26 is already a year I'm not really looking forward to. not so much because of me getting older, though maybe that's part of it. Mostly I just feel kind of crappy about the whole affair. Sometimes I wish that I lived in an age where it was socially appropriate not to know exactly how many years old I am. Also, I really don't enjoy planning my own birthday parties but the alternative--an evening of primetime TV and maybe some canned tuna and bread--is just not the sort of thing that I want to do on my birthday.
Part of this I think is the funk I've been in most of the day... make that most of the winter. I enjoy my job and making the zine is at once intense, hectic, and life affirming, I also find myself swallowed by my life. So many of my friends still don't know that I'm back in town it would seem, and of those who do I barely have time to see them and when I do I'm usually cranky or tired or pressed for time. Does this ever get better? Lord I hope so. I would like to paint an idyllic pastiche of what living in a Catholic Worker would be like but I know that the life of a dedicated peace activist is not an easy one, neither is serving the poor or becoming poor oneself in this service. When I was at the LACW we were up every day no later than seven and we worked hard, we also rested well in the evenings and our afternoons were full of intelectually stimulating things like Bible study or community meetings or sometimes presentations and discussions and liturgy. It was a welcoming and supportive environment but I can't imagine it always being so. I think that's why the veteran Catholic Workers whom I've met all havve these keen and impecccable senses of humor, without which they would be left to tear each other to ribbons at the end of the day.
One thing that I've been learning here at the house of anger is that when people just live in the same space tension makes communication difficult. One person might spill something on someone's carpet and that could set them off, another person might leave a sink full of every dirty dish in the house making other people's cooking impossible, still another person could have the unfortunate habit of leaving disposable razors all over the floor of the bathroom and in the tub; none of these things are conducive to a happy living situation.
I think that any illusions of that Catholic Worker Pastiche have been rubbed into reality by living in this house. It's not a bad thing, infact as I think about it I welcome the fact because it provides me with an important contrast and in fact it fuels my desire to live in an authentic community and living a life of service. I know now what kind of living arrangement doesn't work in a big house and I have some experience within communities like the LACW and Spartacus Books that I hope I could apply to my life in the coming years. All I need to do now is cultivate that indominable sense of humor and taste for smartassery.
In the coming weeks I will be preparing to move into Samaritan House, a move that I hope might be transitional, I pray that together with the people I've met who've expressed a desire to open a new CW house things in my life will begin to change as this project gets under way. And if it turns out that there's still more time between myself and this dream then I can be assured that it's only because God has other stufff for me to learn first.
Mybe one day I'll be able to leave to attend things like the National Catholic Worker Gathering in Iowa or the SOA protests in Georga and that I could do it as a reporter for the Christian Radical, God willing one day I'll be able to work as a Catholic Worker, living on the donations that come to aid the homeless and the mentally ill in this city.
God willing.
