If it is Friday afternoon, then by the time you read this I will be on the way to Mannheim (!) to record (!!) a demo album (!!!!) with lots of people that I really like (!!!!!!). Which means that sometime soon we can finally release the country noises that we’ve been brewing out back into the world, for better or for worse, ’til death to us part.

In other news it is so warm that I am wearing a tank top, and when I got home form work yesterday night, I found everyone sitting around a table outside eating carrot soup. The tulip bulbs I dumpstered and planted at the beginning of last winter are already sprouting, and the greenhouse is full of little pots, seeds buried in dirt, warm, waiting.

Shipping crates once upon a time used to transport artifacts from somewhere to this university’s anthropology department. Now cleaned out (except for one lost tooth which Karlsson quickly pocketed) and discarded. Several crates had newspaper clippings from the 1960s inside, others bore labels reading “1935.” It took two tractor trailer loads to get them all home.

Today many of the crates turned into the (until today still partially open to weather) walls of Franken-shed, and the walls of a second wood shed/fence between my future wagon spot and the house garden. In their new life, the crates look like this:

Oh how I love old wooden boxes. Lovely.

At one time, long long ago, I thought click clack gorilla was going to be (mostly) a travel blog. Ha! As I recently admitted to a reporter interested in my “story,” it turns out that I don’t even really like leaving my house/land. Whoops.

So, as usual, instead of telling you about Germany’s cultural quirks (you can read about those on another website where I also blog), I’m going to talk some more about chickens and food.

This (see picture to the left) is the chicken coop. Bean and Coyot built it last summer when the old coop experienced a very intense mite infestation. I walk past it every morning (and a thousand times after that) on the way to the kitchen.

Every night just before it gets dark, the chickens waddle one by one into the coop. They do this because they are clever. There are a lot of animals, even in this over-built wasteland of concrete, that would eat them during the night if they didn’t. Once last summer a hedgehog walked into an open coop (one of several mini coops some people built for two mama hens) and tore two chicks to shreds before somebody heard the squawking and chased the hedgehog away. The world is a pretty brutal place if you’re a chicken. We latch the little door for them each night to be sure.

Several days ago, two of our platz-mates left for a very, very long bike trip. New people were needed to help with the chickens. I volun- teered. Now on the way to the kitchen each morning, I open the coop (one entire wall swings out on hinges for easy egg collecting and cleaning) and look for eggs.

Our land (and our platz-mates) can’t handle any more chickens than we already have, so we need to make sure we get all of the eggs before a hen becomes interested in sitting on them. (We also have to check around the platz constantly, and count the chickens each night to make sure one of them isn’t sitting on a nest somewhere outside. That’s what happened last time, and whoops! suddenly we had ten more chickens.)

Before I went vegan, back when I used to buy factory-farmed eggs at the grocery store without blinking an eye, it never would have occurred to me; but the reality of eggs is that when you get them out of the nest, there are bits of shit and feathers sticking to a lot of the shells. If you are even remotely acquainted with chickens, this would be obvious, but it just goes to show you how much I used to know about where my food came from.

All that I know about the food on the left is that it came from my favorite dumpster. The animals killed for these sausages were probably factory farmed, and it just kills me to see pieces of an animal who probably had a really shitty life lying in a dumpster wrapped in plastic. To torture an animal its whole life, kill it, and then just throw it away. What disrespect. I insisted that we take every last sausage home, and after egg check I cut up a few packages of meat and feed it to the chickens. In my former life I also had no idea that chickens ate meat. But they love it. Especially throughout the winter when the ground is too hard for them to get to any juicy earthworms.

The shorter sausages had no price on them, but the longer cost 2 euros a package. We dumpstered about eight of them, and five or six of the short ones. Luxury chicken feed, to say the least.

I start tossing little bits of meat to whichever chickens happen to be around, and soon they are singing their food song, and the rest of the flock comes running from every corner of the platz. Then they bitch at each other, steal each other’s food, and Outcast Rooster gets his ass kicked, again. (Anyone local who wants a rooster? One of ours is not allowed to spend time with the rest of the flock, be with the hens, and gets the shit kicked out of him by the other chickens daily. It seems that he might be happier in another family.)

Chickens gorged, I return to the kitchen to fry up break- fast. The frying pan has a few spoonfuls of leftover brown sauce from the night before (three large dumpster mushrooms, soy sauce, flour, water), and I scramble the eggs in leftover sauce and make salad. I prefer a heap of oily fried greens to accompany my eggs, but the dumpsters haven’t provided any. But there was cantaloupe. Time to start planning lunch.

The first time I heard the term was in a bathroom in New York City. I had gone down to Bluestockings to look at zines and drink tea. Scrawled on the bathroom wall, black ink on white wall was “Lifestyle anarchists fuck off.” I wondered what a “lifestyle anarchist” was. I wondered if it meant people who tried to live what they believed, and I wondered why that could possibly be bad, could possibly be a reason for a bathroom wall war cry.

The next time I heard talk of “lifestyle” activists/anarchists/whoever was on a discussion forum. Then it popped up in a book I was reading.

Ah-ha, I thought. Lifestyle-anarchists/activists/people weren’t those who tried to live what they believed in because it felt good. They were people who thought that living what they believed in was going to change the world. People living off-grid, using boycott tactics, and preaching these as The Answer. Vegans were the most oft-referenced example.

I wondered if there were people that would call me a lifestyle-ist. Considering that I spend a lot of time writing about my lifestyle choices, the thought processes that led to them, and then often in the same breath mention that I’d do a cartwheel if industrial civilization were to end tomorrow, there are probably people who do think this. I do not, however, live as I do out of a conviction that I am changing the world through my actions, and I wanted to make sure this was clear, dear readers, because I really enjoy being understood.

I live as I do because I really, really like it. I pursue habits that I perceive as being in the right direction for me and perhaps for some others, but the way I live isn’t even close to anything I could fathom calling “right,” whatever “right” is supposed to mean anyway.

I think the most important thing to remember, always, is that there is no Answer. There are many answers. There is no Truth. There are many truths. Each is different depending on the person, depending on the place, depending on and interlinked with a thousand factors rarely duplicated. Diversity is necessary in everything, even in, especially in our beliefs about the world.

Perhaps, however, there are a few universal truths. Things that are true for every human no matter where or when or what. An example: If you do not drink water, you will die. Another: If you don’t breath air you will die. And a third: If you don’t eat you will die. Because I do no see death by starvation, dehydration, or suffocation as positive ends, I conclude that eating, breathing, and drinking are good (from an animal perspective). So I conclude that food, air, and water are good. So I conclude that poisoning and/or destroying food, water, and air are bad.

This is why I do not like industry. This is why I think industrial civilization is crap. There are ways to go further with this method of defining what is universally good, but I need no go further here. It is this very basic point—the inarguable importance of food, water, and air—is the foundation of my entire personal morality. I thought you should know.

What is luxury exactly? Where does it begin and where does it end? What do I mean when I call something a luxury? Since posting luxury, ease, the topic has been ping-ponging incessantly around my head. I had to write about it again.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary says of luxury:

1 archaic : lechery, lust
2 a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort : sumptuous environment 3 a. something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary b. an indulgence in something that provides pleasure, satisfaction, or ease

Forget the archaic definition. But “not absolutely necessary”? I’d also use those words. As for “provides pleasure,” I’d argue that there are plenty of things that provide pleasure that are not luxuries. (Food. Sex. Laughter. Music.) The same goes for “satisfaction.”

So what is “absolutely necessary”? Not as defined by dictionaries, but by you and I. I would answer clean food, clean air, and clean water. (You might say we can and do get by on the poisoned stuff, but I think today’s cancer/asthma/etc rates thanks to pollution are less than “getting by.”) Shelter. Warmth for our bodies when it is cold.

But even on this basic level there are more questions. Where do you draw the line between luxury and necessity? How much food? What kind of shelter? There are shades of gray between them all. Between potato soup and a five-course catered feast. Between a lean-to structure and a villa. Between a thick blanket and central heating.

Another factor to consider is access. Does everyone in the community have equal access to the so-called luxury? A resource plentiful in one part of the world might be perceived as a luxury in an area where the same resource is scarce. Or something necessary to life might only be available to those with the money to buy it. (True of food, water, and shelter in much of the world today.)

And now another question: can ease be equated with luxury? Disposable plastic cups could be considered a luxury because they are not absolutely necessary. They also make an individual’s life momentarily easier (no dishes to wash). But I have a hard time thinking of a plastic cup as a luxury. Plastic cups are stupid. Plastic cups are ugly. In considering this I realized something about my own thought process: I don’t associate the word “luxury” with just any decadence, but specifically with an aesthetically pleasing decadence.

When I think of the word luxury out of context I start picturing gold-leafed molding, thick Persian rugs, crystal chandeliers, servants and champagne. And perhaps this is the problem—most people think of luxury this way, connecting it with kings and millionaires instead of recognizing it in the little things. What about water heated by nuclear power, coffee flown in from South America, out-of-season vegetables at the supermarket year round, and “disposable” plastics? Technically, these things fit the bill. Let’s call them what they are.

In the shower, I think about luxury. Steaming-hot water, available at the turn of a knob. Warm hallways on the way to the bathroom. Morning-bright light at 11 pm. Little switches and knobs to control it all. Luxuries that we barely register as such.

Some people take a long look at my life in winter, raise their eyebrows, and say, “No fucking way.” For the people who say this, these luxuries have become inextricable from Living. Which is understandable if you don’t feel like a cat bath is enough, and you don’t have the time to heat up a watering can full of water yourself, or the gall to shower outdoors in the middle of winter (yeah, me neither actually on the outdoor winter showering, but I know people who swear by it).

But the real shock is that it took me 27 years to learn that these things were luxuries at all.

And yet I am a hedonist. I love excess. It’s just that the things I consider hedonistic and glorious are a lot different than they used to be.

Come summer the luxuries that I celebrate the loudest come into bloom. Entire days, every day, spent outside. An outdoor kitchen. An outdoor living room. An outdoor bathtub. Decadently drinking champagne in all of them.

Time, “free” time, according to those who have little of it to spend as they please, is the biggest luxury of all. And I am rolling in time. Time to sit in the sun. Time to stare at growing plants. Time to watch the magpies fight the cat in the tree next to the ping pong table again. Time to kneel in the dirt and watch the ants. Time to drink another cup of coffee with a friend. Time to sleep in. Time to write. Time to chop wood. Time to garden. Time to dumpster dive.

But except for the champagne and coffee, these things are not luxuries. Time, food, warmth, sunlight: these are the intrinsic joys of life, and they are there for us to have if we are willing to lay down most of the luxuries of this culture. These things are far more important to me than steaming-hot water and warm hallways. I can always heat up some water on the wood stove and put on a coat. This is my hedonism.

In a roundabout way I was thinking about all of this because of something my cousin read to me from a book she was reading. I don’t have the passage to quote at you, but it was about French cooking and the point was this: many French recipes are very simple (i.e. have very few ingredients), but they are not easy to make. They involve time, patience, and a bit of work. The conclusion was that this was like life, and that simple was good, that complexity and work were good.

Simple is beautiful, yet does not imply ease. It is perhaps an obvious conclusion, yet it was so articulately formulated and nail-on-the-head I wanted to clap. Though the less word-obsessed might say that “simple” can be a synonym for “easy,” at the heart of things, it is not. Easy is McDonalds. Easy is Ikea. Easy is disposable mass-produced crap that we don’t need. I do not like easy. I do not want easy. I want complex, diverse, sweaty, and muscle-fueled.

I would consider heating with wood “living simply,” though it is a lot more work than turning a thermostat knob. But behind my wood stove is an axe and a shed full of stores. Behind the knob are miles of copper cables, nuclear and coal power plants, and an industry of people needed to run them.

The price of the knob isn’t worth it though, and the price of the power bill doesn’t even begin to cover it. No, we get to pay for that one in cancer and polluted water and air. I wish everyone would choose simple over easy so that we could just get on with shutting the whole system down tomorrow. I want to see a politician run on a campaign with signs that say “Simple” and then disband the entire government upon arriving in office.

In the daylight hours there is too much to do to write to you, dear readers. And at night, well at night there is also too much too do. Lately I have little more than a few sentences and pictures to offer you. Despite the snow Saturday, it is Spring. Things Are Happening. It Is Beautiful.

friday

My muscles ached from carrying meter-long stumps, still heavy will water.

The wind had ripped several trees out of the ground in the courtyard across the street, and the chainsaws of the university’s grounds people got the rest.

I stalked the construction site entrance for hours before I saw someone who I could talk to. The person I found was Gregor, dressed in red overalls. “Those stumps lying back behind the building, can I have them?” I asked through the grid of construction-site fencing.

His German was hard to understand, accented with Polish sounds, or maybe Russian. He would ask his boss, he told me, and come by later to let me know. I assumed I would never see him again.

A month ago some univer- sity people felled a tree across the street. They needed room for their metal construction-office cont- ainers, now piled two high in the place of grass and tree. When we asked about the tree stumps they told us that, no *snort of disdain*, we couldn’t have them. Then they shredded them into mulch and threw it all away.

But Man in Red did come back later, and he had good news. “You can have all the wood you can carry. Tomorrow we put it all in a container. Trash, you understand?”

I nodded, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the thought of free heat. He took a step closer to me, “You live over there?” He pointed toward the wagenplatz.

“Yup.”

“You live with other people? ”

“Umm, there are about fifteen of us, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, no, women.” I was beginning to guess what he was getting at. I had hoped he wasn’t going to go there. There is a certain kind of man who assumes any favor he does for a woman should be rewarded with sex. A lift offered on Craig’s List, a drink, or talking to the boss about giving away some trash from the construction site; the details of the favor are irrelevant. “Women, you understand? You know, brothel? Brothel.”

“No.” I was not in the mood for this conversation. I am never in the mood for this conversation.

“But you, you live alone?”

“I live with my husband,” I told him dryly. (Ha! Husband! It is hard to say that word with a straight face.)

“But other women?”

“Sorry, no idea what you’re talking about. But hey, listen, I’m going to go start hauling wood then. Thanks a lot for talking to your boss. I’ll see you around.”

I hauled one load in a tiny hand-cart before getting The Doctor and the tractor for the rest. (I wish I was an ant.) Man in Red came out on the balcony of the building they are emptying to watch. I waved. Eight more men emptied onto the two neighboring balconies and lit cigarettes, leering.

“I feel like we’re in the zoo.” We started loading stumps onto the trailer while the balcony men yelled to others who were cutting down a tree behind the tractor.

A burst of laughter came from above. The Doctor speaks a little Polish. “They just said something about whores, I caught the words whore and work,” she told me across the birch stump we were carrying.

“Construction workers certainly are good at reinforcing their own stereotypes.”

There were at least 8 cords of wood for the taking, so we called in reinforcements. As soon as a few men showed up, the balcony men stopped their cat-calling and went back inside. If I had a category called “Why I Hate the Patriarchy,” this would be one of the many stories filed in it.

The good news, however, is that we hauled wood for hours (results pictured here) and haven’t even managed the half of it. And in three years it’ll be ripe (re: dry enough) for burning, and we’ll have enough wood to heat several community wagons for the entire winter.

There used to be a small wagon between the red wagon and the spot where my future wagon will be. We call it “the suitcase.” A few days ago we moved it to another part of the wagenplatz.

Before:

After:

Where did all that space come from? The suitcase is small, three meters, tops, yet now, now! I look around and my eyes fill with the garden that will, in a couple of months, have taken the suitcase’s place.

Energy is seeping back into all of our bones. Around the wagenplatz it feels like everyone is getting ready for a big party, and the party is spring.

All of us, more or less, are avid pickers of trash. So throughout the year we end up with a lot of random stuff. Some of it becomes useful, some of it gets built into our wagons, and some of it ends up rotting outside, unprepared for a life with Weather.

Come spring we start rounding up the stray bits and pieces and tossing them onto the bonfire pile. We rake leaves and bottle caps into the bushes, and wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of un-burnable junk gets rolled across the street to the Sperrmüll (re: “big trash”) collection point.

Even though it’s still frosting, is still jacket and gloves weather, I spend every day outside working on something, and the world feels friendly, big, and full of opportunity.

The bonfire pile (it might look small in the photo, but it is almost as tall as I am):

Some day, just before the end of the world, but years after I’ve left this job and moved on, I’ll tell you all about that time when I worked at a publishing house in Frankfurt. For now however, I’d rather not give anyone an excuse to get their panties in a bunch, so I’ll let you jump to your own conclusions with a few vague winks and nods.

New job day one: Umm… What?

New job day two: Well then, why not? Sweet.

Enter “Weekend.”

Fin.

And now for something completely different.

Money. The blessing and the curse. The more money that I have, the more it stresses me out. When you have no money there’s no reason to spend any time thinking about it. If rent and food are covered regardless (here I can always pay later, and you guys all know about the food in the trash), then what’s there to think about? Nothing in the bank, nothing to think about. See what I mean?

When you have it you think about what it would be best to do with it, you beat yourself up for spending it on the wrong things, and suddenly you find yourself noticing when it’s not there anymore.

Money being the societal obsession that it is, it strikes me as strange that a lot of people don’t really talk about it. It’s considered rude in certain company to ask someone how much she makes, or how much he pays for his car or apartment. But why? (Class is the most obvious answer to this question, though perhaps there are many factors.)

When I worked in publishing in the United States, I had to sign an agreement promising I would not talk about my salary with my co-workers. They didn’t tell me why this was necessary, and I assumed it had something to do with preventing mutiny, which meant that they knew there would be a reason to mutiny should people start talking freely about who was making what. They prided themselves on being an employee-friendly organization. Hmm.

Two days ago I asked my boss when I could expect my first paycheck. “Middle of April,” his secretary answered from across the room.

“Would it be possible to get a partial payment beforehand?” I wanted to know. “I have exactly enough money to take the train here for the rest of the month, but that’s it. If you want me to work I at least need to be able to get here.” I said it cheerfully. In another life I think I might have found this admission embarrassing.

Boss-Man laughed, and they arranged to send me a payment for my first two weeks early. Now he probably thinks I’m one of those people who says “I don’t have any money” and mean “I have plenty of money, but don’t feel like spending it on this right now.”

If he didn’t think that, he would have been asking himself how I planned on feeding myself until then. I wish he had asked me. I would have liked to have seen the look on his face when I answered.