JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Susan Mernit has made some new rules for herself – and I might borrow hers! I was thinking this morning that I need new discipline – then I saw her post. It’s all too easy for me to write and read until late, and then it takes a while still for me to settle into sleep. When I get up late, the day gets off to a less-than-ideal start. and I’m perpetually catching-up. Like Susan, I need to find a time when I stop whatever it is I’m doing and go to bed. (I guess she’s already stopped working for the night by now!)

Her ideas of going to the beach and having a date with her husband, each once a week, appeal to me. I could copy those. Bubble bath night is one I’ll borrow too…thanks Susan for the inspiration!

Someone told me that there are problems with posting comments to this blog. Is anyone else having problems? If so, please email me: harrowme AT yahoo.com
I’m sorry and I will try to see what I can do, if I can figure out what is wrong.

The comments on this blog have been fun, especially the past couple weeks. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read and write. I want discussions and dialogues to happen here. I’m trying to spend more time replying to comments as I can.

I have noticed though that sometimes what I’ve written has upset others. I don’t want to upset people. I don’t like upsetting people. Especially friends! I think I may have gotten a bit careless and carefree, burning too much midnight oil too often, trying to squeeze in one more post during those precious quiet hours of productivity…

If I offend someone, I want to know. Please tell me. I want to be able to fix it if I can. I want to seek forgiveness if that’s what is needed. I want to try to clarify and communicate.

But maybe what others are seeing is me. Who I am. What I believe. We’re all free to disagree. And disagreements are part of life. Communication often involves conflict. Maybe what I am writing – and how others are responding – is revealing sides of me that I need to see. Not too pretty at times. Or maybe this is just what it means to be who I am, not pretending or putting on a show, but being me, warts, scars, birthmarks and all, and talking with whoever wants to talk. Maybe this is what conversation is. How community begins. What blogging is about.

The first harvest has come. Crisp and fresh. Baby lettuce. You don’t need dressing. You don’t need a bowl with tongs to toss it. You can’t wait anyway. You pick a piece in your hand, soft and green. You stand in the sunshine, feet in the dirt, and taste the spring.

I spent Sunday morning “working on the streets” as a neighbor described it, pushing a broom against stubborn wedges of curbside mud, sweeping our neighborhood for part of our annual spring cleaning. Each year we sign up for shifts for a day – voluntarily- and take our turns weeding, mulching and tidying this community that 60+ families call home. When I think about our “spruce-up” or the other events where we cooperate as neighbors, the word that comes to mind is “pride of ownership”.

As I looked around at my fellow workers with weeds and wheelbarrows, I saw many new faces, families who had just moved into our neighborhood, names I didn’t yet know. There were some like us who have been here the whole 3 years, familiar friends, and many first-timers. A mix of newbies and oldies. It’s those who care about our community, who want to make things happen, who want to get to know each other and work side by side. Those who are willing to sweat and get dirty, pay the price for what they want to experience here. Comraderie comes from shoveling aromatic mulch, riding together in a pick-up truck and kneeling in the dirt to plant and pull. We tidied the entrances, cleaned the streets, mulched the perimeters, freshened up the playground and had a picnic to celebrate.

Ted and I have had an ongoing conversation this week about community and what it means. Yes, I am the reason he cares about Movable Type software on a personal level. The announced changes may mean a change for this blog: it may be time to pack up the boxes and move somewhere new.

Between what I’ve read about the Internet Law Program, and what I understand about MT, I’ve found myself contemplating quite a few questions this week. It’s been fun (and intense at times!) to talk about them with Ted. What does it mean for a community to own something? To feel that something is theirs? When and how is it best for a corporation or a copyright to have legal rights? What is the impact on humanity and creativity? How can a community acquire that crucial “pride of ownership”? When people have passion and desire, when they have power, when they can create and change and choose, it’s amazing what can happen. It is vibrant and alive. It is fun. It is life.

I’ve been a part of various communities in my life. We’ve participated in different spiritual communities. I’ve belonged to exclusive writing groups and inclusive meetings for mothers. I’m not a part of the open source community although my husband is…

Perhaps the community I understand the most at the moment is the one where we live. The place where we run and play, where we weed and sweep. Where we share common space. Where we belong.

That morning a newer neighbor asked my advice about plants in the median that needed pruning. I wasn’t familiar with this particular lime green one and although I agreed that it seemed unhappy, I was a bit hesitant and suggested consulting someone else certain to be an expert. Another new neighbor said, “There’s no one giving commands here. There’s consensus.” And with that, the decision was made and the plant’s stale branches lopped.

On a morning like yesterday, it’s easy to see and say what community can do. What it means to feel that this belongs to us. Now when I drive through our neighborhood, I’ll see the red and purple rhododendrons blooming in their blankets of mulch. I’ll see the medians tidied and dark with new dirt, the plants pruned and ordered, prepared for another summer of flowers. I’ll see the signs, the signs at the entrance, cleaned and stained.

I’ll see the signs that say this place is ours. All of ours. This is us.

Postscript Monday morning….
Note: While the opinions expressed here are my entirely my own, not those of my lover, Ted has written two more posts Code. community and money, and Why is it always about us vs them? on community issues….which so far this morning has been retitled It’s the community, stupid!” by one blogger, and received a thoughtful response from Dave Winer in As good a time as any.

I order it and it takes a while to come. An email says it will be slow. I keep the email in my inbox, keep the order in my mind. I’m waiting. Watching. Where is it? When will it get here? Then Friday morning I swing open the little door with the key and find it there in the mailbox, beneath all the envelopes a brown paper package (but not “tied up with string”, sealed with staples instead) and I come home carrying children and wondering how soon I can open it.

At lunch I sit down with the stack of mail and fingers migrate to the package. I tear it open to see the angel’s marble face on the cover. It’s in my hands now. Thinner than I thought. Bluer than I thought. The Foreword’s mystery writer is revealed: I am delighted, exclaiming and reading aloud the provocative prose to my lunchtime companions. I wonder how long it will take me to read the whole thing. How much time I should set aside. Even though books are sacred in our house and must never be baptized, I find myself flipping through the pages with salsa fingers, risking stains. I am hungry.

I’m tired today from our activities. And I’ve been taking time to read this book I so desired. Therefore posts today will be a bit brief. But I want to mention another book…

Jay McCarthy today summarized a book he read. It is a book I have read many times. I’m surprised I can’t find it on the shelf above my desk, but I remember the cover of the paperback copy I owned: white with drawing in purple, blue and black (barbed wire).

I feel strong fondness for this book. I’m not sure if it is because it is one of the books I remember seeing my father read when I was younger. Or if it is because it was one of the books that my favorite teacher in high school (perhaps my favorite teacher ever) assigned us to read in his class. Or I think that it is the book itself, rich in its rawness, honesty and stories of suffering. I wish I had my copy. I remember what it said about faith and fear, how precious were pieces of bread or Bible in the gulag.

After we read the book, my teacher assigned us the author’s commencement address at Harvard in 1978: A World Split Apart. I’m grateful for Jay’s reminder of this book and author. Although the speech is old, 25 years old last June, it is worth reading again today.

truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter

[…]

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man — the master of the world — does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet society.

[…]

After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music. All this is visible to numerous observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.