… if it costs you, and doesn’t serve you, it harms you….
(c) 2019, Davd
It’s below zero tonight, even in Fahrenheit1. The snow is deep for Canadian Prairie winters (but would be shallow in climates that are equally cold and less dry, this same time of year.) The air sneaking in from outside smells of wood smoke, and Fritz, my canine spirit guide, is curled up on his Ikea camp mattress. Even indoors, it’s cool enough that he might be less comfortable stretched out.
Overall, though, he is comfortable, and so am I, in this simple rented camp — more comfortable than we would be in fancier quarters. We have what we need; and a few things we might not need but find pleasant, like an extra pillow for me, enough extra clothing and footwear that i need not put on something when it is wet from its last trip outdoors, and his breakfast soaked in broth made from meat drippings and fat.
We moved here at the end of November, from a much nicer apartment in another central Alberta town about 75 km from here. I prefer this one, for reasons that might be too androcentric for many women to appreciate.
Our previous camp was a third floor apartment, this one is near enough to ground level that i can open a double glazed “patio door”, pick up the end of Fritz’ tether, and “tie him out” while i stay indoors, do kitchen chores, even study or pray, while he smells all that outdoor information that I cannot smell, hears the outdoor sounds that i can hardly hear [some that I cannot hear at all], maybe chews on a bone or curls up for a rest that helps him cool off from this human temperature apartment.
He couldn’t do that from a third floor apartment. If we had a real home, he could do more; but at least, this simpler camp is better for him than the Nicer one.
We have been homeless for more than three years (since July 2015 to be exact.) For those three years plus, i have paid rent. To call any of the dwelling places i have rented, “home”, would be a lie or at best, a serious mistake. To call most of them “camp”, is more accurate. A good camp is not to be scorned.
I have begun an essay on what a home is, or you might prefer to say, what are the qualities of a real home. Real, fully qualified homes do exist, and it would greatly improve the human condition if most men had one, and most of those men lived at home…
.. if that be possible.
Most Canadian and i strongly suspect, most “American” [US] men are homeless in the strict sense of “home”. What makes it impossible, as best I can tell, for most men to have a home these days, should be the subject of that essay which is not fully written. Before I publish that, i might ought “post” one for Valentine’s Day. (That “Valentine blog” is finished in first draft, and i intend to publish it early next month. Now would be too soon.)
Meanwhile, it is “the dead of winter”, and as a homeless man with enough money to pay rent, i am camped in a rather simple apartment. The cost is one reason; i pay maybe 60% as much as i paid for the nice one.
Meanwhile, for a man living in an apartment whose rules are not of his free choosing, nice can be more of a burden than a blessing.
If the apartment be “furnished”, he may literally be required to sleep in a bed he dislikes, in order to be permitted to sleep in a bed at all. That condition, sleeping in a bed not of one’s choosing, in a bed vs. which one could readily improve but are not allowed to improve, sure as Hell is not home. I remember sleeping one November night alone in a double bed, and the next, on a single width mattress on the floor2. I slept better on the floor, on a good firm mattress of my choosing, than on a wider softer mattress half again as thick with a “box spring” under it and a furniture frame under that.
Using bedding i neither need nor want, like a mattress too soft, like a “box spring”, like needless width, does not serve me. It did remind me that I was not home and with rules like that, that apartment building could never become home.
For me, no conventional rented apartment could be home. A room of my own in a building where i share kitchen, dining area, study and maybe even prayer space, with men I know and have chosen as friends, could be home. I’ve roomed in two such buildings; both were called monasteries.3 They prove by existing, by having existed longer than one man’s adult lifespan4, that home among brothers one did not “grow up with”, is possible and can be durable.
The third floor apartment i left at the end of November, had a television set, and “TV cable”, which I never used5. It had wireless Internet access, which I used to read news websites and download some libre software; here I tether my mobile ‘phone for e-mail and weather forecasts and the rest can wait for my trips to the Public Library.
I rented that third floor apartment for a month and a half, paying more than 1/3 my after-tax income 6, because i respected the town where it is located and wanted to work on a project with some people there. In that month and a half, i did not find more economical housing “in town”, and going to and from the outdoors by elevator [or two flights of stairs] became tedious. The local work went slowly and met frustrations for which i do not blame those people.
One thing I prefer about this simpler camp, is a sngle bed with a basic firm mattress. Another is not paying for amenities I do not use. Being able to tether Fritz is valuable, and more comfortable, for us both.
Fritz gets more outdoor time here. I get about the same amount, on about equally interesting roads, trails and sidewalks. I have friends in this town from 2016 and 2017… I miss not having the friends in the other town within walking distance; but instead, i have some here.
If there were a fire, i could go out the door where I tether Fritz; it’s an easier escape.
I have a really crude desk made up of two filing cabinets, a piece of “OSB” stiffened by two small pieces of scrap hardwood (beech? yellow birch? It does not matter for the purpose). That desk serves me better than a fancy one the nice apartment loaned me.7 I’m not using all the cabinet drawers for papers, so some hold clothing — probably not nice, definitely not fancy, but quite satisfactory for getting through the winter.
The table in the kitchen, i built from junk. One piece of the junk happens to be a smallish door with one relatively good side, that i would not use for a door even in my scruffiest home, but the good side of which makes an easily cleaned work-table top. The one in the furnished apartment looked nicer, but i am making uses of mine that it might not have been strong enough to serve.
The chairs by the table, Fritz and i found in an alley while out walking: Solid oak. They could benefit from refinishing; if i had a home i’d have a place to refinish them.
Fritz’ bed — 22×46 inches of old Ikea camp mattress, on the floor where the air is coolest, because he wears his fur coat all the time — looks more ‘in place’ here than it did in the fancy apartment.
That’s enough, methinks, to convey The Comforts of a Simpler Camp. They are working, functional comforts:
‣ A firm single mattress for a man who has slept alone for 15+ years and expects to continue;
‣ a door for a canine to go outdoors on a fairly long tether, by himself when he belongs outside and his human ought to work indoors.
‣ a crude, some might say ugly desk that meets my needs;
‣ a sturdy, easily cleaned kitchen work table
‣ two strong oak chairs, comfortable too.
‣ … and no amenities that neither of us uses, to work around and pay for.
I do hope to have a home again, next winter, “and my brothers sitting in it” as Thomas Merton wrote in The Seven Storey Mountain. If it is as crude as this winter’s camp is, we will be working on making it not “nicer”, but more comfortable and pleasing to our working and social lives.
My file cabinets will still be with me; perhaps some brother will use one of them for storing his paperwork. The sturdy work-table might be in the kitchen, or somewhere else where its kind of work is done; perhaps we will have plants on it if it has a sunny window. (It couldn’t have had plants on it by the Nice Apartment windows: Fancy carpeting and no sun.)
The sturdy oak chairs might be refinished; they are too good to throw away. My bed is likely to be the same, perhaps it will stand in the corner of two walls so i can use 3-4 pillows to read comfortably in bed.
My ersatz desk is likely to be doing other work, but i could take it apart, move it compactly, and put it back together to use until i have one larger in surface area. The second hand office chair i sit in will stay with me; it’s good enough. Fritz will probably be sleeping on the same mattress; maybe he will have two of them, one on a porch or in a room where he can sleep cooler when he chooses.
In a six-letter F-word, my home will be frugal. It will provide more rather than less comfort and subsistence for our expenditure of time and money… as does this camp, in the meantime. For me, frugality is comfortable. For all, in a Canada where ecological scarcity is widespread, it is a moral imperative.8
Notes:
1. That was factually true the evening i began the draft; it might or might not be true tonight. The long-run average low temperature here in an Alberta town east of Edmonton, is definitely below 0F for today and every previous day in January. It might get up to 0F by the middle of February, but I’m not sure of that.
2. There was a sheet on the mattress, but no bed frame under it. I’ve built a bed from 2x4s and a part sheet of OSB [formerly called waferboard, it’s made from poplar] since that night, and sleep comfortably on the same basic mattress, which I bought new a few years ago.
3. One, i left because they would not let me keep a 11 year old, loyal, excellent dog for his remaining active lifespan. I was not willing to abandon a faithful friend; they were not willing to let me keep him in a “hermitage” and sleep there, nor among the monks, so that i could return his fidelity.
The other monastery was Francophone, and my French is not that good.
4. The Orders to which these monasteries belong are centuries old; it is Canada that is younger than the Orders, and hence, these Canadian monasteries are not yet centuries old. (The same could be written about Buddhist monasteries.)
5. By the time i have done my computer assisted writing and studying, I would rather read a book printed on paper, cook, pray, or go outdoors.
6… a criterion for how much rent one ought to pay; paying less is OK, paying more leaves relatively little for food, clothing, vehicle costs, ….
7… whose file drawer was too narrow for a regular file folder, and whose top had holes in it that didn’t suit my computer cables, but did foul up my use of the mouse.
8. Somewhere there are men, probably one or more within bicycling distance if the roads were free of ice and snow, who cannot afford as much subsistence and comfort as even this frugal camp affords me. I have no moral right to waste what another man needs.
