A New Space, Part III: On Smallness and Moving Slow (with guest writing from Suhee)
If you just joined, we are continuing The Beginnings of a New Space, a series charting our progress, as we remodel a building for our planned studio in Daejeon, Korea. This happens every two weeks, with my normal illustrated stories/essays appearing on the alternate weeks.
The previous writing in this series has us taking apart shipping pallets:
—
It is snowing a lot here, and when it’s not snowing, it’s -10C outside. Sometimes it is sunny and snowing though, which is really beautiful. But it’s still cold nonetheless.
You know that feeling when you are doing a whole lot of work, but it still looks like you have gotten nowhere?
We have made progress in our pallet upcycling adventure, but the work has been mostly prepping the materials. Since so little is actually being built at this stage, this is the feeling which takes over at times.
In these times, I remind myself to focus on the details and take satisfaction in my actions.
Actions like:
Transforming an ugly, rough, gnarly piece of wood into somewhat attractive, flat, perfectly usable piece of wood.
Removing a nail from a pallet and adding it to a bucket of 300 other nails from other pallets, reminding myself that they might be useful later.
Moving a stack of heavy boxes moves from one side of the room to the other for the third time because I didn’t plan ahead, while also reminding myself that my muscles are becoming a little bigger and my stomach a little smaller, and I should be thankful for physical work.
Also, I have produced quite a pleasingly large pile of wood shavings every day through planing.
Really though. We are having fun, and growing.
I want to share a writing from Suhee, with her reflections on the moving process and the new space(s) we are inhabiting. It is below, roughly translated from Korean to English. There are [notes are in brackets by me] in the text.
1. The New Home
The house we moved to is a studio apartment, so we had to reduce our belongings a lot. We are still in the process of reducing it, and I really like this unexpected change. The kitchen and the bedroom are simply separated by a built-in table, and Patrick designed and created a front storage cabinet on one wall to store clothes and bedding. The building is managed by LH [the Korean National Land & Housing Corporation] so there is a stability of being able to stay here for a long time with a low monthly rent. We had been missing this kind of stability in our life for a long time. The villa [that is what Koreans call a small apartment building] was built recently, and our unit is on the middle floor, so it's warm even if you rarely turn on the boiler.
There were minor defects in the apartment, such as the kitchen faucet or missing insect screen. So I called the “Happiness Support Center” and was grateful that they addressed the issues immediately. Patrick, meanwhile, brought his tools out to accomplish detailed planning + design + production tasks that I could not possibly do. It is still amazing and admirable even though we have been together for over ten years :-) [Hey, thanks, Suhee!]
In this small space, we were forced to think about our belongings and what is useful. The fact that the usefulness of an item needs to be reaffirmed is the big advantage of a small space. Actually, before we moved, I felt ashamed of our previous large place in Seokgyo-dong, with three rooms and a spacious veranda that, after getting the shop, we very rarely used. Then again, I also think of how cold and difficult that big old house was and wonder, how did we live in such a home? [The shower floor had an inch of ice covering it in the morning.] Anyway, it was a house where we stayed for nearly three years and had many good memories, so, goodbye to the old house in Seokgyo-dong. I am grateful for our time there.
2. The New Studio
While the house is being organized to some extent, when it comes to the new studio space, there are so many things to do that there is no end in sight. I am determined not to overdo it and to proceed little by little. The pallet wood that will become the wooden floor is in progress—pallets dismantled over a week, nails removed in three days, and smoothing with a sander and plane underway.
When work felt too hard and slow, as my father used to say, there were times when the thought crossed my mind, ‘Why didn’t I just pay money to buy it?’ However, reviving as much of the discarded materials as possible and reusing them to suit our purposes is an important work that we have continued since our very first space, in Osaka. This is not just to reduce our cost, but also to reduce the waste that will be added to the world, create new uses, and create beauty from discarded materials.
When possible, I want to properly record and share our intention and the progress, with the thought that someone else might find it useful or inspiring. Patrick has also been working on that in his spare time over the past few weeks while I was too busy+tired to do anything.
Meanwhile, the faucet in the kitchen at our studio broke, so I tried replacing a kitchen faucet for the first time in my life. I followed the advice of various YouTube teachers and carefully wrapped the Teflon tape and connected the parts, and was able to complete it without any problems. How proud I feel of myself every time I use water :-)
[Coincidentally, it was also the first time Suhee went to the hardware store with me, excited to buy a new tool. I feel proud, too.]
In front of our favorite little tool store in the next neighborhood, I bought a cute green monkey wrench. There is free coffee vending machine in the store, so we happily shared a cup on a cold day.
3. A Reflection
A few days ago, I stopped by the ‘new books’ section of the library and borrowed an interesting book by Michael Singer and am happily reading it. The book features many stories I remember hearing during Vipassana meditation years ago. Those stories had faded away somewhat, and this book helps me remember and understand them in new ways. I enjoyed reading it and spent time to write down passages that touched my heart. This one sentence at the end seemed to encapsulate the past few months, so I read it over and over again.
“I came down to Earth for a while and these are the experiences I had to have. It was hard, but I went through it and became better for it.”
[Not sure the exact quote here. The Korean version of the book takes some liberties with the translation, so the above text is like an English → Korean → English game of telephone.]
I feel there will definitely be difficult processes in the future, but let's believe that we will overcome them with strength, and that things can and will continue to get better. Finally, I am sharing the scenery of Bomunsan Mountain from this past summer with Patrick. On a midwinter day like today, I do miss the green light and summer sunshine.
Suhee’s original post can be read on her blog in Korean:
https://blog.naver.com/vertciel
—
Thanks, Suhee. Definitely, I will be happy if we can take a nap on a rock in the forest again soon. Thanks to ya’ll for reading this week.