moving

MH and I moved this past week. Took a full 7 days of getting our shit packed up and brought over and unpacked. I can’t believe we did it and in some ways I think me losing my job was a blessing in disguise. I could not have imagined going thru this pxs and working at the same time, alongside planning for the conf and all that jazz hazz mazz.

Anyways, in our pxs of building a home, which both of us aim to do — respecting the Three Jewels:

- The Buddha, The Dharma and The Sangha

How do we stay as organizers and revolutionaries AND also be happy and have a good sense of community and family, and be good Buddhist practitioners? This is what I wanna be. I dont want organizing to become an excuse for me to be a sloppy and lazy and messy human being in other parts of my life. This is recipe for disaster AND regret!!!! This is how people feel they have been shortchanged of their life when the revolution didnt happen and I dont wanna ever be resentful like this.

But building a home , the initial steps of it that we are in right now made me realize how my sense of home was so influenced by my parents’ immigrant statuses, their participation in the informal economy — the home was not separated from economic activity. We never bought fancy furniture or thought of “decorating” the home. All that was seen kind of as…extravagant! Not just financially but it wasnt something we did cos home was where my mum taught cooking classes, it was where we rented out rooms to people, it was where we made the products to sell, it was a workspace…

I dont know what to make of that. It is a problem that people fall in love with “playing house” and have a sense that their home is isolated from the bigger world around them, that it HAS to be some kind of frozen cottage on the priarie, idealized AND fucking unreal AND stressful. My family was the other extreme, there was no distinction bw family life, home life and work.

I think I want to reject both. I want to have some boundaries but not so staunch. I want to have some flexibility and fluidity that is real but not so abrupt. I want my space

Is this a capitalist mentality? I dont know…but it surely has some touch of enlightement theory to it…the thing that individuals have their own space their own time their own everything…

but maybe its not all bad.