A new baby! Mala and Ezra's baby boy was born late last night, 11:55 pm. No name yet, but we'll have one in a few days I'm sure. I'll write more about the birthing party and the exciting conclusion later...

I feel neglectful for not having transcribed my thoughts of leaving here on the blog. It's been a busy time for me, both actually and mentally. The thoughts haven't held still enough to write them down... oh, that's not a fair portrayal, not fair to the thoughts themselves. They were there, and I was uncomfortable with them. Leave the commune? Parts of me are ready for it, parts of me aren't. I've been here for three years; I'm ready for a new perspective. The passive aggressive communication culture drives me crazy, and I see myself acquiring those traits the longer I live here.

And at the same time, I've grown roots here. I have deep friendships and lovers and partners -- I've found family here. I love living rurally. I love being so directly involved in the basics of sustaining my life and the lives of others. I love harvesting zucchini. I love swimming naked in the pond and being shirtless without being ogled. I love walking and biking on tree-lined paths.

And at the same time, I want to have more direct experience of the larger world. I want to understand what's happening beyond these 450 acres, I want to experience it and be directly invested in creating a healthier world. I've gotten too caught up in the petty bullshit issues of Twin Oaks. I'm frustrated with spending my time and energy figuring out how to accomodate individual neuroses, as the culture of Twin Oaks prescribes.

I've been playing with the idea of leaving for awhile now. About a month ago, I accepted that within the next year I'd likely take a Personal Affairs Leave (PAL), which means that I drop membership for up to a year and get my same room when I come back. Over the last few weeks, my exploration became more earnest, seeking possibilities of what I could do for a year. Travel? Get a funky activist job? All the while, my relationships here were a strong reason not to leave. And I still felt the pull towards other things. I felt like I was split in two or more pieces, feeling desires and needs pulling against each other in opposite directions.

Then one morning last week I was laying in bed with my partner Free in his house near Charlottesville, and we were talking about possibilities and fears about the future. In exploring different “what ifs”, an idea bubbled up and crystalized, fitting into an open space in my heart that connected the divergent desires. Go to grad school, get my PhD, become a professor. Go to UVA, right there in Charlottesville. Live at the collective house that has strong ties to the communities movement. Maintain my connections with friends and lovers at Twin Oaks, be closer to Free, feed my hunger for academic exploration, stay involved in collaborative living. I’ve held the idea in my heart and mind for the last few days, and it still fits beautifully, though of course there’s also sadness with the idea of leaving this home. That’s a part of it, too.

And for now, I’m still here. What a time to be here! A good friend is giving birth tonight – the first baby born here in almost three years. Mala’s water broke last night, and her sweetie Ezra grabbed me on his way up to see her. I hung out with her for a few hours, helping get final preparations together. The news spread fast, and lots of folks showed up to check in and share in the excitement. The commune is twittering with anticipation. The local midwife will show up later today, and we’ll all gather for a “birthing party” downstairs while she’s in her birthing room upstairs (usually a small living room where we have meetings and give massages). Last night she showed me how she had set up the room, and I was thrilled to discover that she had chosen to hang one of my paintings from a recent art show. I had hung a bunch of my art in the dining hall and invited folks to take whatever they wanted. I’m tickled and honored that I get to have a small presence in her birth (she’s specified certain people that she wants in the room when she’s heavy into labor, while everyone else parties downstairs).

So at the same time as I'm starting to disengage, I still feel the power of my life here, and it feels amazing. I do love living here, and it's time for me to move on.

At the end of the spring, some three years ago
An actress decided she'd done her last show
Disgusted with TV and fake store-bought bread
She yearned for a garden and new thoughts in her head
She read lots of books and used the computer
Looking for alternate paths that might suit her
She learned about communes, her heart nodded "yes"
And the actress departed the Babylon mess

Three years on the commune have been a delight
Milking the cows, feeling safe in the night
Learning to process, picking zucchini
Swimming in water without a bikini
Deepening friendships, working with soy
Opening up to more levels of joy
The actress has grown here, beyond all her dreams
And growing has led to a new path, it seems

The actress is feeling the call of new things
Grad school, Hawaii, whatever life brings
The plan, as she knows it, will keep her nearby
To UVA grad school she plans to apply
The actress is wanting to be a professor
Sociology classes have always impressed her
So sometime this winter, young 2006
The actress will leave this home in the sticks
She'll travel awhile, beyond good and evil
And when the fall comes, she'll settle in C'ville.


UVA is the University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville.  I registered for the GRE last week, and my application to UVA is due in January.  I'm really leaving...

more later, I promise.

I got home from Burning Man on Wednesday, and since then I've been struggling with trying to describe the experience to people who have never been.  It's a bit like trying to describe what the color orange sounds like -- we just don't have the vocabulary.

I stayed up last night until the wee hours before sunrise, trying to write an article about it for the Washington Spark, an indymedia newspaper based in DC.  The deadline was this morning, and I finally got to a place of having a reasonable, though nowhere near comprehensive description of a small piece of the experience.  I'll post it here, and write more freeflow about it later as I'm inspired.

The Burning Man Festival: A City of Possibility

The inspirational directive to “dance as if nobody’s watching” is elegant, though it might be more appropriate to say, “dance as if nobody cares”.  In the desert of Nevada for one week each year, it’s true.  As long as you’re dancing (or expressing yourself however you feel inspired), no one cares what it looks like.

Next year marks the 20th summer of the Burning Man festival, a celebration of raw creative expression and temporary autonomous community during the week before Labor Day.  For one week, a city of tents, RVs, and geodeisic domes is created by over 40,000 people on an ancient lakebed (the "playa").  No money is exchanged; people pack in their own supplies, and share. The result is a mix between a frat party, a commune, a playground, and an art museum.

Collective camps make up the bulk of the Burning Man experience.  Groups of participants organize beforehand to offer elaborate setups of food, space, information, and experiences to share with the rest of the city.  Some of my favorite offerings from camps included the roller disco, homebrewed root beer, daily yoga sessions, a giant teetertotter, S&M workshops and bondage lessons, the Crappiest Lemonade Stand Ever (make your own out of powdered gatorade and water while the camp hosts sit back and watch), and aerial silk dancing lessons and performances.  We passed by one camp on our bikes where we were accosted with invitations to come in and join a party of exotic drinks and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Beyond Black Rock City (the unifying name for the temporary civic area) lies the open playa, which over the course of the week becomes spotted with interactive, experiential works of art.  From giant statues to quirky installations,  over 150 artistic expressions are scattered across the desert carpet.  Anyone is welcome to display a piece of art, and some artists receive grants from the festival in order to finance their creations.
The real power of the experience for me was in the openness and essential limitlessness of the event. There's no established program; things only happen when someone decides to make them happen.  There's no established social rules about acceptable behavior, beyond a basic value of civic responsibility.

Cultural rules give us a sense of what to expect, providing social safety which is at the same time comforting and limiting.  Traffic rules provide smooth flow with other travellers.  But when people are for the most part on foot or on bicycles, interactions can be negotiated in the moment.  For the power of direct engagement with other people, I'm willing to accept a few near-misses and ungraceful swerves, at least for a week.  For one week of freedom from expectation, it's worth it to put the extra energy into intentional navigation of every interaction.  This is the power of this temporary autonomous zone, where we can choose to make this daring and ineffecient tradeoff for a limited amount of time. 

Burning Man isn't a model for a sustainable alternative society.  Instead, it offers an experience of new possibilities, a look at what lies beyond our normal limits of experience and expression.  The lessons of Burning Man are about empowering the individual, with the intention of creating a community based on both self-reliance and trust of others.  Individuals expressing themselves fully, in needs, desires, thoughts, and fears, create a strong base for a powerful collective.  I experienced this in the final days of the festival, once I trusted myself more in seeking out what I really wanted.  I got silly with strangers.  I explored new art forms.  I walked in solitude across the vast playa on a self-directed mission to pick up scattered trash.  I asked questions that seemed irrelevant, gave away random gifts from my bag, rode my bicycle naked, and offered to assist a struggling juggler.

Coming back into larger society, I want to carry these lessons with me.  If I see someone doing something interesting, I can ask them to teach me.  If I see something that needs to be done, I can do it.  If I'm lonely, I can find someone to play with me.  If I'm curious, I can step forward and experience more.