medicine is community ii

community.

for 12 years i've been walking from person to person, state to state, asking almost everyone i came across what community means to them, whether they have community or not, what they think of intentional community.

i did this, cause i found adulthood a great challenge. from living in a household where i always had people around me - my brothers and folks - and all their friends coming in and out and breaking bread and praying, debating, playing together - to living with a room-mate, making plans to do everything.

making plans involves calling people up, texting and emailing them. it involves coordination, time. making plans means maybe at some point this week or next or this month or this year. being an adult outside an indigenous household, where home is an open door for community, and community are people who know you through atleast 10 other people in their life and yours, to friends who wouldn't even know who to call if anything happened to you, is a trip. it's the norm.

so i was feeling suddenly confronted by a community-less world and it didn't make sense, but most others around me didn't bat an eyelash about it, the way they did about bp oil spills and bombs and tuition hikes and welfare cuts...

maybe they are all part of a secret community that i'm not privvy to, i thought. so i had to ask...

different people, different responses.

community? ya, i have community, one friend i used to bang with in brooklyn, said to me, on a train ride to the city. 

i tell lisa everything, and even though she moved and we see each other once a year or so, she's community. and, i guess the people i go to parties with and have brunch with and there's my college friends... 

my h.s. friend monica agreed. yeah, i still consider all my high school friends community, i mean we hardly see each other, but we keep in each other's lives through facebook. albert left the marines, moved to cali, you know sabrina had another kid, she's in queens, and you.... monica says. monica, a friend of mine from high school that i run into every 8 years. 

if we had community, we wouldn't be cutting each others throat, trouble told me once, as he clapped hands with 90% of the people walking in and out of wilson projects in spanish harlem. i found it ironic that my other friends who barely said a word to their neighbor, far from exchanging touch, greetings, and questions about - how's your moms? your brother alright? - considered themselves to be part of communities, but trouble who was in a village of interaction didn't. it's cause of the economy, he said. it's killing us. 

what i love about the city, my boy from tennessee once told me, is that everyone is anonymous. you could drop in and out of people's lives and its no  biggie.

my boy matt from Rhode Island found this to be the most scathing part of his ny experience. it's amazing how here you are surrounded by people, and still can feel so lonely. this is what i was trying to get away from in the suburbs. 

intentional community can only work with people of the same ethnicity, my boy shenoda said, when we hung in his backyard in oaktown. otherwise, no, it's not going to work.

some in the informal survey felt they had community cause they exchanged greetings with their neighbors, even got into a convo every so often.

in the absence of people who have stories of you from childhood on, who have broken bread with you and your family, who share space and time and work and bills and spirit and debate and land and meaning with you, there is the community of individuals who get together as individuals and leave as individuals.

this absence provides a massive opportunity...