Havens

There is an avocado tree in our yard. It's just small, we planted it as a large sapling a bit over a year ago. It has a number of flowers now that if protected could lead to a dozen or so avocados. I love avocados. This area of Mexico is the world's leading producer, and those in the north rarely have access to such fine avocados as we routinely enjoy. Rich satin mellowness.

Thus i enjoy calculating that in the passive solar greenhouse we plan to build in Canada, a tree several times its volume would fit. In its coddled clime, such a tree might produce more than a hundred avocados each year. Plus there would be room for as many as four other fruiting trees, as well as a wealth of veggies, herbs, and ornamentals, and some small grassy patches for the chickens who would winter inside it. It is a grand plan we've worked hard on. I dwell on it often in the free spaces in my day, as i miss Canada sharply.

I feel like a playing piece that has been plucked off a game board and set to the side, future deployment unknown. I watch the game continue from a suspended state that makes everything look very different. I came to Mexico with the idea that i could create here, maybe, the conditions i needed to be a working artist, living cheaply here and returning to Canada to sell pieces. I didn't expect to meet my husband. Now he makes the dough and i just help him out, as i can. I make artwork in fits and starts, and get into other projects as they move me. I'm damn lucky, because i certainly would not have been able to manage my fatigue enough to execute the plan i had. I was pretty deep in denial about that. Not that i had many options.  I knew my energy was failing me ever more, i just didn't understand it wasn't going to be enough to get away from it all, eat better, exercise, and return to doing what i had once loved and done well. My husband Aldo is my saviour. He could see how tired i always was and accepted it. He was glad just to have me there to listen to him. That's my main job these days. The rest is hobbies.

Anyhow... Not having the energy to do much of anything much of the time leaves a lot of time to think. Rather slowly and foggily, often, but thinking still happens. As mentioned, one straightforward theme is our return to Canada. Being the chief proponent of that in this marriage, i have focused myself on planning a tempting future there to outshine the successful construction company Aldo has here in his home country. (Note: events over the past few years in Mexico have made that considerably easier. You may have read a few things in the news.) We'll build a passive solar house, and a similar but larger all-season greenhouse, out in the country near Niagara Falls. (Aldo loves Niagara Falls.) I was able to research the technique and build a spreadsheet to test the design.

So the fruits of this will be passing my all-open-ended lifestyle to my husband. Heating and cooling costs will be minimal to none, we'll be able to produce the majority of our food ourselves, we won't have a mortgage. Solar power generation systems are still mighty costly and inefficient, but there are so many people working on that now i expect the problem to be cracked in under a decade. With one installed we'd have no electricity bills either. With enough power generation installed, we could make our greenhouse(s) productive enough to pay for all our other needs. LED lights make that possible, once their price comes down. They require a fraction of the power of conventional grow-lights, and strings of tiny ones can be positioned so close to foliage as to ensure most of the light goes to leaves, not to lighting everything else too. Aldo will always build things, that's him, but he'll build what he wants. It's a lifestyle so different from everything i was prepared for growing up, it makes me question many of the underpinning assumptions of my culture. A happy society depends on people having the means of production themselves, but not in the Marxist sense. Big organizations aren't good for people, that's pretty clear to everyone except the people who run them. What will humanity become once most of us live the way Aldo and i will live? For us it will be a fortunate luxury, as time goes on it will be possible on ever less land for an ever cheaper price.

Maybe it's just a personal dream of the future. I'll be posting the many indications i see that we are heading inexorably down that path. 3D printers will be everywhere in a decade, and even now several firms are working on ways to 3D print entire houses. Home power generation is going to become a reality, and will soon be an effective option on rural properties. Self-driving cars will also be common in 15 years or maybe less. Sending high-speed internet over a long-range router for a number of miles is actually pretty easy and cheap. If you aren't concerned about power or communications infrastructure, and driving time becomes reading/surfing/chatting time, where then do you choose to make your home? If you can build a home in the countryside with all the infrastructure you need for less than the price of a condo, how does that change your life? Your relationships? The world?