Opening up the window, I hear a few lingering crickets singing in the autumn sunshine. A chipmunk springs like a mini kangaroo through the damp leaves. Birds gorge on intoxicating juniper berries and the tart, red-orange berries of the mountain ash tree. On this day, as so many times before, I’m reflecting on how removed we are from nature and how delicious and healing it would be to live closer to the sea and among the trees.
Years ago, I read a book that I can no longer remember the title of; however, in this unnamed book it mentioned The Moon and Sixpence, which is a novel (written by William Somerset Maugham) loosely based on the life of the French artist Paul Gauguin. I hadn’t thought about Gauguin much since I read The Moon and Sixpence, but I read another book recently called Beachcombing at Miramar that makes a reference to Gauguin’s semi-autobiographical book Noa Noa. Naturally, my interest was piqued and I set out to find a copy of Noa Noa. I admire Gauguin, who in his early 40s abandoned everything to follow his heart. For 63 days he sailed to reach his dream: to paint in Tahiti. After shedding his European ways (his clothing even!) and spending some time in an island hut, Gauguin muses:
Silence!
I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night. In this silence I hear
nothing except the beating of my heart.
But
the rays of the moon play through the bamboo reeds, standing equidistant from
each other before my hut, and reach even to my bed. And these regular intervals
of light suggest a musical instrument to me—the reed-pipe of the ancients,
which was familiar to the Maori, and is called vivo by them. The moon and the bamboo reeds made it assume an exaggerated
form—an instrument that remained silent throughout the day, but that at night
by grace of the moon calls forth in the memory of the dreamer well-loved
melodies. Under this music I fell asleep.
Between
me and the sky there was nothing except the high frail roof of pandanus leaves,
where the lizards have their nests.
I
am far, far away from the prisons that European houses are.
A
Maori hut does not separate man from life, from space, from the infinite. . . .
In many ways, I can relate to
Gauguin. Viewing houses as prisons sounds dramatic but he’s onto something there. When I stayed in a modern villa in Costa
Rica earlier this year, I was resentful of
the fact that at night I was cut off from the stars and night sounds. Patio lights used for security blocked out the night sky and the
steady hum of air conditioning units prevented me from hearing anything wild.
Well, except for the mysterious tapping on the glass of my bedroom patio door every
night just as I was drifting off to
sleep... (After a few nights of fearfully listening from my bed, I eventually
and bravely switched on a flashlight to reveal a small Halloween crab clicking
its claws on the glass!)
Like Gauguin, our domestication repels me. He found a peaceful simplicity in island living that made him feel creative and vibrantly alive. Something in me struggles to break away from conformity but how one accomplishes this completely, I’m still not certain. In the meantime, I’m exploring exciting and different ways of living. Tree houses have become an infatuation of mine. I don’t know anyone personally that lives in a tree house; although, it’s become trendy to vacation in them. For now, maybe that’s a start.
Like Gauguin, our domestication repels me. He found a peaceful simplicity in island living that made him feel creative and vibrantly alive. Something in me struggles to break away from conformity but how one accomplishes this completely, I’m still not certain. In the meantime, I’m exploring exciting and different ways of living. Tree houses have become an infatuation of mine. I don’t know anyone personally that lives in a tree house; although, it’s become trendy to vacation in them. For now, maybe that’s a start.
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Free Spirit Spheres, Qualicum Beach,
Vancouver Island
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Treebones Resort,
Big Sur, California
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TreeHouse People (Takashi Kobayashi),
Hokkaido, Japan
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