Of Visionary Women

My report of the next leg of my farm making adventure in Northern Thailand as it unfolded with all its gifts and surprises during my recent trip earlier this year.

Mae Taeng Province

The district of Mae Taeng is still largely undiscovered being but a stop between Chiang Mai (the Northern capital of Thailand) and the mountains of great beauty at Chiang Dao. Getting off on the side of the road here feels like the middle of nowhere. That’s what I like about it. The existential-ness of it. You have to have a reason to stop here. Nobody is going to crowd you with a ready made program of must see attractions. So our first questions to each other was how to get there—rent a car, rely on public transport, ride motorcycles or start building a network based on our needs. The train station in Chiang Man took care of our immediate needs to get breakfast and buy clothing for the cooler weather which Clasina set about to do at the shop adjoining the restaurant. And soon I too found items to round out my wardrobe—a jacket, pants with cargo pockets, a shirt to shield from the suns rays. Then we looked around for a taxi truck willing to drive us out to Mae Taeng for not too much money which we soon found.

And as there wasn’t really a town center or landmark destination we just got off at the one place we already knew—the government land transfer office. Clasina and I were on our next leg of our farm adventure together—the matter of a lease that would allow Clasina the legal right to develop the land while maintaining my legal right to own it. So we stopped in at the land transfer office to see if they could help us pick such a lease. The woman at the desk who was very helpful and had various leases we could use remembered my name from seeing it on the documents I had signed last time I was there. She had wondered if it was the name of a flower. It means to be loved I told her and then I thought to ask Clasina what her name meant. “The shining one,” she said, “one who would be a leader.” That was very promising for our joint adventure I thought.

Now that I had more time to get to know her I asked Clasina how she came to be in Thailand. It wasn’t exactly a plan she revealed. After Apartheid ended in South Africa the laws were changed to favor the hiring of black South Africans to government positions in all but 5% of jobs and virtually all other industries followed suit. Only family run businesses held any future for young people who were not Black. Clasina explored a number of overseas options including living in a kibbutz in Israel and going to England for training in food services. While in England she tired of the winter climate and asked a travel agent where she could go that was warm. Two options were suggested—Mexico or Thailand and it cost less money to get to Thailand so there she went. 

Before this trip I had listened to Trevor Noah read his book Born A Crime which told me everything I needed to know about Apartheid plus had a lot to offer me in terms of cross cultural navigation. Apartheid wasn’t exactly a history one could be proud of as a white South African and what came after sank into corruption and mismanagement. Clasina hadn’t wanted to stay, she said, because it was too sad. Her parents though remained in South Africa. 

The Thai government isn’t exactly pro welcoming either; they sometimes harass her to test if her marriage to a Thai was bonafide. They found it suspect that she and her husband Ya hadn’t wanted to have any children. She is still awaiting the Thai I.D. card that would grant her land owning rights. I had the necessary Thai I.D. card for land owning while Clasina had fifteen years of experience living in Bangkok and navigating life in Thailand that I was missing not to mention that she was so outgoing she would talk to anybody. She knew how to talk to people here in the North I realized. My high society manners and formality did not play well here. People addressed each other with homey familiarity using terms to designate family. 

“Hey uncle” or “hey mother” Clasina would call out in Thai if she needed directions or information while I was left to wonder how to determine who to call what being so old as I was. The farm family we had bought the land from saw me as aloof and snobbish I felt as I waited an introduction or some clue to gather my words together. No introductions were made as everyone already knew each other. I would have to create a more outgoing persona to navigate this I concluded.

Clasina had already booked our accommodations for the night at a guest house quite close to our farm and made friends with the Thai lady who had created the pleasant compound of guest houses. Clasina also had the phone number of a man with a motorcycle with side car to take us there. We had a hot drink while waiting and a local woman dressed for work in Western clothes asked to take our picture. The sight of a blond caucasian woman was still quite rare here. Soon our uncle with the motorcycle side car was there to take us to the guest house where we got comfortable at our little house on the corner of a rice field. Someone loaned us a motorcycle and so it began this building of a network. We were soon at our farm snacking on string beans from last year’s crop.

An English Woman’s Vision

“You must meet Maggie,” Clasina told me and rang her to ask when we could come. Maggie turned out to be an energetic English woman who had settled in Chiang Dao where she had built herself a charming cluster of guest houses with her own hands. She came to pick us up at the bus station in Chiang Dao an hour an a half by pick up truck from Mae Taeng. Maggie had lived in Thailand for 40 years and now at 73 was looking to sell her Chiang Dao guest house which had taken her 7 years to build. She didn’t have quite the energy for the work of a B & B now she said and would go on to build her final home down the road a piece as a co housing endeavor with friends. She was asking 8 million baht for this property—$250,000. That didn’t seem like much compared to California prices. What a gem of a property just to have as a home base. Perhaps money would fall in my lap I joked to Clasina.

The hand made buildings were round and as soon as I looked at the original one that had not been plastered over I recognized the technique from one developed at the Cal Earth Institute in Southern California which I had opportunity to visit when I managed rental property in San Bernardino. And indeed Maggie had hired a teacher who had studied at that institute to come to Thailand to show her how it was done. 

Built with sand bags filled with earth this technique didn’t quite breath well enough in the tropics so Maggie had devised a method of her own filling the sandbags with rice chafe and tying them to a metal structure made from rebar bent into a dome shape. The entire structure was then plastered with mud. This seemed to suffice until over the years the dome roofs started to crack in the monsoon season so she was in the process of putting roofs of thatched coconut fronds on all the buildings as if to give them hats. She now had a charming group of round thatched roof huts scattered up the hillside facing a spectacular view of Chiang Dao. During the high season a steady traffic of travelers seeking a unique experience kept her fully booked.

I liked Maggie immediately. She had missionary parents and had grown up in India. When she told me she had come to Bangkok in the ‘60s I realized we wouldn’t have to dig far to find a connection as that was the decade of my childhood in Thailand. She said she had come at the invitation of her aunt to help out with a school for the children of expats and that the aunt who had helped start this kindergarten had gone on to open a school for older children called Mrs. Clayton’s school.

“I went there,” I nearly shouted. All sorts of memories flooded my brain as I told her how Mrs. Clayton’s school was my first introduction to the West via British culture. I was struck by the serendipitous coincidence of this connection and saw also a kindred spirit. She reminded me of another English woman who had long been a model for me.

“Have you ever been to Cornwall?” I asked her. She had. “Did you visit the Minack Theater,” I asked. She had. The Minack Theater was built by a single woman with a wheel barrow and the help of her gardener as she toiled up the side of the cliff with bags of cement. She had built it for her grandchildren to stage plays during their summer holidays. The result was an outdoor theater with a spectacular backdrop of the open ocean. I took in this site when I was 18 and the story of this one woman vision stayed with me for life. It is still in use as a theater today and is a much loved local feature. Maggie said she had been much influenced by this visionary woman just as I had been. She was such a model of what could be done with simple hand tools, some day to day determination and a vision. I recognized in Maggie’s round houses a similar visionary spirit.

As we were talking a Japanese man and his wife came down the path in full admiration of what she had created here. He said he lived in Portland, Oregon and was himself a designer of gardens for he had designed the Japanese garden in Portland. Indeed I had visited this very Japanese gardens on several occasions. That park was no small feat, covering many acres and was striking in attention to detail. How strange to now meet the designer in Thailand. That he was now admiring the efforts of my new best friend spoke volumes. It reminded me that places like people can be a magnet for like minded spirits as though we were connected by Ley lines to the high energy spots around the globe. 

Clasina was meanwhile taking in our shared conversation and would later ask me what I thought about building our first structure in the style of Maggie’s round house and asking her to be our teacher for the build. Why not? Clasina had been sending me drawings of what she wanted in a farmhouse and they had all included a round tower as an anchor. She had also taken a workshop from Maggie already. Maggie said yes.

The guest house we stayed in was spacious with its high dome ceiling. The round building had character and a great deal of charm. Maggie had also designed wonderful outdoor bathrooms for each one. Her own bathroom had a mosaic tiled bathtub and a squat toilet—a white porcelain one set into the earthen red floor. Clasina tried out the tub laying in it and posing for a picture while I remarked on the toilet style being my favorite. Maggie proclaimed the virtue of the squat toilet for digestive health. She then demonstrated squatting over it and popped up and down with such ease that it was clear that this activity had also kept her spry. Clearly a woman after my own heart. We in the West now know how this position aids in elimination due to the cleverly marketed Squatty Potty, but this work-around would never come close to the benefit of so much squatting.

I told Maggie I would help her get the word out about her property, yet I could see it would call for a very unique and specialized buyer. If I were to devote myself to just one location this one would certainly be spectacular. To see more of my pictures of the Chiang Dao mountain and round houses click here and continue to the right.

The Mud Hut Sisterhood 

While we were in Chiang Dao we only had to go down the road a bit to visit the women’s build in progress that week. The same event where Clasina and I had met last year, but at another location where I had built a house the year before. I had timed our visit to Mae Taeng to coincide with the build so we could visit with our mud hut teachers and a couple of friends I had made at previous builds. 

“Melissa” I called out as soon as I spotted my friend from Portland. She looked up ready to take orders, then saw it was me and gave me a mud specked hug. She was already acquainted with Clasina from my FB posts. As I told her of our plans to build a house she was all in and said she had a list of friends who wanted to come to Thailand specifically to take part in a build. Another woman, Robyn, who had been there last year with us had come again and brought a friend to this build too. She also said she had people she could bring. 

This was all unfolding so easily I wondered if we could pull it together by next January to accommodate such a team. We would need bricks to be made, a place to house people with a dining area and kitchen. The building site would have to be prepared and a cement foundation poured to ward against termites. Clasina certainly seemed eager to begin. When we got back to Mae Taeng we talked to our new friend at the guest house near our farm to see how many people she could accommodate. Sixteen she said if we bunked 3 to a house. Ten more beds would be good for a full team. But she did have a lovely dining pavilion and had once been a cook. So far so good. We had our network. It was almost as if everything we had done on this trip was designed to set in motion the building of our house.

We finished off our trip with another reunion with three mud hut sisters who were attending a four day music festival where they had helped prepare the site by building bamboo structures and sculptures. Attended by young people from all over the world it was a celebration of community that is now a global phenomenon. This built environment providing space for workshops, yoga, natural healing, Thai massage and numerous food booths of international variety while the river running through the park offered a refreshing place to hang out. We slept in rented tents and wandered from booth to booth. At a Ayurveda healing booth a young Indian woman offered to read my fortune with a set of cards each with a photo of an object. I wasn’t sure I needed a reading from such a loosely structured deck, but I consented and drew five cards. One was of a teddy bear, one of a child holding the hand of an adult. I forget what the others were. 

“These three cards indicate that you are entering a time that will fulfill a childhood dream,” she said. That might well be true I thought and nodded in agreement. “You won’t have to do anything. Just let it come,” she concluded. This was even better. “You have something to teach,” she continued. Yes I was all about teaching stuff. My head was a fact collecting synthesizing machine. “Something from your own life experience; about relationships,” she finished. What? What did I know about relationships? She looked up at me as if she herself would like to learn from me. 

“I am writing a book,” I offered “about living sustainably.” She smiled encouragingly. “I can make shoes,” I said showing her my Celtic sandals laced up my calf. She was duly impressed and asked me to come by again, then gave me a hug. 

This easy connection with so many women builders and visionaries was exactly what I was hoping for when I opened the door to this farming adventure with Clasina. I had led a life of long projects considering it had taken ten years to write my first book. I knew well that the journey had to be the fun of it, had to sustain you and teach you your craft. But now I had a partnership and a community. This was new. I felt lucky. I wouldn’t have to do it all. 

Return To Pun Pun

My report on this year’s adobe building workshop in Thailand reveals what appears to have been a blueprint for my current life and leads me into another adventure.

Return to Pun Pun

In 2008 I had been hungry to find a Thailand I knew my relatives couldn’t show me. One that more matched my values than the proliferation of shopping malls that Bangkok was becoming. So I joined a tour and embarked on a road trip to the north eastern provinces in the back of a truck farmer style, sleeping in rustic home built huts and using squat toilets exclusively. The tour was of organic farms that practiced sustainable methods and the new earthen buildings known as Baan Din (House of Earth).

The leaders of the tour were Jo Jandai the founder of the adobe building movement in Thailand and his American wife Peggy plus their son Tan who was maybe five at the time. The final destination was Pun Pun a small farm in the hills where Jo and Peggy had created an educational center to teach the skills of sustainable living. 

In this first phase of Pun Pun the people they attracted had built all manner of natural structures so that it had a whimsical rainbow festival feel to it. One man from Holland had built a circular house on stilts that was open from the waist up. Another from the States was in the midst of setting up a giant filtering system made from stacks of concrete culverts filled with sand, gravel and charcoal. He lived in a tiny adobe house with a roof thatched with coconut fronds. It was big enough for a desk and a loft bed. I recognized it as all I would need myself. 

Other innovations I was introduced to at Pun Pun included toilets that flushed with water into a compost pit, a pee toilet to collect urine for use as a nitrogen source in the garden, soap making, oyster mushroom cultivation and the fermenting of fruit waste to make effective microorganisms for what I didn’t quite understand. Several of these ideas I would later incorporate into my tiny house (including the microorganisms which I now knew to call Bokashi).

At the last build I had attended two years ago our yoga teacher announced one morning that she had just drank her own pee. I looked at her curiously as the remembrance of the taste crossed her face with an expression that told me it was not altogether pleasant but doable. Jo had been teaching about drinking your own pee as a remedy when you were sick and to recapture substances the body made such as melatonin. Well, if Jo was doing it there must be some merit to it I thought. On this trip I would learn that pee could also be used to treat cuts and skin abrasions too. Urea is, after all, an ingredient in plenty of high end body lotions. I tucked all this away in my alternative medicine chest. So much did I trust all that I learned through Pun Pun. 

The Mud Hut Sisters

Since that first trip with Pun Pun I tried to make it to the women's build every year as an investment into what I called my mud hut sisters network. Anyone who would come all the way to Chiang Mai to build a house from mud was my kind of person. At the last build I had made enough friends to visit from California to Portland. Others had become my circle of friends in Bangkok. Last year I connected with two who came to the Bay Area from Australia and China respectively. 

It was an hour and a half’s ride from the city of Chiengmai to Pun Pun by taxi truck. As we pulled up I spotted a gathering of patrons hanging out at what looked like a coffee shop. Was Pun Pun now a resort I wondered? The coffee shop was indeed a new enterprise since I’d been there and it gave the farm a destination feel to it. Inside there were baked goods, herbal farm products, bars of scented soaps and books many of them by Jo—his personal story about returning to his family farm and learning to build with adobe, his experience as a father and even his love life. Too bad all were in Thai. 

A quick look around showed me that almost none of the original buildings were left. They had been replaced after being eaten by termites. Much had been learned in the process and the new buildings had a more permanent and finished look. 

It was unusually cold out. So cold that we were all bundled up in coats and hats as though we were at the arctic and there had also been unseasonal storms. Climate change was afoot. At a nearby mud pit at the end of our tour of the farm we were persuaded to doff our coats and shoes and start stomping the mud. When everyone was in I felt the fun had finally begun. 

I put my arms around the shoulders of women on either side of me and started chanting monosyllables as a spontaneous expression of group bonding. Nobody joined in though it made Ailsa the 10 year old girl resident of Pun Pun look up at me curiously. We had met before. She was a mirror for me sharing with me similar skin tone, dark hair and Asian features. We had worked together two years ago when she joined us for her first build gamely lugging bricks and climbing scaffolding for the entire ten days. Her Scottish mother Lisa was one of our instructors. Her father was from Burma. 

The continuity of seeing her tugged at me. I was ten years old when I left Thailand and so much that I called home, but couldn’t put into words. My memories were somehow embodied in the mud. Mud that in my childhood the local children had taught me to roll into marble size balls with which to play games squatting on our heels on the hard packed dirt. 

A House To Build

The house we were set to build this year was a few kilometers down the road from Pun Pun at a site that would be the next phase of their educational center. Peggy’s brother had already built the first adobe structure which could be seen from the road waiting a final coat of plaster and earth based paint. The house we were building was behind it deeper into the compound. It would be Peggy and Jo’s house away from the bustle of the Pun Pun farm. 

We could see it as we approached. The concrete foundation perched on the edge of a large pond. There were pilings in the water where a pier would be built. It would be two stories high and had a compact footprint with a covered outdoor barbecue area. There were also iron beams instead of wood ones since wood now cost the same as iron. One of the reclaimed doors had a window put into it an unusual feature in Thailand. The house itself had a modern look to it.

After brief instruction our team set to carrying buckets of mud from the mud pit. We then formed a long line to pass the dried bricks that had already been made — with a mixture of mud and rice husk poured into wooden forms. I loved this brick passing line that would only really work if you had a large group of people. It embodied the sense of community I was after. Withe bricks stacked inside we began building the walls in earnest.

The Cat Lady’s Story

A few days into the build just as we were coming to the top of the walls, we finished up early so we could drive to the Cat Lady’s house. This was a woman who lived in an adobe house a team had helped her build in a little village between two rice fields. We sat on the lawn in her vegetable garden as she told us how everyone thought she was crazy to leave Bangkok and come out here to live. 

“If I hadn’t left Bangkok I would have died,” she said dramatically. I could understand where she was coming from. 

She had bought herself a little plot of land just off the road in this village. The house was outfitted with a large outdoor cat cage of cyclone fencing connected to the house with a cat run alongside the top of the wall that let the cats in through the bathroom window. Next to the house a large outdoor kitchen with wood slat walls sat next to the house and behind it the garage. At the bottom of the garden was a guest house; those relatives who had thought she was crazy now liked to visit, but she didn’t want them in the house stepping on the cats’ tails.

As she told her story she mentioned that city people under 50 years of age were the most afraid of the country. This detail stuck in my mind for it put words to my own despair that the younger generations of my Bangkok family no longer valued the natural environment or even connected with it so enclosed were they in cars and air-conditioning. 

I asked the Cat Lady how she got the idea to come to the country. She said it was through her government job that she was sent out to the country and she could see for herself that the people enjoyed a better quality of life. Her story was both inspiring and odd so focused was it on the cats who were famous and had a following on Facebook. It was a rich lady’s story I sensed since she likely had investments that had allowed her to buy the farm. She grew food just for herself and any visitors. 

“They should have told us how the guest house could be an income,” said Clasina who would later become a pivotal figure in my story. We were riding home in the back of one of the pick-ups together. I too had ideas on how to improve her homestead. She had talked of wanting to improve the fertility of her soil yet she was flushing away a perfectly good source of nutrients that could have been had with a composting toilet.

“She’s just a crazy cat lady,” I said, “she didn’t need an income.” And like most urbanites the world over she likely had never considered digging her composted poop into the garden that would then grow food. Even Jo said people just couldn’t seem to get their minds around it and Pun Pun put their composted poop on fruit trees only.

Chosen Family

The cat lady’s observation of Bangkok people haunted me. I was left asking myself why were city people afraid of the country? I knew it had to do with the rapid growth of Bangkok since the ’80s. It was true that we who were over 50 grew up in a Bangkok that still had a relationship with nature living in houses that were not air conditioned with large gardens to play in. Plus TV was only broadcast in the evenings and of course there were no smart phone driven media and games. 

Now city people flocked to the indoor shopping malls and spent their leisure time inside these hyper stimulating artificial environments to get away from the heat and polluted air. With food courts and entertainment the malls contained everything they could want. In 2017 the photo site Instagram reported that out of the the entire world the location where people uploaded the most pictures that year was from the Siam Paragon mall. People taking selfies with the latest status car or some perky pop art display I guessed.

I could see the allure of these entertaining malls, but going into one made me feel like I was in an aquarium with limited air in my tank so much did I want to get away from the materialistic displays.

The two children who lived at my old house were rarely outside even when their cousins came over to play; they preferred playing games on the large screen TV. How could I relate to children who did not play outside? An entire generation lost to artificial indoor environments I lamented.

When I talked to Peggy about it she confirmed that when Bangkok children came to Pun Pun they were afraid of everything and were also clumsy, falling a lot on the unpaved ground; they were so unused to walking on natural terrain. And I could see she didn’t like to say it, but they were also already trained to feel the entitlement of their class and so refused to do things they thought beneath them like washing their own dishes. This annoyed me even more so much did it resonate from my observations.

My dismay sapped my strength and I looked for support. I had on the first day introduced myself to Robyn from Australia who was older than me (by a large margin she said). At the end of a day of building I saw her sitting on the sidelines and I joined her. “Tired”, she asked me. I told her of my despair at my family making me tired. How I didn’t understand their motives. She sympathized and waited until I offered a strategy to cope with it encouraging me in this positive direction. I felt fortified just from being understood.

Robyn had come to the build with a younger woman she referred to as her daughter which further intrigued me when I met Meredith with her butch haircut. Later I would learn that they were not actually blood related which made me curious how Robyn constructed her world. She referred to a partner too disabled to travel. During our chats she told me about her chosen family of daughters in various countries. I was intrigued by this concept. How did one acquire daughters in this manner? Was there a formal bonding ritual? But I did not have the words to ask her at the time. Just the glimmer of an idea that you could create a chosen family.

My Feet Can See

I took refuge in life at Pun Pun. There were many working volunteers to talk to who came from all over the world with similar desires to heal the earth. I tried out the solar shower and favored the squat toilets in their own adobe building in a central location. (Throne toilets were now offered on the other side.) The guest houses did not have toilets so it was a bit of a walk in the middle of the night. I found I did not need my flashlight as there were floodlights shining from various buildings. The paths were well worn and packed down under my sandals. There was only one part of it that was completely in the dark as it crossed a road. As I walked into the dark part I had the strange sensation that my feet could see. This made me curiously happy. For to be so sure footed was a comforting feeling as one gets older. 

The small children who lived at Pun Pun were also sure footed and agile. They enjoyed a free range existence with few toys. They picked up tools as toddlers and learned to use them as they wandered into our work area. They participated in projects and were sweet to each other. It comforted me a great deal to see teenage boys helping out. Tan now taller than his parents was quiet, confident and free from that cockiness and attitude that marked teen boys I knew in the West. He recognized me and we just smiled at each other across the dining hall too shy to speak. On an outing to visit other adobe buildings I was touched to see Ailsa holding the hand of her big brother Jack who towered over her. I could not remember seeing even one example of such sibling affection in the US.

We took our shoes off Thai style as we entered the guest houses and the dining hall. The tables we ate at were low to the ground so we could sit on floor cushions thus avoiding the need for chairs. This spared us the noise of them scraping on the floor. There were a couple of picnic tables with benches at one end for those not able to sit on the floor. This furniture free life agreed with me, with my childhood sitting on the polished wood floors of Thai homes. 

My study of biomechanics and how the body needs a variety of movement had long shown me that you pay a price for the use of furniture with the diminishment of range of motion which led to diminishment of function of the joints. The Asian squat long seen as somehow primitive and feral had been exonerated by biomechanists as vital for proper elimination. The creative marketing of the Squatty Potty having driven this point home on Facebook. 

There were no comfy chairs in this low furniture life. The beds were hard too being nothing more than a 3 inch chip foam block. (Chip foam is what we put under carpets.) This hardness was better for the body I had read in a medical article. For while sleeping the body moves in such a way as to adjust itself, realigning bones back to their optimum position. 

And then I remembered how I had trained my feet to see. After reading Katy Bowman’s book on foot health I had laid a path of loose river rocks outside my tiny house so I could force the bones in my feet to be pushed around as she recommended. The path also allowed me to walk to my freezer in stocking feet. Six months of this had given my feet new found skills evaluating unstable ground. This was what had given me the sensation of innate knowledge, of “seeing”. 

Shoes, especially well padded shoes with all kinds of support, robbed the feet of the opportunity to gain muscle strength. Too ironic that the more we have sought comfort the worse off we made ourselves. Still I piled on three blankets to ward off the cold temperatures of this climate change era. When my roommate from Taiwan asked why there was no glass in the windows in the hall where we did yoga I told her no one thought it would ever be this cold in Thailand. So we wore our jackets to yoga.

My reading on health had further taken me on a tour of our personal micro biome. How the bacteria inside our guts provided services — everything from synthesizing melatonin to affecting our moods. These beneficial and some not so beneficial bacteria lived in the colon. One of the residents who had also just discovered the microbiome herself showed me a root vegetable she had bought in the village called the Yacon which would make it all the way through our digestive system to the colon. We were certainly enjoying such fibrous foods with the vegetable focused meals that came out of the semi outdoor kitchen. Meals made from scratch much of it from the garden. Not a tin can could be seen in this kitchen. My body responded to this non-material, non-artificial environment. If my relatives could not appreciate this it was their loss.

One morning I woke up feeling renewed and happy. Pun Pun had worked its magic on me. 

A Farm Of Our Own

On the last day I said goodbye to Ailsa, not knowing when I’d make it back again or if I was up to another build so tired had I felt. And perhaps the builds didn’t need me anymore now that they were so well attended. The movement to teach sustainable living techniques had matured since Pun Pun established itself. Now there were some 80 such groups and outfits teaching permaculture farming and natural building methods in Thailand alone. The movement was maturing and the participants reflected this change.

Unlike those who attended in previous years looking for something different to do these woman struck me as serious about actually building a house for themselves. Yilin my roommate from Taiwan had moved to an island resort she had loved as a child and had run tours both on bicycles and by kayak. She was now looking for ways to help the locals make a living that would preserve their way of life. Two Thai cousins already had a garden and were interested in permaculture. Syri, a Japanese woman who had trained as a chef, had her grandparents farm to return to. A young Thai woman grew micro greens on her balcony in Bangkok and sold them at a farmer’s market. And then there was Clasina, a South African woman (married to a Thai) actively looking for land to make a food forest. I had enjoyed her enthusiasm and bubbly spirit.

When I got back to Bangkok my cousin was eager to meet with me to make me an offer for my share of a piece of land the family owned where we had had a factory to assemble Venetian blinds. Her offer was enough to warrant my attention, though my stepmother believed it could sell for eight times that value. But all over Bangkok family land lay locked up in such disputes and what good was that? I didn’t want to be similarly waylaid. So I accepted the offer and she  took me to the bank and gave me an envelope of cash so I could feel my money she said and get used to this new wealth. It did stir in me many new thoughts. I had no real need for things, but with this new wealth I had enough to buy land, not in Bangkok of course but outside of the city, a farm even. And then bam it hit me I already knew someone with just such a plan.

I messaged Clasina asking how much was this farm. I hadn’t been paying attention, but she had indeed been looking at a farm she wanted to buy. She sent me a picture of it. There were mountains in the background as she wanted and in the foreground a banana tree and a structure with a corrugated tin roof. The tin roof was my personal symbol of Thailand before globalization. I had used this same material in my tiny house to remind me of this humble past. It captured something this picture; something I longed for. In American dollars it was a mere $64,000; it had sounded so out of reach in Thai baht at 2 million.

How perfect that Clasina lived near my family home in Bangkok. She tutored English for a living and was planning to eventually live on such a farm having collected a garden full of potted fruit trees. I couldn’t yet move to Thailand for some time if indeed that was my future, but I could have the fun of planning it with her and returning to work on it. It would give me a reason to visit and keep up my family ties and network of friends in Thailand. My family and friends grasped this immediately and supported the plan. 

In short order Clasina and I were discussing land deeds and survey maps through Facebook messenger. I committed to returning in July to buy it. I was overjoyed to have a farm with so many friends already living in the area. My mud hut sisters network was entering a new dimension of possibilities. Some wanted to come and do a build with us even. I was excited by all the new things I would learn and do. My mind expanded to take in this new reality and was nurtured by it. My world so much larger now and made more whole.

Lessons Gleaned From The Dead

On a recent trip to the family homestead in Bangkok for my aunt’s cremation I scramble to find my Thai persona and my role if there was one as the family structure is reconfigured around the loss of her considerable leadership.

Evening Prayers

“How many people are expected for the funeral?” I asked Pong the daughter of my dear departed Aunty Ah Pahdt.

“At least 400”, she said. Yes, I had expected a large crowd too, but 400 was impressive. My aunt had been a leader in her women’s business community and much loved socially with a light hearted laugh that made everything seem easy and fun. She had died shockingly quickly everyone said. No one even suspected she was sick. Once diagnosed with liver cancer the disease took her in two months. She was only 76 so was survived by a large number of her peers. Three buildings  at the temple had been rented for all the guests.

The night before the cremation we gathered for the pre-cremation evening prayers. I went to the temple to help transport the coffin from one Sala (a small open sided building) to another. Seeing her coffin on a pedestal at the end of the room stopped me. Nothing so final as being in such a box. Or so lonely. She had been lying in it since February. Pong had chosen the 100 day mourning period for her as befitting her status. It had also allowed me time to plan my schedule so I could fly all the way to Bangkok for the event. 

The temple compound commanded a considerable piece of real estate in this high end area of Bangkok. Looming just beyond the orange tiled temple roofs was the cement structure of the Sky Train cutting through the visual space much as you would expect of the monorail at Disneyland. Several glassed in office buildings filled the rest of the sky. The temple compound was every bit as busy as the bustle outside for the dead still needed to be honored as befitted tradition. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

The family was required to accompany the deceased whenever she was moved. Thus we walked in a procession followed by her white and gold coffin on an ornate gold and red cart pushed by male attendants who did all the heavy lifting as well. Pong gave me Ah Pahdt’s framed photo to carry and I followed her brother Thop who carried the lamp that had been kept lit at the side of the coffin. An elder monk led the procession walking briskly through the temple compound between dozens of other funereal buildings. 

Once the coffin was carried into the larger Sala the attendants set about bringing in the numerous flower bouquets and laying out the religious paraphernalia for the monks who would chant the evening service. Guests were arriving and performing the prayers of greetings so I took my turn, first kneeling at the foot of the Buddha statue to the left  and then kneeling in front of the coffin. I returned to my seat filled with a sense of emptiness and peripheral grief. I sat cross legged in meditation until this existential void wore off. Only a pair of nuns at the end of the row seemed to notice—Buddhist nuns in white robes. I opened my eyes to see before me my Ah Neung, the niece of my grandmother older than me by two years. She and her sister and I had played together as children. 

“Were you meditating?” she asked as she sat down next to me.

.

“Yes,” I said not wishing to say more. Ah Neung looked around the now crowded room and noted that there were no relatives of my Ah Padt. None were expected. Her mother had died a year ago with a mourning period of the briefest 7 days. (Three was the minimum to allow the spirit to leave the body.)

Pong, Ah Neung noted, had married into a very wealthy family. Yes I was eager to meet them. Her mother-in-law was noble born and had also started a packaged cookie business that had blossomed into a packaged food company and included the box fruit drinks being served that evening. It was this connection with the rich and high born that prompted me to review my outfit—a black v-neck t-shirt and a kilt I had made from fabric with a gross grain texture that was likely meant to line a bag; a belt with a large silver buckle of Celtic design and some simple silver disk earrings from Peru plus black flats. Luckily the protocol of mourning clothes was somewhat democratic discouraging flamboyant jewelry so I felt properly dressed even stylish in my own way. Pong had on yet another beautiful sheath dress; this one with flowers in the lace sleeves. Some of the outfits that were coming in were so sculptural in cut and design it gave the event a stylish modern look amidst so much black.  

I was a long way from my tiny house life. If they only knew how strange I really was. I had photos to show of the tiny house in a little photo album, the kind no one bothered with any more now that they all had smart phones. When I had gone to lunch with Ah Neung and her sister Nor I had shown them the photos. Upon realizing I had no real bathroom Nor announced that I was crazy which was something of a complement coming from Miss Prada whose silver sandals were so highly polished they looked like chrome. I had also shown the photos to the live-in staff at my house—Pryoon my maid since childhood and Wel my Aunty Lily’s maid. Their own rooms were bigger than the tiny house, though not by much; I wondered if they thought I had come so far down in the world I was now poor. But they could see I was so proud of my house they did not question why I lived there. Wel just asked if my stove being in a drawer could be closed when not in use. That was also one of my favorite features.

And there was a picture of me sitting on a meditation cushion inside the house which I had staged to show the relative size of the interior before I filled it with furnishings. Pong upon seeing it asked if I meditated, but made no other comment on my photos. She was still trying to figure out who I was now that it had come to her to negotiate with me as one of the four owners of the gated estate where we had both spent our childhood. No I would not try to show anyone else this strange life I led back in the U.S.

Soon the monks were assembling in a row on the raised platform.  They did their chanting and the congregation chimed in on the chorus. Then we were done. 

I had been invited to join Pong’s in-laws at their place for dinner afterwards. Their place turned out to be one of their restaurants, elegantly decorated with beveled glass, chandeliers and long drapes in a somber grey to mark the mourning of the King who had died last October and would lay in state for a year at the palace as befitting his status. Thus the entire kingdom seemed to be swathed in somber colors with the pubic largely dressed in black. I was glad to discover that his legacy of a sustainable economics through agriculture was finally being recognized and celebrated.

I sat at a table with my corresponding generation mostly Pong’s in-law siblings who readily introduced themselves to me in English. The children also spoke English to me with American accents as they were enrolled at the International School to further their business prospects. Had Ah Pahdt been there she would have introduced me to all the important elders sitting at their own table, but now such protocol seemed to have no place to land. Only after our meal of fusion Thai cuisine did the patriarch of the family come over to ask how my dinner was. Of course I said it was excellent then boldly told him I was reading his memoir (which had been given to me two years ago so I thought I'd better catch up on it on the plane). I asked how long it took him to write it. 

"Oh I didn't write it," he said, "I just did interviews; a ghost writer wrote it and my son edited it." Hmmm. My entire reading of the book shifted from intimate relationship with a writer to something more akin to a television broadcast and I could say no more on the topic. He asked again how the food was.

"Very beautifully presented," I said. Then as we all got up to leave, the matriarch herself came over to ask me who I was. I gave her the formal Thai wai of greeting with palms in prayer position, but she still wanted to take my hand. She was so gracious and her hands so soft I could appreciate that she was a true lady. My hands have the texture of sanded wood so much work did I do with them. I wonder if she noticed. She said she had wanted to meet me because she had noted the family resemblance between me and Pong. I was touched that this was significant enough to prompt her curiosity. She remembered my name the next day when she invited me to visit the elegant lunch buffet laid out at the temple for us as we waited for the cremation. 

Cremation Day

Referred to in Thai as the day we burn her, these proceedings took all day from the talk given by the monk in the morning to viewing the actual fire consuming the coffin. The day’s schedule included the feeding of the monks before noon offered on raised trays to the ten monks sitting on the platform. Then a nice long lunch for all of us giving plenty of time to visit. Plus we had royal patronage which meant more preparations and the sweeping of the site by a bomb squad and dogs. Apparently one of Ah Pahdt’s friends had connections and so was able to summon for her a Princess to light her funeral pyre. (Though she didn’t actually light it since it was a gas oven.) When I asked if this Princess would later be Queen, Well and Pryoon laughed. The Crown Prince was already on wife number three and this one was divorced long ago. But with all the events requiring royal personage no princess need be idle no matter her rank. A throne chair was placed in the largest and fanciest of the three buildings and red carpeting laid down. The immediate family was then coached on how to approach the princess. 

We occupied the time with official photographs in front of the coffin. Ah Padt’s son Thop made sure to include me in the family photos first with his family then with his sister’s family as well. The women having changed into the formal Thai long skirt and jacket. I had on a similar outfit I bought at a street market the day before for $30. The sleeves were not the requisite long sleeves, but no one commented on it. Pong’s husband and sons had on the white uniform associated with the palace for those who bore titles. 

Then the coffin was again placed on the red and gold cart and the family led the procession circling around the crematorium counterclockwise three times before the coffin was carried up the stairs and placed on a table in front of the oven to await the Princess. Finally she arrived with her entourage driving into the compound in cream colored Mercedes Benz. A giant traditional umbrella awaiting as she stepped out of the car. She climbed up to the coffin to do her official blessing then sat with the family as the entire congregation filed past the coffin up one set of stairs and down another.

The Lessons Of the Dead

By the third day of the funeral I had many questions. The day after we burned her we returned to the temple early for the ritual of the ashes. I was pleased to see the two nuns who had been at the service the first evening. One looked about my age and one younger. I asked if they knew my aunt and they explained that they had been Pong’s teachers when she became a nun for the traditional three month period. She had done this service following her father’s death. I asked them if I could ask some questions. They invited me to pull up a chair. Why was a meal served to the coffin every day? I asked. The elder nun told me that that was to show the people that the person was indeed dead no matter how long one knocked on the coffin. And that their body would not be able to partake in such pleasures again. And the knocking was indeed part of the ritual I had observed when the food was served. I asked about the lamp and she said this was to guide the spirit as one would use a lamp in a cave. She told me that the funeral ceremonies were more important than a marriage ceremony as it was a means to teach the people about impermanence and not to get too attached to things. It was also an opportunity to ask forgiveness of the deceased for any wrong doing, she said, in order to end any disputes. I began to see how this worked; that people were learning through death how to hold life lightly.

The ceremonies around the ashes were the most visceral of such death lessons. When we were allowed up to the crematorium Ah Padt’s ashes were laid out on a cloth and formed into a doll size figure. A startlingly, humbling vision this was. It made me feel naked to the bone looking at it. Monks came to chant and then the family decorated the ash figure with flower petals after which the attendants rolled the ashes up in a cloth and put the bundle in the urn. Then we all drove with the urn to the Gulf of Siam where a boat had been hired so we could drop the ashes in the ocean with flower petals and garlands thrown on the water to sweeten the send off. A stiff breeze blew our hair every which way along with our composure and I felt a sense of joy being on the water away from the hemmed in streets of the city and feeling more myself in my casual clothes.

Lunch was at another family restaurant. This one converted from the grandfather’s original house which was set over the water on pilings. I had my photo album along this time and showed it to Pong’s husband who worked for the World Bank representing Thai interests. He asked if I lived in this tiny house full time. I said yes, but explained that I had another house I could go to where I could hang out with my dogs. “I’m conducting an experiment to see how little I can use,” I told him. He seemed to understand my quest. It was after all similar to the King’s message of sustainable living to use as few resources as possible. Inspired by his message many Thais too were shifting their lifestyle to a smaller footprint I would learn later. Educated people, disillusioned by the corporate rat race, were leaving the city and buying a small piece of land to grow food using permaculture technology, They called these mini food forests “smart farms”. I was thrilled by this trend.

I had wanted to sit with the nun’s, but they did not eat after the noon hour as required by their vows so I joined them later to show them my tiny house photos. They perused the photos with interest. I told them the reason I liked my tiny house was because it was very easy to leave it, just lock the door and go. This seemed to prompt a response.

“You are living like a hermit,” pronounced the elder nun, “this is a good start for learning to let go of material things, plants, animals and people.” I was so intrigued by this perspective I did not interrupt though I had rather thought that the tiny house allowed me more time for plants, animals and people.

“It is very difficult to live as a hermit,” she said. “It can be lonely and forces you into contemplation.” Yes for a Thai being alone was to be avoided for fear of loneliness. But I loved the vision of the Hermit a familiar figure in Thai culture from childhood since he appeared as a character in the alphabet and was depicted wearing a tiger skin, sporting a long white beard and a jaunty little tiger skin hat. I had often wondered if he was mad, touched in the head. The nuns asked me how many meters wide and long my house was and compared it to their own living quarters nodding their approval.

Suddenly the elder nun poked my arm in a familiar way and said “Do you know how to leave your body?” 

“No,” I said thinking she was referring to an out of body experience. She explained that in meditation I could learn to leave my body which would make it easier to leave it when the body died. Then I would be reincarnated and each time it would be easier and easier to leave my body until finally I wouldn’t need a body. 

“Yes you get off the wheel of Samsara,” I said recognizing this concept. The phrase was familiar as this was a goal many an ambitious American Buddhist would tell me they were aiming for in their practice. As a writer I was certainly spending my time in the tiny house in contemplation of my life. And when it came down to it I was in essence ascribing to a certain spiritual practice in using only as much as I needed and more telling — disposing of my own bodily waste back to the land. Many thought I was touched in the head to want to do this part, even tiny house people. So yes — I was a slightly mad hermit, an eco monk. 

Finally I had a context for my tiny lifestyle in the Thai cultural experience. One that would set me outside of the status symbols of my high society relatives and the business priorities of money yet still be considered acceptable. I noted that I was the only person eager to speak to the nuns, but that too was befitting of my singular quest. It was all falling into place. My tiny house was a hermitage. My role was to contemplate my inner life, write down my revelations and dispense them to any who would listen. I was more than ok with that. 

It Takes A Village To Live Tiny

In early May after my return from Canada, Catherine told me that she felt our domestic arrangement had come to an end and it was now time for her to live alone. She asked that I move out by September. She said the same to her brother Steve. I was stunned and devastated. 

"Where shall I go? What shall I do?" I wanted to say in Scarlett O'Hara fashion.

"Frankly my dear I don't give a damn," said the the Bay Area housing crisis. I gave myself a month to wring my hands and absorb this shock. I had known my living situation was without a future in the sense that we were no longer in a committed relationship, but I had put my money on the mutually beneficial arrangement of my staying which had been going so well these last two years. That with all the care the two dogs demanded and the shared meals I made, the gardening and household chores I helped with she would want me to stay especially once she returned to working full-time. It was the only option I was willing to entertain because I had been enjoying a $700 rent for so long I would be hard put to afford a room in a house in the Bay Area. Most were double that. Perhaps I should have taken a different path I lamented.

I had been told by our therapist and others that legally I did have the right even in a domestic partnership to sue for half the value of the pooled assets accrued during our 20 years together. I hadn't wanted to do it. I feared that it could get ugly and destroy our friendship. I had opted to see what would unfold if I stayed. Barring her meeting someone else she wanted to live with this seemed like a reasonable expectation. But now Catherine felt this transition period was over. It was time for her to move on, she said. I made another plea on my behalf.

I mentioned that she had, at the time of our break-up, promised to buy me a tiny house on wheels. But when she researched online and saw figures close to $90,000, she said she didn't have the money and she did not foresee selling her house anytime soon (to free up cash). I didn't pursue it since she was allowing me to stay. Maybe something else would unfold I thought.  

"I'll buy you a tiny house," she said just like that as I recalled this discussion. This stopped me mid-argument. It had indeed been my dream to live in a tiny house one day even if I had to build it myself. A very big dream that I knew I would have to do alone for Catherine did not share this vision. The tiny house concept of self sufficient living embodied all the off-grid living ideas that I had been experimenting with for the last fifteen years. To actually live in one would allow me to fully realize my passion for this life. With Catherine's offer of the tiny house my grief and shock were arrested as I remembered the full potential of this vision. And they were not, after all, as expensive as she had anticipated given what I had in mind. A shell that was unfinished inside could be had for $25,000. I accepted her offer gratefully and immediately went to Craigslist to look for such a tiny house on wheels.

My Tiny Life Education

A year ago almost to the day, I had attended a two-day workshop where I had listened to a young woman teach a roomful of would be builders how to build and live in a tiny house on wheels. The workshop was given by the Tumbleweed company formed by the original creator of tiny houses to sell plans to would be builders. The tiny house that our workshop leader lived on was parked on a property out by the coast next to a horse paddock. That she was a cello player with a degree from a university in Europe fit right into my scenario of wealthy patronage hosting such a high end tiny house. The scenario evoked all my experience of negotiating class and racial boundaries in the Bay Area. This was an elitist solution I felt, a diminutive version of a high end house with all the material wants of a Western lifestyle. It changed very little about how one lived apart from having less room to live it in. And it would still require that you had a relationship with land to park it on which implied that you had enough social equity to find a host who would be willing to let you live on their land possibly illegally given city zoning. You could not even buy land and park the house on it because there were laws against "camping" on your land. There were also laws that prevented you building normal houses small enough to afford because most towns had square footage ordinances that prevented such tiny dwellings. Zoning was how the American landscape was divided into economic apartheid. Building the house on a trailer was a way to get around building codes. 

Still I loved the idea of living in such a compact, well designed space that I could custom fit to my own habits. It was an opportunity to design a lifestyle that would incorporate my ideas of how one would live using the least amount of resources possible. In fact I so wanted to experience such a space that I decided to design and build a mock tiny house just to see how it would feel. For this experiment I chose to build a loft in my mother's one car garage which was about the same size as a tiny house being 91/2 feet by 20 feet and was a separate building made of wood resembling a 1920's board and batten cabin. I had in fact already cut holes into the walls for windows when I was enrolled in a construction class a decade ago and wanted to practice my carpentry skills. By returning to this unfinished space for this project I was able to hone my tiny house building skills, practice installing electric lights and outlets, then finish the walls and paint them the white wash I so wanted to see over the OSB strand board I put up for the walls. 

The project not only improved my building skills it honed my mind to make decisions around all the details of living in a tiny space. Intellectually I was able to investigate practical aspects of spacial design, compact storage and how to make multi-use built-in features that would cleverly transform the function of the space. I experimented with salvage materials to see what could be used that might otherwise go to landfill. Bed pillows for instance made very good insulation for walls. Over a six month period of working a couple hours every other day, I put in 230 hours and the garage was transformed from a rat infested haphazard store room into a pleasant light filled studio space with ample storage in the loft I had designed. And all using wood I had saved over the years (and stored in same garage) and what I found on craigslist mostly for free. How I loved that humble building. And how I enjoyed improving the space and adding value to my mother's property. 

Ever Tinier

In considering what size of tiny house on wheels I would choose to buy I remembered something my cello playing instructor had said when I went to visit her tiny house at the bottom of the horse paddock. If she had to build it again she would go smaller, she said, because even in this small a house of 24ft by 8ft there was still plenty of room to accumulate excess stuff. And this included a boyfriend and two dogs. She would go to 18 feet she said. So when I went to craigslist that night to look for a tiny house I was looking for the smallest I could find. And there it was. It was beautiful being all shingled in cedar and having a red door. The photograph of it was so professionally done that it looked like a magazine cover. But it cost $32,500 and that was just too much I thought for an unfinished house. A few days later I looked again and there was a lengthy description telling the story of why this house had been built. 

Apparently two dads, John who sold things and Phil who was a professional roofer, had decided to build their families a vacation cabin. It was their plan to park it on a friend's land. They put into the project the highest quality materials they could find including high end windows and a wood floor. It was fully insulated and wired with electric outlets and wall sconce lights, but was otherwise empty inside. It had taken them a year and a half to build this much, by which time the friend had sold the land and their plans to use it were moot. As I read the description of the house I could feel the love they had poured into this project and how proud they were of it. The interior was lined with reclaimed salvaged redwood fence boards that gave the interior a soft variegated look. This fooled the eyed into thinking it was bigger than it was. The ladder to the loft was built from heavy beams from an old barn and was sturdy enough for a big man. It was small, only 6 feet wide inside and 14 feet long which was perfect because I wanted a narrow profile to better fit on a narrow piece of land. I had it in mind to park it at my mother's house next to the the beloved garage where I had been building the mock tiny house. 

To express my appreciation I wrote the seller a fan letter admiring the quality of the build. Then since such a letter seemed to warrant a reason for my writing it I explained that I could not buy it because my budget was only $23,000 or so. Ten minutes later John called me and said I could have it for $26,000. This was a considerable discount. I would get back to him, I said. I showed the ad to Catherine and she agreed to buy it if it was the one I wanted. And that Saturday I went to see it taking with me my new friend Tim, a carpenter I had met by chance just before I needed help to patch the leaky roof of my mother's garage.

To make sure I had a place to put this house, I had proposed to my mother that I park it on her property. She was not enthusiastic about the idea, but her boyfriend Bill had been more encouraging. "Think of the benefits of an onsite cat sitter," he said over dinner. When I showed her the glamorous pictures of the tiny house she clearly saw how lovely it was and urged me to buy it before someone else did. In terms of home ownership it was not very much money she noted. This was all the encouragement I needed.

Tim and I drove all the way to Hollister to see it. Once I laid eyes on the tiny house in person the height of it was a little scary. It was almost the height of a two story building, but I ignored that warning feeling for it was the height that made the inside bearable since there was so much space above your head. Tim asked Phil about the methods used to strengthen the walls. All was done to the highest standards. I felt confident to mover forward and put down a deposit of $1000 then set about preparing for the arrival of the tiny house in two weeks. I went home thinking I was well on my way to living my dream, but instead I spent a sleepless night wondering how such a high profile tiny house was going to be received in the neighborhood. For much as they seem so perfect a solution to homelessness, they were not legal to live in. It was legal to park them, just as an RV is legal to park on private property, but if you were living in it and the neighbors complained you could by local ordinance be evicted from your own house. 

To quell my anxiety I decided to ask the nearest neighbor who kept an eye on my mother's house, what she thought of such an endeavor. My mother, however preempted this meeting when she called me in the morning and told me she could not allow me to park the house on her property. It was just too evocative; it would soon attract the attention of the county officials. I had to agree that she was right and so I had to choose to either give up this dream (and my deposit) or pursue it in an aggressive manner unlike my usual low key approach. I never liked to ask for anything. 

I wrote up an ad on craigslist in search of a place to park and listed what I was willing to offer in terms of a little rent ($300-$600) and a lot of skills for home maintenance, gardening and care taking. I used the same beautiful picture of the house that had caught my eye. And I posted the link to the ad to Facebook and Twitter and the Yahoo group of my colleagues. People wrote back words of encouragement and ten of my friends  posted it to their pages asking their friends if they knew of a space. I did get some very nice responses both from friends of friends and strangers, but they were in the East Bay outside of my area and far away from clients which I was not prepared to do just yet. Still I felt enormously supported and loved it kept my heart open for a favorable response.

The purchase of this house with no land to put it on would render my dream an albatross that would cost me money to store it and be impossible to sell since few who have such cash are willing to live in a shoebox. 

I went away for the weekend to a house party where I got the opinion of all those present. My closest friends agreed that this could easily go sour, but one friend who had had many adventures in buying property encouraged me to go for it, because whatever happened I would end up owning something beautiful. I might end up leaving the Bay Area to live in it, but it might be worth it and if I left the country I could put everything I owned into it and still pay the same fee for storage as I would for my stuff alone and I would have something to come back to.

That night I picked up an e-mail from an acquaintance I knew from my Buddhist meditation center with whom I had done some solar oven demonstrations. She wrote me that she had a space in her backyard that might work. This was extremely encouraging. As soon as I got back from my house party I went to see her site. It was indeed feasible and well located being only ten minutes from my present home. I envisioned some fine collaborative eco projects in this garden for we had a shared eco sensibility. The space did, however need a lot of preparation in the trimming of bushes and moving of storage units. It was a tight space with sparse room around it. It was clear I would need a temporary place to park while I finished building the interior of the tiny house. 

There was another possibility that had been appearing in the back of my mind. Only a mile away from this site was my childhood home where there was a two car garage and a driveway down a cul-de-sac that would keep the tiny house hidden from view from the street. I could see myself working from my father's workshop using his tools and workbench. Could feel him helping me though he'd been gone now for 14 years and my stepmother had inherited the house.

My father had been a complex and difficult man given to rudeness and temper tantrums in my youth and a peculiar lack of understanding of human relationships, yet he was a brilliant engineer who had built his own computer in order to stay relevant to his work. He had had in all likelihood what we would now diagnose as Asperger's. The circumstances of his long illness with throat cancer that eventually led to his death had been trying to both me and my stepmother. I had not been very patient or diplomatic in my participation in his care while my stepmother had to contend with the brunt of his anxiety and non-compliance to his doctor's orders. I could not imagine myself asking her for any favors so estranged had we become. But as it happened I had recently spent some time with her and had had a chance to renew our acquaintance. 

While I was in Thailand for my mud hut building workshop I had been in Bangkok at the same time as she was, sharing the house my father built on the family compound which he had left to both of us. She was there with her boyfriend, a doctor who was charming and friendly to everyone in the household. So much so that all the difficulties of our family relationships seemed to fall away. He was warms towards me too. As I contemplated whether or not to ask her I realized that I had for so long put her in the roll of the heavy in my life as the figure who had usurped my inheritance, that she might welcome the opportunity to be my savior if I would only ask. 

Unfortunately I couldn't call her to explain to her the situation or even what a tiny house was because she and the doctor were in Germany on holiday. Time was ticking down so I wrote to her through Facebook explaining what I wanted to do. She didn't respond at first so I wrote again giving more details of my soon to be homeless status which could end up with me living in Bangkok in the house we shared. She wrote back with her cell phone and said to call her. She was sympathetic. Her only concern was that she would be able to get her car out of the garage and that the neighbors be informed. Neither was a problem so she said yes. I was so relieved. I had asked for help from so many people to get this house that I could truly say it takes a village to live tiny.

My Tiny Adventure Begins

The day the tiny house rolled into town, the neighbors came out to see the house as it pulled up and stopped on the side of the road.

"I love your tiny house," said a woman as she drove by.

"Pull it in here, I'll make room," said the neighbor across the way. The neighbor in front of my stepmother's house came out to network with my builders.

The two men had towed the tiny house all the way from Hollister. On the pickup towing it was a ladder strapped to the truck rack. This came in handy. The overhanging trees in the driveway did not clear the roof of the house adding to the drama of its arrival. The 20ft ladder was set up to allow Phil to climb on the roof and lift the branches out of the way while the truck was pulled forward. Then another difficult maneuver to back the house into position in the driveway. Once the house was leveled with the jacks at each corner it was done. All that was left was for me to hand over the cash.

When my stepmother returned she and the doctor welcomed me by inviting me to lunch when I came to work on the house. This offering of food was very Thai and made me feel right at home. It warmed my heart to feel so welcomed. I was eager to help with the chores she asked of me in return — hauling away things mostly, much of it my father's old books and papers. Her friends who came by admired the house in the driveway.

I was buoyed up by the reception to the tiny house. My tiny house. I was suddenly a celebrity with this cute unusual big thing. Thanks to the cable TV show Tiny House Nation and a few other similar shows, the phenomena of tiny houses had captured the American imagination. The compactness of such a lifestyle was a kind of antithesis to the horrors of excessive consumerism and collecting of stuff that had made the hoarding shows so popular. It solved the problems of mortgage debt and provided the mobility needed to follow job assignments. Viewers were charmed by the idea (though most did not want to live so small). There seemed to be no end to the cleverness that could be built into them. And now I was a part of this phenomena. An early adopter of a new innovation. Housing 2.0.

I marveled at how I had gone from homelessness to tiny house ownership in a mere three weeks. The tension in my relationship with Catherine evaporated too for I no longer had to be vigilant about a living situation that was forever poised to change. We would remain friends. I came to see that there are those in your life whose role it is to make sure you fulfill your destiny when you are too comfortable or too complacent to get around to it yourself. The tiny house was my destiny now. One that unfolded so effortlessly once I was committed to it that it elevated me to a new level of manifesting my life. The next few months would completely absorb and stimulate every cell of creativity I possessed. Ideas rolled out of my head and were manifested within the week with components that just seemed to turn up. I envisioned myself giving tiny house tours and tiny house dinner parties. 

To join in with the tiny house community I started a new blog to have a record of this new phase of my life and a blow by blow account of the build with photos. It's called "Tiny Red Desk: Living The Tiny Life". (I named it after the color of my writing desk). There you can join me for the tiny house journey.