Vardo first ... then the community Part 2

When market season ended, and harvest season began Pete and I began to dream again
... of community and a place to gather

Dreamers have a pre-disposition to see magic in the most unexpected places, or see the multiple universes potent in the everyday. Here we are day dreaming of a winter home for The Safety Pin Café. A space and place where Sensitives can gather to tell stories, sip hot teas and laugh at the unpredictably weird words that come from between the borders and out the cracks.

Our South Whidbey Tilth community has given us the nod, and is receptive to our vision to enclose the existing Pavilion (the space pictured above) as a fragrance-free and chemical-free space for us to continue to share the medicine of story! Using the years of experience we have gleaned from a life that we thought at first might do us in, we will grow the fairy tale and share what we have learned because we built a Vardo for Two. To read the process of collaborating to involve our local Tilth ...
GO HERE.

Let's see how well we are

"The safe oasis room on wheels became the right answer for us when our savings and resources could no longer pay the asking price for renting unsafe space and gravity was working against us as well. We are aging faster than we can continue to recover from Diaspora. The small space we have built is what we could manage and afford to build. If the choices of others affect us, we’ll move our home. What it boils down to is this: the inconvenience that make up our daily kuleana (Hawaiian word for responsibility) today is no less inconvenient than Earth’s endurances. We have admittedly been part of the problem when it comes to living with environmentally triggered illness. Now we have a chance to be part of the solution. Let’s see how well we do." - from the July, 2009 Interview "A Gypsy Life: Notes from the Diaspora" with Julie Genser of Planet Thrive

We found The Egg and Berry Farm in the summer of 2010. Within weeks Pete found gates to build, and places to use his drill and his inimitable humor. This is him and Eileen (1/2 of a pair), and the foundation of the "intentional community" we had imagined. We share 5 acres of woods and 'aina with these women. The relationship we have with them evolves and we all learn to be the best we can be; and practice acceptance and forgiveness when it's a day when we are being human.

Time has been softening the ground of our being allowing Pete and me to root and build other tiny spaces as gently as we possibly can. The Hale (pronounced ha-lay) pictured above is a metal wash house with hot water, a shower and a double stainless steel sink we use to wash our clothes(by hand with a washboard and a hand wringer). My sewing machine has a place of honor in the corner just inside that drain pipe. There's nothing I love better than a space for stitiching!

To the right the Quonset is our cooking and eating hut, and the writing/computer space. It's also JOTS hang-out, sleeping room and all around get your rubs and company place. Like the VFT the Quonset is 12 feet long and 8 feet wide.

We have four chickens who root around the lower half of the orchard, and give us fresh eggs. We used to live with ducks, too. But no longer. The chickens teach us a lot about being, and becoming dependent; and the ducks taught us about dying and loyalty and I wonder about "animal husbandry" now. Domesticating animals, enclosing them (and us). It's a subject that is tickling at my curiosity. I've not yet come to many conclusions. But wonder about domesticating.

JOTS is the real mistress of the tiny spaces. Above, the vardo porch is one of her familiar lookouts. She was sent to keep watch, and we are the lucky ones. Below, it's her first winter (2008). She found us and nestled her way into a box warmed by a wool blanket and Christmas tree lights.

This fall I took a view of the yellow leaves that brighten the woods with their seasonal magic. Taken from the corner of VFT, the Tall One (Grandmother Pine) anchors us When we first arrived it was she I chanted to specifically, asking permission to live among them. She said, "Yes." The garage (with the chimney that does not get used) provides the attachment wall for The Hale, and the rain barrel catches water.

Thank you girls!

The VFT roof and new canvas porch awning gets covered with pine and fir needles, Pete's sweeping and lifting that chin for the Raven to see.

We're grateful and humbled for the life we live. The tiny spaces we live in are small in comparison to the woods and the Nature that allows us to be here. I'm reading a good book that I'm sure to blog about before too long. It's Philip Shepard's book New Self New World. This is one of those books that offers turn-on-your-head redefinitions; like the difference between "being tired" versus "being exhausted; another loop for throwing at Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest"; and a chunk of consideration for domestication of humans and farming and animals. All of it suits my Scorpio curiosity, and my habit of digging around.

Onward on Route 66, a highway I am told by one who has spent much time on it, "Metaphoric or real, it's a great highway."

Team Up and Inventory your Tools

Moon Time and Prayers

The old moon is in its final stages.  Yesterday and last night was 'Ole Pau.  I remembered to say my prayers of thanks to Akua Kanaloa and Kaloa, mindful of the gods as I went about my repairs (washing pillow cases and our futon cover by hand in a dishpan, and drying them over the heater; recovering from an exposure ). 

"Mahalo Ke Akua, I repeated over and over."  When the sun came up the light from Ka La shone bright through the tall standing trees.  I chanted "Ea La e, ea La e," over and over again.  If during the course of the moon I forget the deeply restorative nature of my ancestral roots, it is during the 'Ole Cycle when I am consciously slowed that I partner with intuition and attend to repairing and patching, reevaluating and giving thanks.

The  exposure during the 'Ole cycle was a self-imposed one.  We have had the distraction of a tiny television and a DVD player upon which we could watch favorite movies, over and over again!  The DVD player began sticking weeks ago.  Pete figured out how to make it work.  But, the 'fix' involved opening up the player and priming the disc like priming a pump or turning the handle on a Model T auto.  The innards of the player got warmer and warmer and finally the smell was toxifying, and my lungs and brain were frazzled.  Re-visiting your decisions and choices ... that's what 'Ole cycles are about for us.  Where is the TV and DVD?  Banished for the while under the tarp house. 

I am recovered with the help of my NAET practices of moving qui down my spine and out the bottoms of my feet; nebulizing glutithione, and using glutithione in a nasal spray.  In addition, we unplug the vardo of electricity at different times and slept for six hours last night without EMFs and it was a very different kind of sleep.

Harvest ... those things that abide ... one year's progress PART TWO

The Pineapple Express continues to chug across the Pacific with its wet bounty.  The rain drops onto the quonset and I have the kitchen to myself.  JOTS is out doing kitty things and Pete and I have traded places between vardo and quonset.  Outside I hear the birdsong of a Toehee hunting up breakfast. 

Harvest is a long-term process.  As this year draws to an end, and Christmas Eve dawns here in the forest I can see the lightening sky through the tall trees.  It's like that with us this Christmas Eve we have many blessings to count. 

Continuing where I left off yesterday there are 3 more things to recount and review from Julie Genser's interview. 

7) openness to sharing resources

TODAY
When we built VardoForTwo we did it knowing the tiny home was primarily a bedroom built to be a safe haven.  We used all the resources we had at the time to build it stout, safe and road ready. 


Home includes much more than a bedroom, but that was what we needed most.  The leap of faith we took with creating VardoForTwo was to believe that we would find people, place and situation where we could share resources. 


Stop 1-The Ledge


We arrived exhausted and fragile.  Our old friends had also taken a leap of faith giving us the spot on their land to land.  We found comfort in that act, made the ledge which had been till then a kind of salvage heap with a grand view of a fresh-water pond.  We refreshed ourselves, our souls and began learning what it took to share resources.


We stayed 6 months and found that even with the best of intentions, friendship has its limit and boundary setting is not an easy practice.  We arrived and lived from a near constant state of post-traumatic-stress and did the best we could to maintain our lives and health.  Educating friends who are not MCS aware is a long-term commitment; change is not easy under the best of times.  We are grateful we had a place to begin and I recognize the limits of old friendships.


Stop 2-The field in Bend


We had no place to go when we left The Ledge.  A long shot of a possibility took us on a journey across the pass to Bend, Oregon.  New friends, made over the internet, also living with MCS gave us hope for somewhere to be for our first winter.  The risk was enormous:  Bend was foreign land, the new friends were NEW, and winter in Bend meant deep winter.


What we learned in Bend is sharing resources with others even when you have an illness like MCS in common is not enough to build an intentional community, especially in winter.  Friendship develops and doesn't grow strong over night or in a season.  We planted seeds of friendship and learned some of the complexity of building community is multiplied when MCS and its myriad symptoms challenge decision making, and social intercourse. 


We stayed in the field for a month, became a friendship with two young people with similar though different dreams for a safe community and then packed up before winter snowed us in. 


Stop 3-Everett


Long time friends and supporters offered us a place to pull VardoForTwo.  The mill town setting would really test the limits of friendship and community.  Once again we were road y weary upon arrival, and yet we were stronger than we were when first we lived with these old friends. 


Tucked into space in front of and then between the large old mill town houses we brought such out-of-the-boxness to Everett.  We arrived in early November, 2009  and left on May Day, 2010.  We had a place to sleep, electricity to warm us and a basement where we set up our kitchen, used a bathroom, and generally spread our chattel into our friends' life.  They were accomodating, and loving.  The limits to there ability to be fragrance and chemical free made contact and socialization difficult.  Many deaths and losses happened during the winter of 2009 and that added to the process of sharing and caring.  We contributed in ways we could and I reached a new bottom emotionally, broke an elbow and arm while out walking and our relationships were tested.


We left Everett when the neighbors next door building a new house were ready to paint the big new mansion.  We'd stretched our welcome and tolerance for the city to a limit and had somewhere to go for a month.  We packed up once again and made our shortest trek for a place to be since our life as Gypsies began three years prior.




Stop 4-Whidbey Island


For the first time in three years we had a house all to ourselves.  We made arrangements with an MCS couple to work for rent in exchange for parking our VardoForTwo in their driveway and use their MCS-safe cottage in South Whidbey Island.  It was a wonderful feeling to be in the woods, parked on flat land with an extension cord fort electricity pulled into a cottage where no one else lived.  We felt an unfamiliar sense of freedom and relief.  We let-down our guard and crashed into the luxury of amenities.


Resiliency comes with practice.  We have had lots of practice and with the VardoForTwo as our kernel of safety our four weeks in the Whidbey cottage gave us time to seek out a more permanent place to stay.  We learned to use timing in our favor:  it was Spring and though the seasonal allergies were real for me (Scotch Broom !) we began searching for a place to be on the Island. 


Having a place where we could tend to the basics:  sleep, cook, bathe, wash and dry our clothes safely, breath fresh air and be in the quiet of the woods, we began feretting out this new place.  We have known Whidbey Island, though never lived here.  We posted a photo and a call for a place to park and hook-up.  People were very interested in the tiny home and we received many calls, first for us.  One of those folk also lives with MCS.  We visited her home in the deep woods of the Maxwelton Valley area but I was reactive to the cedar siding and something else.  We didn't move in there, but Pete has become her caregiver helping her with a sundry of different things every week.  

Whidbey Island has its own "Craigslist" ... it's Drewslist and it works like a magnet for local needs, wants and goings-on.  Through our MCS friend and DrewsList we met our friends who share their land, ducks, chickens and friendship with us.  We rent a space that gives us many ways to share resources:  Pete does all manner of fix-ems, I cook crockpots of food once a week and they have introduced us to the folk and groups who are of like mind and intentions.   

8) laughter whenever possible, if not more
TODAY
There's always room for a little more laughter.  Like today when Pete locked me into the vardo until I settled the checkbook.  Feeling like Rapunzel I made my way through weeks of reconciliation.  Then I walked to the locked door and realized, "Hay, I have the dead bolt lock on my side of the door!"  Pete laughed at me when I stood on the vardo porch, "Wondered how long it would take you to realize that." 

We are often befuddled by the reality of our day, and forgetfull of where our keys, cellphone, mask, scarf etc. are.  Still we get through it and make shift with the short-falls. It lightens the load so much.
9) fragrance- and chemical-free
TODAY

We both maintain the fragrance and chemical - free world we inhabit as much as we can.  We can do that much of the time.  What we can't do is make others change, or be as f&c-free as we are.  We educate and then try to be the example of what we ask of others.  It works sometimes, and sometimes people do what they can and it falls short of what we need.  So, we do what we can to change ourselves: a shift in attitude, a shift in position, a softening of expectation. 

10) a spiritual connection with Earth and Ke Akua (Source, Higher Power) that is the foundation"

TODAY

This is the the partnership of most value in my life.  I try to see the Divine in the everyday.  Pete and JOTS and I just returned from a nice long walk through the woods around the bottom half of the land upon which we live.  The winter starkness is perfect for trimming out trails and reclaiming paths.  Armed with my o'o and Pete with lopers we had a very pleasant time.  The island woods are very thirsty and seem to absorb the drenching rains leaving very little on the surface. We hope there is space for us to bring family and friends to expand the community of this land.  We spend time with Papa Honua (the land/Earth) and tend her carefully.

Intentional community grows with time.  We count ourselves lucky to have time to grow, and thank Ke Akua for the life that grows slow and steady.

Harvest ... those things that abide ... one year's progress PART ONE

I've enjoyed reading the success stories of folk in the MCS community.  With access to the internet again, the ability to connect and share in healing and recovery journeys is the best sort of holiday present.  2010 has been a year of creative expression and change for me and Pete.  Ironically, the internet was not available to us most of this year, so the times when we did have it had to be focused and at the same time accepted as short windows of opportunity .  Blogging and surfing the web were replaced with the hands-on feet on the ground experiences of settling, setting root in a new place.  In May we boarded a ferry with our VardoForTwo and landed on Whidbey Island.  With rain drops fat and sloppy falling on the metal roof of our quonset shelter, and the radiant electric heat baking my right thigh there is time and circumstance for catching up on the wonderful harvest of progress.

First, let me celebrate the successes of sister Canaries who have made wonderful progress in the journey of healing from MCS.

Libby  blogs at MovingBeyondMCS

Libby began blogging about the small and giant steps of improvement and recovery from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.  When her blog was infant she made it clear that her purpose was to chronicle the improvements in her life; the things that work for her; and the stories of others who are finding sources and experiences of recovery.

In 2010, I read how Libby has taken herself on a long and successful road trip to New York.  Libby lives in Canada, and her venture as well as the other posts of change and improvement are harvests of success.

Congratulations and Hurrah for you Libby!

LadyItchalot

Community forums and blogs introduce me to others with MCS.  Though I have had little contact or communication with LadyItchalot, I have read her experiences over the past two years on The Canary Report and Planet Thrive.  The link will connect you with LadyItchalot's current success and recovery in her own words.  I read the two part article on The Canary Report yesterday, and am truly filled with joy and hope after reading it.

This quote from LadyItcalot's story (Part 2) was especially resonant for me:

..."Let me please stress that I definitely still believe that we were chemically injured. What I now believe is that for most of us, there was another stressor at the time of injury. A stressor can be any of many different sources (physical, emotional, medical). MCS researcher Martin Pall addresses this in his NO/ONOO- theory with the eNOS, iNOS and nNOS. Brain retraining expert Ashok Gupta addresses that with amygdala co-wiring, as does Annie Hopper with her neural retraining"

This story of recovery and healing opens to the very broad band of opportunity and possibilities for reassembling life.  "There was another stressor at the time of injury" is a key factor for me.  Now that we are on Whidbey Island and have planted the seeds of a new life into this island community, those other stressors have a chance to surface and heal.  My blogging is one form of re-wiring and using the gifts of growth and creativity to heal.  Patience is necessary in large stores and others recovery stories fan the flames.  How grateful I am to have access to your story LadyItchalot in time to count it as a fine holiday present.  Thank you.

VFT
A year ago last summer(2009) Julie Genser founder of Planet Thrive did an extensive interview with Pete and me.  A Gypsy Life: Notes from the Diaspora has been a gateway ... a sign-post from which I have reviewed our journey.  The rune "Gateway" serves as reminder to review and consider what life has been like in all its phases and myriad forms before stepping through the gate to things yet to be. 

We have planted the seed of a new life, or 'new normal' and need to recount and value the progress we have made.  Here are a few of my favorite sprouting successes.  From Julie's interview with Pete and me I find these successes,and count them as presents.

A quonset kitchen

A year ago summer we were camped on The Ledge in the Woods, and cooked under our tarp-roofed outdoor kitchen.  Our outdoor kitchens have served us well during the summers.  When the temperature and weather changes to winter, other arrangements need to be concocted. 

Here, now though you have no pictures to confirm it, we have the quonset kitchen to enjoy degrees of comfort, warmth and respite like we have not had in a long stretch of time. 

We count this as a present, and give thanks to the guidance and generosity of a very creative Creator.

Intentional Community

This is part of the answer I gave Julie Genser when she asked us to describe our vision of an "Intentional Community" we would like to created.

"I think our original vision for intentional community was more idealistic. With each day and night of life from the Vardo that vision tempers. I see how slowly change comes and try to keep it simple. An intentional community might include the following basics:


1) clean air

TODAY
Here in South Whidbey the air is clean and fresh on most days and nights.  Winter wood burning is an issue, and we need to close up the vardo and sometimes I use oxygen to ride out the exposure to the smoke.  The present comes from having both the vardo which seals well against things like smoke, and having the resources to pay for tanks of oxygen when I need it.

2) clean water

TODAY
We share the well water with our friends  and landladies.  We choose not to use the water for drinking or bathing because the minerals and sediment from all manner of stuff is not the best for us.  What we have done for many years is to carry a portable RO (reverse osmosis) water purification system to filter the well water.  With the quonset kitchen in place, the filter works wonders from the faucet Pete has in the sink.  Slowly yet steadily we filter a half gallon of water at a time. 


HOT CLEAN WATER is the other blessing that comes from like in an evolving process.  Thanks to our friend Joan, who suggested the idea of using a big old fashioned coffee pot as a mini hot water tank, we have a small stainless steel percalator that is our hot water tank.  8 cups of filtered hot water is available any time for washing/bathing/drinking.  It's sheer luxury 8 cups at a time!

3) safe sleeping spaces

TODAY
The Vardo for Two is that for us and we love it, love it love it!

4) quiet times often

TODAY
Dreams do come true when you tether them to the footwork of risk taking and hard work.  Our place here in the forest is quiet often.  The loudest sound I hear now is the air filter and the fat drops of rain on the quonset roof.


We have separate yet close enough to our near neighbors living.  We have established respectful and consistent boundaries between us.  We have learned from the other shared living experiences and grow in our ability to live without unnecessary walls.  Since we live from small space, the outdoors is our living room and the walk between our neighbors home and the vardo or quonset give us plenty of quiet, often.

5) organic local food/growers and garden space to tend and harvest

TODAY
South Whidbey and Whidbey Island as a whole is a mecca of organic, local growers.  We have made connections with them through the Farmer's Markets and through community groups like Transition Whidbey.  Here on the land where we live, nine ducks, three chickens and an orchard of fruit trees give us what we have dreamed could happen. 


There is plenty of maintenance to keeping the critters happy and the trees healthy.  Next year there will be time to do a little more than we have done this year. 

6) respectful human relationships

TODAY
With each camping place we have taken Vardo For Two we learn what it means to be a human in respectful relationships.  That is a process that doesn't happen quickly, and with the lessons that challenge us because MCS makes us 'different' the process is one of learning and unlearning as much as healing from environmental illness.


Growing respectful of ourselves and others means I practice the things that have worked for me as an abiding process.  I practice the principles and practices of The Twelve Steps.  I remember that I am a Makua O'o and I use the memory of my Hawaiian culture as a backbone to connect with a Higher Power. 

Pete and I learn how to sustain and nurture a partnership of equals and give each other the room to be given the tiny spaces from which we grow our home.  Having the quonset extends this option to have separate, though small space.

I'll continue tomorrow with Part Two of Harvest and make notes on the remaining parts of the Intentional Community we envisioned.

7) openness to sharing resources

8) laughter whenever possible, if not more

9) fragrance- and chemical-free

10) a spiritual connection with Earth and Ke Akua (Source, Higher Power) that is the foundation"

Hoot, Hoot hurray this day's for you "Josh Tree"

Joshua Tree loved the land and trees that filled the deeply angled slopes surrounding the pond of Ever. Familiar to him since he was a boy, Josh knew everything about his trees. He worked in town and had little time on the trails for clearing downed limbs and rotted trees but his attentive eyes were always keen to the conditions on the glen. The sound of voices and laughter filled The Family’s mansion. Calliope and T.F. had promised to meet in the river bed mid-way between the lake and the pond of Ever. The river bed, now dry of run-off carved a shallow trail just below Josh and Anna’s porch. “Do you think he’s ever seen us?” Calliope asked as he slithered over the lichen-covered rock bed. “He’s a fully grown man with a love of the Tall Ones and yet he has reserved a connection between us that says something about his Grace. Is it easier you think, for some mortals to remain above water even when the pond of Ever draws everything and any being to the deepest parts?” The orange one was quite a philosopher with interests that always made Traveling Frog chuckle with delight. “Calliope, you of all beings ought to appreciate the changeable nature of a being. Orange in one season and slim green and tailed the next. It seems to me not all mortals care to invite, or perhaps lose memory of the grace to cant the dreams, we remain invisible to them.” “Doesn’t make Joshua any less a good man just because he can not see us,” Calliope was very fond of the keeper of these stretches of stony land. “No, he doesn’t need to see us to believe these are a special Wood and an even more special pond. There’s a season of unveilings beginning now that the Bird and her mate have pulled their wagon to The Ledge. What Joshua Tree does or does not see may be different before the cycle finishes.” Calliope quieted and followed T.F. to the leveled patch of stones not far from the lake’s shore.

- a snippet from Wood Crafting inspired by the real Josh Tree
who shares the land, The Pond, The Ledge and The Trees with
Pete and me

The adventure of life from VardoForTwo evolves with the experiences of building an
Intentional Community. Life on the planet offers us mortals opportunities to Reassemble the ways in which we live with ALL THAT IS. Pete, Jots and I are learning what it takes to share time, place and responsibility. At 60 + four friends and their familiars with natures and personalities as unique as our astrological signs (one Gemini, one Taurus, one Cancer, one Scorpio and two four-legged spirits of unknown astrological beginnings) are intentionally sharing a life.

We are nearly seven weeks into the process and we are learning: respect, cooperation, humility, compromise, acceptance and I practice the 12 steps that I learned while in the rooms of Al-Anon.

Our friends and the land upon while we live inspire me to listen and notice even more attentively. The snippet from my book in the making was inspired by the real Josh Tree. The picture in this post is his original cabin ... built decades past, Pete and I ventured the over-grown trails and brought back a parcel of enthusiasm and excitement. The Fairies and Magicians of the Woods and Pond are alive and well and living in the glen below The Ledge. Lucky us,
Mahalo, Mahalo!

Happy Birthday M & M ... the real Josh Tree.
and thank you Chuck for everything.

Mokihana, Pete and Jots

Sequential Access and Appreciation

We celebrated our first month of living from our wee wheelie home. A wonderful new tradition began shortly after we settled VardoForTwo on the perch of a place that I have dubbed The Ledge. "Shall we have a community dinner once a week?" Pete asked our friends Pellet and Turtle. Turtle was right on it! Sunday has become the evening we share food, engage in general merry-making and bring to the table the shared costs, concerns and events of the week. Our dream of creating an intentional community has begun its sequential access to becoming. While we shopped and tested the pieces and material for the building of VardoForTwo, the slow and organic process of building common values among four friends began. This was a purposeful journey that required teaching friends what and how Multiple Chemical Sensitivities shows up. What is 'fragrance'? Why is it dangerous? What are the alternatives? How do you make the changes to free and clear living? Turtle and Pellet stuck with us over the past nine months, and committed to clearing the common household cleaners, soaps, and personal care products from their home. I am writing from their kitchen right now, and appreciate every moment of a safe 'mother ship' ... a house to which we can connect.

"Sequential Access" is a phrase I ran across this weekend while searching blogs and websites with discuss about living small. A post on the blog CLUBORLOV perfectly described the style of living we are experiencing. Within a small space such as our vardo, things and as it happens ... processes are not available ALL AT ONCE. Our food is stored in a thrift shop Coleman cooler, a gift from Joel our old pal. Block ice chills our perishable food, and to get to something on the bottom, everything on top comes out first. Our clothes are stored in reused brown paper bags under the futon inside the vardo. I roll my clothes rather than fold them flat ... it keeps some of the wrinkles out. To get at my turtle neck, I need to do the sequential access thing, reassembling my tops to get at my choice for the moment.

VardoForTwo from the Ledge in the Woods is the next chapter in our reassembling life here on the planet. It helps to celebrate and renew our focus on what is working, and what things and people we appreciate. There are a heap of sequential process to keep us busy making our chosen life as modern Gypsies comfortable. So, as we experience those processes we will share them. I can tell it's been a while since sitting at the laptop with my thoughts and gleanings. We have some questions to answer from readers who have queried us about building VardoForTwo ... we will get to them soon.

Before closing, I resume the practice of posting 10 people and things I appreciate ...

1. I appreciate Pellet and Turtle, our old friends in the Woods.

2. I appreciate The Ledge, our new home in the Woods.

3. I appreciate the Woods.

4. I appreciate the warmth and safety of VardoForTwo.

5. I appreciate trail therapy.

6. I appreciate joyful moments.

7. I appreciate being able to pick up an old favorite book.

8. I appreciate a place to begin gardening.

9. I appreciate story.

10. I appreciate Pete.

DREAM COMING TRUE WEEK 8

VARDO .. is a Georgian word, a girl's name, meaning 'ROSE.'

VARDOFORTWO the blog is two months old. We have been building our home-to-be VARDOFORTWO since late July, just this summer past. Our goals for building both blog and home-to-be are the same: appreciate (love) what life offers, recognize and fuel the spark of hope that is always present though often buried in the challenges to survive multiple chemical sensitivities and environmental illness, and innovate/re-design and insight revolutionary possibilities when old versions no longer work. This week's DREAM COMING TRUE post focuses on this TRIO of Goals through appreciating the people and places that have given us hope to persevere.



THIS WEEK I HAVE $ 12,800 OF DREAM MONEY TO CONTINUE GROWING AN INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Folk with a vision and commitment to INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS. The specifics of this dream are expanding. So far this I.C. might include:

• Tiny Mobile or Moveable Homes built by and for the individual needs of its community members
  
• With one or more permanent shared buildings; ie. kitchen/dining room; seed storage and growing room; clean and clear laundry facility
  
• Organic gardens
  
• Mobile Chicken coops
  
• A Community-Based Savings and Loan modeled after community banks and investing in 'human capital' projects that are already working

WHAT OTHER THINGS WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN this dream? If you are interested in joining us for brainstorming and creating this I.C. please email us: ssvardoatgmaildotcom

The 10 THINGS I APPRECIATE THIS WEEK ARE:

1. I appreciate Susie Collins who writes THE CANARY REPORT because I see in her the heart of an innovator influenced by the affects of MCS, and fueled by something much greater than illness. THE CANARY BLOG has become a 'one stop shop' for me as I search for inspiration, hope and support for the illness that we have in common. The links and connections she has offered me and a blosphere of others is extraordinary. The personal care with which she send KAHEA (the call, the cry) for support when one of 'the flock' of canaries is down, is the stuff of holiness that makes being human an honorable tag.

2. I appreciate Turtle Woman and Mr. Pellet our friends who have made changes to their lifestyle to prepare their home and their land for the time when VARDOFORTWO is parked in the woods 100 feet from outdoor electrical outlet. These friends are our next step in learning to create an intentional community.

3. I appreciate Doug, Lois and Sigrid, The Mooney-Amona 'Ohana in Kailua, Moksha and Judy, Annette, Audrey, Koa and Phillip, Kaliko and Blake for their kindness and willingness to give us safe space during the year of diaspora and living without a home of our own.

4. I appreciate the beach park at The Tide Pools for the many nights of safety we experienced when there was no other place to be when night came.

5. I appreciate the support of the Seattle MCS group for being here to embrace us when we arrived, and continue to be a source of social and emotional connection.

6. I appreciate the endurance and determination I have that springs from The Source of All.

7. I appreciate my intuition that grows stronger because I encourage her.

8. I appreciate music from the radio.

9. I appreciate walking sticks that work in all weather.

10. I appreciate Pete. Period.

Spreading the word and building community

There's a great string of commentary going on about VARDFORTWO over at The Canary Report. Susie writes:

"One our flock, Mokihana, has an article written about her amazing digs in Coming
Unmoored, a blog dedicated to the small home movement, responsible financial
stewardship, and living greener. Mokihana, originally from Hawaii, now lives
in Washington state and is building a “vardo” or tiny, safe home on a trailer
bed so she can move when necessary to protect her health..."

Mahalo to Susie Collins for her skills, resources, network of followers, and especially her generous heart. Like a true 'coconut wireless' the word is really starting to spread. Click to read Susie's whole story then read the comments from other Canaries, and add your voice to the chirping going on over there.

Our vision for a community of tiny homes is the grand dream. The dream calls to others of like vision, courage, resources and a willingness to intentionally re-invent. Building "Intentional Community" is a lot of work and building one which meets the needs of individuals with multiple chemical sensitivities is an opportunity to transform the limits of the illness. We have two friends in Tahuya, Washington who have begun to intentionally make changes to their lives to include us. It's a lot of back-and-forth, give-and-take. When we began talking about sharing space and resources we did it with the best of intentions and an open heart, stated up front that it was not our intention to change them into people they were not...does that make sense? We'll introduce them sometime soon, and share the steps we're taking to begin building community.

Your dreams, your needs, your examples and your comments for a gentle on the Earth, safe for Canary lifestyle can make a difference. The first poll we posted here is pau (finished). The question was: "What are your feelings about tiny homes?" Eleven votes were cast. Here are the results:

2=I'm fascinated, in a good way

4=I'm curious, and envision living in one.

5=I'm living in one, or intend to build one/have one built for me

How do you feel about a tiny home community? Have you any experience with Intentional Community?