As you approach our little home on our not-so-little island from the sea in late May under low clouds, as I did when I first arrived, you will see yellow grass growing on hummocks along steep walls, large grey-black rocks along the blue water and a tall steely volcanic outcrop, with similar shaded cliff sides along the mountain. There is a bald valleys of ashy dirt where landslides regularly take place. At the bottom of the landslide there is a long white triangle of snow. To the left of the long white triangle of snow there is another, much smaller little triangle of snow beneath a high cliff just above the water. It is impossible to miss the one little white patch of snow along the entire visible face of the island.
When the first sea-lion researchers came here two years ago and built our little home, they found a clear spot under a cliff, well-protected from the wind, on a relatively flat bit of soil above the rocks that rise from the sea. Because it was clear then, they assumed it would be clear always. In fact, our little home happens to be located exactly beneath that little white triangle of snow. There is only one little pile of snow, it is just twice the size of a little house on the rocks by the sea. Yet the two have chosen to compete for the same little volume of space on a not-so-little island. The precision is uncanny, like a cue ball that sinks an eight ball, banks once, maybe twice, and, incredibly, rolls clear across the table into a corner pocket.
When we step outside our little home, we must first climb over a hill of snow to stand and blink at a bright sun. Though we warm our little home in the evening with a kerosene stove, we turn it off when we sleep. In the morning we crawl out of our sleeping bags and into a refrigerator.
On the other hand, our 6 sausages and 3 cheese balls and 30 bread loaves and 2 kilograms of bacon will last a little longer buried in the snow drift.
When the first sea-lion researchers came here two years ago and built our little home, they built the walls vertically from a horizontal floor. This is more or less standard procedure. Because there is no real earth to bury into, only a thin layer of dirt on jagged rocks, they just managed to get the rear studs, i.e., the ones against the cliff, into the ground. Because the ground under the house is sloped, the front-end, with the studs sticking out like stilts, rested on stones.
With snow drifts and shifting ground and time, the stones under the front of the house have slid out, the bits of stud that the house was standing on have snapped, and the house has dutifully inclined itself towards the sea. Most of the angles within the house have something like their original 90 degreeness, but all with respect to a floor that is pitched at some 15 degrees. This is, I believe, the equivalent of what would be marked as a 14% grade on an American road. If, that is, such grades are legal on American roads.
The charms of living in a graded home are several.
When you are sitting on the lower bunk, which is also a couch, and desk, and are facing south, i.e. towards the sea, i.e. downwards, and then you stand, you feel like you are being pulled. When you straighten out, having oriented youself with your eyes against all the apparently vertical lines of wall around you, you reel towards the opposite wall and are not quite sure whether you have been drinking, which you haven't, because our cognac is for coffee, our one bottle of wine was polished off on solstice night, and the remaining half-bottle of Martini is strictly rationed.
If you sitting on the chest, as for eating, and are therefore facing north, i.e. towards the cliff, i.e. up, and you stand, you are immediately pushed back down into your seat in a very humbling way, as if you did something wrong and an invisible disciplinarian is asking you to stay put and think about things.
You learn quickly that when you pour liquids, to keep your receptable south of the source and never to fill too close to the brim. Similarly, you learn that all served soups spill, but that the can opener and the screwdriver work moderately well as leveling-props for the large bowls, and forks will do quite nicely for the smaller ones.
When you are the desk and you are tossing something into the wastebasket, clear across the house in the kitchen, some six feet away, you learn to aim for the door to the right, because everything flies left. It is quite magical to see your object curve up and right, then left and down across the entire expanse of your manse. It is very skillful and stylish in general to curve. Ask any bowler.
When you sleep on the top bunk, and the first night you find you spent the night desperately clinging to the post so as not to slide off, and then you hammer in a extra 6cm piece of wood on the lower edge, your bunk now is now the single most pitched-looking surface in the house. You then find that the main challenge in getting into your bunk lies in squeezing between the outer edge of your bunk and the ceiling. Verily, your bed is pinching you against the ceiling and the wall. And STILL rolling objects roll not to the wall but off the bunk. And believe me, when you sleep you are an object that rolls.
All objects roll. Not just the smallish and roundish pencils, pens, lighters, nails and screws, but also hammers, boots, slippers, backpacks, chairs. You do not see them roll any more than you see the Indian subcontinent ramming into Asia. But roll they must, for all objects end up against the seaward side where all dust and onions peels and those little square paper teabag handles also reside, beneath the kitchen table, behind the chest. The distribution is, I should note, not random. A sloped house places objects in your way when you don't need them and makes them inaccessible when you do. This is a law.
Amused as Sergey and I were by the many nuances of a graded home-life, we nevertheless felt compelled to mellow the intensity of the internal situation. For practical purposes. Along with raising our bunks, we sawed down the legs of the desk, added wood to half the bottoms of our wooden stools and sawed down their other legs, reconfigured shelves, laid down planks and boards and stones beneath objects elsewhere, mastered the art of slipping books under computers. All surfaces we dutifully tested with a water bottle, and on every surface, the water bottle would roll.
The rather expressionistic result is that there are no longer any two surfaces in the entire house that are parallel. All surfaces are tucked somewhere between the pitch of the floor and the mocking line of the horizon through our window. For all it's fluctions and fluidity, the sea that peers in through the window is, after all, very, very level. If it weren't quite so damned to levelness, I dare say it would curl up it's corners in a smugly at all our sawing, hammering and water-bottle rolling.
For shelves we could not reconfigure, we rigged barriers and railings. We learned to attach as much as possible to the walls, much like in a boat. Indeed, our house is much like a boat that is stuck in mid-pitch, and we are like sailors trapped in a heave, waiting vainly for a ho.
These, then, are some of the charms of a graded life. If they appeal to you, by all means grade your home. I, for one, who do not yet miss much about the rest of the world, do feel a wee pang of nostalgia for one wonder that, as far as I can tell, is entirely absent from our not-so-little island, otherwise so rich in wonders. And that would be the level surface.
