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.