Yesterday I talked to a few of the Biofuels kids about an internship on their CSA farm, over on their industrial site in Pittsboro. The pay is low, but more than enough, especially since housing is provided, and ever since I worked on a WWOOF farm in Ontario two years ago, that's the environment I've been longing to come back to. Working on a farm, or in any small, fairly contained setting where you both live and work, there's a distinct and wonderful feeling of community that has to develop. I like to know what my physical work is for each day, and to do it, and to know, tangibly, that it is done. Working with a small number of other people is rewarding in the same way - you will develop tangible relationships and bonds, and take the time to value them.
I've been trying to live in a collective house in Chicago - we're all trying. My housemates are wonderful, caring, smart people, but we're all so busy all the time, with things in and out of the house, that it's hard to spend the time to feel really connected, sometimes. This is how I feel about Chicago in general, and maybe just about city life. There are so many places and people and attractions pulling us in different directions at any given moment that it's hard to choose any one direction to focus on. There are a lot of half-finished projects. There are a lot of promising friendships that remain on the verge of acquaintance and comrade.
I was talking about this the other night, to a friend from Chicago who now lives in New Orleans but is also visiting family in Chapel Hill for a week (as always, a small world...). Everyone is concerned about community. But everyone I know is moving constantly, looking for new adventure or maybe looking for a new scene that hasn't dried up yet, when maybe what we should be doing is staying put, establishing relationships and reciprocities that will have to last longer than a few months or a few years. Maybe we should stop being so afraid to let our roots latch onto the ground beneath our feet. Nico says that it comes down to people needing each other, and I agree. I've spent enough time fighting with myself about this thing exactly, about whether it's better to be independent and thus somewhat safe & less vulnerable, or to openly, joyfully need other people. I need to feel needed. I know that.
He says small towns are probably the model, ideally, for the ways we will have to live if things become bad enough, in some societal or ecological way, for us to have to start needing one another again, and to be self-sustaining within smaller communities. Yet we're all looking to cities, because they are big and sprawling and beautiful, because in a city I can work and live and bike and grow in community gardens and use public transportation and have access to arts...but what I can't do is be a necessary part of it, because the whole system is too large. We forge communities within it, wonderful communities that overlap with other ones and last for a short while, but we all know that we can move at a moment's notice, that we will not all be here forever.
All I'm trying to say is something about community and human dependence. I spent yesterday agonizing over whether I should stay here and be happy and healthy and focused, working in the dirt, learning to live with a small group of people, or whether I should go back to my big beautiful Chicago, to a similarly tangible job and to a small group of people I could learn to live better with. I'm going back, of course. I have too many plans and commitments and friends coming from out of town; I have way too much love for the long, flat streets and the ability to get around without a car.
I just got new wheels built for my bike, after all.
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