Paxus's blog

Before Obama was elected, i predicted he would disappoint.  I certainly had a very strong preference for Obama over McCain, who had been completely co-opted at that point, kissing up to the conservative religious right, who he had dissed 4  years earlier.  McCain is the same type of adventurist hawk as Romney, who believes the military capacity the US has is an invitation to use it.

But despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama ran on a pro-war platform (for those who forgot it was the “Iraq is the wrong war, Afghanistan is the right war”) and has bombed Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and then went on using drones to bomb Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.  I will do a longer piece on drone killing later, but the practice of coming back and killing people who try to rescue civilians who have been bombed by the first wave of drones, or those attending funeral services, is especially repugnant and mentally taxing of survivors.

One of the principal negotiating points with Willow was about Halloween.  He was fine to be gone for months to exotic lands, in fact was looking forward intensely to seeing the pyramids.  But the idea of being gone from Twin Oaks during Halloween was almost unthinkable.

Lyndsey with a bad attitude. Red with a sawzall

Hawina had the solution.  What if we did our own Halloween like event at Twin Oaks, just before we went to Europe and N. Africa?  ”What type of Halloween event?” Willow is a hard bargainer.

“What about a Haunted House.” Suggested Hawina

“Cool.  That could work.” replied Willow

Gwen died, sucks actually.

Part of my problem with living here is i lose things.  It is like i have a huge home, with dozens of buildings and a myriad of workstations and i could have left it at almost any one of these places.  I got a memory stick, promptly lost it and just the other day found it in Pucks room , where i sleep with some regularity.  When i looked at it i found all these communities conference pictures i was going to use for a blog post.  Here are some of my favs, a bit late.

Registration – your journey begins here

Make up is out – body paint is in

learn from the orient – leave your shoes behind

The myth is that people who are polyamorous are more dangerous as romantic intimates because they have more transmissions vectors pointing at them. The reality is that most people who are serious about poly have pretty good safe sex practices, know more about these hazards than their monogamous counterpart and get tested regularly.

Anat has been studying Fluid Presence which is a sister of water dance and a daughter of Watsu. These are all water based therapies with origins in the Japanese healing art Shiatsu. When she told me she wanted to work on me (“to float me” is the language of these arts) i was excited.  I like massage. I especially enjoy her working on my body, water is cool – i am totally game.

i love the reflections in this shot

But it was not what i expected.  We went to the beautiful domes of the Harbin’s former Watsu center, now called just the “Harbin Domes”  We cleared the thin plastic surface off the large pool of a consistent 3 to 5 foot depth.  Anat prefers this pool to the ones at the main area of Harbin, because they are cleaner and emptier of other users.

i floated for over and hour twice in two days.  The second time i fell asleep (i likely would have the first time if i had had ear plugs).  And the reason that it was different than what i expected was perhaps best described this way.

When i meant into it i thought the water would take the place of the massage table.  What i found is the water is taking the place of the masseurs hands.

i am in San Francisco and tickled to discover the latest urban trend is parklets – parks made of one or more reclaimed parking spaces inside the urban area.

This is the more boring and most economically useful of the versions.  This parklet is three car spaces in front of three different venders all of it serving food.  It created an extended living room into the street for a pizza place, the Revolution cafe and Indian food.

maintained plants and seating places

This two parking space parklet which is a somewhat more classical park, tho i am curious if it works as a well utilized space.    They are nice places to sit which provide a bit of privacy in this highly public space.

The only private parklet has elaborate hedges

i am told there is a single parklet which is paid for by a single individual, instead of a business or collection of business.

It is also the most cared for and complex.  The triceratops hedge is just one piece of this lovely little park.  Where apparently the owner got married a few months back.

[In a parallel universe this particular adventure from my life has been turned into a made for TV movie. The following is the trailer for that movie.]

Tibet’s capital is over 10,000 feet elevation and the highest city in the world. In this ill-lit bar there is little oxygen and lots of smoke. It is 1990, a year after the Tienanmen, and independent travel in Tibet is banned. My lover at the time Deborah and I have jumped our tour and are negotiating with a driver who has been recommended to us. His name is Punsak, he appears to be in his 40s with weathered skin and a gravelly voice. We would find out later he was in his late 20s.

The punishment for white skinned internationals for unauthorized travel is brief imprisonment, hefty fines and deportation. For Punsak, it would be much worse.

The tallest mountains in the world

“So you want to go to Nepal?” Punsak asks but he knows the answer.

“This you must understand. There are two obstacles in your way. Neither wants you to succeed.” His eyes moved between the two of us. We are hanging on his words.

“The first is the largest mountain range in the world. The second is the largest army in the world.”

Then pointing to his chest he said.

“I, Punsak your driver, will get you through.”

i am not beyond bribery.  So when i walked out of Abigail’s house and saw a frisbee disk golf store being run out of someones garage, i could not resist.

Disc Gold Dungeon 2100 block of Van Buren

So i went into this shop and said “i need your help, i have almost no information about this field that you clearly know too much about.”  They were good natured about my insulting intro and pointed me towards a gold colored, titanium, discraft “Nuke” disc which will be perfect for my friend prof Bunny.  i want to see him, he wants this disc – we can make an arrangement.

The second stop on this short block which is long in experiences was the local community gardens.

One of the many cute signs at the community gardens on 2100 block of van Buren

This project is something of a model as to how empty lots (or in this case a street) can be converted into vibrant urban spaces.

In 1993 i was dispatched as part of a team of Austrian and Czech anti nuclear organizers (and diplomats, technicians and lobbyists) to block the US from funding the completion of Soviet designed reactors in the Czech Republic.  Honza Beranek and i were asked nicely to leave from the Friends of the Earth Death City offices when we ran up a $5K phone bill in 2 months call Central Europe.  Greenpeace US happily became our camp out office home.  Greenpeace had figured out how to get cheap international telecom, even before the internet had taken off.

the masters of making environmental action look sexy

I was riding the DC metro during rush hour.  When i got on the car it was full and there was just one open seat with many people standing.  As i approached the seat it became clear why it was being ignored.  Across the isle there was a young man, perhaps 20, who was berating and occasionally yelling at the woman in the seat near the empty one.  I took the empty seat.

After a couple of minutes of his continued disrespectful acting out, i turned to the woman and asked if she was okay.  This dramatically changed the dynamic.

The young man moved away from this woman and started focusing his attention on me.  I dont remember a lot of what he said, but the first part of our dialog was clear

“What did you say to her?”

“i asked her if she was okay.”

“And what would you have done if she said ‘no’?”

“i would have asked you to stop”

More animated “You better have a gun or you better have a knife, because otherwise you are not messing with me and my girl.”

Reblogged from Committee Against Political Repression:

My name is Leah-Lynn Plante, and I am one of the people who has been subpoenaed to a secret grand jury, meeting in Seattle on September 13th, 2012.

This will be the second time I have appeared before the grand jury, and the second time I have refused to testify. The first time was on August 2nd. I appeared as ordered and…

Read more… 504 more words

Brave gal taking on the Grand Jury system. If you are in any of thee citys where support demonstrations are happening please go to them.

Rollie put all his chips in.

“If we dont do some serious preparation for Y2K I am going to leave.” Usually when people threaten to leave the community if they dont get their way, they are on their way out anyway and the community does not worry about it terribly much, nor do we think there is much we can do about it. But Rollie was different, he had lived at Twin Oaks for decades, had grown up two children with us and could repair and fix a myriad of the things which we have in our community which is in a near constant state of something falling apart. Rollie’s threat put the community on notice that we could not just ignore Y2K as a number of members were suggesting we do.

of course if the bank computers had crashed …

So in the middle of 1999 we started a process which in retrospect I am quite proud of. We could not agree on Y2K, the community was sharply split. Many people thought that with the change over of dates from 1999 to 2000 there would be significant computer malfunctions, likely including infrastructure failures. There as much talk about embedded chips and possibly event nuclear accidents triggered at this very specific time. An even larger number of people at Twin Oaks thought nothing was going to happen, either that the engineers would figure it out before hand and fix it, or that dates simply dont matter that much in computer programs.

Within 24 hours of my arrival in Eugene i had been to two different unusual personal processing events.

Erowin arrived in a leopard pattered costume and then switched into bridesmaid dress, which we kept referring to over the night as a prom dress.  She was in one of these high price personal growth systems, which are a bit common in these parts of the world. but she was there to confront the guru or perhaps not.

Erowin had champagne, a leopard suit, a prom dress, explosives, but no plan.

She had been very close with the guru for many years who broke off their connection for a new romance and then did not take responsibility for the hurt that they had caused.  And now the guru had done it again.  Over the course of Erowin’s performance we saw her go thru a highly animated and intentionally comic emotional processing, which was rich and deep, i was happy for my little part in helping her focus on being emotionally expressive.

The very next day, Abigail and i went to brunch and saw a couple of friends of hers, who were looking for support for their personal situation.  One friend was struggling with reproductive issues and the other main host was quite dissatisfied with their “soul sucking” job.  This included closing all the windows and screaming into pillows so as not to bother the neighbors.   But after the personal processing was complete, the presentation moved into a a multi=level marketing pitch for cell phones.  This transition struck me as more than a bit odd.

i recruit for an egalitarian community

but i am not an egalitarian recruiter

i have favorites

Some of them are easy

my community has a huge fixed plant

with many things to fix

tool turns who are not chauvinistic are highly sought after

some members wish we were more stable

and that we would encourage prospective members

who will come and settle down

but i am oft on the look out

for shooting stars

for members i know we cant hold

because there will always be attractive other options for them

because their charisma or charm or capacity

adventures unfold before them

but like the meteor overhead we are enchanted and pleased by their presence.

if we are wise, and emotionally nimble, we will appreciate them while we have them

and remember them fondly when they are gone

The original shooting star in my experience with Twin Oaks was Sugah.

She is now called Tegra, but we called her Mario Andretti when she lived on the commune

i ran into Tegra at my old friend David Goldsmiths birthday party in Eugene.  David has done all manner of exotic and wonderful things in his life, perhaps the most interesting of which is he taught the Dali Lama slam dancing.

So the way i am creating community is i am telling stories about it. And as is my belief about engaging story tellers is they change their tale to suit their perception of the audiences desires.

As i tell the story about Chubby Squirrels, one of the pieces i have been stumbling over is the piece about single moms. While it is true i am interested in having moms who are poorly served by the communities movement given a chance to contribute as i have seen them in the right collective circumstances.  What i think we are trying to emphasize in this project is something more complicated and richer.

hanging out with extraordinary families

Part of the problem is with the tag “single moms” first off it makes the kids somehow secondary, despite the fact that the single moms will be coming with their kids for at least some of the time. But really the problem is that the label is too limited.

“Extraordinary families” is my current terminology for what i want to include in this evolving story. This could include complicated poly families, like the one i am in – the Star Family. It could embrace single parents or folks like my friend Twiggy, who’s partner is at sea for a significant fraction of the year. And it could even be welcoming of more conventionally configured nuclear families – as long as the members of it had an extraordinary willingness to be part of a supernormal family.

Reblogged from raven0us:

This morning I woke from a dream to my son being ecstatic to go back to Japan with his Daddy. I couldn’t remember the dream so I groggily choked back tears of the coming moments and got Jordan in the bath. I began washing his hair and laid him back in the tub to get his hair wet. As his head went under and his eyes closed he became startled and jumped back up to sitting closing his eyes and opening them over and over.

Read more… 918 more words

A powerful piece from the tattered edges of Babylon

Part of my typical Twin Oaks tour rant goes like this:

If you believe in climate change, or peak oil, or the limits of finite resources on the planet then your really only have two choices.  You can try to convince people from rich countries to consume radically less (trust me this is a hard sell) or you can get folks to shift their ownership patterns to be more efficient in their use by sharing things.

I get that i am decades ahead of my time with this message.  But i like being right, so i will keep pitching it.

2 miles of the track between Brussels and Amsterdam

If i cant get my radical solutions, except here on the commune, i can be happy about liberal things which are happening elsewhere.  Here is a recent European effort.  These two miles of tunnels were built for noise abatement (not protection from trees as this article claims) and designed to support these 16,000 solar panels providing enough electricity to power 4,000 trains.

A tattered edge of a tutu drifts across the playa

the exodus is over and a lonely volunteer pulls glitter from the dust

the vast space empty of noise makers and heighten expectations

only memories linger here

—

i knew you would answer

when my disoriented plane

put me half a thousand miles from my connection

you were always there

except when you weren’t

“of course, come, you can have half my bed”

your generosity resonates in thru your sleepy voice

Sabrina is Ruby Tuesday

we chat when i arrive at absurd o’clock

you are busy as always

a festival medic you say, it fits you

you turned down a gift ticket to Burning Man

also classic you

—-

we’re out of touch

different coasts, different clans

you were for me a shooting star

bright, short, hot

the torn tutu drifts just slightly out of reach

The following is a mailbox letter i put out so that people know what i am doing for the coming time.  It has a lot of Twin Oaks internals in it, so parts might not make sense to people who know nothing about this place.

Paxus’s Plans

Fall & Winter 2012

My immediate plans are to go to the West Coast for 2 weeks starting on Thursday Sept 13, come back Sept 26. I will then be here until Oct 2 and then fly with Hawina and Willow to Europe returning just before New Years. I will be going on PAL, Hawina is going on vacation (and has her own letter). In terms of my responsibilities to the commune, this is who will be taking over:

• Hx Marketing: Gordon, Sabine and Bochie
• Hx Gen Mgmt: Shal and Alex (current general managers)
• Recruiting: Valerie (current co-manager)
• Room Assigning: Kenric
• Outside Work: Keenan with Bochie and Biddy on OW Accounting

It is my hope when I return from my PAL to resume all of these responsibilities except Hx marketing and General Management. In January, Hawina will take over wholesale hx marketing working with Bochie. On Jan 1, Gordon and Sabine will phase out. We have yet to find someone to take over promotion and management of the retail website (if you are interested please talk with any of the general managers. I will continue to do some small amount of work in the hammocks businesses, including dealing with a couple of our larger customers (Buyers Choice, Northern Lights) and probably making similar sales trips to the one I made in August. And generally speaking I am significantly reducing my work in the hammocks business.

“i imagine it is pretty hard for a monogamous identified person to find a partner at your community.” Chatted Twiggy, a curious communities conference participant to me today.  She was equating the high visibility of polyamorous Oakers in her conference experience with a correspondingly small fraction of people who are looking for a single romantic partner.  Twiggy was surprised when i told her that over 60% of the community identified as monogamous.

But the thing which spun her around more was the idea that sexual identity preference was often a secondary consideration in relationships on the commune.  “If you are open to Holiday Agreements, the fraction of eligible partners goes even higher.”  Twiggy had not heard of this type of agreement.

Holiday agreements are those which relax intimacy restrictions on romantically exclusive relationships for special events like New Years Eve or Validation Day.  A classic holiday agreement would be that it is okay for you to kiss or make out with someone (who is not your primary partner) at one of these events, where your normal committed relationship agreements would not condone this type of behavior.  It is pretty common for people here in exclusive relationships to open their experiences up a bit around the holidays.

In my version of this story is that i was driving a friend who was on the edge of a manic break down to an all night place to get food.  It was about 4 AM and he had been up all night for at least the night before.   Without warning, while i am driving, he punches me in the face.  Fortunately, there was no traffic, because your reflex when someone punches you while driving is to slam on the brakes.

A couple years later my dentist tells me that my front tooth is dead and asks me about shocks to my face.  I get a bridge installed, but the teeth that it is attached to are hurt as well.  Last Friday while eating a carrot at Acorn i hear a very disturbing sound and feel sharp pain in my bridge.  My dentist confirmed that i had broken the root of the tooth the bridge was attached to and that i would need to get a temporary bridge to replace the one i had and that i would not be able to fly out to San Francisco when i had originally planned to.

I asked my dentist if he could write a letter for me to the airlines.  He reluctantly said yes.  I offered to draft the letter for him, which he found an exciting prospect.  I write lots of letters like this, and was up for the challenge of this one.  He gave me his email, and when i inspected the signed letter this morning, i noted they had not changed a word from my draft.  Quite satisfying.  The airline changed my ticket with a most minimal fee.