We are not meant to live divided & alone...

When I first came to Philadelphia, there was an old Hungarian woman who lived in an apartment upstairs from us, alone. Something happened, maybe she fell, became ill--she stopped coming out of her apartment. Weeks after we last saw her, she was found. There was no food--cabinets and fridge, all empty. She starved to death.

It was one of the things that opened my eyes to the insanity of how we live, separated by nothing more than a wall, a flight of stairs...yet living as strangers. Not long after, we moved into a communal house in Powelton Village.

Capitalism divides and divides and divides--Emerson's Self Reliance made over into a dehumanizing horror. Think of how marketing demographics works-- first dividing us, then repackaging by taste, age, income, race, sex--bleeding our relationships of human significance, with nothing left to connect us but what we buy, how we spend our money.

I'm moving next week... from my one room efficiency in South Philly (where neighbors do, at least, keep an eye out for one another)--to a former factory/warehouse in Kensington--sharing rent and expenses. A few Occupy veterans. A few other refugees from the Machine. Another commune--50 years later.