Travels and Transitions

Quite a lot has happened since I posted that last blog post filled with eagerness and yearning to travel. For one, I did indeed travel. At the end of June I went out to the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB) in Asheville, North Carolina. This was the first big public in-person explicitly anarchist event that I have attended in over ten years. I kind of drifted away from going to big public in-person explicitly anarchist events due to the ongoing prevalence of messy public controversies and physical altercations that tend to accompany such events, and not to my surprise there was just such an occurrence at this event as well. Regardless of that, however, I had a great time at this event! I reconnected with a number of different people whom I have known for a long time and who have been important parts of my life, and I met a number of different wonderful people there as well. It was also encouraging for me to see in-person that there are indeed still anarchists in this world, that anarchists are not just apparitions on a screen and notes in a history book, that they are indeed real people who live, love and fight.   

Upon returning to Minneapolis we then went through the long arduous process of packing up and moving out of our apartment. As expected, this process was more elaborate and complicated than expected. We lived in that apartment for eight years, which is the longest that I have ever lived in one place my entire life. A lot of different material possessions accumulated throughout the course of our time there, many of which were given away to new homes to hopefully find new lives there, and many of which were packed into boxes and moved into the purgatory of an old attic. 

Then eventually our cross-country travels began in earnest. First we drove to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, then to northern Michigan, and then to the Detroit / Ann Arbor metro area. We saw my brother whom I haven't seen in years, we spent time with many different relatives, we met some people associated with NGL (Nonviolent Global Liberation) and we saw the new headstone for my father's burial plot. We met up with an old friend in Goshen, Indiana and then crossed into Canada to meet an NGL friend in Kingston, Ontario.

The beginning of August then marked the beginning of our time concentrated in the New England region. We were graciously hosted for a month by friends who have a lifesharing home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This served as our home base while we explored the variety of different Camphill intentional communities that are in that area, visited other affiliated lifesharing homes, met up with other NGL people in New England, and explored the rich local history that encompasses everything from old Shaker villages, Norman Rockwell, Shays's Rebellion and Alice's Restaurant Massacree. Also during this time period I spent a few days volunteering at Dhamma Dharā, the first and largest Vipassana Meditation center in North America, which was quite an inspiring and rejuvenating experience for me. 

Further time in New York State then resulted in us visiting two different intentional communities that are not Camphill communities but are still based in Anthroposophy, spending time with a new NGL friend and an old anarchist friend, meeting up with the NVC / Restorative Justice superstar Dominic Barter and staying at the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Rochester, New York. 

We then spent a week in Camphill Village Kimberton Hills where we reconnected with old friends, met a bunch of people who were new to us, and generally immersed ourselves in the Camphill lifestyle. The week after that was spent in Pittsburgh where we visited with relatives there, celebrated Liz' birthday and ate some wonderful Eastern European vegan food. We also had a foray into West Virginia where we met up with an old friend of mine who was pivotal in my first getting involved with egalitarian communities and then later Nonviolent Communication. 

Next we went to southern Ohio where we visited a friend who does the Hobo's Collective podcasts, and then went to Huntsville, Alabama where we visited a friend who did the Immediatism podcast. Also while in Huntsville we visited the gravesite for my father's father, as well as other relatives that are also buried out there. I have never visited my paternal grandfather's grave before, and seeing these gravesites in Alabama felt like the last installment of a whole series of deaths, funerals and gravesite visitations that began for me in September of last year. 

The whole reconciling-with-my-past phase was not over for this trip, however, since we then did the long drive out to Lawton, Oklahoma to see the place where I was born and spent the first eight years of my life. We timed our trip there to see the annual International Festival that takes place there. This event is something that my father first helped create 45 years ago and that I have fond memories of attending back when I was a small child. I am amazed that this event still continues on after all this time, and I made sure to inform the organizers of the event of my father's passing. During the opening ceremony of the International Festival the news of my father's death was mentioned and Liz & I stood up before the crowd as honored guests for the occasion. I found this whole experience to be quite moving. 

The final leg of the journey was going to Fayetteville, Arkansas where we spent a couple of days with an NGL friend and then Springfield, Missouri where we spent a couple of days with a friend from the intentional community scene whom I've known for a long time. While in Springfield, we also recorded an episode of the Cults I'd Join podcast together. You can find this episode here.

This then brings me to where I am at now, back in Minneapolis. The initial period of vagabonding is over, and now is the time for rest, reorienting, figuring out next steps. Some steps have already been discerned, namely:

We plan on going out to Idaho for about a month for me to volunteer at a Vipassana Meditation center that's there. I am really wanting to do this so that I can better establish for myself a regular ongoing daily practice of meditation, which is something that I have struggled with and repeatedly failed at achieving for years now. This year in particular has been quite difficult for me with regard to dealing with my own anxieties, and I really want to develop within myself greater capacity for achieving inner peace and stability, without relying on other people or chemical substances. Having a solid Vipassana Meditation practice seems like a good way to do that. Likewise, having that sense of inner peace, consistent stability and nonreactive discernment seems like a good foundation from which I can then build up all of the other projects that I want to engage with. 

The other thing that we have planned is for us to spend a few months out in northern Missouri to try living together with some other people who are also a part of NGL and are interested in establishing a new intentional community based on NGL somewhere in the U.S. NGL is something that I have studied and talked about a lot these past few years, but so far it is not something that I have actually lived together with other people in-person. So I am wanting to have a lived experience of it all, and I am also wanting to see if these other people who are wanting to create a new intentional community are people whom I can live and work together with in-person in ways that are fulfilling for everyone. It's an ongoing step-by-step process, learning & integrating new things, as well as meeting and getting to know people, and this time in Missouri will all be a part of that process. 

Ultimately what I want this whole "process" to lead me to would be some kind of living situation that I am a part of where people are living and working together in non-hierarchical collaborative ways, supporting one another in meeting everyone's needs. I would like for there to be explicit and robust systems & agreements in place to support the group's flow of information, resources, feedback, decision making and conflict when it arises. I would like for the group to be oriented towards service, particularly with regards to supporting people who are in need of special care of some kind. The "caregiving" that takes place I would like to be carried out in a way that focuses on integration of the person receiving care with the wider web of life in it's many different expressions, and I would like for it to be holistic in nature with the many different types of needs and aspects of one's humanity acknowledged & cared for. I would also like for the people who are committed to supporting such a group to have a personal commitment to ongoing development of one's own capacities for self-awareness, somatic attunement and empowered choice. 

Reading this last paragraph, it strikes me that what I am looking for is quite a tall order, like what I am seeking is some kind of mythical & mystical unicorn. But I in the end do believe that what I am seeking is possible, that underlying all of it are distinct identifiable skillsets and capacities that people can choose to learn, develop and practice. What I am doing now is trying to identify and build up all these capacities within myself, and my hope is that in the process of doing this that I will come into contact with other people who have similar commitments within themselves. From the meeting and building up of relationships with such people, new community projects can eventually be built. 

Since we have visited these places, change has continued apace. For one, the wonderful Asheville, North Carolina area that we visited at the end of June was devastated by Hurricane Helene at the end of September. Likewise, one of the people connected with the Camphill movement who we saw while visiting Pennsylvania passed away just a few days ago. And who knows what is in store for us all, considering the upcoming elections, ongoing wars, and global climate change. It increasingly seems to me like trying to predict the future, and relying on these predictions, is not a firm basis for anything. Throughout all of this, I take inspiration from the story of Karl König and the people who first created the Camphill movement. They created Camphill in the context of the Great Depression and World War 2, fleeing persecution from the Nazi regime in Central Europe and facing internment for being refugees in a foreign land, yet they were still able to create this wonderful movement which survives to this day and has enriched the lives of countless people throughout the world. 

So I don't know where I am going to wind up in the end. I've spoken some here about where I've been, and where I hope to go. I hope to write more as I continue along my way. And I hope to meet you somewhere along the journey.