did you always want to write things down, or was writing something you could finally do once you had the table?
Stories from my school library.
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Thought
did you always want to write things down, or was writing something you could finally do once you had the table?
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Robinson Crusoe
Chp 4: Crusoe Becomes a Carpenter
I now had a home to live in and was safe from wild animals. All my things had been stored inside the cave. I decided I could explore my surroundings even while I was putting my home in order. I went out every day to hunt for food. There were plenty of ducks, pigeons and turtles to eat, and even a goat, which I captured and raised for its milk. But I still needed a lot of other things besides food, especially a table and a chair. Without these, I could not sit comfortably; neither could I write. I had to make them all myself, and that too, without proper tools.
First, I made a table and chair out of some boards that I had brought from the ship. I was happy to have a table at last. I ate on it and when I was too tired to do any other work, I sat down and wrote my daily record on it.
I then turned to the cave, which I used as my storeroom and started putting everything inorder. Along one side of my cave, I made large shelves, one and a half feet wide, on which I put all my tools. Then I stuck pieces of wood into the wall, on which I hung up my guns and other weapons.
Now, my cave had started to look more like a home. I had arranged everything neatly and felt happy with my own work. I found that I had managed to store quite a lot of things that I would need to use.
I then made little square boxes to keep all my things in. This was not easy because for every little piece of furniture that I made, I had to first cut down a tree as I had used up all the wood from the ship. This took a lot of time and effort, but I had all the time in the world. It did not really matter how long I took making a single piece of furniture. It was a good way to keep my hands and mind busy.
I now decided to enlarge my cave. As I did not have a spade, I found it hard to dig. In my walks around the forest, I had discovered a tree of very hard wood. I cut off a piece and dragged it home with great difficulty since it was very heavy. Slowly, I shaped it into a spade. I do not think any spade in the world took so long to make! When my spade was ready, I finally used it to make my cave wider and longer. This took eighteen days. Now that the cave was bigger, it became a kitchen and dining room as well as astoreroom. The tent was my bedroom and living room. I had a proper house!
Just when I seemed to have finished everything, part of the roof of the cave fell down. This frightened me; if I had been standing under it, I would have been killed. So now I had more work to do. I had to carry all the earth out, and put up a few more posts to support the roof of the cave so that no more earth would come down. It was hard work, indeed!
Some of the animals I had killed were not fit to eat but I kept the skins of all of them and hung them out to dry. Some of the skins became so hard and dry that I could not use them for anything. Some of the others, however, were to prove very useful later when my clothes were frayed and torn. I made new garments and a cap to protect me from the sun out of these.
Thoughts
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of course the roof falls right when everything's perfect haha the cave had other plans
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did the roof actually collapse right after you organized it, or was that more like the universe saying 'not quite done'?
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the real constraint isn't time then, it's that everything has to be built from scratch. so the eighteen-day spade: was that pure necessity, or were you kind of obsessed?
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I'm going to think about that part where everything's finally in its place and you're just content with it
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did you always want to write things down, or was writing something you could finally do once you had the table?
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Chp 4: Crusoe Becomes a Carpenter