Watching

There is an extremely satisfying humility in doing simple things. The elegant routine of doing something again and again as if ritual were all that mattered, regardless of the fact that the routine in question could be something so mind blowing like sweeping floors or washing windows. The essence of work needs to be something that is understood and appreciated for the simple fact that without it; what would we be? Working for the hard goods of life: food, shelter, companionship has so far been a much more rewarding experience than working for money. Add to that the fact that I haven't really spent much money since Sunday except the eight bucks for a six pack of beer; and I realize that time and labor are much more valuable means of exchange for the necessities of life than money.

Anyways..........................................this is my windowless sleeping nook. Technically not a "room" for various reasons but it still serves an essential service of allowing me a place to lay my weary head from time to time and also store the various material possessions that I happened to drag along with me. Not too shabby I have to say and also a good source of inspiration for how to transform something that is not all that exciting into something that can be a source of pride.


Below, one will find "the cube", a sort of mock timberframe house that is used to teach various earthen building classes how to assemble their strawbales and whatnot into various configurations of house framing. Putting it together was much more confusing than imagined considering the four of us who happened to be working on it had never assembled the thing before and the various sheets of paper that came with it that were supposedly the "manual" weren't a whole lot of help. Basically it turned itself into a giant three dimensional puzzle that eventually took shape after much rearranging and head scratching.


The other half of the shop in which this monstrosity resides was filled with the other half of the intern group who were building boxes while getting the intro to shop tools and listening to Dave's seemingly endless tangent stories (more of Dave later). Here is a portion of the other half of the shop...