Congressing, advancing

I squint and try to see the shores of a week ago, and there seems to be so much between then and now. It's been a full week, the congress having filled my little heads the most.
Left wing congresses are like a holiday camp, a parenthesis in normal life, a gang of for the most part friendly and generally open people put together randomly and willing to communicate and open up, even in the metro, even with people who are not even from the congress. I enjoyed the Trust: being able to dump my bag and coat and everything anywhere in the massive buildings of the technical uni to go help out in the kitchen, or carrying food, or doing any other thing that needed to be done - and coming back and knowing everything would still be there. Knowing that whatever task needed volunteers for, there would be a handful of people ready to spontaneously take it on. Carrying a heavy box of rice to the tables where the food would be handed in and knowing that I could just turn round and ask the person closest to me to help me carry it. We would talk and be friendly, and then disappear our ways in the Congress, leaving other tasks to other spontaneous helpers.
Auburn head M. and I spent most of the congress together. She and I have surprisingly overlapping interests and are in a similar phase of our reflexion and self-development. It started to make me laugh when I realised that whatever interest I would express ("Have you ever studied Rosa Luxembourg a little closer?", I asked, myself interested in learning more about R.L.), she would say she was into that too ("no, but I'd really like to!") - or vice versa. We went to all the commune workshops on Saturday and were both excited and inspired.
I wasn't sure whether her girlfriend was jealous and suspicious of me whenever she saw us together.

Listening and speaking with various people from communes really made me think. There are so many aspects I am attracted by, and the images, now idealised and glorified, of Longo Mai in Forcalquier, keep floating in my head and coming back. The faces, the looks, the attitudes of communards, rougher, tougher, yet respectful. A different rhythm. Building trust, accepting (and rejoying in) slow processes, witnessing evolutions, both in the community, its material basis, human relations, and within one's self.
Trying out other ways of organising a society. Learning to be a different social animal. Learning through practice, not books, not just two days a week in a seminar.
Gaining freedom through collective organisation.
Offering and creating spaces of alternative freedom for others. Inspiring bubbles of differentness. Giving examples of concrete, comfortable yet sustainable life styles.

I started my studies in large parts because of a book called Alternative Lebensentwürfe - Gelebte Utopien (alternative life sketches - lived utopia). I'd bought it in the German book shop near Beaubourg, a little randomly. I wanted to read in German, I don't think I even really had a conception of what the book could contain. It sounded good. Looking back, it's a pretty bad book. The essays are written on a scant data basis by journalists who are happy to criticise and seem to glee at the examples of failure they focus on. But at the time, I was thrilled. it got me thinking about societies, rules that held people together, the functioning of societies - and I eventually started political science.

During the course of my studies though, I hardly focused on aspects even closely related to that. I did a lot of environmental policy, then development policy, started realising I disliked policy but was interested in theories and politics beyond state activities and with a more sociological approach. And now I've eventually reached my starting point again, but with so much more in me than when I was reading the book in the RER to Paris8.
Going for my present studies was one of the greatest and most beneficial ideas I've ever had. I'm glad. I'm happy. I feel good.
A lot of people smiled at me over the weekend. I think I have a good aura these days.