screaming in the tunnel under the metra is a beautiful thing

it is so good to be home.
last night, z shared a thought, something like
relationships are getting comfortable in the routine of someone else's patterns.
(this idea extracted from her actual words, which are alonso's words revoiced: "and perhaps you never know anyone as much as you know the rhythms you fall into when you're around them.")
stambam said, yeah, like comfort.

i love missing things,
leaving in order to return
("the return makes the leaving less nervewracking")

but also, when i would sit by the river and make necklaces or paint gourds or think or cry, i wondered whether i was missing being comfortable (rhythms of synchrony), or people (sparks of connection), or a culture of bäo (in which i am something which elsewhere it becomes hard to sustain)...
i concluded that my feelings of saudade were all and none of these things,
and one night over caipirinhas and candlelight az and i articulated our wonder and pleasure at what the bäohaus has become for us (in part)--
(i speak for myself now, my voice inspired by others,)--
a place where we've allowed and pushed ourselves open,
to transform each other, ourselves, allowed ourselves to be(come) transformed,
and celebrated (and respected--maybe respect is not so far from celebration?) community, togetherness, and the benefits reaped from breaking down walls and norms,
and seeking seeking finding building autonomy from codependence, independence and self-reliance through safe-sane-consensual-communicative relationships,
an alternative (to) education (born in the midst of a sometimes-suffocating academia),
(and of course a refrain of
fostering playfulness,
opposing racism, sexism, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, structures and institutions which keep people so bound up that they can't see their ropes and our teeth become too dull to chew-spit-talk a way out,
making music, art of all kinds, encouraging self-expression,
care)

these things, i think, are awesome.
and we (i, i think we) marveled at how these things have also inspired-empowered-educated us, and perhaps other bäos, to build-create-question-challenge elsewhere (or perhaps this is what brought us together--it's hard to say exactly.)

anyway,
it's good to be back here,
but it's not the place i left, exactly, not just slipping back into rhythms of comfort
(although good hugs are good and knowing how the stove works is a nice perk and having a bed that doesn't get rained on...is different)
i think there's something about returning to this space
that makes me want to rip my skin off,
spit on my best friends,
apply and translate and stay awake late and get up early,
bomb the world and rebuild it (using principles of anarchist permaculture this time)
and learning learning listening listening changing always.
to me, the bäo is not static. not closed. never the same. never dead. somehow still home.

for a long time i defined home as a place to return to,
but it's funny to find my definition shifting--
realizing that i've taken the bäo with me, and that it's spread like seeds
created like a collage, modeled on junkheaps, collectives, birdsnests, and sidewalks.

thanks for a fab potluck last night...i'm thrilled in this moment and looking forward to taking chicago (the world?) by glitterheatdirtstorm, again and again and again.

(and i would love to hear your words-thoughts-images,
in life or internet,
about what this house is, has been, could be for you,
since these walls have been built, lived in, pierced, and patched together by all of you.)