The B-53 beckons with it's 777 square feet of petite beauty.
I'm pretty sure that my post entitled Little House has been the most read of everything I've ever put up in six years here. Before Jay Schaffer wrote a proper book on the subject, his tiny house offerings were little bitty hand-stapled pamphlets, which I ordered all of, after seeing a post up at Keri Smith's blog. It was so long ago I can't even remember when it was.
It's at least how long I've been itching to jump in my car, hook up my vintage Beasty trailer and beat a trail out of whatever two bathroom spread I was living in. The time has come to start walking my talk. As we search each week for homes, my sights keep focusing into smaller and smaller spaces. Ironically, it's expanding me.
A friend of mine is selling her small house in Austin, if you are one such Texan who doesn't need your home to be as supersized as your state. How in the heck did living spaces become so large?? And the expectation to fill it up with stuff has hit what seems like an all-time high.
Attending Squam Art Workshops really broke this issue open again for me last week. Any last reservations I had about giving up luxurious space were set free on the lakeshore breeze, and the path between a wee house in nature and the mystical powers of the Universe was cleared.
The RDC cabins are little and warm (once the fire's been lit) and when I'm there I yearn not to leave because it's a place where there is so little to tend to and so much creativity to be explored, especially outside those cabin doors. It was on the dock, under the illuminated ceiling reflected on the lake that I discovered I was ready to say it out loud. I didn't really know I was saying it, but I was. I did. Nothing else made sense.
I am open to receive a clean, smallish dwelling in Ojai with land enough for my tipi, the trampoline, three dogs, two cats, two fish and oh yes, one seedling daughter and a sapling son.
Now, how in the hell am I going to get two children in one room to share a bunkbed, you ask? Give up my dishwasher, my custom walk-in closet? I don't know yet how it's going to work or feel, but I can say that it's going to happen, and that we're going to have to push through it to rebirth a new way of thinking about HOME.
I got a letter last night from the firetender at the sweat lodge I attended a couple of weeks ago. In it he explained that the work we most have to do for the Earth is on the inside of us. In my own words, it's about shifting our perspectives as the Hanged Man would teach, healing our old wounds, dancing with our shadows until we can make a conscious agreement with them about how to let them express.
One of my shadow expressions is fear of confinement, that there will not be enough: enough of me, enough time, enough money, enough space. I think that these concerns present as obstacles on my path to being at peace with what is. Fear keeps us from connecting with our true needs, and so an entire lifetime can be spent living in the illusory future, hoping and waiting for that blessing of experiencing real abundance. Building bigger and better hasn't always proved to be better.
Radical downsizing isn't going to create vast amounts of extra time because I'm cleaning less. It's not going to be instant peace-I expect a period of agitated adjustment from the little roommates. But seeing as how I've been manifesting this change for about two years, it will be an interesting test to put myself and my family to. A challenge to rework my life in a way that is in accordance with my values.
It's humbling, too. Guests will have to sleep in the the Beasty or in the tipi on the ground. Oddly enough, this is what I have asked for. To let ego step down and take a rest from trying to protect me from not having enough, appearing enough, offering enough. My focus will hopefully shift to simply being, and doing what I do, instead of trying to be enough and doing what depletes me. Existing in fear of lack of anything sends a confusing message to the Great Mystery, which seems to respond when we clear out the fear boulders and trust the road in front of us with our whole hearts.
I think the firetender was right. The real work is on the inside.
