Self-sufficient life | "Writer's Child" and Writer (Part 3)

Editor's note: Kou Jie has always had a looming identity as a writer - now, it lies on some book covers, or hangs in the producer list of series contributors; when hidden, she leans over the ridges of the fields and works like a worker. In the third article of the self-sufficient life series, this writer hired people to build a four-season vegetable garden and a sun room. In the process, she learned some details of the work from the masters, and also learned a word: "writer".

This "writer" is not that writer

"Wow! You're a writer too." When Master Yu said this to me, I was stunned for a moment: I didn't say anything, right?

After thinking about it again, I smiled. I learned a sentence in Taian dialect. The stress is on "zuo", read it in the third tone, and the sound is prolonged. "jia" is pronounced with an er-like tone. "jia jiaer" means an expert who is good at using tools and working.

Master Yu said this because I picked up a tool to level the ground. They dug trenches and trenches, making the ground uneven and bumpy, and I stumbled as I walked. My yard is only the size of a palm, and I either stepped on the beams in the ditch or on the rose, blueberry and kiwi seedlings. They only focused on rushing the work and not on repairing the ground. If it is leveled, it will not only look good, but also save the lives of my babies.

I was delighted by the word "writer". I managed to resist the urge to take the opportunity to brag about my ability to farm or something.

They are not only metalworkers, bricklayers, and plasterers, but also farmers nearby who cultivate the land, true labor experts. This is a compliment to me, and I was surprised that an old lady with books all around her started out with such a high attitude. But if you really think of yourself as a writer, then I don't know how high the sky is and how deep the earth is.

During the construction period, I was impressed by their ability to work. I like to do things with my hands, but I often don't know how to do them. They not only made things look easy because of their physical strength and power, but also used their bodies and tools in detail, which was amazing.

For example, I have electric saws and electric drills, and I love to use them and I know how to use them, but I use them in a conventional and clumsy way. If I want to cut angle iron, I must first set up the tools and prepare the site, prepare a tape measure and a marker, follow the operating procedures, put it in the bottom, make it solid, start, saw down, and then follow this procedure to cut the second cut.

At first, they held the handle in their right hand and the angle iron in their left hand, just like me. But after sawing off, they immediately used the angle iron they had just sawed off as a ruler, drew a mark with their hand, folded it over and continued to cut another line, and then, without stopping the sawing, they swung their left hand, adjusted the angle iron 90 degrees and turned it over, without putting it firmly on the base, and held it directly under the rotating saw blade in their hand, sawing the right-angled line in mid-air, and then shook their hands to knock off the burrs, so that they would not hurt their hands or others in the next process. The whole process was extremely smooth and completed in one go, and the sound of the electric saw almost never stopped.

Except for the first measurement with a ruler, the rest is done by measuring the size to ensure that it fits perfectly when welded. It can be said that this operation is not standardized, but why is the standardized operation for? The purpose is to ensure stable operation without deviation and user safety. There is no problem with the stability of their hand-held angle irons, the human-machine matching is highly safe, and the efficiency is countless times that of mine - "writers".

Among writers, I am considered to be someone who loves to work and is capable of hard work, but if measured by working ability, compared to theirs, almost all of us have had our lives ruined.

There are also "writers" among writers

Of course, there are "writers" among writers, such as Thoreau, the Thoreau who wrote "Walden".

At the end of March 1845, Thoreau came to the lakeside forest with a borrowed axe and began to cut trees to build a house for himself. On July 4, Thoreau moved into the house he built with his own hands: "So I have an airtight house with wood nailed on it and plastered with mud." On the shore of Walden Lake, Thoreau's wooden house is about 14 square meters, with an attic, a small room, two doors, and two windows, which is very transparent. There is a fireplace in the house, a two-meter-deep cellar outside the house, and a sloping house built with the remaining materials from the construction of the house, which is fully equipped for living. All of this was built with Thoreau's own hands.

Of course, the building materials were also purchased from outside, and Thoreau kept detailed records, spending a total of $28,125, including two boxes of lime, one thousand old bricks, and two old windows and glass. In order to give people a reference for this expense, Thoreau mentioned the annual rent of a student dormitory at Harvard University's Cambridge College, where he studied, which was 30 yuan.

A writer like Thoreau is a "writer-child".

The "Writer" on the Prairie

The classic American children's literature, Little House on the Prairie, tells the true life story of the Ingalls family. It records the process of building a house from the perspective of Charles' daughter Laura, a six or seven-year-old girl. The family drove a horse-drawn carriage from Kansas to Kansas. When the carriage reached a place where there was no road on the prairie, Charles shouted "Stop": "This is where we are going to build a house and live."

Charles, his wife and three young daughters, lived in the carriage all the way. He wanted to build a house and live there, so he unloaded the items on the carriage and drove away: "Dad is going to the ditch to load a cart of logs back."

It sounded like there was a lumber mill at the bottom of the ditch, but in fact, it was a vast prairie with no one around. From where they parked, they could see the treetops along the riverbed. Laura didn't see the process of the treetops turning into logs, she only saw the result, "Dad came back with a wagon full of logs." Then, one more wagon after another. Then, they started to use these logs to build a log house.

One person built the house to the height of three logs, and Laura's mother was needed to help hold the logs. Soon it was built to a height that Laura could not climb over. At this time, the mother was hit by a falling log and her foot was hit. Without help, the house construction stopped.

Fortunately, there was a neighbor across the ditch who had also migrated from afar to start a family from scratch. They swapped jobs to build the house, and with the help of Mr. Edwards, they built it to the required height in one day - building a house on the prairie is so simple and rough, so willful and easy.

That night the family moved into the new house without doors or roofs. The father heard the howling of wolves nearby and wanted his wife and daughter to live in a place with walls to feel at ease.

A good man doesn't need nails

The wolves came without waiting for their door to be in place. Laura was awakened by the wolf's howl in the middle of the night, and her father carried her to the window hole, "under the moonlight, the wolves formed a half circle." From another window, he saw "on the other side of the house, was the other half of the wolf's circle."

Laura lay in bed "and heard the sound of their claws scratching the ground and the heavy breathing as they sniffed the cracks in the wall."

The next morning, Dad started making the door. The only tools he had were the axe, saw, knife, and drill he brought with him. The raw materials for the door were still the logs from the bottom of the ditch, and of course, the labor.

He had no nails. More than 20 years earlier, Thoreau's list of expenses for building a house already included iron sheets and screws, which were common building materials of that era. But to buy nails, one had to go to town, which took at least a whole day, and the wolf was right next to him. Dad wanted a door immediately: "Men can build houses or make doors without nails." He didn't spend a penny to build the house, and indeed he didn't use nails. He used an axe to carve out mortise and tenon joints to fix the logs. This is a skill that I understand the principle but have not yet mastered. Wooden nails are used to make doors. I have tried wooden nails, but it takes a long time to make one, and the quality is extremely poor. Laura just said "everything was nailed together with good, strong wooden nails", which shows how easy this matter was in her father's hands.

We used to be writers.

The story of the Ingalls family is not too long ago, just a hundred years ago during the Western development era after the American Civil War. Similar experiences are not isolated cases. In the West surrounded by wolves, thousands of pioneers have similar experiences.

I have met many such "writers". More than ten years ago, I was shooting a documentary on the Jinsha River and lived in the mansion of my cousin who was a ferryman. The huge house had two entrances, a fish pond, a chicken coop, a livestock shed, an orchard, a vegetable plot, a firewood shed, and a kitchen, as well as a two-story building with carved doors and windows.

Land there is precious and every inch of it is worth a lot of money. No one is willing to use any land that can be used for planting to build houses. Twenty years ago, this place was still a barren Shiliang slope. People here built their own families from scratch with just their own hands.

"The house is bare" means poverty, but when my uncle and aunt got married, they were so poor that they had no walls and lived in their parents' house. In the winter when they were not busy with farming, they built a shed and lived in the mountains, felling trees (they had planted them many years ago), breaking stones and burning lime, digging soil and burning bricks and tiles - how did they build a "luxury house"? They spent almost nothing, and the materials for building the house were all from their own hands and the land under their feet, and the labor came from exchange workers.

Regardless of whether the house is spacious or cramped, the people living by the river all do everything from oil pressing to wine making, and are self-sufficient in life. Going back 20 or 30 years, they even planted mulberry trees, raised silkworms, spun yarn, and wove clothes. Particularly particular families would plant a field of barley in addition to wheat, and the wine brewed from it is particularly moving. My cousin's aunt did this and made my cousin drunk with barley wine for 20 years. Here, every person and every family lives independently between heaven and earth, and they are all "writers" who interact with nature and are self-sufficient.

It doesn’t matter whether you build your own house or not. What matters is your ability to work by making good use of your body and limited tools in your own living environment. Once upon a time, this was the most fundamental survival ability of the human race.

What was the reason why the human race did not perish at the hands of wolves, did not starve to death in the process of evolution, and stood out to become the most intelligent creatures?

The difference between humans and animals is the use of language, fire, and tools. As civilization develops and human beings progress, the ability to use fire has reached its peak, modern industrial civilization has grown based on fossil fuels, and more and more writers use words. However, is our ability to use our bodies and tools improving or declining?

In the hands of Thoreau, Charles, and my uncle and aunt, tools are not only an extension of the human body, but also an extension of human autonomy. Today, tools are different from the past. They can be computers, keyboards, airplanes, ships, excavators, and crawler vehicles. It seems that human tools are becoming more and more powerful. However, we must know that the longer the distance between our hands and labor and these tools, the more humans lose control of tools. To a certain extent, we are controlled by these tools and lose our autonomy in life.

No matter where you are, a true "writer" is someone who can make good use of the most basic tools in his or her hands and use his or her own labor to meet needs and benefit others. So, are there more or fewer such people now? Am I such a person?

"Let the wolves howl, they can't get in with Pa and Jack (their old dog) there." Laura fell asleep surrounded by wolves.

There are fewer and fewer wolves in the world. Why can't I sleep well even though there are no wolves around me?

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