Despite All My Rage ... From the Rat Cage to the Rat Park

Interesting thought for the morning seen in my blog feed:

You know those studies that are done of rats where they're addicted to a drug like heroin, and they end up pressing down on that lever ahead of food until they die?  A man by the name of Bruce Alexander took that experiment a step further. 

Alexander found that when you take rats out of tiny separate cages and put them in a spacious “rat park” with ample exercise, food, and social interaction, they no longer choose drugs; indeed, already-addicted rats will wean themselves off drugs after they are transferred from cages to the rat park.

The implication is that drug addiction is not a moral failing or physiological malfunction, but an adaptive response to circumstances. It would be the height of cruelty to put rats in cages and then, when they start using drugs, to punish them for it. That would be like suppressing the symptoms of a disease while maintaining the necessary conditions for the disease itself. Alexander's studies, if not a contributing factor in the drug war's slow unraveling, are certainly aligned with it in metaphor.

... Here are some ways to put a human being in a cage:

Cut people off from nature and from place. At most let nature be a spectacle or venue for recreation, but remove any real intimacy with the land. Source food and medicine from thousands of miles away.

Move life – especially children's lives – indoors. Let as many sounds as possible be manufactured sounds, and as many sights be virtual sights.

Destroy community bonds by casting people into a society of strangers, in which you don't rely on and needn't even know by name the people living around you.

Create constant survival anxiety by making survival depend on money, and then making money artificially scarce. Administer a money system in which there is always more debt than there is money.

Divide the world up into property, and confine people to spaces that they own or pay to occupy.

Replace the infinite variety of the natural and artisanal world, where every object is unique, with the sameness of commodity goods.

Reduce the intimate realm of social interaction to the nuclear family and put that family in a box. Destroy the tribe, the village, the clan, and the extended family as a functioning social unit.

Make children stay indoors in age-segregated classrooms in a competitive environment where they are conditioned to perform tasks that they don't really care about or want to do, for the sake of external rewards.

Destroy the local stories and relationships that build identity, and replace them with celebrity news, sports team identification, brand identification, and world views imposed by authority.

Delegitimize  or illegalize folk knowledge of how to heal and care for one another, and replace it with the paradigm of the “patient” dependent on medical authorities for health.

Gateway Drug to What? by Charles Eisenstein

An Amnesty for Library Slackers

Do you still do that old-fashioned thing of actually borrowing actual books from your actual library?  I know, right?  It's so three-dimensional.  Moving your body into a public shared space to borrow books that are on paper?  Bizarre!

Though there is a growing amount of reading I am finding myself doing on my phone (must stop that stupid habit) on the e-reader and on the computer, for me they are still a shadow of the old ways.  The tactile nature of reading a book that is made from paper not plastic means that my enjoyment of book-learnin' has only grown alongside my e-reading.

I love the library, and do not take for granted living in a country that has a plethora of books available for me to borrow and read for myself, all for nothing at my local libe!

Well, nothing except for the fact that as taxpayers we actually pay for it anyway.  But nothing as in no user-pays charges.  Which is a refreshing change, I must say.

And except it doesn't even end up being nothing for me anyway, because as an avid user who struggles to maintain herself upright and responsible and adult and productive within space-time, there's often library fines on my card.

I feel bad about that.  Every time I get another fine I tell myself that that is the last time it will happen.  Next time, I will be more organised and get them back on time.  Which is sort of sad because I actually already am organised.  As soon as I borrow books I come home, make a note of when they're due, and type myself a reminder a day or two earlier to take them back.  But still, one never can tell what sort of a day one is going to have, and suddenly one can find oneself putting off the library till tomorrow, and then tomorrow forgetting about going to the library at all.

Mush-brain.

Which is why I am a little bit in love with the Eastern Regional Library Service's Xmas Food for Fines Amnesty.  Basically, it's a swap - you bring in some non-perishable food all this week, and the library will waive your fines.

Being able to contribute what constitutes a pittance in my country - like, five bucks - but knowing that it will make a diff to some of my fellow struggling folks via local charities, and in the process having the punishment for my impertinence wiped clean?  Nice.  I like that.  Very, very much.

And it ends tomorrow, so wish me luck for getting there on time. 

Jumpy n Nervous - Groupthinkery

Describe a time that I felt jumpy and nervous?  Sheesh, which second of the day do you want me to single out, NaBloPoMo?   :)

Okay.  Here's one.  I felt jumpy and nervous a few weeks ago when I went to a meditation group for the first time.  I love meditating, but I'm having trouble doing sitting meditation much at all lately.  I used to use that to begin my days, and it was such a beautiful bow to the day.  These days, I meditate a little in the sauna, and in bed before I fall asleep, but it's not the same.

I am both drawn to group things and loathe them.  The older I get the stronger this ambivalence about groups.  The ambivalence contains wisdom - "Be careful about who you hang around with.  Us humans have herd mentalities;  it's our limbic way.  The more fearful a people, the more they will herd together.  Be careful about this;  you have the same propensity in you, too.  Be in the group but not of it."  The ambivalence also contains crustiness - "I'm getting older, and perhaps a little more inflexible, and bending to other people is harder.  And anyway, other people so often are unlikable."  Ah, Susie.  How Crusty, crusty, crusty you are.  Loving people has nothing to do with how likable they are.  I need to get out more.

And so these are some reasons why it feels more necessary than ever for me to get out in some sort of group situation, even once in a while.  Because I work from home, and I can go days without seeing anybody other than my beloved, I feel that it's important to force myself to get out of the house when I'm able, and with a handful at least of people, because I feel better afterwards.  Because I love communality, even if I don't always love community.

And so I went to the meditation session.  But then after that one time the health shutters came down, and I haven't been able to return.  Until this evening.  I'm quite capable of going tonight, only I've gone cold on it.  Again.

I've gone cold on it because I always feel coerced in a group even when no one is coercing me.  Even if people are genuinely kind and wanting your best, they still have such a propensity to want you to do things their way.  I find that most people are like this.

I sort of like the way this meditation session runs - it's very simple - but it also makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.  But that's okay.  I am used to feeling ambivalent about things that I know I really want to do.

The thing that is annoying me the most about returning is that I feel distracted by one of the other participants.  During our meditation I could hear her every now and then in her bliss do this little sort of laugh to herself.  She told me before we began the meditation that I may feel like laughing, or crying, and to not hinder it but not give myself over to it as well.  Well, I feel like she is giving herself over to it.  Why does she need to do it out loud like that, even if it is quiet?  That laugh is distracting to me.  It feels like she is using it as a display of how spiritual and wonderful she is, how deeply embedded she is in the bliss, of which it's most patently obvious to everybody that I aren't, and here, why doesn't she show me how?

That's what makes me jumpy and nervous about being around other people.  The problems isn't so much that they are all trying to get me to conform (even though everybody is, in their own way).  The bigger problem is that I have these defensive feelings even at such banal things.  It is a defensive fence that has been there for as long as I can remember, once imposed by adults, but which is now mine to dismantle now that I am one too, board by board, removing the nails.

It takes an awful lot of decades to really grow up, methinks.

Occupy Melbourne

Great post here from someone who attended and was arrested at Occupy Melbourne yesterday.  A large contingent of police going in with riot gear against ... 100 supporters.  Who were peacefully protesting but still were treated with violence.  And yet the Victoria Police claim they did not use undue force.  I beg to differ.

Meanwhile the Lord Mayor bleats about $15,000 worth of damage, but I don't know what he's talking about.  Must be the damage to the commerce of the shops which now line the City Square.

Well, I do feel sorry for those shop owners who may be losing out.  But this is a city square, after all.  A public place.  Public places are for the public.  Commercial interests are only one element of a citizenry.  A wonky, cumbersome element that reminds me of cancer - it does not know when to stop, where to stop, how to stop, ever to stop.

Well, stop.

Meanwhile, across the seas in the US, Erin posted a link to The 99 Percent Declaration, a document which sends thrills, chills, hope and fear all kareening through my veins all at the one time.

Lightbulb Moment

I've realised what sort of a community I'm looking for. An AA meeting community full of loser alcoholics with contemplative tendencies. A space where the people know what pathetic tossbags they are because they're too broken and tired to pretend anymore because the evidence is in front of their eyes. No space for the circus sideshow. A place where grace permeates, as so many people comment on when they mention AA meetings. Grace seems so evident in those spaces in ways its not when Christians get together. It has to be. The people need it to be. They have nothing else to hide behind and the grace flows.

Maybe I should develop an alcohol problem so I can go to an AA meeting. Or maybe all Christians and churches should be forced to go to AA meetings. I reckon we should have CA, Christians Anonymous. There could be a detoxing centre for those of us addicted to the rat wheel. With a 90-day in-stay deprogramming intensive with optional delousing to help get rid of all the accumulated bullshit of the past 200 years and teach us how to be real, GODDAMMIT.

AA communities know what losers they are cos they're stuck out on the edge of the whole experience of looking at the demons within their own souls. Too hard hit by them to dress them up and put a nice smile over the top of them because you can't hide a booze addiction the way you can hide an addiction to being right, or to stoking your ego and calling it service to God, or to continue the tradition of everything being so bloody complicated so that you click on a church website and there's the "438 rules for joining us" that are so much less fluid than Benedict's and "our mission statement" and "our ministry people look how wonderful we are" and "please come along and worship with us and we'll bore the shit out of you but you can all meet up in the carpark afterwards and have some real chat time" and blah blah blah and I can't even keep my eyes open to keep reading because the whole thing just collapses on me as soon as I start seeing all those rules.

Spot the person who's been looking at some church websites. Heh. Why do we need any rules at all? Why could we not operate as a family instead of a multinational corporation? Would we combust?

My idea was to look at some churches with the idea of seeing if I could find a group of people (who I'm sure would all be quite lovely underneath all the systemic and structural things that do my head in and frizz my hair ends). Maybe go along to something they have on a Wednesday night or something, you know? But I got sidetracked by the gooberly claustrophobia that descended upon me. I must remember when I next go looking to not let myself get sidetracked. The website is not the people who attend, which is what I am looking for. The people. Not the guff that covers them over in beige coloured dust.

I hate 21st century Christianity. Did you guess that? What I also hate about it is that complaining about it like this is naughty naughty naughty and some people will read this as a rant and a rave by a bitter person trying to find something perfect but that's not it, folks. It's just that so much of this deal is so massively gassed up with secondary bullshit that if anyone lights a match we're done for. I don't understand it because I did not walk in these circles when I was younger and now I'm older I love Jesus and I love God and I love the Spirit and I want to just be able to hang with some people in relation to that AND I CAN'T FIND IT!!! How hard is it? Why are there not groups of Christians wanting to hang out on each others' couches? Why are none of them inviting me to hang out on their couch? My only conclusion must be that GOD IS KEEPING ME AWAY FROM EVERYBODY!!!! :)

It's me. Haha. He's keeping me here, confined on this blog, so that I do as little damage to the Christian populace as possible. So that you can just click away and I can just turn the computer off and no one comes to any harm :) Hah :)

Or alternatively, God is speaking to me but I AM A BIG THICK BRICK who, when he says, "Try this group of people" says no because I am being stiff-necked and willful and a big scaredy cat and there are 486,000 different reasons why that particular group will not be acceptable. That is a possibility, I must concur. Just a slight possibility, you understand. But probably not though. That and refusing to believe that there is anywhere out there that I am going to be able to fit into, even if it's wedged in slightly sideways. That self-defeating thought going through the Susie head is probably one more thing stopping me from seeing clearly in this matter. *Sigh* It's hard being such a clod.

PS: In a completely unrelated postscript, I saw the movie Up today. Has anyone seen it? I just fell in love with Dug. "My name is Dug. I have just met you and I love you. My master made me this collar. He is a good and smart master and he made me this collar so that I may talk ... SQUIRREL!!"

The Life of a Caretaker

I have been learning that the life of a caretaker is as addictive as the life of an alcoholic. Here the intoxication is the emotional relief that temporarily comes when answering a loved one's need. Though it never lasts, in the moment of answering someone's need, we feel loved. While much good can come from this, especially for those the caretaker attends, the care itself becomes a drink by which we briefly numb a worthlessness that won't go away unless constantly doused by another shot of self-sacrifice.

It all tightens until what others need is anticipated beyond what is real, and then, without any true need being voiced, an anxiety to respond builds that can only be relieved if something is offered or done. At the heart of this is the ever-present worry that unless doing something for another there is no possibility of being loved. So the needs of others stand within reach like bottles behind a bar that, try as he or she will, the caretaker cannot resist.

I have experienced this even in the simple issue of calling a loved one while away from home. Even when no one expects to hear from me, I can agonize over whether to call. Often, unable to withstand the discomfor of not registering some evidence of my love, I will end up going to great lengths to call.

IN truth, caretaking, though seeming quite generous, is very self-serving, and its urgent self-centredness prevents a life of genuine compassion. In all honesty, to heal from this requires as rigorous a program of recovery as alcoholics enlist, including sponsors who will love us for who we are.

Within one's self, the remedy of spirit that allows for true giving resides somewhere in the faith to believe that each of us is worthy of love, just as we are

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening.

This is why, if when I get involved in any sort of organised Christian group again (skipping the Sunday morning thang), it won't be with a group of people for whom the term "my ministry" does not carry any unease.

Second Sight

If the early monks [the desert dwellers of the third century] paid close attention to themselves, it was only because they knew that rigorous self-analysis was an indispensable spiritual practice. Change was the point of the discipline, and they nailed narcissistic self-definition, correctly, as vainglory. To people schooled in a religion that has often seemed to define sin as a grocery list of dos and don'ts, these monks can seem, as the Dominican Simon Tugwell explains in Ways of Imperfection, "rather casual about morality." They were not all concerned, he writes, "that people should behave correctly according to the rules, but rather that people should be able to see their situation clearly for what it is, and so become free from the distorting perspective which underlies all our sins."

Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me

I've been thinking a lot the last few days. I commented recently on a blog post (here) about my inability to attend a church building. I said, "why would I commit myself to something like that?"One of the comments was this, which has given me food for thought:

I get what you’re saying. I feel the same way sometimes.

I think you see where dealing with the awkwardness and difficulties and failures to connect are pretty much what “loving the church” actually means in context, too. All that crap you instinctively dislike is more or less what you, as a Christian, are being groomed to overstand, forgive, transcend and love and grow through; saying “why would I commit myself to something like that?” is just unrepentant hypocrisy and we should know better.

I thought it was an interesting comment and while I bridled a little at it, of course it is something I need to keep in mind. I can criticise Christian communities' sin and failure and refusal to admit their own sins, corporate and otherwise, truly. That is what I mean when I say "why would I commit to something like that?" If the community I join cannot be true and real and vulnerable with itself and its people and me, then I do not wish to be a part of it. I cannot. I cannot be a part of a group that is unrepentently hypocritical itself. But I cannot be an island unto myself either. What is one to do? (I guess one is to wait and ask. But I have been waiting and asking for an awfully long time now, I cannot help but wonder whether I am being deliberately obtuse in hearing in this regard or whether this is one of those thousand years as a day type scenarios. Perhaps I am waiting for perfection. I don't think so. I am waiting for transparency though).

And yet, of course, the same defections I criticise in those communities are the same ones in myself. That is probably why I dislike them so. I have had cause over the past couple of days to see a little bit more into my capacity for acedia, betrayal, commitment phobia, lust, and on and on and on. I am viewing these things as I do from within what has been the greatest evidence outward of these propensities in me: my leaving of a perfectly good, though not perfect, marriage. The things I told myself about brighter horizons. The daydreams about other men, the insistence that I could not stay and it could not be fixed. I did not believe that life could flow after death. It's been a most sobering experience for me to realise how little I see in this regard, how I viewed my marriage like a consumer (with a hope to upgrade to a Christian model). I am, after all, a product of the same culture that I despise and decry. It's just easier to see it in the culture than it is within me. Because what I see within I despise and scapegoat, I guess.

(And yet, of course that description of leaving my marriage is a one-sided simplistic sort of one. I had nothing left after being sick for so long. I was sort of falling apart and I couldn't stay. And yet ... and yet ...)

But it is safe for me to view my murkier depths, from within the enfoldment of God. I know that I am loved. I know it not because I prod myself to believe something that will be good for me to believe. I know it because I know it. But still, seeing these things hurts. I am so much more and less than what I used to think I was when I was more blind than I am now. And now I am less blind than I was, I know that I am pretty damn blind. *Sigh*

(And a sigh of relief, paradoxially, also. I need God to see. I cannot do without him/her. And the small realities and seeings that slowly, drippingly, over days and weeks unfold are so different to what I once thought. Where once I thought small and constricted now I see a little bit more how beautiful things are in God's economy. I am understanding the differences between wholesomeness and holiness, for example.) Places where I have hope that I can one day stand).

HT to Barefoot Barbara, who I have linked to not once but twice in this post :)

But I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Is parked here

The Three Communities

Just read this over at the Leading Questions blog (HT to kinnon.tv):

We are witnessing the beginning of an era where the institutional structures that we've depended upon for maintaining progress and continuity in our world are now declining into powerlessness or extinction.

I'm becoming convinced that what all these national and global commentators are missing is the significance of local communities. There is a great emphasis on the power of virtual communities, but that is a different thing.

From now on we are all members of three distinct communities.

• The global community through institutions of business and government.
• The virtual community through the tools of social media and the internet.
• The local community through the place where we live.

I agree. I predict that local communities will begin flourishing from their current death throes. I very much like the combination of those two, local and virtual. I was just thinking the other day what a tool the internet can be in bringing together like minded people who might happen to live in the same suburb or in the next street. I was actually playing around with the idea of a community veggie swap for people who grow their own veggies, after Andrea mentioned one in Brunswick or Collingwood. Great idea, and a nice way to meet your neighbours and get to know them a bit, eating their pumpkin, instead of just seeing them as one more person to be in competition with, you know?

I feel like my heart is increasingly being turned to the people nearby (even though my grouch is too, unfortunately - see below :)

One of the things that I suppose keeps us indoors and away from each other (among many) is how transient we all are, I suspect. I rent here in my suburb. I have no intentions of leaving seeing I have no reason to leave, but if I was forced to then I would possibly consider packing up and moving my way to the Dandenong Ranges. I wonder if this is partly the reason why we don't get involved in our local communities right where we are, the thought that we don't know how long we will be here and so why bother? It's certainly been one of mine.

But for all I know I will be here for the next 10 years! I was actually thinking of having a chat to the kids in the street next time they come a-calling about an idea I've got for maybe seeing if we can organise some sort of street party. A bit of a "getting to know you" for the neighbours, you know? I don't know how it would work, or any of those yukky logistical things, but at the very least the kids would have some fun :)

(Actually, I'm not sure when I will see the kids next. One of them came over three days in a row last week until I cracked the wobblies :) Then three of them came visiting earlier this week but I was sick and really ultra crabby and one look at my grouchy face and they all left. Hmmmm. So if they ever dare to come visiting again, I might suggest it to them and see what they think.

Brown paper packages tied up with string

Well, it wasn't tied up with string so much as sealed up with sticky tape. And it was a box rather than a package. It was pretty big and came in the mail yesterday. Like, over 30 bucks' postage big. My mail packages usually come from amazon.com secondhand book suppliers or EBay CD sellers. This one came for free, from a real live generous soul from Minneapolis and contained a book AND music :) Spoilt girl.

Several of the CDs were mix tapes. Mix tapes I say!!! Well, they're mix CDs actually, but just as CDs are still called albums, so the mix tape shall always and forever be known to me as the mix tape, whatever incarnation they come in. (Anyone read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby? Much better than the movie, though that was good and Jack Black did a pretty good Barry it has to be said. Opinionated music lovers and compulsive list doers will love this book, which sings the praises of mix tapes with the reverence that is their due :)

The lovely mail package came from Jon, party head extraordinaire of Something Else fame. The book was one his grandfather wrote about what he discovered when reading the bible, dismissing the claims of mothership christianity, and using his own mind to think for himself. A heady combination, and I look forward to reading what he has to say. What is more attractive than a mind having original thoughts? I don't even need to agree with the thinker for it to be a wonderful intellectual experience.

The mix tapes I haven't listened to yet. I am saving them for the weekend, when I shall have my house to myself again, at least for the few days of the weekend, and hopefully for good (please God. Please. P-l-e-a-s-e). Listening to mix tapes has to be done in the correct time and place, especially ones that have come accompanied with their own liner notes and require playing very loud and reverently, as a very personalised peek into another soul that they are :)

And the charm of receiving an illegally copied disk of the latest Metallica album from a fellow Christian was not lost on me :) For many years I didn't think there existed any sort of Christian like that :) Now I find there's thousands of you!

Thanks Jon, it really made my day getting this package :) If I had a teleporter machine sitting in my backyard, you and your wife and kids would be on the list. Especially on a day when you're having one of your parties ;)

Community takes many forms, does it not?

Bloggish Meetings

I met Louisa for coffee on Sunday. I was a little bit nervous, as is only right when you meet a new person, especially someone who you have been chatting to online beforehand.

I felt comfortable straight away, however, and it was really cool to hang out with Louisa, her three kids (two of whose names I have forgotten already), and her dog Mocha (is it bad form to remember the dog's name but to forget two of the kids' names??) I look forward to catching up for dinner with her and her hubby and chatting about God and how luvverly he is :)

This weekend has been pretty full on, I must say. It's been all emotional and I've been living in anxiety a fair bit of the time, or else in hyperactivity - just flaky, you know, the way Blogthings said below, hehe :) I think my flakiness is due to the fact that I haven't been indulging my creativity as much in the past week or so, ever since I have had my middle ear infection. And boy, it doesn't take long until I start thinking I can't do it. I lose faith in being able to access that place where it all comes from, and start blocking myself. Sigh. Sometimes I drive myself cerrazee.

I'm actually looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow just for the balancing out. Whoever would have thunk it? Looking forward also to returning back to the balancing boat of doing what I know I need to do, and trusting that the place that I have started walking in ever so gently hasn't actually gone anywhere, this weird place where my right brain gets to play and my left brain gets to shut the hell up for five minutes :)

Sometimes I get annoyed that the lessons we learn still have to keep being re-applied. How cool if we learned them and they applied for a 75 year time period before we had to look at them again :)

Finding community

Susie's resilience-ometer is a bit flabby these days, I must say. I rang the Christian meditation group I've been thinking of for the past few weeks, only to find that the very last session was held last night because the guy running it is getting married and moving out of where he is. And I indulged in a bit of "Oh! I'm gonna be stuck in the desert by myself forever!" thinking.

The guy who ran the classes shared a house with 3 other people who are all involved together in different types of Christian-ish stuff, and who go to the same church building together. He was moving out to get married, and so the classes have ended.

I liked the idea of these people all sharing a house together, in one way. Although the thought of the church building still stiffens my shoulders straight away, part of me dribbles copiously at the thought of all that intentional community. But the rest of me goes, "But when do they get time alone?" And that right there is the rub. How does a person who requires several hours at least of solitude every day to maintain equilibrium dribble at the thought of that sort of intentional community? But still, I do. Perhaps I shall begin my own intentional community, a Zen Universalist Christian Solitudes group, who share a house and only talk to each other for an hour or so every day :) Heh :)

You know, I really do seriously believe that when the door opens it opens, in terms of hooking up with other believers, and you know about it. Not that it is easy to believe that, being part of the great giant swathe of believers stuck out on their ownsomes all over the world. What a strange time we live in, do we not? Such a giant mass exodus from church buildings of people who are thirsty for the real stuff, who ain't gonna buy the control anymore. Hallelujah. But oh, ever since I've gone out of it all, I've been hanging for a coming together. The type which I haven't really experienced before. The type where I don't carry the dragging shadow of my real-but-unshowable self, my secret sins. The type where I get to be myself in all my messiness and goodness.

And so yes, I think the doors open, but in their own time. Even though I have been saying that for years. But I haven't been anywhere near ready to get back into Christian community. Until (maybe, perhaps) now. And not that I have had all that many open doors over the past 10 years in any respect (which may come across sounding rather pity partyish, but is simply the truth of how things have been). I know that there is a place and a group of people for me. When I have been indulging in regular contemplative prayer and swimming in God I can rest and relax in that. I just know it will happen. I can feel it. But I haven't done any contemplative prayer for a week, and have just come off several days sickness, and so therefore today I plot and ponder about ways to find it and force it to happen. Silly silly girl. :) Because the signposts and the gutfeels and the "go there" whispers and resonations live 400 relaxing levels below striving.

Divine psychosis

I am going to my writers' group tomorrow night. I didn't go from June last year until March this year because I was either feeling too sick or too suicidal or too blocked in terms of writing fiction (fiction is the pinnacle for me. I can be writing tons of nonfiction stuff - even hopefully one day getting paid for some of the stuff I write, but I know I won't feel like a real writer until I am back on the fiction horse again. )

There's something inspiring about getting together with a bunch of people who are like you - it must be telling how often I feel like I'm kinda a bit out of the loop or weird or on the fringes or whatever, as friendly and as outgoing as I am, that when I get together with likeminded people part of me is sitting there going, "Wow, they do the same things I do! I'm not the only one who writes!" (Or who is a Christian, or whatever). If that's not a sign that it's time to start stepping back into more intentional community, in whatever forms those take, then I don't know what is :)

And tomorrow night fits my mood. We are getting together beforehand to eat some food together, and then we are going to a seminar at the Alfred Hospital (rock on at the hospital, woohoo) which is about Writing Madness. Heh! How suitable :) Psychosis both as a subject of writing, and also writing as written by psychotics. Should be funny. Or maybe not. But these people are a rather eclectic group, many of who drink way too much. Maybe I'll join them :)