Defining word: community
All of my homies move to the Hawthorne Park Apartments challenge
“I can’t believe how often you see your friends.” “You really have to cultivate that.”
My friend Rachel cultivates kombucha. I don’t think that cultivates is the correct verb to use here, but she makes kombucha, and I’ve had it, and it is good.
I leave my door open when the weather is nice. The weather is nice, so my door is open, and my friends are on a walk. They are walking by my house. Well come on over! They do. We drink lemonade and fumble through stoned descriptions of our days. Please recall that the weather is nice, so we are stoned, and also my door is open. Another friend walks right through the door. What are you doing here!? This is the world I want to live in. This is the world I live in!
“I can’t help but feel crushed by the weight of what I owe to my community, certain I’m going to hurt the people I’ve fooled into loving me, convinced that I’m doing them a favour by icing them out until I get my shit together… It is tempting, in this world of alarm-bells and flashing warning signs, to want to trap myself in a room where there’s nothing to bounce off of but myself.” (Internet Princess)
Sometimes I blink and find myself surrounded by problems of my own creation. When this happens, I cannot muster the constitution to ask for help. But still, there are people who will sit with me as I clean up my own messes.
[Me, jumping in the rain to keep warm]: “I am having so much fun!”
[My friend with an unfixable flat, waiting for my neighbor to pick us up]: “I haven’t seen you this happy in weeks.”
An article called “Live Closer to Your Friends” makes the most profoundly obvious claim: it’s nice to live close to the people who you care about. As Anne Helen Peterson wrote in Culture Study, you should actually strive to live SUPERCLOSE to the people who you care about.
Related term: Spontaneity; Can I borrow your hand pump? Yes, I’m in the lawn with my friend. Are you home? Yes, my brother is here, come by. Are you leaving soon? Knock knock! I made you juice. I made you espresso. I need batteries. Use your key. There’s kombucha in the fridge. Want to go to the store? Let me help you with that. Ah, he’s home. Oh, she’s gone.
This made me think of you.
–The yeast infection is going to love this one.
–Men get those too, you know.
–What? Like, on the inside?
–The fuck, Kendall, no, on the outside. All red and bumpy.
We were about 30 miles into a gravel ride in Yazoo County. Discussing our genitals was only natural.
–If you type ‘penis hurts biking red’ into any of the forums, there’s a new result every day of the week.
–I have personally spoken to more women with cycling-induced vaginal issues than I have seen posts online about them.
–When men need help, they ask the internet. When women need help, they ask their friends.
I listen as two adult men discuss their skincare routines. “We’ll get you fixed up, buddy.”
A process note: This structure is ripped straight from a few chapters of Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She wrote chapters with “serendipity,” “small,” and “writer” as the organizing concepts.
If only there were a socioeconomical idealism centered around this concept I could subscribe to 🤔 !!!!