A Philosopher’s Adventure #23
Episode #23 - Feeling Phi-lumber-sophical
The Philosophy of Treating Wood
Who knew wood treatments were philosophical? But here we are, so settle in. Martijn is up to more testing of material finishes. In this case, he is trying to “age” the wood for when it’s inside the cabin. The esthetic he is going for is older since the cabin is older. The deck will get a lighter shade as it’s a brand-new building. Martijn takes us to an old door on the side of the larger cabin to explain material age. The door looks old, rough around the edges, with large gaps and eroding hardware. However, Martijn refers to the age as beautiful and real. Compared to the faces of those who have seen a large share of Summer and Winter cycles, there is character, and the verification of a life lived that has been through a lot. Martijn jumps to the idea of those faces and the buildings in historic European towns that take you to a different time. We find our connection between this concept of aging material and one of the reasons I like watching this story. This story transports us to the idea of a slower life. We are shown what persistent project work can do for us and how it can bring people together for a common purpose, even if that purpose is to spend a week building an outhouse.
Digging a little deeper into the idea, age cannot be faked. There is a story in the door that aged finishing cannot match. This is a selling point for approaching life with a slowing mindset. When we look at life as the long haul, we can view the materials around us as living the same life alongside us. The age we gain is gained by the things around us. Their story is our story, and vice versa. It’s an easy target, but fast fashion and throw-away culture erode our chance to connect to our story. Martijn’s hat, for instance, is living a life atop the skull it adorns. I think about the various trucker hats and floppy caps I see on vacation and how they are designed to tell a temporary story. They might have a connection to a wonderful moment in life, but there is no connection to my life’s story. The hat Martijn wears has and will have, an incredible story to tell over the coming years. It’s a hat, I get it but go with the concept.
Additionally, “the aged look” being built into modern homes conveys a message: the idea that we can make a place look more lived-in by giving it a certain aesthetic. Are we trying to make it look like we have lived more than we really have? Are we fooling ourselves into placing a veneer of experience over a base build of green lumber? The look itself isn’t the problem. The mindset that a “lived life” can be faked by surface-level finishes feeds part of humanity that insulates us from embracing the lives we want. Faking experience into our personal look and living space “short circuits” our story.
This is not a call to live, only the slow life. This is a call to consider the time horizons with which we approach life. Sometimes, that is just the horizon we can see. Sometimes, it is the horizon we want to see long in the future. Neither answer is right. We need to be considerate of ourselves and the connections we build into our lives.
The Little Things Matter
It might seem like a nothing moment, but Martijn brings the cement mixer to the mountain. Two episodes ago, we saw the first batch of concrete being made. Martijn alludes to the floors of the cabin being poured, and having a cement mixer will make that whole process so much easier. I can hear you, “Chris, you’ve been banging on about the slower life. How does a mixer fit into that?” It doesn’t, but there is a threshold where specific tools for larger jobs are fair. The digger for the plumbing across the property or a cement mixer for the cabin floor. We want to live our lives comfortably and not have broken bodies when we get to the enjoyment phase.
Martijn is discussing the test results of his different finishes, comparing a sample to the 120-year-old beams in the roof of the larger cabin. Seamlessly, he goes from talking about wood to saying, " There is a lizard there,” then moves back into his sample summary. Why is just noticing things so appealing to me? My wife and I went grocery shopping last night, and we are surrounded by a dearth of noticing. We take the common area dance we’ve developed as a species for granted. It’s truly amazing to watch shoppers move around one another and not run into one another more often. However, I see at least a dozen moments every time I go to the store where people leave their carts in the middle of the aisle and walk away. People will situate themselves in such a way as to block multiple people from getting to what they need or blocking where they need to go. The thing is, it’s not the act of gaining information in the grocery store that bothers me. It’s the lack of looking out for those around you. I never see shoppers looking at traffic flow or keeping their heads on a swivel. They go and trust the ingrained shopping choreography. When Martijn takes the time to notice a lizard, the senses are on. The persistent mechanization of human living loses when we notice the lizard.
The jack of many trades reappears when the cord to the power sander gets caught in the rotor. Martijn becomes an electrician, cuts the cord, and rewires the two ends together. I openly admit that I am not handy, and I would love to change that. Watching him do these fix-it jobs always inspires me. More to that point, it has taken 23 episodes of writing these, but I’ve followed my own ranting and did something I’ve never done before. I made bread for the first time in my life. It’s bread; many people make bread, but I did something I wouldn’t normally do. I was proud of that.
Thanks for reading, see you next time.
CHR;)
