I can say I notice two things for certain: one, my age. I'm the youngest by far in my co-op and at work. two, how little I know about so many things. I have a friend here who spouts history at the slightest prompting; today among other things we went over the jonestown kool-aid mass suicide, how and why to prune trees, how the berlin wall fell and the subsequent rise of global capitalism. I'll mention a topic - the concept of a gym, isn't it weird? - and he goes off on it - gyms go back to the romans, etc. I would listen all day.
I'm trying to remember that it's okay to be young and curious. tonight my teacher-friend let me go with him to an arts and crafts party down the street. my friend sewed a patch onto his bag. one man there was drawing cartoons. he held one up and we all were impressed and I said my usual bit about not being too good spatially. the man - ramesh - insisted that I would draw. I sat down next to him and he had me copy the very top of a calvin cartoon head, and I did. then, we went onto the bottom, etc. I drew the rest of it and he drew the rest of it, and then we captioned them. Here's the one ramesh gave me:
the beautiful thing about hanging out with older activist minds is that I'm seeing all of these possibilities for radical adulthood. so often my politics are framed as a stage - that I'll eventually accept our capitalist society once I get a real job and settle down with my own family. here, I'm watching a woman raise her child in a co-op. she makes sure Oliver gets enough playtime with other kids his age, because he is around so many adults in the house all the time, and lets him watch TV, but doesn't like that he loves talking about guns. it's such interesting negotiation.
anyway, at this arts and crafts night there were so many people who seemed centered in their politics, like they've been engaging in these discussions for years and would continue to do so that night and each day after.
did I mention it's unbelievably stunning out here sometimes?
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