Like the deserts miss the rain

When we came here: callow, insignificant, bound up, wound up. Not utterly lost but largely depoliticized. We actually had in mind the notion of moving on from here to roles in Asia, larger and more demanding roles. Note that those roles would have been mine. We asked few questions - this, and we were already reading more widely, already seeking out narratives.

The notion of community was extraordinary to us, foreign in the absolute sense. And much as it might be that we knew we were foreign, we knew we belonged to another culture, we hadn't yet identified which. And we struggled, not only to understand but also to distance ourselves further. We went out for walks dressed to the nines. We dressed more provocatively than we would have done in Barcelona.

But it wasn't until we made the leap and step and skip and went to Crop Mob that we were able to put the trumpet to our lips and make a start on the walls (this being both Pink Floyd and ol' time spiritual reference, we were either tearing them down or working to have them tumble). We'd made earlier starts - V's studies at the Center for Documentary Studies had led her to found a documentary project based on the queer group in Durham, but the long silences and disjointed rhetoric together with resistance put the thing to bed - but this was the first time we had met something head on, so to speak.

This isn't a history of the crop mob. I don't want to write that it changed our life, that it made us better people. But what happened instead is that a process started in which we were proud to have muddied our hands on a cold September day. Suddenly a vein of discussion opened when we were going & coming which brought us to community.

A part of that of course is finding points of connection, and there we curse our natures. It's not that we're retiring, but instead that we've become very sparing with our time. A's arrival may change that or reinforce it. Neither with Trace & Kristin, nor with Nick, Geoffrey, nor John & Sarah - maybe not with anyone did we know how to be friends up front. Not with Jon E. Not with Rob & Andrea. Not with Mattie. Fuck ... not with anyone.

And it really sucks to have to leave and know you could have been better friends to, with, and for people. That a lot of the things we struggled with really make no sense - it didn't matter that we are this mix of things, as are all people. And I find that now in the office, where the uneasy friendship formed over the past few months is extremely rich, beneficial, a source of pleasure - and where I can actually speak freely and openly of what I believe.

Such a strange experience with Kristin's father when he started talking to me about GE. These things do not define us, but then sometimes they shimmer into view, bas-relief or figure-ground inversion. But not one of these people would have cared for a second. Secrecy and smoke and mirrors about what or who you are is of no use, no purpose.

We feel about this place that it has allowed us to be ourselves, without a patina of judgement or a forcing means that makes us be what our trajectory has given us.