I'd like to know more, but... I'd like to check it out, but ... I'd like to visit one day, but...

2.0.02

But(t)s

Scared? Ashamed? Shy? Know yourself to be a bit too much? Never tried anything like that? Not skilled in anything in particular? Owning a pair of two left hands? Not well-read in sacred chants? Hate singing "kumbaya" along with the rest? Not really outspoken? Pierced and tattooed below the neck? You enjoy hugging trees naked? Or - are you just too normal?

Yoo-hoo! Welcome home honey! Blessed be! Warm hug and a kind smile.

Come to be fully yourself.
Come to discover why you are who you are.
Come to explore becoming what you have never though to be.
Come to achieve what was beyond reach for you, because "it was simply like that".
Come to honour your barriers, to play with them, to break them, to keep them, to love who you are right now.

Would I like it?

Do you dream of getting more from life, more taste, more stories, more togetherness, more love, more tenderness, more closeness to people, more layers to being yourself, more to being gay, more to the sex, more to the relationships? Can you just imagine there's something better, satisfying, meaningful?

Do you dislike (somewhere in the crease of your intestine) being told what to do to be happy - and what is happiness at all?
Do you dare to think (in a hidden compartment of your brain) what no one else around you does?
Do you (in a corner of your heart) ask yourself what you honestly feel?

You're so brave, honey! Welcome among your kind, finally!

What do faeries do all day?

Magical creatures as the faeries are, they are still human beings. Bones, flesh and blood, muscles that need stretching, heads that need challenge, stomachs that need feeding, bowels that need emptying, lungs that need breathing, hair that needs washing and combing and braiding, skin that needs caress of the sun and breeze as much as the human touch, hands that need to create, hearts that need love. We mostly do live. Live a life.

We wake up, we wash, we make a fire, we sometimes talk and cuddle for hours throughout the epicurean breakfast, we surprise each other by making something special, we talk of practical things to be done, we wash the laundry, dishes, hands (!), we mow the meadows, chop the wood, plant new trees, we teach each other how to mow, chop or plant, we work in the garden, we chop onions and sing together with our favourite divas and prepare exquisite food, we dig holes in full drag, we spend half a day at the lake - fully nude, we join the yoga workshop, qi-gong practice, we give massages, we receive massages, we organize workshops, we create art of what we find while walking from the toilet to the barn, we make spectacular shows out of thin air, we decorate everything with glitter and feathers and ribbons like spiders, we sweep the house, we "sweep the chimney", we cuddle, we make love, we separate. We allow the space for "I" to shake off the obnoxious "we" and run into the forest to hide and meditate and be with oneself.

We do all of it or we do just one thing. We don't do too much, we take it easy, we try to enjoy every single minute. We leave our work half-unfinished when we realize we do not enjoy it anymore. We see a challenge - we take it. We see a space for improvement - we do it. We have a funny idea - we make it happen. We encourage each other to be creative, and help each other with the most absurd projects, we applaud the smallest of the deeds. We stumble and laugh, we fall into hysteria, we dust ourselves and go on. We hide by working hard and being useful. We observe ourselves hiding in being busy. We share with the others how does it feel to see ourselves hiding behind tasks. We spend a day not doing anything - and not being reproached for it. We feel guilty and in a whim of a second f**k our guilt. We laugh out loud. We are amazing while counting butterflies swinging in hammock - our hairy legs sticking out and pointing with 5-inch heels.

There's an added value to every faerie activity. Often, what you do is as much important as how you do it. Do you like it? Does it satisfy you? Does it lift your spirit? Does it feed your soul? Does it feel good? There's as many mundane tasks in faerie life as of the glamor and glitter. We try to do our routines with style, with love, with care, with interest, with a sense for craziness. With full consciousness (Why am I doing it? Is it useful? Is it fun?), presence (I'm right here - right now - with you.), awareness (How does it affects the others? What does it teach me?). We thrive on togetherness without neglecting a need for solitude, we try to think of the community while not suppressing the individual needs. We shovel in cocktail dress, we go for a picnic in boots and overall, we (may) dine with whigs, shower in leather harness, or just be as civil as feels good. We experiment with what we felt too embarrassed to do in the other life.

Though, what constitutes a faerie life is not so much what we do. We transcend the heritage of hyperactive do culture. We try living beyond have imperatives. There's more to life than doing and having. You are not to be judged by what you can or do and what you own or have. We try to just be. And watch how we feel. The most important work we really do here is the work with and on oneself. Learning to be yourself. Sharing what your heart says.

Am I faerie (enough)?

Never heard of faeries in the first place? Feeling awkward to call yourself that name? You did not do much "organic, eco, mud" in you life so far? You don't burn a ton of candles every full moon? You don't feel like joining the orgy during your first night? You did not flirt with sexy bearded communists when you were young? You work for corporation, pay your taxes and don't spit on exploiting capitalists in every second sentence? You have a computer and smartphone and know how to build a web-site even? (Call us!) You have never thought of dressing your straight-acting self in a Marie-Antoinette costume? You don't tend to loose your head or tongue at least? There's still a chance for you, dear!

Contrary to popular belief, the archetype of incense-smelling, green-handed, sexually-uninhibited, pompously cross-dressed or noxiously un-dressed, agitatedly revolutionary faerie is not a norm. The beauty of faerie space lies in the fact, there are many who do not fit into the template. There's a balance between practical and hedonist faeries, spiritual and rational, political and sensual, expressive and shy. This makes our coexistence stimulating, inspiring, creative. We are a "society of fools" - while we put on make-up in front of the mirror, we offer a reflection to the mainstream lifestyle of the society. And we value this healthy provocation, disagreement, diversity among ourselves.

What counts more than if you are left-wing is if you feel your wings, can spread them and use them and fly. Or at least dream of it. Think of the image of a faerie. Fragile and playful while in the same time magically powerful. To fly might mean to follow a vision, curiosity, zeal to live fully. You keep a little corner of craziness in a secret department of your soul. Can you accept the beautiful foolishness of the other people, gently, non-judgmentaly, with love - as much as you would like to receive in return? While faeries tend to denounce "normality" at every opportunity, it can be your starting point for exploring the freedom of movement around it. Faerie space is safe for personal experimentation, welcoming, caring, healing for the wounds and anxieties and self-limitations we carry from the outside world.

Will I fit in?

No, you probably will not. Deal with it honey. Isn't it tiring - aspiring to be like everyone else, all your life? Yes, we'd all like to belong somewhere. But there's a difference between longing for belonging and blending in, not sticking out of the crowd, doing what's expected of us. The camouflage we eagerly put on to survive the day often makes us feel more frustrated than ... loved. Hence, we try to honor the mysterious contradictory needs of soul - being extraordinary and showing them what we know/can/are good at, what we have achieved, what makes us special - and on the other hand being protected, cared about, cared for and caressed. Being a part of something while still being unique. Finding home, that is not a prison, but rather a nourishing soil to put the roots in. Roots as in radix and radical.

I dare to offer another question instead of the headline: Do you often feel like one of a kind? You are at the right place then. First of all, we are a community of misfits. Pariahs. Outcasts. Political, spiritual, sexual. We don't worship "unity in diversity", we live it. We love it. We are here - using the popular phrase of Harry Hay - to "shed the ugly frog skin of hetero-normativity". We transform ourselves from consuming caterpillar into beautiful butterfly, the animal akin to faeries in several aspects. We are not just this or only that - we open up to discover our full potential, what everything we might be - and try it at once, or at pace that feels comfortable. We are not at exams. There's no faerie jury, just a welcome committee.

Who the hell was Harry Hay?

Harry Hay is a person. Not a guru, not a prophet, not a leader. There's many names and voices that have contributed to the idea and also state of faeries as they are today - some of them even dissenting, provoking and diverging. It's not so much Hay being a face of the movement (or "non-movement", as he liked to stress) - a bad habit we have taken from the mainstream activism - as the legacy of his extraordinary life-story. If he has taught us anything, it was the importance of telling stories, having hi-story, having past, roots, myths. And especially as a part of mythological pantheon, he may inspire us. His challenging ideas seemed to be always ahead of his time and even nowadays are not easy to swallow.

Once upon a time, there was a farm boy, who by working of coincidence or fate met a famous Wowoka from the native American tribe, who saw some odd hope in the boy and blessed him. As a young man, he felt sympathy for the protesting workers being shot by the state loyal to the wealthy. He's become a communist - not so much by book as by heart. He was able to find this unorthodox connection between oppression of the lower class and the oppression of the sexual minority, that he was part of. And how! While many lived comfortable underground lives (not to be seen, not to stick out, not to provoke), he was already out quite a lot for those times. This bizarre background has haunted him - too gay for the communists, too communist for the gay liberation movement in its birth. The comrades expelled him (not due to faults in character, just afraid of the damage to their reputation), though he was able to use what he had learned when he co-founded first ever gay-promoting organization: Mattachine society.

As some of the goals were achieved and a chance of tolerance if not acceptance of sexual minority has showed up on the horizon, he has become a too-radical nuisance, a risk to the image of the movement. He supported Gay Liberation Front and has seen the protests, the riots and the success that has finally come at the end of 1960s. Later on, he has become a bad conscience of the LGBT activism and uttered provocative commentaries on the issues of the day - like Act Up, NAMBLA, or all-pervasive assimilationism. To his horror, LGBT people have become part of mainstream, good citizens, husbands, middle-class consumers. They desired fitting in, being like everyone else. Sexuality has become just the little detail aside of generally being "normal". Hay thought, rather, that what we do in bed is maybe the only thing that makes us alike heteros. Otherwise, we are a "different people", with special abilities, special "gay window" through which we look at life, special role or purpose in society.

Life in gay mainstream has become an imitation of the heterosexuals. "We want marriage, we want kids, we want our suburban houses, we want our market, we want to buy things." Gay existence has become scattered, lonely, meaningless, it embraced a heartless competition as a way of life, macho or at least straight-acting look as a desirable self-image. And so he and couple of his soul-mates have called upon the kindred folk to gather and reconnect with our gay soul, gay kind of spirituality - that is not castrated from sexuality - gay myths, talents, existential cravings. The end - of it - we have not seen yet. The story goes on as we continue to self-explore.