Cardamom Apparitions

Here are a pair of poems to celebrate New York becoming the seventh state to recognize same-sex marriage.—Wren

Cardamom Apparitions

Now Blindness asks, What’s in a photograph?
That bending scent–your garden, ripe with dew…
Your softball scar! My gawky dyke giraffe!
Some laughter echoes, tracing down our youth.

The card’mom ghosts that clung to kitchen air…
House renovations–rainbow gingerbread…
The peachy rinse that clouded your roped hair…
Accordion folds…your grin, the sheets, our bed…

Apartments old and brittle; photographs.
So clingy to the touch…Prints left behind…
Your book unshelved, you cradle it–new calf.
Between the slips you visit wilder times

without me. I turn off light’s waterfall–
Your skin my album…my state…sweet recall.

—WT

Apparent

The difference is apparent.
At your party I am angled toward the wall,
the one that wears the door.

You serve straight privilege like punch.
But I said what I said–no rewind;
I don’t ask for a cup.

Attracted opposites show pictures
of the little blessings in pink and blue
that just happen because they’re in love.

—WT

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A storm has been here.
A storm is coming.
Air currents argue
east or west,
hot or cold.
The sparrow,
like everyone,
knows it’s not over.
But a stomach is to feed,
and she flaps mightily,
David meets Goliath in the jetstream.
A wing is belief.
Two wings are proof.
But she loses height
in this fight that is not about her
or her hunger.
The air tosses and flips her,
backward as often as ahead.
Still, the sparrow belongs to certain truths.
Her wings are not for the still ground.
Her wings are not for the dizzying surf.
Each feather, tailored for its place and  purpose,
is a streetmap of hairs and filaments;
Nature’s plan here is not a casual one–
A wing is belief that flight is possible.
Sandwiched by outer space and gravity,
sparrow is a creature of the air,
which for days has been ugly and angry.
But the sparrow belongs to certain truths.
And the sparrow, like everyone,
knows it’s not over.

—WT

This is an old poem. It was made into the short film of the same name about thirteen years ago. Nice to rummage through old files and remember!—Wren

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From Wren: Laird Schaub is a friend from Sandhill Community in Missouri, who teaches facilitation and consensus. He’s active in Fellowship for Intentional Community. Thanks, Laird, for allowing me to repost your article!

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About 12 years ago I recall the first time FIC discussed the potential for intentional communities providing a safety net for people with special needs. Under Reagan’s tenure in the ’80s, the federal government went through a massive policy change whereby support for disadvantaged groups was deinstitutionalized. With the Boomer population about to enter retirement age, it didn’t take a math degree to predict the coming train wreck. Why couldn’t communities pick up some of the slack?

There’s no doubt that communities are well structured to offer this kind of help (think about the challenges of aging, mental health, developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, recovery from trauma—there are myriad populations that could benefit from the dignity and caring distinctly possible in group settings). That said, I want to explore the tender dynamics of why it’s hard to take that very far, unless the community makes an explicit choice to go in that direction.

To be sure, there are a number of communities that have chosen to define themselves based on services to disadvantaged segments of the population. Here’s a sampling of some well-established examples:

o Camphill Villages
Inspired by the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, these groups offer residential support for the developmentally disabled and have been around for 50 years. There are currently 13 offerings in North America, with others abroad.

o Gould Farm
This community in Monterey MA provides residential therapeutic treatment for the mentally ill. It’s been around since 1913—two wall calendars short of a century!

o Innisfree Village
This community in Crozet VA offers support for people with intellectual disabilities and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

o L’Arche
Inspired by the writings of Jean Vanier, this movement started in France in 1964, got a foothold in the US in 1972, and has 17 residential communities in America today, servicing those with intellectual disabilities.

With these solid examples, couldn’t the wider Communities Movement do more on a less formal basis? Perhaps.

Addition by Subtraction
For the most part, intentional communities aim to create a superior lifestyle for their members by purposefully downshifting into the slower lanes of traffic. Community living encourages members to get off the production and consumption treadmill, to slow down, build smaller houses, nurture connections, and share more. Following this path leads to less doing and more being, crafting a quality life on fewer resources. Sure people want security, but this is increasingly being defined as the quality of one’s relationships, rather than the quantity of one’s bank account.

Thus, even as communities aspire to meet their own financial needs, they actively work to whittle down what those needs are, and don’t particularly aspire to make much more than they need.

While most groups willingly stretch to help their own members in need, it is uphill asking communities to set aside resources (or work harder to generate those resources) for the purpose of creating surplus to aid unknown future members. Groups almost never run short of good ideas about how to put surplus resources to use. And if, for some reason, they’re ideas are fully funded, they’re far more likely to ease off the gas and smell more roses now, then to keep chasing dollars and deferring enjoyment of the life’s flower garden to some uncertain future.

Digesting this, it’s understandable that communities rarely get excited about tackling additional responsibilities than the ones they’ve already signed on for. In trying to pioneer sustainable and compassionate culture, they don’t want to swamp their life boat. While they’re typically happy to be an inspiration for other groups focusing on the needs of disadvantaged populations, they’re not likely to take a bigger bite of that particular apple than they already have in their mouth.

The double whammy here is that the disadvantaged groups themselves are, by definition, probably incapable of creating their own communities, and are thus at the mercy of new groups seeing the opportunities in meeting the needs of that client base as a way to ground the community’s mission. While some do, it’s not enough to make up for the (in)difference of contemporary public funding.

We need a different answer, and I think our best hope is for groups to be an inspiration for the neighborhoods and wider communities in which they’re embedded, where the support that intentional communities extend to their members is inspiring for how the many can humanely support the few—without reliance on governmental subsidies.

In an effort to fashion better safety nets, I don’t think we need communities to be salting away more dollars, so much as we need communities to be peppering their neighbors with ideas about how we can create robust services on the local level, built mainly on connection and common sense—giving up on our dependency to a connection with common cents.

Not only do I think we can do it, I think we must.

—Laird Schaub

http://communityandconsensus.blogspot.com/

Farewell, Peter Falk! I should screen The Princess Bride tonight…

Peter Falk

September 16, 1927 – June 23, 2011

Here are some samples of the stickers available at the Hippie Chick Diaries Porch Sale, June 24-26, 2011. See the quarter in each picture to get their scale.

See you there!

As I finished making signs to post around Heathcote, advertising my porch sale, my dog Tuatha took advantage of my distraction to slip away for a little “me time” adventure.

Tuatha knows this distresses me. I want to keep him safe, away from car wheels and copperheads. But I have to admit that, on a hot June day like today, I’d love to slip away and play in the stream, too.

So I loaded my signs and myself into the car and went looking for him. When he runs away, I always have to talk to myself to remain calm and methodical. Once when I let my anger express itself in driving down the road much too fast, I ran over a groundhog. I felt horrible. And, of course, I realized that it could have been my own lost dog that I killed in an out-of-control moment.

And today I remembered that awful moment as I talked myself into calm, remembered that I’ve always found him quickly in the past, that he’s much more woods-savvy than I give him credit for, and that I can help him best by breathing and staying connected to my surroundings.

The Universe likes to reinforce these messages, apparently. As I drove around looking for him, driving at a reasonable speed, a rabbit in the road had one of those squirrel moments and zig zagged under my car. But I was in control and managed to not injure it. Later, on a dirt road, a box turtle was well camouflaged as it walked in the rut. If I weren’t paying attention, I would have flattened it. Instead I moved it.

Hares and tortoises. I get it. Even The Universe speaks in cliches .

Of course, my dog was safe in the bowl of Heathcote the whole time. and I caught up with him at our usual rendezvous point, Bill Anacker’s house. He was dripping wet from cooling off in the stream. I couldn’t be mad at him. Okay, I was still a little, but that’s my stuff…

This is the second time in a week Tuatha has snuck off. I am slow to get the message, but I wonder if there’s a way I can help him cool off while staying safe at home. He loves to play in the hose, but if I could find a little yard sale kiddie pool, he could self select. How about that, Tuatha?

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