Pleasure Grows Best In Simple Conditions
Extracting the highest yield of joy from slow living
Dear Reader,
There are certain quirks (read: inconveniences) about this new life chapter of living in an incomplete tiny home that I often think would make some of our family’s and friends’ eyes bulge. Gauging our off-grid energy use depending on the weather, baths exposed in sideways rain, and timing lined-dried laundry loads in between squalls have certainly tested our patience and at times left our (mostly my) morale thread barren. But also, this tiny life has offered something precious in return. Without wanting to sound trite and wax poetic about silver linings, let me be clear that these relatively small trials instead are reminders of the work already done. They are little breadcrumbs and ribbons tied to tree branches calling us back to our learned super power of adaptability and to the simplicity of the things in which we find pleasure.
(It feels worth mentioning that as I was typing out that last sentence about signals and signs, I was distracted by an incessant buzzing against the window, which turned out not the be the fly I’d expected it to be, but rather a honeybee, a long time personal symbol that appears every so often as a reminder that I’m moving in the right direction. Let’s hope she’s right. I opened the window and gently guided her out, and now she’s back to work and so am I.)
Back to adaptability as a means to experiencing greater pleasure — My creative work through Hina Luna has been a self-sent invitation to slow down, release expectation, and embrace the beauty of imperfection. In 2016, I launched Hina Luna as a “botanical dyery”, an outlet to showcase and offer my experimentations with natural dyes on textiles (which has since evolved and still continues to morph). Prior to this work, my medium of choice since as long as I can remember had been paint, graphite, ink, and for a stint, mixed paper media. Plant dye requires varying levels of chemistry, a subject I didn’t particularly excel at as a younger person, and so my technique has been to approach it much like I do cooking. Add, layer, intuition, sample, adjust, forgo the timer. Delizioso.
As a young painter and drawer, I was calculated (as I revealed in last week’s letter, I’m a recovering perfectionist) and regret the risks I didn’t take in my years of art education. One of my earliest art making memories is of coloring at the kitchen table and my grandfather — a wonderful, gentle man who read me the Sunday comics and always reminded me to “be safe” — telling me to stay inside the lines. Plant dye is an unpredictable thing at the mercy of water quality, regional growing conditions, and timing. This rainbow world of endless possibilities was my gateway to breaking up with perfectionism, starting at my creative life and proliferating out, shining a light in every shadowy corner. I can’t deny that there have been some failed dye experiments — some metaphorical over-salted, inedible meals — but more than that, I have been left in awe, mouth gaping, at the unplanned beauty that came out of the dye pot.
The moral of the story being that my work with natural dyes taught me to fear less the unexpected and to instead let myself be gobsmacked by its beauty.
With natural dyeing, the ingredients are quite simple. At its most minimal — plants or minerals, water, and heat. Proof that more does not always mean better. A testimony to the beauty of the uncomplicated. The process is as simple as the dyer chooses to make it and my greatest muse in the field, Sasha Duerr, creates stunning examples of extracting a high yield of beauty from dye processes that are as simple as it gets. When enraptured by the world of plant dyeing, before long one can’t help but wonder what else can be made as simple, as small, as few, as uncomplicated as possible while providing a beacon of pleasure in its most magically mundane form?
(The bee is back!)
Over the years, I’ve taken this question to my wardrobe, to my possessions, to my food, to my relationships, to my time, and to my work. The answer across the board has been quality over quantity and by surrounding myself with fewer, better things, my capacity for joy is broadening. For my partner and I, in this current phase of life, we’re taking it home, choosing to make our life small for it to expand, simplifying to maximize pleasure. In the physical sense, there is less of everything — fewer belongings, less space in our little fridge, fewer windows to clean, less square footage of floor to sweep. What it’s revealed is opportunities to choose better, to take more thoughtful and consistent care, and to more easily manage the working parts of our life. The ultimate goal being that if we have fewer things to do, we can do them better and also create room for more of what we love. While all of the comforts and conveniences of past iterations of our lives don’t exist here, we feel a greater sense of gratitude for the pockets of surprise pleasure that wouldn’t otherwise be felt, like slipping into line-dried white bedsheets, bleached by the sun and ironed by the wind. Especially after shuffling back inside through wet grass and sideways rain in a bath towel!
These reflections are not silver linings or forced positive outlooks pocketed in unpleasant situations. Rather, it’s real, deep gratitude for ordinary goodness that reveals itself in the void and in the quiet spaces, when life slows down enough. Simple, authentic contentment that comes with a practice of releasing control, embracing unpredictability, and trusting that you can, actually, be pleasantly surprised.
