Cooperation for the Masses April 2, 2012

When I left Twin Oaks, my partner and I were clear about our mutual desire to live in community.  I imagined he and I would quickly gather a group of people and start the process of forming a new community together.  A week or two after I left, I asked him when we should organize the first meeting and see who was interested.  ”Meeting?  It’s gotta happen organically…”

A prime example of our different styles, and beyond that, a source of vital frustration for me as I struggled to align my yearning for community with our isolated nuclear family life.  I resented his lack of focus on creating a life we both said we wanted.  He thought I was impatient and unsatisfiable.   We’ve grown, though, and over the last 6 years something has indeed unfolded as we merged organic and intentional…  we’ve welcomed friends to live in our home for months, sharing tiny spaces with multiple adults, toddlers, and teenagers.  We’ve deepened connections with friends from around the country who gather for festivals a few times a year.  We’ve found ourselves as part of a “tribe” of freaky circus performers who get together several times a week to either practice or socialize (or both) — while our kids of all ages play together.

(Edited after a night of sleeping on it: It’s not just that we now have friends and deeper connections — it’s what we do together, and how we do it.  We cook group meals, help each other move, watch each others’ kids, celebrate birthdays and holidays, share the often chaotic waves of our lives… not just as friends one-on-one, but as a group, as a collective.)

Even though it doesn’t look like I thought it would, it’s working… in a different way than the systems and Bylaws of Twin Oaks does.  There’s a lot about those systems that I miss (like income-sharing… especially when our rent is due!), but I’m being challenged to translate the lessons from the commune into life in the larger world… and it’s working in beautiful ways.

This, I think, is the new direction this blog is finally taking — reporting to you live from Bohemia with my adventures in and reflection on cooperation for the masses.

figuring it out...

letting go, stepping forward: revisited February 5, 2012

I’m pretty excited to be stepping back into blogging.  Integrating the old “Over the Edge” commune blog into “Passion and Patience” is fulfilling work… turning my seemingly-fragmented life into a cohesive body of work.  Tonight I’ve been re-reading posts from the last several years  – seeing what feelings, intentions, and pursuits have persisted or changed, especially since leaving the commune in January 2006… almost exactly 6 years ago!  In honor of that anniversary, I’m re-posting part of my entry from January 23, 2006, just a few days after I left:

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.

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.

schmintentions April 30, 2011

Looking back at my last post (nearly 6 months ago) and my sincere intention to rekindle the blog, I just have to laugh at myself.

I tried to start a post just now about why it’s harder for me to follow through on intentions these days… but I didn’t have my heart in it.  There’s laundry I’d rather be doing, and packing to move to a beautiful and small cabin in the woods.

I guess I haven’t had as much interest in self-reflection when there are physical tasks I can be doing to move my life more towards where I want it to be.

For anyone stumbling on this blog for the first time — welcome, have a look around.  This journey is an interesting, ever-evolving one.  I imagine I’ll be back to reflect on it again one of these days…

Ruminating on 30 August 14, 2009

Tomorrow is my 30th birthday — it feels pretty big, much more than any other birthday since 20, I think.  21 was no big deal because I already drank alcohol, and not much of it, so nothing really changed.   There’s something about my sense of self that changes with these decade birthdays… a shift in my perspective on who I am in the world.

30 feels like turning outward, after spending my 20s learning about myself and testing out my ideas and ideals.  My 20s was about experiencing and experimenting, opening up to new possibilities and pushing perceived limits… and then noticing how I felt, how other people reacted, and how I felt about other people’s reactions.  Data collection, my 20′s.

And now I have a sense of a mandate to act on the information I’ve gathered.  I know myself fairly well — I know my tendencies, my emotional and mental “gravitations”.   I know the well-worn paths and the traps that lie therein.  It’s my job now to take responsibility for all that, and navigate gracefully around the traps.

I know how to open when I’m shut down, and I know how I justify not opening up.  I know that I have a tendency to be controlling, and I know the power and the danger of that habit.  I know the things I need to do to take care of myself, and I know I enjoy life more when I do them:

• EAT WELL– avoid wheat and sugar, and don’t skip meals
• DRINK A LOT OF WATER — I need a beautiful water bottle that I carry everywhere, otherwise I forget to drink
• GO TO BED EARLY — I can’t let Facebook suck me in night after night… I need to give myself a bedtime
• WRITE IN MY JOURNAL DAILY –  I need a daily routine where I write at the same time every day (right now it’s when Aurora naps)
• WORK WITH TAROT CARDS REGULARLY — I need to give myself over to magical experience to get out of the illusion that I’m in control here
• GET OUT OF THE HOUSE WITH AURORA — I need to plan things the day before so in the morning we get up and GO!
• WALK IN THE WOODS — I need to have time surrounded by the creations of raw nature, rather than the creations of people
• WORK WITH PLANTS — I need a garden, and I need to be making medicine from herbs
• DANCE — I need to have a regular date with myself for dancing, otherwise I let it slide
• CHALLENGE MYSELF — I get bored if things are easy… I need to be challenging myself emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually if I’m going to feel satisfied with my life, because I want to be growing.

And the purpose of all of this is shifting to be more outward now — not just the development of self-awareness from my 20s, but now shifting outward to being of service, making my life a contribution to the communities I’m a part of.  This family, my circles of friends, this city, this world… humanity.   I feel like I’ve been scrambling since Aurora was born (15 months ago!) to reconfigure my modes of service.  It’s hard to be an “activist’ as I wash diapers and dishes at home.  As it’s all played out, though, I find myself focusing on theater and ritual as my contributions.  Jeffrey has supported me in performing in 2 shows in the last 6 months, staying with Aurora during rehearsals and performances.  The stage has always called me… from my first role as Goldilocks in kindergarten, right up to tonight’s opening night for Godspell.   Yes, this is a clear path for me.  Sometimes it seems like it’s so obvious that I forget I’m an actress, when I’m in angst about not having a focus, not having a “profession”.  I do, it just doesn’t pay.

Then the other path, more recently acknowledged, is that of holding space for ritual.  Being by my Grandma’s side during the last days of her life inspired me to pursue work as a chaplain, after I was already in training to become a doula.  Holding sacred space for birth and death (and marriage, and divorce, and other life transitions) is another clear path that stays lit when I’m confused about everything else.

I think writing all this out here helps me claim it, helps me say “YES — this is who I am right now, on the eve of my 30th birthday”.  Of course I have no idea what comes next, what I’ll learn in this next decade.  But, controlling as I am, I know I thrive when I have a clear and tangible plan for where I’m headed… even if it turns out to completely change.  I’ve learned that much about myself… so I move forward with that information, doing the best I can.

yearning for the edge October 6, 2008

Aurora is asleep in bed next to me, and I’m typing on the laptop I inherited from my Grandma a week and a half ago.  Today I found a refreshed determination to WRITE.  This is my mode of self-reflection and of engagement with the world around me — this is how I’ve learned to go deeper in my understanding of my experience… and that’s exactly what I need right now.

And blogging, different than journaling, holds me to a standard of keeping it *relevant* — not just bellybutton gazing and self-sympathizing.  With blogging, I keep thinking of the reader asking “so what?”.  How does my experience relate to the larger world?  That’s a big piece I feel myself missing these days, as I putter around the house with Rora in the sling, washing dishes and laundry for a whopping 5 people (compared to the 100+ people I used to serve with my daily actions).  I keep asking myself “so what?”… and rarely come up with a satisfactory answer.

This lifepath is turning out to be boring, lonely, and frustrating… I spend too many hours alone with 5 month old Aurora, without people to bounce ideas off of or to provide fodder for my mental and emotional growth.  These days, I feel incredibly stagnant.

AND, at the same time, I feel the fire burning in me, the passion just waiting for fuel.  I ask myself daily, “what can I do?”… and then Aurora wakes up or bumps her head, and the question drifts away.  So I’m going to write, nightly, after she falls asleep.  I’m going to use this time to bring the questions forward and keep my fingers moving through the self-doubt and fear and see what answers come.  Until she wakes up, and maybe even keep writing through the nursing, thanks to Grandma’s laptop and our neighbor’s wireless connection.

SO WHAT?

So I’ll be more able to be present with Rora, so I’ll be a better mom, so I’ll be back exploring at the edge instead of in the muddled middle, and the edge is where I grow, where I learn.  So I’ll be more alive, and happier, so I’ll have more to offer the world around me, so I’ll be a better mom.

Getting it all out of my head helps make it more real.  I’m going to write, and through writing, remember who I am.  For myself, for my daughter, for all the people in my life, and for (  ) … the spirit that permeates all.

breathing… April 18, 2008

Last night I though I might be starting the birth journey, and I panicked! So much nervousness and “But I haven’t yet done…”

Thankfully, that was just a practice experience, and I got to see how I’m not being open and ready for it to come. So, my intention today and for the days to come is to seek full presence in the moment, to clear my To Do List with intention and ease, and dance, meditate, paint, breathe myself into the moment, into full acceptance of What Is.

September 16, 2007

My dad wrote me an email today, asking if I’ve hooked up with a gynecologist/pediatrician yet. I realized that maybe I hadn’t been clear about my intentions with the birth. Here’s what I wrote back:

I have a meeting with a midwife this week, kind of like an interview. I’ll be meeting with a few others, as well, and then choosing who I like best. She’ll be my main source of biological support, and then I’ll get blood tests at a doctor’s office (to check my iron and hemoglobin levels, among other things). I have a lot of herbal support from friends and my own knowledge — I’m drinking my raspberry/nettle/alfalpha/oatstraw/red clover tea every day!

It’s important to me that you know I’m following a non-medical model of pregnancy and childbirth. There are many reasons why, and I look forward to talking with you about it all! Something that isn’t well-publicized is that homebirths with midwives result in fewer complications/infections/deaths than deliveries in hospitals with drugs, forceps, vaccums, and doctors.

Beyond that, I have a deep belief that giving birth is as natural of a process as breathing. My body knows how to do it — I just need to take care of myself during these 9 months and have the support and wisdom of a midwife, who will know how to tell if something is out of the ordinary.

There are many resources available that talk about the problems associated with hospital births and the medicalization of preganancy. I haven’t read this one, but Free reccomends it; it’s a book by a French doctor called “Entering the World: The Demedicalization of Childbirth” by Michel Odent. Another book that a friend of mine from Twin Oaks suggested to me (she’s reading it now) is called “Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born”, by Tina Cassidy. That book just came out last year.

I hope I don’t sound too defensive or preachy. I just know so many women who weren’t supported by their families in their choice to have a natural homebirth with a midwife, and I want us to be on the same page about it.

love,
tickledspirit

January 15, 2006

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…

January 6, 2006

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.

January 5, 2006

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:

Over the past several years, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the connections between social change, deviance and taboo, and the social construction of the concept of “self.”  While living at Twin Oaks Community and being involved in the broader movement for social justice, I’ve found myself yearning for a forum to explore my ideas and questions about self, society, and change.  It is with this yearning that I return to academics to pursue graduate studies.My interest in social change began as a sociology undergraduate, where I focused on the development and impact of social stratification.  The understanding I gained in these classes grew into dismay at injustice and corruption that seemed to be passively accepted as “just the way things are.”  My distress was fueled, I believe, by a component missing from my academic study of stratification: an analysis of the possibilities for change.  In none of my classes did I learn about efforts towards creating a different, healthier model.  I sought out the political system as an avenue for creating change, and became disillusioned after a semester as an intern with Common Cause in Washington DC.  Experience with grassroots activism eventually provided hope for me, and I started to notice how I could create real change by changing my own life and through subtle and not-so-subtle conversations with people around me.  As part of my explorations, I visited Twin Oaks Community, an income-sharing community of about 100 people in Louisa, VA, where I have now lived for over three years.

In my own investigation of social change and from a desire to “live my values,” I unintentionally became a deviant.  I abandoned some of the social values and norms that I had previously accepted, in favor of new ideas that made more sense to me.  I stopped shaving my legs.  I moved to a commune.  I gave up monogamy, grew my own food, and started telling people what I really thought.  From this new perspective, I’m fascinated by the difference in my experience of the world, compared with when I simply followed social norms.  I’m curious about how a culture can encourage and discourage deviance, and the impact this has on society. I want to research how taboos are communicated and culturally enforced.  I want to analyze different types of taboos (those based on tradition vs. contemporary social necessity, for example) and explore the social process of defusing and dismantling taboos.  What enables some people to step outside of social norms, shrugging off socialization to intentionally try to create a different culture?  I want to study groups of “intentional deviants”: innovators, activists, and radicals such as the CrimeThInc collective, the Zapatistas, the Black Block, people in the Communities Movement, and others actively working for social change.  I want to explore their experience of socialization and their process of dissolving it and claiming something new (if that’s indeed what happens). I’m interested in looking at how one’s perception of “self” shifts as someone opens to identifying as deviant, especially in relation to theories on the social construction of the self. I recently revisited an old Social Theory reader (Lemert’s “Multicultural and Classic Readings”), and I found myself especially inspired by Cooley’s description of “Looking Glass Self,” and the works of Erving Goffman and George Herbert Mead.

I’m also interested in specific movements for change and the process of how something deviant becomes more integrated into a culture.  Malcom Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point has been particularly interesting to me as a look at how an idea spreads or a trend emerges.  Contemporary movements that are particularly interesting for me are urban community gardens, car sharing cooperatives, alternative currencies, radical intimate relationship models, and intentional communities.  Beyond current movements, I want to explore social change in a broader sense, theoretically and historically. How does culture change?  Who changes it?  Why?  What are different methods people use to intentionally change culture?  What things do people do that change culture unintentionally?

With a strong foundation of researching and understanding stratification, I ask the question, “what can be done to change this?”  To be clear, the question is not “what should be done?”; the “should” is up to philosophers, ethicists, and religion.  I certainly have my own personal ideas about the “should,” but as a sociologist I want to ask questions of possibility.  How can societies change?  What methods have worked?  What methods haven’t?  How does legislative change reflect or inspire cultural change?  In what ways does a society invite or impede social change? Additionally, based on sociological theories of how culture works, I want to extrapolate new theories of how people could try to create effective social change.

At the University of Virginia, I’m especially interested in studying these topics with Krishan Kumar, Sarah Corse, and Steve Nock.  Kumar’s focus on revolution and utopian ideals aligns well with my interests in social change, as does Corse’s examination of engineering culture and organizational change.  Nock’s studies of relationships and intimacy are particularly interesting to me because of my recent experience and study of alternative relationship models.  Overall, I’m attracted to the UVA Sociology Department’s small size and friendly culture, which I experienced during my visit in mid-November.  I had the opportunity to meet with Steve Nock and Paul Kingston, as well as several graduate students.  My conversations with them were encouraging and inspiring, and I look forward to meeting others in the department, as well.

My ultimate goal in graduate study, beyond the immediate experience of wrapping my mind around these questions, is to teach.  I want to facilitate the examination of social stories, helping people identify and evaluate the forces that have shaped their perception and understanding of the world around them.  During my time at Twin Oaks, I’ve traveled to colleges around the country and given numerous presentations in sociology and political science classes about my experience of living in an intentional community.  At conferences and festivals, I’ve taught workshops about open relationships, intimacy, communication, activism, and resource-sharing. In the course of this work, I’ve discovered that I love teaching.  I’m excited by the process of developing ideas and figuring out how to present them in an accessible way.  My objective in pursuing graduate study is to eventually become a professor of sociology and help students cultivate a deeper awareness of the complexities of the social world.