I'm an Elsa P. fan, a long-time reader and client who found Elsa Panizzon's blog when Pete and I were living in a kitchen while we built our vardo. A blog was new to me in 2008 but astrology has been a long-time interest for me. There was something I was looking for when we lived in that kitchen in White Center. Everything I thought I knew for sure didn't fit, rules for 'success' no longer worked nor made any sense. I booked my first email consultation with Elsa sometime in 2008. She wrote to me with this recommendation, "Sounds like a Neptune thing. (watery). The tide comes in. The tide goes out. You don't have any friends. (tide's out) People don't understand you ... so, you might as well float!" Ha?
The kitchenette in White Center
Pete working inside the vardo in the winter, 2008
At the time that advice offered my deep water Scorpio sensibilities a transcendent solution. It was not specific, but, I understood how important it is to float in water where you can't just stand up! While we made our way through the learning curve of understanding Environmental Illness, and researched how to build something never quite done before, Elsa's advice has sustained me ... I understand more than ever how important remembering to float is. The small wagon life requires a lot of floating as structures and boundaries keep changing. We envisioned being in a warm climate for winter -- Hawaii was our goal. Instead of Hawaii, we're living on a prairie on Whidbey Island where it's not warm but we are warm enough because we are exchanging resources with people who see the value of our 'currency.'
Two weeks ago tonight, we secured what travels in Vardo for Two and headed onto the Prairie Front. Just minutes ago Pete and I had a bowl of red cabbage with mushrooms and rice with chicken drumsticks for dinner. We ate that meal seated on chairs in what I have begun to call The Spider Web Kitchen. A transformed version of the South Whidbey Tilth's Dancing Cat Cafe is now being shared with us.
Here are a few pics of the shared resource of a space. We are warming things up, making it cozy, and finding ways to respect the faith people have in our currency.
A violet towel and a length of fabric double up to keep a draft blowing through the French door from chilling the kitchen.
Pete hung a length of conduit across the space the creates two spaces in the whole kitchen. From that conduit we have hung the blanket and woolen fabric used again and again in other spaces/kitchens from White Center to the woods of Langley
A second violet blanket covers one of the kitchen windows for warmth and privacy. We have cleared and begun to occupy the counter tops with our kitchen chattel, tucking the Tilth's kitchen into corners or in cubbies that can easily be pulled from their nooks.
Window looking south
This is the entry into the Spider Web Kitchen with a few mats to cushion your steps on the cold hard cement and the cotton rug we have used in our old Quonset left for Eileen and Mary in the woods of Forest Lane.
A closeup of the bells, beads and dancing cat dangling from the center of the spider web in the kitchen
Exit ... evidence of rain that has been coming from the south
I've learned a lot by reframing the meaning of 'currency.' Coming to value my quirky brand of currency, it makes life so much more interesting to find places and people attracted to this sort of community-economy. Just enough. In the nick of time. Use things up. Share. Work in trade. Again and again. Give and take.
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