My lovely hosts 

Thanks to my lovely friend Moshe Robas and all the lovely queer commune "La Segera" around him:  Itai ,his son the amazing lovely dancer, Gracia , Alba & Johana, Rache, Wille , and Miriam.
not easy to find barbed wire in Barcelona, thanks for the help. Open hearts and lovely talks about solidarity.

Thanks to Alex whose house is open to activists of all kinds, but also to passivists like me. The house is on a stunning mountain near Portbou, a city on the border of Spain and France, through which refugees still pass, and some are still killed on land and at sea in the hope of finding a better place in central Europe. What sounded like the beginning of a joke: a Syrian, an Israeli, and Germans met on a balcony near the Walter Benjamin memorial, was actually a possibility. Together with Mary, Martin, and Alex from Germany and Mahmoud from Syria, I could ask questions again about refugees and solidarity. They know each other from volunteering in an organization that helps refugees in boats in the middle of the sea in the hope that they will not reach the shores of Europe as bodies. And this is their website. One never knows when one would become a refugee in the middle of the sea.

In Perpignan, small city in south of France, i found myself in a very sweet family they knew nothing about me and my strange knitting journey. And so they opened their door and their heart. Sophie repairs violins and Jolian builds them bows https://www.ekho-violins.com, with people of such soul i will give my instrument to be fix or by a bow to play on my strings, and they melted my heartstrings in a simple, generous, and sweet way,They and their children. I can't fully describe what it did to me, and what was there beyond a direct warm and sweet human encounter between people on the road in a world where the ground is burning underfoot - and there it is burning in very tangible sense - it hasn't rained in Perpignan for the last for 3 years. This year it was the first time it rained, for two weeks at the end of winter. The summer temps suddenly reach 40 degrees, and the fear of climate change migration is growing nearer

thank you Sophi & Julian for such blessing hospitality!

A big thanks again from the heart that cannot translate to words the simplicity of opens kindness and hospitality that Wanda Martinez and her children, Josef & Liila and Belttxa the dog in Castelnaudary gave me. Indeed, the verbal communication between us was a bit broken, but to integrate into the harmony and the love music of this sweet family was wonderful bath for the heart.

Some people don't "get into your heart". They have been there for years, but only now you suddenly meet. From the stacks of  books to the kind of mess - as soon as I entered Mark's house I met myself in it. He lives on the mountain near Zarautz in the Basak region. It’s green and very beautiful there. Mark was a kindergarten teacher, now he is a therapist. I know this life path well -the sense of meaning and also the exhaustion and the Sisyphean uncertainty of it. it's always nice to meet a fellow traveler with whom you share a sense of kinship on the road. And thanks to Amela, who generously gave me her room and her bed and trusted me from the very first minute. Is it because she was raised in a commune?

It took me a while to figure out why I run around in circles like a puppy before bed until I sit down to knit; What is so challenging about sitting in the street knitting on a wire?

The meetings at the transqueer commune, which generously hosted me in Porto, introduced me to the pain and courage it takes to move about in public with a combination of vulnerability and exposure, a combination of strength and gentleness that is sometimes revealed when we are emotionally naked.

It seems to me that beyond the reminder that non-binary people present - that we are all walking hormone labs and not some kind of male or female fiction, the presence of bodily and psychic fluidity in public is a brave act of vulnerability, usually reserved for moments of love making.

Instead of the gender divide, I propose a divide between those who only have sex and those who make or long to make love. That is, those who know how to dissolve boundaries and not just set them. I wish we would elect leaders who know how to make love rather than just fuck.

Thanks to Sandra for the warm invitation and thanks Pedro, Victoria, Nige and the cats on the couch in Porto. And thanks also to Mini, Toto and Amadeo who are their partners in the project “La Garla”, which tries to create a safe space for everyone there.

Thanks to Pedro also for his help in hanging the lattice on the bridge, and most especially thanks for reminding me more perspectives or awareness.

https://www.instagram.com/csa.a.gralha?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

Thanks to Yasir Islam, who liked my crocheted fence, invited me to stay with him, and was brave and curious enough to meet for a moment the mess I bring with me.

Even before we met ,we talked on the phone about boundaries. We don't know each other, and it was important for him to clarify the rules of the house - you enter without shoes, you are not allowed to smoke or bring guests, and more. Obviously, there were other concerns beforehand. We both came to the meeting with all the imagined emotional and mental charges - the inner ones, and especially those invented on each other.

When meeting strangers, especially if they host me, at first there is a kind of gentle passport control - until a common space is created where you can dance, in this case also physically, in the streets of Lisbon. It took me years to understand that precisely the game of boundaries, especially when done with gentelnes, is the opening to the possibility of closeness.

Somehow it is not surprising that precisely in Lisbon - which sometimes feels like the gateway to Europe and sometimes like a crossroads on the way to or from Africa or Brazil - I stayed with Yasir, who has already crossed several borders in his life: born in Congo to Indian parents, studied and lived in the United States, lived through Corona with his parents in London, and immigrated to Long time ago to Portugal. And he asked me: So where is home?

And maybe it's not surprising either, that in the midst of all this and precisely with him it was possible to talk about the historical press that crushes - probably not just me - between Auschwitz and Gaza.

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There are some people which have an openness and can create a space which allow you to rest.

Albert and Marcus immigrated to Malaga from Antwerp. The word migrate within Europe may sound imprecise, harsh, but that's how it feels. Apparently, there are many types of migrations and immigrants. They renovated the house by themselves. Marcus collects the furniture while Albert renovates them and this house has enough rooms to accommodate guests - from radical Fairies to borederlineknitters. It might also be a way to grow the circle of friends while their hosting. It is not easy to create social network in Málaga, which although it has turned from a shabby and graceless city into a metropolis with a marina, it has remained conservative in its core.

Thanks to Albert and Markus for giving me a place to rest, and also coming to spend time with me in knitting shifts in Malaga’s Ibn Gvirol square , For a bourgeois nomad like me, the question of what makes a place into a home will probably remain always open.

It felt lovely and natural to get a loving reception from Cris and Maria in Sevilla (after all, it’s no coincidence that I earned the title of “honorary lesbian” - my love for and identification with lesbians are great and well known.

Maria grew up in a house that had a statue of Franco at the entrance and went to Catholic school until she left and became a DJ. Cris lived in a commune, then parted ways with boys and met Maria. Every LGBTQ person makes some kind of emigration. Today they are both social workers in women’s support organizations.

The three of us belong to the same tribe, with the same campy butch touch, and similar social-political beliefs. It’s as if I met old friends from Black Laundry for whom there will always be a huge place in my heart. Already then, in the early 2000s, we understood the ties between different oppressions, yet the chant “In Gaza and Sderot there are girls who want to live” got smothered by the national ossification of the heart.

I wish there would be more Palestinian flags in all demonstrations in Israel, if only to confound the settler-Hamas-anti-semite enemy whoever it is .

https://m.soundcloud.com/chocoteke...

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"If you're in Seville, you have to pass through Córdoba, there's the mosque that became a church and you can sleep at my parents’ house." I have known Louis for years from Berlin. I am a friend and witness of his journey - the transformation from engineer to tantra instructor, and to  sex therapist by touch. Probably the profession, which ultimately, and contrary to what people might think, requires the most developed ability to set boundaries - both internal and external. Gentle but clear. Louis lives in a threesome, maybe actually a fourthsome, depending on how you count. This too requires skill in transitions and boundaries.

Louis's father, a retired army man, was waiting in the kitchen with a smile. He made us a red Salmorejo - a traditional cold tomato dish they make in Córdoba.  Louis’s mother, Ina, is trying to learn English. There was something touching about this welcoming, their way of trying to be close to Louis, his way of life and the colorful friends he brings. It took time for the army man and the hospital nurse to embrace a life journey with no frames and uniforms.
Thank you to Louis the father and Louis the son and mother Ina - for the openness and the bed in Louis's childhood room in the city where Muslim, Christian, Jewish and all kinds of other children dreamed, played, ran away and died, in the name of God's nighnightmares.

George and Jose have been living in Spain for 11 years. George is from New Jersey, Jose was born in El Salvador. They met in a community theater group and have been together ever since. 20 years. In Spain, they moved from Madrid to Malaga and from there to Valencia and it seems they still haven't found their home. But in the US it is not easy to survive even with a pension of an intensive care doctor and a teacher's salary, and right now they also can't imagine themselves returning to Trump's USA. The experience of foreignness, as well as racism, is not easy. At a late age it is difficult to integrate into a different culture and create circles of friends or a community. Refugeehood and migration do not require drought or war, and its seems that the world will offer plenty of those too.

Thanks to George and Jose who opened their door and also their hearts and accompanied me to my knitting at the city gate.

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