I've left Twin Oaks. In most moments, it doesn't feel particularly extraordinary. I'm here at my partner Free's house, hanging out with him and his kids. This is familiar to me; this has been a part of my life for nearly a year... this house, these people. I've been slowly integrating myself into this place (and this place into myself), and it doesn't feel significantly different to be here without Twin Oaks to return "home" to... yet.

I'm sure it will come, the time when I start to feel a longing for roots, and sad that those roots aren't Twin Oaks anymore. I traveled a lot while living at Twin Oaks, sometimes for up to two weeks. Being away is familiar and comfortable, temporarily. I wonder what it will feel like in a month, when I'm on the road for an indefinite period of time.

My current itinerary is fairly vague after the first few stops. I'm here with Free until next Monday, when I travel up to Maryland with some Oaker friends for a 10 day silent meditation retreat (Vipassana). I haven't ever done anything like this, and I'm excited, especially at this major point of transition. 10 days of observing myself, noticing what I'm feeling and thinking, and just holding it for what it is... not acting on it or trying to change it, just observing. At least, that's what I imagine it'll be like. Friends who have done it before tell me it's pretty challenging, both physically (10 days of sitting) and mentally/emotionally.

After the retreat I'll decompress in Baltimore with my dear brother, who teaches in the public schools there. He's one of my closest friends in this world, and I love him. We haven't seen much of each other, given how close we've been living for the past couple years. We've mostly seen each other when we're home for Thanksgiving and other family events, or for quick visits when I'm passing through B'more on longer journeys. I'm excited to just hang out together for a weekend, without family holiday business to attend to.

Free will pick me up in Baltimore, and we'll head up to New Jersey, where I'll meet his parents for the first time. Free and I will say our passionate goodbyes, then I'll head on to Chicago to raise some hell with the famed Serenaluchang, with whom I have a lasting friendship that started in college. From there, the vagueness begins. I hope to head up to Madison to see an ex-Oaker, an intern who lived at Twin Oaks for mere months and in those months carved out a permanent home in my heart. She left Twin Oaks a year and a half ago, and we've been sporadically in touch since then. We've been fantasizing about traveling together for a bit, perhaps taking a road trip out west to Eugene, OR to see another pair of ex-members, Teo and Juniper. Juniper arrived at Twin Oaks the day before I did, and we were immediate friends. After three years together on the commune, she left in September with her new partner Teo, and they've been traveling together around the country. Now they've settled temporarily, working on a farm in Oregon. I want to make it out there to connect with them, and share thoughts and feelings about the experience of leaving the sanctuary of Twin Oaks. I get that some with Free, though he left almost 7 years ago and doesn't seem to get as attached to physical reality as I do... places and things and people are transitory and he takes changes and losses in stride. Juniper and I are more similar emotionally, and I want to explore and share this experience with her.

I'm realizing that perhaps my travel plans aren't as interesting as my actual present experience of leaving. Am I avoiding writing about it? Logistics are just easier, because they're concrete.

Right now, from the comfort of a house where I feel supported and loved, on a cozy Monday morning of tea and NPR, it's hard to dive into the grief and fear of two days ago. Where to start? I spent my last day at Twin Oaks in a strange limbo. I had high expectations... I wanted intensity and meaningfulness, symbolic releases and powerful goodbyes. Instead, the whole day was fairly mellow. I had a morning date with Hawina, who has been a giant force in my life since early in my membership. She's Paxus' life partner and co-parent, and throughout my time at Twin Oaks we had several intense rounds of polyamory-induced emotional and logistical processing. We started to develop our own independent relationship through working together on the Mental Health Team over the last year, and our friendship now is deeper than I would have expected, given our history.

We chatted for awhile, then walked around the community and told each other stories of our experiences in different places. We ended up at the dining hall, and went inside for lunch. I got a plate of food and sat down with a group of friends in a small lounge area. Taking in the scene around me, friends laughing and entertaining the new baby, I felt an immediate emptiness, noting the joy and comfort and deep friendship I would be leaving in just a few hours. A friend across the room made eye contact with me, and the tears that had been building in my eyes suddenly released down my cheeks. She came over and wrapped her arms around me while I sobbed. I don't mind crying in public; in fact, I like it. I want it to be natural to see people expressing sadness. I want to embrace sadness as an acceptable emotion, and so when I'm sad I don't go hide out somewhere to cry unseen.

Other friends came over and sat with me, holding me and stroking my head. I calmed down and talked about how weird it felt to be there with them, and be on completely different trajectories. They were engaged in the continuing functioning of the community -- I wasn't. I was engaged in extracting myself from the fabric of their lives, while their lives continued on.

After lunch I spent a few hours getting ready for my goodbye party with another woman, Alexis, who was also leaving in a few days. We decided to have party together, sharing the experience of letting go and moving on. We decorated a large living room with all of our clothes and other items we were getting rid of, for other people to take. We hung clotheslines around the room to display our clothing, and laid out candles, earrings, condoms, and posters for our friends to choose from. Once the room was ready for the evening's festivities, I left to say my final goodbyes to the community. I walked around with my journal and took a few moments in different places around the commune to write memories and reflections on my experiences in those places. I wrote in the dining hall about rehearsals for musicals, meals with friends, wild dance parties, and hackey sack circles outside on sunny days. In the dairy barn, I wrote about the smell of the cows, the playfulness of the calves, the intuitive skill of herding, and the silence of solitary winter mornings. In a high field near the graveyard, I remembered moments of retreat and reflection, rituals for full moons and other pagan holidays, and running in the rain for sanctuary when my grandmother died. In that same pasture, I engaged myself in a ritual of release. I had brought a piece of wood that I found in Maine before I moved to Twin Oaks, a bouquet of lavender from the herb garden that had been hanging in my room, and a rock I had found during a full moon mediation in that very field. I released the wood and set it softly on the earth, symbolizing that which I brought to Twin Oaks with me, and was leaving there: hesitance, passivity, deference to authority, fear of being wrong, naive independence. I then scattered the lavender beside it, symbolic of that which I acquired and experienced at Twin Oaks, and was also leaving behind: the cows, the land, daily responsibility to community members, full benefit of the collective resources of the community, safety, sanctuary. Finally, I held the rock against my chest, envisioning the confident, powerful, compassionate Self that I've found at Twin Oaks. Awareness and empathy, clear and honest communication, an active sense of responsibility... I want to carry this persona with me as I move on, and so I brought the rock, infused with that vision, with me. I looked at the wood and lavender on the ground, and felt the weight of the rock in my hand, and I realized that I didn't have anything to symbolize that which I brought with me and am also carrying on with me. I looked through my bag and couldn't find anything that fit the description, so I used my body, my eyes and lungs and nose and skin and heart. I thanked my body for carrying me to Twin Oaks, and thanked it for staying healthy enough to carry me away.

I came down from the pasture, and had enough time before dinner to hang out a bit with Paxus. It felt important to spend some time together on my last day, rooting ourselves in our continuing connection despite our many changes. We will certainly have a different relationship now that I've left Twin Oaks; what it looks like is up to us.

After dinner, I headed down to the courtyard to finish preparations for the party. Alexis and I had decided to have a "feed your friends" party, where no one fed themselves from their own hands. Instead, we had finger food (pineapple, grapes, chocolate, popcorn, and cake) that people could feed to each other. Once it got rolling, people walked around with platefulls of food and offered to feed each person they interacted with (I did it a lot, and loved it!). The whole party was great -- folks grabbed the clothes we had on display and wore them as party outfits. We had a coffeehouse where people performed (juggling, singing, and spoken word tributes to Alexis and me), and we all danced until late in the evening. I returned to my room around 1am to finish packing. I went to sleep at 4:45 and woke up again at 6:15 to get ready to leave with the 8am trip into town.

I spent my last hour and a half at Twin Oaks running around doing final details, cleaning out my message slot, returning things I'd borrowed, and emptying my trashcan. I found Paxus one last time for our final goodbye, and then picked up my bags to load into the minivan. A friend had posted a note on the office door for me, saying simply "You will be missed" in big bold letters. I took it down as my tears started, and held it in my hand as I climbed into the van with the other folks going into town that day. We drove around to the dairy barn to pick up the milk that was to be delivered to cowshare customers (though raw, unpasturized milk can't be sold, people can buy a share in a specific cow and receive milk from the cow that they partly own). On top of that day's milk was another note for me, from a friend who was that morning's milker and knew I was going in with the town trip.

Her note kept my tears flowing as we drove away from Twin Oaks, my home of three and a half years. Folks in the van asked me about my plans, and assured me that I could always come back if I wanted to. The driver offered jokingly to turn around. I cried, and felt comfortable with my tears. I chatted with a friend who I hadn't spent much time with lately, a man named Thomas who joined the community just before I did. The 45 minute drive passed quickly. We dropped one woman off at an early dentist appointment, and then everyone else unloaded at the downtown library. Before we headed off in our own directions, Thomas hugged me tightly and offered to help me carry my bags into the library. "No thanks," I said. "I want to know I can do it all by myself." It wasn't a feminist political statement -- more, it was a symbolic act of independence and my capacity to take care of myself. As I write it now, I realize that's only part of it. The truth is, we are all interdependent, whether we recognize it or not. The very nature of life on Earth is interdependence. Living in community just makes it more tangible. I don't want to forget that truth simply because it's more obscured in the mainstream culture. And yet, it felt important to me to feel my independence as I walked away from the van and my life at Twin Oaks.

Friday was hard for me, more than I expected. Sitting in the library, I felt aimless, no roots, no direction, just floating in limbo. I spent the day in deep grief and sadness about leaving my home and my friends of over 3 years, wondering what I'm heading towards and being fearful about not knowing. I cried with Free and he held me. I blamed him for picking me up late at the library and dragging me around town to run errands, and he held me. I cried and talked about my fears and he just gave me the space to be scared, giving me his love and reminding me about hope and faith.

Then on Saturday, I borrowed the car and ran some errands around town. I started a bank account. I stopped by the library to check my email. I sang in the car about how the earth is my home. I'm not rootless, I'm rooted in the earth and the global community.

As I walked down the street towards the library, this time unencumbered with bags, I felt my independence and my interdependence merging. I smiled at people I passed on the street, and they smiled back. This is my mandate for myself on this piece of the journey. Trust myself, and trust other people. Remember my independence, my capacity to create what I want, and my strength, and at the same time remember my connection with others, my responsibility to the people around me, and my commitment to honoring each person for who they are, even when I don't understand them. We're all in this together.

I left Twin Oaks this morning with the communal trip into town.  I'm using the library as my decompression zone for a few hours, before I spend a week with my partner who lives here near Charlottesville.

I want to write about leaving, and right now it's too raw.  Sorry, readers.  I want to write from my rawest self here, and at this moment my rawest self doesn't have the words for what I'm feeling.  I spent the last few days at Twin Oaks feeling like a ghost, physically there but not engaged in what everyone else was experiencing, distinctly seperate.  And now... I'm gone.

I took the artwork down from my walls last night.  I've been packing in small bursts since last week, books first, since there's little to cull and they're easy to stack in boxes and the quickly-bare shelves affirm my intention to leave.  Then art supplies, choosing what to pack away, what to bring on my travels, and what to let go to the universe.  I'm a hoarder, especially when it comes to art supplies.  If I think I might want to use something later (tissue paper, ribbons, a random tube of paint), I put it in the "art tower," a set of shelves I devoted purely to supplies for creative expression.  Twin Oaks helps me feed this slight obsession -- we have a "grabs" table up at the main dining hall, and there's often weird photographs, scraps of fabric,  and earrings-that-could-be-turned-into-something-else.  I try to be selective...

As for packing, the artwork coming down from the walls was significant for me.  Up until now, my room has still felt like "home" despite the boxes all over the floor and the empty shelves.  I noticed myself feeling antsy and anxious while I was packing up my "body supplies" (medicine and makeup that I've scarcely used in the last 3.5 years).  I realized that I didn't feel like I was REALLY packing to leave... more like I was packing for a trip that I'd be returning from at some point.  But that's NOT what I'm doing, and the emotional discord with reality was distressing to me.  I decided that I needed to have a more tangible space of transition for these last four days (FOUR DAYS!).  So I spent the late evening talking with a friend who sat on my bed while I meticulously pulled out thumbtacks and took down posters and paintings and photos and the smearing genius of my 3 year-old friend Willow.  

Behind a few of the posters, I found love notes taped to the wall, some from over a month ago, some from as recent as New Year's Eve.  Paxus strikes again -- the master of love letter delivery.  He and I are in a major transition in our relationship as I leave the commune and align my life more closely with another partner.  We've struggled and fought the change, and now we're moving into a place of accepting each others' lives for what they are.  He has a new lover here who I'm in awe of, who I've respected from afar for years.  Seeing them together and seeing him growing in new ways is a joy and a relief for me, most of the time.  Some moments of grieving what we've lost and feeling envy when I see it in them... for the most part, I'm happy that we're both in powerful relationships and continue to feel the power of who we are together.  The whole "monogamy/polyamory" question has been coming up a lot -- Free and I experimented with a "sexually exclusive" relationship for awhile and discovered that it felt too restrictive and didn't credit the trust we have for each other.  We ended up agreeing that we both feel we want to be "sexually focused" with each other right now, and carrying that as an intention (rather than a rule) feels more in line with how we want to engage with each other and with other people.  I'm not interested in pursuing sexual energy with other people, but if it's there I'm not going to feel guilty or ignore it.

so many changes...

I helped kill a cow this morning... a steer, actually.  We keep all the females around until they're done producing milk.  All the males that are born go to the "beefie" herd and are slaughtered at about 3 years old.  I moved here almost three and a half years ago, and joined the milking crew almost immediately.  I probably saw this one as a calf, and maybe even helped with his birth. Today I was a part of his death.

I don't think I've ever seen an animal die before.  I don't think I've ever really seen Death happen.  I've seen plenty of dead creatures -- just last week my partner Free found a recently-hit deer on the side of the road, and he hauled it home in the back of his truck and we spent half of our date skinning and gutting it.  We stayed up until 2 in the morning while he butchered the meat.  I mostly watched.  I was fascinated by the process, and even more than that, by the concept of something living as an independent being becoming an inanimate hunk of matter.  When I returned to Twin Oaks the next day, I asked Woody to let me know the next time he was going to kill a cow.

I almost didn't go  this morning.  I woke up early and laid in bed for awhile, trying to imagine what it would be like to see a cow die… such a huge creature, an animal that I've worked with so intimately as a milker, an animal that I grew so fond of that I eventually gave up milking and stopped eating dairy products.  After about a year, I returned to eating cheese and butter, though I didn't start milking again until just a few months ago when the dairy crew was sparse and needed some help getting shifts covered.  And then this morning, I had the opportunity to observe and participate in the other end of our dairy program.

I was running late because of my hesitation, and I had to jog to catch up with the crew of eight other people who were already on their way from the barn to get the steer from the "beefie" pasture.  When we arrived, Woody went through the gate with a bucket of grain to choose which one would be killed.  The steers were curious at first, but each one backed away quickly when Woody approached.  It seemed, though I don't know if it's true, that they recognized Woody as the one who took cows away and never brought them back.  He finally separated one large steer, and coaxed it through the gate.  Once through, it started running and bucking in the open field, then calmed down and walked slowly as the group loosely surrounded it.  Another helper held the bucket of grain to his mouth when he paused, teasing him forward.  As he walked away from his herd, I had a distinct awareness of his separation from the others as a predecessor to his death.  He was quite alone.

He came easily most of the way, then stopped suddenly when we got close to the barn.  Woody said it might have been the sound of the tractor turning the compost -- I think it was the steer sensing what he was moving towards.  Perhaps it was the energy of the barn where so many others had been killed, perhaps it was the intention growing in each of us, or just Woody, as we guided him closer.  Regardless, he was spooked, and we had a wild few minutes trying to corral him and keep him from running down the road.  We finally got him going back towards the barn, and he actually ran directly to the corner where Woody has killed all the cows -- 5 so far this year, including this one. 

Once he was in the corner, he was able to smell the blood from the previous kills.  We had gathered around fairly tightly so he couldn't bolt, and he let out a load of shit and then started turning and pacing and snorting and kicking.  Woody picked up the shotgun and loaded a bullet.  The more experienced helpers covered their ears -- I was transfixed by the steer, watching and feeling his fear. 

The shot surprised me; Woody got him right under the ear and he immediately dropped.  Suddenly this lively and active creature was collapsed on its side, unmoving, in a heap in the dirt.  Woody grabbed a knife and immediately started severing the head from the body to cut the spinal cord and let the arteries empty.  Once done, he tossed the head to the side for Elona, one of his more experienced helpers, to cut out the tongue.  Once the head was off, the body still moved, muscles responding even without the central command of the brain.  We waited before doing anything else while the legs kicked aggressively and blood continued to drain from the neck.  Woody turned on classical music in the barn and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette.  I watched intently, tears streaming down my face from the intensity.  Watching life suddenly evaporate, seeing the transition from alive to dead… the union of body and spirit separates, body unites with earth and spirit unites with Spirit.

The rest seems mundane after that initial moment.  The rest, I could handle easily.  Woody cut around the anus and loosened up the bowel muscles as well as he could, then tied off the end with a rope to keep it tidy.  Elona worked on the other end, cutting away the trachea and the gullet from the neck.  She tied a rope on her end, and then started opening the abdomen, careful not to puncture the stomach, so we could pull out all the guts and internal organs at once. 

Once gutted (the heart, liver, and fat judiciously removed and placed in cold water for storage), Woody cut off the two hind hooves just below the ankles and strung chains between the two bones on each leg.  The chains were hooked to a piece of equipment that I'm sure has a name, a broad piece of wood hooked onto a chain that went through a pulley at the top of the barn.  One of the helpers worked the pulley to slowly drag the carcass into the barn and raise it off the floor so we could begin skinning it.  Yes, "we", and not the "royal we".  Woody called me in the barn, and someone handed me a knife.  Up until this point I had been mostly an observer, helping at times with pulling on a rope or moving a cinderblock to help lever the body into a better position.  At this point I felt ready to engage more in the process -- we were far enough away from the time that the thing in front of me had been a living creature.  It wasn't really moving anymore, except when my knife sliced into a muscle and it involuntarily twitched… which was actually quite fun to watch.

Woody showed me how to pull away the hide with one hand and gracefully cut it away from the fat and muscle beneath.  I liked the work, and I enthusiastically dove in.  Others had already gone by then, and I was glad to help at last; I had been frustrated that I felt so reluctant and useless before when there had been so many people and I was caught up in the intensity of Death. 

It seemed like it took us about 45 minutes to skin the whole thing, pausing at intervals to hoist the body higher so we could work at eye-level.  Finally, Woody cut off the two front hooves and put aside the hide for a friend in town to tan it.  He hung the limp tail next to four others on a nearby beam, his way of tallying for the year.

I thanked Woody and walked up the gravel road back to the courtyard, and my room.  I washed my hands, noting that the soap was made of beef tallow, and then went up to lunch and ate a cheese sandwich.

Closer to leaving, and I'm starting to really feel the intensity of letting go, instead of just thinking about it.  Pretty soon, I'll start having an onslaught of  "lasts": my last tofu shift, my last Planner meeting, my last childcare shift with Willow, my last date with Paxus, my last women's group meeting.  Tomorrow marks the first day of my last week of assigned labor -- after this week, I'll be on "transition" for two weeks, where I don't owe any labor credits for the week and I just get to pack and hang out with friends.  Some people use transition time to get a short-term job and earn some extra money for leaving, but I'm going to travel using  the money I got when I sold my car three years ago, when I was still a new member here.  Since it was based on a prior asset, it wasn't legit to use any of that money while I was a member, so I saved it in an account here for just this moment, not knowing when it would come.  And now here I am...

I'm crying a lot these days.  My life is going to change dramatically in the next 3 weeks, and the magnitude of the change is overwhelming.  I'm also excited.  I'm smiling a lot these days, too.

I turned in my application to UVA a few days ago, after working diligently on my personal statement  and having it edited by at least 5 people here.  A former college professor, an indexer who loves to edit, a friend with a passion for writing, a guest here for New Year's who is actually a Sociology grad student right now...  and I'm pleased with the final version.  I'll post it here for your enjoyment!

The instruction  was to "discuss some of the issues and questions that occupy your mind" (or something like that).  Here it is, my grad school entrance essay:

Things are rolling along quickly now... I'm gaining momentum on this new journey away from Twin Oaks.  My application to grad school is due tomorrow, and I completed it today.  Most of it is done online, and at 2pm this afternoon I clicked the button to send it in.  I mailed my letters of recommendation and my transcript off on Saturday, New Year's Eve, and now I don't quite know what to do with my spare time.  I had been filling it with studying for the GRE, then working on my personal statement for the application.  Now... what?  Start packing, I suppose.  There's always hammocks still to be made, as well.

My family and I are playing an online Scrabble game (see my dad's comment below), and it's quite fun!  I get an email whenever someone makes a play, and a special email reminder when it's my turn.  I'm in the lead, with my brother a close second.  Our parents are eating our dust! (HA!)  For the last many years, Scrabble has been a staple of our family time together at holidays.  I didn't go home for Christmas this year, and so I got the play-by-play of this year's game  from my brother.on the phone.  We then mused about the possibilities of playing a long distance game, with our own boards and tiles and emailing each other our respective plays.  In the imagining of it, we realized it would be pretty easy to do online with a simple program, and he set out to find one or create one.  He found a great site with a Scrabble setup, and we're playing here.  As of now, I'm in the lead!

The New Year's party here on Saturday was fantastic.  It's usually the biggest party of the year at Twin Oaks; lots of folks from off the farm come to party with us.  Ex-members, friends of members, friends of friends of friends of members... some folks here don't like having all of the strangers around, but I enjoy sharing the magic of this place with people who've never experienced anything like this before.  We have the party at one of our larger residence buildings (Tupelo, for those who know), which has a giant living room that's cleared of all its furniture to become the dance floor.  One wall of the living room has a ladder leading up to a loft  at least 12 feet above all the action, and that's known as the "cuddle loft" during the New Year's party, complete with comfy mattresses and soft lighting.  Other rooms throughout the building are designated for different activities, including a quiet room for babies and kids to crash and a "Temple of Oracles," where all sorts of divination tools like tarot and runes are available for consultation.  I happened to be hanging out in the Temple when a guy walked in and asked if anyone there could give him a tarot reading.  No one else volunteered, and so I smiled and offered myself to him.  I usually only do tarot for myself and my close friends; I think this is the first time I'd ever done it with someone I didn't know.  It turned out to be a powerful spread of cards, and I was pleased with the way I interpreted them with him.  Afterwards, he asked me how long I'd lived at Twin Oaks.  I told him I'd been here about 3 1/2 years, and that I'd be leaving soon to go to grad school.  "Wait a minute," he said.  "Do you have a blog?"  I was delighted!  He said he had read my posts a few times... ah, serendipity.

One rather frustrating part of the party was that the next day we discovered that several guests' cars had been broken into overnight.  We operate on relatively high levels of trust around here, and we never lock our car doors.  Guests usually don't either, and a couple credit cards, cell phones, and about $100 in cash was taken.   Presumably, the person/s who robbed the cars was a guest who came to the party -- one of the missing wallets was found later on in the cuddle loft with the money and credit card gone.  So what should we do?  Do we change our culture out of fear, by locking our car doors when we have a party, or do we try even harder (somehow) to cultivate a culture of trust and honesty within our broader network of connections (all those friends of friends of friends...)?