in the land of Hus. He had some land, some servants, some cattle, and a beautiful family. He was, indeed, blessed by the Lord due to his righteousness and devotion. One day, Satan entered heaven and mocked God telling him that Job only praised Him due to his life being so easy and fortunate. To prove Satan wrong, God allowed him to jeopardize Job, with just one condition, to not kill him. And suddenly everything Job had vanished; his servants, family and cattle, killed (except for his wife); his land, destroyed; his body, in the verge of breaking due to leper. And what did Job do in that traumatizing and extreme situation? He, without losing his faith, said something incredibly powerful: “ Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I should return to the earth. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord ”. Now that’s some guts there. After that, some friends and even his own wife tried to comfort ...

From 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2, the Bible tells the story of the Prophet Elijah ( Helias ) the Thesbite. The first thing we know about him is that he proclaimed to king Ahab that there wouldn’t be more rain and then, leaving everything behind, followed the Lord’s command and went into the middle of nowhere to be fed by ravens and drink water from a torren in Carith, and later on to be taken care of by a widow, whose son was resurrected through God’s intercession as Helias mourned his death. Some time after these events, we find Helias in the Mount Carmel facing the children of Israel and the prophets of Baal and proposing to them to call the names of their gods against the Lord. “ Invocate nomina deorum vestrorum et ego invocabo nomen Domini et deus qui exaudierit per ignem ipse sit Deus” “Call ye on the names of your gods, and I will call on the name of my Lord: and the God that shall answer by fire, let him be God”. After the prophets of Baal started...