New Community Resident’s Journal—Week 1                                                                   by Elena Zubulake

It’s hard to believe we’ve only been here less than a week… a week tomorrow to be exact. So much has happened, from our late-night-exhausted-after-21-hours-of-driving-with-two-kitties arrival, to today— my first day on a computer since arriving on the first day of Aquarius in our new mountain community home.

To put it quite honestly, “arriving” at Full Bloom Community, has been pretty much everything I could have wanted it to be and more, and the ancient part of my being so stomach-churning-hungry for village is already feeling deeply fed by being here only 6 short winter days.

I do realize in saying that the risk of “speaking too soon” or the natural tendency of NRE–new relationship energy–to predominate the field at the beginning of any new intimacy or love based relationship, be it a partner, a new job, or in this case, a new village. But I will take the risk, knowing that mountains crumble and ice melts, and even go out on a limb to say, “yes, indeed, I am falling in love”. After all, we are here to at least give falling in love with a village of human and non-human companions a good ol’ try-on-for-size.

“Being Fed” could be the most beautifully fitting metaphor for our time here thus far. Sitting here now, eating Victor’s left over birthday cake, inspired by the orange cake his grandmother used to make him when he was a kid. A cake created by my own hands and the enthusiastic hands of two tow headed girls and a boy in a kitchen full of the busy-ness of midday, a lunch of greens from the green house, bread from the bakery, an egg salad with lovage from the garden and eggs from the chickens out in the pasture. People winding in and out from brush burning up the hillside. All whilst, trying to keep the “secret” of the cake making from Victor’s sight.

I have been fed abundantly every day since arriving by food created in a kitchen full of story— the story of a community coming together, the daily comings and goings, the meetings and the partings, the baking of many loaves of bread, the kids getting taller, a place where visions have been made, where arguments have brewed, and ultimately where an older-kind-of-family-every-day-loving has found a little root from which to sprout. The abundance of a community begins right here.

How do I know all this? Because the food and connection here feel delicious. The succulent lamb from up the road, the perfectly cooked salmon that Jacob caught this summer, the roasted potatoes with a little of this very earth still in their essence, the sweet chard from the green house….

….the perfectly cooked heart share circle that left my belly full and round, the delectable laughter seasoning our first breakfast here after awakening and finding our way to the kitchen, the spicy-ness of the impromptu “fashion show”, the bitterness of an interaction with a visitor followed by the sweetness of a curious inquiry into what happened, and the ongoing crossing of paths that just makes daily life more interesting, diverse, and delightful. And sacred.

You pull together some quality ingredients, just a few, and a delicious stew of possibility is created. I feel that and look forward to more as Victor and I live into our own deliciousness and see how it can add a new flavor to this already well cooked stew.

I just heard Ryan call out from downstairs that they are making lamb meatballs for dinner. Yum!!!