I'm tired of activism. I did activism in college. I was an activist, and it didn't work for me. It was me against something else, against the horrible world. The change I want to see goes beyond that conceptualization. It's not about making something else be the way I want it to be, but finding and claiming my freedom that already exists. It's an inner revolution, realizing my capacity for freedom. Once I'm on that path of understanding the powerlessness of boundaries, the inner and the outer revolutions are then one and the same.

from http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/guactivism.html

"The key to understanding the role of the activist is self-sacrifice--the sacrifice of the self to 'the cause' which is seen as being separate from the self. This of course has nothing to do with real revolutionary activity which is the seizing of the self. Revolutionary martyrdom goes together with the identification of some cause separate from one's own life--an action against capitalism which identifies capitalism as 'out there' in the City is fundamentally mistaken--the real power of capital is right here in our everyday lives--we re-create its power every day because capital is not a thing but a social relation between people (and hence classes) mediated by things."

It's 1:33am and I'm sitting at a computer in what we lovingly refer to as the "Products Office" (where my friends answer phones about our Hammocks business), which is 100 feet away from my bedroom. In 5 minutes (hopefully LESS), Paxus (who is sitting at a computer next to me) and I will arise from these chairs and tromp outside, accross the grass, up the stairs, down the hall, and into my room, where we'll collapse into bed. I love that we just got done taking a sauna (and jumping in the FREEZING cold pond), and I love that we walked from the sauna to the office and have been sitting here doing work and checking email, and then we'll trot right off to bed. And tomorrow morning we'll lay in bed until we feel like getting up, and then walk outside, down the stairs, accross the courtyard, and be "at work". I don't have any scheduled work in the morning, so I'll probably weave hammocks for a few hours. I feel like I'm bragging about my life. Right now, I love my life. I read an article this morning about how the state of Virginia is shutting down cider makers who don't pasturize their apple cider. And who use a hand press. It's all got to be machanized and standardized... no pulp allowed. What this means is that all the small cider press businesses who can't afford the new equipment will be shut down. kaput. We're so distanced from the food we eat! It's regulated and processed and diluted beyond recognition. We have no connection to what we're eating. I finished the article, and then walked down to the dairy barn to milk the cows. No pasturization, no homoginization (I don't even know how to SPELL it!), and I live with and know all the people who A)drink the milk, B)make the cheese, yogurt, ice cream and butter with the milk, and C)clean the dairy barn when I'm done milking.

I'm on a college speaking tour this fall, talking in Sociology and Political Science classes about life on the commune. My alma mater, Wittenberg University, invited me back to teach classes there for a few days...

Entering Chakeres Theater through the back door, I'm greeted by a senior who I knew as a freshman:
"I feel like a ghost just walked through that door!"
and it's true, I feel like a ghost,
a legendary hero who people have only heard tales of

and I love it.

I've spent the past two days talking in classes made up entirely of freshmen (Common Learning, for all you Witt Grads). The theme is "Individualism and Community in American Life", and I get to talk about life on a commune. I get to tell all these J Crew models about "egalitarianism" and explain why we don't have television. They're trying so hard to be like everyone else, and I get to do a song and dance in the front of the room and say "you have a fucking choice!" I get to say that I'm using my Witt degree in Sociology and Religion to milk the cows and make tofu.

I ask them to take a trip with me into metaphor land. Mainstream culture, I say, presents us with prepackaged frozen dinners, saying "Here. This is your life." You can choose between the ravioli or the chicken parmesean, but the ravioli comes with peas and a brownie and the chicken comes with corn and chocolate pudding. You want chicken and a brownie? Nope, it doesn't work that way. The ravioli sounds great, but it's made with sauce that has lima beans. I don't like lima beans. In mainstream culture, I spent a slew of energy trying to pick around the things I didn't like, like compulsory monogamy and pop music. It's everywhere, all mixed in with the ravioli sauce, and if I want to eat the ravioli I have to pick around the lima beans.

There's also basic ingredients in the frozen dinners that are essentially unhealthy. Like crack. There's crack in that frozen dinner. There's racism and classism and sexism and flat out oppressive ideologies that are completely ingrained in mainstream culture. It's so ingrained that you can't eat around it. You consume the food, you consume the crack. No choice in the matter. And I see other people around me eating this shit and getting horribly sick. But they keep on eating the frozen dinners because you have to eat, and if that's all that's available, that's what you eat.

And yet there's more to life than frozen dinners! I can go out in the garden, pick a bunch of vegetables and herbs and concoct a stew that suits my tastes. No lima beans if I don't want lima beans, and certainly no crack.

(Yet, to take the metaphor another level deeper, we're cooking in a pan that has mainstream residue already on it. All of us at Twin Oaks are products of mainstream culture, and we bring with us much subconscious socialization that takes a lot work to let go of).

And what's most important to me ISN'T that people drop out of their current lives and come to live on a commune -- it's not that we've come up with the BEST recipie and everyone else should cook just like us. Nope. That's not it.

I want people to learn how to cook for themselves. Fuck the frozen dinners -- I want people to recognize that they have the CHOICE to make their food the way they want it, to make their life what they want it to be.

"Anarchy has done amazing things for my driving," I told Peter as we drove in reverse down the road.

I realized the change last night when I pulled out of a parking lot and came to a sign that read Right Turn Only. A year ago I would have turned right without question, finding the proper place to turn around with slight frustration at not being able to go the way I wanted to go. This time I saw the sign as a warning: "turning left here could be difficult, and potentially dangerous." I checked it out for myself, saw it was neither difficult nor dangerous, and turned left. No sirens went off, no ink stains on the car for shoplifting a left turn I didn't pay for. And there was no crash, no almost-crash, no crash potential. It wasn't defiance; it wasn't breaking the rules for the joy of crushing a boundary. It was me allowing myself to take responsibility for my own actions, instead of following the directions of someone else.

"Let us do what we do for our own sake, not out of obedience"