Natural Rhythms with Renée Rooijmans
“My whole sense of belonging grew so much beyond the walls of my tiny home. How can people who live in cities, who have so little space beyond their front door connect to the world outside their walls and beyond? ” Renée Rooijmans
I’ve been thinking about the symbiosis between people and the natural world since COVID -19 2020; particularly I’m interested in the natural cycles of the seasons and the hours of the day and how, for a while, the human race was forced to stop and had no choice but to move in harmony with them.
I met Renée for the first time online in February 2021- in her introductory email she had confided in me that she had just lost her grandmother a few weeks before and would be out of touch for a while but she was looking forward to talking to me.
When we met on Zoom, I began by introducing myself and expressing my condolences for her loss and the following 10 mins were spent sharing our experiences of being there for a grand parent on their final journey towards death and of the welcomed support of a hospice. As the conversation progressed we realised that this kind of death had been the first that either of us had really experienced with a family member and we agreed on how much we had valued that time to say goodbye; indeed we remarked on the positivity and importance of marking those rituals of life and death and how it’s better to accept this inevitability for us all as soon as we could. She shed emotional tears and thanked me for acknowledging this milestone in her life and giving her the space to talk about it. In return, I shared that it was very natural for me to connect to another human and acknowledge them and confessed that had this been the previous week I would have been in the middle of my menstrual cycle and I would probably have cried with her due to the high levels of progesterone my body would have been producing.We laughed about how we’d deep dived straight into discussing our thoughts on natural cycles both menstrual and of the earth and really how natural it should be to talk this way as we are all connected. I will say in that I LOVE talking about the cycle of life and in particular menstrual cycles because I have been severely affected by them in my adult life. I have spent the last ten years mapping my symptoms and behaviours in order to understand the physical and emotional effects my body and well being, noticing the seasons and at what points of the year I feel more relief- so this has made me particularly interested in natural cycles of life on the whole .
At this point I’ll admit, I wasn’t that surprised that our first meeting had begun so openly due to the fact that I reached out to Renée for a meeting because she has lived in a tiny house on several rooftops in Rotterdam since 2019. I had watched her talk at a conference about this experience, so I had a hunch that she’d be an enthusiastic sparring partner with many stories to tell.
Renée Rooijmans is a practicing Urban Anthropologist- in her words : “this is the study of people who live in cities” and further to this she is interested in “how” people live in cities. Until quite recently Renée worked for Stipo- an urban development firm in Rotterdam and during her time there she worked on several placemaking projects. . She loved her work however felt that working in a traditional practice was too demanding and took her away from her focus and desire to understand people and cities. She proudly explains to me that she feels that her understanding of people and cities should come from her own lived experiences and therefore places herself at the centre of her experiments. Rooftops became one such experiment.
“Land on top of the city”
Renée was granted custodianship of a partially developed green rooftop on a disused train stop called Hofbogen; the site has been transformed into shops and bars on the ground floor and will eventually become a public park on the rooftop. She moved in during Rotterdamse Dakendagen Rooftop Festival and lived there for nearly a year. She passionately wanted her daily routine to reflect a better life- she feels that human beings today are so easily pushed into this routine of working to pay the bills without taking stock of the daily wonders of life. This curiosity led her to source a place to live- this came in the form of a converted trailer that was once a canteen for construction workers that was hoisted onto the rooftop.
As the plans for the rooftop development were in flux Renée was offered the opportunity to become a caretaker of the roof; her role was to open it to the public every day and close it every day and ensure it lived and thrived. Living on the rooftop made her consider her water source and how she lived- her water supply was a 5 minute walk from her house.. The space in her house was limited and since Renée didn’t have a bathroom she thought creatively and took out a gym membership so that she could shower. he comments that, in a way, this time at the gym’s sauna became a very social place for her even though the gym members around her were not fully aware that this was her bathing time. On reflecting about her adaptation to living on the rooftop she describes it as similar to the way a plant grows into it’s space- she grew into whatever existed and that was enough for her needs. She began to notice the natural cycles of the plants, insects , birds and climate and became very attuned to them; she woke up with the sunrise and slept with the sunset. By putting herself at the centre of her experiment, Renée began to really notice the symbiosis between humans and nature — these natural rhythms made more sense to her. Indeed, she felt so connected to the environment around her that if people damaged the rooftop she said she experienced that pain in a way too- she remarks : “My whole sense of belonging grew so much beyond the walls of my tiny home. How can people who live in cities, who have so little space beyond their front door connect to the world outside their walls and beyond?”
I felt my body breathe in anticipation of this new potential of living — one conversation with Renée has validated these stirrings within me of living more simply and in tune with the natural rhythms of the earth. Renée feels that this experience was life changing and as a result has inspired her to focus her efforts on securing a rooftop for tiny dwelling living. She is currently working to create a pilot for Tiny House Living on top of rooftops in Rotterdam and is in discussions with local authorities to demonstrate the potential and value of this not only for the people of Rotterdam but for the ecology of the city on the whole.
Renée currently lives on a converted barge and continues to embrace a slower paced, natural rhythms form of living.
I shared this poem by Ursula K le Guin with Renee as it resonated with the subject matter about how we are all one with the earth:
Come to Dust
Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.
Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring’s green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
All earth’s dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.
