If I am in Love...

My birthday is a day for being alone. 

I drove through the hills of Marin county - bending trees articulated their branches across the landscape, offering gestures of conversation to the sky, providing arced resting spots for birthday vagabonds. 

Now, the moist loop, be-lichened and sweet smelling, welcomes travelers.  It gives a comfortable perch to purple corduroy.  It listens happily to an off-key rendition of Amazing Grace.  It wholly accepts an impromptu poem that began like this:

If love is space,
    then I am in love.
   
If I am in love, then so is the loneliness.  It is in love,
    with me.

***   

I ate California fruits - the waxy tang and orange cream flesh of a perfect persimmon.  I savored an avocado, grassy and sweet.  It was the best avocado I ever tasted.  I peeled it, exposing its buttery inside, biting it like I would a giant hard boiled egg, enjoying the smooth green smear on my cheeks and squish between my fingers. 

I left the grove of trees and drove down to the ocean.  Running along the surf, I flirted with a vulture, I let the icy tongue of the Pacific chase my feet with its swelling tide.  I found a large rock, stood behind it and took off all of my clothes.  A mother and her son were walking nearby, so I used a superhero cloaking device and disguised myself as a naked woman.  They couldn't see beyond the absurdity of midday November skinny dipping on a public beach.

I squealed as waves crashed against my body.  I turned to face the land, reached my arms out and closed my eyes, falling back into the water.  My bottom met the sandy floor.  I tried to imagine all the habits, addictions, and harmful patterns in my life washing away. 

***

I made my way from beach to car to winding road.  I drove to the town where he said he lived, the beautiful man I met at the desert festival.  One of the elusive spirits that stir my loneliness.

Clouds hovered in the hills and each time a dip in the road brought be below the dense mist, I discovered a hidden forest, giant trees reaching skyward, surreptitious fungi peeking out from behind their roots. 

When I arrived the sun was setting.  Population 350...Elevation 33 feet.  I began at the radio station.  The rain had started and I peered into the cozy room, lined with tapes and records and other labeled stackables.  Three people inside were singing a beautiful rendition of happy birthday to a gray-haired woman.  She tilted her head to the side, clasped her hands, and thanked her friends.  She saw me through the glass and beckoned I come inside. 

"Happy Birthday!" I said. 
"Thank you."
"It's my birthday too."  Everyone laughed. 
"Ha! You don't say.  Happy Birthday to you."

After I had left - nobody knew of my man - a young woman ran outside to meet me.  The rain was real now.  She held a newspaper above her head. 
"I love that you're doing this," she said.  "I love this kind of thing, these adventures.  Why don't you give me your name and email?  I'll keep my eyes/ ears open just in case I come across him."
When I had given my information, she hugged me, crinkling the soggy paper against my back. 
"Good luck."

***

I went to the creamery.  This town - 350 people - has a creamery.  I went inside and temporarily forgot all about the mission to find my beloved.  Wheels of beautiful cheese were stacked in the corner.  Here is the fresh white fuzz covering the triple cream...and here, over here we have the dumplings of cheese washed with chardonnay, flavored with the genius of another ambient bacterium (one, I learned, is in special abundance here, so the cheese cannot be duplicated in other areas).  Over there is the seasonal variety, a cheese made only with the milk from Jersey cows, then rolled in forest mushrooms.  And if you sample this one, mmmm, one of my favorites, your tongue will go wild with the sharp tang - almost like a goat's cheese - it goes so well with warm honey and a sprig of thyme.  (I sampled every one.)

I skipped around the gourmet shop and came across a section where local artists sell their wares.  Hats, gloves, earrings, and lingerie adorned the colorful corner.  The woman at the stand did not recognize my man by his description, but guided me to the nearby gift store.  I bought a sun hat, put on some lipstick, and wandered, cheese-belly-full out into the rain.

It was dark.  The store was so full of things it was difficult to move.  Antique relics, mood rings and figurines shaped like animals all waiting for the relevant moment to tell (or invent) their stories.  None of them had seen the person for whom I searched.

In the bookstore, I read a few pages of a book called Mycophilia and admired an illustrated version of Pinocchio.  I asked the woman behind the register. 

"Hmmm, don't know anybody like that.  Mark, do you know anybody like that?"
"Hmmm, I don't, but that gentleman," he pointed behind me, "he knows just about everyone in town.  Jeremiah, this young lady is looking for somebody."

Jeremiah turned around and stood near to me.  Our eyes met and my heart made an attempt at jumping from my chest into his.  I stuttered as I spoke to him, trying to describe the connection, the festival, the dancing in front of an old timey house on wheels where they bake cookies in the oven and a gypsy fiddling group plays on the front porch. 

He listened quietly and gazed into my eyes, periodically covered by the wide brim of my wet sunhat as I blushed and dipped my chin.

"I don't know anybody like that," he said, "but I'll text my friend.  She may have some idea."
I reached out my hand and placed it inside his.  We both stopped breathing.  He squeezed.
"T-thank you."

It was time for me to go.  I was borrowing a friend's car.  Jeremiah called me shortly after I departed.  I missed the call, but he left a message, asking if I wanted to spend the evening with him. 

A gentle fragrance, the one of sweet longing, came in through a crack in the window.  I listened to his voice.  I would spend the night with you, Jeremiah, if I wasn't so in love…

If I am in love, then I am in love with this warm loneliness.

The Antihelp Manifesto

“Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols … Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.”
~Hakim Bey

We call ourselves “The Antihelp.”  The exposure of parts of us that want to sweep in and play rescue.  While our insecurities might be assuaged in the moment of felt helpfulness, we recognize such an approach as contradictory to service.  Ultimately, it is rarely relevant and works against creative social opening.

The Antihelp interrupts a cycle of aid that overlooks the reciprocal energetics of world systems and dependency.  We do not participate in global Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, poisoning communities so that we may eventually offer flag-bearing antidotes. We are not blinded by pity and virtue.  We play gratefully in the sweet particularity of culture and pinch one another at any attempt to fix or exploit.  We are interested in healing through inquisition, participatory governance and recognizing opportunities for creativity within conflict.

1.  Intention without direction.  (a.k.a. play).

Change is inevitable.  We stop trying to direct it.  Our efforts are not a series of superficial reactions, but arise within a container of intelligent improvisation.  We are honest about and willing to explore the depths necessary to identify and rebuild obsolete or dysfunctional structures, however, we embrace the process of exploring itself as a primary strengthener of community.

2.  Participation.

We do not play alone.  We need people to participate to build connections.  Change is not relevant unless it’s relevant.
We listen.  With our bodies, our ears, our minds.  We listen.  To each other, to our dreams, to everyone involved.

3.  A sense of humor.

We graciously accept benevolent disparagement.  If not graciously, we expect to be made fun of for reacting to it and/ or throwing tantrums.  The willingness to take the piss out of ourselves, our friends and our projects, dissolves righteousness.  We make absurd demands for laughter, regardless of circumstance.  When we are laughing more than not, all pain is worth it.

4.  Radical Inclusion.

When the uncool, the curmudgeon, the foreign, the weak, the indomitable, or those perceived as threatening ask to be involved, we spread our arms and make vulnerable our tender viscera.  “Bless your heart, you asshole, I love you!” we shout as we embrace participants and onlookers.  Everyone who understands the premises of this community and wants to engage is welcome.  No preconceptions to defend exceptions.  As long as we can tickle each other, it works.  Genetic, cultural, ideological diversity makes for a healthy party.
We love hypocrites.  Because we love making fun of them.
We dissolve the boundaries between helper and helpee…celebrating their obsolescence.
We appreciate radical inclusion as self reflexive: by treating others this way, we get to accept all the parts of ourselves we deny or compartmentalize and judge.  As we open our arms to everyone, risking our well being, we reintegrate ourselves.
We take care of each other.

5.  Wonder

wonder:  a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful.

curiosity:  a strong desire to learn something.

We are honest with our reactions to a space, a circumstance and a people.  We have a multi-disciplinary approach to the perception of beauty.  We encounter circumstances present in the physical and social environment with awe and respect.

Likewise, we are unwaveringly committed to feeling emotional, physical, psychological sensations that arise within our experiences.  We do not deny them, nor do we silence them in others.  We marvel at individual and group reactions.  Anything that arises on the multidimentional spectrum of pain and pleasure, we meet with wonder and curiosity.  We accept the pain.  We follow the pleasure.
We learn with our bodies.
We believe in magic.

6.  Gratitumility.

Even though we have ideas about what is good for us, we meet people with gratitude for any inclusion. We recognize that when we are visitors, strangers, outsiders or aliens, the home-people dictate what kind of help we offer.  We bring the willingness (and appreciation) for being accountants and shit shovelers if that is what is asked, rather than thinking we can offer something better.
We do not identify as “community builders.”  Instead we are lucky visitors who get to participate in the reveal of what is already happening in a space.  We come with playful intention, curiosity, a sense of humor, and a commitment to work hard.
We take our shoes off when entering.
We offer help, but treat it as a privilege when it is accepted and directed.  We come with open minds and creative approaches to problems, but we do not impose.

7.  Respectful Autonomy.

We do what we want to do.  As long as it is harmless, we indulge our passions freely.   As visual artists, we make; as dancers, we move; as chefs, we cook, as musicians, we play.  When people are attracted to what feeds us, we offer them plates.
Creative endeavors such as those expressed in art, music, circus and dance bring opportunities for play, wonder, and a connection with our bodies.  We consider one question of paramount importance in any approach to problem solving and conflict resolution:  “What do we do for fun?”