I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SPEAK IN CHURCH ON A SUNDAY
Kets: I said it before and Ill say it again, days are racing before our eyes and every night is full of activities, even after the scheduled presentations and discussions. Every day we meet very interesting people and sometimes we get to hang out with a few and have a lot of fun. Sometimes I think I will go to sleep early, to have more time to do something in the morning, but the evenings stretch into the night and after just a few hours of sleep the morning comes and we better hurry to pack our stuff, maybe have some breakfast and leave. I’m glad that we are two drivers though so that there is less pressure on us to take the whole distances alone.
In Columbus a comrade had organized our event to take place in a church. We thought it sounded weird but when it got there I saw a lot of signs inside of the simple rooms (posters and flyers etc) indicating that there was probably other political groups using that space as well. For example I saw a flyer with the radical transgender symbol on it. It called for people interested in organizing around gender politics.
There wasn’t that many people who showed up, but still good. Maybe around 25? Though the variety of people was quite wide I would say. 
Plant boxes. I see a lot of these where we go in the US, at infoshops and social centers.
Among them where a few punks, some leftist and, lets not forget to mention, a distant relative of a member of our crew. Someone expressed his dissatisfaction on how people in general society do not recognize the fascism/nationalism that is growing around the united states. He wanted to ask the activists in Europe for ideas and strategy on what to do about it. What can I say about Europe? My general feeling is that Antifascist movement did a good job in cleaning the streets but now we are inevitably facing a nationalistic trend in common people all over the continent despite those efforts.
Old and new photographs hang on the walls inside this church.
After yet another interesting discussion we went to our friend Al’s place. He lived in a beautiful big house with another five people. They had rebuilt a lot of stuff, and had organized a very cozy and DIY-spirited home. It would be a shame if I didn’t mention the very ambitious kitchen again… I’m still amazed. Everything was big: their sink, for dishes or whatever, was made by an elevated bathtub, they saved space in the room by installing the huge fridge through an old door-opening in the wall and isolating it from the outside. Instead of having some corner by the sink do whatever (chop veggies and work with food) they had a little, tall table in the middle with space around it so many people could be in the kitchen and work at the same time. It was pretty inspiring to see more of their solutions, especially since I usually feel claustrophobic in the kitchen back home…
After a great dinner with hummus, garlic breadsticks, salad, tomato sauce and pasta, we went to the backyard and shared funny stories by the fire. Al mentioned that there where tunnels under the city that where built a long time ago for protection against the cold war or a possible nuclear attack. We toyed with the idea of getting there through some of the known entrances to hunt for graffiti and explore (but we didn’t go). Then came J, another person who lived in that house and I went with them for a little dumpster-diving adventure. I was pretty excited because I dont have the chance do it very often these days.
We talked about ideas of healthy lifestyle (like regular physical activity) and the sometimes problematic psychological aspects around it. I find it very frustrating and hard sometimes to maintain a beneficial perspective on these things as there are so many levels on how we are told in this society of whats right or wrong, desirable as well as disvaluing different bodies. Others and our own. I have for a long time wanted to do some project, maybe a zine, to try to explore and maybe bring some motivation and strategies in that complex battlefield of “health”, ideas, self-respect, “riot not diet”, etc, with a queer perspective. J was also interested in these things so we had a good conversation about it. Hopefully we could exchange ideas or even collaborate in the future.
After about 10 minutes in the car (that looked like a little land-rover or something) we found our huge treasure box that we climbed and started digging. It was a freakin great hunt and we found many well preserved vegetables and fruit. Some of the crazier things we found was organic mango juice, almond milk, fancy root chips and pre-made (oven-ready) vegan pizza. WHAT THE!
The evening got longer with good conversations but finally I “put the axe in the floor” and went to sleep on the nice bed in the school bus they had on their yard. Apparently it had been donated to them from some hippie who felt it was to big for him. It runs on vegetable oil though and Al was gonna start working on the interior.