Seemingly, we humans live our lives so that we can have a house. Well, and food.
Isn’t that the way it’s been since man opted to come down from the trees and stopped dragging his knuckles on the ground?
It is certainly not a new thing that when we are not collecting the best palm fronds for our thatched roofs or installing new, sound-proof, energy efficient, double-pane windows in our craftsman view home, then we’re out hunting or gathering or, shopping.
Linda and I have managed to fall into line with the rest of the sheep, baaaaing our way to and from our jobs so that we can have toast for dinner in our own hut in a place called America.
Our hut not the worst one on our street. It’s not unattractive and it’s comfortable and well appointed. Yet oddly, although inside our hut we have a large piece of cushy, sectional furniture, a luxurious, leather couch and chair and a queen-sized bed with a goose feather filled comforter, we often spend a fair amount of our free time in the room usually reserved for an automobile.
When this hut was constructed in 1985 the builder added a large room, actually the largest room, just for automobiles.
All the huts on our street have similar auto rooms. Some people don’t use them for their automobiles. Some use them to stack up cardboard boxes filled items that they once shopped for but no longer use.
Some of our neighbors stack these boxes to the ceiling and if they could they would stack them all the way out into the street. But if they did that they would not be able to close a door and conceal the fact that they live as pack rats.
The auto room attached to our hut has enough room for two automobiles to live. But we only let one of our two automobiles stay in there.
That’s because we have a lot of cardboard boxes filled with things that we once shopped for but no longer use.
But like some other huts on this street we get further utility from our auto room. We have wooden cupboards installed in there that are filled mostly with things that we once shopped for but no longer use. There is also a wooden bench that serves as a place to put various items that may need some work done of them or some sort of repair or possibly a coat of paint.
Around this workbench we have also placed two tables that create a U shaped space that we use for a variety of things.
One of these tables is a drawing table that Linda uses to create illustrations using a variety of media. On the other table is an old G4 Macintosh with a wireless connection to the network inside the hut. We use this machine to surf the net or listen to internet radio when we are “working” out there.
In this space I’ve also put a drum machine and three electric guitar amps. If I’m going to plug-in and play electric guitar poorly, this is where I go.
In or around this space we’ve also added a high studio chair and a comfortable but old chair that once occupied Linda’s living room.
We like this space in our auto room a lot.
For some reason we seem to like to spend Friday nights out there. We keep the over-sized, auto room door wide open, drink too much Jameson, listen to or play music poorly and yammer into the night.
The folks who live in the huts directly across the street from us likely think we’re crazy. Which is fine with us because we actually think they are psycho. They have boxes stacked to the ceiling inside their auto rooms even though they have 4 or 5 cars parked in the driveway and on the street.
Last night, as Linda and I were drinking too much Jameson, talking too loudly and playing guitar poorly in our auto room, it suddenly began to rain.
This came as a completely satisfying surprise to us both and since we both worship rain.
Rain worshipping is something that happens to a person who lives in an environment where the sun may shine every single day for 8 or 9 years straight.
We love rain so much that we actually have a plan to eventually move to a different hut in a different place in America called the Pacific Northwest where it is known to rain every single day for 8 or 9 years straight.
We love rain so much that when it does finally come, we get out multiple cameras and start taking pictures of things we look at every day but we never see wet.
Last night, after a few hours of drinking too much Jameson in our auto room, we stood outside in the driveway. We bent ourselves over backward and felt the rain on our faces and our chests and our necks.
Then we came inside to one of the smaller rooms in our hut and crawled up into our queen-sized bed with a goose feather filled comforter.
We drifted off to sleep as the sound of rain poured through leaks in our deteriorating rain gutters and splashed onto our barbecue and deck box and other things that we shopped for and still use, in the backyard behind our hut, in America.