After I sang the praises of the second half of winter last week, the gods of the sun and the air ganged up to remind the humans who was still in charge.
It was a horrible week for the cold. Temperatures were not all that drastic, but when they don’t rise above freezing for days and nights on end, then it gets inside you in a particularly unpleasant way. And I am getting a little edgy about the amount of firewood I have left. Ah, it will be fine for sure, and I can repurpose some of the logs I intended for building things with into firewood. It was graded as firewood in the first place, so it’s not like I would be sending up in smoke any of the good stuff.
In fact, it is precisely because it is graded as firewood that it takes so much work to prepare it for building. But in excellent news, and right on schedule, I finished preparing the last major frame piece of the tomato house. This week, I will be cutting them all square and to the correct length, and creating all the mortices and tenons. I say all - let’s not get too excitable, but as far as intentions go, it’s always ok to set ambitious ones, as long as we know from the outset that it is ambitious, and not to be disappointed if we don’t get there.
I still need to make all of the corner bracing pieces as well. That should be for next week. And I need to come up with a solid plan for the roof. Or at least, that would be a good idea. I might just wing it.
Winging it means making each piece as it is needed, but it also means not making them all the same. The house part of the tomato house is a box. A higgeldy piggeldy roof, fertilised of Antoni Gaudi, Friedensreich Hundertwasser and a crazy pirate who isn’t entirely sure what he is doing might be a more interesting way to top it off.
Other Things To Do This Week.
I really want to get out of the fab for a bit, and do something grubbier, but it seems that all of the important projects at the moment are more or less woodworking.
I haven’t checked, but I think I said last week that I might try starting some seeds. I did not do that. (see: Weather Gods). I’m not going to tempt fate by saying I will try again this week, but a wink is as good as a nudge to a blind horse, what what?
I would very much like to move the compost heaps. This is less sunshine dependent as precipitation. I will not do it in snow or rain. So, another one for the let’s see pile.
And I would very much like to bottle the sauerkraut, but I put my nose in it last night, and it fkin reeks. I’ve never made sauerkraut before, so maybe it’s supposed to smell like that. I guess I will have to get brave and taste it. There are still a few cabbages left in the garden though. I am not relying on it being delicious to sustain life for another few months.
This is definitely one of those weeks that I have to be a bit glad that I don’t do commentary on the news, or anything related much to current affairs.
Except, to say that many of the problems of the world have always been much the same. Historically, there is nothing unusual about powerful leaders making awful decisions, dogma in the absence of compassion; greed, narcissism and a distrust of people not quite the same as us. The new, extra-awful specifics of these decades seem especially existential and the death throes of capitalism will for sure take us all down with it. But this week, it all seems to have been varnished with a bright shiny gloss of cruelty. This makes me sad.
We can do something about it. We can be real. We can get together and talk. Not to find solutions, but to find humanity. To share in the wonder of being alive. Me? I am going to take care to read thing written by humans, to listen to music and poetry. I am going to work on my own writing, and I am not going to apologise for aspiring for this to be thought of as literature.
Maybe one day “The Book of the Barracks” will be the answer for some people to the question “have you read anything good lately”. Maybe.
Until then, and that might be some time I know, please do be as passionately human as you can, take care of each other, and step lightly with love
Your loving Pirate Ben
xoxo
Yes, historicaly there have always been tyrants and great injustices. Our generation in the West has perhaps benefitted more than most before us from a welfare state and an NHS and relatively high quality of life. We see it all beginning to revert, however you are right, Art, literature, music and humanity will prevail.I have decided to lose myself for a while and have falllen under the spell of Dylan again- my go to. He don't half make you want to sing it out. Check out Niel Young's new song too - Big Change a simple call to all old and injured warriors out there.
I really enjoy the fact that you intentionally (or unintentionally - it doesn't really matter) eliminated the use of the period after your last sentence. It implies fluidity...that by taking care of each other, and stepping lightly with love, the world will simply keep moving. No one knows exactly where, but moving on could be a good thing...
I've thought a lot about you and your project this past week. It seems collapse is on steroids at the moment, and it might be time to urgently think more seriously about what that looks like, and how can we - as caring humans - come out on the other side...or at least, create a better place for those who come after us.
I'm just saying...I doubt very seriously the answer is colonizing Mars...