The Art and Science of Urban Camping

Once our two rental houses were homes for other people, they were no longer mine in the sense that I could occupy them as I had done when I traveled to San Bernardino to work on the houses. My thoughts thus turned to the little fenced off area between the homes that the former owner had used as a utility yard and warehouse for scavenged building material.

Give Me Shelter

That little 16' by 20' living room size plot of land offered me months of entertainment as I looked into various ways I could think of to erect some form of shelter in it for my visits south.

I considered a vintage travel trailer, but didn't have a car that could pull it or space to store it. I became a regular reader of the Tiny House blog and bought plans to build myself a micro cabin.

While searching for earthen building activities in the area, I discovered the Cal Earth Institute in Hesperia an hour away from San Bernardino. Their sandbag houses fascinated me especially since they were earthquake proof, but I couldn’t imagine how one would fit in with two normal suburban houses. I planned to visit Cal Earth on my next trip. This would be a good cover story for my expedition.

Building a sandbag house would definitely take up much more time than I could spend in one trip, likewise a micro cabin, but I was itching to build something. Finally I found a shelter that wouldn't take more than a day to erect. It was called a hexayurt and had been developed by an enthusiast of the Burning Man festival so was designed for the desert.

I was so sure that this was the shelter for me that I ordered the specialized 3" wide industrial fiberglass tape needed to put it together. After much study I could build the whole thing in my head; that was when I realized that the panels were simply too large to both hold up and tape together by myself. All the hexayurt people worked with crews of four or more.

I did have a fall back plan. The Tiny House blog had introduced me to the tent cot, basically a tent on stilts. I was so charmed by the concept that I ordered one. As a house it would do perfectly for this trip. Still there was something else I had to have to make a go of it without having to rely too much on my tenants, and that was a toilet.

Liquid Gold

I had been wanting to make my own composting toilet ever since I discovered the book The Humanure Handbook. I saw the folly of using good drinking water to dispose of human waste which, being full of essential minerals, had value for agriculture. Our centralized sewage system made processing this "waste" one of the most flawed technologies of modern life. Copious amounts of energy, water, chemicals and tracts of high value land were involved, but after a few good rains the tanks would flood and excrement float into the bay, not to mention the ongoing disposal of the toxic sludge.

The humanure toilet is basically a five gallon bucket used with sawdust to cover each deposit; then when full, the contents were hauled out to a hot compost pile to process. The tiny house culture had embraced the sawdust toilet because it solved the big pipe, plumbing problem of disposing of raw sewage. I was squeamish about working the necessary compost pile in our small yard, but wanted to build such a toilet for emergencies.

There was still another route to explore—the pee toilet I had used at the sustainable living farm I visited in Thailand. There I had learned that since urine is rich in nitrogen it can be used immediately to fertilize plants when diluted with five parts water. Adding sugar or molasses also helps to "ferment" the urine and make it more accessible to plants. I learned all I needed to know from the book Liquid Gold.

My challenge was to build a urine-diverting toilet that could be easily packed and transported. A funnel welded inside a 5 gallon bucket was one DIY suggestion, but that was too bulky once a gallon bottle for the pee was included.

I had a large funnel. All I needed was a container that would lay flat. Eventually I thought of one—an oil drain pan. Pep Boys had a two and a half gallon one that fit perfectly lying flat inside a Bankers box. For poop, I repurposed a gallon size kitchen scraps bucket that the city of San Carlos had issued for compost collection. Even had its own lid and logo, "Rethink Waste". The funnel and the compost bucket fit side by side in the box. A rubber tube easily connected the funnel to the oil pan opening.

For a seat, I grabbed a wooden wine box from my stash; it fit perfectly over the bankers box with room to add legs and why make four legs when two boards would do? I made slots to hold the boards in place and cut a hole for the seat. I had seen a plastic one at Ikea that would keep the weight down.

Six hours and three days later I had my completed toilet, varnished and posted to flickr for feedback. I was very pleased with its modern lines and the black toilet seat. It was an immediate hit with off grid survivalists.

Urban Camping

My head was so filled with working out the details of my off-grid expedition that I hardly slept the entire week. I filled my car with all manner of untested gear plus my faithful solar oven. Then there was the menu. Part of my challenge was to feed not only myself but treat my tenants to a home cooked meal. I bought a new flat bottomed wok that would work with my portable wood burning stove.

I arrived as promised just before sunset. Addison and his little friend Tika from next door were on hand to help me park inside the utility yard enclosure. Their excitement mounted as I pulled out my various folding chairs and unfolded the tent cot. As soon as it was up they were all over it asking me to zip them up inside and let them use a lantern. Their squeals of delight brought out Tally my new tentant. Addison's mother Jennifer joined us, too and we all sat in the folding chairs.

It was in part to meet Tally that I had come to visit. He was a small man with the sideburns and '50s bubble hair he groomed for his Elvis act. He looked at my tent cot and told me I had to be kidding. I could not possibly be thinking of spending the night in it. He offered me his house although his couch was already occupied by a friend of his grown son, staying indefinitely.

"You can sleep with me. I wouldn't do nothing," he said. He had but a single bed so was kidding. Jennifer chuckled. Addison offered to let me sleep in his room so he could sleep in the tent cot.

I earnestly explained that part of my whole purpose was to get away from the comforts of home to test my equipment. Tally said you couldn't get him to sleep in a tent, no way. Jennifer was being bitten by mosquitoes. They left me to set up the rest of my outfit. Mike came by and asked after the hexayurt I'd told him about, then laughed when I said I had abandoned the idea largely because it entailed a roof rack. He showed me his vegetable beds and pumpkin starts.

For privacy, I moved the tent inside the fenced enclosure, lay a painter's drop cloth on the ground in front of it and put my toilet in the metal shed. The yard was cluttered with various projects. Mike had also dug a large hole for composting. I reorganized a few things and settled in happy, finally able to get some sleep now that my expedition was under way.
The next morning I put up my sunshade from fence to fence. Tally came out to offer me coffee and help me string it up. He persuaded me to come into his kitchen with offers of an English muffin toasted. I didn't have any means of toasting so accepted.

"I feel like we've been friends for years," he said. I was content with this status and was careful not to interrupt his narrative with mine. It is good camouflage. He told me details of his divorce and later sang for me in his room where he had his recording equipment. And he did sound just like Elvis.

Spotting Mike in the yard, Tally beckoned to him.

"Get in here," he said, "I got cawfee." I rarely saw Mike sit down. They joshed each other like old friends. I discussed the menu with them. Tally had never had Thai food, but he liked fried rice.

"I call it Chin food," he said, "you know for Chinese". Mike suggested vegetables cooked soft because his teeth didn't work right. This I could handle and set out to walk to the nearest grocery store, a Mexican chain two blocks away. It had everything I needed including nice cuts of pork all for less than $8.

Cooking for more than four people made me nervous, so I sat in my reclining chair and thought it through. It was such a luxury to do just one thing at a time that I reveled in just sitting there making a blow by blow schedule to execute my plan. I wondered why it wasn't possible to do just one thing at a time at home.

I set up my solar oven and made five cookies at a time, five times. Next I put in the rice; it cooked to perfection after two hours. When it came time to light up my woodgas stove the wood I brought wouldn't light, but no matter I could use the gas stove inside. I had already cut everything up at Tally's house, so took everything into Mike's house where the family was already gathered with Jennifer's visiting Aunt Becky.

"I'm ready to wok and woll," I said. This old joke on my ethnicity always gets a laugh.

Addison came by, saw me using the stove, and said, "You're cheating." I lamented to him that I couldn't light my outdoor stove, but soon had dinner on the table.

"Hope you like it," I said to everyone.

"Mike won't complain if it's a home cooked meal," said Jennifer and asked if I minded paper plates. They are the minimal kind that go on basket weave trays so I didn't mind. (Tally used paper plates at his house too; this was perhaps the downside of my not installing dishwashers.) The women sat at the table chatting while Mike and the boys ate in front of the drag race on TV. Tally joined us and was soon entertaining everyone with his story of the day Mike shut off the water while he was still in the shower. It was exactly the kind of situational, funny story on oneself, that my Thai relatives like to tell at dinner and made me feel at home.

More visitors stopped by—a black family—mother and two children; Addison calls the boy his brother. Jennifer notes, with a chuckle to me, that race does not stand in the way of Addison's definition of brother. I invite the mother to eat. She turns down my invitation, but later, as the evening draws out and her kids have eaten, she does and makes it a point to tell me the food was very good. In all I managed to feed 6 adults and 4 children for less than $10 plus there were leftovers.

Performance Art

I joined the children outside. At the curb was parked Aunt Becky's truck. It was a monster truck just this side of a semi and had two steps to climb into it. Shiny and black, it looked new; the front grill towered over my head. On the back was a sticker. "Silly, big trucks are for girls" it said. I had to admire this sentiment.

When I returned to the house with my solar baked cookies, Aunt Becky commented that I liked to be Green.

"I just like the gadgets," I said. It was not my agenda to speak of being Green, especially with monster truck drivers. I have had little success persuading anybody to be Green beyond a little recycling. Nor have I had success persuading people to put together a viable earthquake kit. Fear quickly leads to overwhelm and helplessness. Thus I now present my off grid living solutions as Art, my Design For Living.

With this in mind, I had decorated my tent with a string of flags, the triangular kind you see at gas stations. I had considered hanging my rainbow 'peace' flag, but even that seemed too liberal an agenda. I did have a wall hanging a client had off loaded—a reproduction 18th century tapestry depicting a pastoral theme of aristocrats on a picnic, fishing. I hung it on the outside of the utility yard fence with binder clips suspended from clamps. The irony of the scene amused me, but no one else seemed to get it. Probably thought I was putting on airs.

The children got a ride in the monster truck; I could hear the sound of the air horn as it rumbled down the street. The Ford 650 gets 20 mpg on a very efficient diesel engine, Mike told me. After their ride the children came to my camp to try out the tent, inspect my gear and pull out all the parts of my Swiss Army knife.

"You’re the only girl I know who likes this sort of thing," said the girl.

"I'm the only girl I know who likes this sort of thing, too," I responded. She wasn't interested in the tent or the knife, but she looked at the rest of the gear and sat in one of my chairs.

"I love learning about this survival stuff," her brother told me politely.

"Yes it's fun," I agreed, completely won over by his interest, glad to have presented a viable alternative to the next generation.

Later when I was brushing my teeth his mother came by, said her children couldn't stop talking about my camp, so she had come to see for herself. I picked up my LED lantern and gave her the tour. She took everything in, withholding any judgment, even commenting about the practicality of the tent being off the ground.

Not one person had asked me what I used for a bathroom. I did borrow a shower at Mike's after a hot day driving to Hesperia. I also took the opportunity to use both tenants bathroom on two occasions thus saving myself having to dig a hole for disposal of poop, but otherwise my homemade toilet was key and worked perfectly as designed with a squirt from my water bottle as a chaser (in lieu of toilet paper). On the last day, before I packed it, I showed it to Mike (after assuring him that it had not been used for poop). He was very intrigued by the use of urine as free fertilizer and perused my copy of Liquid Gold on the spot.

Satisfied that my off grid performance art had been properly appreciated I got on the road wondering what my next project would be (apart from fertilizing all my plants).

The Seven Habits of Highly Subversive People

As the corruption of the Bush administration unfolds for all to see, I find myself wondering why people are so complacent? Why are we not abuzz with discussion about the outrages committed by this administration? Apparently we are too fractured in thought to really put it all together. People, as my mother would say, can't think their way out of a paper bag. And the powers that be like it that way which makes thinking a subversive act that everyone can participate in.

Habit #1. THINKING

Here are some paper bags that I have attempted to think my way out of.

The New Age Paper Bag

Much that was revolutionary in the human potential movement of the '60s spurred us to great strides in personal development and self-actualization, especially here in California. We took workshops to liberate ourselves from destructive cultural messages and parental tapes; we were offered books to empower ourselves to reach our full potential; we quit smoking, embraced low-fat diets and took up yoga; we "worked on ourselves" and learned negotiation techniques to improve our couples relationships. A whole industry of self-help books and page-a-day calendars with daily affirmations was spawned.

Mr. Chicken Soup Of The Soul
Speaks at National Conference

Within the scope of the New Age movement we were able to create a parallel universe of good in our own lives, separate from the degradation going on in the world at large, especially if we were in business for ourselves. How America loves the self-employed. Do what you love and the money will come. Think positively and you will attract what you want into your life. The cosmic shopping channel is open 24/7 for you to visualize your dream of success down to the car you drive and the clothes you will wear.

How convenient for the agenda of globalization that this message negates our ability to criticize capitalism. It has laid us wide open for the cheerleading of trickle down economics and self-congratulatory, post-Soviet collapse rhetoric. Okay, so we have to leverage our own health care and pension plan, pay for disability insurance and liability insurance, then pay even more steeply for our self-actualizing workshops, certifications testing and business networking associations. We must market ourselves constantly, take only unpaid vacations, compromise our values when necessary, risk projecting conflicting messages of political or religious affiliation to our client base and manage our fears when the work isn't there. That's the price we gladly pay for this glorious opportunity to be our own boss. Meanwhile what's all this fuss about globalization and free trade? Isn't it all good? Shouldn't trade barriers be brought down so we can continue this wonderfully business-friendly atmosphere?

The New Age Paper Bag separates us from historical perspective and context. This parallel universe narration has clipped our ties to the consequences brought on by the nation that represents us in the world. We are, after all, not supposed to dwell on the negative unless there is a solution immediately at hand. Which brings me to the next habit of highly subversive people.

Habit #2 UNDERSTAND THE BIG PICTURE, THE GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN OF EVERYTHING THAT YOU TOUCH AND THEN SOME, THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF ALL THINGS AND I DON'T MEAN JUST THE COSMIC GOOD STUFF BETWEEN YOU AND THE DIVINE. IN THE BEGINNING THERE WILL BE NO SOLUTION TO THE DEPRESSING REALITY OF IT ALL. GET USED TO IT. BETWEEN DESPAIR AND HOPE LIES THE MOTIVATION TO CHANGE.

One of the few popular filmmakers attempting to help viewers understand a bigger picture is Michael Moore. His film "Sicko" manages to throw in many of my pet issues regarding corporate buyout of our government, the fear mongering of government propaganda, the repression of alternatives by profit driven corporations and the plain disregard of decent people by our national policies. He embodies in his script, subversive acts of civil disobedience by going to Cuba to raise awareness of these issues.


The Techno-fix Paper Bag

Speaking of solutions, we love the potential offered by technology. Somewhere, somehow, someone will come up with a brilliant gadget that will solve everything, make our lives easier and slip seamlessly into our current lifestyle with no effort on our part. That is the supposed saving grace of the "free market." The US currently positions itself as the brains at the top of the food chain of production. Americans, the lucky educated ones, are offered the plum high paying jobs of innovation that are not as yet outsourced offshore. To stay competitive we are urged to funnel all the smarts and creativity of our human potential into this gadget-designing piece of the action.

The Techno Paper Bag is bottom line about enabling the disposable economy. Capitalism thrives on disposability. Throw it away and buy the next big thing. Got e-waste? Well then make it go away magically through better high tech recycling. Create more efficient, more recyclable wonderstuff, or at least something way cooler than last year, then make the whole world want it with slick soothing advertising. (I just Fed-Exed an iPhone to my publisher in Bangkok so he wouldn't have to wait until 2008 when it will be released there.)

The underlying pitfall of the disposable/product-for-every-occasion mentality is that it robs us of our own individual inventiveness and creativity; the day-to-day practice of our imagination is co-opted into acts of shopping. The very thought that we could make do or make something for ourselves or find a local artisan to make it for us, threatens the growth of profit driven multi-national corporations. This prompts the third habit of the highly subversive person.

Habit #3: FIX, MAKE OR BAKE STUFF YOURSELF, BECAUSE IT STRENGTHENS YOUR INDEPENDENCE OF THOUGHT FROM THE SOUL ROBBING, IMAGINATION SUCKING, CORPORATE PRODUCTION OF STUFF. CUT OFF OR COVER THE LOGOS ON YOUR BAG, SHOES, CLOTHES. REPURPOSE A PRODUCT AND NAME IT AFTER YOURSELF.

WEAR A HOMEMADE COSTUME.

A close cousin to the Techno-Fix paper bag is:

The Freedom of Individual Choice Paper Bag

Here's another mega-platform for selling stuff through the illusion of choice. What turns you on? What will set you apart? What will make you happy?

Catherine likes to watch House Hunters, a cable TV reality show about people searching for their next dream home. I couldn't figure out the appeal of this show since we aren't looking for another house. The repetition of the plot, the cheesy low production values and the amateur actors expressing their rehearsed joy at the inevitable climax of closing the deal reminded me of something. Suddenly it came to me.

"I know what this is," I said gleefully, "it's porn—shelter porn." Catherine did not entirely appreciate the metaphor.

Shelter porn, food porn, makeover porn, Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, the designer clothes on your sitcom stars. When I watch movies at home I call out "Product Placement" whenever I see a recognizable brand name item. Thus the fourth habit.

Habit #4: KNOW YOUR PORN SO THAT YOU CAN UNDERSTAND HOW YOU ARE BEING TOLD WHAT TO DESIRE.

Advertising is now no longer restricted to just brand names and individual products. MasterCard will finance your trip to Europe, so that you can experience the "priceless" memorable moment of your life. We have Wells Fargo to tell us that our wants are inevitably material ones. "Someday a new couch" "Someday a spare bedroom." Don't you long to hold up a card that says "Someday world peace"?

Which brings me to the final and biggest paper bag of them all. It is so big it resembles an architectural monument, a sort of post-modern, Dwell magazine paper bag covering our national consciousness.

The Democracy Paper Bag

I've a colleague whose mother is from East Germany. When the Bush administration was yammering to go to war with Iraq, she was aghast at the instant patriotism of her neighbors.

"Don't you see? This is how Hitler happened?" she said to them in exasperation. I had to laugh in my empathy with her perspective. Yes, it takes a village to raise a Hitler. Let us not forget that Hitler was operating in a democracy. And I don't buy it that the Germans were somehow culturally flawed and therefore more vulnerable to Hitler. Disconnected as we are from political context, we have been just as easily fooled into allowing our civil rights and political power to be eroded, bit-by-bit, under the guise of national security.

We are so secure in our identity as a democracy that we forget to question if it is actually functioning. We believe steadfastly in our ability to make change by peaceful protest and the power of one vote.

"We'll vote for a styrofoam box," quipped my friend Martine, "just as long as it's a Democrat."

Arundhati Roy, author of the best-selling novel The God of Small Things, pointed out, in one of her essays on empire, that when the Ghandhian legacy of peaceful protest is dismissed, we are leaving the people with no choice, but to turn to other more violent means. It's the sort of sentiment one wants to bat away before it has a chance to take hold. Still there is a certain chilling logic to it?

The Bush administration is answering to nobody but themselves, care about nobody but themselves. They have changed laws to benefit the corporations from which they came and to which they will return. They care not for due process. Our justice system is not holding them accountable; nobody seems to be holding them accountable. The media is full of apologists (save for Keith Olbermann).

Our leaders count on our good behavior, our staying in our seats and acting on our democratic ideals—yelling occasionally at our TV. We know they are crooks and we know they are liars, yet we still won't think the worse of them. For to think the worse of them would be to threaten the very existence of our democracy and have to resort, instead, to marching on Washington as a lynch mob.

How else to explain the reluctance of people to entertain the complicity, on the part of these rogue leaders, in the attack on the twin towers? The subject is made taboo. It is just too scary to accept, but not the first time such a false flag strategy has been used. (The Nazis also staged a false flag operation called the Himmler Operation to justify the invasion of Poland.) To dislodge democracy demands severe techniques.

Having been raised in a country that often installed its prime minister with a military coup, I do not seem to have the same attachment to this identification with the sacred cow of democracy. My parents did not vote for our leaders (until we came here) thus my core identity is not threatened by the idea that I might not be living in a democratic country. Much as I value democracy, it is easier for me to question it when it seems to be broken. This brings me to habit #5.

Habit #5: SEEK CONTEXT. DON'T SETTLE FOR THE EASY SHORT ANSWER. STAND FOR SOMETHING RISKY. MAKE A STATEMENT THAT EMBODIES COMPLETE SOCIOPOLITICAL NARRATIONS.

Habit #5 is the manifestation of Habit #1: THINKING. It opens up the arena for all kinds of creative story telling and story embodying art. Habit #5 has inspired my most creative work. My favorite being the creation of my alter ego, the Caterpillar of Perpetual Consumption.

I've met passionate radical activists on street corners who don't seem to be getting their message across because the culture they are addressing has not yet been nurtured into receptivity to their ideas. Thus they are easily dismissed. I start small and find out what matters to the company I keep, which brings me to:

Habit #6: START WHERE YOUR AUDIENCE IS

At our last business networking meeting, our speaker was an image consultant. I cannot seem to take this career choice seriously so I was surprised at how passionate my carpool mates were about her flaws. It struck me that that if my colleagues were paying this much attention to the clothes people were wearing, then I could easily get my message across by accessorizing my "image" with a symbol of my pet campaigns. Thus my Spork Manifesto. (The spork is a combination spoon and fork.)

Because of my feelings about the role of disposability in our journey to planetary hell, I started carrying with me a midnight blue spork (along with my pocket knife), to ward off those horrid plastic utensils that pop up. The spork led to a portable fold flat cup (of a cerulean blue) to avoid those styrofoam and paper cups that appear at meetings. Having gone that far, I threw in a plate as well (of deep speckled blue enamel). It didn't really take up that much more room.

Thus equipped with my color-coordinated kit, I was ready for the next business event involving food served on disposable plates. As I visually walked my talk, the picnic set in my hand became a classic ice breaker for people to talk to me about being green and recycling, and for me in turn to lead them beyond the incomplete thinking of recycling to my theory on the evils of the disposable consumer paradigm as described above.

I, now, leave you with my final subversive habit.

Habit #7: IMAGINE. DISRUPT. DISTURB. DESTABILIZE. BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU.
Or in my case, I bite the hand that reads me.

Bibliography

Many of the ideas in this piece were informed and inspired by the following book

The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don't Think For Themselves, by Curtis White.

I was also adversely informed by the shallow, unabashedly pro-capitalist and muddled thinking of The World Is Flat, by Thomas Friedman

And the intriguing, but ultimately shallow thinking of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I was properly informed by the following exhaustively researched books:

The Bu$h Agenda: Invading The World One Economy At A Time, by Antonia Juhasz

Against Empire: A Brilliant Expose of the Brutal Realities of US Global Domination, by Michael Parenti

The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, by David Griffin

Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire At the End of the Age of Oil, by Michael C. Ruppert

Shoveling Fuel For A Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders And A Plan To Stop Them All, by Brian Czech.

And I was sustained by

Confessions of an Economic Hitman, by John Perkins

An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, and War Talk, by Arundhati Roy

How To Succeed At Globalization: A Primer For The Roadside Vendor, a narrative cartoon by Mexican national, El Fisgon


And JK Rowling for reminding me that children innately understand totalitarianism, thus the subversive and imaginative nature of the Harry Potter series in the grand tradition of child empowering childrens books.

Also posted at the energy bulletin