the prize isn't about winning

listening to roots manuva. "nobody's dancing the way they used to dance," he sings. it reminds me of dj shadow's proclamation about why hip hop sucked in the '90s: "it's the MONEY!"

watching community evolve, reach a critical point. where the strings that connect us are so plentiful that they eclipse the individuals. i can't see you past all of our common points of contact. and the events we gather together at have become so complex, spinning forth so many satellite desires (let's have a this-pod! a that-pod! a pod for when i get up in the middle of the night and have to pee and don't want to go back to bed), and the work required to do them is inversely proportional to the number of people who aren't burnt out and are willing and able to build, lead, follow, work together.

talking with an old friend, how we've seen this evolution three times now over the last six years in the group we gather with. however it manifests this time, i am potentially interested in seeing if anything sustainable for a longer-term community has emerged through all these reinventions.

two things to note: one, that people are seriously pro-creating, so anything we want to build longer-term would stand a much better chance if it was amenable to small children. shoot, i forgot what the second thing was. probably about how we need to remember things so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. oh yeah! it was that we have been successful: we have helped nurture the community skills of so many. i've watched people's mental health stabilize because they feel supported enough to make that journey back through the darkest parts of themselves. i've watched couples break up and both people stay involved and feel welcome in the community (maybe not each individual moment, but in the long haul). i've watched people approach the precipice of drug addiction and move back, shaken, into the arms of people they love. i've seen some grasp an awareness of their skills, bring them to the larger group and grow in strength and confidence.

we aren't home-free in the land of ease, but then, we don't want that. what we do want is more difficult to predict. i would rather let the group speak for itself in a chorus of disagreement and challenge, and see what happens.