Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [101]
Mr. Miller and I shook hands.
“Can’t thank you enough,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. You’ll do well wherever you go.” He looked at me steadily as he spoke, and I knew that he meant it. It was a kind of fatherly blessing, and the effect was long in rubbing off. The words filtered into the center of my daze and melted it away. He was right. Life offers more than one option for doing the right thing. I let go of Mr. Miller’s hand and stood back.
When it was all over, we climbed into the awaiting pickup and, with a turn of the switch, pulled away from our fond habitation, propelled by a sneeze. But a brief gulf separated us from modernity. A curtain of rain descended, like the one we had driven through on arrival. As the little world receded into obscurity, it was hard to imagine we had spent over a year in its green and compact byways; harder still to picture the power this little world might flex upon the larger one which we now re-entered when, given the right finesse and a little luck, the results of this experiment were set at large.
Twenty-Two
Outside, and the Box
Back in Boston, I hastily assembled my findings in a rather stodgy master’s thesis. It was accepted, though with reservations, and then Mary and I went to work. The exploration I described in the thesis had another segment that was still under way and could be completed only in another setting that it was Mary’s turn to choose. In that place, we would try to learn to adapt principles of minimation to new circumstances. We now had a strong hunch where we would end up, but we wanted to save for the move. We had taken to heart Wilbur’s tip on living debt- and worry-free. We hoped to make an outright purchase.
Mary went back to accounting part-time, and I, wooed by a friend who owned two taxicabs, got a hackney license. This was a true test of my flexibility: in a city saturated with musicians, I realized cab driving paid better than piano playing. It was only to be temporary, plus I biked several miles each way to pick up my cab. But I soon discovered I loved cabbing in Boston. What better way to get to know the innumerable twisty streets, the colorful historic neighborhoods, and that ever-elusive Bostonian? I could pick up a slice of the best Italian pizza in Allston, chat with a Harvard professor on his way to dinner (one night it was Henry Louis Gates going to a Spanish restaurant on the Cambridge-Somerville line), then stop at a pub in Kendall Square and catch up with Mary on the phone while sipping a good beer (technically a no-no), then off to the airport or to the North End, or downtown to take a lawyer home to the suburbs.
While I was having this fun-disguised-as-moneymaking, we rented a cheap apartment in Somerville, then switched to a better situation in Hyde Park, where an elderly gentleman needed in-home care. We lived rent- and utility-free on one side of the duplex he owned in exchange for doing his laundry and cooking his meals. Our income increased and our expenses went down.
So we stole some time for one daring side-adventure: we left Boston for a few months and got involved in forming a rural neighborhood association, patterned after that of the Minimites, with others who wished to regulate the use of technology. The project proved to be a brief but instructive last use of the land we had bought. We learned that in its early stages, a fledgling community is very fragile and requires the right blend of many ingredients, including personal outlooks. It presumes a certain level of psychological stability. If any ingredient is missing, the whole thing can quickly cave in—and thus, like a failed