It's been a month since my last post here. The RV has been in the shop this long. Apparently the previous owners decided to do some interesting Frankenstein repairs and the new mechanics had to pull in experts from all over the world, either that or they found the good scotch in my hidden cabinet and have been having weekend parties. I just hope they restocked.
My son is with his father for some orthodontist appointments and I have been staying with friends. I seem to have developed into a sort of modern day Mary Poppins and, in fact, told this by a friend, I was promptly given a delicate ruffled polka-dot umbrella, which I will attempt to employ for levitation but I'm not holding my breath.
A few weeks ago, I realized that my very well laid out plans of building the Glance Floor in Flagstaff and then installing the first Abundance Tree at the Star School were not going to happen. The Abundance Tree is now postponed until September and all the wood painstakingly packed onto and inside the RV was removed and loaded into a friend's backyard in Phoenix, a new Phoenix crew assembled on the fly and we've been working on it in the 114 degree heat and record humidity for this desert region. I can honestly say that I'm now acclimated to Arizona. The burn will be a breeze compared to this.
I have, an amazing crew - always looking for the silver lining or what was "meant to be" has opened me up to some amazing opportunities to get to know people with similar mindsets and good work-ethics. It may be strange for a homeless woman whose entire worldly possessions have been sitting in a dealership trying not to explode to say that she's been blessed, but the fact is, I really have. And I've learned a level of patience that is frightening.
A friend told me that I was experiencing "Holy Poverty" and I think that will need to be the name of an art project some day. The same friend suggested an interesting name for the RV - I've decided it needs a name, since it's now taken on a bit of a personality. The friend suggested it be called the "Sage Cage" when I told him that I'd been considering painting questions on the sides of the RV to inspire conversations in the passing cars. I told him I was a bit uncomfortable with this as it implies something about me that I'm not really feeling I adequately embody - but perhaps I could assign the moniker to my son and feel better about it. Then he suggested that I could assign it to everyone else in the cars around.
So all the world is a cage. And all it's players, sages. I like this.
Thank you, all the sages I've been lucky enough to cross paths with. I'll see you all on the road.
27 July 2010
02 June 2010
Stuck
Well,there isn't much to report this week as I'm still stuck here in Tempe, although slowly picking away at the issues with my RV. There are a lot of things I'm just going to have to deal with. And a lot of things I'm going to have to learn to fix. The ETA on departure for Winslow has been moved back a week because of airline issues getting my son back from his father's but we'll work through those. Inspiration comes in many forms and I'm working on finding the inspiration in being stuck. My personal mythology (some would call spirituality) includes a sort of overall meaning in everything that happens. So these stuck times must mean something. Perhaps there is an energy that is only created when starting from a dead stop and that sort of energy is what's necessary to complete something big. Or perhaps there are lessons in being stuck - lessons in patience, in tenacity. But then, I often feel as though I'm running out of levels of those particular lessons to learn.
Any day now, I'd like to be faced with having to learn how to handle fame and riches. I am really up for a new challenge.
Any day now, I'd like to be faced with having to learn how to handle fame and riches. I am really up for a new challenge.
27 May 2010
Go Slow
The Learning Curve
So far, we've moved exactly nineteen point seven miles from East Mesa to Tempe, Arizona. I took a brief trip (less than a week) from here to Witch Well, Arizona to attend the Arizona regional burn, Toast and to test the RV functions. All was well except for what we think was a little vapor-locking. We're hoping the adjustments and repairs my mechanic friend made will take care of that and that we won't have this problem on the next trip to set up the Abundance Tree at the Star School outside of Winslow. Although we're not quite "on the road" because of repairs still in the works, we're meeting all sorts of good people. The serendipity is already working. In the house we're parked live artists and others we're sharing stories and helpful input. There is something that happens when you leave your house and enter the larger world that feeds the serendipity - that alone, begins the process.
I knew intuitively that this experiment was going to teach me things. I just didn't know what, or how much. So far I've learned things ranging from ways to find free everything, low cost whatever is left, and exactly how many truly decent people there are in the world when you get out of your house and start meeting them. I've learned how to patch holding tanks with fiberglass and epoxy - which has me seriously considering more artistic uses of the material, and several minor mechanical processes. I have a really good understanding of what the construct of an RV septic system looks like. I can tell you where to buy some pretty cheap plumbing and vent cover supplies, and I'm not as afraid of things failing as I used to be.
Slowing Down
The one thing I didn't count on learning, however, is exactly how important it is to slow down. The first week in the RV left me battered and bruised. I flung myself around as I, apparently, have been doing all along and knocking into just about every surface of both the vehicle and my body. I bruise easily. People looked worried. But I've begun to notice myself slowing down - physically, I'm moving more slowly, stepping more lightly, and seem more aware of my surroundings - the minutia of those surroundings. This has caused my mind to also slow and reason a little more carefully.
In an RV or other small space, it's extremely important to be aware of where everything is, and so organizational systems become a lifeline. Without knowing where everything is, you can easily spend hours moving things around trying to find one thing that you know you have, but have no idea where. I anticipated this journey making me more organized and facilitating my already in motion simplification strategy, but I had no idea just how much. Stepping over things gets very tiresome, very quickly. Everything is suspect - everything must be justified. CD Jewel cases make no sense. Drawers turn two cubic feet of usable space into one.
Good Things Come to Those Who Stop Complaining
There is no way to make everything work all at once, or to create the usability of the space I want as quickly as I want, and the comfort level in the meantime is vastly different than it would be in a regular home environment, and so the patience it takes to keep at task, instead of attempting to escape, and to pick away at the space while maintaining sanity is its own new skill. And this bleeds into all areas of life. My patience for all people, all situations, even the most annoying has doubled. Spending my birthday at the airport - all day long? Not nearly as bad as bumping into four boxes of things to be organized on my way to, well, everywhere, in the hundred square foot area I now call my only home.
Someone on a mailing list I'm on shared the Buddhist concept of Dana, or the practice of the perfection of giving. I realized that what I'm doing has a lot to do with this type of practice. The trees are gifts, and represent this virtue - allow people to experiment with the concept. But a little more digging led me to the Six Paramitas - Buddhist perfections or virtues to practice - and I began to think that somehow, intuitively, I've been set on a path to practice what I can of these. True believers of Buddhism may take issue with my stumbling upon these ideas and taking from them what has meaning, but it's not so much that I am pulling piece-meal from a religious philosophy as it is that I am intuitively following a path that only after being set in motion is revealed to be closely aligned with an established path. This all leads me back to my reliance on the intuitive mind. It keeps bringing me closer to peace, happiness, and a magical existence. Even the drudgery is fruitful - learning to work with new materials and becoming more self-sufficient beats coding papers for meaningless entry into databases any day.
Home Free
I've begun joking about being homeless to people I know, or new people I meet. I'm trying on the label for size. It sets people's minds at ease somehow and makes for some fun conversations. A new friend that I tried this with shook his head and refused to buy my label and instead told me that I wasn't homeless, I was "home free". It's funny, isn't it, how words and the ways they are manipulated can make such a difference in how we perceive our reality.
So far, we've moved exactly nineteen point seven miles from East Mesa to Tempe, Arizona. I took a brief trip (less than a week) from here to Witch Well, Arizona to attend the Arizona regional burn, Toast and to test the RV functions. All was well except for what we think was a little vapor-locking. We're hoping the adjustments and repairs my mechanic friend made will take care of that and that we won't have this problem on the next trip to set up the Abundance Tree at the Star School outside of Winslow. Although we're not quite "on the road" because of repairs still in the works, we're meeting all sorts of good people. The serendipity is already working. In the house we're parked live artists and others we're sharing stories and helpful input. There is something that happens when you leave your house and enter the larger world that feeds the serendipity - that alone, begins the process.
I knew intuitively that this experiment was going to teach me things. I just didn't know what, or how much. So far I've learned things ranging from ways to find free everything, low cost whatever is left, and exactly how many truly decent people there are in the world when you get out of your house and start meeting them. I've learned how to patch holding tanks with fiberglass and epoxy - which has me seriously considering more artistic uses of the material, and several minor mechanical processes. I have a really good understanding of what the construct of an RV septic system looks like. I can tell you where to buy some pretty cheap plumbing and vent cover supplies, and I'm not as afraid of things failing as I used to be.
Slowing Down
The one thing I didn't count on learning, however, is exactly how important it is to slow down. The first week in the RV left me battered and bruised. I flung myself around as I, apparently, have been doing all along and knocking into just about every surface of both the vehicle and my body. I bruise easily. People looked worried. But I've begun to notice myself slowing down - physically, I'm moving more slowly, stepping more lightly, and seem more aware of my surroundings - the minutia of those surroundings. This has caused my mind to also slow and reason a little more carefully.
In an RV or other small space, it's extremely important to be aware of where everything is, and so organizational systems become a lifeline. Without knowing where everything is, you can easily spend hours moving things around trying to find one thing that you know you have, but have no idea where. I anticipated this journey making me more organized and facilitating my already in motion simplification strategy, but I had no idea just how much. Stepping over things gets very tiresome, very quickly. Everything is suspect - everything must be justified. CD Jewel cases make no sense. Drawers turn two cubic feet of usable space into one.
Good Things Come to Those Who Stop Complaining
There is no way to make everything work all at once, or to create the usability of the space I want as quickly as I want, and the comfort level in the meantime is vastly different than it would be in a regular home environment, and so the patience it takes to keep at task, instead of attempting to escape, and to pick away at the space while maintaining sanity is its own new skill. And this bleeds into all areas of life. My patience for all people, all situations, even the most annoying has doubled. Spending my birthday at the airport - all day long? Not nearly as bad as bumping into four boxes of things to be organized on my way to, well, everywhere, in the hundred square foot area I now call my only home.
Someone on a mailing list I'm on shared the Buddhist concept of Dana, or the practice of the perfection of giving. I realized that what I'm doing has a lot to do with this type of practice. The trees are gifts, and represent this virtue - allow people to experiment with the concept. But a little more digging led me to the Six Paramitas - Buddhist perfections or virtues to practice - and I began to think that somehow, intuitively, I've been set on a path to practice what I can of these. True believers of Buddhism may take issue with my stumbling upon these ideas and taking from them what has meaning, but it's not so much that I am pulling piece-meal from a religious philosophy as it is that I am intuitively following a path that only after being set in motion is revealed to be closely aligned with an established path. This all leads me back to my reliance on the intuitive mind. It keeps bringing me closer to peace, happiness, and a magical existence. Even the drudgery is fruitful - learning to work with new materials and becoming more self-sufficient beats coding papers for meaningless entry into databases any day.
Home Free
I've begun joking about being homeless to people I know, or new people I meet. I'm trying on the label for size. It sets people's minds at ease somehow and makes for some fun conversations. A new friend that I tried this with shook his head and refused to buy my label and instead told me that I wasn't homeless, I was "home free". It's funny, isn't it, how words and the ways they are manipulated can make such a difference in how we perceive our reality.
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