Yup, been a while. Aware of that.

In the main, recently, we have been living life and enjoying our new home, and Our Pirate Life has seemed less and less relevant. I think the moment I began visualizing the style of Ikea dining table with which I was hoping to furnish my living room is the point at which I officially lost my pirate status.

It was immensely fun being a pirate. I recently read an article about ‘rewilding’ and I would say that that is what the five months at Pirate Camp were for the four of us. We reconnected with ourselves and our environment. We rewilded. We were pretty wild before. Never tame(!), but we had forgotten how wild wereally are.

So, what does that mean we have been doing for the past two months? Recivilising? I suppose, in some ways, yes, that really is exactly what we have been doing.

From the initial shock of the subdivision (which nonetheless turned out to have some very friendly neighbors), and then the joyous relief of finding a home, we have been re-entering civilization in a manner true to form.

We moved in, took the doors off their hinges (interior); painted some walls; let the kids muralize; ripped out the tv cable; began hoarding rodents and leporidae (bunnies!); hung some flags; thanks to the connections and generosity of new friends and community members, managed to acquire a sofa bed, two living room sofas, a coffee table, and two goats (a mama and her baby girl); and met most of the neighbors. Ziggy is now over a month into his magical Waldorf school – the school I (literally) dreamed of while back in New Mexico almost two years ago… a beautiful home, on 10 green and wooded acres, with a river running through it, horses, pigs, enchanted teachers, I could go on.

I could go on about all of this. I could talk about the puppy I found by the side of the road today and brought home (flea-ridden, worm-infested, exhausted, about 6 weeks old, terrified, grateful, affectionate, loving, ours) called Yaya, Taino for Higher Power, or Creator. I could talk about Coco’s new playdate group and the empowered and interesting, honest and humbled women I have been lucky enough to connect with through our shared motherhood and backyards and homes. I could talk about the Farmers’ Market and the night-time Art Market; or the essential oil magician and the chiropractor, both of whom feel as if they were placed right there in my path inviting me to heal.

I could talk about the buck I am taking my Nubian goat mama to get impregnated by (si Dios quiere) tomorrow; or the beach walks I take on an almost daily basis with my daughter and dogs; the fruit trees we are unveiling in the yard as we hack through vegetation and the goats eat; the raw goat milk from three doors up; the yummy local eggs; the local pig we are going to load into our freezer(!); the roadside fruit stands that satiate our sweet teeth with pineapple, papaya, guanabana, mango, bananas; the delicious chocolate mousse we have been chowing down on thanks to all these avocados people keep palming off on us as they are just everywhere and can’t all be eaten ever.

The surf lessons, the money-management breakthroughs, the business insights, the incredible artist who has offered to create some images for our upcoming album project, the breakthroughs musically in attitude to production, performance and purpose. The hoarding of driftwood. The luxury of running water, Laundromats, electric lights, flushing loos that we will ne’er cease to marvel at.

The barn plans; the garden plans; the burgeoning herb garden; the night I superglued my dog’s neck back together while Justin was out of town with the car; the rebalancing of heart and soul and the deep aligning with spirit that happens when you are where you are meant to be.

Gawd, there’s more. So much more. Of course there is. This is Life. You all know that. You’re all here too.

With this blog, Our Pirate Life, I began writing to document a moment in time, a point in our evolution and a time in our lives. And I think I did that very well. My writing had a focus. I wasn’t writing about me, or us, or ‘our crazy family’ or ‘our day to day’ or whatever humdeedumdrum. I had an angle. Only now I don’t.

This blog has ceased to have a point.

Oh Life has a point, oh yes. Many many myriad points, so many as to make life a complex and beautiful organic crystalline formation, as magical as it ever was and as simply complex as it always is.

It’s just the writing about it part that feels redundant somehow.

It’s kind of a thing of four quadrants: the reader’s desire to know, the writer’s desire to tell; the reader’s need to know, and the writer’s need to tell. I feel that the best writing hits all four. Our Pirate Life hit all four of these quadrants at different times. And even, I would somewhat unBritishly dare to state, hit three of them at a time, most of the time. And, on the odd occasion, even all four, for the fleeting moment of a sentence or few.

Yet now. No, reader, you did not need to know any of the details I have just relayed to you. You are still reading because either a – you started so you shall therefore finish, b – you like me, c – you don’t like me and want to slag me off in your head or to someone or other after you have finished, d – you have no idea how you stumbled onto this page and it’s late and you can’t sleep and it’s better than worrying about your health or your marriage or your children’s behavioral problems, or e – you stopped reading ages ago and I am talking to the firewall.

The thing is this. The worst dross on the internet hits one of the quadrants only – either the reader’s desire to know or the writer’s desire to tell. It is either some worthless drivel floating about because someone just wanted to put it there but it is of no interest, use or diversion to man nor cyborg. Or – worse still – it was compiled or written utterly mindlessly by anywho or other who can’t spell or punctuate or deviate, innovate or more creatively recreate than to offer up stale and flimsy waffling shite about somethingthehellorelse simply because someone will read it, and they may make a small sliver of a buck based upon that chance. That is where the mindless flannel lies. All the vanity, all the fluff, all the bs, the posturing, the marketing of nonsense, the propagating of falsehoods, the excessive screen time.

So, I am not saying that this will be my last post ever. But I am saying this: I no longer have the desire to write down and post on the internet the stories and insights of life with my pirate three. I don’t have the desire to because I don’t have the need. I don’t need to because I have found a wider community that I connect with again. I do not feel ostracized or isolated and, at this time in my life, I am not doing anything so challenging to the status quo that it needs to be documented.

I may post updates as our goats breed, as horses come into our lives, as we build a barn from pallets, get chickens going again, as we learn about our soil here and as we move further into food sustainability.

But not much else. Need to know basis. Ya get me?

And as for writing, it was recently suggested to me by someone whose opinion I greatly respect, that I should start writing short stories. As writing, I have rediscovered, is something that I very much need to do; and as writing short stories awakens a desire in me, then that is what I shall do with my limited writing hours.

Thank you everyone for your support and for the kind words and honest reflections from your own experiences that you have offered in the comments of this blog. It has meant so much to me.

Thank you also for the stories that you have shared via your own blogs.

Anything I need to tell you, be assured that I will. Anything you want to know – ask.

Let’s agree to wish only the best for each other.

Smell ya later…