Living Simple

I've had a project that has been on the back burner for about ten years here on my little corner of the world bit of Culebra and I have finally almost finished it. Ten years. Why so long? I could give an infinite number of reasons but the real one is I just didn't make it happen. What could take so long? A porch. A porch not put together with pieces and bits. A porch I wouldn't fall through. A porch that would look like a porch. In other words, a porch. Not a veranda (though my fantasy was a verandah), not a stoop, but a porch.

So the other day, when Walt and Steve brought me some free materials that were exactly right, I started. The flooring is almost done, lacking one sheet of plywood and its as yet undecided color (which will probably be whatever paint is lying around). Then I took a bunch of broken stone/concrete that was from the original porch that I never liked, pieced them together, went down to my stony beach and filled up a few buckets with little stones (fun stones, the blues and reds and browns, a few shells, just whatever got scooped up, including one agate crystal for good luck) and filled in the bits between the stones. Oh, I need a couple more buckets of that, and to figure out how to edge it all so it doesn't wash away, but it's close to good enough. So far, I've not spent a dime but it feels very rich to me. To many, it might look like, so, when are you going to do that porch, MJ? That's okay!

Working on it, I kept thinking about the theme of simplicity that has run through my life for, at this stage of the game, well more than half of it. By choice. To the chagrin of my family at times, to the dismay of my children more often than not, the same children who now thank me for all that taught them. Living simple doesn't mean a lack of appreciation of beautiful things, it just means how that appreciation is expressed. Does it mean living a work life unsatisfied to have those things in my own possession? I think so. That could just be an excuse, but having had a lot of beautiful possessions in my life, and losing the majority of them to theft in a weird series of events, it was a choice to not go through the rigamarole to re-acquire them. My choice. No judgement either way, just a life design to keep my head from exploding. It's just that Simple.

So in thinking about all of this I was thinking about books that influenced me a lot along the way, Scott and Helen Nearings The Good Life, Carla Emery's The Encyclopedia of Country Living, Thoreau's On Walden Pond. But not just books specifically about this sort of life, there were also novels and travel books and essays that just kept pointing me in the same direction. From Herman Hesse to Richard Brautigan to Annie Dillard, the melody and harmony was weaving deep into me, over and over, always and always.

Until it all brought me to Culebra. To the shack, as it is ungrandly known on Culebra. Not because I called it the shack (in fact, it was known as the Rasta Shack when I moved in, a temporary way station for surfers, temporarily landbound sailors and other various and assorted passers through, which meant I painted it immediately and never have since), but because it really was a fishing shack over 40 years ago. A place local guys hung out, fished, told lies, drank beer. A place that will never be more than a shack, even with an almost proper porch. Not a rocking chair and wicker furniture porch. More like an Ozark high in the mountains porch, minus the couch and the spittoon.

Here is a list of books someone kindly put together, some I've read, a lot I haven't, because some things just aren't found in books. There are plenty to pick and choose from, check out what strikes your fancy. Some are so earnest that they might turn a person toward becoming a Wall Street broker, others are charming and alluring. It's a funny world we live, our part of it, when we have the choice between living simply or living not so simply at all, by choice rather than by no choice at all, as the majority of the world lives. I choose simple. And now you know the rest of the story.

No photos this time, though this theme is going to be revisited a lot, via Culebra style.

Have a see if it's simple Saturday. Do something spectacular.