Diamonds Are Forever
Home is a Place to Leave
"He was telling me about a friend of his who travels around the world from one sailing job to another, never stopping except to find the next gig. He marveled at the freedom that his friend has being able to travel anywhere for any length of time with no commitments or relationships to hold him back. I couldn’t help but think of what a nightmare that seemed like--- going anywhere at any time because your presence isn’t particularly valuable no matter where you are.
Because nobody cares where you are.
Not about the ethics of traveling, this anecdote instead acts as an important illustration about him & me: his dream is my nightmare.
Last year, I attended a facilitated discussion among a large group of anarchists about community: what it is and how to make it. What I remember from that discussion was a remark made about the solidarity that often springs up out of necessity when people are thrown together in a crisi. The factor he saw bring people together more than anything was a lack of alternative. When people are trapped together, he said, the work together. When they have the choice and means to leave each other, they will.
“SO,” he concluded, “the question seems to be how do we trap people?”
This sincere but admittedly outrageous comment caused a stir in the room. Was this person seriously suggesting that the key to building community was to limit people’s choices?
Individualists and egoists are pretty clear in this matter--- it’s not legitimate if it’s not a choice. Social pressures limit choice at least as much as laws do, and without eliminating all hindrances no unions we make with others count. All the guiding principles of my life seem to point to one value: the encouragement of maximum choice. So why did the comment about trapping people resonate with me? Am I secretly authoritarian?
I hope not, but I have noticed that people in me life with the most choice available to them are generally the ones who abandon situations when they get difficult or complicated. The rest of us work through the difficulty or deal with a complicated life.
He says it’s a depressing assertion that we remain anarchists because we couldn’t do anything else. Remember though that his dream is my nightmare.
You might wonder what this has to do with home ownership. Welcome to my zillionth mention of transience, one response in a city like Pittsburgh, where housing is so cheap that many anarchists own their own homes, is this alleged Third Way, something I call the Home Base Ideology.
It’s a phenomenon that combines the investment of permanence with the flexibility of transience. Or rather, it blends the face recognition of a sedentary lifestyle with the abandonment & lack of commitment of transience.”Having a place to leave” is more common in Pittsburgh than I realized before moving here. Many people in my social circle who “live in Pittsburgh” actually spend 3-10 months of the year other places.
What does this mean? It means that it is hard to make a long or medium range plans with people, because you don’t know where they’ll be in six months. It means someone can leave when they’ve hurt one too many people and still be welcomed back with garlands. It means never having to hold yourself accountable or work through a difficult relationship. Households become storage lockers. Having a home base seems like an attractive thing, but I think people tend to overlook that there needs [ TYPEFACE CHANGE – NEVER QUITE ENOUGH!] to be actual human beings who stay in town and maintain a city as an awesome place to come back to. Or at least a critical mass of people. A sense of entitlement though is something that irritates me.
I know what you’re saying. Why be bitter? Why not winter in Flroida, summer in Minnesota, and tour in between? Some say that if I’m resentful, it’s because I secretly want to be more like the people I gripe about. Or that I spend too much time fixating on what other people are doing and not enough time doing what I want.
Hard to manage when what they’re doing is stopping me from doing what I want.
You know what I want to do that very clearly no one but me is standing in my way of doing?
I want to write a book. A novel. I have it planned out.Now I get to write it.
Okay, I’ve said it. Time to do it.
‘Hope is like a crush, making things beautiful as possible even knowing you’ll get hurt. It wont sustain you, not like the hard work of love will, but it punches you beyond what you thought you were capable of.” ---Cindy Crabb "
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