Free Life

Free Life
by Dan Wilson

Let's take a little trip down where we used to go
It's way beyond the strip, a place they call your soul
We'll sit down for a while and let the evening roll

Don't worry about the time, we'll find a place to stay
The people 'round here seem familiar in some way
Look kind of like we did before we got so cold

And in the air the questions hang
Will we get to do something?
Who we gonna end up being?
How we gonna end up feeling?
What you gonna spend your free life on? Free life

Let's fall in love again with music as our guide
We'll raise our ready hands and let go for the ride
Down into unknown lands where lovers need and hide

We got these lives for free, we don't know where they've been
We don't know where they'll go when we are through with them
The starlight of the sun, the dark side of the moon

In the air the questions hang
Will we get to do something?
Who we gonna end up being?
How we gonna end up feeling?
What you gonna spend your free life on?
Free life, free life, free life

It seems so long ago, those empty afternoons
With nowhere much to go and nothing much to do
But sit up in my room and let the world unfold

In the air the questions hang
Will we get to do something?
Who we gonna end up being?
How we gonna end up feeling?
What you gonna spend your free life on?

In the air the questions hang
Will we get to do, do something?
End up being, end up feeling
What you gonna spend your free life on?
Free life, free life, free life, free life

Dreaming of muddy hands

I want our kids, and I want our house. I've wanted to build my own house since I was sixteen. These are my two greatest dreams. I have read and researched and planned and dreamed. I have a green spiral notebook that contains all our house plans and ideas. I have books on cob building, on making natural paints and finishes, on buying land, and other things that are needful to know. Cob is a mixture of clay, sand, straw, and water. It makes buildings that are fireproof (the structure, anyway :P), strong and very earthquake resistant. There are cob buildings in Europe that are centuries old and have been in constant use since they were built. It's very versatile. You can sculpt your building to look however you want, physics willing. You can carve cubby holes, niches, and shelves in your walls. You can build a fireplace with it. You can sculpt benches and arches with it, and you can sculpt decorative elements on your walls. It also makes as good a floor as it does a wall. Best of all, it's cheap to construct and easy to do. It's an incredible building material.

It's continually evolving, but this is our latest house plan:

It needs to be redone again, because I want a sun room/greenhouse on the south side of the house, with a thermal mass wall to soak up the heat in the daytime and release it through the night. But I think the general layout is pretty close to how I want it. I've got a newer sketch that hasn't been scanned in that incorporates a stillroom in the back of the kitchen and partway into where the craft room touches the kitchen wall. That's for my herbs and medicines and the like.

I also have a bunch of those paint sample cards from Lowe's, each one marked for the room it might go in. White in the craft room, sage for the stillroom, yellow for the kitchen, steel blue for a son's room, deep purple for a daughter's room, warm, dark orange for the living room... Everything might change a thousand times before we build, but that's okay. Each revision is an improvement, a step forward.

I also want to construct a prayer room away from the house, just for me. Big glass windows, gauzy drapes, a small cob bookshelf, an altar and a kneeling cushion. A bench with lots of pillows and cushions, and candleholders built into the wall. A poem carved into the wall behind the altar. It'll be my private, quiet space of meditation. 

Cob takes time to build, if you're doing it alone, or with just a few people. You can throw up a poorly constructed house with cheap wood and drywall in a few weeks, but you get what you put into it. While we're building our house, we'll be living close to the building site in a yurt.

Of course, the inside of these ones are much nicer than we will be able to afford, but the yurt itself, depending on the size we get, will probably be somewhere between $5,000 and $7,000. About the price of a nice used car. For however long we need we will have that yurt to live in, and after the house is completed and we move into it, we can either sell it or set it up as a guest house. I'd like to set it up as a guest house, but it depends on how much money we have left after construction. We might need the few thousand dollars selling it would bring, or we might be okay. It's really hard to know at this point.

All of this is several years in the future.. We have to save up money to buy our land, build our house, and furnish it, and money to live off of while we build, because it will be a full-time job. Garret wants to go to cooking school, and I want to take some classes to further my various interests and skills.

Sometimes I wistfully wish for a windfall of money to come our way, or something, but I wouldn't really want to skip straight to the finish, you know? I don't want it to take too long, but skipping the journey altogether would be wrong. There's so much growing to be done along the way. Building our anticipation, our sense of accomplishment, all the learning and the wisdom to be gained. I sure wouldn't mind if my business took off and made me buttloads of money and got us there sooner than we hoped, though. ;)

I want this so much. I see myself there all the time. I dream about sunlight streaming through the windows, laying in bed with Garret, baking bread and making cheese in our kitchen, sculpting details in the children's rooms.. I see us teaching our babies to walk, watching them do their homework at the kitchen table, playing in the living room. I see myself rocking our child back and forth, singing him or her to sleep. I see winter nights warmed by the glow of the fireplace, my family all gathered together. And I see us building it, having mud fights with Garret, fitting the foundation stones in place and building up the walls, smoothing the floors and painting the walls. I see myself planting the garden, and watching our children running through it. I hear laughter and imagine hugs. I want to hear those four little words: "I love you, mama." I want to kiss their boo-boos and read stories to them and rock them to sleep and kiss their foreheads.

We plan on getting married right after we complete the foundation of our home, and we want to get married right on our land. I've got this lovely dream in my head. I know the dress I want:

by isadoraclothing on Etsy.com

and the ring (but in rose gold):

by bandscapes on Etsy.com

and the necklace:

Which I already own :)

and a lot of other things... *blush* There will be a handtying and a hearth blessing ritual (I really wanna do a post about that by itself), I want the guests to camp out, the food will be simple cookout fare, and there will be music and dancing and glass jar lanterns hanging from the trees. The timing is symbolic; as we finish the foundation of our home, we create the foundation of our married life, all our hopes and dreams. It is the beginning of a lot of things very dear and special to us.

And I know all of this is possible. It will take time, determination, fortitude, and planning. But we can do it, and we will. Mine is a simple dream, of hearth and home and husband. Of family and creativity and happiness. We can make this ours. Steadily, we move forward. We'll take baby steps, work hard, and strive for patience. With fire in our souls, hope in our hearts, and love on our lips, we will walk toward this new dawn and bask in the light of the sun.

Pressing onward

Continuation of my first post.

There's no solid ground to stand on in that case. Maybe our collapse was inevitable. We'll never really know, but I don't want to see that happen with me and Garret. I understand more now than I did two years ago. I am stronger and more stable, and I have more of myself to give. I am ready for the next step in our lives. We have so many dreams, and I want to see them fulfilled. I am so filled with love, and though my determination gutters from time to time, and I lose my hope and motivation, it always returns, and I can feel it burning brightly in my heart. I don't know how we're going to do it, but we will find a way. Love will find a way. Hands held tight, never letting the other fall too far. Anything is possible now.

Waiting, though, is difficult. I see all our dreams before us. We're crawling toward them, just starting out. They are mountains on the horizon. The days pass slowly, and we have only one income to support us. I can't work. And what I do try to do to make money is unsuccessful. I sell jewelry, photographs, and vintage items. If anyone would pay me for it, I'm an excellent baker and canner, and I could make edible goodies. But I've had extremely limited success... though everyone tells me I'm wonderful at what I do. I just bought a book called "The Handmade Marketplace: How to Sell Your Crafts Locally, Globally, and Online", so hopefully I will be able to improve my business somewhat... And you have no idea how much I'd appreciate it if some of you would consider purchasing something from me. I'll make a separate post about that sometime, but I can pretty much bake you anything if jewelry, photography, and cool vintage treasures aren't really your thing.

I just don't know how to end this right now, and I'm really tired. More later, again.

Waiting

I know I'm not ready. I know I'm not healthy enough. I know we can barely support ourselves at this point. I know we're not prepared. I know it's not time. But more than anything else in the world, I want to hold my babies in my arms right now. You have no idea how much...

Well, alright then.

My blogs never usually work out too well. Neither do my diaries, or my journals, or any short stories I've ever tried to write. I've got a grasshopper personality. Something fascinates me and I focus all my attention on it for a while, before being drawn away by something equally fascinating. I don't usually lose interest in the current thing, I just can't do everything I like at once. But I'm trying to give blogging another go.

I don't really know what kind of pre-amble introduction doo-bob to write, so I won't bother. Either you know me or you'll get to know me.. I'm not good with rules, or structure. So screw that, and here we go!

I've been beset by envy lately. I feel like I've been left behind and left out of a lot of things in my life. Pain cripples me, depression cripples me, anxieties cripple me. Heartbreak, on occasion. There are many people with lives worse than mine, and I'm grateful for the things I do have. I'm very mindful that I have shelter, food, clean water, love, education, access to most of the things I need to survive and plenty to make me happy. But my life is not easy. I'm happier now than I've ever been - or perhaps not ever. I think I was happier as a child, but children are simple. Let us say, then, that I have more reason now to be happy than I ever have. And still, darkness haunts me. Sorry to be melodramatic, but... blogging is for pouring your heart out, right? Saying the things you don't normally say, things that aren't really easy or polite to bring up in conversation. Or it can be. That's what I've always wanted out of blogging. That's what I'm aiming to get.

I'm finishing my GED next month. That's my current goal. I dropped out in October 2008. Who among you would ever have thought that I would be the one to leave school? I was always the smart one, right? Quiet, focused on her work, always reading. Life takes unexpected turns... a common theme in all our lives, I know. Sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, but always things you never dreamed of. Whoever said "Life is what happens while you are making plans" had the right of it. So, two years wasted. Eh... no. Two years spent healing and finding answers, while all other life moved on without me. Two years spent dreaming.


Now I look around me. My friends are at college, or married, several have children (some on the way). A lot of them have jobs, and are in their own house. The future is coming fast toward my generation. I have those dreams, too. If I don't go for a full degree or certificate, I would at least like to take a couple of classes. Pottery is an interest of mine, and I would love to see if I have any talent for it. I'm usually pretty adept at any artsy thing I try. Biology is always interesting, and I think I'd like to take a class in botany. I love herbs and I'd like to have a deeper understanding of plants. That would really be more of a recreational course, though. A business class or two wouldn't hurt, seeing as how I'm not really making any money right now with my jewelry or my photography. There are actually specific craft marketing and enterprising classes at the local college. Photography classes would be nice. Some basic chemistry classes.. An earth science class would be fun. There's a first aid & CPR class that probably everyone ought to take. Much as I hate it I should probably also take a refresher course in math, because I suck at it. I rely on a calculator for all but the most basic tasks. Fuckin' hate math. Let the people who find it interesting have all they want of it, but give me words and art. Ooh... there's a swimming class? (Yes, I'm looking through the course catalog as I write.) I need to know how to swim. There's a water aerobics class, too - that sounds easy enough for my body. WHOA! There's a tai-chi class at the college! Holy fucking shit! I want that... See, I read a study a while back that fibromyalgia patients who practiced tai-chi saw a HUGE improvement in symptoms.. And I haven't found a class close enough for me to take! Halle-fuckin-lujah! Alright, that's pretty cool. That's on the list. I really do want to go to college.. I'm kind of afraid of trying, actually. I don't know how well I could manage, physically. But I'll find a way... I'll get my GED and soon we will be renting our own place, and I'll be able to get financial aid, and that stuff will fall into position.

The other stuff isn't so easy. We have specific plans for our wedding, which I would be all too happy to talk about in a later post, but the short of it is that we aren't planning to be wed for several more years. Engagement is another story, however. I'm ready to be officially engaged yesterday! :P It's exciting, though, waiting for him to propose. I've thought long and hard about it. I don't think I was really ready to make that promise even just a few months back. I haven't wavered in wanting to be his wife, but marriage really is a big commitment, and I think the promise to marry is just as big. It's a partnership. The love and support go both ways, and for a long time he's been carrying me. Through no fault of my own I have been ill and weak, mentally and physically, and damaged by the past. I don't have to be superwoman to be a wife, but when he needs me, I need to know that I will be strong enough to be there for him. I have already seen how a relationship can break when you have two very damaged people trying to love each other. 

I have to go. My back is hurting too much to sit in this chair any longer. I'll continue that train of thought later.

And so, an inconspicuous end to a rather uncertain beginning..