A Short Stay in Utsera, Georgia

The first thing my host mother said to an English-speaking Georgian mediator between us was that she will now treat me like her own son as long as I’m living here and that all is ok. Our communication involves looking up words as rapidly as we can in our pocket phrasebooks, speaking single words at a time, pointing, pantomiming, and smiling. So far it has gone far enough to mutually assure one another that all is good and that both parties are happy with our arrangement. Sometimes we’ll spend a half an hour discussing how often it snows in Utsera, but it’s great. I would really love to engaged in deeper, more dynamic conversation but the expression of simple emotions is enough to keep things pleasant. I just feel inadequate at times socially and dread the day if I ever offend somebody and can’t understand why and am unable to rectify it.

The house I’m living in serves sort of like a bed and breakfast in the States, but I think without the “breakfast” part. It’s known as a resort for people in Georgia who wish to travel to the Racha region and enjoy some of the natural mineral water springs that occur here apparently every one hundred meters. Guests come and stay in any of the dozen or so beds that are in every spare room of the house, and then do whatever it is that they do with the mineral water springs during the day. The setting, of course, is really beautiful. I think it’s going to be amazing in the spring and summer seasons. This village is backdropped by the Caucasus Mountains, one of the largest of all mountain ranges in Europe. So that’s what you see everyday from your own backyard if you live in Utsera. Or any village in northern Racha, really.

The snow-covered peaks of the mountains truly are a refreshing sight to bare witness to every day when you step out into the world. The distance there absorbs every particle in the air between you and them, and amplifies the mystique of their inaccessibility. It appears that there are no trails to the summits of most of the ones I see. Perhaps they’re very small, but there is one volunteer in Oni, the next town down, and he offered to go hiking with me. So maybe he knows a way to the top. I really want to get up there on a clear day because I know you can see probably even all the way down to Kutaisi from that vantage point.

By conventional thought in the U.S., a family living the way this family does would be considered to be poor or not desirable. But nothing about this place is so. Yes the house is heated by a wood-burning stove, the milk is taken directly from a cow across the street and most of the food is made from scratch, but everything is immaculately clean and well attended to. You can tell that great care is taken with orderliness and cleanliness, in a way that says to me that the family is very well attuned to the demands of a natural life and have fashioned habits of existence that answer those demands; habits of routine and productive activity. Expressions of humility. All things that nurture the soul in ways a life motivated artificially cannot.

I’m really in awe of how clean the living space is. Every floor is free of all dirt and mud, every surface is dust free, and everything is put in its place. There are very few things in this house that aren’t immediately useful in a certain way. Very little is beyond what is needed. They are aware of everything around them and they know exactly where everything important to them and necessary for the functions of life, is. They dance very close to the equilibrium of having no more and no less than what they need and it just feels like harmony. This harmony between the inner and outer world of the human being is probably very closely linked to a healthy psyche, as it affords the individual the grounding reassurance that everything essential is readily available and immediately there. Once the basic tasks are learned, all it takes to ensure that this type of existence remains there at all times is the expenditure of simple, daily effort.

Work here looks nothing like the work of a so-called modern society. It looks more like the restless, primordial energy of a healthy human being directed very naturally towards simple, daily tasks that ensure comfortable living. It exists apart from the realm of artificially constructed bureaucracies, institutions, corporations, and other similar organizations. It affords the individual an opportunity to live a life of little stress, save for the circumstances of any natural or man-made disaster, albeit a life of little stimulation. With a few modern entertainment devices and a car for travel into the larger cities, it isn’t a bad life by any means. Perhaps striking a balance between the extremes of a simple life and the extremes of a complex, “modern” life is a worthy goal for the modern (wo)man.