The dust has finally begun to settle, in my third week here in Davis. Ever since my first party here, a week and a half ago, I am no longer to
be found on the edge of this wild universe. They took my hand and led me right
in. So perhaps it’s time to turn to some descriptions of what has turned out to
be, even within such a short time, the setting of a profound personal journey,
the meaning of which I have elaborated on a little last week. Maybe if I tell
you about this place in a little more detail, you will understand why Davis,
and the Tricooperatives specifically, are having such an impact on me.
The Tricooperatives are an ecological community, set up as
an alternative living experiment in the 70s. The three houses, Davis Student
Coop (DSC, where I live, housing 16 people), Pierce (with 16 people), and
Agrarian Effort (Ag, with 12 people), share a big garden, chickens, and pretty
much all the rest of their lives, situated by the Northern edge of campus. They’re
not the only quirky community type thing around here. In town there’s some 2 or
3 other cooperatives (mostly UC Davis students) that I haven’t visited yet. And
just a ten minute walk from here, in a far corner on campus, there’s ‘Baggins
End’, a dozen white domes shared by two people each. While the Domes are taking
the alternative living environment thing to a whole new level, people tend to
be more involved with each other here in the Tricoops, where we live together
in such close quarters. And this is where the parties are at, which is great. In
the weekends, people wake up from the workday slumber and there are parties to
be found all around. The weekend mornings are great for sitting downstairs and watching
the one night stands squeamishly trying to leave the house unnoticed.
Party at the Domes - full moon, stars, Xmas lights, couches, a Yurt,
and trees and Domes in the background. Man, what a crazy setting for a party.
Fluidity
I had deliberately (tried very hard to) kept my expectations
of the Tricoops blank, just opening myself up to whatever would come my way. So
when I arrived here, was shown to my room, and I saw the cobwebs, crazy murals,
and dirt on the floor, I thought, ‘Alright, so this is how it is here, I can
live with this.’ In all my open mindedness I didn’t even think to clean the
room, which hadn’t been inhabited in the winter break, in the first few days.
By now, however, I have come to see that one of the main characteristics of the
place is its fluidity. The whole house gets mixed up every quarter, so you’ll
only spend about 12 weeks in any of your rooms. You can paint everything over,
and if you need drawers, a mattress, or any other furniture, you just go ahead
and find an idle piece somewhere in the three houses. It’s all that I have
longed for for a long time: a living space that those who live there give shape;
leaving their mark, creating their own most natural habitat.
While there are house dinners 5 out of 7 days a week, it doesn’t
matter all that much in which of the three houses you have your bed. People just
walk in and out of all three houses, sitting down without a word on the couch
to study, visiting friends in their rooms, joining for dinners, hanging out on
the porch, pretty much like it’s their own home. When I stored my dinner
leftover in the Pierce fridge for the night, it really almost felt like a
second home. Some of my favorite moments so far were when we would merge house
dinners and all 44 of us (plus guests, which are always around) would eat in
one of the living rooms, or when one of the other houses forgot their cook
night and when the clock strikes 7, a dozen Piercians or
Agrarians magically materialize in our kitchen, right in time to be served. All
our meals are vegan, mostly gluten free, and complemented with fresh produce
from the Davis Student Farm where some of us (me included!) volunteer, and
later on in the year probably also from our own garden. These dinners are my
favorite time of the day, and the time that comes after, when I’m done for the
day and just roam around, walking into rooms at random and getting to know all
the amazing people here better by the day. That said, it’s funny how fate
determines your allegiance. I live in DSC, so I like DSC best of all three
houses, and am closest to the people here. Nonetheless, I’m taking advantage of
my newness while it lasts. I do not yet have a feel for the subtle relational
dynamics of this place. I am ignorant as yet about the intricate webs of who
hangs out with whom, and everyone’s respective personalities. I’m still in the
privileged position where I’m (mostly) not yet inhibited by such sensitivities,
and boldly hang out with as many different people as I can. I’ve been reaping
the benefits: I already feel deeply embedded here, have gotten to know some
pretty great people, who have become allies, safe havens from which to keep
exploring.
We have house meetings every week, and a big Tricoop meeting
every month. The house meetings are one of the moments I look forward to most
every week (together with the parties in the weekend, weekly garden parties,
and shopping for the house). These meetings – in my opinion – keep the house
unified and connected. We start with emotional check-ins, which are great. It
is really wonderful to know what is going on with the people you share your home
space with. We end with thank yous, just going criss-cross around the room thanking
anyone who did something nice for you that week that you hadn’t thanked them
for yet. At the first meeting we divided the chores. You’d think cleaning the
bathrooms and the like wouldn’t be things people would be stoked about, but
everyone avidly vied for their favorite chores. I got great ones for this
quarter: feeding the chickens (so I regularly get my own freshly collected egg
for breakfast), garden coordinator (thinking about the ‘vision’ for our garden
and coordinating the weekly garden parties), volunteering at the Davis Student
Farm (bringing home fresh produce that you pulled out of the ground for your
little Tricoop family feels really really great), and shopping. Doing groceries
has never been this much fun. We only buy at the biggest fanciest organic
supermarket in town, because we get a discount in return for some Tricoopers
volunteering there. We bring all the empty jars and bottles and refill them with almonds, spices, rice,
beans, self-ground peanut butter, sugar, soy, oats, agave syrup and anything
else that comes in grainy or liquid format. Next we go to the other side of the
store, which is overflowing with the most incredible vegetables I have ever
seen. And all of it is organic, save for one tiny little section labeled ‘nonorganic’.
Some people get cook nights, others are assigned as ‘staplers’. This means that
almost every day as you get out of class, there will be people baking cookies,
bread, cakes, granola, sauces, you name it, for you, to snack on! Can you imagine?! This place is simply heaven.
While there’s something sad about the massive flux of
residents (for 13 out of the 16 people in DSC this is their first year here),
it also keeps this community vibrant. People come in with fresh excitement to
further enhance the living environment here. I talked to one guy who’s been
living here for almost 5 years who told me that, understandably, he had come to
feel very detached from the Tricoop life, desensitized to the perpetual change.
Luckily, most of the people here have not yet grown tired of forging new
friendships, losing them, and starting over. They have welcomed me here with
open arms, quite literally, willing to invest in me as a real friend.
Sharing
Next to fluidity, sharing is another big theme here, as you
might have guessed. Just about everything is shared. We share our food (what
you label is yours and yours alone, all the rest is ‘house’, and will be gone
within a matter of hours) and our clothes (there is a massive ‘freebox’ in
Pierce that recently provided me with an entire outfit for the Californian
winter I had underestimated). We drink out of recycled glass jars, because all
the cups always go missing. We share catchphrases (everything here is ‘gnarly’),
heartbreaks, colds and sicknesses, lice outbreaks (glad I wasn’t there for that
last quarter), our bored and animated moments, sleep, study sessions, our lives, generally. And I love it.
About those heartbreaks, though. While everyone will shout ‘hippies!’
as soon as you’ll start talking about this place, it’s not a place of free
love. People love to cuddle here, but often there will still be a hidden sexual
agenda, and when you fall into that trap, more often than not, emotional
consequences will ensue. Hearts do get broken here. People are forced to live
alongside those they are trying so hard to forget. Life here is intense, but then
it’s exactly that which makes me feel so alive here. I was made for this full,
dynamic, communal lifestyle. I’m sharing my room for the first time in my life,
and that with two people, but already it feels boring and empty when both of
them are gone for the night.
Learning
The Tricoop population is really very diverse. It ranges
from introverted solitary figures who easily get overwhelmed and make you
wonder how they cope here, to flamboyant types who stomp around yelling and
laughing and hanging one boob out of their shirt. You get spectacled science nerds and zealous gender
studies majors. People who hate gardening, people who love it. People who are
young to take drugs, and those who are young to study. People who write on the
walls, and people who tell you to do your f*cking dishes. People who collect
dead birds in jars, or gauze fairy wings, or keep fruit flies in test tubes. Name
and identity fluidity are big here. Some people have changed names or the
spelling of their names, and some are in the process of gender and sexual
identity transitions. You have to be careful with the way you talk here,
political correctness is very big in a place that where many political
minorities find a refuge.
What I’ve been finding is that this diversity is very activating.
Every day, there will be people that go out running, to the gym, rock climbing,
or to open mic and improv nights, concerts, or jamming on the roof, or juggling,
hula hooping, gardening. It motivates me to join them, and here I am finding
myself more active than ever before. I run several times a week, twice already
with a couple of housemates on a spontaneous 4 mile run. I have done all of the
above (except the gym and jamming on the roof, though I do pull ups on the pull
up bar in the Pierce kitchen and play guitar every day) and much more. This
place is helping me actualize all of those things I know make me a better
person: I am fitter, more creative, studious (as ever), more socially embedded,
more in touch, more outdoors, more intellectually challenged outside a school
setting, and more productive than ever before, and all of it at the same time. This
place is challenging me to grow on every imaginable level, and I have felt myself
slipping into a rapid in this personal journey that is life.
Stephanie
