I came back here because I believed this place needed me. And perhaps I still believe that it does in some sense, whatever that means... "need."
I came back here because, while I feel more comfortable in the culture of Olympia, I thought my energy would be best used in a place where so much social/environmental change and justice work wasn't already going on or being engaged with. I wanted to bring that somewhere else, somewhere I could introduce it and where it could make a bigger change. I wanted to bring it home. Home. Where is that? Well I thought it was here. And it is here, in many ways. I feel at home here, with my loving parents, in my cozy room, in this place I have spent so much of my life, under the faithful mountain Si, in this valley, nestled against the Cascades; in various places around town, in the woods, by the river near my house, and in the memories these places hold. It is home. It has been home. It has held me sweetly. It has loved me well. I owe much to this place. I owe it my love, surely.
I came back here to share my love with it. At one point, when I was trying to writing my final evaluation and academic statement for Evergreen, I compared my college experience to a vision quest, or a series of them--characterized by separation, initiation, and return. The separation is a leaving, the initiation is a learning, and the return is carrying your learning home with you and sharing it with your tribe. My separation was hard. My initiation even more difficult. And my return, I am realizing, is perhaps the most trying of all. One of my final projects at Evergreen was based around this valley and the possibilities for it (Transition Town work, potentially a food co-op, and physical interventions that would influence the social, economic, political, environmental context). I thought I was returning with new truth and vision that I could share. I thought it would be received, that my tribe or community would accept it, embrace it, and move forward with it. I wasn't completely wrong. I brought many learnings back that have been embraced and have taken hold here, to some extent, especially in my immediate family, where we started growing some of our food, building soil, and eating better/more responsibly in general. In the wider community I started a buying club (which eventually broke down) and built community around food (which will hopefully persist in some manifestations), and I helped forward the local transition initiative (if only in a small way). I guess that these changes just haven't happened to the extent that I had hoped. And also, I am now seeing that through my time here (almost a year now, since I have moved home) I have both deepened my relationship to this place and love for it, and I have also slowly come to terms with a growing distance from it.
Recently (today maybe) I realized that the distance I was feeling was creating a scenario for my vision and engagement that was suddenly not as healthy or beneficial as I have long believed it
must be. Because I am no longer embedded in the community (if there can be said to be one here) and culture of this place, I am--in some sense--an outsider...a foreigner. And I am bringing my own cultural assumptions and beliefs to this place that already has its own cultural assumptions and beliefs (though I realize that they are widely diverse and not set in stone due to globalization and a general fracturing of community/culture). I guess what struck me was the similarity between the mindset I was having about this place, and a colonialist mindset. It is the mindset I admonish in foreign-aid/relief organizations, missions, unenlightened social services, and colonial empires--the mindset that I have something to bring to these people that will assuredly improve their lives (recently heard the term "philanthropic colonialism," which feels about right); the mindset that I can "help" or "empower" someone else or a community, rather than getting out of the way and letting them empower themselves.
Maybe I do believe that (that I have something to offer), but what right does that give me to insert myself into this place and try to change it? Perhaps I am being too hard on myself. I do believe I have some right to have a say in the fate of this place. I love this place. This place has been my home. I want to give back to this place. I care about the people of this place (even though they anger me and discourage me to no end). Yes. It does come down to that: I care. I love.
So what do I do?
I think my experience in Peru, and my reflections of that trip, remind me that I can love a place and want to change/fix/help it, but I need to step back and see what that would actually look like or mean. And furthermore that I need to be honest about whether what I see as the best thing for this place, is actually what the people of this place desire for themselves and believe is best for themselves. If I ask the question: what would actually help this place? I don't really know. I think I do, but what does that mean? And if I impose something without truly understanding the values of a people and their place, then whatever I impose will likely not be sustained anyway, and may actually cause an unnecessary and harmful dependency.
In Pisco, for example, I can say I believe that having foreigners building individual houses with no windows, one-by-one, out of reinforced concrete masonry, in the sand, in an active earthquake zone, for families that are living in shacks (or worse) is probably actually not helpful in the long-term. It breaks my heart to say that. I saw the conditions: People living on mattresses in the dirt, with astera walls, or maybe cardboard, or maybe newspaper. It seems obvious that a concrete floor would be better, right? But not when the next earthquake comes; and not when it creates dissent and jealousy because one family was gifted the materials and labor for a house and another wasn't; and not when the materials are imported and expensive and unaffordable to most people; and not when the individuals and families and local people are once more deprived of the tools/knowledge/skills to take care of themselves, and their reliance on foreign aid/product/labor increases, and their self-sufficiency decreases. It is hard. I love PSF, and I love how much energy and enthusiasm and love volunteers would pour into these projects, but I don't necessarily believe that all they/we are doing is truly of benefit, because it wasn't truly sustainable (sustainable in the sense of "the ability to be sustained over time"). And then, after all of that reasoning and logic, getting those houses built is still what the people of Pisco seemed to want for themselves, and who am I to deny them that? I could argue that they only want it because the globalized industrial economy and media tells them it is what they want because it will supposedly bring them a better quality of life, but that opinion would still be an imposition. It is so difficult to know what to do. This is why I came back to the states. I didn't want my "privileged" perspective to be imposed on the landscape. So instead I thought I could help change the status quo here, in America, so people/countries who happen to want to adopt the American lifestyle might have something thoughtful and effective to adopt.
Since then I have been reminded again and again that in this time, and especially in this country, there are so many different, divergent,
overlapping, intersecting, opposing cultures and subcultures and countercultures. But it is the dominant culture that the other countries are really experiencing/being fed/seeing, though subculture/counterculture seems to be the actual culture, and the new scale of community in reality (is this true?). Everyone craves membership, and our society has adapted
to a lack place-based living (where culture and community would be predominantly shaped by place and physical/otherwise relationships to it and the other people/beings in it) by developing these subcultures of belief, activity, interest, or whatever else. So I
am, perhaps, being stubborn or idealistic or both when I pretty much
demand a return to place-based community (at least, for
myself), because if I think about cities, there is no singular culture in a city. There is
the dominant culture that is fairly pervasive, but the subcultures or
countercultures make up the city too, and they challenge the dominant culture (to some degree), and even change it,
over time. The people in the subcultures didn't (necessarily) up and
leave the city to establish their own culture, they just did it by
rallying around a common belief, cause, lifestyle, etc. And they are
still largely embedded in the dominant culture--are influenced by it and
influence it. So, anyway, I am not saying I don't want to challenge the status quo. I do. But I think I am realizing that I might be more influential if I am not alone in what I believe when I try to do so, but am close to others who will inspire me in my beliefs and work with me to push boundaries (within our own mini-culture, and in conversation with the larger culture we are, perhaps inevitably, a part of).
For the co-op project I keep asking: what is this community ready for? What do the people who live here want? I really tried to stay faithful to that. One answer that seems feasible at this point is that the community of North Bend/Sno-Valley isn't ready for the co-op. That it is not what people want right now. If it was what people wanted, wouldn't they being rallying around it and making it happen? Isn't that what a co-op is, at its root? Though Melissa had a good point today when I told her that: often things do need to endure past a difficult beginning/period, and need to be pushed hard to actually get rolling. I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I am not giving up on the idea or the project, but am conceding that perhaps it just needs to incubate for a bit, until the conditions are right for it to grow. (I planted a seed. And maybe it is just that I won't be the one to see it through to its fruiting this time--does that make me unfaithful? *Sigh* I think I can actually say "No.").
My logical conclusion is this: that I can leave North Bend and not feel bad about it.
But my heart persists in saying otherwise, because it keeps breaking every time I drive past that fucking Bartell's drugstore without blowing it up (oop, I mean... what?), every time I go into Wood River after they have destroyed Miner's Ridge (not that I have totally accepted/conceded that it will happen), and every time I think of the wildness of those waterfalls at the Devil's Cauldron and the fact that Wayerhaeuser is gonna develop right over them without a hint of remorse (ugg). And it's painful to know that the people of this city either don't know enough or don't care enough to do much of anything about it, and that they won't even have an "activist living on 'their' street" anymore to at least remind them of what they don't know or care enough about.
So after all of this musing and processing, I am still left confounded at what to do. But at least I am clearer about what I want, and perhaps, what I need to do to maintain some semblance of sanity, and even happiness and sense of purpose and effectiveness.
So here it is, my best idea of what I am looking for right now: I want to find a place where I can root down and be nourished; where I can bring life and receive love and give love and be filled with life. I want to find a place where my vision is embraced. But I also want my vision to be challenging, and challenged. I want to push a place, but not force it; blend with it and change it through the colors and textures I bring by weaving into it, not by imposing myself on it like a stain. Not be "the activist living on our street." Not be discluded or rejected from it, for speaking out or being in tension with some part of it.
I am also thinking that maybe if I am part of a more progressive community I can more realistically bring legitimately radical beliefs (like the idea of civilization being inherently unsustainable and destructive) and have such thoughts be heard without being outcast, and push that boundary a bit. Here in North Bend there is such a huge gap between the realities I am living and those that the people around me are living, and I could relieve myself of a lot of pressure by living in a place with people who at least are closer to me on the spectrum of beliefs so I can be a member and still push boundaries.
Hmm, now what I just said made me wonder why pushing boundaries is such a focus. I remember Derrick Jenson saying that breaking through boundaries is one of the defining characteristics of our culture's perception/perpetuation of masculinity, and thus we live in a rape culture (a culture where everything, every boundary, must be violated). I wonder if my drive for change in this way is influenced by my socialization to that idea, or if it is purely just a passionate reaction to my understanding of what is going on in the world. I have a sense that socialization does have a role there, at least in my initial reactions to things, but I can't quite get my head around that right now.
