Privacy Curtains

How to do it. I think.

Step One: I bought a car that was not a van, so then I needed to come up with a way to block views of the inside.

Step Two: I tried stuff. It didn't work, so I tried other stuff. That didn't work either, so I kept trying. Now I think I have it.

Conclusion: Every iteration has ended with a simpler, easier, cheaper solution, so that's good. Maybe I can quit now.

Why: Invisibility.

(1) When the car is parked, and I'm inside, there are times when I will need not to be seen, such as when changing clothes, having a sponge bath, pooping, peeing, sleeping, or metamorphosing into a glorious winged flutter-by. Since the car has 360° windows, I uh, I have to block them.

(2) When the car is parked, and I'm off somewhere, like backpacking for days on end, I will want the interior of the unoccupied car to be invisible, because my valuables are in there, and because I can't just put everything into a 40-ton vault.

Invisibility in this case will be a stand-in for security. I'm hoping that if things are not visible, then anyone nefarious will tend to try being nefarious elsewhere, because of being uncertain of the payoff of breaking into a car that does not have valuables in sight (and might just possibly have someone inside, though you can't really tell, but just might). And like that.

Definition: Invisible. Here it means "not able to be seen", and does not mean being transparent.

Transparency would be nice, since then no one would know there was anything to look at, but invisible in the sense of "a blocked view" is the best I'll be able to accomplish, and will work.

My first pass involved two layers of black bug netting backed by a sheet of what they call "clear" poly film with a thickness of 2mil to 3mil. "Poly film" is dropcloth material — polyethylene.

My thinking was that the bug netting would give the curtain a no-gloss surface and sort of fuzz it out, and in a way, from a distance, it all would not look too different from professionally-tinted glass, while the poly film would be partly transparent, but since it's actually milky (the genuinely clear stuff is no longer sold for some unknown reason), it would blur the view to the point of obscurity, though on a bright day I could still sort of see out a bit from the inside. Plus, since it's sort of white-ish, any light inside the car would bounce around inside the car, and help with visibility when I was in there doing something.

The problems were that this required cutting three pieces of stuff, attaching the pieces together, and then hanging this thing, and getting it all right. Didn't work.

The concept was fine, but without a really good place to work (i.e., somewhere indoors with a decent work table), it wasn't possible to do the measuring, cutting, and assembly with enough precision to make it work. And then there was the problem of how to hang these curtains.

Wandering around a Fred Meyer store I had come across 3M Command Hooks. I'd used these before, in apartments, and realized that the really tiny ones might be a good bet for the narrow spaces inside a car. I bought some and mounted them. Everything seemed fine until it was time to hang the curtains, which turned out to be misshapen and wrongly sized.

So next I decided to try using cut-open trash bags, the dark green ones. In lightweight bags, this material is really thin, and naturally translucent, so it does let some light pass through, but also does obscure the view well.

I put tabs of duct tape where the material would need to be held by hooks, and used a hole punch to make a proper hole. I also placed the holes just a tiny bit too far apart, so that the material would need to be under light tension, so that it wouldn't hang limply, or hang with wrinkles. All went well enough.

I didn't have to actually cut anything, just use a scissors to cut open a bag into a long and narrow piece, put the tape and holes where needed, and hang it.

But.

At some places in the car, the interior plastic lining where I was putting the hooks is unaccountably slippery, as though it's been waxed. I couldn't clean these areas well enough, short of using a nuclear-grade solvent such as acetone, which might well permanently damage the car's interior. Hmmm.

So. Next I went looking for different hooks.

I decided to use badge straps. Or "ID badge strap clips", or whatever. (They have several names.) There is a spring-loaded metal clip on one end, with a narrow vinyl strap attached to it, and a pair of snaps.

Take a look at what Office Depot has...

I already had duct tape, and the vinyl strap would offer a decent place to anchor the clip with the tape, and so on. Didn't work, for the same reason: Some of the car's interior was just too slippery.

So. Next I tried something completely different — I skipped adhesives and stuffed the clip's strap and its two snaps sort of behind the wall. I pulled the hard plastic interior lining of the car out a bit, just enough so I could slide the strap and the two snaps behind it, and then let go. What I ended up with was the metal clip protruding into the interior of the car. Once the clips were placed, I verified that I could hang cut-open plastic bags from them.

This method is awkward because I can't put a clip just anywhere, and hanging something from the clips takes three or four hands, but it does work. There is no adhesive involved, so there will be nothing to clean, ever, and there is no damage done to the vehicle. There is a line inside the car where the headliner meets the "paneling", and I can stick a hook (mostly) anywhere along that line. There are one or two places where this technique will not work well, or where I need to use some tape, but I'll be able to get by.

Success.

Photos:

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Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com

Hacking Through It

Living is a hack these days. I like it better this way. It's better than living with bags of regret and no remedies.

I won't say what I have to regret, but there is something almost daily. If I didn't care I wouldn't care, but I've always been reflective and it's not going to stop this week, or next, so out of desperation I guess, I found something else to do besides hate myself for what I've done in the past out of ignorance, or shyness, or inexperience, or laziness, or wrong-headedness.

Now I hack. Hack myself.

Maybe this approach started due to the influence of Craig and Lucy. They are retired dairy farmers. They now own a cafe in Cuenca, Ecuador, the Windhorse Cafe. They follow Tibetan Buddhist practices and lead meditation sessions at the cafe. It's a thing for them, a big one, and also apparently for others.

I heard a woman in her 60s gleefully exclaim "I'm a Buddhist!" Go for it, gal. Done in the tone of the Smothers Brothers' "Streets of Laredo" parody: "If you have an outfit you can be a cowboy too."

Point One: Being a buddhist (in, if I may say, the real sense), means that you don't claim to be one

Point Two: If you're a Buddhist you don't get there by buying a t-shirt and wearing it around town.

Point Three: Diet isn't a thing. Claiming to be a Buddhist and being a vegetarian and using one to prove the other doesn't prove anything.

Point Four: You're grown up. You should know better by now.

I taught myself to meditate beginning back in 1964 or 1965. It took 10 or 15 years before I started to catch on. I wanted to be a Buddhist too, but I'm not a joiner. There was no one to join in Bismarck anyway, but still I don't play well with others, so I had to do everything the hard way while being honest with myself.

The years tell. As decades go by, a person matures and gains perspective on things simply while continuing to breathe. Things stick to you the way lint sticks to a shirt. Things have stuck to me. I now claim that there is no magic. I will never be a Buddhist, and don't want to be one. I still have sporadic episodes of meditation, but that's my private deal. It's not going anywhere. Meditation doesn't go anywhere.

I can say that the single most important thing I've learned is how to meditate. I'll stand by that.

However, I'll also say that there is no enlightenment — it's a brain hack. Meditate and you hack your brain.

Keep hacking and eventually you change the way your brain operates. That's it. No magic. No religion needed. No rituals. No secret handshake.

Hack harder and longer and you will probably get bigger changes sooner, but there is no guarantee, and no matter what you'll still get old and ugly and then die, unless you die sooner, in which case you'll still die, but with less oldness and less ugliness.

Meditation does change how you think about things and how you feel about things, and overall it's a good deal, but going around squeaking about how advanced you are or how Buddhist you are this week or how much you know that no one else knows is not a sign that you have the real item. In fact, you never have anything — you change a bit here and there, subtly, and maybe take a more nuanced and helpful approach to life, and don't get your shorts tied in so many knots.

That's about it.

And then for the rest, I'm extending the hacking idea to my life in general.

When something happens I try to figure out out why, or to figure out what could have made it work, if it possibly could have worked but didn't, and then yell into my internal ear "HACK!", and remember it. Then do the hack next time, to get things right, rather than doing the same dumb wrong thing over and over. Or feeling nasty about myself.

Now, currently, I'm in western Washington state. I arrived February 27. I wanted to come early to get a good deal on a used car, at a time when there was still a good supply at depressed winter prices, and little competition. That worked.

What hasn't worked quite so well is that, once I accomplished that, the weather turned especially bad, and there has been nasty rain for the last month. Mostly I've been spending days at the library and nights sleeping in my car in the rain. Heavy rain. Rain and wind. Record rainfall. Waiting for the car's paperwork to grind its way along. That took the full 45 days, oh joy forever.

But, there is a hackishness to this too. I am tired of waiting, and am way behind on such projects as modifying the car's interior to make it more amenable to living in and to sleeping in, but I know that the weather will catch up to the calendar. I know that things will improve. I know that spring will really come, and then that real summer will be here, and then that I will forget what I'm going through now, and that I will be doing a lot of fun traveling and fun backpacking.

But not yet. Not today.

Today, as in weeks previous, and for some (small) time to come I will be moving slowly and will continue to be frustrated by weather. But the deal is that I'm hacking the hiking season. I'm living outside, though (gratefully) protected by the hard shell of a car, with plenty of money for fuel, a car which supplies mobility and heat and electricity to power what devices I have, and all that, and I have two places where I can shower up any day I need to (each). I'm OK here, sitting but sitting alertly, just as though I'm some goddamn meditation master smirking at the universe and watching it unfold.

"Gimme shot — gimme best shot, you. Hah! You call that shot? Piss on you, eh?" That's me, sort-of.

I'm getting to see the hiking season develop. Getting to see my opinions change, my plans change, my gear closet fill up, my thoughts about where to go and when and where to go first, and second, and later some time, and then maybe where to go at the end of this season, and what to do with my car and my clothes then, and what about next year, if there is a next year. I'm learning. I'm watching the lotus blossom.

Which means that I'm hacking my life some more. I'm gaining perspective. It's like a meditation retreat, except while sleeping in my car. And eating in my car, and urinating in my car, and changing clothes in my car, and (although not yet, not yet this trip), defecating in my car (into a plastic bag, of course).

Yeah, so lucky me. I could be in Cuenca now, watching fall arrive. There now, in Cuenca now, the season is the equivalent of mid-November, because Cuenca is south of the equator. In truth, Cuenca is deep into winter, winter being the rainy season, when not huge amounts of rain fall, but when rain falls regularly and when the temperature overnight is in the low to mid 40s (°F) and the day's high might touch 55°F. It gets effing cold with no heat and almost no sun. But still it's more pleasant than what I'm in now. But still, this here-and-now stuff is what I wanted. Go figga.

So, nothing especially to do now, at this moment, but to continue observing, learning, and updating my approach, i.e., keep on with the hacking.

Which sounds good. Not that bad. OK. Tolerable.

I hope I'm as smart as I sometimes think I sound.

Rainwet

No — not yet. September. September, 2016.

Friday, then Friday night, then Friday night rain.

I'm a turtle, inside my shell, sleeping while the rain beats at it. Let it beat. I'm down for the night, shelled in a car.

Then I'm up, and it's Saturday. Another day, another day at the library.

So that's Saturday, then there is Saturday night, and then Saturday night rain.

How familiar by now, and back to Turtle Island, my car, floating, dreaming in the rain. Turn the good ear up and it's pain. Turn the deaf ear up and it's an endless long hum.

A hum caught in the sky's throat. The sky takes long nighttime showers, takes the full night, goes all in. I dream of Frenly Denwa, of Fulsom Honeydew, of Mindy Fresh. Know them? I don't think so either. They only passed by once, full in their beam of portable sunshine, while I loitered in the darkness.

Then Sunday comes. Hope. Should be better, no?

Better then? No.

Off to the park for my own washup, needed. How bad can this state park shower be by now?

Shitbucket.

The hygienic equal to diarrhea soup, served cold. Like a deep bowl of cold diarrhea soup to stand in.

One test token turns the shower on but twirling the knobs only bounces it from off to full glacier. By mistake I tune it to variably tolerable. Someone failed here, so why not, and leverage their oversight, enduring the warm to hot to warm to chilly cycles and bathe anyway. Ha! Beat you! Sorta.

...Dave's qwikwash interlude...

Then back to my car in a solo umbrella parade. Sunday. What a fine day for laundry. So I do that.

But the weather itself fails later, and dies, and weak sun burns in. Yeah. Always later, isn't it? But sun.

Monday then, today, and how is it? Partly to mostly sunny. For now.

And tonight? And tomorrow? How about? Oh.

Rain.

How Is Car Living?

"How is car living?" you might ask, if you knew me. (Although you don't, but I can pretend).

If you did, and had too much time in your life to deal with on your own, and needed to kill some of it in probably the worst possible way, then you could ask. Why ask is your problem, because you won't, so then I will never have anything to do with this question, like answering it, but you still have to deal with the why of it all, because you're thinking about it, aren't you? Eh? Or would be if you existed.

So anyway, if I know one thing, that's it right there. I'm on my own.

Yes, and living in my car. What separates me from the rest of the homeless population around here is that I have a car. I make sure to remind myself to remember that. To remember that I left my warm cozy life of waking up late and only trying to make it to lunch by noon and then doing nothing else all day except possibly buying some fruit and going for a walk, for this. I spent a bunch of money for this. For this living in a car, which has around two thirds the floor space of my former bathroom, which was in turn just large enough that if I turned around exactly slowly enough I would not bump into myself. Slowly. Not faster.

Counter, toilet, and half the bath tub. That's my car, but without the headroom, or the plumbing. I'm living in my bathroom without the washup option and can't also flush away what needs to be flushed away.

A plastic bag, paper toweling, and a bunch of those wet wipey-wipes do work, but your aim has to be accurate right up front, assuming that you do have room behind the driver's seat. And no one is looking. And after that, The Disposal Routine. Problems that it doesn't even occur to a normal bathroom to think about.

But that's life these days. Free as a bird.

A bird named Ed, for example. A bird with a cigarette-stained beak, one leg, a bad cough, graying feathers, a limited time horizon.

Or not. Maybe some other Ed.

The watchword is carefulness. That's it for now: Think first, then act. Move slowly. Don't spill. Especially don't spill. Anything. This car needs to be resold at some point. If that's in a few months then Pay Attention Now, Hear? But if I keep it and continue breathing for two or three more years, then it doesn't really matter unless I miss the bag, and lay my secret right on the floor. Probably best at that point to pull a cap down around my ears and burn the car and hitchhike back to Ecuador without saying anything.

That's where carefulness comes in. I'm practicing it.

Carefulness is like mindfulness but not dressed in black leather or moving to the music. Mindfulness is trendy now, and sleek and slim, but "carefulness" is barely even a word. It's doesn't go to parties or get its name dropped every 10 seconds. It means "Don't eff up, then, putz-face", and means to mean it, and will give you a slap across the forehead right now, not even one second from now, no time to even begin thinking up an excuse, just Whack! if you forget and let your attention wander and do something you shouldn't.

So, yeah, I'm having fun. Life is real fun now, sleeping inside a damp car 25 miles out of town, listening for engines in the night, remembering to wake up by 6:30 so I can get into town and have a shower before it locks up a 9 a.m., having a cup of coffee, buying food from the refrigerated section, and spending the day at the library, inside of which is has not rained. Yet. And then going in reverse in the evening and hoping I won't need to use a toilet until right before tomorrow's shower, and waiting for the car's title and registration and plates to arrive, and drier weather and all that so I can tool around and remain being a homeless guy but one out hiking in the summer.

Something like that.

Exciting to think about if you're the right kind of person.

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The story of Ed: I rescue this dog. He rescues the bird. The bird rescues all of us in a weird sense and it's just a miracle. A different Ed.

Helicopter toilet

Good Enough

Overnight.

Parked in the woods, at my hilltop stop. As the car door closes and locks, the rain begins.

I am inside alone in the wet until until dawn, listening to drops tapping their dances atop my car. Cozy sleeping but cramped. Little air but enough. I can manage.

My facilities are reduced. I have an empty jar, if I need it, and I will. No reason to go out, to stand in the rain. Better to stay dry, inside, to bleed pressure from my bladder. As long as I don't spill.

"If you live long enough, everything is possible," they say, so one day I will urinate my car. "But not tonight," I hope.

The moon is with me, above, but it hides. I know it is watching behind its curtain of clouds. We are separate tonight, cannot see each other. The moon has been keeping me company for days now. Nights. For nights. We will get past this and resume our conversation directly, but not this night.

The moon itself is always dry, you know, but cold — the eternal tradeoff. Wet or cold, pick your pain. The moon is dry but I am wet. We both suffer then, in our separate ways, and talk later.

In the morning after showering with the other homeless men I visit a laundry to let a dryer have at my towel. It will never come dry otherwise, today, not inside the car inside the rain all day. I have money, and it is well spent. The towel revives.

Then, surprised, hours later, the following evening, last night, parked again at the same spot, there is no rain, not all night, and I see stars while outside, not needing my jar, or chancing a spill. I see stars, and tonight was due the deluge. Later, I guess. It will still come, I think. It will. The year is still too young to be dry, and the storms still range free.

Very well. I have to accept all outcomes because there is no choice among them. At least I have seen stars again. They are still doing fine, and the hazed moon was only slightly hazed. Beyond the clouds, but only slightly out of reach.

This is good. Good enough, I guess.