the (internal) commune

Between the comments to my last post and Chani's piece I've been daydreaming about what it would mean to truly have a vibrant community around me in the physical form. It's a place I drift to sometimes since finding all of you, imagining a neighborhood where to the left, right and across lived strong and amazing women (and men) who strive to connect in an authentic and tangible way.

How rich our evenings and weekends would be; how full the lives of our children. So many of you have left your imprint on me, of course I want to share that with M, so that she, too can grow up feeling supported by a diverse and stimulating choir of voices. And I know we'd pull each other's trucks out of the mud, literally and figuratively as often as needed.

It's one of the reasons we are eager to move to Belize. While I obviously romanticize the possibilities, I can't help but think how different life would be if it were a bit slower, with less media influence, more time to live in community. Harder in some ways, but richer in others.

The last time we were there we were talking to some of our neighbors, some boys in their teens, and I asked them what they thought was most important. Just like that, an open ended question. One of them immediately replied to be conscious.

And that's how you all make me feel, too. More conscious. That's one of the many gifts of this community. And in that spirit I am taking a bit of a hiatus from my storytelling (not from blogging, just the recent dredging I've been doing); I had hoped it would make me feel less like drowning but it was having the opposite effect. And the next stories on my mind are darker. I am sure I'll return to it, but for now I am going to spend some time wandering down other paths and see what I find there.