Blown on the steel breeze

We recently marked the autumn equinox, one of my favourite days. While I've always noticed the seasons, I never paid direct attention to these things until I spent several years practising seasonal vinyasa yoga with a teacher who enabled me to connect with parts of myself I'd never even been aware of. Sort of like that Heineken advert, but real. 

From E, I learnt about the significance of the solstices (which to be fair do not go unobserved in wider society), the equinoxes, and the four inbetweeines: Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas. These are all pagan festivals, for sure, and I would not describe myself as pagan, but I loved aligning different kinds of movement to them. It made sense to me. They're important inflection points in the year. Spaces to reflect and make change. 

I am grateful to know more about all of them, as a person who has often struggled to maintain a strong connection with her physical self. Imbolc especially is a good day: we're nearly through the darkness! Don't push it, respect its retreat. Stay cosy but start making plans. Tentative forays are what we need at Imbolc. Adventure a few stretches. 

But I have come to learn that I also love an equinox. Whatever it is you've been investing in, the year is flipping on its axis, have a little think? It's less of a resolve time and more of a reflection one. I find. 

M and I got civilly partnered on the autumn equinox almost two years ago. Not sure anyone else (including him) really got the significance of the choice of date, and to be fair it helped that it was a Saturday and the registrar was available, but it felt good to me. And as equinoxes approach each year - especially the autumn ones, but I do like the fact that there are two of them - I do a bit of the "so, how's this going then?" 

The short version is it ain't so different from the way it was going before the legalities and the big party, though there are some lovely long tail reminders of what a great idea it is to push the boat out on the party front once in a lifetime, and I am glad we did it after 25 years together as sooo many people there knew and had spent significant time with us both (and each other), and that made it all the lovelier. I could point to some things I would have done differently, but on balance, all I would say is I'd do it again in a heartbeat. 

Last year we returned to the Imperial Hotel to celebrate our first anniversary, not alone but with a much smaller group of people, and it was lovely to remember, to celebrate in a different way, to give Blackpool another chance to entertain us (and it totally did). I had a bit of a thought of, ok, this is what we do now on the autumn equinox, but actually, I am not sure I want to be that predictable to myself.

So this year, I decided to mark the event in a slightly different way. M's birthday was the weekend before the equinox, and we booked a night away at the wonderful Inn at Whitewell, but I know that more than anything he likes to be part of a big convivial meal, so I offered to organise one of those in our Common House on the Saturday night before we went away. 

I could easily have pulled a group of 12-15 people together from the folk we socialise with regularly, but actually I knew he wanted something that would be open to anyone here who wanted to come. This is something I knew I would find much harder, because of the potential for feedback. I like to be prepared, and the more variables there are, the more prepared I have found I like to be. 

But I've been working on this stuff with my therapist. who will say "why don't you just do [X] then?" and then watch me wave my arms around for ten minutes as I describe all of the things that might happen to me and how they would make me feel. But he's always got a point, and the things that I do instead (impersonate a cat, make sculptures from fish tins, write Nick Cave quotes on the blackboards, let my window box flowers die, avoid community meetings) may seem to me like a clear expression of my discontent, but I'm not sure anyone else reads them that way. 

And we have a "your birthday, your rules" position in this house, so I drew on one of J's suggestions, which was to organise something you want to organise, do it the way you want to do it, and invite everyone. My only stipulation was that I needed numbers in advance -- numbers are important for logistics, but signing up is also an important signifier here: I see you and I accept your offer. And also you get to know who's coming. 

And that's what I did. I chose something that would be a bit special but that I knew I could cook at scale on my own - and clear up on my own if necessary, though I didn't expect to be doing either, I knew M would help me prep and it's usually a communal clear up if it's been a good night. I decided to make fish soup from a recipe I've been using since my early 20s: if you have good olive oil, good vegetables and herbs, good stock and tinned tomatoes, and good fish, you're onto a winner. It's so good, and super easy.

The fish goes in right at the last minute, so I planned to do most of the cooking in the communal kitchen, which is vegetarian, and then add the fish in batches on a little induction hob around the corner in the Meat And Fish Area. We bought the fish from our mobile fishmonger on the Tuesday, prepped it and froze it for easy use on Saturday with no messing around. 

We're very sensitive about certain things here, for some reasons I understand and some I really don't. But I did a lot of thinking about how to deliver it inclusively, including having an offer for any vegans or vegetarians (basically the same soup but with butter beans -- I have done this before, it has gone down well). 

Protocol here is you give out info on the menu so people can check their dietaries, there was also going to be local sourdough bread and samphire butter (I was a few glasses of wine in when I decided to include the butter, as that was a true experiment and this was supposed to be entirely known territory). Anyway, I set out the offer and I sent out the invite. 

It's actually hard to explain how big a deal this was for our household, as for years I have been extremely cautious about engaging with the community as a whole, qua community. I drew up a set of concentric circles and populated them with the people I feel solidarity, connection and comfort with, moving out through goodwill, neighbourliness, and neutrality to hostility and mistrust (often mutual). And when I felt I wanted to engage at all beyond that inner group, I used an array of opt in WhatsApp groups and an email group I called, Imbolc style, Tentative Forays. If you don't want to hear from me, went my reasoning at the time, I will make sure that you don't. 

There's a WhatsApp group that most people are on, but I am not because it makes me feel existentially lonely. I'd like to be able to drop in and out of it but the main admin won't change the setting to make that possible, and so I just miss that stuff. 

But this is all complicated to manage and not very sustainable. New people arrive and I never meet them, unless I go round and knock on their door and say "hi, you won't meet me so I thought I'd come and introduce myself, I don't have any beef with you, so do you want to be on my email list?" I paraphrase but it's a strange way to try and get to know people, and of course it immediately puts them in an awkward position. 

So, you know, invite everyone, let's see what happens. Be Best, as Melania would say. 

Stuff happened. I aim to keep the focus here on me, this being my blog, unless a line is crossed. I wrote about getting accused of a hate crime, for example, and I stand by it, but I try not to write about other individuals. This time wasn't nearly so drastic but there was a Challenge, which became an Issue, which led to some Emotional Conversations, and ultimately a Meeting. The crux of it was could you just not? and I decided that I couldn't just not, so while most people who accepted the invitation had no idea about all of this, and indeed neither did most of the people who didn't, by the time the day rolled around I'd been several times through the wringer that living here can be. 

And I didn't know if it would be ok. If I would be ok. The morning of the party there was a General Meeting and I facilitated an hour long session on travel. I have been trying VERY VERY HARD to bring my A game (or at least my B+ game) back into the collective mix, based on the assurances of others that we're all a bit more chilled out these days, more tolerant of each other, more willing to see that there's more than one way to "do community". So I've started going to GMs again, including offering to minute and run the occasional session. There is a limited pool of people able / willing to do these things, and my Marxist tendencies mean I think that if you can, you should. And at that point, I could, so I did. 

I was scheduled to go to the gym in the afternoon, but that, I couldn't do. Instead I slept for a few hours, then at 4pm I said right, let's do this, and I went down to the Common House to get started on the cooking. By about 5.30 soup for 20 was well underway, samphire had been mixed into butter, fresh sourdough had been delivered, and it was maybe time to open the wine. 

Let's put some music on and do the tables, I said to M. There is usually a row of three tables all lined up together to make one big one. I don't like it, to me it makes the place feel like a school dining hall. My current preferred layout is to turn each of them through 45 degrees, to break up the lines and create more intimacy. There are other tables in there too, including our old dining table from Oxford, and I like to make them all look different but equally welcoming. 

There's a pretty good sound system in the Common House these days. I connected to the Bluetooth and opened Spotify on my phone. The first thing I saw was the preview of Wish You Were Here 50. And I thought, that will do if I put it on loud enough. 

So I did, and we moved the tables, and turned down the lights, and opened the wine, and set up the space, and around 7 the guests arrived. One neighbour lit a fire, another sliced the bread, another brought berries and cream, another one brought a cake. Two of the younger ones who love to help carried the soup round the corner, stirred in the fish, and helped me serve it up in batches. There'll be way too much, I thought, but every last bit of it was eaten, and several people asked for the recipe. 

The whole evening felt wholesome and good and warm. There was that lovely buzz of conversation that you get when the ambience lands right. I was very happy. A neighbour loaded the MAFA dishwasher with all of the soup bowls and the pans we'd used at the end, then around 9.45, people started drifting off. Right, said T, let's turn the music up and get the clear up done. And four of us cleared the tables, ran everything else through the main dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen, swept and mopped the floor, bang, done. One of the lovely things about a shared space is lots of people know how it works, and it doesn't belong to any of us, it belongs to all of us. 

You made an amazing thing happen, said M the next day. And I did, though not on my own. 

Sometimes I take an indirect approach

Not the end of the story though. It'd be a #livelaughlove Facebook post if it was. No. 

Instead, my implicit not explicit breach of a rule made for reasons lost to time, in an era where many such rules lie in the dust of the governance drift we cannot find the energy to attend to, has occasioned an Edict. There will be no more fish soup without due process. And we all know the death of creativity is the due process in the hall. 

I have worked on all of this for coming up 18 months now. I've moved myself back into good faith engagement, encouraged by a lot of the good faith I see around me. I've put time into things I know I can do, not least this very evening -- our bin collections are changing, we need to work out how many more bins we need as a community, because we don't have individual household bins. I'm in a good place to be part of that team, as I can a) do maths, b) was part of the original thinking about how many bins we needed 13 years ago, and c) live right next to the bin store so I can see what it copes with and what it doesn't cope with. Oh, and d) I care. 

It's the caring that comes and goes. I worked really hard to get it back. Many people were lovely to me, and appreciated the work that I was able to contribute to travel, to bins, to file management, to food and celebration and joy. I have skills -- some of which I already possessed (planning, estimation, user experience, numeracy, critical thinking, sensemaking in ambiguity, attention to detail), some of which I have developed while living here (menu planning for large numbers with varying needs, ambience curation, expediting, facilitation of diverse groups, adapting approaches for low tech users). They're not all of the skills a community like ours needs, very far from it, but they've all been useful at times, and I am aware at least some of them are in short supply. 

I also do more of what I have learnt to call "inner work" than I've ever done. And I always did a fair bit. I'm currently supremely fucked off that none of that seems to have paid any lasting dividends, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Haters gonna hate. Gotta shake shake shake it off. 

So. No more working on community spirit for a while. Tis a season for joys closer to home and far, far away. 

No. Shit. Till Imbolc.

(earliest, bitches)

joella 

O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

sometimes I feel very seen

We went to see Hamlet Hail to the Thief last weekend, and it was thrilling. I've never really been one for Shakespeare -- I can see there are stories in there that embody the "nothing new under the sun" message, and I can also see how valuable it is to have those stories, but, mostly, yawn. Too many words, too much leaping around, too much declaiming. I've seen a few of the more famous plays, live and on film, and I studied a few more at school, but they just don't reach me. And it's not that I'm unreachable, is my logic, so it's not on me. If I ever got to go on Desert Island Discs, I'd ask for the complete works of Ursula Le Guin instead. 

But HHttT (as no one called it) was immense. I have seen the full Hamlet twice, so I know how many of the lines are part of the culture, and this seemed to concentrate around the highlights and make them make sense. With additional bonuses of a) incredible physical energy (there was quite a lot of dance) and b) a killer soundtrack (there is little Radiohead I don't love). I laughed out loud several times, and had to look through my fingers several more, and this is rare for me at plays. To be fair I don't go to that many -- the first one I went to that wasn't a school or university performance I tried to leave at the interval because I thought it was finished, so I guess I'm just not much of a thesp. 

I've been thinking about what reached me, and why, and what other recent things have reached me, and why, in the light of my current exploration of the snakes and the ladders. Some of the other recent things include a Richard Dawson gig which I only bought a ticket for on the night, a visit to Levens Hall, a bowl of Bun Bo La Lot at Salvation in Noodles in Finsbury Park, a Lego Serious Play workshop for some of my colleagues that I made happen (and got to attend), a wine-soaked conversation punctuated with birdsong on someone else's riverfront terrace, and a walk with my beloved across the Lots in Silverdale as the sun was setting over Morecambe Bay.

I live, and have generally lived, a life suffused with things that reach me. I want to be reached, and I want to be part of things that reach other people. I think that's important, when I talk about the snakes and the ladders. It really fucking matters to me, the reaching. And I mean reach (and this will come up again later, kids) with good intent. That can mean challenging. That should sometimes mean challenging. Of me, as I am reached, and of others, if I reach them. Or it can mean joy. Or comfort. But if it makes you think, that doesn't make it bad. In my view. If it makes you a little uncomfortable, ditto. 

This musing is prompted, or maybe accelerated, by the fact that here in Ecoville there is a new Common House Floor Cleaning Rota and a new six month rota for the regular cleaning jobs, and as usual (since forever) my name is not on the former and as usual (since 2020) my name is not on the latter. I really thought this time round I'd feel like I could sign up for a job like some of the jobs I used to do -- I have never been able to approach the kitchen but I used to change towels, clean windowsills and communal toilets, tidy shelves, look after the washing machines. 

I'm not the only person whose name doesn't appear on those rotas (I can guess at some other people's reasons, but I'm not going to speculate on them here) and this does cause issues. If it was literally just me, the community impact would not be that great, everything would get done, some people would think less of me, I would accept that, in the sense that getting me back on the rota would not really be worth any community effort. Just leave her be, she's a weird one. 

I'd still be sad, because I am reachable, and my conscience combined with my female socialisation means that I feel bad not being on the rota, but not as bad as being on the rota would make me feel.* Lots of people not being on the rota makes me feel a bit worse, because I think it's hard on the people who do their bit, but then maybe they like it that way, I don't know. 

Because we don't talk about it. Not really. 

But I can. As I said in the trailer, I've been working some of this through in the light of my (very late! go patriarchy! thanks menopause!) autism diagnosis. If you are unfamiliar with some of the dimensions of autistic thought and communication, there's a reasonable summary here. I would say my need for clarity is intense, and couples with my strong justice sensitivity  And one of the biggest WTF elements for me these last couple of years has been the slowly then all at once realisation that for a lot of people, clarity and justice are not nearly as important as everyone being nice to the people who expect people to be nice to them** (I can't even work out how you know who those people are, except by counting my bruises when I hit a nerve that was supposed to be clearly marked "do not discuss"). 

One way this manifests is that I experience fudging as oppression. I therefore want to fight it, and if I can't express myself in words out loud, I'll find another way to do it. Honestly, it's a relief to know this. 

Sometimes that's in t-shirts: the photo above was taken by a neighbour (also a friend and confidante) at one of our General Meetings (GMs). For many years I barely missed a GM: I believed they were where we made decisions, and I believed (in the words of President Bartlet) that decisions are made by the people who show up. You have to be in the room, I thought, because that is the way to ensure that your views are represented. So I made a lot of effort to be in the room. Before we moved in, that represented hundreds of pounds of effort a month, as we had to travel here from Oxford. After, it was more emotional effort: some meetings sent me to bed for the rest of the day. 

I don't believe that anymore, not fundamentally. My loss of faith in consensus decision making is a whole separate post, and a whole separate sadness, as for a long time I was like well, fuck, this is how everyone should do stuff. You don't get 52:48 votes changing the course of history if you're working with consensus -- you have to keep going till you find something that everyone can live with. But it really doesn't work if you are conflict averse, and it really doesn't work if you won't examine your power dynamics. 

More on that another time, but basically I got burnt bad when my intent was good, and I don't react well when that happens. It feels in my head like a portcullis slams down. I can still see the place that I used to be able to hang out, but I can't get there anymore, so I have to adapt. Annoyingly, it's a surprise every time. You'd think I'd learn, but I'm an earnest little bean. 

Adapting often takes the form of withdrawal, but I still need to find a way to express myself -- I need the pressure release valve if I am not to explode with the injustice of everything. This is, I think, what my Ecoville blog posts have often been about. And sometimes I can get myself back in the room, which is how I found myself in a General Meeting where we were ostensibly talking about conflict. I have stuff to say about this, I thought. Finally! 

I am pretty sure my T-shirt choice that day was deliberate, but it was not conscious. I have a bunch of T-shirts that are (arguably) provocative. At least two of them have fish on them, and one just has the word UNAPOLOGETIC. I bought this green one at a Cypress Hill gig, and really for the front of it (which says Cypress Hill in the Rizla font) than for the back. It's a cracking song though. 

But anyway, there I was, wearing it, and there was the session about conflict, and there was the list of ways you might approach it and we were invited to decide which we identified with and I was standing there looking at it, thinking "where's I protest?". My approach to conflict is not on this list! But, as captured so beautifully by E, I was literally wearing it on my body. 

🎵 It's a sin to kill a man / But I'll be damned if I don't take a stand 🎵

(Note: I would almost certainly not actually kill anyone) 

We had a genteel conflict avoidant conversation about conflict, I'm not sure whose needs were satisfied, but mine weren't. A straw poll indicated that a majority of the people who had got themselves into the room that day saw "conflict" as something we should pay attention to. That was 10 months ago, and I see absolutely fucking zero evidence that we have. 

Jo, I hear myself saying, you could take a lead on this! Yeah, I hear myself saying, look what happened last time you tried taking a lead on this! And the time before. And the time all you did was try and support the other person who was trying to take a lead on this. Et fucking cetera. 

We could say that we only value people who Don't Make A Fuss, Clean The Floors, and are happy to Go Along With Not Upsetting A Specific Group Of People***. We could say that, and I sort of wish that we would, it would be at least helpful for those of us who appreciate clarity. Those of us who have been here for a while once received a printout in our mailboxes about the value of duct tape (over your mouth) and work gloves for new community members****. While this is almost the dictionary definition of passive aggression, when you are actually new it's not terrible advice, especially if you are a white cishet man. 

But if we're talking about the "living phase" as opposed to the "build phase" -- we were literally here second. We did some really fucking hard yards. And even for a lot of the softies who arrived after we had a postcode and a car club and wi-fi and a laundry, they were still basically in at the beginning. How many years till you're allowed to have views? Five? 10? 

To round this post off (I'm trying to keep them at a digestible length) I have learnt that where I live I am seen as difficult and challenging and upsetting, and at times not acceptable. And I felt bad about that for quite a while. I don't try to be those things, except occasionally when I have reached my tolerance limits, or drunk a whole bottle of red (I often go from warm fuzzy to cold fury somewhere between glasses three and four, but this is why I left the community WhatsApp). 

You should hear my inside voice. Honestly, I work hard in a world full of dissembling and fudge, and only occasionally go pop, though fair to say that when I do, we're cleaning it off the walls for years (well, I'm not, as I'm not on the rota). 

As one of my neighbours (who literally rubs my words out every time I write them on a blackboard) bellowed at me once, maybe I should... MOVE OUT!! And I've thought about it. But I love my house, and a lot of my other neighbours are awesome. When virtue signalling was more overt here than it is currently, someone declaimed that we ran the risk of just being a bunch of middle class people living in nice houses by a river. Maybe that's what I am, me and my refusal to clean the floor, but you know, I tried. Another one of them once said "We've (that magic we again) tried very hard to meet your needs". You haven't though, you've never even asked me what they are. 

But I can write about them here, and maybe that will help. Or not, but it will help me, and that's better than a slap in the face with a wet fish. 

joella

*There's always the option of being on the rota but not doing the thing -- I am unable to do this one, I find unilateral active transgression almost impossible. 

**These are usually the power holders in a situation (though not all power holders etc). This can cover unconscious entitlement, extreme wealth, cult leadership, and many things in between. 

*** I have a list of the people who refused to agree the agenda of a meeting that contained some proposals they did not even want to hear. This was an organised exercise and there were 13 of them. Maybe half of them were foot soldiers recruited by the officer class. I'm cool with them, it's hard to say no to that kind of thing if you are asked to pick a team. The officers, I watch. When one of them leaves, I have a silent disco. 

**** This was an excerpt from Finding Community by Diana Leafe Christian. Who visited here once. Lunch was vegan, but my beloved cooked her an omelette. 

Snakes and Ladders

I've started to write this series of posts multiple times, I have scraps and fragments in drafts, in notebooks, in late night voice notes I've sent to myself . I've wanted to write it for years. I've trailed it more than once, hoping that would give me the juice to get going. But every time, it's run into the sand. 

I'm hoping this time will be different, because I have Done Some Work on why I want to write it and what's getting in the way. I think I'll start there. 

Snakes and Ladders is one of the framings I've used over the last few years to think about my life in Ecoville. If I reach square 100, I clean the Common House floor. This is something we are all supposed to do a couple of times a year - there's a rota and everything. 

I have never cleaned the Common House floor. I have also never paid anyone to clean the Common House floor for me, which is one way to avoid cleaning the Common House floor. It's not that I wouldn't clean the Common House floor, I can see that it needs to be cleaned, I am capable of cleaning it. It's not even a job I would find that unpleasant, in and of itself. 

But I never get to square 100, so I can't. I've come close a few times, but then I've hit a snake. 

The dice in this game of snakes and ladders is just life -- things that come along in the course of a day or a week or a month. Things you have to deal with. We're all rolling the dice, all the time. Am I going to go for a walk? Should I catch up on my emails? Is it time to do the laundry? In an intentional community, even the most basic level of "just life" involves other people, that's kind of the idea. We have meetings and make decisions and run into each other by the mailboxes and share cars (some of us) and meals (some of us) and hang out in various permutations and combinations. You can totally be an introvert here, but you can't be an isolationist. 

Sometimes, there are ladders. Someone is kind in a way you didn't expect, something works out in a way that is deeply pleasing for all involved, serendipity delivers an outcome that is fully greater than the sum of its parts. We put some of the conditions in place to encourage and enable these things, and we work to maintain them, but they are no less delightful as a result. Wow, I say, when I zoom up a ladder, look what we did! Aren't we lucky to live here! Isn't it worth all of the... 

...Snakes. Oh, the snakes. The snakes, for me, are mostly the things I didn't see coming. The feedback. The accusations. The behaviours that make it entirely, devastatingly clear that person x doesn't trust you and quite possibly never did, but never said. The cloaking of dogma in appreciative inquiry. The unspoken, unwritten red lines that you don't know about till you cross them. The use of "us" and "we" in a way that doesn't have you in it. 

I struggle with the snakes because I don't understand them. And that's why I want to write this, because I want to understand them, and writing is one of the ways I do that. I don't think we all have to like each other. I'd kind of worry if we did. And I know that I personally can be a bit Marmite -- I struggle with small talk, I don't really do 'nice', I swear freely, I give direct answers to direct questions. I like to make myself laugh, I like to make other people laugh. I'm not always as kind as I could be. But I'm not devious. I'd be a terrible politician. 

I think that might be at the heart of it. I certainly think it's worth exploring. In terms of what's been stopping me, it's partly writing discipline and partly fear of feedback. (#notallfeedback - I also know a lot of people have found things that I write helpful). 

On the former, I've just reduced my working hours to give me a bit more time for mental and physical exercise each week. On the latter, I have been seeing a therapist for a while to help me process my autism diagnosis. And we talk about feedback a lot. I don't have to take it on board if I don't think it's valid. And I have taken a lot on board: I like to write for an audience, but it needs to be a willing one. Some folk just ain't going to like what I have to say, and I shouldn't push it at them. It's a lot harder to get here than it used to be, and I did that on purpose. 

So let's fucking go. That floor's not going to clean itself.

joella