The sunflowers are sprouting!

I'm in town this morning to catch a bus this afternoon. We share 17 cars among all 100+ people who live in the community, so we carpool as much as possible. My bus doesn't leave until 12:45, but the Wednesday town trip doesn't leave Twin Oaks until 12:30 and it takes at least half an hour to get to town. Instead, I came in early with someone who had chiropractor and dog grooming appointments early this morning (we left Twin Oaks at 7am!), so now I have the morning to spend in town. My first stop was to the Downtown Mall to check out the places where we planted sunflowers almost 2 weeks ago, and SOME ARE SPROUTING! I'm very excited. There are lots of places where either they haven't sprouted yet, or (more likely), have already been weeded out, like the neatly-groomed planters in the middle of the walkway. But the ones at the base of a big tree, and in some small planters outside of individual shops, there are obviously 2-week old spindly sprouts shooting up out of the soil. It's refreshing to already see the effects of our work!

And now I'm sitting in the public library, looking like a vagabond with my enourmous backpack and sleeping bag on the floor next to me. I love it. This vagabond is the woman that two years ago I wished I could be. I forgot to take a shower before I left the commune, so I ducked into the bathroom first thing and did some brief washing. Still no deoderant (see previous post), but I want to respect the noses of my fellow Greyhound passengers once I board the bus this afternoon. I hadn't taken a shower in a while, and my natural "spice" was overtoned with general funk. So I used the liquid handsoap and a few papertowels and had a nice spongebath in the public library before jumping on the computer. I'm not really writing this because I think you want to know about my washing habits, but more because I'm enamoured with my vagabond persona.

As I'm writing this, I'm well aware of the "middle class white girl idealizing the hard life" trap. It's something I'm uncomfortable with in myself and judgemental of in others. I think that's one of the reasons why I enjoy this -- because I'm actually doing it. It's not a one-time thing, it's becoming my life. I travel by bus and sleep in bus stations regularly. I'm comfortable being at the mercy of circumstance, without a cell phone or a credit card to bail me out. Am I just giving my vagabond credentials? Proving that I'm not just a college-eduacted poser? I'm sure there's some truth to that. Shit, I don't know. I'm poor. And yet I'm choosing a life of poverty. I could easily choose something different, and that choice is my freedom. That's why I can enjoy my vagabondry, because I choose it. And that's fine, that's great, me enjoying my life doesn't oppress anyone. It's when I mentally align myself with people who don't have the same choice as I do that I loose sight of the nature of my priviledge, the reality of cultural and economic stratification.

And finally, for your enjoyment, more search terms that brought up "Over the Edge" on Google:

"boots store - purfumes"
"finding nigari" (which is the substance we use to curd our tofu... see previous post)
"water baloon slingshot"
"cheerleader blog 'tights'"
and "Jealous Pet Band"

who knew the merits of mispelling words? Fellow mispellers find my blog all the more easily! (Purfumes is actually "perfumes", and baloon in normal English has two "L"s. So I'm an anarchist when it comes to spelling too... Ha -- it's a joke. No ranting comments about anarchy and the English language. uhh... that's a joke too. If you have brilliant ideas about anarchy and vocabulary, rant away.)

A REQUEST: I want this to be a space of exploration and growth. I want people to feel free to ask questions and seek possibilities without fear of being attacked for their ignorance. The request is for compassion. You don't need to respect the other writers here, or even understand them. Simply honor their journeys, and help them learn from yours.

A friend wrote a comment on my last post, reminding me and others about the health crisis in Africa concerning AIDS. There's lots of work to be done on numerous, enormous issues. It's important work, and more people need to be doing it.

I'm working based on the idea that the most effective way to help the oppressed is to challenge the oppressive system. There's a reason why people in Africa aren't being supported, and it's not because enough Americans aren't calling their senators. It's rooted in a system of dominance and oppression, an ideology of "power over" and individualism, and a reliance on the exploitation of other people and the earth. I'm dedicated to challenging this system by creating and promoting an alternative. This doesn't negate the importance of putting energy into healing current problems -- I'm just doing different work.

"But wait!", I say to myself! "It's not different work!" It's all interconnected, focused on healing and changing towards a more compassionate and wholistic experience of the World and of Life. And this is the level where I need to be directing my focus in order to feel fully engaged in making this change.

Last night 3 friends and I went on a guerrilla gardening mission in Charlottesville. We planted sunflowers throughout the city, at gas stations and restaurants, along the side of the road, in the parking lot of a big strip mall, in front of the police station, and down the main shopping district (an outdoor mall which is the center of town). We each had a cup of seeds and a stick for digging, and we scampered around like bandits. I loved it. I'm excited to go in next month and see which ones are actually coming up (there of course is a high chance of them being "weeded" from the more prominent locations).

One that I'm very excited about in particular is a controversial statue near the center of town that was built to honor Lewis and Clark (do I need to explain who they are? I'll purport that I'm explaining for the non-US Americans in my readership, and those Americans deficient in US History can read over their shoulders). Lewis and Clark were the leaders of the exploration party that headed beyond the colonized Eastern part of the country, into the "wild" and "untamed" midwest. (almost an oxymoron now, eh??) They had a Native guide, a woman named Sacajawea (or Sacagawea... people disagree on the spelling) who helped them enormously on their journey. The statue in Cville depicts Lewis and Clark standing tall and manly, with Sacagawea cowering behind them. It's truly appalling, and many people in the city oppose it. It's been splashed with blood (or red paint, perhaps both), graffitied, and protested in various other ways. And now the precise little flower garden around it will be bursting with sunflowers come June!

I have this image in my mind of these huge sunflowers popping out and reigning over the neatly manicured flowerbeds and miniscule piles of earth throughout the city. Take that, order and landscaping! Ha Ha! Hundreds of sunflowers reminding us about spontenaiety and the joy of disorder.

Inspired? You can get a big bag of sunflower seeds from any local lawn and gardening store. Dump a few handfulls of seeds into your pockets or shoulderbag and head out. I'm going to keep one zippered pocket of my bag filled wherever I go. A short, strong stick works great for digging small trenches to fill with seeds. Bring along a waterbottle for watering, especially when you're planting in really dry and compacted dirt. Choose your planting locations based on the liklihood of mowing (sad for sunflower sprouts) and weeding. We looked for flowerbeds and planters, and unkept, weedy areas. And I know I said we snuck around like bandits, but that was just for dramatic effect. Really, we acted like we knew what we were doing, like we had every right to be digging in the flower pots outside the police station. One person asked if we were planting pot seeds, and we just smiled and said, "Nope, sunflowers! Want some?". We handed out seeds to a bunch of people, especially kids, and told them to plant them wherever they wanted to.

Sunflowers for the Revolution!

I feel like I'm MarieMarionette. I just had a rather intense and hot date with a man I don't know very well (though we've lived here together for nearly 2 years). This started as a "6 point" date, which is a matchmaking game we play here, usually around Feb 14 (which we call Validation Day). People in the community are given a chance to opt out of the game, and then everyone gets a list of people who are in on the game, with the numbers one to six after each name. The numbers stand for levels of potential or desired intimacy: 1 is a work date, 2 is a hang out date, 3 is a cuddle date, 4 is a one night stand, 5 is developing an emotional relationship, and 6 this year was "spiritual connection, no action necessary" (the actual meanings of each number change a bit from year to year). People who play the 6 point game circle the numbers which correlate with the types of interaction they'd like to have or be open to having with each person on the list. Then someone who has vowed to be "Iron Lips" (i.e. to keep all ballots a secret), cross references people's games to see what levels people match on, and records the numbers that people mutually selected for each other. For instance, if I circled a one, two, and five for someone, and they circled a two, three, and four for me, we'd both find out that we matched at a two. I wouldn't find out what else the other person had for me, and they wouldn't find out about my other votes either.

We played the game back in February, and this man and I just had our date tonight (we're both very busy people). We matched at a two and a three, so we decided to get together to hang out and talk, with the possibility of more. We drove into town and bought a mango, a cantaloupe, and a bottle of wine, and went down to the pond to eat and talk on the edge of the water. It was already dark by the time we got back from town, so he grabbed some candles and we had a lovely candle-lit fruit-eating and conversation about random things. Then we jumped in the pond, which was suprisingly warm, and made our way back to my room for the "see what happens" part of the date...

which was great, and you don't get the lurid details. Sorry.

today is the day of the perfect pond. We've had enough sunlight to warm the pond beyond being unbearably cold, but not too much warmth to turn it into a bathtub. It's refreshing and beautiful and clear and it's still cold enough that many people think it's too cold, so it's not crowded even at 4pm. The frogs start croaking around 5:30, and if there isn't anyone in the water, an amphibian symphony ensues. A few days ago before dinner I took a book down, jumped in to wash off the day's grime, and then laid in a chair on the edge of the water to read while the frogs serenaded me. I even skipped dinner so I could enjoy it longer.

This morning someone brought an inflatable chair to the pond -- not a raft, but an easychair-sized throne. Enormous fun in the middle of the pond with three people trying to sit on it at once. We got it from this weekend's dumpster dive at the University of Virginia, whose students just escaped from classes. They feel abundant in knowledge (or is it priviledge?), and so they throw away other excess like clothing, furniture, rugs, food, shoes, and infltatable chairs. It happens every year, at college campuses accross the country. Dumpsters full of unopened packages of Ramen Noodles, dried fruit, rice, and rice cookers, hiking boots, fuck-me boots, running shoes, jeans, shirts, formal dresses and silverware. A group from Twin Oaks goes every year at the end of school with one of our cargo vans and they load up all kinds of treasure from the dumpsters (but they don't get in the dumpsters... all you UVA security guards reading this). On Sunday afternoon they laid it all out in one of our parking lots for people to take what they wanted. I was working in the tofu hut that afternoon, and we shut down production for half an hour while we went to rummage thru the loot. I got a bag of Craisins (which I LOVE), a pair of blue and brown striped corduroy pants, and a nice printed linen shirt. And a dry erase board. Lots of those to go around. Most of what they got will go to our communal stash -- cooking utensils, clothes, carpets and furniture primarily.

Whenever I go dumpster diving, whether rooting through things that are brought back to the community or crawling around in the metal bin myself, I'm disgusted. Not by the smell, no, but by the waste, by the disregard for the needs of others and one's capacity to fill them, by the disregard for the earth. Where do people think things go when they're thrown away? ANSWER: they don't THINK. At all. It goes in the trash and it's gone. And of course it's not. It goes to a landfill, those piles of "waste" that are growing exponentially in size and number each year.

I've done "dump runs" as a job here, which entails going to each building and loading the garbage cans into the back of a pickup truck, driving to the dump, and emptying the barrels onto the ground. Or rather, onto the rest of the trash on the ground.

So much waste when so many are lacking in basic needs. How can we justify it?

"On the Superfluousness of Deoderant"

I woke up this morning thinking about how much money corporations make by promoting the ideology that who you are is bad, wrong, and just not good enough. Makeup, deoderant, and bras come to mind specifically, but it also happens with cars, clothes, jewelry... basically anything that needs an advertisement to get you to buy it.

So, deoderant... based on the message that our bodies smell bad. I'm sure I'm going to get comments that say "But people STANK!", and I'm going to argue that our idea of stinky is based on a purfumed culture, an ideal that's been created by what we're used to smelling. Our noses are accustomed to smelling "purchased" smells, and shy away from the foreign "spice" (shall we say) of natural body odor. I can say from experience on the commune that you just get used to it after a few days (maybe a week for more sensitive-nosed people). When you aren't surrounded by people smelling like Floral Sunset and Ocean Breeze, you get used to people smelling like people. No purchase necessary. We take showers and swim in the pond to wash off the dirt and grime, sure. We've just created a different expectation for our noses that doesn't require alteration of what we naturally are.

Break free of the chains created by purfumes and deoderants! Smell like a real person, instead of a floral shop! Liberate your bodies! Liberate your noses!

I'm here, I'm here. I'm not stuck on the subways of NYC, I'm not locked up in jail for indecent exposure, I'm not buried the in psychodramatic whirlings of commune life (at least, not right now). I've just been busy. It's hard for me to return to the community after being away for most of the month of April. I love to travel, and making the transition from being out in mainstream culture to being here in the community takes a lot of energy for me. It's slowing down, relaxing, refocusing, realigning, remembering. Each time I go away, it seems like it takes just as long as I was gone to really feel rooted in the community again.

We had gorgeous Beltane on Saturday, brilliant sun with intermittent rain which was perfectly timed, bookending the Maypole ritual with light showers before and after. A reminder of the power of nature over whatever plans we try to make.

On Saturday night a group of us went out to a far-lying cow pasture for a Primal Scream. There were 4 of us, and we stood in a wide circle, backs to each other, facing out into the rainy evening. I hadn't done an official, intentional Primal Scream in years -- the rest of them come in moments of ecstacy or anger, and I rarely allow myself to let go fully, especially in anger. I think creating the space for it with other people helped me this time, agreeing with each other that this was a space for wild and raw abandon. Once my back was turned from the others I stood staring out into the wet pasture, and listened as others started to scream. Most were screams of anguish, sadness and anger. I didn't have something specific to scream about; I've had lots of unexpressed frustration recently and I figured something would come to me. I took a deep breath and then crouched down to force the air from my lungs. As I began screaming, I connected not with a specific frustration, but with an animal rawness that opened in my gut. I've only expreienced this on the top of mountains and in moments of deep intimacy, this opening of myself. It feels powerful and submissive at once, giving myself over to the power of Life, to the unknown, the Great Mystery... and in giving myself over to it, becoming a part of it, becoming empowered through it.

I screamed for awhile, stopped when I ran out of breath, and then stood and breathed for awhile. I noticed myself, my body, no longer crouched animalistically but standing, feet spread, shoulders back, chin high. I listened to the others and watched the rain and the grass and the juniper trees. Then I screamed again. Then breathed, and screamed again. When we were all standing silent for awhile, we walked quietly back from the pasture, and I jumped in the pond.

and now I have what I call my "phone sex voice", low and raspy. "Hey, sugar..."