Turning rubbish into dreams

Am writing from my bed-office right now (see pic) ... monday is day for chilling out, just after end of permaculture course last weekend ... (5 super-intensive weekends, phew)!This is the inside of our very first experimental Hobbit-Domo. Still nowhere near finished (will we ever..?) but it's already really great living in here, I feel like a princess in a cosy pod, surrounded by garden and peace. (maybe I'll change my mind about how cosy it is this winter.. unless we get to finish the roof at least)

I have fun remembering all the controversy of disgusted 'eco' people who thought it horrendous that I should want to live in a house made of rubbish (main design spec for this dome is that it be 90% waste materials, and I'm most keen to get the huge amounts of plastic out of circulation and lock it here to provide insulation if possible). ... most of them probably still live in cities drowning in rubbish, or houses which made tons of rubbish to produce. This one subtracts rubbish from the world. ... and it's really comfy too. Am very proud of it.

If you make any serious reading of permaculture ethics, principles and directives .. but especially make use of the hierarchy of resources.. you would quickly come to the conclusion that we shouldn't be building any more houses (we have already more houses in Spain than people and I guess that is fairly normal for a western country), and where we really must (where really there are no retro-fitting options, like here), they should be as tiny as possible and made of rubbish - materials that otherwise would be just polluting or taking up space somewhere.

Hobbit Domos

Design page of our experimental HobbitDomos here

http://fincalunawiki.pbworks.com/Domos

So this is what it looks like now, unfinished and messy* .. and I'd like you please to imagine it tidy and all painted white inside (10-15cm of cardboard roof plastered on the inside with 2-3 cm of papier-maché finished off with lime paint), that we've put on the door, made the nice clay floor and radiant heat clay stove to heat it in winter... and maybe the power of collective visualisation will somehow send some more energy for me to finish this thing, instead of just snuggling up lazily in it, when I have some time.

* Am not always messy, just mostly, and this lovely poem from Erica Jong which I just re-discovered from my youth goes a long way to explaining why.. and how.

The EcoBuilding Paradox

But more about the paradox of "Eco-Building". I think it very ironic that this term is used when referring to new-build made from 'nice healthy natural materials', because it is actually a big contradiction in terms in most cases: we're just transposing our addictions to new things, more things, 'better' things.. and justifying it with calling it more 'eco' ... it's all greenwash, there's nothing 'eco' about it. And nobody seems to think about the logics of using 'natural' materials...

Anyone who has ever farmed or seriously tried to re-build fertility on eroded soils(THE most important activity all humans should be engaged in now) am sure would feel their heart bleeding at the thought of all the tons of straw (precious precious biomass! designed by Nature to feed zillions of species of soil life essential for fertility) that gets locked up forever in clay, when building straw bale houses for eg. (which are all the rage, apparently..).

And they're amazingly popular... which surely should alert us to something (since when has 'popularity' been any indication of sanity, in our destructo-culture?)

Biomass & Earth

Conscious designers would call "straw & clay", "Biomass & Earth", & treat them with the reverence they deserve ...

As an organic gardener, I can safely say that 90% of my work is getting straw to feed our chicken-tractor so the chickens can make compost to feed the worms, and so create more soil. And it's quite hard collecting all that straw ...why it seems sacrilege to me to use this precious (irreplaceable) material for anything else.

Also, I'm a potter, I love clay, and it's because I love it that I would never use it to make walls with (given the alternatives, like stone - if you don't want to do rubbish). And it's because I know of it's amazing properties of clay as a material that I would never use it to build houses, also: there are SO much more appropiate things to build with this magical substance, like our pots and pans, ovens and cookers, because they really can't be done so well with other materials. House walls, on the contrary, can be built with anything, pretty much, so it doesn't make any sense to build them with soil or plant-food (biomass), especially nowadays... what with runaway climate-change and the population numbers we're facing.

Clay takes billions of years to form (nice essay on soils formation here), and although plants can't eat rocks, they do need clay to grow (all good soils have clay in them, it has wonderful properties for plants), so what on earth are we doing (the most intelligent species of the planet... supposedly) using plant-food to make our houses when we can use rocks (or our huge piles of rubbish)?? Especially in times of climate-change!! We should be planting trees instead of building more houses anyway. Yet if you just listen to most people who wanto go live in an eco-village or do the eco-dream ... 90% of the conversation is about the wonderful house they're going to build themselves! Have you noticed?

The only reason we are busier building houses than regenerating soils and planting trees, or that we don't use rocks to build those houses, but plant-food.. is just because it's 'more difficult' for us. Not because it makes any sense. So, as always, it's our comfort that comes first, and sod eco-systems or the climate balance of the planet.

Caves (houses built in rock) are amongst the most intelligent forms of building humans have invented: thermally stable, durable, don't spoil the landscape...

So we're busy claiming some new words, eg. Perma-Building to distinguish really sustainable attitude to human built environments from "Eco-Building", which is mostly (but not always) just consumerism with a new name.

And here are three of my PermaBuilding heroes: the first one is a beautiful philosopher-poet, long dead, who famously wrote On Houses, the other two are modern-day nutters I find wonderfully inspiring :) ...

On Houses

Kahlil Gibran

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.

For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.

Your house is your larger body.

It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hill-top?

Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.

Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.

But these things are not yet to be.

In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.

And tell me, people of OrphaIese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?

Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?

Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?

Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?

Tell me, have you these in your houses?

Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host and then a master?

Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.

Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.

It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.

It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.

Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.

It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.

You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.

You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.

And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

Garbage Worrior

Then there are these two: Garbage Worrior and Spiral Island Man (super-heroes well deserving of their names :)

And I just ADORE this guy ...

Spiral Island Man