The commune is like a ghosttown today. We share everything, including germs. Someone went on a trip and came home with a nasty day-of-hell stomach bug, and it's been cycling through the community like the plague. First one person had it, then three, then ten, and now at least twenty people are knocked on their asses in bed, puking and shitting and moaning. Just for a day or two, and then it's over. But what a day... I had mine yesterday, and I feel fine, though exhausted, today. Puking hourly with a hurt back is one of the most hellish physical experiences I've ever had.

So, ghosttown. Half of the community is off the farm visiting their families for the holidays, and the other half is either in bed with the plague or recovering from it. When I went up to the dining hall for lunch there was a card posted asking for someone to cook dinner tonight, because all 3 of the dinner cooks are sick. There were at least 5 other "open job" cards posted by folks who were too sick to do their work. Luckily, I had already cancelled most of my work for yesterday because of my back. Which, by the way, feels much better after a few days of rest and many massages with Tiger Balm. I have another massage scheduled this afternoon with our newest member, a funky young woman who happens to be a professional massage therapist (amongst other things -- she's amazing). Thanks for all the comments wishing me healing!

I just talked with my grandmother on the phone, and she was asking me about the holidays here. "Are there lots of decorations up? Are people getting together to sing carols? What will you do on Christmas morning?" I've had a few other questions like this from family members, and it's made me realize what a different experience I'm having here today, compared with much of the rest of the country. We don't have Christmas music playing on loudspeakers accross the commune, and we don't have any stores to go shopping in. I'm oragnizing a "New Year's Elf" game, much like "Secret Santas", but beyond that there isn't much gift-giving, certainly no expectation of it. This week doesn't feel much different than last week, or last month, except that it's colder. We had a nice small ritual and party for the Winter Solstice, and I put up some lights in my room on Solstice Eve. I also hung some ornaments from my childhood, mostly as a way of connecting with my family during this time that they'll all be together. I thought about going home -- I've gone home for Christmas the past 2 years that I've been here -- but I travelled home for Thanksgiving this year and I've been feeling like I wanted to stay put for awhile. I like not being out in the hubub of it all.

The biggest excitement for me right now is that the theater scene here is practically exploding! I've been working on a play (The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds) for about two months with a small group of people, and we're getting ready to perform it in two weeks. It's a show unlike anything we've done here before -- straight drama, no Twin Oaks jokes, intense, kind of depressing, and only involving a few people. Most of the other shows (besides the Vagina Monologues) have been big silly musicals revised to be set on a hippie commune, and injected with references to life at Twin Oaks. When we're done with Marigolds, we're going to jump right into the big musical for this winter: Cabaret. No revisions on this one either; the contemporary political paralells are compelling enough. I was in the show in college and loved it, and right now there's a poster up in the community with some of the photos from my college show, with a "guess which one is TickledSpirit" game. I love it.

I'm down at Tekiah again, the community in southern VA that I've visited a few times before. The community is dissolving after 13 years because they haven't been making it financially and the woman who has really been the heart of it, Joy, is moving to New York. My partner Pax, his partner Hawina, their son Willow, and our friend Spot have been down here for a few weeks helping Joy finish things up here and saying goodbye to this place. This has been a significant place of retreat for us, a three hour drive from Twin Oaks. There have been major Samhain rituals and other healing rites held here. The land is beautiful and the community has been open and flexible. I came down a few days ago to help out and drive the clan back home tomorrow. We're saying goodbye to the land, closing their hemp hammock business, and honoring the work that we've done here (especially interpersonally -- Hawina and I have really evolved our relationship during our stays here, as have Hawina and Spot, Joy and Pax, and all of us as a group).

Last night we helped Joy host a farewell party in Floyd, the small funky town in which the community is located. About 40 local folks came, including many people who had lived in the community and then moved to town. We had a light solstice ritual, and then a "saying goodbye to Joy" ritual where she put on her coat and walked away, out the door, while we sang a song and waved goodbye. We rested for awhile in the feeling of having her gone, and then she came back in for cake and dancing! It was a sweet and powerful experience, for her especially.

My big news now is that I'm hurt. I was dancing at the party, right at the end, and I did something that squinched my back and now I'm having a hard time with pain whenever I move. Yikes. It feels pretty significant, like it will take awhile to heal. Joy and Hawina are both wonderfully talented healers, and they've been giving me a lot of love and attention. I noticed that my first instinct when I got hurt was to go hide in a corner behind a table and stretch on my own, but then Pax came and found me and got Joy to help me. It's so interesting to me that my first instinct was to go hide by myself, when I was surrounded by people who I know are healers and who I know love and care about me. I think it was a "I have to be happy all the time" kind of thing, thinking that other people wouldn't want to deal with me when I was struggling. And of course, that's not what I THINK; on some level, I guess it's what I BELIEVE.

When Joy came over to me, she had me lay down on a long cushion so she could work on my back. At one point she asked me to roll over so she could work on me from a different angle. I couldn't. My muscles just couldn't do it. Eventually a few people came over and helped me roll slowly onto my side. I laid there, with different people coming over to work on me and talk with me and just be with me, until the party and cleanup was all over. When we were ready to leave, I struggled to get up, wanting to do it myself and simply being unable to. Pax and Joy helped me get up, and I felt so sad and frustrated that I started growling. "Yes, do that!" said Hawina. "Do what?" "Do that release thing you were just doing. Let it out!" And I growled loudly, which turned into a yell and then a scream and then sobbing. "That's it, let it out. Keep going," Hawina said. And I screamed and cried and yelled and at some point I looked down and saw two year old Willow staring up at me with a huge smile on his face. He was just beaming. This morning I was hanging out with him and I told him I was having trouble moving because I got hurt last night, and I asked him if he remembered when I was crying and yelling. "Yeah, it was a song" he said. "A song?" "Yeah, it was like a song."

So, here I am. I can walk slowly pretty well, and I can sit without pain. Getting up from laying down is very diffucult, and I haven't figured out a way to put on my shoes successfully (Hawina and Joy have loved helping me with my shoes, kneeling down at my feet, each taking a foot). Joy has been massaging me hourly, and I've been doing ballet exercises in front of the woodstove -- keeping my back completely straight and doing plies and other french-titled moves. I'm getting lots of love and allowing myself to recieve it. It's amazing what a conscious choice that has to be -- my first inclination is to feel guilty that I'm taking so much time and energy from them. ! What a fucked up mindtrip. When I realized that was going on in my head, I intentionally chose to trust that they were doing it out of a place of love, and if they didn't wan't to be doing it, they wouldn't be. So there, all you messages of inadequacy perpetuated by mainstream culture! hah ha! I choose something different. I choose to nurture myself, and allow others to nurture me.

I recently posted a profile on an online dating service, GreenSingles.com.  I know, I'm not single. But I'm always open to new connections, and the other folks on there are fascinating.... most of them.  Mostly I joined as another way of putting out the idea of communal living, making myself accessible as a resource for more information about life in community.  A whore for the revolution...

Even though I've described myself as "not looking for a life partner -- I've already got a bunch of them!", I've gotten a lot of "smiles" (the website's way of communicating interest) over the past week.  The people who pay for the service can send real messages that you can respond to even if you haven't paid (which, being a very poor communard, I haven't).  Someone wrote to me a few days ago asking about anarchy and life in the community, and this morning I wrote a response, and liked it so much that I wanted to share it here.  Enjoy!

what attracts me to anarchy is the idea of empowerment -- mutual empowerment, people supporting each other as individuals and folks making choices intentionally based on their own experience and awareness.  Anarchy, the way I think about it, fosters responsibility.  Our current culture and governmental system fosters complete IRRESPONSIBILITY, because it's "someone else" making all the decisions.  No one out here in the "real world" has any say, and so we don't take any responsibility for what the world looks like.  That's fiction, it's bullshit, and it's the mindset perpetuated through the current system of governance in the U.S.  Anarchists are the most organized people at protests because they work together.  Anarchy isn't against organization, it's against coersion, manipulation, and dominance.

Life at Twin Oaks... well, it's not a community of anarchists, that's for sure!  There are about 100 people there, and everyone has their own thoughts about what it should be and how we should live.  There are enough systems and structures in place that we can disagree about many things and still continue to function.  We've been around for 37 years, and that history has given us a helpful foundation to build on.  We're currently going though economic changes because of loosing a big customer of our hammocks business, so we're doing a lot of looking at new business possibilities, and also the questions of how we can live with less money (and what the balance is between earning more and spending less).  It's an exciting time to be in the community for someone who has a lot of options of other things to do with their life(like me), and not so exciting I think for someone who's sunk their life into the community and would have a hard time leaving if things get too rough (like the people in their 60's and 70's who have been there for 20 years).

thanks for your interest -- I'm happy to answer any other questions you have.

in joy,
tickledspirit

This morning I biked home to the commune after staying the night at a partner's house, 5 miles from here. It's a relatively new relationship (the "falling in love" of the last month that I mentioned a few posts ago) and I had been driving to see him a few times a week. This is significantly more driving than I usually do, and I was starting to feel frustrated about my car use. Yesterday was gorgeous, and he had invited me to come over for a holiday decorating party with his son's mother's family (more on this event later). So I found a bike (we've got a communal bike system here, lots of bikes laying around that anyone can ride, most of them of a fairly decent ridability) and pedaled my way off the commune, down the country roads, and up the driveway to his place (which is nearly as long as the rest of the ride!). I LOVED the journey! I felt so invigorated when I got there, and quite pleased with myself for making an intentional choice and following through on it (a few times before I had thought about biking, but it was raining, or cold, or dark...). This morning the ride was quiet and beautiful, the sun rising over Virginia fields and grass-munching cows staring at me as I rode past. Quite idyllic, quite satisfying. I entered through the "back entrance" of Twin Oaks, and rode through the community, silent and still, without seeing another person until I got right down to the courtyard (the main "hustle and bustle" of this place).

Having an off-the-farm lover makes my life feel bigger. I feel more a part of the great big world when I'm away from the commune. To be clear, he's an ex-member of Twin Oaks and still has lots of connections here, and many of his friends are other ex-members in the area. So it's not a complete culture jump -- and there's still something significant to developing a life beyond these 450 acres.

The holiday decorating party was a hoot! I haven't been to something like that in a long time. My family always did low-key tree adorning, just the three of us (in two parts: me, my brother, and my dad, and then again with our mom). I have sweet memories of unwrapping individual ornaments from their tissue paper protection, telling stories of when we got them or which of us made them. And we'd always have some orchestral carols playing in the backgroud. This party, well, it was definitely more of a party. Eggnog with vodka (it's actually pretty good), a table full of food, huge bags of holly, straw angels, and eclecticly-blinking lights on the tree. Lots of kids running around, a dart game, "extended family" conversations... I loved it. It felt so stereotypical, and at the same time so authentic. It was fun and loving and silly and important -- steeped in tradition. When the decorating was done, we snuggled up on the couch with our eggnog and watched the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, the Jim Carrey version (I didn't even KNOW there was a Jim Carrey version!). I think I've gotten kind of Grinchy over the past couple years, being so frustrated with consumerism and unintentional culture (we do this whole parade because it's just "what we do" in December, being so seperated from the idea of celebrating abundance as we enter into the cold winter). But yesterday, in the midst of it all, I remembered the other side of it, tradition and connections, getting joy out of making life festive. So here I am, un-grinched, for a little while at least.

We had a party last weekend for all the folks here who have birthdays in December. I think it's the most-represented month on the commune, when it comes to birthdays. We haven't had a big party since Halloween, so people were really ready to let loose and go wild. We did a silly pseudo-ritual to call in the "four spirits": Sake from the East, Tequila from the South, Bourbon from the West, and Vodka from the North. After invoking the spirits we passed the bottles around the circle for everyone to take a swig... lots of people had significant hangovers the next morning, but it was worth it for the value of parody.

At some point during the party, I gave in to my exhaustion from dancing and crawled up into the loft that overlooks the large livingroom that was hosting the party. I sat with my legs danging over the edge, watching people dance. Dances here are so different from any other big parties I've ever been to. People are at the same time extremely independent and extremely connected. We all know each other, and we spend our daily lives in support of each other on multiple levels. We all live here. We're comfortable and independent, not relying on the "friends we came with" cluster for comfort because we've mostly all come by ourselves. And because of this comfort, people let loose in a way that delights and inspires me. So many different ways of moving and expressing through the body. From my vantage point at the top of the ladder, I watched how people would engage in the mass of dancers, sometimes dancing by themselves, eyes closed and facing away from the crowd, then turning and getting into a groove with the person or people around them. There's not a whole lot of "coupling" on the dance floor, especially over an extended period of time. My newest love interest (!mmmm...!) and I would lock eyes as we moved near each other, coming close to share part of a dance, then move away as the tide of the group carried us in different directions.

so what really felt extraordinary about this, for me? I've been wanting to write about it since I woke up on Sunday morning with one of my first major hangovers since college. I think a large piece of it was the feeling of being so connected to the people at the party, and loving them as they expressed themselves through dancing. I have an image preserved in my mind from sitting at the top of the ladder, scanning the crowd below me and appreciating each person for their role in my life. I wasn't on drugs, and I wasn't even very drunk (I was sober enough to climb up and DOWN the ladder). This feels like a key piece of community -- not even in the sole posession of "communal life", but community in whatever form -- this feeling of deep connection with other people. It's something I really missed when I moved to the city after college. I didn't know any of the people I passed by on the street, and it was unlikely I would ever know them. Or the post office workers, or the grocery store checkout folks, or even the people in my apartment building. I moved to a commune to find those deep connections I was missing, because I really wanted to KNOW the people whose lives support mine. And yet, I'm guessing (hoping?) I didn't need to move to a commune to get those connections -- I wonder how I could have created it within the city I lived in. I know I didn't have the communication skills to really listen to people with a different life experience than me, and I certainly didn't have a deep awareness of what kinds of connections are possible. If I moved out into the city again, what would I do differently? A question for another post...

Where to start? It's been one month, almost exactly, since I've really written anything except a brief apology for not writing.

Do my readers deserve an explanation of what i've been up to, or should I just dive into the thoughts I want to share tonight? A synopsis of my last month will suffice for now, I suppose. I've been travelling, falling in love, sharing the commune with a college friend, pondering on the nature of sanity and otherwise, travelling some more, falling in love some more, negotiating complex relationships, and thinking of the brilliant reflections I wanted to write about the last round of comments about the insular life of the commune.

I've noticed a pattern in my blog writing that whenever a great conversation gets going in the comments, I pull back from posting for awhile. I think I get caught up in my "perfectionist" persona, wanting type out a magnificent manifesto in response to the comments, and I don't want to post anything until I post brilliance. Well, I miss writing this blog, so I'm just going to give it a go and see what comes out.

I struggle fairly constantly with the challenge that Patch was addressing in co's comments. I came to the commune driven by a passion for emotional, social, and spiritual health -- not just for myself, but for the world. I had worked in Cincinnati and DC doing "in the system" political change work, and I felt like I was beating my head against a brick wall. I felt like the work I did was band-aid work, while the knife continued to slash and create more wounds in need of more band-aids. I wanted to be doing "knife stopping" work, creating a different social and economic structure not rooted in oppression and exploitation. (When I mentioned this metaphor to a friend, he replied that a more apt visual is pulling drowning babies from a river vs. stopping the person who's throwing them in... grotestque, yes, and perhaps more poignant). Said again by MLK Jr: "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Choose the metaphor that works for you; it's important for me to remember that BOTH levels are important. You can't bleed to death while you're trying to stop the knife, and those babies need saving once they're in the river. It's just not a one-person job. There are many people working in many ways for the overall health of our world.

So then my struggle here is asking myself how my life on the commune is working to create any real change in the world. It's so easy to get insular and isolated here, focusing on the minor details of bureaucratic process and community budgets and interpersonal conflict. And yet, learning how to negotiate these things repectfully and healthily is important for creating the kind of culture we want to promote! That's really the piece that I focus on -- making the idea of a healthy culture accessible to people. The concept of CHOICE about what one's life looks like, of ACTIVE CREATION OF CULTURE, of INTENTIONAL INTERACTIONS with people that involve deep communication. Any person can choose to live with other people in healthier, more sustainable ways, but only if they know that they have that choice. Mainstream culture promotes an ideal that seems stagnant and passive, "this is the way things are", "this is what success is", and "this is how normal people interact with each other". I see my participation in the larger world as offering the idea that something different is possible, and my life on the commune is directed towards creating and living that possibility -- one manifestation of it, at least. I don't purport that we've got it all figured out. We're living in search of something different than the obviously unhealthy and exploitative dominant culture.

So how effective am I? How effective are we as a community? I don't know. We haven't gotten any new members from the talks I've done in universities, and I'm okay with that. That's really not the point. The seeds we plant have a long incubation period, and we don't really know what the actual plants will look like. This is all an experiment based on a deep conviction that something different is possible, and absolutely necessary.

I struggle with not having tangible effects of my activism. No legislation gets passed, no sick folks get well, and no candidates get elected. I often ask myself "what am I really DOING here? Should I be working to develop affordable housing in Cincinnati?". And then I go out into the city, and I remember the path I'm on to "restructure the edifice" that produces the need for "affordable housing."

And, not everyone here is committed to the same ideals as I am. There are lots of folks here who are quite happy with their lives on the commune and wish that all the visitors and tourists would just go away and leave us alone. And they wish that I (and other people who do work like I do) would redirect our energy and labor to the garden and the tofu hut. Sometimes I ask myself if I'm supporting the community enough, if I should spend less time doing outreach and more time making tofu.

this is enough for now. It is a fairly constant question to myself, how/if I'm really affecting any real change. Thanks to Patch, Chris, Free, Pax, and everyone else who commented for fueling the exploration. More comments welcome (if you're all still around after my prolonged absence!).

love, tickledspirit

ps -- you're all invited to come out and visit, just to see what we're doing here. Check out our website for information about our Saturday Tours and our 3 Week Visitor Program.