Hutting

I have some pretty hippie believes under my yuppie exterior. One of those is a firm belief in the power of manifesting your destiny. The first time it happened to me, I was living in LA. I'd just ended a 6 year relationship and I was house-sitting temporarily in a lovely house in Larchmont. The only problem was that I was nesting big time, dreaming of having my own home and making it mine. I recognized this gut desire, and rather than making myself crazy, I decided to start a 'dream home journal'. I pasted in images of what my dream home would look and feel like, creating a virtual home for some far off time.

Three months later,  I was house hunting on craigslist. One post stood out to me, even though it didn't even have photos. I emailed the owner and rushed over there at 8am before work. I walked into the granny cottage and immediately recognized the home in my book, bright yellow kitchen and all.

That's when I became a believer. I suppose what I really believe isn't that cosmic. It's simply a matter to clarifying what you want, and then making a record, so you recognize it when you see it. Last week, I met McKendree who's started a project called The Den Transaction. When I met her, I thought of all my friends who should stay in her Den. But when I got home and I realized that I was avoiding the obvious... that I wanted to stay there. I opened my book up, and there it was, plain as day. I'd manifested this shit:

The funny thing was, it was the same as the last time. When I made this page, I was dreaming of a time far off, when I had money, leisure and time. I thought it would be in the country, far away from reality. Definitely not now, in the backyard of a friend in Bed-stuy. But that's the awesome thing about creating a book like this, you recognize it when you see it..

So, next month I'll be staying in McKendree's back yard shed. In exchange for the lodging, I'm hoping to make her a free-standing outdoor oven (Bottom right photo... see, it was all there!). When I first decided to do this, I felt a bit guilty taking a spot. After all, I have a perfectly good apartment less than a mile away from the cottage. But, I realized that there's something deep here for me that I'm really interested in. There's a social movement right now in Scotland called hutting. In America, only the rich have a country house to retire to on the weekend or summer, but in Scotland hutting was a form of working class retreat:

"By rediscovering how previous generations avoided the alienation of paid work we can discover ways we ourselves can be freed from the alienation caused by consumerism’s infiltration into every aspect of our lives." Bright Green

Seems I am a hippie after all.