HOUSE

Shipping Container Apartments

The meaning of house was something I understood.  After that, I struggled with its meaning.  Today I feel an abundant understanding of the meaning of house that is intensely personal and gratifying.  It is true for me that my house is the center of my universe, and I can have it and put it and be in it anywhere on the planet.  Becoming a widow gave that to me.

This, from John Berger, poet, essayist, novelist and screenwriter:  In traditional societies, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening because it was unreal.  The house one lived in was built in the very center of where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal line.  The horizontal line represented the traffic of the world.  The vertical represented both gods in the sky and the underworld, the dead.  One's house was the exact location of the real and the spiritual. 

Repurposed Silo

I believe in this picture, although intellectually I know that the chaos of the world is real.  I can live in my house, though, and decide what to let in.  I can safely stow my stuff in my house, I can guard against disease, I can set it up against injury.  I'm a tangle foot, so that last item is a vigil.

I grew up in mid century, and learned from my culture to believe in the materialization of the house. I decorated my house and carried on inside in a way that made it a home for me, Ted and the kids.  We all had a lot of fun, such as the time I found out beautiful cotton flat sheets can be used for wall coverings, costumes and all manner of art.  Ted and I also endeavored to pick our house right, pay the mortgage, to some day have a nest egg for us and our descendants. 

That typical, American, hearth and home vision and investment house and home went up in flames for me and Ted a couple of times.  Recessions, real estate busts, job loss, career choices chipped away at the materialization and monetary value of the home for us and millions of Americans, starting in the late eighties and nineties, continuing to present moment.  In our case, we lost gobs of money selling two of our houses, net zeroed on some and gained a little once.  From those experiences, I ceased to view my home as an investment.  As a result, I became purely emotionally attached to my house, my home, my center of the universe.  That worked better for me, and for Ted.  We were happy homebodies sans investment jitters.  We started using the entire color wheel on our walls, for our own delight.

Inspiring backstory: read Interstellar Orchard Blog

Becoming a widow unmoored me in various ways, including a re-evaluation of this emotional attachment to my house, my home.  After five years of living alone in a house that was both too big and too distant from my family, I finally let it all go.  Stuff, money, property, rural privacy and quiet, significant emotional attachment -- I let it all go.  Becoming a widow opened my mind to the possibility that I can decide what I need today, find it and acquire it, become attached to the fun of it -- and still keep my eye on other possibilities.  I live in a small house of 920 square feet in an urban neighborhood.  I rattle around there, too.  I own a tiny teardrop camper and travel with it.  Both are my houses, at the moment.

People today live in silos, churches, apartments, old grocery stores, tree houses, RVs, cottages, tiny houses, McMansions, shipping crates.  I am drawn to alternative housing.  I am drawn to neighborhoods, both gleaming and seedy.  My material investment cozy family home paradigm has shifted and now has more fluidity and changeability and I find more beauty there than ever before. 

Tiny house, Big social movement

It is solo I who is at the very center of where a vertical line crosses with a horizontal line.  The horizontal line represents the traffic of the world.  The vertical represents both gods in the sky and the underworld, the dead.  Whatever and wherever my house, it is the location of the real and the spiritual because I am there, not just the house.  Knowing myself comes first -- what I love, need, want, don't want.  Everything else -- including the chaos of the world -- may be real, but it's real out there, not here in my house.  I don't need to obsess about the future if I am satisfied with where my center is today.  If I need to move from my house, I know how to do that.  And it is alluring and liberating to know that I can live just as fully in a storage container or a tree house or a mansion (if I trip into the Lotto), or 920 square feet in Edmonds, Washington.  I still have an eye for beautiful flat all cotton sheets wherever I make my house.

I know first hand that the loss of home, of belongings, of real property is a devastating blow to a widow.  It can also be part of a new beginning and a freedom that can change and grow with us.  It doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen.

Understanding what house means to me is a gift that widowhood gave me.  And because I live at the center of the universe, I am connected to the spirit realm where my loved ones tell me to enjoy it, and pass it on.

Never more at home than in a teardrop

A BELIEVABLE WOMAN, TRAVELING THROUGH

On the big screen, a believable woman is running through woods with a panic, looking behind, terrified, stumbling and skidding, injured, into the mossy ground.  Each viewer has a different nightmare idea of what is chasing her.  As she watches her fate approach, the audience is right there with her.  Blood pressures rise.  Perhaps our escaping woman is too tired to resist any longer, and she will accept whatever is to be.  You may be shouting for her to get her rear in gear, get up and fight.  Everyone watching has an idea of how they would battle something menacing that has them on a run for dear life. 

For movies that begin with the chase, the rest of the story will probably be delivered in flashback, showing the audience the lead up to the chase.  What was her morning like?  Was there a warning, something skulking from her past that was bound to catch up with her?  Was she blithely moving through a well-constructed life, unawares?

Recently, scenes from my own movie kept me company as I drove down the back roads of Skagit County in northwestern Washington.  It was like this -- I'm not going anywhere, or looking for anything in particular.  Perhaps something to photograph that reflects my mood will roll into my field of vision. It's been more than eight years since I was scared into walking briskly and finally running through the woods in my own life and mind.  Right before that, I was marinating in something I knew, something I completely understood.  Then, I was running. 

In Skagit, I can't take my eyes off the hills to the north where steam is lifting from the hillsides and the earth looks young and emerging.  It's a bit like seeing myself in a third grade choir rehearsal, belting out This Land is Your Land.   Closer in, there are fields just after a harvest, telling their story.  Hoards of anglers in wading boots have parked trucks up and down both sides of the road near a well-known secret fishing creek as it tap dances toward Padilla Bay. I can barely get my car down the middle of the road.  That's okay.  There is no on-coming traffic and no one is waiting for me anywhere.  I can smell the fish, the corn, the salt air coming off the bay.  If I earned a nickel for every rough-legged hawk I see, peering into the disrupted earth from draping wires, I could pay for the gas I am consuming, and then some.  

The only thing  is, I am not quite sure I can label what I am doing as running. 

I'm not sure if I can legitimately label anything I am doing these days as running, come to think of it.   I'm not settled down.  I don't have a long-range plan.  I'm no zombie, but I'm not in AARP Magazine either, featuring older people who start over and make a killing in the gourmet cookie market.  What am I doing with my life if I'm not any of those things?

I think I am that woman who is stumbled, injured and starting to think:  Everything I have known up until this chase is officially over.  If I surrender to loneliness, worthlessness, nothingness -- or whatever is chasing me -- then that will be my last, free-will choice.  From that point forward, I'll be waiting for it all to end according to powers outside of my control.  That wouldn't be so bad, would it?  To just drift off to a kind of sleepwalking life and never wake up? 

I pull my car over to take a photo.  I take stock of my self, think about my situation and  begin to recover my wits.  I do feel like the escaping woman in my imaginary horror flick.  The scary thing that is chasing me is a die-hard idea that there is a way back.  The thing that is chasing me is the cruel notion that there is something I can do that is going to reverse every loss and restore my cozy little brightly lit happy place, forever.  Once I realize that my stalker is actually my own thought process, I have more choices.  All I have to do to survive this chase is rise, get up, stand up. 

And then I'll have to do it all over again, tomorrow.

Such is widowhood.  Such is surviving great loss.  It's a stalker movie, running daily.

To everyone who has lost a life partner, a way of life, an abiding love:  There is beauty in the world that only your eyes can find.  There are people in the world who need to know they are not alone.  Whoever you are now, as injured and bereft as you may be, the way through the woods is going to show itself.  It really will be there for you every day, and all you have to do is get up and look around. 

Ahh, but I call it through the woods, not out of the woods for a reason.  

Wanting completely out of the woods of grief and loss is the same as being chased, to be always looking back.  It's a form of panic and terror, to think you can get something back that is well and truly lost.  Better to travel through these woods, without regard for how long or the possibility of the sunny somewhere that may or may not await you.  Keep your eyes peeled.  And as you see beauty -- and you will -- share it.  It might help someone to remember there is still beauty in the world, no matter what has been lost forever.  Traveling instead of surrendering is not a substitute for something lost, and it is not the lost thing, itself.  It's an alternative to giving up and leading a sleepwalking life.  It is nothing more complicated than that. And, lucky you and lucky me --  it's a daily choice.

The way this movie ends:  Today is the whole thing, it's all you or I get.  Record it.  Share it.  But first, you have to rise. 

Visit Padilla Bay