On Building, Pt. 2

Here’s what you need to know about building a house you are going to live in:

You have to be brave.

“Do the work + hope = a miracle.”

I read this somewhere, or heard it?

This adventure is so emo. It’s not straightforward. We’ve done a lot wrong and rebuilt all manner of things. 1 step forward, 2.75 steps back. Your heart has to be so extra bright to outshine the clouds that can gather around this amount of confusion. Some for-instances: The custom windows we forked over coin for and installed, struggling in the cold. We had to pay someone at a later date to come back and replace all the glass with tempered freaking glass! So stoops. Our slab foundation is slightly smaller than it should be—due to a last-minute meltdown over crumpled blueprints, all cool lost, a cement mixer truck idling in the driveway churning its load of Deschutes County’s finest. There are moments when you’re on the verge and things aren’t perfect but you gotta just say FUCCCCK IT and drop in.

Legacy is in the building.

Every place has a story. My shack in NE Portland turned 100 last year and after a chill century seems to have avoided any hauntings. Still I always think about the people who built it and all the tears and laughter lived in it. Someday the place I’m building now will shelter people who are not me. Maybe they’ll ponder on the origins? This is assuming they don't flatten the place to build a McMansion, which is actually very likely given the current appetite for space over humility and natural beauty. Anyway, it can’t be a coincidence that my parents built the log home I grew up in. My mom was just telling me a story about me at .5 years old crawling around on the plywood subfloor, my baby-soft marshmallow knees turning to pincushions with the splinters, while she tiled the kitchen counters. (Tile on kitchen counters is an easy way to carbon date this moment to the late 70s.) You can’t be what you can’t see or so they say. I never intended to be a back-to-the-lander like my moms and pops, it just kinda happened. But … cool!

The journey is its own reward.

Most minutes of life I can’t tell if I’m wasting my time or in pursuit of something grand. But when I’m out there building, I can feel it’s the second one. I started building this house because I felt a shift inside myself, I was dreaming of something different. But dreams are the stuff of the future. “Once I have that, I’ll be happy,” is a dangerous mindset. Life isn’t shopping. Wherever you go, there you are. Etc. Etc. Having been made to own the hard work and chaos of the now is not relaxing at all BUT it’s how you get to know thyself and also a pretty good route to the kind of moments where sheer abundance of being fills your little heart.

Summer Of The Roof

So what’s new?

Not writing. I haven’t written anything down here since last April. All I’ve been able to manage is thinking about writing. But ... THAT’S WRITING … right?

As you may know, we’re building a house. Still. Building. A. House. We broke ground in August of ’21. Calling it a project would be laughable. It’s a life’s work.

We spent the past summer working on the roof. Every day was a beautiful struggle. The spring was wet and foul, mid-June and the clouds were still pissin’. The roof transforms into a high-stakes slip and slide at the first hint of dew. So, we’d work as much as we could between the dark clouds, then climb down to safety while gently cursing the sky.

The summer wore on, got hotter and dryer. Ladders. Scaffolding. Precarious positions. Wrastling tarps turned to sails in the tattering wind. Forever squinting up into the sun, faces crisp in the glare off the pitch.

The roof sheathing and insulation were a righteous pain in the ass. We stacked that shit up like a layer cake in order to achieve today’s Deschutes Co. demand for R value (R38, for you curious folks).

As a bonafide weakling, I couldn’t drag the plywood up the ladder, so I was very limited help to my main squeeze. Unless — is standing on the ground telling him to be careful every 3.5 minutes helpful? But Cale rolled up from Chiloquin now and then to help Mark. Knowing he had a helping hand during the week while I toiled over my laptop relaxed me a little. Sometimes I’d drive down on Saturday and get there in just in time for an afternoon cool out in the Deschutes. Then we’d eat takeout pizza and drink beers while the light fell, feet dangling off the second story deck. We’d conversate and dream — about the days when we were “done” and doing less, spending less, crying less, living like gnomes in the woods, with a grand functioning toilet and shower and stove to cook our righteous feasts, the radical luxury of a day-to-day with no major labor to-do’s — oh it blinkered off in the dusk like a cloud of fireflies. The possibility was beautiful.  

By September the metal panels were going on. Each piece clicked into the one that went before it, then you’d sew up the other side with custom gasketed screws. A satisfying process. It was the fastest part of the build, easier than we thought it would be. Un-used to things being easy, we charged forward with a renewed energy.

The weather cooled and wildfire smoke dispersed as autumn winds galloped down off the volcanos. A rainstorm appeared on the weather forecast — fall’s first rain. With impeccable style, Mark rattled in the final roof panel. We packed up the truck. Our baby was all tucked in and ready to snooze through the coming season. What timing! Back in Portland with the rain running down the windows, we didn’t cry tears of joy — pfft that only happens in the movies.

True story: a week-ish later, a windstorm knocked a big ol’ tree down on that brand-new roof.  

HOMESTEADING … AMIRIGHT????

Jawbreaker: Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault

25 years plus 2 after seeing Jawbreaker’s Dear You tour at the C.U. student union my college freshman year, I floated across the Willamette River on a Sunday eve to watch them rip an anniversary Dear You show.

Back then, I was (probably) in my bad-posture, thrift-store-cords and studded-belt phase. I do remember the crowd boo-ed the band — Dear You was a “sell-out emo album” and not “punk enough.” I’d only just gotten hip to Jawreaker, though, and I ate up all that college cotton candy about throwing keggers and reading Kerouac. I also remember really digging the drama of the show — the crowd heckling, the band over it, very Dylan-gone-electric Fuck You, on a less important scale. Like, play a basement or an arena — either way your fans only let you be what they already think you are. 

Anyway, heading into Sunday I was nervous. Music can be such a nostalgia firehose. I didn't necessarily want to be time-machined back to the wilderness of 17 years old. My decision making was questionable back then — the ’Breaker was there for many of my first biggest life mistakes. But I’m happy to report the show did not wake up any ancient dormant angst volcanos, but rather bathed my 44-year-old brain in a tidal wave of dopamine. It was fun.

Speaking of 40 somethings, I never tire of observing how punks and skaters (AKA fringe people) age. Shit, I am one … and I’m really looking toward y’all older kids to show me what’s next, how to get on in years with some grace and mischief — and without losing my cool. At 54, Blake Schwarzenbach is an interesting specimen. You don’t age out of well-read cleverness and self-deprecating charisma. I quickly remembered why I’ve loved him all my life. 

Photo by Christopher Jesse Juarez

As always happens at every rock show from way back when to deep into some futuristic metaverse eternity, the crowd annoyed me. Specifically a douchey dude and chick — dressed for Coachella, screaming in elation, dancing into everyone’s personal pandy space. Were they on ecstasy? I found myself wondering about them. How did they clue into Jawbreaker? What attracts them to the music … and by extension, what do I have in common with this fedora/Hawaiian-shirt/tube-top-wearin’ duo? 

Back then, I was magnetized to Jawbreaker as much for their jams as their ethics. But these kids don’t give two shits about that I suppose. Now that the 90s anathema of “selling out” has been exposed as a myth born of a certain kind of privilege, racism, classism (like, you should turn down the big-label bucks to be poor and brilliant forever, sure, sure). It’s a fairytale of authenticity that died in a puff of sponsored posts and Kanye’s new video dropping in the form of a 3-minute Yeezy X Gap ad … good for him.

But shit, this is music. The cultural context ain’t a pre-req to loving it. Do I have any clue what Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” is really about? Nah. It’s all in the riffs and the wallop.

Then I considered — Jawbreaker is a style and youthful point of view. Jealous at a party. Dumped and dark-hearted. Chill September day, buzzing on hormones and nicotine. Road trip in a beater car. Vulnerability disguised as nonchalance. Ditching class. Fuck you don’t tell me what to do.

That something so purely “90s teenager” could hold a butane torch to these TikTok babes’ hearts? Wow. Love it. That’s art. 

2021 And Done

In a fun little twist, 2021 didn’t suck for me.

I of course was engaged in the regular doom of modern life, in Portland, in America, in a pandemic, navigating a thousand heartbreaks of climate, racism, classism, capitalism …

But I purposefully avoided the news. I put extra care into my work, Nemo was buzzing. When I wasn’t toasting in the blue-light glow of my MacBook Pro I was swinging hammers trying to build a monument for my future. 

That, or dicking off. Swimming. Skating. Crinkling Rainier cans. Whatever fun you have when you’re still godless and child free in the first half of your 40s. 

The winning moment of the year involved July, me with cherry-red cheeks, simmering in a natural hot springs, cradled by aspen trees, soaking in the purple evening air of northern Idaho. What a pure moment — I’m always seeking that kind of oblivion. 

In an effort to recreate it I bought an inflatable hot tub for the back deck, becoming just another pandemic herd buyer, but whatever. I’ve had some nice splashes in that inflatable, but as you know it’s still missing the tectonic potion of a proper hot springs and the higher-order joy of summer vacation. 

As the new year cracks over the Northwest territory, a dark dawn, and wet — how we do up here in Oregon, I hope you have found whatever renewal and meaning you were searching for in your winter holiday ritual. Heading into ’22, here’s what I’m thinking about:

Uncertainty is healthy.

Imagination is required.

Question your cultural notion of self identity.

Be emotional and intuitive whenever possible.

More sunrises.

More stars.

How To Build A Home

Heading into Christmas but here’s a post-Thanksgiving update. We didn’t feast or celebrate. We toiled. And the crew was cooked after a couple hard days of working in the cold. “Soul crushers” my guy calls them, those bitter days when your work gloves are soaked and your hands throb all the while. 

As mentioned elsewhere, we’re constructing a house in the woods of central Oregon. 

The process of creating your own shelter is kinda incomprehensible to the modern human (i.e. me). Dreaming up plans for the place, we prioritized the simple, durable and timeless over the modern and stylish. Now that we’re building, it’s anything but simple.

When I think of how much we have left to do, I die of overwhelm. But like anything else tough or easy or even in the middle, you have to put one foot in front of the other — one board atop the next. It’s our Rome, our Stonehenge, our Egyptian Pyramids.

I’m a novice on the construction site, which is fun—I like the work. But, I have to focus and keep my eyes peeled so I don’t fall off something, hit somebody over the head with something, ruin something or accidentally cut something off. 

Amidst staying sharp, I also think a lot. The local radio spins ’90s jams. “Head Like A Hole” — Trent Reznor scented with snow and sawdust. Memories of freshman year float to the surface of my mental lake. Winter days in a small mountain town, high on a cocktail of confusion and hormones. Chewing Kodiak. Throwing up in a laundry bin. Breaking Frank Rivera’s heart. Riding shotgun in my big sister’s car. Woefully under-dressed in a Champion hoody and size 43 jeans staring up at a cold, star-blasted sky. I re-live entire eras between an 82” cut and handing lumber up to Mark on the roof.

Guys, I’ve always been looking for something and I never did find it. Hard work of the physical variety does settle my unquiet heart. The last time I took on a labor this kind was back when I decided to open an indoor concrete skatepark in the middle of a recession. Those good ol’ days of scraping money and shoveling sandbags now radiate the warmth of nostalgia. Someday, I know these soul crushers will too.