Oh dear! This reminds me of a conversation I had with Bill Kreidler about 15 years ago. We were both getting our first international invitations to speak and it was a relief. We were both afraid that we’d be remembered for the wrong things. Bill thought it was very funny that he was worried that a rest area would be named after him. And now I wonder, will I be remembered for my compost toilet life style?
The Short Answer- Marshall and I live on a land trust devoted to living with low environmental impact and the fellow who made our house put in a compost toilet plus shower and sinks.
The Longer answer, Marshall says Too long –
Dear Hearts,
It does concern me just a tad that two such wonderful strong competent Quaker women were strolling and discussing my toilet. But life takes us on many paths and ours is not to question why we poop the way we do nor to judge but merely to sit and go.
Our house was built on a land trust, which was formed by some young hippies, old communists, and a smattering of Quakers between them. Also some help from the AFSC back in the early 70’s when Vermont was experiencing a great back to the land movement of young people. The idea of the land trust was that farmland would be kept cheap and people would live with low environmental impact.
So our house was made in 76 with the intention of not harming the environment. It’s small, passive solar, cement slab, poured concrete walls on 3 sides burmed into the hillside and the 4th wall mostly glass facing south. There is an entryway with our front door on the left and a door to the compost toilet on the right. So, it’s not outside and it’s rather fancy for an outhouse. But, to be sure, it’s a poop and listen for the drop kind of room as you gaze out the window at the south sloping meadow. There is a cross-country ski path going across our meadow so there might be the chance to wave hello as one sits, so neighborly.
Now, here’s the kicker. We rented the house without knowing there was no flush toilet. Who would think to ask, “There is a flush toilet, right?” No. We are moving in, Oct. 1990. I gotta take a dump. I find a room with a shower/tub and sink. There’s a nice red sink in the kitchen but where is the toilet? A neighbor laughs and says, “It’s a solar toilet. Go out the front door across the entryway to the white door.” Oh, dear. Marshall has lived in London, Dublin, Oxford, Los Angeles, Paris, Vienna, and Stockholm- get my drift? Cities. Here I had dragged Marshall out of city living into tons of quiet and no streetlights. This was asking too much.
But he is more adjustable than I and we’ve made friends with the making of “night soil” for the flowerbeds. When U.S. Senator Barney Frank was here and asked to use the toilet, he was truly horrified. His whole face said, “My God! Faggots without a flush toilet! Get me out of here!” But didn’t speak a word. It’s one of those little things that you forget until it’s midnight in January, -18 degrees and you get an urge. Or until you apply for a mortgage and the banker who thought up until that moment that you are a cute couple now looks seriously at you and says, “Why?”
Just to complete the record so there will be no gossip, we tend to pee outside which assures less stink in the toilet. Poop in peat moss doesn’t smell much and makes great soil. So, we actually are quite familiar with how beautiful the night sky is and the cycles of the moon and wind and stars and sounds from the woods as we step outside to pee. Sometimes there will be deer in the woods near by and just as the zippers are down there will be a great thrashing of branches and hooves. Not for the pee shy.
Sorry for the long answer. It’s not something I think about. I mean I don’t think of myself as a person without a flush toilet. I’ve told Marshall that when I am ancient, which maybe sometime next week, I don’t want to be waddling out with my cane to freeze my butt in winter and I’ll need a real toilet at least when he retires. But for now that’s an expensive proposition. Can you imagine writing the Beethoven Letter and instead of asking for help with a car saying the Friends of John Calvi want you to help him poop indoors, finally! “Oh yes, I remember him, something about a toilet, I think, or something earthy.”
Our next goal is a new kitchen for Marshall’s fabulous cooking and a washer and dryer for me so I can stop schlepping our dainties to the Laundromat each week. Then, a real honest to God flush toilet, low flow, bright and clean. Marshall says he had toilets on a recent trip to Japan that was also a bidet with a padded & heated seat & a dial to chose temperature, direction, and force for a butt washing so that toilet paper was just for drying. In those terms, I guess we are pretty 18th century.
I do tend to keep a stack of Architectural Digest there for ironic humor. Did you know Joni Mitchell use to have a house in Malibu? And there’s that great ancient poster, no longer made, “Because gay men and lesbian are………I am a part of the gay & lesbian liberation movement.”
This will not be a chapter in my book, by the way. I turned a corner after working on my book for the last 7 weeks. I had been laboring under the nasty old rumor that I was barely a high school graduate trespassing in literary territory on a hopeless quest that had gone on too long. This slowly began to lift as I went over 300 plus pages of writing I’ve done over the past 2 decades. This past week it shifted within me to understanding that this is a natural extension of my work as a teacher. And just as this great boost made me hungry to charge ahead and finish, well that’s when both the computer and printer got severe program illness and gave me a week of hell. Now we are all on board, well, and working. Marshall will do a great batch of editing this weekend.
I just spent the later afternoon hours with a couple of old Quaker ladies having high tea here at Pansy Brook Farm asking them about how they came to bring their Quakerism deeper into their lives. Along with my mother’s china tea set and some goodies from the bakery, we spent some time wondering how one moved along in prayer from asking Big Daddy God to change this and that for what we wanted on to being in prayer without asking for outcome but surrounding a trouble in reverence. How does one make that trip? And we wondered how life-threatening illness, which they both had or have worked into spiritual ground from terror. Mostly I listened and they talked. I made some notes and will do some writing for a piece called Schlepping the Light. So good to have the luxury of time as the light of day fades to be with old friends and wonder about spiritual life and our learning, how did we make that leap, what encouraged us, how did trouble become homework and when did we stop being so impatient with ambiguity? Hope this finds us all with some moments to wonder real soon and some quiet to hear the guidance and some friends to laugh at ourselves with and some tea and goodies to remember the good earth on this cold gray sky day with spring no where in sight.
To stand and fight can be a noble and exciting witness to truth. And such witnesses can be in the service of the greater good when we stick to our truth, keep our integrity, and hold on to the principles of service.
It can also be true that to fight might bring us further in conflict, pain, confusion- no matter our good intentions or sacrifice. In some ways the difference lies within the monster we face but also in our response to that monster. What is it we are taking personally and what reverberation does it have to other earlier hurt? Can an insult be allowed to stand and see over time if there is any truth to it? Does bad behavior and poor decisions immediately bring us to decide to fight, as we are good at it as a life strategy or to flee as we hate confrontation and does either serve our greater Light? Can we see that there exists the possibility that to lay down a particular work setting might be the beginning of new situations that bring us closer to our best work?
Those of us who have had enough failure to hold tutorials can see the choices for learning abound. This includes not only the immediate vision of what has been and is now, but a very long term vision that suggests what will all this look like in 15 or 20 years.
Both the fight and the surrender can be done in the Light and be for the common good. Both need support and good care. Both can teach what it is we are meant to learn. It is my hope for all of us and especially for Lynn, who is a dear old friend and talented woman of power and good will, that our choices be with as broad a scope as possible and that we gather our support from what might be learned and understood so that future choices will have greater Light and less pain and confusion.
I send much love as we all go into another day. There are times that getting out of bed in the morning is extreme bravery and should be cheered. Other days, more than that is a lovely possibility.