GIMME SHELTER

By Peggy Atwood

I know this feeling; I have been here before. My heart is in my throat, all love, pain, passion, logic and desire, I am running as fast as I can for the edge, like Carlos Casteneda having faith that once having leapt off the cliff I can fly. Is this addictive behavior? Is this extremism needed in order to feel anything? I have been doing it all my life, skiing too fast, high diving off bridges and cliffs, loving as if there were no tomorrow, climbing snake-infested ledges to be one with the warmth of the rock, even being incarcerated on a pallet in an Athens jail for defending a Greek draft dodger whose life was all but worthless except for his internationally famous grandmother. All doubts are present, all self-criticisms are shrieking like fanged harpies, all family and friends are now nodding in self-assured certainty that their collective assessment of my mental and emotional instability was correct, and my double-Gemini gates are wide open, a clear channel for the massive throbbing energies ebbing and flowing and overwhelming my puny human form. I have just taken the biggest risk I have ever taken.

I am talking about the emotional roller coaster that my latest creative undertaking, the planning and construction over the last 5 years of my eco-structure, a Monolithic Dome, the most earth-friendly, disaster-resistant, energy-efficient structure on the planet. As I write this, snow is blowing drifts over my window sill, power lines are down, stick-built roofs are collapsing under the weight of the snow, it is -3 degrees and my woodstove is cheerily keeping a 3200 sq. ft. insulated concrete shell snug and cozy. The path to this point in time has been adventurous and educational, filled with enough stories to tell over many generational campfires.

It all began, unbeknownst to me and too many intertwined stories ago, approximately the time I left New York city in 1991, thinking my career and life were over. All I had left was some form of deep knowing and trust that I would be guided out of the deepest abyss into the light. Almost immediately, two pure-white newborn feral kitties crossed my path, and I took them in; I knew it was a sign. They were my little guardian angels, and the source of love for my wounded heart/soul space. With two other friends, my life began to unfold in a way that was dictated only by following spirit without hesitation, all experiences leading deeper into my conviction that following my inner voice was absolutely the way to go; one profound metaphysical experience after another, each one reaffirming an ancient knowing beyond my current ability to comprehend, but all having a signature resonance that blasted my heart chakra with undeniable force. I knew I could never return to the old ways of being in the world, and didn't know what that would look like or bring about; I had always bucked the system, and was already way out of synch with anything resembling a safe path at this stage of my life. [Damn the torpedoes — full speed ahead. ]

Following the signs, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1994, and purchased my first tiny fixer-upper house. Each night after work I would sit on the back stoop, look out at the turn-of-the-century vintage Hackberry trees and pray that they would not hit the house in case of a tornado (which in Tennessee there were many). During that time, I was having dreams that would awaken me, sitting upright in bed in a cold sweat, voices in my head yelling, Get Out Now! Ruuun!!! I had no reason whatsoever to think anything of it; in spite of a family tragedy, I was doing well, making a name for myself. I was generally enjoying the discovery of my new life in the land of my mother and stepmother, women of the deep South from Memphis and Little Rock, and from whom I had received whatever precious support they could give to nurture my musical gifts. My dreams and uneasiness persisted, however, and I knew I needed to heed my inner voice; I moved back to upstate New York.

One month after arriving in the Catskills, a friend called and told me to turn on CNN news. There it was: an aerial view of my sweet little house, my neighborhood in Nashville, demolished and burning as if it had been strafed by a B-52. The tornados had come, and, all trees that I had prayed to were lying in a swirled manner all around the house — except the two I could not see on each side of the house, whose tops had intertwined and torn the roof off and twisted the house off its foundation. Within moments of my return as I clambered over the trees to survey the damage, a voice called out to me, "Hey, do you want to sell your house?" Truly, I was blessed.

For the next four years, I set to work renovating what seemed like my dream home at the time, an Adirondack-styled lodge I had picked up in foreclosure; it was in an idyllic setting, and I thought it would be my happy home forever. As the renovation was winding down in the Spring of 2001, a forest fire roared over the ridge behind my back yard like a volcano; the crew I had hired packed up everything and got out of there within 15 minutes, leaving me to face the fire alone. I knew if the wind shifted I would lose the lodge in five minutes. That was the beginning of several traumatic events that came to pass all at once, and 2001 turned out to be the most horrific year of my life to date.

After nearly losing two homes and not having the ability to face getting onstage, I began looking at alternatives to regular building, and started channeling my creative energies into seeking shelter from the storm. I researched one alternative structure after another, straw bale, cordwood, earth ships, sandbags, yurts; none of these structures could possibly withstand what I had been through with a tornado or a forest fire, let alone earthquake, mudslide, flood or hurricane. I wanted it all.

Then I came across the Monolithic website, (www.monolithic.com) and "the feeling" came over me; I knew this was it. It was the perfect combination of all styles of construction, yet ecologically friendly, these Domes are as disaster proof as a building can get. They will withstand tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and fire. They cannot burn, be eaten by bugs or destroyed by mold. They will last for centuries. And because of the concrete's thermal mass, interior temperatures remain stable. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of them before. I was now on a mission. The desire to create the ultimate eco-shelter harmonious with Mother Earth washed over me.

I knew I had to do this no matter what. I did know how to restore houses and get a job done. I did not know how to go about getting it financed.

So I did it — I jumped. 'Build it and they will come', I muttered as I felt the fresh air of creative freedom caress my face and blow through my hair. I began frantically flapping my wings, taking courage from the Asian version of the Canadian geese, who migrate over the Himalayas adapting their metabolism in transit as they go from one climactic extreme to another. I asked and presented my idea to architects, contractors, family; everyone laughed or looked at me in not-so-thinly veiled shock. The brokers were enthusiastic, the banks were tepid and the underwriters slammed the door. And the local contractors, well that's another story.

I listened to my inner self, the need to create was burning, so I sold my lodge and moved into a catfood can of a trailer down the road from the dome site and my former lodge. And, as fate would have it, a monolithic dome builder was building another dome just 50 miles away, and could come do mine when he was done.

So, for 3 years I lived in the trailer, blessing my good sense to have kept the old EMS down sleeping bag from my mountain hippie days. I was so excited that I never really took stock of the situation; and, if I hadn't been so excited, I would never have taken it on. But my lifelong learning that creativity was all about 'just doing it' guided me on. And I knew that the rhino hide I had developed from butting my head up against one cultural loggerhead after another just might come in handy; in fact, it may not have been enough. I began to wonder if my good sense was not a total lack of it.

Perhaps if I had grown up with television, or finished my anthropology studies in college, or had a career in the military, my left brain capabilities would have been more finely tuned. But when Kent State happened in 1970, I immediately rose valiantly to the challenge and heeded the call to do something about what I perceived as wrong with the world; at my university we formed a movement called "Total Involvement: Evolution not Revolution", and my life's trajectory was set; I blasted through the cracks. The fact that the US government had actually turned its guns on a student population that was exercising its right of free speech was so powerfully disillusioning that after a few months of running the movement, I dropped out of college and never looked back. Being true to myself was all I could feel and could not understand the lack of perspective; then again, perhaps the soldiers firing on an unarmed population were being true to themselves, and that thought was truly heart stopping.

One cool winter's day as the earth was barely warming with a melting snowy sweet pungency, I walked the deep quiet woods of the land that I knew would be mine. I caught my breath, feeling it before I saw it; there in a natural clearing ringed by white pines was a gigantic globular clear form, a 40-foot bubble like a glass-blower's creation, weaving and bobbing as if some force was blowing and inflating it with — something warm; I felt warmth, as I have when a departed spirit has made contact, or the warmth of my hand close to my face. I panicked and blinked several times; the form was gone, but the impact on my heart chakra was measurable by my increased awareness of that feeling again — the hit-by-lightning knowing heat, and cold sweat all at once. I gathered my senses and returned to my clammy trailer. The next day, I returned and did some dowsing and kinesiology to ascertain if this "energy plasma" as I have since called it, was trying to communicate with me. Was I supposed to build the main dome over the area where I had seen it? A very big definite 'NO!' came back; I was there to protect it. The dome was to be built exactly where I had originally felt drawn, about 100 yards away.

So, work proceeded, one fitful momentous burst of energy after another. Every step of the way, it was so beautiful that I did not want to cover up any of it, but once the concrete was sprayed, that was the most beautiful part of all — a free-standing curved structure that was stronger than anything else in the world, and felt light as air. The feeling on entering the dome is like nothing else. It is so comforting and all encompassing. Something about the curved shape also invokes the combined essence of sensual and spiritual, the earthly and the divine. It is not a stretch for me to live in such as structure, I had grown up seeing many earthen structures around the world, from Turkish "beehives" to Navajo hogans and am totally in love with the kivas in the pueblos of the southwest.

How do I feel about this project? It is the love of my life, my flesh and blood, like giving birth to a baby whale. I have in turn been savvy, organized, tough, tight, charming, pleading, begging, caustic, exasperated, not nice (a bitch) and as protective of my vision of this project as a mama bear. I have learned much about myself, and about the world, and I thought I knew it all. As I now take this out to the world and observe the reaction, I am encouraged; there has only been one outright disdainful reaction, with plenty of quiet respect, and lots of cheers. My own self-criticism is the deepest reaction of all, and I don't know if I will ever reconcile with myself whether my naivet was a blessing or a detriment. Now in my ripe old age, I doubt that I will ever take such a huge risk ever again. The question remains if I will ever recover from the risks I have taken.

As I am writing this, I am facing foreclosure due to my inability to keep up with the enormous mortgage I had to take on to get the job done. With any luck, the dome will get sold to an intentional community, which I may or may not be a part of. It may not give me shelter much longer, but it will the best thing that anyone who lives here will have ever lived in; there is no going back once you have experienced living in the perfect structure.

Has it been worth the stress and struggle? Did I manifest all the difficulty or was that part of breaking trail? Am I a better person? Will I go to heaven when I die? The God within us wants us to recognize and create heaven here on earth, of this I am sure. I know I am supposed to build another dome in the southwest. Where it leads, I will follow.

More information about Peggy Atwood: www.peggyatwood.com