The Simple Life?

I've been having an affair.

Kim, Bodhi, and I are housesitting for our friends Ryan and Erin while they take their two little ones to visit family in Minnesota. Ryan and Erin have a beautiful home in the Hawaiian Shores subdivision. As the sun goes down nightly, we sit on their covered lanai and look out at the vast Pacific Ocean. The expanse goes on, seeming endless, until it touches shore with the west coast of the Continental U.S. As the sun goes down we step into the house, I flick a switch and lights come on magically powered by some electric source far, far, away. I go into the kitchen, turn on the faucet and a flood of water, clean enough to drink, pours over my hands and onto the evening dishes. Best of all, after Bodhi is down for the night, I step quietly into the bathroom, take off my clothes and move into the embrace of a perfectly pressured hot shower.

I am in love . . . I think.

What happens when the romance dies?

A few months ago we posted up a blog titled Humanure 101. It showed the steps we take to manage our bathroom waste out on the land. In the entry, the whole process of taking the five gallon buckets out to the compost heap, dumping,and washing had a fiercely rugged and romantically independent feel to it. A few days ago, I was out at the compost heap piling our human waste into the bins and rather than feeling rugged, I felt grossed out.

Our water system, which a few months ago seemed, to me, to be something grand, along the lines of the Roman Aqueducts, just recently produced water with little mosquito larvae wriggling in it.

There have been many occasions where Kim and I have huddled around three flashlights to read at night, our rechargeable lamps completely crapped out because the solar panels didn't charge them enough during the day. It felt a lot like one of the opening scenes of Sam Mendes' 2009 film, Away We Go. Two of the main characters, Verona--played by Maya Rudolph and Burt--played by John Krasinski, sit in the dark of their living room. It's the dead of winter and the electricity is out, they are expecting a baby and they are unsure of how life will unfold for them.

Verona: Are we screw ups?
Burt: What do you mean?
Verona: I mean we're 34.
Burt: 33
Verona: We don't even have the basic things figured out.
Burt: We're not screw ups.
Verona: We have cardboard windows.

So are we screw ups or are we just people with some 21st Century sensibilities living like 19th Century pioneers?

One of the initial thoughts we had as we embarked on this journey to the land was that we wanted to live deliberately. Like Thoreau we wanted, " to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Thoreau and his New England Transcendentalist sought refuge from the industrial ecomomy amidst nature and the simple life. The Transcendentalists lacked the urban rebelliousness of their European Bohemian counterparts, but they both stood in opposition of the Bourgeois sensibilities of the time.

So are we just expressing some kind of Bohemian rebellion out in the woods? Aren't you supposed to get that kind of stuff out of your system in your 20s?

The other day, Kim, Bodhi and I were having a meal in the outside eating area of Island Naturals in Pahoa. A group of white 20 something girls with rasta dreads were on the same long table as us. They excitedly talked about the communal living situation they were in and how cool it was that there were no showers and only cold baths and how fantastic it was to live without electricity.
After they left, I looked at Kim and said, "Oh my God! We're living like 20 year olds."
Kim smiled and corrected me saying, "No, at least we own our land."

At that moment I wanted to go back to Erin and Ryan's place open up the freezer, feel the blast of cold air hit my face, fill my glass with endless amounts of ice, sit on the sofa basking in the glow of light powered up by those magicians at HELCO, sipping delicious cold,cold,cold water with the condensation getting my hands wet as I fantasized about my next hot shower.

Kim and I are pretty simple people, but admittedly we do really like nice things. Writer David Brooks coined the term Bobo--Bourgeois-Bohemian to describe those that have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. According to Brooks, for example, a bobo believes that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall so that you can experience the Zenlike rhythms of nature is a necessity. We have found ourselves in the midst of this nuptial relationship.

Can we, like Thoreau, suck the marrow out of life while zooming down the highway in our Volvo XC90 with the air conditioning booming out full blast? Can we live deliberately while enjoying some of the fine amenities 21st Century living has to offer?

I believe the answer to both questions is a resounding "yes".

I am reminded of a story I was told at the Huna workshop I attended in March. The story was about Master Kumu Hula Uncle George Naope. The story goes that Uncle George was talking to a group and asked them if anyone knew, "My Little Grass Shack." Hands went up in the air and spontaneously the audience starting singing,
"I wanna go back to my little grass shack in Kealakekua Hawaii. . ."
In the midst of the audiences' rendition, Uncle George leans into the microphone and says, "Not me."
This man, who was the keeper and steward of a very sacred and very traditional art form, more than happily embraced the modern world. I believe that he was aware of himself, so that he could function deliberately in both the modern and traditional worlds.

I believe the key to living deliberately is attentiveness. Are we truly attentive to what is going on around us? Are we aware of the elements around us, whether we are dumping our human waste into a compost heap or downloading a new app onto our iphone? Are we aware that we live in a vast field of energy that connects all of us and that from this vast field we create our reality?

Awareness will guide us in the right direction to keep life zesty and romantic.
Awareness will help us realize how delicious the marrow is as we are sucking it out of life no matter how we do it.

Isn't it ironic that Thoreau used the marrow metaphor even though he was a vegetarian? I guess crunching all the fiber out of a carrot stick isn't as poetic.