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Mixing it up

Do homo sapiens have a purpose?

A model of a large ocean cargo liner arches over the entry to the Eden Project Rainforest Biome
Part of a large ocean cargo liner arches over the entry to The Eden Project Rainforest Biome

Nik Meergans, a British artist now living in France, once remarked that if we humans have any purpose in life, it is to mix things up. Humans like to take things (plants, minerals, people) from one place, one country, to somewhere else, and stir things up. It’s what we’re good at. Why, I’ve often been called a stirrer. We take minerals from one place and make steel train lines, we take coffee beans, load them on ships and send them off to Melbourne to be pressed into service. The Eden Project explores the idea of mixing to the max: one crop, one exploitation, and one cargo ship at a time.

It was a quiet walk through mist-rain from the YHA down to The Eden Project in Cornwall. Past fruit-flavoured (strawberry, melon, mango, pineapple, lime … ) carparks (they expect a lot of cars!!), past a gorgeous orchard surely older than twenty years (the Project’s age), to join a stream of people arriving into the visitors’ centre. I was one of the first of the day to buy my £35-year-pass. Only, I shan’t be back this way. Is it a little bit expensive for a day trip?

I took the information booklet that acts as an entry pass and went straight away to coffee and cake. (Is it vegan? I think it’s gluten free? Shall we look that up and read out all the ingredients to make sure the customer is well and truly reminded they’re a weirdo?) Once seated and relaxed I perused the information book. It’s so thorough I couldn’t really grasp the concept on one quick read. However, it is a great reminder of what you’ve seen after the event. I dressed in my waterproofs and walked outside into the Eden Project.

Previously, I was under the impression the Project was a glorified botanical garden, and initially I wasn’t impressed as I marched the long way through the Climate System and the incessant light rain (Cornish mizzle – cross between mist and drizzle). I asked a gardener about frogs (silent in the rain) and he said there were lots. They find them in random places, but he dodged the question of them singing. Maybe English frogs are quiet?

water running off the Core Building roof at the Eden Project
Water gushes from the Core Building roof, pouring into a rock chip filter system, then channelling through into a water garden.
One of the displays from the Core building 'Invisible World' exhibition
Display from the Core building ‘Invisible World’ exhibition

Into the Core, where a museum display illustrated big universes and microorganisms, and then I turned a corner and saw ‘Blue’. It’s an 8.5 metre ceramic cyanobacteria, the smallest form of life, emitting random scented smoke rings like a giant hookah-smoking blue peanut. Here art and science began to provoke thoughts.

Blue is an 8.5 metre sculpture blowing perfect smoke rings for O - oxygen
‘Blue’ by Studio Swine – 8.5 metre ceramic sculpture

The smoke forms a perfect O for oxygen, the beginnings of life. There’s an inspiring film about the origins of the sculpture and the international team (Studio SWINE) that created it. I enjoyed watching different people interact with the rings. One boy would make up his mind at the last minute; either smash it or loop it over his arm like a bracelet.

The Core houses a variety of changing exhibitions and displays to inspire and create wonder. The current is ‘Invisible Worlds’.

After examining the inner world, I went outside again to find a biome. Two of these giant bubble shapes nestle into the hillside of what used to be a quarry. Built like insect eyes, in the misty rain of the morning, they appeared ghostly and perfectly suited to their environment.

The Eden Project, the Core building and the smaller biome, nestled into the hillside in the mist
Paths leading to the Core building and the Biomes

The Mediterranean Biome is smaller, built up into a cliff, and represents plants and crops found around the Mediterranean, South Africa, and Western Australia. Now, I really was intrigued, as only recently I’d visited both WA and SA on my journey to the UK. Olives, grapes and bougainvillea, oleanders and proteas, fine leafed SA rarities and WA banksias side by side, describing my shore experiences! And if you want good mixers, geraniums and agapanthus, amarylis and gladiolus are all originally South African.

But it was when I entered the Rainforest Biome, probably twice the size as the drier climate, with tall lush canopy trees almost brushing the inside of the dome, walkways through the glossy green treetops and that enormous ocean liner sculpture at the entrance that I began to feel a real affinity with the scope of the Project.

Rainforest canopy leaves
You can just see the walkway up over the rainforest canopy leaves

Not only are we treated to a recreation of a rainforest, seeing a collection of plants from four different zones: Southeast Asia, West Africa and Southern and Central America, but also industrial crops such as sugar and coffee, cacao and rubber, palm oil and spices, giving more than a hint of past exploitation and colonial greed. As we travel through the Amazon rainforest photos of indigenous tribal people describe their vulnerability as ongoing destruction continues.

Vulnerable tribes in the Amazon
Highlighting plight of vulnerable tribes in the Amazon

A great, international story unfolds, from seed to plate, soil and microorganisms to tall trees and orangutans. The story is enormous, yet school children run across a rope swing bridge that highlights how a rainforest creates its own rain, screaming cheerfully when the fog cloud is turned on. They don’t get wet, but you can be sure the teacher will expect them to talk about their canopy experience when they get back to school!

You can climb to the very top where the temperature was 31 degrees Centigrade the day I visited. Many clothes are shed in this biome! I noticed a school group participate in the chocolate adventure – one youngster even dressed as a Mayan God. I attended a coffee tasting and discussion as we stood near a group of arabica and robusta bushes. What countries grow coffee successfully? Who is exploited? What happens when the plants escape the farms and invade native forests? I also happened upon a tea tasting – guess the spices – you’ll have to visit yourself; I’m not going to tell you.

Orangutan hiding in the rainforest
Orangutan hiding in the rainforest

The message is clear, your weapon is your wallet. Gentle suggestions encourage consumers to try single origin, certified products. If supported by Fairtrade or the Rainforest Alliance, even better. You’re supporting farmers to grow more sustainably, more intelligently and feed their grandchildren into the future.

For adults in any doubt about climate change, there’s a chance to see some well-presented evidence. If they don’t ‘see’ it, then their children might. There’s a hopeful assumption that we’re all working together to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and we are developing enough new technology to get moving yesterday and there’s more Eden Projects all over the world. Look for them in Hobart and Angelsea in Australia and the redzone in Christchurch, NZ. There a new water project in China, which will also be reflected in Cornwall due to a major destructive earth slide in 2020. There’ll be one in Costa Rica, one in Chad, Northern Ireland, Morcambe, Dundee and Dubai.

The Eden Project is projecting a grand future - watch out for one near you!
The Eden Project is projecting a grand future – watch out for one near you!

The art continues in the extensive gardens and surrounding displays. For locals there are concerts, playgrounds and changing exhibitions. What a wonderful way for us mix-it-up humans to reconnect with history and look at the entire planet as it was and is and how it could be. All this within a few hectares. Travel without travel. But I have traveled; I’ve sailed halfway around the world on a liner. I’ve brought things to the UK: my Taiwanese iodine, my Canadian moisturiser, my Australian metal water bottle, some biscuits from Cape Town.

I docked at Southampton in late April after spending six weeks at sea on The Queen Mary 2, the only ocean liner in active service. She’s not a cruise ship – she’s a liner – due to the deeper keel, higher speeds, greater engine power, the pyramid shape for stability and overall endurance. At least, that’s what the designer, Stephen M. Payne told us in his presentation.

QM2 in Sydney harbour waiting to dock at the Ocean terminal
QM2 in Sydney harbour waiting to dock at the Ocean terminal April 2023 (ship to ship photo: Jeff Bartolomei)

I will be posting about my QM2 adventures soon.

Meanwhile, are you a mixer?

Mix it up by the Kingstonians

Blanes. Winter is coming.

Saturday morning in the middle of Blanes.

Saturday morning in the middle of Blanes.

Blanes is a popular seaside resort on the Costa Brava of Spain. I’m lucky enough to be staying here while I work as an English conversation assistant in the next town, Palafolls. As you can see, the town centre of Blanes is a bustling metropolis. The farmers’ market takes place every morning but is particularly busy on Saturday.

In contrast, where I live, on the outskirts of town near the Camping Grounds, winter is coming and the shops are shut. Most of the apartments are empty and the hotels are boarded up.
blanes-masage-theraputico blanes-restaurants blanes-shut blanes-super blanes-wrapped blanes-backstreet
blanes-fast-food

blanes-mini-golf

I should add I took these photos on a Saturday at lunchtime.

The built environment

The built environment and the blustery day of Blanes in winter

There is one population though, that owns Blanes in the chilly temperatures.

blanes-cat-park

blanes-black-catblanes-catsblanes-cat-hotelTo the extent that some animal lovers have created Gatolandia – a cat hotel – to feed and provide shelter to our feline friends.

Gatolandia Birthday Celebrations

Gatolandia Birthday Celebrations

The area is very quiet. I am exceedingly lucky. Here is my apartment block. I think about half the flats are inhabited.

My flat is the top right hand corner. The sea view is the bottom left hand corner.

My flat is the top right hand corner. The sea view is the bottom left hand corner.

 

This is the view looking back towards the sea. I think about four of these flats have people living in them at the moment. The others are locked up tight.

This is the view from my little clothes-drying balcony looking back towards the sea. I think about four of these flats have people living in them at the moment. The others are locked up tight.

In the other direction, looking toward the Tordera River and Palafolls, you can see the empty caravans of the Campings and the hills of the Parc del Montnegre i el Corredor, one of the national parks of Barcelona province. This ever-changing landscape is swept by winds from the Bay of Biscay. The cloud formations can be spectacular, or absent! On the point of the closest hill is Castell de Palafolls, now a ruin, which some of the young people at my secondary college have promised to show me.

My view in the morning

My view in the morning

 

My view in the evening

My view in the evening

Even though there’s nothing very natural about these built up areas, I’m sure there’s something still untamed up in them there hills …

Slices of heart wood

Hola from Spain! I am currently living here, working as an auxiliar de conversacion de inglis in a small secondary school, in a tiny town on the Costa Brava. I’m very lucky. I’ve visited much of the country, especially the North when I walked the Camino del Norte y Primitivo. I’m still trying to process my impressions of the last few months but here’s a little taste of the Camino – all 876km.

Now that I’m feeling more settled in my little flat overlooking the hills of the Parc del Montnegre y el Corredor, I have time to return to this blog. I am learning how to be an English conversation assistant and hopefully, along the way, be better able to teach English. In between days at school, and typing, I am still restless. There is much to see locally, of course, but I do feel the need to tick off some of the big towns of Spain. (You might find some ideas for your own travels here)

I visited Valencia on the recent long weekend. It is a wonderful town of history together with a heady vibrant energy of rejuvenation. But one visit really tumbled me and it was La Memória dels Arbres, in the University of Valencia Botanic Gardens.

sun strikes Toi Toi in the grass section

sun strikes Toi Toi in the grass section

I wandered around these gardens, a formal zoo for plants that was established in the sixteenth century, with no great aim. It is a lovely oasis. Living in one of the flats overlooking these neat and tidy sections would be idyllic. Birds flittered about. A sweet little grey bird with a pale orange chest chirped away above me as I sat on one of the many shady benches. It sounded like a little metal hammer tip tip tapping on a tiny fragile stained glass window. Or a miniature suitcase, wheeled along tiny cobblestones, tirruping along. The parrots came alive later as the sun rayed into the tops of the trees. I couldn’t see them but I thought they would have red heads and green bodies like the ones I’d seen earlier flying around the Palace. Strange how some of the flats face away from the gardens. And in this Botanic Gardens there are many cats!

cats listen to 'Imagine' by John Lennon sung lustily by a school of English learners

cats listen to ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon sung lustily by a school of English learners in the school nearby

Finally I came upon an exhibition building where I found:

poster for La Memória dels arbres

Suddenly the world was coloured by layers of music and the smell of freshly sawn timber. The building itself has a beamed ceiling of heavy wood but it was the languorous guitar that took me down through the circles of time into this extraordinary exhibition.

Silhouette of tree in Valencia, Jardī Botanic

Created by two men who apparently went into the forest, hewed, carried by backpack and arranged the pieces:

Miguel Ortega & Jesús Julio Camarero, the men responsible for the memories of wood

Miguel Ortega & Jesús Julio Camarero, the men responsible for the memories of wood

I tried to think why I was so greatly affected by this selection of lumber CAT scans. Partly because I am recently from Prague, where I learned to carve wooden marionettes with Mirek Trejtnar of Puppets in Prague. Often Mirek would encourage us to respect the wood, respect the grain, feel the timber.

Pieces of Puppets carved by Mirek Trejtnar from Puppets in Prague

Pieces of Puppets carved by Mirek Trejtnar from Puppets in Prague

The wood memories selected showed the rings of ages. Clearly some were very old indeed and, given the changes and torments wrought over the land of Spain, had stood while many human lives had fallen. The slices showed the effects of insects, cold, drought and fire. They looked soft and so like medical specimens that once again I was reminded how human beings have much in common with other species. Even plants!

Slice of sabina

Slice of sabina-negra

Although this looks bumpy it is in fact as smooth as silk

Although this looks bumpy it is in fact as smooth as silk

Almond wood

Almond wood

Heart wood

The Signature of All Things – big story, big picture, big biggness

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/the-signature-of-all-things/

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/the-signature-of-all-things/

The Signature of All Things strides across centuries, across science and across the face of God. It details (and I mean, really details) the life of the father, the daughter and the Holy Angel. It looks at our relationship to nature in a learned, scientific light. It’s a book, it’s big and it’s by Elizabeth Gilbert.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733752_1735978,00.html

http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733752_1735978,00.html

But I wasn’t paying attention to the writer when I began because I was drawn to the reader. I listened to this behemoth on Audible books read by the delectable tones of Juliet Stevenson. Ah.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1579914752/nm0828980

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1579914752/nm0828980

If you have never had the pleasure of being read to by Ms Stevenson, may I recommend you rush to Audible for your introductory book and plug your ears into anything at all, say for instance, Middlemarch or Persuasion. I could listen to Juliet read the phone book and herein lies the problem, because I began to wonder if indeed The Signature of All Things might not in fact be a bit of a phone book. Juliet’s mellifluous golden tones seeped into my mind like a pleasant dream but once in a while I would be jumped out of the loveliness and mentally exclaim, ‘What is this stuff?’

Like Joyce, Gilbert is heavy on the lists. It sometimes feels as though she’s deliberately setting out to write an enormous masterpiece, covering a great sprawling canvas, and therefore she must conjure all the things that pertain to the thought she has in mind at that moment, that circumstance, that idea, that shade, that currency, that minutiae, that detail, that nuance, that secondary motif, that other thing that just might resonate with some reader somewhere because of something a second cousin once said at a wedding where she wore a beautiful dark dress with a large floral print in pinks and leaves but her shoes were too tight and she got a blister on her heel that took days to fade away and MEANWHILE back in the real world you’re starting to wish Ms Gilbert had found a slightly sterner editor and that maybe Juliet is reading the phone book after all.

There’s no doubting Gilbert’s steady and erudite construction of sentences and, apart from slight Americanisms like ‘pinky’ and ‘route’ most notable toward the end of the book, the prose is indeed suggestive of Elliot. In fact, and this reveals more about my lack of current popular knowledge than anything about Gilbert, I didn’t know who she was. It wasn’t until some way into the work that I looked the woman up. Der. She’s quite wise really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat,_Pray,_Love#/media/File:Eat,_Pray,_Love_%E2%80%93_Elizabeth_Gilbert,_2007.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat,_Pray,_Love#/media/File:Eat,_Pray,_Love_%E2%80%93_Elizabeth_Gilbert,_2007.jpg

So I went and borrowed Eat Pray Love (in that order) from my local library. The strands of this memoir are the concerns of the main character, Alma, in Signature. The corporeal, the spiritual and the emotional. That is to say, All Things. A lot of people really like it, apparently, and you might want to watch the movie. I shan’t dwell on ELP except to say it is based on Gilbert’s private journals and acts as a kind of miasma or swamp of the mind from which might grow a mighty lotus blossom. That blossom might well be The Signature of All Things.

Signature is an extraordinary vision and it features many real life characters like Captain Cook, Joseph Banks and Darwin. It could be that the story is based on a real person. The idea is not so far-fetched after all. A female scientist joins Darwin and Wallace in examining the world and seeking answers. There’s nothing preposterous in that. Female thinkers have been, like Alma’s moss, quietly gathering science ever since records began. Many have disappeared. Perhaps Gilbert found an account or diary somewhere that kicked this giant opus off?

There is much to ponder in Signature. There is much, full stop, much of everything really. It’s big, I tell you. An amazing feat. Alma is big, her father is a titan, her husband is an angel. Her view of God is not singular. Ms Gilbert really likes numbers and the basic trinity is always present (as are other numerological games in both ELP and Signature). Gilbert is an intellectual, after all. However, God is not in the moss. Heaven is not within. Heaven is somewhere else.

You might like Gilbert’s TED talk on creativity. She describes the need to separate artists from their muse – genius comes from outside. (Like God!)

Humans are part of nature – and her discussion of the development of the theory of evolution is even-handed and I welcome her embrace of Wallace. Although Bill Bailey on the subject is probably slightly more amusing.

I’m sorry I can’t be more conclusive about The Signature of All Things. I do love hearing big books, especially read by Juliet. I did enjoy many parts of this enormous blossom, this mossy roll, but in the end it did feel unsatisfying. Did it go on too long? Did it start too early?

It is amazing. That is all. It is about All Things. That said, I do wonder if Gilbert has been in communication with George Elliot’s muse?