In an amazing city like San Francisco, with its great restaurants and clubs, its museums and landmarks, its gorgeous parks and infamous parades, it’s striking how alone one can feel. Things like having no one to call to help you change a weird halogen light bulb, or to help you move, add up over time. And being sick, big sick, in the city strikes a chord like few things do.
You do learn, as an urban dweller, to use pay-for-hire services, like grocery and pharmacy delivery, taxis and car services. But these don’t take the place of an impromptu house call with a comforting meal, your missed dry cleaning, and a half hour whirl through the kitchen to make it sparkle when you’re lying sick in bed.
Of course, it wasn’t really city living in the end that got me down, but my lack of community there.
But what is community? This term gets bandied around a lot these days as we redefine community in the digital age, nostalgic for the communities of small scale most of us have lost, and craving something we can’t quite name.
Of all the definitions for community I’ve seen, I like the scientific one the best:
“A group of organisms or populations living and interacting with one another in a particular environment. The organisms in a community affect each other’s abundance, distribution, and evolutionary adaptation. Depending on how broadly one views the interaction between organisms, a community can be small and local, as in a pond or tree, or regional or global, as in a biome.” (American Heritage Science Dictionary).
The way I read this, when I am in community with you, your welfare matters to me because it directly impacts me. And I know I mean the same to you. Whether you live down the street or across the world from me, I will reach across the divide to lend a hand, and I know you will do the same.
Signs of Community
When I moved to downtown Floyd in 2011 (nearby to my old hometown), I didn’t even have to ask for help moving. They asked me when I was moving, planned their weekend around it, and some I hadn’t even asked showed up to help. When the new kitchen table and chairs I bought turned out to need extensive assembly, a friend volunteered to come over two nights in a row to help me put it together, bringing tools and a housewarming gift for my kitchen.
The thing is, if I hadn’t had these cheerfully wonderful volunteers organizing me to move, I had so many other people I could have called. Between all the people I know from my decades-long roots here and the distant acquaintances who just seem generally more disposed to pitch in and lend a helping hand, I feel firmly held in community.
Some other observations of community
My brother let me crash with him for free for a year while I got over the stunned realization that I’d spent $120K on an education for a profession I couldn’t bear to practice.
When I told a co-worker that I’d found my own apartment, she didn’t say, “Oh, that’ll be good for you.” Rather, she asked, “Well if you don’t mind my asking, what is your brother going to do without you?”
When I thanked my brother for “saving my hide,” he got misty-eyed and said, “It was a two-way street.” He was recently divorced when I moved in, and sorting out life on his own for the first time in ten years.
I’ve had a quote rattling around in my mind trying to understand why I’m here in rural Appalachia, and these reflections on community tug on some of those same threads:
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Lilla Watson
Photos from San Francisco
I wanted to share these because, well, I can. Facebook made me take down some of the Bay to Breakers photos – but some sights are meant to be seen! San Francisco’s Bay-to-Breakers parade is a particular one-of-a-kind community, an annual tradition that brings the naked and costumed alike, one-time tourists like my mom (with the ponytail in the first photo, and at lower right in the fourth) and regulars who never miss it.
These photos also happen to be from the day I graduated from graduate school in 2009. I didn’t see the parade in person, because I was getting ready. But my family, there for the weekend, went out that morning while I was getting ready, and took these photos, maybe ten blocks from my apartment. Then we headed over to the Palace of Fine Arts, which you can see in that photo with the tall columns.
My CIIS cohort was another kind of community – we definitely made a big impact on each other, struggled and suffered together, and made some longlasting connections. Deepti, standing beside me in the red skirt, is still a friend. Rebecca, crouching in the green sweatshirt and lei in the front, ended up being kind of like a sister, less because we were soulmates (she likes Hello Kitty and Bulgari, I like Lord of the Rings and living in the woods) and more because we were both Asian and just felt more comfortable together. I hadn’t cared nearly so much about my Asian American identity until then, but she and I talked about it a lot, bonding over the core values that even a fourth generation mixed-race Japanese American and a second generation Taiwanese Chinese American shared. I am sure that much of this was highlighted by the focus our schooling made on race and identity, but it was yet another kind of community nested within the CIIS community.
By the end of the long day of graduation festivities, my sister told me she was feeling slightly traumatized by seeing that bit of my bra peeking out all day – ! It was a tad risque, definitely not my norm, and I can cringe at it if I let myself. But that was the era of the winning fashion combo–g-string, low-rise jeans, and tramp stamp–which I NEVER wore!
Besides, it was a day for celebration, and I can’t feel too critical about it when I think about the parade. I still love the dude in his cock ring. Surely I can find no complaint with any part of his costume, except maybe the hat.
“The fourth dimension of intelligence within the heart is Respect. It begins with respect for God, respect for yourself, respect for your brothers, and for all life forms. Respect is a point of honor, although it is a great deal more than that. Though we are one in spirit, each being is unique in love, purpose, and life. Unique qualities belong to each person and endow him with abilities, freedoms, and responsibilities that may not be present for another. Each person, and every aspect of life, is irreplaceable. What you do not bring to the earth, no one else will. Respect begins with knowing that you and your Creator have a covenant, and in that covenant are all the answers and resources you need to make your life work. Then you extend that right to others. This ultimately leads to respect for Divine Order, which is the highest intelligence.”
