From my journal for August 1995. I had gone to Dance Camp, but I was limited in what I could eat because I had systemic yeast. No bread, no wheat, no sugar, etc. The cook at camp was not sympathetic or cooperative. So I came home.
Back from circle dance camp, disappointed, the food was not abundant, tasty, nourishing enough to sustain me through a day of dancing. Even this morning, after a good breakfast of eggs, bacon, potatoes, I began to feel a little shaky in the late morning. I took some rescue and ate a snack of granola & yogurt. What I really wanted was shortbread, and I had even turned on the stove, but the ghee was cold and my hands weren’t strong enough to open it.
So here I am in the hut, with candle lit and tape of Tibetan monks. I wanted to write down a vision of a world in which I could live, one in which things like Circle Dance Camp would be commonplace and easy to get to, in which organic food is grown locally and easy to get, in which machinery is quiet and powered by sunlight, in which travelers can go by train, or car, or bicycle, or horse, or gypsy cart, or air vehicle, in which people are joined in “clans” or “families” by interest and temperament rather than by blood — so that I could travel across the country stopping for the night at Dance Camp or Bird Lodge, knowing that I would be welcomed and fed. There would be a system of community bicycles, so you could get off the trail and find a bike to take you wherever you wanted to go, and there would be no “tragedy of the commons” because each of us would think of the bikes as “mine that I share with my friends and to be cared for” rather than “theirs, to be abused and exploited.” There would be a clan of “Bike People” whose job would be to see that there were plenty of bikes in good repair at places where they were needed. People would exercise their bodies more, and visit with friends more, and not be so stressed-out with sedentary and oppressive work. There would be bonfires and dancing and ceilidh’s and discos, and jazz jams and rock jams, and local entertainment every night. There would be seasonal pageants. There would be high-tech building materials available so it would be easy to build a sturdy warm free form house, with a little help from friends. When you wanted a couch, you would go to the local furniture maker and commission something to your specifications, or trade at the monthly exchange Fair, or build it yourself. Our houses would be works of art and culture, filled with beautiful, rich, objects made by hand that were the expression of what each of us wanted to live with. There would be Men’s and Women’s Lodges, similar to old style monasteries, where people could live or retreat when they needed/wanted that life style. There would be whole territories given over to people who liked noisy internal combustion engines, and other territories where planes would not even fly over because there would be an understanding of the importance of silence. Cities would be smaller, with smaller buildings, parking for cars on the lowest level, and gardens on the roofs, so they would not be industrial deserts. And there would be room for lots of other things, that I don’t even know about, that I maybe don’t like myself, but could certainly live with as long as they weren’t forced on me.
O yes, and there would be an understanding that children are the future, and each new birth would be greeted by the adults with delight, and they would then watch, with joyful patience, to see who this new being was going to turn out to be. Parents who were having a hard time would have an extended family to turn to for help, and the possibility of exchanging a child who wasn’t a good match for one that was, with the understanding that nobody is wrong here, and that each of us will eventually find our “tribe”, united by spirit, not by blood. Blood relationships would no longer have the possessive and limiting characteristics that they have today.
Other parts of this vision are already written in the F of H, and in the Woman’s Way vision for any woman pregnant with an unwanted child. I’d like to get this into some sort of form so I could share it at circle dance camp, and so that other people could add to it, naming clans they’d like to see, and activities they’d want to have be available. I don’t want to see anything ruled out, even noisy planes, as long as it’s understood that when one activity impinges on another as noise impinges on silence, then they have to be given separate territories or silence disappears. And I want there to be room in my world for silence, for monasteries, for gypsies camped by the side of the road, for tents with banners flying and shrines that are to be approached only on foot.
I hold this world in my heart, and in some ways I live there already though my body is not there yet, just as I’m still at Circle Dance Camp even though I couldn’t stay.