I originally wrote this page years ago, when BC and Ldot and I had just bought a house together. I talked about families and intentional communities, and having an extended group of people that you could count on. It was all optimistic and starry-eyed and full of Disney chemicals. I sounded like a damn hippie. Well, that was a while ago. The household has since broken up and we are now living seperately, although BC and I are still involved. I've had relationships in the meantime that have started, ended and new ones have started in their turn. So have they. Some ended amicably, a notable few left messes that are still being cleaned up. I'm considerably less optimistic about the "intentional community" aspect of living with people. In large part because living with people is hard. More humans means more needs, more different ways of doing things, and more mess. I don't like having to compromise, and more people in the families means a lot more of that too. And although we often joked about having a built-in tie-breaker, being on the losing end of a vote often felt like being ganged up on. On the other hand, there has been a looser version that has sprung up around me when I wasn't paying attention. I have people who aren't afraid to call me at 3:00 in the morning if they need to, and I know I can do the same with them. There are about 20 people local to me who will show up if anyone needs help to move. There are people who will put up somebody they have never met in their home based on nothing more than a vouch from me, and for whom I would do the same. I now have a half-dozen people who I can visit on foot because people are intentionally moving to be close to each other, choosing proximity to friends over jobs or other factors. My friends and partners are linked together by a myriad of overlapping relationships involving sex, love, work, games, hobbies, music -- six degrees of seperation boiled down to two. I'm not sorry we tried the living together experiment by any means. And I think the community idea still works for me, but perhaps the focus has changed. It has become less about partners and more about relationships of all kinds. Our next step of course, is to change all the street signs to say "Casperia" and declare ourselves a country. "Heart with inifinity" poly symbol created by Brian Crabtree. Last updated July 16 2004. Back to my poly page Back to my home page