Exploring Liberation themes.

"This moving away from comfort and security, 

this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted 

and shaky- that's called liberation." 

~Pema Chodron

When I ran across this Pema Chodron quote, I felt like I had stumbled on one of the primary roots of my Tiny House interest, passion, and obsession, if not the mantra of the entire movement. The desire to kick free through deliberate action. What does it feel like to push away from one's moorings?

In my life, for the most part, I haven't indulged much adventurous spirit. I've lived in a contained, restrained manner. And I'm at that point in life when there is a Now or Never reality coming into focus. I've heard we're not supposed to talk about our age or become attached to it, because with that age comes a prepackaged expectation of how life is supposed to feel and look and how one is supposed to comport themselves. At a certain age. You know what I mean. One psychologist, Dr. Mario Martinez, goes so far as to say, "Never tell your age." The idea being that age is meaningless anyway and Centenarians never think of themselves as old, so why buy into the idea of middle age? It's self limiting. Once we buy the concept of Middle Age, it's only down hill from there. Okay. I get that. At the same time, I think my age might be an interesting aspect of this story. Maybe even a compelling one. But in an effort not to totally lose my aspiring Centenarian creds, I'll whisper: I'm turning 55 in a little bit, here. 

So that is happening. 

That is happening and I'm okay with that. Really. What I'm not okay with is not giving myself more of what I have wanted to experience in life. 

I have a whole lot of unfilled dreams, aspirations, and dreamed of but not acted on adventures that have been kicking around my heart and mind for years. Maybe for a lifetime. That's not to say that none of my dreams have been realized. They have. Of course. A great many. But some of my most fun ideas have never been given feet. It's never seemed like there was enough money. Or enough time. There has always been something else that "needed" to be done first or someone else who needed to be taken care of. I'm fine with that. Those are the choices I made. Or unmade. I'd make most of them again. So, I'm fine with that. I'm less fine if I create a way to live out the rest of my days without a greater sense of excitement, adventure, play, and "who would have expected life to be this great?" energy. 

I'm less fine with winding down instead of gearing up.  

Or continuing to feel there's a reason, perhaps by reason of being undeserving, that life and LIFE stand just outside my grasp.

And here's the thing. I feel I have an unconventional mind and heart and yet I've framed them in a rather conventional life and expression. What's up with that? Well, clearly I'm not quite as unconventional as I want to think. Okay, so, there's that. And then there's the way in which I, and many of us, simply don't allow the expression of our deepest heart's desires. We let go of our dreams. We let go of them so completely we forget they were ever ours.

So, am I the unlikely lady who has spent a life time dreaming of living in a 120 square foot space? No. I mean most of us think that kind of space comes with bars, concrete floors, an open toilet, and an unsavory roommate. I have occasionally had thoughts that might have 

placed me in that cage, but being there was not my dream. I hadn't actually been dreaming of teeny tiny itsy bitsy. But I have dreamed of small. Small. Contained. Sustainable. Land. Garden. Freedom. Financial freedom. Lack of burden. 

Tiny Houses, in all their cuteness, in all their potential for being self-contained, in their invitation to Simplicity, not as a practice of self-denial, but as an art form and a way of interacting with the material world, present themselves as a stepping stone, if not a solution to the issue of living small, free, and unburdened. They also carry a huge potential for intimacy. Intimate relationship with yourself. You are bumping into yourself everywhere you turn in a Tiny House. And with anyone who chooses to share that space with you. There is nowhere to hide out inside the house and a huge amount of visibility outside the house. Tiny Houses are hard to miss when they are out in the open. They invite interaction, comment, curiosity, criticism, and emulation. 

I think building and living in a Tiny House will finally make it impossible to hide out with my unconventional self. Even from myself. It will certainly make it harder for me to hide out from you. Tiny Houses have the potential to build community. Not just with other Tiny Housers, but with everyone who interacts with you through and about your Tiny House. Through observing or helping with the build. Through dialogue about the Tiny House choice. Through vicariously sharing a dream of freedom. Tiny Houses build community the same way puppies and babies open doors of conversation among strangers. If it takes a Tiny House for me to learn how to really build community, then it will be well worth the adventure. 

If Pema Chodron is right, moving from the land of comfort and security into the unknown, unexplored, and shaky is the act of liberation. Liberation. It turns out that's a game I'm down to play. Who knew?

 

The Field Trip to Little Yellow.

Well, I've been slow to get to it and post this week, but we did see Ella's Little Yellow Tiny House on Monday. My daughter, niece, and I drove out to the mountains, toured Little Yellow, and hugged Ella. And it was super! It was actually awesome. Ella's a sweetheart and her tiny home reflects that sweetness, moxy, attention to detail, and a real freedom to explore her own aesthetic. Tiny Yellow is infused with a whimsical fairytale element grounded in the practical. Quite a feat!

For those of you who haven't really seen a Tiny House and can't quite picture what all the buzz is about, I grabbed a few quick shots to bring you up to speed. The truck gives you a sense of scale. Two things are going on here. That's a pretty big truck. And a teeny tiny house.

Here's an interior shot through the big front
window. Ella had packed up the house for the move and cleared the shelves for the big drive
up the coast

All her worldly goods are packed in the back of the truck for the move. A few more things are stowed in the shower area. Clothes were on the shelves. Can you imagine being this pared down?

Big things are happening in these little houses. Ella has done a great job ensouling her home with her own huge indomitable spirit. I'll post just a couple of shots here and then direct you to her blog where you can get a real sense of the Tiny Yellow and the story of its construction. I've read and followed a number of Tiny House blogs and hers is one of my absolute favorites. Very detailed. I think you'll agree.

Isn't this beautiful? Ella's kitchen sink. Lovely. Simple. She cut the hole in the butcher block and dropped it in herself. I love the sense of peace.

The window seat of this modified Fencl plan. This little detail is single handedly responsible for converting my daughter to the Tiny House project. Now I just need to make sure I end up with one in my final plan. Before it was over, she thought we should build a Tiny House for her to live in while she is in college.







No Tiny House tour is complete without a peek at the loft. I climbed up high enough to take the pic, but restrained myself and didn't crawl into the bed and take in the view below. It really didn't seem like the thing to do. I'm still kind of regretting it, though!

Standing in Ella's Tiny House was like standing inside her dreams. Very intimate. Very lovely. Quite touching. As I stood there and walked around Little Yellow on the inside and then circled her on the outside, I tried to imagine what it must feel like to have worked that long and hard, for over a year, and to have finished. Ella has finished and she is now living in the result of her work. Few things in our world today afford us such a tangible experience of our efforts and their results. So much of our life is done for us. Our food is grown. If we're meat eaters, our meat is raised and slaughtered for us. Our cars are built and maintained by strangers. Our homes are built by "someone", cookie cutter like. We don't typically birth our own children in our own environs or die in our own beds. We don't prepare and bury our dead ourselves. We've jobbed out most the things that constitute living, surviving, and dying on this small planet. Perhaps that's part of the appeal of Tiny Houses. Yes, you can order one and have it built, but you can also build one yourself. Without skills. Alone or in the community of your friends, loved ones, and neighbors. A lot of this world has been built this way. It is something we can still choose to reclaim.

We're off to see Little Yellow and I can hardly wait!

There's nothing more powerful than actually seeing something in the flesh. Seeing it up close and real. Off the web and face to face, nose up against the window glass real. This is doubly true of Tiny Houses. Cuz no matter how many times they are called "Tiny" or how many times you see photos of the "tiny kitchen" and the "tiny bathroom" and check out the "tiny porch," you don't really get it til you see it. I've seen one Tiny House and I'll say one thing about it. Damn! That thing was tiny! It was take your breath away tiny.

I stumbled on a Tiny House on a recent road trip up through the mountains of Northern California and on to Oregon, scoping out colleges for my daughter. There are several Tiny Houses up in the PNW and I had hoped to track one down through one of the blogs and beg a visit during our road trip, but I just ran out of time. I'd even tried to get a reservation to rent one, but it didn't work out. On the second day of our drive, I pulled over to rest under a large shade tree and directly across the street there was a nearly finished Tiny House under construction. I couldn't believe my luck! I mean, what are the chances I'm going to randomly pull off the road, drive through a small town looking for shade (it was 103 that day) and land myself right in front of a Tiny House?

I was floored. Well, actually, I was ecstatic. And a bit out of my head. All tiredness evaporated and with it, my usual profound reserve. I started yelling, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Look! Look! It's a TINY HOUSE!!!" I guess you could say I was animated. I started struggling with the door, trying to get out. Over my daughter's strenuous objections, I jumped out of the car, ran across the street, and may have roused the entire neighborhood in my efforts to get someone to answer the door of the bigger house next to the Tiny House. I drove about three yappy little dogs inside the house absolutely ape-blank-nuts before I realized someone was operating a drill in the Tiny House. Someone was in the Tiny House! So, that's how I had the opportunity to chat up the very generous owner/builder, Bob, for nearly 45 minutes. Learned a ton! He was actually working with a plan I was looking at and had extended the porch, just as I had been planning to do. He'd built the whole thing totally alone, with the exception of the roof. The entire time I was there, I was trying to imagine what the space was going to feel like all togged out in furniture and ready to live in. Like I said, it was empty, but it was TINY. So small. In all its coziness that day, in all its emptiness, it was as big and spacious as it was ever going to feel. 

I think it was right at that moment I started to dream about a 20 foot trailer bed, rather than the more typical 18 footer. When I get to the December Tiny House workshop in LA, one of the first things I'm going to ask is, "How long can I push it and still manage to pull it without, you know, tipping it over or something?"

I've been stalking all things Tiny House on the net for quite some time now. And all this time people have been taking pictures of their Tiny House interiors with wide angle lenses. Of course. For one thing, that's the only way you can see everything. Or anything. Wide angle lenses stretch out and grab everything and they also take a Tiny House interior and turn it into a mansion. Cognitively, I knew that. I mean I also knew Tiny Houses had a footprint about the size of your average parking spot. A parking spot isn't spacious. A parking spot isn't spacious for anyone who isn't driving a Smart Car or a Fiat 500. It certainly isn't spacious if you try and imagine tucking your whole self and all your worldies into it. I'm going to have to swear off of buying books, for one thing. This time, for good.

No wonder Tiny House builders are teasing every inch of width and length they can manage out of their trailer beds. Or deciding not to insulate interior bathroom walls in order to buy back an extra inch or two of space. Or doing without bathroom sinks and shaving in the kitchen. And then there's the constant debate about how much floor space is going to be captured inside and how much is going to form the porch. It's all falling in the same big-as-a-parking-space footprint, so every inch counts. As you can see in the photo, Tiny House builders get creative about space. Bob had added an entire storage unit to the back end of his Tiny. Essentially, that will be his tool shed. To each his own. I need to figure out where to keep my kids' old Waldorf lesson books!

Every inch counts. I got that big time standing in Bob's new place, sweating in the heat, and squinting as I tried to imagine where everything was going to end up. I tried to imagine all the stuff in my already scaled back life that simply wasn't going to make the cut. And for some odd freeing, possibly obsessive reason, I still want one. I want to build it with my own hands. And then I want to live in it. Someplace. I want the challenge of it, from beginning to end. I want a Tiny House in a Very Big Way.

I'd like to live a Big Life in a Tiny House, rather than the other way around. I'm going to keep visualizing what that might be like. I'm going to FEEL it, and work towards it, and I'm going to keep on doing that until I pull it off.

And this is why I am so excited right now. Someone else has pulled it off. And they live in Southern California, too. Remember Ella and her Little Yellow from my first post? She was one of the young women I referred to. She built her own Tiny House, right out of college. It took her a year. A full year. And it's amazing. Very lyrical. Very whimsical. Very functional. And it's hers. All hers. It gives a whole new meaning to A Room of Her Own. No matter what else happens or doesn't happen in her life, Ella has a home. No matter where she goes. No matter how well she does or doesn't do financially. She has a home. And because she won't be sinking every dime she makes into rent or a mortgage and a bunch of stuff to fill her abode with, she'll be free to spend or save her income in dozens of other ways. Like travel.

She has a home. AND she is having an Open House in Frazier Park, CA before she heads off to San Francisco with her Tiny House. And I am going. On Monday. I'm going to drive two or three hours to Frazier Park in Monday morning traffic and I'm going to walk through a Tiny House I've watched being built on her blog (I didn't catch the whole thing, but I have been able to follow her for the last couple of months--one of my very favorite Tiny House blogs, by the way). I'm going to touch it. I'm going to see how it works, all filled with furniture and life and a harp (yes, she's a harpist!). And I'm going to try that Tiny House on for size and learn how to shrink to fit.

And then I'm going to figure out how to locate and pay for a car hauler trailer. And an electric screw driver. And a framing plan. Cuz my solid wood Door of Infinite Possibilities is starting to feel lonely already.

The $10 Door of Infinite Possibilities.

I did it.

Somewhere in between a disappointing East Indian brunch with our Groupon and endless shopping for my daughter's Home Coming Week theme days, I snuck into Habitat Restore. I snuck right in, slithered to the back of the store, and took another peek. And there she was. My door. Solid wood and in great shape. Pulled all the way out and turned right side up, suddenly she is beautiful! A stunner. And narrow in all the ways a Tiny House door should be. Slight, but mighty. And mine.

You have to start somewhere and it might as well be at the front end. So, it is The Door of Infinite Possibilities that has first presented itself. In all her glory. Step through that door and we'll see what comes our way next. Anything could happen.

Oh! Here's her first full portrait:

You gotta start somewhere.

You gotta start somewhere. Right? Somewhere along the line there is a first step. I want to build a Tiny House on wheels. Maybe you've seen them? Little homes built on flatbed trailers. Or car haulers. I've wanted one for some time. Years. I can't even remember when I first ran across Jay Shafer and his tiny houses. I do remember I was hooked. As in hook line and sinker. I was hooked at first glance. Something about the scale, simplicity, and artistry really spoke to me. Hooked is one thing. Committed is another.

My Tiny House dream took a back seat to raising my kids, getting an MA, starting my business, and that valiant single mother swim through the first great wave of the Great Recession. Guess what? I'm still here. But life has definitely scaled down. I still have my kids. I still have a business. I don't own a home. It's not that I mind, really. There is something to be said for renting. There's a certain amount of freedom and flexibility, if you choose to use it. There's an on-call maintenance guy. I don't have to pay property tax. Or worry about termites. Or the roof. Or paying for the bee infestation that happens every spring. There's not much certainty, though. Even a year long lease I would have to buy my way out of to break can be decimated pretty quickly by a landlord's foreclosure. Easy peasy.

And of course, it's not mine.

So far, I've been lucky. I like our place. It's one of those "light and airy" units. I have a garage. Everything works. The neighbors aren't running drugs or girls out of their unit. They do run a Korean home-made food delivery service, but in a real down low fashion. I respect the get up and go that makes that happen. So life is good, if not inherently-super-you-can-count-on-it-to-last-forever-stable. At least on my end. I can't account for the rest of the world, which appears to have gone off the deep end crazy.

So, okay, it's an uncertain world. I think most of us have grokked that by this time. I can kind of swim with that. In a way, I can actually flow with that. I'll tell you one thing, there is sure as hell no real sane reason to find oneself swimming upstream in full out struggle. We've landed in a chaotic, creative, transformative, shitfest of a moment. I have that certain kind of peace that comes with, ahem! age, and with simply being ready and willing to notice and be with what is. What is, as far as I can tell, is change. All kinds of change. Maybe not the change some of us lined up for and went and pulled the lever for a few years ago, but lots of change, nonetheless. Not just in the States, but everywhere.

So what emerges for me in the middle of all this craziness? An intense, remarkable, persistent desire to build my own little Tiny House on wheels. Oh, yeah. One hundred and twenty square feet of hardwood homestead on wheels with my name on it and no mortgage. That's right, 120 sq. ft. total living space. Tiny. House. I've had some radical thoughts in my life and acted on a few of them, but nothing likely tops a Tiny House for standing out like a sore thumb of absolute oddness and eccentricity. As much as I could manage, I've managed to keep most my oddness under wraps all these years. Or at least I like to think so. There's no hiding out with this one. It looks something like a gypsy caravan that made a wrong turn and ended up 100 years away from its targeted time space continuum landing spot. And there I'll be, standing right beside it.

And it's not like I really know how to do it. Oh, I know how to be odd. Enough. I just don't know how to build anything out of wood, let alone a house. Even a tiny one. Why doesn't that seem like a problem? I don't know! It isn't even that one fifteen-year-old boy has done it, and a handful of young women in their twenties, plus a whole bunch of other folk on top of it. It just seems if I'm careful enough, get enough advice, and don't cut off any digits with the table saw, I'll eventually get there as long as I keep at it. And keeping at it happens to be one thing I do know how to do.

So, I have no carpentry skills. No tools. No place to build. No money saved up to start the project. No mentor. No flatbed trailer. And, finally, no place to park it when it's done. In other words, there is lots and lots of space for Possibility to step in and fill up!

What I do have is a huge Pinterest board of Tiny House images, resources, videos, stories, and ideas. It started as a sort of private online dream board and has started to evolve into a cataloged resource of all things Tiny House. So, I have that.

I have research.

I even went and visited the local Habitat Restore and checked them out last week. Do you know you can actually buy a real solid wood house door for ten bucks? I didn't buy it, but I did see it and now I know it is possible to find one. Almost anyone could afford a $10 door. Even me. Every blog should have at least one photo, so although that door didn't ask to come home with me, I will put it to work here all the same and post a pic. It's a crazy uncertain world, but there are still such things as $10 solid wood doors. So. There is hope, after all.

Darn! Now I look at it again, I'm wondering if I shouldn't run back to Habitat Restore and grab that door tomorrow morning? Maybe a door is a good place to start. Sort of a build-it-and-they-will-come-open-the-door-of-possibilities-Door. A door for my Tiny Dream Catcher.

Oh! The other thing I have is a ticket to the next Tumbleweed Tiny House workshop in L.A. Now this really is something! Two full days of rubbing elbows with folks who are at least as obsessed as I am. Maybe more. Hopefully some of them will be local and we can form a kind of Tiny House Support Group. And if that doesn't work, we can at least form a recovery group. So, there's all the other Tiny House Hopefuls. And then there's the opportunity of picking Jay Shafer's brains. In person. And starting to put feet on what will likely be a long long process. I may not know enough about what I don't know to be able to make real good use of the information I get, but I take really great notes (another thing I actually know how to do). Sooner or later, those notes will start making sense to me.

I'm not sure whether it's kosher to blog about a Tiny House build before there is anything tangible to report or not, but you have to start somewhere. Right?