The Simple Life

Sunday Magazine, 2008

Matt Suddain

As kids we were told lavish bedtime stories about the looming apocalypse: the end would come quickly, falling upon us in our sleep like a black, obliviating blanket. Reagan sleeps with the nuclear trigger next to his snooze button; the Russians are pretty much drunk all the time, and the nuclear early warning systems can be triggered by migrating geese or a stray Superbowl blimp. Well, sleep tight.

I suspect today’s kids are told a very different story: the earth’s defences are crumbling like the edge of a glacier; there aren’t enough resources to sustain us all; that Nintendo Wii will have to go. As the dregs of precious oil are mopped up we’ll be thrust into a simpler mode of existence. Without the gadgets and comforts we’re used to we’ll face a creeping apocalypse, an Armageddon of leisure, our days will be filled with the salty tears of perpetual boredom.

But cheer up, kids! There’s loads of fun activities we can use to fill the void. This is an opportunity for a simpler life. As my old scout-master Don Sanchizi used to say: “Be prepared! Learn your skills, your weaving, your hunting; keep a fake passport and $1000.00 cash in a pair of soiled underwear, and don’t never love no one!” He may not have been a real Scout master, but he was one heck of a neighbour, and he knew that in the future, although we may not be facing nuclear hellfire, or battling mutant rats through the husk of a burned out school, we will probably have to darn our own socks. I have all the “learnin’s” you need.

1. How to darn a sock:

In this simple future you’ll need socks to go with your sandals. Also, some kind of shirt made out of muesli.

You will need:
Sock with hole
Darning needle
Light bulb
Yarns (Not story-yarns, although these are useful. “You can’t darn without a yarn,” as they say.)
Scissors
The eyes of a friggin eagle

Place a light bulb in the sock and position the hole over the bulb. Your needle will glide smoothly over the bulb's surface, making your stitching go faster. In my experience it is best if the bulb is both unlit and removed from its socket. Start your work on either side of the hole. American Dressmaking Step by Step, 1917, suggests the following:

1. Begin a little distance above the worn place and work downward. Follow the warp threads, weaving over and under the woof threads. Carry your weave a little beyond the worn place.

2. Turn and work upward, passing the needle over the threads which you passed under as you worked downward. Pass under the threads which you worked over while coming downward, keeping the weave as even as possible.

Continue stitching back and forth until you've completely filled the hole. Trim excess thread. Now you will have either a perfectly darned sock or an extra sleeve on your jumper. This is a complicated process and it’s no coincidence, I think, that “darn” is also a mild curse.

2. How to make your own wine:

To succeed in this simple future we’ll need to be resourceful, inventive, and drunk. With scarce resources and a fragile climate, booze may be harder to source. You might want to think about making your own. To make a simple table wine you’ll need:

Grapes
Campden tablet (or 0.33g of potassium metabisulfite powder)
Tartaric acid
Sugar
Wine yeast
Pails, bottles, tubes and corking devices too numerous to list
A powerful thirst

To make your wine, simply place your chosen grapes in a nylon straining bag in the bottom of a pail. Firmly crush with the appropriate tool or a small child. Crumble your campden tablet over the must. Cover the pail with cheesecloth and let sit for one hour before measuring the temperature and acidity. (It should be between 21° and 24° C.) Take a break. Next, pour a yeast solution directly on must and agitate your bag. Cover pail with cheesecloth, set in a warm area and check that fermentation has begun in at least 24 hours.

Once the must has reached "dryness,” squeeze any remaining liquid into the pail. If there is no liquid then your wine is too “dry” and you should start the process again. Rack off the sediment into a container, topping up with a little boiled, cooled water to entirely fill the container. Fit with a sanitized bung and fermentation lock. After 10 days, rack the wine into another jug. Top up with dry red wine of a similar style. After six months, siphon the clarified, settled wine off the sediment and into clean bottles. Cork with the hand-corker. Store bottles in cool, dark place and wait at least six months before drinking. Arrange your party. Serve your wine. If your guests say, “Yummy,” then good. If they grimace or vomit then be ready to say “Ha ha! It’s joke wine. Suckers.”

The process of making quality wine is delicate, absorbing, and never ending. You should probably just go ahead and get a divorce now.

3. How to write the next Walden:

You will need:
Pen
Paper
A hut

In this simple future it will be important to learn to enjoy the silence and solitude that has been cruelly thrust upon us. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau spent a year in a self-built hut beside Walden Pond near Massachusetts. His experiences formed the basis for Walden, one of the great novels about living a simple life of self-sufficiency. Here’s an excerpt:

“Occasionally, after my hoeing" (consorting with prostitutes) "was done for the day, I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning … There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines .” (Cocaine or "snuff").

It’s a cracking read, but many of the ideas in Walden are old fashioned and the world is crying out for a fresh version. Maybe you could write your own great novel about your experiences with self-sufficiency. I’ve started mine. It’s called Walden II: On Walden Pond. Here’s an excerpt:

“Went fishing today. The water gleamed with rainbow sparks like the haunch of a great trout. I sat there for hours, many fish broke the surface, mocking me, but none took my line. So I took a stick of dynamite and that night I had a mighty feast.”

4. How to grow an apple tree:

The tree: nature’s tree. The trees don’t deserve our support after such a feeble effort in absorbing the carbon dioxide we’ve produced, but unfortunately we need them to live, so we should each plant at least one tree this year. I recommend the apple tree. The fruits repel doctors and attract teachers, which might not be good if you’re trying to find a spouse with a decent income. Otherwise, follow these instructions:

1. Save a few seeds from an apple you’ve eaten.

2. Gather your children to plant the seeds in a small container of potting soil. Water every day.

3. When you have a small seedling, move it to a bigger pot, and continue watering daily. Add fertilizer if you want.

4. Once your tree is big enough, carefully transplant it to a nice location. When it’s big you no longer need to water it. The rain will take care of it.

Now imagine a montage scene: you and your family beside the tree as it grows with you through the years, a silent witness to picnics, birthdays, anniversaries, stolen romantic moments, and, finally, the scattering of your pale ashes beneath its boughs by your children and grandchildren, all accompanied by the wistful strains of Turn Turn Turn by The Byrds. Isn’t life a strange and fleeting merry-go-ride.

5. How to carve something from wood:

You will need:
Wood or a suitable tree
Chisels and gouges
A first aid kit

There can be few greater pleasures than carving something out of wood. The thing that was once just a stupid tree is now a magnificent facsimile of a barn-owl lifting away a hamster, or Beethoven thinking of his next hit tune. Carving wood is a meditative pursuit, whether you’re whittling up a new church-hat or prosthetic arm, or carving the word “Ass-hat” into your ex-husband’s wedding pagoda, you will become involuntarily lost in it’s sweeping grain. By the time you rouse, days will have passed and the recycling will need taking out.

You need the right wood for carving. Prominent New Zealand carver Guy Tuterangiwhiu O`Connor has hewn over 4,500 frozen moments from wood, cow-bone, and the jaws of stranded whales. Custom wood is the best for beginners, he says, although sooner or later the novice is going to have to get used to the tribulations of working with grain. He says that the main mistake new carvers make is choosing a design that is too large or complicated, which is probably why my carving of the Taj Mahal looks like an Elizabethan dildo. Don’t be discouraged; if you stick with it anything is possible. Guy has carved for the king of Spain, Nelson Mandela, and the actor Michael J. Fox. You can find Guy on his website kiwibone.com. (Please type this address carefully.)

If you want to see the culmination of generations of wood carving prowess, visit Amish.net. The official website of America’s Amish country. Here you can source Amish Made Hickory Rockers, Armoires, Quilt Racks, and Amish Outdoor Patio furniture. Apparently a no technology rule can be set aside when you’re trying to create a global web-presence.

Enjoy your carving, be sure to keep your work area free of dust and debris, and keep several tourniquets on hand.

6. How to write a letter

You will need:
Fountain pen or quill
Ink
Stationery
Someone to write to

When was the last time you sat down and wrote one; felt the sweep of your pen as you crafted every phrase, felt love as you wrote “Dear Mum,” or wrath as you penned the words: “To the editor,” or, “Dearest Ass-hat”? As Emily Post screamed:

“The art of general letter-writing in the present day is shrinking until the letter threatens to become a telegram, a telephone message, a post-card … The difference though, between letter-writers of the past and of the present, is that in other days they all tried to write, and to express themselves the very best they knew how—today people don’t care a bit whether they write well or ill.”

How true. When you suggest letter writing to a young person today they say, “Wy wd we evn nd 2 wrt a ltr anywy? It tks f-n ags.” But like it or not, letter writing is part of our heritage. Where would we be without Jane Austen’s letters, or Einstein’s correspondence with Roosevelt, or Ian Wishart’s letters to God?

When writing a letter it’s important that you don’t skimp on your pen and stationery, go for the best you can afford, as this will make the best impression on your recipient. Make sure your letter is well formatted, contains a date, an address, and a polite salutation. For example:

My Dearest Agatha

What’s crackin’, bitch?

Yours with deepest affection
Ernest

It’s that simple. There isn’t time here to go into every subtle nuance of the classical letter, but everything you need to know about letter writing can be found in the book The Fashionable American Letter Writer: Or, The Art of Polite Correspondence. In it you will find many appropriate and relevant examples of good letter writing which you can use in your own letters. This for example: A letter from a gentleman to a lady, disclosing his passion:

“Every one of those qualities in you which claim my admiration, increased my diffidence, by showing the great risk I run in venturing, perhaps before my affectionate assiduities have made the desired impression on your mind, to make a declaration of the ardent passion I have long since felt for you.”

Or this: From a gentleman to a young lady of a superior fortune:

“Believe me, my dearest A -, were our circumstances reversed, I should hardly take to myself the credit of doing a generous action, in overlooking the consideration of wealth, and making you an unreserved tender of my hand and fortune.”

Or my favourite: From the Earl of Stafford to his son, just before his Lordship's execution:

“Lose not the time of your youth, but gather those seeds of virtue and knowledge which may be of use to yourself, and comfort to your friends, for the rest of your life. And that this may be the better effected, attend thereunto with patience, and be sure to correct and restrain yourself from anger.”

To which the boy no doubt replied:

“Sweet. Hv fun. C U in hevs.”

7. How to build a quantum super-computer:

You will need:
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machine (NMR)
Cup of coffee

Computers have been our masters for the past three decades, keeping us bewitched with their games, tools, and exotic pornography. In the future we may no longer be able to rely on the energy needed to run these beasts, but we’ll still need them to organise our supplies of yarn and wood and other such things. Fortunately, computers of the future will not be encumbered by transistors, circuits, or reality. Quantum computers will read the spins of atoms and molecules to perform unimaginable computational feats. In quantum computing the atoms’ “spins” can be read as either positive, negative, or undecided. The effect of this “undecided” state, as New Scientist explains, is similar to being in many places at once. You could send one self fishing, one to the yarn store, and another to kill a former business partner. The only problem with these computers is that they’re very fragile, but scientists have discovered that they can use the atoms suspended in ordinary liquids such as coffee, or beer, to make computations. That steaming cup you just brewed or purchased for an unreasonable mark-up has all the answers to the universe bubbling away inside. Can you feel the potential burning at your fingertips? All you need to make your own quantum behemoth is a question worthy of such a device, a way to input the question (you’ll need to use a bit of imagination here!) and a simple way to read the final answer. (I would use a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance device, such as you might find in a typical garden shed.) Good luck!

8. How to read the night sky:

You will need:
The sky
Eyes

Have you ever lain beneath the night sky, the heavens wheeling and burning above, and thought, “What is it all about, this universe? Also, where is the roof of my hut?” This is the same unfathomable cosmic mess that has fascinated us for the entire course of human history, the same sky that guided the old tribes to our shore, that accompanied Cook as he travelled south to find a prostitute named Venus. This is the sky that Hobson lay beneath and said, “Imagine, Busby, if all this was just, like, part of an even BIGGER universe. I love you Busby.” Heke, Hillary, and everyone since have marvelled at this same great sky.

Your viewing of the night sky can be enhanced with telescopes and other equipment, but there’s no reason you can’t enjoy the sky with your own eyes. Stand anywhere and look south. Trace your finger down the pale smear of the Milky Way to the horizon. Find two bright stars: these are the Pointer Sisters. Just above is the Southern Cross, the constellation that graces our flags and tea-towels. Now move your finger gently upward, past Carrina, Vela, Beta Carotene, Fox, Viacom, and The Riddler. The map of stars we see at night is the legacy of tens of thousands of years of concentrated effort by countless civilisations and they betray our fanatical desire to order a universe that defies order. The night sky, beyond all else, silences thought, theories, and philosophies. As my old Scout master Don Sanchizi used to say: “That’s a whole lotta wow out there.” He was right. In the face of infinity our technological discoveries are meaningless. We are held utterly powerless by the heavens which leave us to murmur a deeply felt but barely audible “Ha.” Only the night sky can do this. Also maybe babies.