Like Roots

I love living with Otesha folks. Giant tasks seem mundane, delicious nutritious vegan food gets created in massive pots over camp stoves, love is spread in a hurry, hugs and tears and anger and rawness are expressed so openly and honestly, as a safe space is created for these emotions to be heard.

It's so interesting, embarking for a second time on an Otesha cycling and performing tour. It's an experience that already is and will continue to be entirely different then my last, though there is one similarity. The intentions of folks who show up are generally the same.

People who sign up for Otesha are interested in experimenting in group living, in dedicating endless hours towards living in harmony, in riding their bikes for 8 hours at a time, in compromising and consenting to try new diets, to live in weird places, push their comfort boundaries, reach out to youth, and be totally silly. It's wonderful to see all of these characters come together, and, not knowing one another, determine how we are going to live, day in, day out with one another, how we'll do all the work that needs to be done, while, at the same time performing a play day in day out to hundreds of students, experimenting with our sustainable mobile community.

But were not necessarily a unique breed. Anyone can do these things, and there are hundreds others that are. One quality such people do share is that we all have intention. We all have desire.

As I go forward into this journey, I do so with some nervousness about what these next months will hold. But mostly, after just one week with my new wee family, I go forward with the knowledge that no matter what comes up for us over the next months, I am surrounded by loving support structures, like roots, that run deep deep into the ground.

We have a few more days here in Vancouver, when we'll put on our first few performances, see our audiences reactions, engage in some dialogue with them, and get to know exactly how this is all going to work. Then onwards towards Gibsons, Roberts Creek, and Sechelt. I hope you all are doing well, I think about each of you heaps, wishing that each of you feel the same level of love and support that I find myself feeling in this small Otesha community, forming here in Vancouver. I send some of this positive loving support your way...wherever you are.