I think I'm only satisfied when I'm in the midst of preparing for or undertaking some huge plan or adventure. I have a long list, many of course travel related. But my latest is home related. This is the nutshell, as recently arrived at: sometime this spring, but probably before the end of June, sell my place here at PPC. This is no refelction on PPC, which I adore, but rather a means of embarking on the next phase, which is: helping to build, and move into, a backyard cob cottage in the North Portland neighborhood of Kenton. I plan to take a week long cob workshop in a few months to get a foundation in the necessary skills. You will hear a lot more about this from me as time goes by, and will no doubt have the opportunity to try your hand at some cobbing this summer as we build the place. It will be in the back yard of Debbie DeRose's new (to her) place. Ultimately we hope to have 2 little accessory cottages in addition to the little house that is already there (which she is working on now and will soon move into.) The cottages will be under 200 square feet of footprint, thus will not need permits. Even so, don't tell the city, okay? Dwellings like this are too sensible and low impact to pass muster with most bureaucratic regulations. There are many cob houses in Britain that are upwards of 600 years old. Once you plaster and roof them they last basically forever. Believe me, cob (and other similiar techniques) is something that everyone will hear a lot more about in coming years. The era of the oversized stick house is over. And not to sound elitist, but I'm proud to say that I aspire to the exact opposite of the delusional version of the "American Dream" that so many still buy into: Clapboard trophy homes. Foyers the size of the house I plan to move into. 50 weeks a year at a corporate job to pay for it all. Frikking ridiculous. I want to live in the simplest possible way, in the smallest practicable dwelling (while still in community.) One of the happiest nights of my life was on my bike tour in 2003, when at the end of a pouring down day in Northern California, soaked and near-hypothermic, darkness falling, I pulled into the bike camping spot at one of the Redwood wayside parks (Marin Garden Club Grove, north of Legget along the Avenue of the Giants) expecting to have to pitch my tarp in a mud puddle, and discovered that there was a picnic table and raised platform sheltered modestly but perfectly with a nicely overhanging roof of hand-hewn beams, under which I could spread out in total and luxurious dryness as the rain continued to pour. I was SO glad to have that shelter from the rain that night. And I distinctly remember thinking to myself (and it has stuck with me) that this was enough, in fact more that enough, a delightful luxury in fact, to be sheltered, dinner cooking on my little stove, my sleeping bag unrolled nice and dry on a pad. And in fact on all my trips and hikes, all up the AT and everywhere else, I have always been struck by how little it takes not just to be sufficient, but fully satisfying. The other essential ingredient is community, friends, etc., and these, thank God, I have in abundance.
So anyway, the next task will be selling my current place. The tricky thing here is that there are probably multiple people, who are friends of me or others here, who might be interested in it, and I can't say yes to one at the expense of others, if it came to that. Imagine entertaining two equal buy-offers from two different friends! So I may punt to my fellow commonsers and put the buyer/new member selection into the process that is already underway for the new units that PPC is going to build soon on the north side of the lot. At any rate, whoever i sell to has to be serious about living in community, and has to click at some level with the folks who are already here (upon meeting them.) It is not an objective process, it really can't be in a unique situation like PPC.
In other news, i just completed a painting, the first in awhile, and I have a music gig/set coming up in a couple weeks which I'll send emails out about soon. It will be a set following the next Portland Independent Puppet Night at Acme on Sat. Feb. 11.
The sun came out yesterday for like an hour. It was nice. Oh, I went cross-country skiing the day before yesterday. First time I've done that in a very long time. I went to Trillium Lake by Mount Hood. It was fun. The hill going down from the parking area to the lake loop was actually exhilirating, in a cross-country skiing kind of way(those skiis are not made for going downhill easily.) I used Eli Spevak's old pair, skinny ones made mostly for groomed track, which this was. The kick and glide thing is also pretty fun, sliding along, just keeping it in control.
I'm going to go again monday or tuesday, Teacup Lake this time.
It is possible that I helped prevent (at least in the short run) a distraught individual from taking his life yesterday evening. It happened as I was on my TriMet shift. I'll just relay the incident recap I wrote up.
On the afternoon of Thursday, January 12, 2006 I was at Sunset Transit Center informing customers about the Martin Luther King Day schedule changes, particularly for Lines 89, 59, and 62. At approximately 6:30 PM as
I was standing by the Line 59 stop, a man approached me and stated that he was feeling extremely down, that he wanted to kill himself, and asked me if I would call the police so they could take him to St. Vincent's Hospital. He had been waiting for the bus 20, but said that at this point he did not trust himself to get himself over to the hospital unescorted without attempting to take his own life, that he was on the literal brink of committing suicide. I immediately called Rail-Control on my cell phone. The Rail Controller answered, I quickly told her the situation and asked her to get the police to Sunset ASAP. She calmly took a description of the man from me and told me she'd get help there immediately. For the next ten minutes until the Beaverton Police arrived I stayed with the man, immediately face to face with him (about 2 feet away), and engaged him in what I felt was sympathetic but not too heavy conversation. I did ask him if he had the means at that moment to kill himself (imagining the possibility of a weapon on his person) and he said that he had been about to jump across the barrier into oncoming freeway traffic. Traffic was flowing quickly at this time so this would have been feasible. I did not ask him, but I'm quite sure he also considered jumping in front of an oncoming MAX train. He relayed various other details of his situation (just got divorced and lost his job both, is bi-polar though claimed to be on his medication.) I responded and conversed with him in a way that I felt was, as I said, sympathetic and supportive but not "enabling" of his dark intentions. The Beaverton police arrived at just after 6:40 PM and I walked the man over to the squad car and told the officer very briefly that the man was suicidal and wished to be taken to the hospital. The police officers took over from there and escorted the man away in a squad car several minutes later. The Rail Controller meanwhile had called back just to make sure everything was all right and that the police had arrived.
I don't know with any certainty whether I actually prevented a suicide, but there is little doubt the man was genuinely suicidal, and that he was contemplating jumping in front of 60 mph freeway traffic shortly before seeing and approaching me. I am glad I was there, and that I was able to be with him until the police arrived, since by his own admission he did not trust himself to get to the hospital by himself, that indeed he was on the brink of ending his life.
oops, i accidentally deleted some comments by people. Sorry.
I have not had any coffee in a week. It feels good, though I'm sure i'll have some again before too long. You really get buzzed when you drink a cup after taking a break from it. The current issue of Time magazine has a special section on well-being and achieving mental clarity and such, and they have an entire article that reads like a piece of propaganda from the Coffee Trade Board. New studies reveal! Coffee is good for your brain! And cures cancer! It has no downsides! Which is total bullshit. It all comes down to what researchers are willing (or paid) to study about caffeine and coffee. Yes, I'm sure it is true that coffee DOES, as they found, enhance alertness, mental sharpness, and memory, at least for an hour or two. I could tell you that much based on my own experience of it. I could also tell you (and so could anyone with any capacity of self-observation) that the buzz-high is followed by a dragging burnout and (paradoxically) difficult and unrestfull sleep, and that like any drug you quickly build a tolerance to it such that it takes more and more to get the same effect. The silly thing about the Time article is that it is several pages after a piece that states unequivocally that the key to alertness and productivity is a good night's sleep. So which is it? Coffee or proper sleep? I'll grant you that coffee drinkers (including myself) do end up sleeping the night, but I really believe that millions of us are basically unaware of the persistent effects of chronic coffee usage. That is, at a level that is so common as to be unconsciously considered "normal" they (we) are chronically stressed, anxious, unrested. And the cure? Another cup of coffee! Plus alchohol or pot and television, depending on the time of day. I don't mean to sound sanctimonious, or that I never indulge in anything, but truly these are the drugs that, when used daily, keep us from having to create a deeper and truer peace of mind.
Coffee is a great vehicle of speculative conversation with a friend, or speculative writing in a journal, but it is also the pre-eminent drug/lubrication of the machinery of a hyper-paced commercial civilization. And some day in the perhaps not distant future it will no longer be available to us for less than a super-luxury price (after all it must be transported by ship across thousands of miles of ocean from tropical climes.) Then we'll learn how life really looks and feels without it.