After years of lusting after Gavin’s fine old Portland house, with its spacious, clean kitchen and bright hardwood floors, I have finally established residence there. Apparently Gavin has long thought about inviting Thomas and I to move in, but he is a long-term thinker… it took much poking and prodding to finally get a stack of paperwork that ended with a very reasonable rent and a bright shiny room. For once I’m not the most OCD person around (I should say ‘for twice’, as I expect my mom could contend with Gavin and myself for neatest).

And already I’ve made liberal use of the kitchen: first Gavin ran into some computer trouble, and to soothe his broken robot heart, we made (supposedly violet-infused) cupcakes. Mainly they tasted like chocolate souffle, or how I imagine such an egg-based concoction would taste like, all melty and gooey. Basically a fluffy, warm ganache. I had two, plus liberal lickings, over the course of the afternoon, and despite being sweetened with agave nectar, I was buzzing around with the most tremendous sugar-high I have ever had. My head was fizzing like soda pop and I was rolling on the floor spouting silly nonsense when Gavin and Thomas sent me outside to run around the block. Several times. What a rush! What a headache…

Thanks to Twitter, when Gavin’s friend Suz came over for dinner, she already knew I was the one jacked up on sugar. Fortunately I was calm enough not to make a fool of myself by way of introduction, and we hit it off right away. We made the most wonderful pair of Indian dishes, full of spices without the heaviness of North-Indian curry sauces. Chickpea, eggplant, spinach stew, and spiced cauliflower and potatoes. It was wonderful having all of us working together in the kitchen, producing a scrumptious dinner and great conversation. I even have another job opportunity, using my OCD powers to help Suz organize her basement! Is helping people find bliss in clean, beautiful environments design? Does this count as making the world a better place?

This morning I made pattypan muffins from a summer squash I found down the street — thank you, free piles! I basically took this recipe and used pattypan puree, nixing the spices, and using a processed combination of rolled oats, shredded coconut, and Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free mix in place of standard flour (250 grams’ worth). I was also super-cool and made my own baking powder out of bicarb and cream of tartar. The end result of this ridiculous experiment? Scrumptious! Even has Thomas’s seal of approval! And you know it’s good when he turned down a bacony invitation to quit his “vegetarian at home” experiment with hardly a hint of regret in his voice — all that muffin in the way, you see. Got that? These muffins beat bacon.

Okay, so it wasn’t a fair fight. But as I try to cobble enough income together to scratch the surface of my monthly expenses, a muffin (or two) topped with jam is darned comforting.

I found an injured squirrel on my way back from work today. Its leg was broken, and it dragged itself across the sidewalk to avoid me. I couldn’t bring myself to leave it, so I called my brother at work so that he could find numbers for various animal rescue facilities. After many frantic calls, including one 911 call, and finally getting ahold of the Fish and Wildlife Services — just as I was arranging a pick-up — the squirrel died in front of me. Poor thing, it must have gotten hit by a car. I wish I could have done something, instead of watching it die at my feet as people went obliviously by and listening to recorded messages about how useless all the animals services are. They eventually suggested I let Nature take its course… I know there’s no animal emergency room, and I doubt anyone could have done anything to save it, but not trying would have left such a wound on my conscience. And still I felt so utterly helpless — not to stop Nature, but to make the squirrel’s death something useful and meaningful instead of the byproduct of a busy street. Perhaps if it had died curled around the tree where I found it, it might have decomposed into rich nutrient soil… now it will just be a corpse for someone to grimace at and throw in the garbage. Crap.

The Village Building Convergence is like an impossible dream. People from all over come together to create beautiful structures, tasty food, lush gardens, entertaining art projects, and productive communities. How is this possible? The speakers were all trying to answer this question to some extent, or else they came at it the other way around: How is this not possible? What do we do that prevents people from taking care of their own neighbors and their immediate environment? Monday night, Karen Hery talked about her Swap Shop at the Sunnyside School, which started as a little get together with some friends and grew to encompass an old Masonic building and the other groups who co-inhabit the space. In her experience, one group inevitably wants what the another is dying to give, so getting groups together and working through their differences is most fruitful. Working with kids and adolescents, she also suggested giving jobs to the least competent person still able to do it rather than experts — this allows the inexperienced members to grow while the more experienced ones hang back. Other speakers talked about the importance of human labor, which is the most carbon-neutral way to move, build, and repair things — especially when we have an abundance of humans on the planet! There’s no shame in laying down paving stones, especially when the same stones can be used for generations.

A community center in a Canadian neighborhood called Fernwood had a similar story to tell, but they managed to transform a whole community. A big boarded-up building downtown attracted drug-dealers and prostitutes, but the folks at Fernwood NRG bought it and, with the help of the local community, fixed it up into nice apartments. The drug-dealing and trick-turning stopped — not to say these things are inherently bad, but they appear to be symptoms of an unhealthy community — and people became proud of their neighborhood. The speaker talked about acting FAST — sometimes patience is not a virtue, and causes you to miss opportunities! “Get your wiggle on!” Throw yourself out there and let the universe catch you! It reminds me of the Miles Vorkosigan books I’ve been reading, which basically follow this technique to the maximum: time and time again Miles gets himself into a huge mess, but every time has a stroke of brilliance which turns the mess into something amazingly functional — like a mercenary army, for instance.

All this talk of excitement and activity got me practically leaping out of my chair! But it has to be tempered. The woman from Fernwood told a story about trying to rescue her kitten from a tree, only to get clawed on the way down. Her Russian neighbor said helpfully, “Do you see many kitten skeletons hanging in trees?” No, of course not. Sometimes the best strategy is to not get involved, and the trick is to balance how involved you get and the speed at which you try to introduce change into the community. Karen Hery said that some people, like herself, practically live in community, swimming in it, only returning home to do laundry — others surround themselves with their homes and make little forays into community. I love how non-judgemental she framed this difference, because I am definitely towards to latter side of the spectrum. As much as I love the idea of eco-villages and co-ops, I need my own space, especially my own kitchen. This is especially clear to me as a renter — I feel like I’m just visiting, and I’m bursting at the seams to build a house and plant a garden!

Thursday night, the speakers talked about seed-saving and permaculture. Now, being brand new to this gardening business, it seems quite stupid to do things any differently. Why in the world would you destroy your vegetable garden every year only to buy brand new seeds and start from scratch? All the plowing and sewing… and now it takes work to get vegetables to perennialize again. But you can do it, and it’s totally worth it. I finally got out to a site yesterday, and helped plant a food forest. Basically a food forest is a garden made up of multiple layers of (mostly) edible plants, from fruit and nut trees to berry bushes to herbs and ground covers. You group plants into guilds, with plants fixing nitrogen or building up nutrients or attracting beneficial insects, and everything is positioned such that they get enough sun and rain. The way you design the garden allows it to produce hundreds pounds of food a year with almost no maintenance — you just go and eat the deliciousness!

I love how the more sustainable practices can actually be easier and more convenient. Another example is using geothermal to keep your water supply or your house at a constant 50 degrees F, just by digging down a couple feet. This combined with the fact that radiant-floor heating is so comfortable you can get away with heating your house to 65 degrees means you only have to heat everything up by 15 degrees. That’s easily achievable with a passive solar hot water heater, and you can even collect the water from rainfall. Best of all, the same design keeps your house cool in the summer! No heating or cooling bills, just a little electricity for the water pumps, which you can generate with little solar panels.

My favorite speaker of all was Robert Bolman. His talk was “The Elegant Collapse: Toward a Complete Bottom-to-Top Restructuring of Human Civilaztion” — for those of you who know me, this is right up my ally. Bolman is recovering from his indoctrination into this society, and building a new one over at Maitreya Eco-Village. He’s soft-spoken bright-eyed fellow who laughs easily at himself, reminding me of Mister Rogers. He also provided the most optimistic view of human nature that has every rung true to my ears, which is this: humans have the most amazing ability to talk themselves into believing anything when it’s convenient. Cognitive dissonance is not a psychological disorder so much as an ability we have, allowing Bolman to forgive political figures we might dismiss as greedy hypocrites as being confused instead. They’ve managed to convince themselves that running for office is more important than saving the world. Yet he also critiques many aspects of sustainable efforts, such as the coal and petrol used to produce and transport solar panels, or (with a laugh) the prospect of “peak clay” (imagining the day when cob is a scarce resource). I was reminded of this later when a solar-panel installation guy complained about how sick he was of catering to rich people who thought they were saving the world — the only way to keep up with global change is by building local communities. Jan Semenza, talked about how socially isolated people were the most likely to die in heat waves. Similarly, projects like the Common Good Bank, the Sunnyside Swap Shop, and European seed swaps allow people to find resources within their own communities to build a better future. No, I take that back — build a better present. Bolman painted the perfect picture: if you’re on the sinking Titanic and another ship pulls up, made of sustainable materials and powered by solar-panels, full of people dancing and having a blast, which ship are you going to choose?

Right, you’re going to dive head-long onto the ship of awesome. I’ve already met so many amazing people, and I’ve been inspired to help out on a website for a group that works with Indian craftswomen, to cover my street with swirling chalk art (thanks, PLAIN Janes), to set up a tea stand over at Mount Taber (hibiscus mint, anyone?), and to rock out at Burning Man this September. Most of the other Reed alums I know have gotten jaded over time and pretty much hate people, but the VBC has proven to me that people — yes, even non-Reedies! — can do the most wonderful things without money, without inanity, without fighting. Differences are complementary instead of destructive. Is it magic? Or is it design? Simple: sufficiently brilliant design is indistinguishable from magic.

Poof!

The best way to make oneself at home is to get injured and bleed all over the bed. Seriously, it worked like a charm. I moved into Thomas’s Uncle Douglas’s apartment on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning I awoke shivering and ready to go for my almost-barefoot run. I explored the neighborhood, measured the distance to Hawthorne, Belmont, Stark, Burnside… all within my grasp! But I was still cold and dragging my feet, and mere blocks from Douglas’s I tripped mid-stride and slid across the cement paving stones. I rolled over onto my back, stinging all over. I wanted to sob and be carted away, but there was nothing for it but to finish up my run and take my usual shower — with the addition of hydrogen peroxide and much flinching. I banged up my left knee, right hip, and right elbow really bad — so much so that they oozed and bled through the bandages that night onto my crisp white sheets — and scraped up my left hand and right knee. I’ll grace you only with a photograph of the least of my injuries.

A little shaken and stiff, and bussed to my first day at work, and things soon went from bad to awesome. I felt so productive and helpful that my enthusiasm is pay enough (in fact, it’s my only pay). I’m assisting Sebastian Collet, an architect who loves clean, contemporary design and local, natural, community-oriented projects. His office is in the City Repair building, which is essentially an old house overrun by professional hippies (dreadlocks and all). It has a wall of mugs for tea and coffee, a huge pile of pillows in their conference room, and a cushy tea house out back. This is the perfect time to be around there, too, because there are a ton of volunteers getting things ready for the Village Building Convergence. It’s like I found all the gnomes who are work behind the scenes to create the Portland I love — the mosaic benches, the painted intersections, the random acts of community artwork and organic structure. These people are in the very act of creating a better world, and making a noticeable difference with their expertise. And I’m in the middle of it all! I walk home in a daze, awe-struck and love-struck.