and it moves

onward and forward projects go. Went yesterday evening to a meeting of the Karlshof people who started a year ago a project for non-commercial agriculture. The idea of the meeting was to see what had been done and how we - people who want to support the project and the idea of a non-commercial life in general - could all contribute to its development. There were about 30 people there, including R, who is with me in the preparation group for the autonomous seminar on solidary economy, and lived on Karlshof for a little while.

I wrote to Karlshof a week or so ago to see whether they'd be ok with me showing up for three or four weeks in June. One of the 8 people had answered that it would be basically fine - but I still had a problem with the fact that I didn't know the people's faces and didn't feel like I'd really found the entrance point to the network. Finding the entrance key to social network is always a bit of a random process.
As I arrived yesterday, I saw a few faces I'd seen in other similar meetings, but no one I could go up to and start chatting comfortably with, until R showed up. And then, as the meeting started and we gathered topics we wanted to talk about, I started feeling more comfortable with the whole situation, more like I was in the right spot. I mentionned the Buschberghof example near Hamburg, who do community supported agriculture, and in fact nobody knew about it but many found it interesting, among others to have as an example of how such projects CAN function, in spite of people's scepticism.
We had a small break and I tried to play table football with V, the Karlshof guy who had replied to my email, before I revealed myself as the email writer. I was embarrassingly bad at the game, but it didn't matter too much. V stated again that coming over wouldn't be a problem, that I should just send an email with an arrival date.
I talked with another guy who knows of a similar project near Madrid. It would be really interesting if I could get the contacts and go there too. Another girl from Poland was also interested in the Madrid project and would be going this summer. We exchanged contacts, and perhaps we could go down together. My months of freedom are really taking shape, it feels great.

As for the Karlshof non-commercial agriculture project - the Berlin people are going to meet for a leisurly self-organised brunch in two weeks' time to discuss how we can organise the distribution in the city and see what else we can do.

I exchanged details with a few people and left to meet up with L, who has just come from Paris for the weekend, at the McPlanet congress. Kath was also there but left just before I arrived, as she was too tired. We seem to be experts at sending one another sms and making out meeting points but then not managing to make it to the meeting. Was good seeing L again, as well as many of the other people from the berlin environmental scene that I've been seeing randomly a few times a year for the past several years. I used to find it uncomfortable beeing amidst these groups because I do not belong to the organisation they are all in and I used to feel excluded by the perceived strong group identity. Now none of this matters anymore.

Full day again today - chaotic meeting of the seminar preparation group this afternoon, and several events in the evening. In a way, I'm started to be as socially busy as I was during my erasmus semester in 2001 - which is good because it makes me feel a lot more at home in Berlin, and wanting to come back to continue working on the projects I'm getting involved in. But I'm also getting a little scattered. Oh well, some balance will come in.