What I did this weekend:
1) went to a rave
2) had "existential sex"
3) navigated complicated poly relationships (not connected to the existential sex, unfortunately)

1) We had an outdoor rave here last night, up at our conference site.  It was so kooky and out-of-the-ordinary, and so much fun because of that.  We rarely have community events at the conference site (except for the conferences themselves), and I don't think there's ever been a proper "rave" at Twin Oaks, ever.    Having never been to a rave before, I was giddy and excited for a night of techno music and dancing with glowsticks, especially underneath the nearly-full moon.  I had fun dressing up in what I conjectured might be "raver" clothes: a tight sparkly superheroesque shirt with big-legged lime green pants, and pink tennis shoes that I found in Commie Clothes.  I put my short curly hair in pigtails and covered my eyelids with glitter.  Does that sound rave-ish?  When I was actually dancing to the electronic music and aware of my clothes and pigtails (with a blinking purple light threaded through my hair), I definitely felt like the persona I've ascribed to ravers.

The dance was set to begin at 9:30, which is a LATE start for any Twin Oaks party.  There was a "caffination party" after dinner for folks who wanted to get themselves properly energized for the evening.  I opted out of that (choosing instead to do the relationship navigation mentioned above), and headed up to the conference site with a few friends right before the beginning of the dance. It's a long, dark walk (maybe half a mile?) from the main part of the community to the site, and we were having quiet conversation when we rounded a corner and collectively said "ooh" when we saw the glowing lights through the trees.  Some communards had spent the afternoon decorating the outdoor space with holiday lights and colorful sheets (masquarading the pavillion that we're using as storage for the hammocks business).   The DJ station was glowing with lights and glowsticks and the DJ wore a headlamp to see his music in the dark.  The "dancefloor" was the flattest part of the dirt and gravel (still not very flat) covered with carpets.  The fire circle was already blazing, and there was a long table full of fruit and chocolate and beer and coffee.   We had a small opening ritual of setting a safe space of openness and fun, and then the music began.

It seemed like it took awhile for things to really get going. Some folks danced intermittently, many clustered around the fire circle chatting and eating oranges/strawberries/grapes dipped in chocolate sauce.  It wasn't until the fire dancers lit up that the energy really sparked.  It started with a hula hoop with 4 wicks lit, donned by a funny "class clown" kind of guy who actually was a pretty good hula hooper.  I took a turn next (and loved it!), and then the two women who have been diligently practicing hula hooping for many months.  They were incredible, maneuvering the ring of fire around their bodies in awe-inspiring ways, grabbing the hoop as it swirled around their hips and flourishing it up to spin around one arm raised high in the air.  Then a poi dancer, with balls of wicking attached to the end of two long chains.  She lit the wicks on fire, and then swung them elaborately around her body.  Then a guy with a staff, balls of fire on both ends, dancing and spinning and wowing us all.  Finally, fire-breathing.  Folks took deep mouthfulls of lamp oil (yes, they did) and then held a lit torch in front of them.  They took a deep breath and then forcefully sprayed the oil from their mouths through the fire, resulting in a giant blowtorch effect.  Quite impressive, and quite unbelievable how willing they were to drink lamp oil.  Everyone who tried it spent the rest of the evening trying to get the taste out of their mouths.

All the fire livened up the party a fair bit.  Some folks got out glowsticks and were dancing wildly with them, half in parody and still with utter enjoyment.  I grabbed some and played for awhile, and I was suprised at how much fun I was actually having with them.  I got compliments for the rest of the evening for my talent with the glowsticks, which filled me with pride... 

At some point, my partner Paxus handed me his 3 year old, Willow, so he could go dance for awhile with another partner (this isn't the complicated relationships part).   Dancing with Willow ended up being one of my favorite parts of the entire night.  He had a glowstick which he swirled around in energetic circles, arm outstretched as we bounced around the dancefloor together.  He'd lean back in my arms, head falling away from my body, and we'd spin in circles to the music.  "Again!" he'd say, laughing, and we'd spin some more.

(Side story about Willow:  someone asked him today what the meaning of life is, and he said matter-of-factly, "It's a secret.")

The party lasted late into the wee hours, the dance floor sometimes lagging and then suddenly coming to life again.  The fire was warm and some folks cuddled on the mattresses and blankets around it.  I mostly danced, sometimes watched, sometimes talked (and ate a LOT of oranges dipped in chocolate!).  A few times I found myself dancing to the digitized music with glowing plastic in my hands, and then turning my face upwards to the dark sky and stars and moon-illuminated clouds, feeling the seeming contradiction.   I had fun, and it was different from what I expected.  I was hoping for soemthing that would sweep me off my feet and carry me along on a wild experiential journey where I didn't think, just danced and played and laughed.  I guess at real raves there are drugs to help with that.  I think I thought too much, more than I wanted to.  I was quieter and more self-conscious about my dancing than usual.  I think the costume was a part of that, though often costumes and themes and "alternate realities" help me drop that self-consciousness.   Hmm... regardless, I had fun.  My partner Free and I were the last to leave at 2am, except for the DJ and another person who volunteered to stay and clean up.  I woke up this morning exhausted and aching from dancing all night, and I spent the day in a rather blissfull "I love my life" place, boxing tofu packages for many hours and playing with Willow on an extra long childcare shift.  And then...

2)... the existential sex!   (It's different than you think)  I watched a movie with my friend Valerie (the same as the Valerie of Matrix fame), and it was such a powerful experience that at the end of the movie we laid there wrapped around each other on the couch in the video shed, in awe, reveling in the intensity.  "I (heart) Huckabees"... anyone seen it?  Goddess, it's amazing.  For me, the movie was a reminder of some "deep truths" that I suspect are significant and "real", and it took me to a place of centered and intense awareness.  Sharing that space of Knowing (or whatever) with Valerie felt better than sex, a shared experience of "getting it" (something... what, I don't know... reality?).  I tried to express it to her as we cuddled on the couch afterwards, and she deemed it "existential sex".  I've only really felt it once before, in the back room of Denny's with the lovely Serenalu, wired on coffee and thesis deadlines, suddenly wormholing into a universe beyond self-censoring and mistrust, where everything we said elicited a "I know exactly what you mean" and then stunned silence.  There have also been, of course, the chemically-altered experiences of existential sex with everything in the universe (dude)... but it's been awhile since I had one of those -- this way has fewer side effects.

3) and finally, the relationship navigations.  I currently have two pretty intense partnerships, amidst other connections of varying depth and intensity.  Paxus and I have been together for 2 and a half years, and Free and I have been involved since November.   For the first time in our relationship, Free is seriously pursuing another deep intimacy.  He's been fantastic about letting me know from the start -- she and I even met and hung out for an evening.  He did a great job sharing his attention and energy and love that night, being open and clear and loving with both of us.  I admitted my fear of the unknown, wondering how our relationship would change.  We talked again yesterday before the rave, and I touched a deeper charge of emotion that I hadn't really been aware of initially.  It started out as a calm and reflective conversation about the new relationship, how he was feeling about it and how I was feeling about it.  I started to talk bit more about my fears,and then I started a sentence that immediately brought tears to my eyes and a tightness in my chest.   I admitted that I was sad about shifting out of this unique place in his life of being the only person serving the role of lover.  It made me feel special, and that was hard to admit because it doesn't seem very poly.  And yet, it's the way our relationship has been for the last seven months and I got used to it.  Now it's shifting and there's some mourning in letting go of that way of being together.  Crying in a hammock together in the early evening sunlight was a fantastic release -- and having had that experience of acknowledging the sadness letting go, we can move forward intentionally.  And it does feel like moving forward.  Free said that the love he's felt in our relationship has helped him come to a place where he's able to love someone else, and he experiences that as a great gift of what we've created together.   I'm honored by that sentiment, so deeply.  And I'm excited (and a little fearful, though less now than before) about where we'll go from here.  Ah, change...

Morning reading in the composting toilet collaborative notebook:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who repeatedly shat in a bucket
When told this was strange,
He replied, "You're deranged!
You shit in clean water and fuck it (up)"

And then I looked out the window and saw an AWOL cow wandering through the plum trees, so I finished my business and went to find the herder and his collie.  I love living in a place where I read homegrown limericks and encounter escaped cows.

I'm exhausted.  It's been a long day.

I woke up feeling sick this morning after an evening of nurturing a sick Paxus.  I cancelled my morning work (visiting the Scrabble playing older woman who I wrote about last week) in the interest of both her health and mine.  I was going to spend the day resting.  Then I realized I could go to the morning's planner meeting, which I was originally going to skip to be with Rose.  "It's just sitting," I thought to myself "so it counts as resting."

Two hours in the planner meeting, where we talked about egalitarianism and individuals earning money to pay for pets.  Food and vet bills for pets are officially a communal responsibility, but in this time of lower economic abundance, the Pets budget has been cut and isn't sufficient to cover all needs.  So folks want to work off the farm to earn money to support their pets.  And officially, "on the farm" use of money that you earn "off the farm" isn't kosher, in order to keep away from economic hierarchy and class differentiation.  So, it's come to the planners to look at how to take care of the pets we foolishly didn't budget for, within an egalitarian framework.  I love it.  I love sitting in on planner meetings, and I've been doing it for long enough now that I feel comfortable saying my thoughts and opinions.  Input for my plannership is due on Sunday…

After the planner meeting, I went to lunch, to the garden meeting.  The garden is basically run by one amazing woman who has everything organized and planned, and a "full crew" team of 4 or 5 people who do regular work in the garden, practically daily.  The "paracrew" is composed of about 30 people who don't make such an intense time and energy commitment, and who work in the garden one or two days a week under the direction of the garden manager or someone else from the full crew.  I’m on the paracrew.  Each Thursday at lunch we have a garden meeting so that anyone on any crew can get sense of the big picture in the garden, and get a heads-up about where we are in the growing season and what specific tasks are needing to be done.  As someone who works maybe once a week in the garden, I really appreciate the garden meetings as a way of staying connected to the whole process of growing our food.

After lunch, the daily hackey sack circle, then off to another meeting: the Community Visitor Program (CVP).  Two hours of Sociocratic decisionmaking about our 3-week visitor process, and then I headed to the tofu hut.  I wasn't scheduled to work in tofu today, but there was a sign posted at lunch begging for extra help, and I decided to go in.  We've doubled the size of our tofu business by taking on production for an ex-member who runs his own tofu business, and today was the first day of production.  His product is pretty different than ours, with many different flavors and marinades and additional ingredients.  If you ever buy Sunergia "More than Tofu", chances are that in the next few months you'll be eating tofu made right here on the hippie commune.  If you happen to buy the Garlic Shitake with an expiration date of 7-18-05, you're eating tofu that was packaged by my hot little hands on this very day.

It was interesting to me to notice the difference between doing work that I'm scheduled for, and doing work that I'm choosing to do.  I'm often sluggish and reluctant when I drag myself into the tofu hut for yet another 4 hour shift of noise and sogginess, and towards the end I’m watching the clock tick towards the end of my shift.  Today though, when I chose to go in and help out, I was much more lively and energetic and I didn't watch the clock, because I knew I could leave whenever I felt ready to go.  I pushed myself towards the end when I realized it was nearing dinnertime, because I wanted to finish up the task I was working on.

So much for a day of resting…  I could have rested.  I could have spent the day in bed.  Why didn't I?  I can take labor credits for resting when I’m sick; it's part of our work system -- getting "paid" to sleep and drink tea.  Why didn't I do it?  Because there were things I wanted to be a part of, meetings I wanted to  participate in and tofu I wanted to help package.  I wanted to be a part of the first day of Sunergia production.  And now I'm exhausted, after sitting in on tonight's community meeting about Intentional Economy and looking at ways we want to be making decisions about budgets and money.  I was too tired to really participate, and I sat in because I love this kind of discussion.  I laid on the couch in the hammock shop while others stood at jigs weaving hammocks, earning labor credits and making money for the community.  I just listened, and that was enough for me.

And now I'm realizing that there was much more I wanted to write about, reflections and ideas and thoughts and brilliant prose… I'm too tired.  All that will come later.  This post just gets to be an insight into my day, if not my mind this time.

Today was the annual "UVA Dumpster Extravaganza".  Every year folks from the commune go to the University of Virginia right at the end of classes and exams, when everyone is moving out of their dorms and apartments and sorority houses.  The Twin Oakers drive up to the back of the buildings with our large cargo vans, and load them up with a massive amount of what college students consider "trash" as they're packing to go home: clothes, working computers, all kinds of trashy store-bought food, fans, lamps, books and books and books, shoes, costumes, blankets, and cookware.  Folks from Twin Oaks go in to town for three days, get hassled by campus security, and bring the loot back home.  Then there's a huge and rambunctious event where we haul everything out of the vans and collectively rifle through the boxes for things we want for ourselves and for the community.   This year we had the party up at the warehouse because it was raining; usually we have it in back of the community center and spread everything out in the parking lot.

People come with plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and garden carts for hauling away their personal loads at the end of the event.  Me, I came with a medim-sized cardboard box; I didn't want to get too carried away.  I knew I wanted to find a backpack to replace mine that recently busted it's second zipper, one I've had since college.  I found a rad space-age bag with black webbing and lots of snaps and buckles that actually seem to have some purpose.  I didn't have any other specific desires, and I wanted to be intentional about only getting stuff that I really thought I'd use.  I found some great crafty things, like nail polish and fabric and feathers, and a got a bunch of colorful half-used blocks of Post-It Notes.  And a pillow, one of those leany ones with "arms" that stick out, that you can lean against when you're sitting on the floor.  I've always wanted one!

One of my favorite parts of the event today was finding things for other people.  I loved rooting through the masses of random stuff and finding something that suits someone else so well, and then running up to them with it.  Endless opportunities for gifting people I love!  There's someone here who really likes the color orange, and UVA's colors are orange and blue, so she was getting lavished with gifts (a bit to the point of overwhelm!).

This event is often a powerful experience for me, and the power of it changes from year-to-year.  The first year I experienced it, I was rather horrified by the waste involved, thinking about how this happens on college campuses across the country every year.  I remember it from Wittenberg, sticking around for a week after classes and pretty much living on the food that other students had put out for the trash.  This year, the power of the event for me was in noticing my "hoarding" mentality, and conscously choosing against it.  Whenever I saw something nice or valuable, there was a voice in my head saying "I should grab that before someone else does", and then I had to ask myself "do I really want this?"  Most of the time, the answer was "no". 

The tone of a didgeridoo echos through the courtyard, accompianied by the song of the peepers in the pond.  It's a warm night, and I just walked accross the community after an evening band practice.  The All-Request Dance Band is gearing up for what's likely our final show in our current configuration.  Three members of the band are taking off for sure in the next few months -- our drummer is getting married and moving to Cville, and two more (a singer and a guitarist who became a couple last fall) are leaving the commune to travel cross country and end up working on organic farms in California.  So, this summer's Anniversary party (celebrating the 38th anniversary of the founding of Twin Oaks) will be our last show together.  We're putting together a medley of some of our favorite songs we've played over the past 2 1/2 years, playing snippets of about 40 songs, with some new ones thrown in and weird new arrangements of some of the old ones.  Yeehaw.  Band practice is at the tedious stage right now, when the musicians are still working out chords and timing, so us backup singers spend a lot of time sitting around.  I brought a sewing project to work on...

It's been a weird day for me... I woke up feeling dizzy and out of it, and it didn't really change throughout the day.  I had a meeting in the morning and then spent all afternoon putzing around the courtyard trying to find someone or something to inspire me.  My throat was a bit sore, so I found a big patch of a plant called "cleavers" growing along the path and picked some for tea.  I like that wildcrafting medicinal herbs has become a natural part of my life here; another of Paxus' partners is a naturopath who has reccomended and helped me identify some specific plants around the farm.    I love that we're connecting around this shared passion -- we went on a walk a few weeks ago to talk about how it's going sharing a lover together (after a hard winter of struggles last year -- it's so much better now!), and we ended up running around exploring the plant life and sharing about their medicinal uses.

What else to write about?  I've decided to go for it and apply to be a planner.  I had my interview with the current planners last week.  Some of the questions were:
How do you feel about current happenings in the community?  I'm frustrated by managers who don't seem to be taking our economic situation to heart and spending money excessively, and overall I'm happy in the community and have been feeling and enjoying a sense of "group identity" lately.
What role do you see the planners playing in the community?  I see the planners as information collectors and processors... gathering input from community members and our bylaws and policies and stirring it all together and finding ways for it all to fit together.
How do you feel about working with the current group of planners? I gave my attention to each of the three and told them why I'd like to work with them.  One is witty and sharp, one is a friend who I already connect with on a deep level, and one is brilliant and someone I respect a lot.
What issues in the community are you particularly interested in?  I'm very committed to the idea and practice of income sharing and resource sharing.  The ideal of egalitartianism is key for me, too, and I'm delighted by looking at how the ideal plays into "real life" decisions.  On a less general level, I've been really interested in following the "kid's labor" process and watching the kids take ownership of crafting a policy that works for them and the community.
How are you at hearing criticism? Ugh... it's hard for me.  And it's an area I'm willing to be challenged on.  If it's about me personally, I get really self-critical.  If it's about a decision I make with other people, I can blame it on them :) or just listen to the criticism without taking it personally.

When the questions were done (there were abour 10 in all), then each planner told me what they thought and felt about me as a potential team member with them.  All three gave positive feedback, saying they'd like to work with me.  One acknowledged that he thought I might get frustrated working with him because I'm an idealist and he's a cynic, and he said he was still excited to work together.   The next step is for an input box to be pu tout to the community, and folks will give their opinion about me being a planner.  After an input period of 10 days, I'll have a chance to post a letter to respond to the input.  Then a veto box will go out, and 10% of the community can veto me.  If not, I'll be a "stand-in" planner for 3 months, and then if I want I can apply to be a full planner for 18 months through the same process, when the 18 month term of one of the current planners is complete.

And now I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow morning I'm hanging out with a 92 year old woman named Rose who lives in a nearby town.  Her daughter is an ex-member who has hired Twin Oakers to stay with her mom for a few hours each day.  She plays Scrabble against all her caregivers, and she usually wins.  She's pretty sharp... so I'm going to need to get some sleep if I have any hope of holding my own in the game tomorrow.

Tonight I played, and I had a grand time.

So, the Matrix.  I loved the first movie.  I loved the idea of choosing raw, real Life over manipulated, manufactured experience.  I loved all of the wild bodily contortions and utter defiance of the "laws" of gravity and physics.  I loved the strong woman character who didn't have long flowing hair and enormous breasts.  I cringed at the extreme violence, and the rest outweighed it.

I first saw the movie here on the commune a few years ago, with a whole group of Matrix-loving communards.  One of those was Valerie, a close friend of mine with whom I've had several exciting adventures (including an 18 hour roadtrip to Iowa -- yeehaw!).  She and I have a similar love for feminism, dancing, chocolate, Madonna, and cultural revolution (not in that order).  We also love the Matrix.  We recently realized that neither of us had seen the third movie, so we decided to make a date to watch it together.  We both had seen the second one, and neither of us were particularly thrilled with it (one of the reasons why we hadn't yet bothered to watch the third).  We figured it was time to complete the Matrix experience, so we set aside tonight to be the night and Valerie put in a TOR (a request to the daily "town tripper" to run any errand) for the DVD.

We planned on borrowing someone's laptop to watch it  (we have several -- 3? -- actual DVD players hooked up to tv's, but they were all signed out for the night).  Last night, I mentioned my  upcoming date to one of my lovers, an ex-member who lives in the nearby city of Charlottesville , and he suggested bringing the movie over to his place and watching it on the (gasp) wide screen television!  This morning I proposed it to Valerie, and we studied the vehicle log and found that someone else already had a car going in to Cville tonight and was planning to stay late.  We checked in with her and decided to carpool (it's about a 45 min drive). 

About 10 minutes before we had arranged to leave, I had a stroke of brilliance.  I ran up to Commie Clothes (our free thrift store) and found tight black pants and a tight black strappy tank top and a (gasp again!) long black leather jacket.  I grabbed them all, strode over to the office, grabbed Valerie and dragged her back up to "Commie" to find a similar outfit for her.  She's very thin, and we were despairing about finding pants to fit her when suddenly I reached into the rack of pants and pulled out the perfect stretchy tight sexy black pants (how many times can I use the word "pants in one sentence?  What else can you call them?), which fit her deliciously.  And believe it or not, we found another long black leather jacket.  Commie Clothes is a treasure trove for creative costumes.

While we were wating for the other carpoolers to gather, we practiced our Matrix moves in the parking lot, jumping and spinning and cocking our arms at weird Fosse angles, swirling our leather jackets around dramatically.  When the other carpoolers showed up, we rolled over the hood of the car and jumped into the backseat.

The rest of the evening was more of the same.  When we showed up at Free's place (yes, his name is Free), we Matrixed up to the front door and put on a show for him to let him know what he was in for.  We jumped around the living room and demonstrated how we could cut up the broccoli for dinner by throwing it in the air and chopping with many knives all at once.

Then we watched the movie, which wasn't nearly as exciting as all the playing we were doing.  It was cheesy and violent and a too much of an extrapolation on the original concept of the first movie.  And still, we had a great time -- lots of strong female characters, lots of non-white leading roles, and lots of wild body gymnastics.  And when the movie was over, we jumped and danced around some more to the music that played during the credits.

And then our ride came to pick us up, and we all drove back home (Valerie and I agreed that neither of us should drive, though, because of all the things we might attempt to do with the car).  We showed off our costumes to some people who were up late in the courtyard (who didn't really get it), and then said goodnight.  I'm getting ready to head to bed, and I wanted to document my excitement before it diffused into the dreamworld. 

All through the night, I felt a kind of freedom in the silliness of our costumes and antics.  Before we started the movie, we took Free's car to the nearby grocery store to buy ice cream and popcorn.  I felt a relaxed excitement about going out in public in costume, and I loved that feeling of  "I'm living my life, having fun, being silly" without the fear or worry of other people thinking I'm weird.  That fear has played fairly big for me at other times in my life, and I think it's really been my time at Twin Oaks that's helped me to relax out of it.   I guess that by choosing to live on the commune, I have the experience of doing something that I really believe in despite the judgement of other people, and I've discovered that that's okay.  I can handle that judgement; I can handle being thought of as weird.  So, I can give myself even more flexibility in that and dress up in costume and go to the grocery store and delight in dancing in the parking lot.  Another piece of it, I think, is that on the commune I have the experience of being honored as a whole, complex person.  When people know so much of Who I Am, doing "weird" things doesn't automatically give me a "weird" label or devalue who I am; it just adds to the complexity that people already know.  And as a person  who has throughout my life highly valued what other people think of me (too much, oftentimes), I find abundant freedom in feeling known for more than just labels attributed in fleeting interactions.  I stop worrying constantly about what people think of me because of the look I just gave them or what I'm wearing, and I begin to focus more on the larger question of Who I Am, who I want to be, and how I want to engage with other people.

I know it's been awhile since I've posted, and I'm hoping to get back into more regular posts.  It's a bit difficult to find time to sit in front of a computer for very long lately, and I'm not complaining about that.  I have a whole queue of topics I want to write about... perhaps tomorrow (which is already today)....