Merging community

It cost 2 dollars each way to take the subway to the South Bronx. On Sundays my daughter and I went, because there was a

community dinner up there at Casa Del Sol, a homesteaded building. Interestingly, many people went, like us, from the Lower East

Side of Manhattan, up to near the Willis Ave. bridge stop, and we convened on the train.


The building was an H shape building, I want to say with 6 or 7 floors. There was no electricity except for the kitchen, which

got its electric wired illegally from the light post outside. Many people got minor electricity from light posts, and I remember the

guys that fixed cars on east 9th street got their electric for tools from the light post. That was a full outdoors situation, there

were vacant lots they used and it was acceptable to get car help there on the street. You could imagine how good this was all

around.


Casa Del Sol was lit by candles in cans, in each stairwell, and in the large space where the wood stove was. Yes, a wood stove.

The food was cooked out doors on these big sheetpans, and extra large skillets found from a restraunt, and the food was

dumpstered or donated, and it was very healthy. Fresh greens and rice and beans, mostly, and fruit.

Usually after dinner people would rest and talk about what they were working on, most people there were political activists, or

Columbia college students, honestly, and while the ploitical activists took all forms and names and elasticities, the college

students were vigorous and bright and helpful and reay to take on the world, and interested. For alot of the people doing eviction

work, or tenants rights work, or various garden related activism, the energy and day to day was hard. But join up with the

energy of the college group, who'll be into your every word and be there at demonstrations, or to unload a truck of mulch, and

you yourself got a boost.


Sometimes we would play those crazy hippie inspired community games or bonding dances, which I will admit, was fun. There was

always work to be done, or something to help out with, plastic on windows, cause it was winter and bitter cold with no heat, or

firewood to chainsaw and split, and brought in, and food to clean up. And then there was music, or a puppet show or a skit, or

someone practicing something or another they wanted to show. And there was a ton of art, of course.


Countless times I would find myself up on the rooftop with someone or people, and talk into the night, looking down to

Manhattan, where my squat was, or at the cars and trucks on the small highway bridge, or staring up, trying to find the moon or

a star to wish apon in all that light.