There are a few THO stories that are on Tiny House Listings now, here are the links, if you missed any.
After the Art Crawl on Friday I decided to try my hand at a big canvas. So I bought one and I am painting again today – a HUGE 48×36 inch canvas of THO. I have only filled in the background colours so far. Not sure where I will go from here and when I finish, where I can hang this at the Tiny House? Perhaps as a headboard? I dunno? Will it fit up the stairs? LOL!
This post is very removed from my Tiny House. It has to do with loss and change and Hamilton Ontario. Have a listen while you read please.
Rap has to really speak to me lyrically for me to get it. The young singer Adam Lane, is from Hamilton, Ontario, close to where I stay when I am not at THO; I like the song because I am quite a runaway myself so I identified with it. I am not sure if he wrote the stuff because he does not give any details, but clearly it is about the need for change and he is talented.
Speaking of rap, yesterday I saw a RAP van with a bunch of workers doing testing right down near where this video was shot. I guess, both kinds of rap have something to say about cleaning things up. I guess both these rappers are in some way wanting to see “Zero Discharge of Persistent Toxic Substances”… RAP I can really get into!
The thing is, that Hamilton is changing a lot. There is a huge arts exodus from Toronto to Hamilton and this is clear on James Street North. Tonight I will head out to the monthly Art Crawl and see what is new in the changing and growing Steel Town. One of the newer artists to join the area is one I am loving! Check her out: Julia Veenstra. Clean up this dirty old town!
I love the Art Crawl events, and I was looking forward, but now I don’t feel much like going anywhere at all… I think it is good to get up and off the computer, though… today has not been easy and I am (like so many millions of others) heavy in heart for my neighbours to the South. I want to acknowledge the horrible events today in Connecticut, but there are no words that can heal this wound. The only thing I can say is how sorry I am. My heart is heavy for those who were victims of profound loss today and so I posted to acknowledge not just suffering, but also to nod my head to those who recognize the need for change, healing and safe communities. I hope that from this horrible incident that at the very least there will come courageous change.
Don’t you just love to read in bed on a cold day? Particularly, if it is damp and rainy? I do.
The cold outside made the windows all fog over, after I added a little heating. This meant, I did not have much of a view upstairs, but even so, it was certainly bright enough to read.
It is always warmer in the loft than it is on the main level, heat rises. Still it is nice to get right in bed and roll up cozy in layers of blankets on a lazy afternoon.
The book is The Starry Room, a gift from my friend D, who is also a writer as well as an off-grid and Tiny House enthusiast. He thought I would enjoy the book in the quiet of THO’s forest and he was right. The Author Fred Schaaf words are intuitive and sensual, as well as very much in tune with the sky and the ebb and flow of nature. He writes,”we should not forget ourselves in our role as appreciators in these heavens we study. There is no feeling of insignificance or meaninglessness for anyone who is an active participant in this appreciation, which not only involves us in the cosmos but makes us intimate with it as only friends or lovers can be. And only through the medium of not just our senses, thought, and feeling but also through a sky we can have this involvement.”
He is not quite so lyrical as my hero Erazim Kohák, but even so he speaks to the issue of bonds and connections that we humans can can attain if we take a little time to understand. I like this about the book, very much. Connection to life, matters a lot to me.
“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The last leaves are now just reflections of nearly forgotten memories, cast like shadows on the wall.
Nelson Mandela said “there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.” I think he is right. I have not yet met the goals that I have set for myself and I know that once I attain these there will always be more. There is always more to come, I think, even beyond death there is more.
I hope that I still have a lot of time to work my life plan out, but one never really knows. It seems to me that my future life is set out like a dinner party to which I have have not been invited yet. Still, I can’t help it! I hope that Judy Chicago set the table for me! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit in on this dinner party with all the fantastic attendees?
But, I don’t know what this life has in store for me. The future, my future, just like everyone else’s is somewhere just beyond my grasp. My future exists only like the shadows of last years leaves which promise that there will be other springs; other falls.
I think about Aesop’s warning to “beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow”. I could use some illumination, but in these short days when the sun casts so much shadow it is not always easy to find the light that will surely come again. It is easier to focus on the unreachable shadows which are long, sleek, and mysterious.
Thankfully, I can do some shadow exploration tomorrow when I return to THO. I can’t help it! I wonder what is waiting there for me? I know it will be my home, my land, my friends and family. I know that there is a big party at home this weekend coming. What else is waiting in tomorrow’s shadow?
Before I left Tiny House Ontario, I took a couple of photos inside the house. It always surprises me how much changes there during the day. Not just out in the forest as one would expect but inside of the house too there is always the flux of change.
My art gallery stays pretty much the same because I very rarely sell a piece of my own work. Still I hang them on tiny nails so I don’t damage the wooden walls very much, so they wobble with the wind and are very rarely level. Too, inside, with the switch and the light that I added this year, the wall looks different than it did earlier this summer when I put them up. Outside the window, the gravel is waiting patiently and settling in. The big change will come next year when the collected rocks are added and this becomes a flag stone patio.
The shelved wall is always fluid. From the season that needs heat to the other seasons there is a huge change because all things that freeze are moved to Hamilton with me. Also there are books that come too, because I can’t live the whole winter without them, namely: Erazim Kohák: The Embers and the Stars, Julia Cameron: The Artist’s Way and all of my own writing. The other change is warmth and peace of mind in the form of the heater and the carbon monoxide/smoke detector.
There are always little changes too because I refer to the books, use the games, light the candles, burn the sage and so on. Every tiny thing moves, because life moves and changes. We too move and change, sometimes these are obvious glaring differences like a move to Australia, finishing a degree, finally finding job security, illness and death.
Most of the time, change is barely perceptible; like the changes I refer to here in the photos. Only those who monitor change can see them clearly. I am the sort of person who notices subtle changes and this is why I know that in my life there is a shift happening. I see this as clearly as I see that I did not put the bag of seeds and the candle away in the right spots on the shelves below. I don’t know the impact of these changes, but I know that they are coming.
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ~ Stephen King
Tiny House Ontario 