I don't know art but I know what I like.

One of the great things about being located in an old shirt-factory-turned-artist-incubator building is that I am often exposed to art. This is good, because when it comes to art I am an idiot. That's OK, I've learned a lot being here, and I can now appreciate the beautiful paintings by Tom Myott in the hallway just walking to my Studio, and the incredible sign Kate Austin did for us above our door. I've started to understand the idea that just being around art gets your mind working in a different way.

That's why I was lucky to have a chance to experience "Porch Pieces," a traveling porch that has been touring around our region and soon will be around the world. The creator, Bryony Graham is a British artist who is very interested in the idea of "Americana" and what it means to Americans and the rest of the world. The porch that she and her team created is made of scraps of other porches, but looking at it it seems more like the patchwork of a comfy quilt than a bunch of wood piled together.

I was lucky enough to sit on that porch the other night and hear her thoughts about porches in America, and how the changing dynamics of America may affect what they mean in America. As we were talking about the porch as a means of getting to know your neighbor, of meeting good friends, of getting work done, all I could think of was how community acupuncture, at least in my life, has provided that porch.

Everybody is busy, with 100 different functions that they, their kids, and possibly their dogs have to attend to, but people are making the time to get some community acupuncture. There's the acupuncture itself, which is amazing and profound, but after talking to Bryony, I saw the idea of group qi in a bigger context than I had before ("Group qi" is what we crazy community acupuncturists call the feeling you get when you walk into the community acupuncture room where a room full of people are sleeping and healing, somehow creating a synergy that is greater than their individual treatments. It's the qi [prounounced 'chee'] of the group. Group qi.).

I realize now that there is a certain porch qi that happens in the waiting room and ripples out into the community. I have a lot of people that show up for their appointment to find out their friend is at the appointment time next to theirs. They sit and chat in the waiting room, which might as well have a rocker and a quilt in it. I see people who have never met suddenly have a 20 minute conversation about a common topic that interests them. My favorite moment was two classmates who hadn't seen each other in 40 years had appointments back to back...and they even have the same last name.

So what I'm saying is that the porch as an institution may be changing, but it can never go away. We are such social beings that something in us creates a gravity pool of togetherness and friendness and yes, community, no matter how hard we may try to be "individuals." And in that togetherness there is it's own healing, that is more than just a cure for loneliness. It's a cure for separateness, and our bodies thrive on it.

It definitely adds another exciting layer to community acupuncture. I always thought my role as community acupuncturist was to bring healing to individuals in our community, but it seems I also get to be a part of watching the community heal itself.

So thank you Bryony for using art to help me see how important porches are, but also that you don't always need a porch to have a porch. You just need porch qi.