charlie, heather and sweet berry wine

The day i left the sunshine house i was just getting over strep throat. The owners of the retreat center had two kids and one was sick with scarlet fever. It happens to be highly contagious and since they don't believe in "traditional" medicine he had been sick for about a week and because they had neither healed him with their chanting or with their herbal pills he was still contagious. I of course came down with strep throat. I woke up one day and said "I'm going to be missing work today, i need to see a doctor" barely audibly. "We don't believe in doctors" was the response. i bit my tongue. "well i am really sick and i think its strep throat, its really contagious and LouLou (their son) has it soooo..." "you didn't get sick from LouLou, a body only gets sick when it wants to get sick and is ready to get sick" i bit my tongue harder and was starting to get angry. "I understand but i am still going, i think its best for me". They sighed and told me that they could give me some of there herbal pills and i told them "thanks anyway but i need antibiotics" "We don't believe in antibiotics" my fist clenched i told them i was leaving for the day and that i was sorry, i needed to see a doctor to get a prescription. Turns out you don't need one in Greece so i walked into town and bought them for five bucks at the pharmacy. With in two days i was feeling better and in four i left the sunshine house all together feeling happy i spent some time there but also happy i was leaving. LouLou was still suffering, i thought about having a heart to heart with him while slipping him the medicine that he needed but i decided not to interfer. I was heading back to Crete to meet two buddies of mine who decided to visit Greece on their vacation. I was really looking forward to it. I hopped a plane and landed without incident. I didn't see my friends Chuck and Heather. i stood in the middle of the road with my stuff at 11:30 at night saying "CHARLIE" to myself. thinking maybe i had told them the wrong day, time or airport. But after only five minutes they came out of the airport, as confused as i was. "Darell!", oh man it was great to see them. The next four days were spent in the company of a lot of these guys:

Chuck

Heather

Mr berry wine

Sweet berry wine. our favorite came in a plastic bottle, 1500ml for 4 USD. cheap and plentiful equals dangerous. We drank it out of cans so no one would be the wiser, this allowed drinking all day. We also spent a good amount of time at the beach, maybe not the way Heather tells it haha, but three out of the four days anyway. They had been there for three days before i had arrived and i have a feeling the beach was a part of those days too. Charlie being the good boyfriend that he was, didnt hit one golf ball the entire time. Heather being the good girlfriend that she was didnt complain when Charlie and i extended our stay at the bar from thirty minutes to three hours. She was worried about Charlie and had worried he had driven behind a school and crashed his car into a fence or a parked airplane. why those two things? i have no idea. Heather's aunt has a time share and it was fantastic to have our own kitchen. i had my own bed and plenty of space for my crap. Charlie, like as far back as i can remember did all the driving and heather was free to sleep and i was free to do decent job with the map.We cooked all of our dinners and made most of our lunches but still found time each day for a gryos. Meat, onions, tomato, french fries and taziki wrapped in a pita, they were magic in the mouth. Heather whipped up a batch of homemade taziki as well, it, was, bomb. So we ate that on everything, our breath must have been awash with garlic but i never noticed. Due to a miscalculation (charlie) in search of a cave we ended up in the mountains where the mouth of the cave had been snowed it. i wasn't disappointed it was the first time i had felt snow all year and had i not taken the chance to hit chuck with a snowball it would have been the first year that i hadn't thrown one in my entire life. I was glad not to break the streak. it was fantastic to spend those four days with them. So good to see some friends so far from home. they could have gone a lot of places but they cam out to see me and crete, but mostly me right guys? right!!!??? it meant a lot either way. after they dropped me off to head to the airport i found myself back in the company of strangers and it stunk but that all melted away once i arrived at my new WWOOFing spot on Paros Island. A big thank you has to go out to Chuck and Heather, thanks guys for everything. Truly, big thanks and hugs from afar. love you both. also happy 30th chuck wish i could be there to celebrate ya bud. take care of yourself.

The Trumpeteir

The Sunshine House was an interesting place, in a span of ten minutes i walked into my yurt and there was someone preforming Reiki, the art of harnessing "unseen life forces", yeah, so i exited the yurt and turned the corner where a guy named Igor was whittling. "that's cool i love to whittle" i said, "i make magic wands",  ahhh yeah. As i smiled and thought "crazy" i walked on to a spot under a tree where tarot cards were being read, "do you mind if i watch?", "actually yeah, sorry" she said nicely. Alright. as i walked upstairs a hum filled the room and as i peaked in i saw my first vocal harmonic massage taking place. My head a little dizzy i walked back outside and down the road i needed  a little time to process and somewhere no one could hear me...

The diet at the sunshine house was vegan for the most part, i only had feta twice while there. Do you know what happens when you feed an Auger beans and greens for two straight weeks? lets say that it makes for a pretty noisy time. its rather embarrassing really. i know others must have surely been suffering from the increased air but no one seemed to let on, certainly no one talked about it. i wonder if their bodies had come accustomed to the added influx and presence of the extra pressure and are now able to absorb it instead of needing constant deflation as i did. They practice constant yoga and Thai massage all day there. That's a lot of twisting and turning in close quarters. There has to be some embarrassing moments wouldn't there be? How could there not be? In the entire two weeks i heard, not once, anything i could construe as stomach music and i was listening! Hoping to hear someone break the ice. But they didn't and i had to constantly walk away from the groups of people, looking as though i was lost in deep thought, contemplating the cosmos but truly i was just trying to get out of earshot. It was harder than you think with 40 people milling around at all hours of the night. I mean there were 40 of us eating beans, small ones, big ones, soft ones, bright colored ones, grounded, stewed, baked... you get the idea. There the environment is taken seriously. Which i love, but no one has come up with any suggestions or methods to capture the virtual gold mine of methane being produced around the clock. i have some ideas but i dared not to share them on here, nor to any of the other people. We are a living breathing power plant, i alone could have powered the lights on any given day. We are untapped and our natural resources unused and wasted. I wished so often to be in an empty house able to be as loud as i wanted too, but i was forced to sneak around looking for much needed privacy. hard to do with 40 people around all day. I had feared that one day i would be hugged or straining to carry some huge bowl of food, laugh or heaven forbid bend over and well, you know, and there by clear the room. I thought that maybe i was going about it all wrong, maybe i needed to let go, let loose, show them what i was made of, show them how we do back home, the American way. Should i have been hiding like a criminal? be ashamed of who i am? I thought not but in doing so, in showing my talents, i was worried i would be labeled forever as "that one guy, you know, the one we called "the trumpet" he was something else" and go down in sunshine house lore for decades as a musician without and instrument. So i hid. It was a long two weeks.

Ghandi

I showed up to my new WWOOFing location, the sunshine house, located on the island of Evia. I journeyed there the day i left my mother in Athens. I didn't know what to expect, the website was clear on what they did, Thai Massage and Yoga retreats but what it would be life to be a WWOOFer? very little. What type of people and or animals that inhabited it? Nothing.

I don't go out of my way to pet cats. i find them a strange breed, i can never be certain of there personalities. is this specimen the fun loving, pet me, purring, attention needing type? Or the hissing, biting, scratching, "i hate people, just feed me, it was never my intention to live with you giants!" type cat? too hard to tell sometimes so i decide to side step the issue and avoid them all together until i am sure what type i am dealing with. So i approached with my normal caution the day i arrived at the sunshine house when i came face to face with a cat sitting deceptively idle in front of the main house door. I had yet to meet the proprietors of this establishment and needed to gain entrance to make my hellos, the door seemed to be guarded by this cat. Damn. i looked it over as it did me, both trying to understand each other without words and or contact. it looked a little haggard in the fading light of the day and i could tell it was old. i decided to step forth and it responded in turn by rising and purring. i sighed a breath of relief and bent to give it some attention, to start our relationship off on a good note. it stayed put and i gave it some scratches and it seemed to really enjoy it. i got to its chin and it seemed to be a lot worse off then i had thought, its fur wasn't well kept and i decided to cut my love short, "street cat" i thought briefly. i stepped past and the cat followed, i opened the door being careful not to let the cat inside although it seemed to really want to enter. i used one leg to keep it out as i poked my head in, smiling faces greeted me and i returned the smile "hi I'm Jake, your WWOOFer? is this your cat?" i stepped inside after motioned to do so and the cat followed. the smiles disappeared and for a moment i wondered if my fly was down or if i had made a huge mistake in not showering that morning, or the morning before. "No, no, no, don't let it in!" the nearest body lunged for the door and scared the cat back outside. The door shut firmly behind me "its our cat but its very sick, don't ever, ever touch it. it has a fungus, very contagious, the spores get everywhere" FUNGUS! Fungus?!? are you kidding me?!? great, i knew it! Cats! Since our first meeting i have avoided it at all costs, indeed we all do, all 40 of us. In the light of the next morning it was clear it had some serious problems with its skin, rashes and boils. i eyed my hand for the next few days scrutinizing every discoloration, perceived or otherwise wondering if it was going to fall off or mutate into some alien arm. Its so friendly and doesn't seem to understand why the people who once cuddled with it now give it a wide berth. or i reason, is it the later of the two types, angry at its confinement, resentful of its life as underling, hating its situation, yearning for freedom and thus doing its best to spread a plague to wipe out the 40 of us? the jury is still out, the cats name is Ghandi and he is an untouchable.