We have been traveling for over a year and two months now, almost a year and a quarter. This traveling has taken us throughout the U.S., as well as to Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, England and Scotland. Within the U.S. this traveling has taken us to some places more than others. For example, we've gone to western North Carolina, New York City and Ohio multiple times, but to the west coast and the southwest not at all. The point of all this traveling was never to be thorough and complete. The point has always been to go to where we are called to go. Some places we are more called to than others.
The "calling" that we have been following has varied. It has included a community living experiment with people connected with Nonviolent Global Liberation in Missouri, material and emotional support for family in North Carolina, working in a kitchen at the Tamera community in Portugal, seeing a friend from my 2008 travels and seeing sites from the anarchist revolution in Barcelona, checking out the acclaimed party scene and visiting the gravesite of the 19th century anarchist philosopher Max Stirner in Berlin, seeing an NVC friend and meeting an old friend of my father in the Netherlands, meeting in-person various friends whom I previously only knew through the internet, assisting with the various summer gatherings at Twin Oaks Community in Virginia and staying at the off-grid freeform communal crashpad called "the Garden" in Tennesssee. Now we feel called to go serve and sit at a Vippassana Meditation center and then return to Minneapolis in the beginning of November to end this period of vagabonding. We are now in the home stretch of our travels.
From the standpoint of whether we fulfilled the purpose of these travels, to find or create a new intentional community to live in, we have failed in acheiving that. We have found a number of different intentional communities that we could see ourselves living in, but we are not planning on moving to any of them. We are instead planning on moving back to Minneapolis to restart our lives there.
In some regards, my life feels devastated right now. In addition to not fulfilling the purpose of these travels, I have also been drifting away from the Nonviolent Global Liberation community that has been so important to me in recent years, as well as from the anarchist scene, my family of origin and a number of old friendships and friendship circles. Not to mention the fact that the United States is right now in the process of becoming a fascist dictatorship, a genocide is openly taking place in Palestine that is being live-streamed to our phones and there is an ongoing global extinction event caused exclusively by human activities. Everything seems to be simultaneously falling away. In the quest for more community and togetherness, I have found more isolation and devastation.
In another sense, I feel more grounded and clear than ever before. This is partly because I have Vipassana Meditation, a practice that I can practice anytime anywhere and that has a community of practitioners all over the world. Relatedly, there is also the recognition of impermanence. All things will end at some point. All relationships, all projects, all communities, all people, all nations, they all end eventually. Before we left the St. Louis area we visited the place known as "Cahokia". This site used to be the largest city in North America for a civilization that rose and fell long before the Europeans ever came to this hemisphere. Civilizations too are impermanent, eventually they will also fall and create ruins for future people to go visit and use their imaginations to visualize what once was.
I realize that with all of the different things that I am into, none of them require specific groups, people or places. I obsess over a series of different things wrapped up in proper nouns that describe processes that anyone can do. "Intentional community" says right in the name the needs that I am wanting to have met - more intentionality and more community. Likewise, anarchism is about people cooperating, supporting each other and sharing together voluntarily as equals. Nonviolent Communication is about people speaking authentically, listening empathically and unconditionally caring. Nonviolent Global Liberation is about having a sense of purpose in all that is done, being aware of capacity limitations and identifying all the different ways that we impact each other. Camphill is about supporting people who are in need of special care in ways that hold a holistic view of the person and an integrated approach to social life. And so on and so forth, the list goes on.
I think that I tend to glamorize, fetishize and perhaps even reify all these different things that I focus on so much. The reality is that in all the different spaces one can go to that are adorned with these labels, one will find people with varying degrees of commitment, understanding and skill-level in actually practicing the things that they are presumably trying to practice. Likewise, anywhere one goes, people already do understand and practice all these different things that I endlessly go on about to varying degrees, in various ways, with varying levels of conscious awareness. There is no place out there where everyone there 100% understands and is doing the thing. Nor is there any place out there comprised of 100% evil monsters. Add to that the impermanence of everything - you, me, our relationships, our communities - they all have a ticking clock hanging over them and will all end sooner or later.
So the plan now is to go home. First we go to the Midwest, then we go back to Minneapolis specifically. Whatever relationships or community I have and the qualities and attributes present in them is up to me. I need to take responsibility for my own actions and what I contribute to. There are qualities and ways of being that I want to contribute to, including ways of being together in groups. It is up to me to take what I have learned from all these different experiences that I have had, from all that I have done, and to apply it with the people that I am with, whoever they may be. "Bring it home", so to speak.
I still do have my shortcomings, and I still have my pain & traumas. Everyone else has all that stuff for themselves as well. My job is to show up, be present and work with what I've got. I have my own ideas as to how to best go about things, and I can embody that to the best of my ability. And I will also fall short in those areas where I have limitations. Such is life. I know what is important to me, I know what I believe and what I want to contribute to. What I will do with all of that is something that I will have to figure out along the way.
