Thanksgiving

Great Ideas for a Perfect Life #2

Under the right circumstances, I could stay in Arizona forever. Maybe. Here's how I'd do it. Erin and I would need to find someplace within easy driving distance from Tucson or Sedona, but someplace rural. I'd need some desert views. I'd like some mountains, too, or some towering cliffs. I don't care if they're red cliffs, or brown cliffs, just as long as they're tall enough to make me feel small when I look at them.

I'd want to live in an adobe house with an ocotillo fence. I'd want it to be old, but I'd want to create an off-grid scenario as much as possible. Solar panels for the reliable Arizona sun, rain-catchers, lots of porches and awnings. We'd be able to really open the house to the outside with lots of window that open wide and double doors. Tile and wood inside, firepit out back in a brick patio with benches and surrounded by tall cactus.

I don't have the money scenario worked out exactly yet, but I feel this perfect life idea hinges more on independence than money anyhow. I suppose I'd make money keeping bees and making stuff out of things I found in the desert. Prickly pear fruit products, fossils, and things of that nature. Erin looked up kitchen witchcraft the other day and, while we don't attribute spiritual significance to domestic tasks, the idea of being able to make your own soaps, lotions, oils, incense, herbal preparations and such seems like not only a good, healthy way to live, but also as a possible way to make a modest income.

Coyotes, javelina, jackrabbits...we'd have them all rolling through. The cats would have lots to look at from the windows. I'd get rid of all my clothes except shorts made from cut-off pants, old t-shirts, a couple thermal flannels, my Top Siders, and some boots. And during the monsoon, we'd sit outside on the porch and watch the desert flood and the cactus swell. I'd save every devil's claw and hawk's feather I found, give them out free to kids when we sold our honey, prickly pear jelly, and desert products. I'm pretty sure kids have got to like like devil's claws and hawk feathers.

Great Ideas for a Perfect Life #1

Homemade, originally uploaded by Dia-trib3.

I have several recurrent post themes here on MOCS1986, such as Homesick Yankee Ramblings and 10 Works, and I thought it was time to add another. Introducing Great Ideas for a Perfect Life. The title is pretty much self explanatory - sometimes I get great ideas that, though unlikely to happen, would probably result in a fantastic life.

Sometimes they're minor ideas. For example, the other day I proposed to Erin that we have breakfast food for dinner once a week. That's something we can do. Other ideas aren't so easily achieved.

I recently got paid for a short story I wrote. It's my first paying publication. $25 Canadian dollars. So I proposed to Erin that I save any money I make from publishing fiction or creative writing and put it into a fund. That money will be set aside to buy an RV. It's great because it encourages me to write more and try harder to publish AND it could, in theory, eventually allow us to buy and RV and travel the country. I don't write much, it's hard to publish, and most journals pay little if anything, so the RV won't be parked in our yard anytime soon. Still, writing for a living, spending my time visiting interesting places, meeting cool people, and doing rad things, is a great idea for a perfect life.

Of course, we'd also need a German Shepherd with a bandanna and a large format camera....