CONSPIRATORIAL RELATIONSHIPS

In my continuing explorations of the local Unitarian Society, I have found the same repository of human dysfunction as elsewhere in my continuing search for community. For half a year, I’ve been struggling with the concept of an LGBT social group, and in turn, struggling with the personalities critical to forming it. A friendship I thought I had secured while hobbling and homebound from crippling orthopedic issues went south on me once I recovered a sense of expansiveness and hope. Suddenly, at what I termed the ‘formative’ or exploratory meeting of ‘Club Sandwich’, there arose all kinds of problematic concerns not only with my competency to both facilitate and publicize, but also some perceived insult, entirely unintentional on my part. Some people will help you die but refuse to help you live. A very long time ago, while living in what used to be an East Village bursting with life and Bohemianism, I thought of an assumed name: Eve Invisible. Over my years of living alone I’d become inured to being overlooked. This is still something I struggle with. Now too, in the Hudson Valley poetry community, it seems okay if you keep a low enough profile, but if you should begin to attract attention, the issue then is one of perception. I’ve encountered countless ‘in’ groups, both in secular life, political and otherwise, as well as in church communities. People seem to feel more comfortable in conspiratorial relationships, and I never seem to fit in. Ironically, I’ve found some of the most painful exclusions in religious communities, where ideals of compassion and acceptance are touted and proclaimed, and then discarded when, for instance, issues of human sexuality arise. But the parade of attempted and failed attempts at establishing the kind of connectedness I seek are numerous: I’ll go back to the mid ‘60s and both the Lower East side anarchist community as well as New York Radical Women, then the lesbian feminist community, then the arts and music explosion in lower Manhattan in the mid ‘70s, then a succession of church communities: Judson Memorial, Park Slope United Methodist, St. George’s Episcopal, Calvary Presbyterian. Not to mention a singles resort I was involved with for 10 years, first as a paying guest and then as work exchange. Oh, and certainly the Omega Institute deserves an honorable, or dishonorable mention. Anyway, this is how the blog got started. I am continuing to fight my way out of the isolation I sunk into subsequent to my geographical relocation out of the City. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.