De breeze come blow ‘pon it,
De rain come down wet it,
De flood come deluge it,
De sun come down bu’n it,
Grudgeful man come obeah it,
Red-eye people put dem mout’ ‘pon it,
But never was moved a nail from it,
For it was built ‘pon a rocky groun’,
With a rock for foundation.
[Lord Burgess & William Attaway: “Hosanna!”]
Harry Belafonte’s rendition of the song above was on his Calypso! album (1956), a musical staple of my childhood. Though I’ve literally known and poorly sung “Hosanna!” since before I can remember, I’ve only recently had occasion to look up the source of the lyrics. It’s Matthew 7:24-27: “And the rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.”
Building a home on volcanic rhyolite deposits laid down during the late Miocene and only thinly masked by colluvial soils ain’t easy, as previous posts have attested. Our steep, solid bedrock property is not at all garden-friendly, but in an earthquake, even a big ‘quake whose epicenter is a mere 5-8 miles away, it’s safe as…. well, safe as houses – assuming the house’s foundation is on a par with the natural stability of the site.
No worries there.
As soon as the forms were done, the cement trucks returned.
“Cement truck” isn’t quite right. Cement is the dry gray powder that gets mixed with water, and then bonds the rock and sand together. This truck is actually a concrete mixer.
The drum of the mixer rotates to keep the concrete from separating. When the truck is at the site, and everything is good-to-go, the mixer discharges the concrete down the chute to the… concrete pump? (The art and science of foundations is obviously not my area of expertise.) See below, our good neighbor Reiner stepping under the chute on his way up the hill to check things out.
In this next pic, if you look closely, you can see the huge hose snaking its way up the center of the pic, past the forms to the top of the hill.
Wednesday 6.26 was a milestone on the path to be-coming home. We had to be there for it, to see the foundation poured,
but also, I had a secret agenda. Our house is oriented so its four corners align exactly with the four directions. I’d brought a few small items with me, each symbolizing one of the four quarters/elements. My plan was to subtly slip each item into its appropriate corner without attracting attention.
I was trying to be subtle because not everyone is ok with overt, elemental magic, and the last thing I wanted to do was make the workmen uncomfortable. But subtle? On a busy work-site? Guys everywhere, concrete flowing fast and furious… I was way too old and way too female to “blend in.”
It’s possible I smuggled the feather into the East corner between pours and when no one was looking, but when I sprinkled the salt into the North corner, it was hardly sleight-of-hand. One of those who caught me in the act was the job foreman, Tony.
Moments later, he called me over and asked point blank if I’d been doing some house-magic. I admitted I had.
“And are you going to smudge the foundation when it’s done?”
Ok, so, clearly Tony wasn’t bothered by my pagan approach to the day’s activities. To the contrary. He told me he believes the feelings and energy he holds while he is working go into his work, into his foundations.
That day, he was thinking of his niece, Miranda, a sweet, special-needs little girl who possessed a special, boundless joy. He’d composed a short song for her and about her. He was chanting the song to himself as he worked. He sang it for me. There are no words for the delight and gratitude in my heart. What a blessing to have such a perfectly beautiful man laying the foundation of our home.
Aware of, and totally cool with what I was doing, the crew made sure I got a chance to place my remaining magical items into their proper corners before filling the forms to the top.
They left the concrete to set overnight. Then they took down the forms,
filled in the spaces between the rock-quarry and the foundation,
and we were left with a fundamentally different view.
What a good story. Love
Hi, all — thanks for stopping by! Guess you can see why I’ve got such a GOOD feeling about all this…
@ Jennifer (do you prefer “Jen”?), as a rule, I’m pretty up-front (some might say, “in your face”) about my paganism, but as a rule, I’m ok with any negative reactions my paganism might elicit. Considering how bent-out-of-shape some people get over my “White Witch” bumper sticker, I knew there was a chance the crew would interpret my 4-Quarters magic as Satanic and evil. In this case, it was important to me not to arouse anybody’s hostility or fear, lest those feelings go into the work, into the foundation, and into our home. As it turned out, of course, the guys were way ahead of me in the good-feelings department ;)
That is wonderful! Although I would have asked outright – but I’m that way. I’m glad you got it done and that he (the foreman) was so open to it.
Love it! There are no accidents. This was absolutely the guy who was supposed to do this work. And with a song in his heart :-)
wow, so cool