Remember when I said I had fallen out of my fairytale when drama
struck? I was wrong. The dark side of the moon only made it more
three-dimensional, more dense, more real, and sucked me deeper into its trance.
Ever seen the movie Waking Life? That’s how I feel. I’m tripping out in a big dream,
wading through thick air that clouds my consciousness, and I can’t wake up
because I’m in, and all of this my whole life here.
The moments that make up this fairy land
How will I ever make people back in my other lives
understand? I can’t. It will always stay a wondrous dream of some lost time
spent in a distant fairy land. Studying in Pierce’s Space Station (one of the bedrooms)
until midnight and then going for a walk with my study buddy, ending up
climbing rooftops and collecting pine cones and clambering on piles of red sand
like little kids before heading home again together. Going for yoga at the Domes,
the little hobbit-house community on the edge of campus, getting dinner in a
yurt filled with good people and good food, ending up borrowing a violin and bringing
it home for my first lesson from my fiddler friend and housemate. Stretching
out on the lawn in front of our houses in the California winter sun to write a
little, being joined by steady stream of friends who bring chai tea and smiles
and stories. Climbing a big red wood tree in the middle of the campus quad, all
the way to the crow’s nest and meditation bell in the top, in a spiraling dance
around the furry bark on bare feet that fit so perfectly around the curves of
the branches you suddenly remember why they’re shaped the way they are. Coming
home to my housemate and her turtle weeding together in the cabbage bed.
Walking out of my last class of the quarter onto the sun-drenched campus quad to take a nap on a friend’s belly,
and wake up to be joined by the next friend, and the next, and the next, until
you find yourself in the middle of an impromptu picnic party. Going on house
trip and on a hike the next morning in a veritable Sound of Music landscape,
and running down the hill together, through the wind and through the brakes, throwing
ourselves at life. Going on Trico-op trip and spending the afternoon in an
enchanted forest in steaming azure blue hot springs with naked forest elves,
the hooting of a distant owl and a green frog concert. Jumping up from the bed
after making music together and biking through the dusk, feeling the breeze
stream through the fingers on our outstretched hands, to our housemates’
concert, where we’ll know about half of the audience because we live with them
or because they’re our friends’ friends in this tiny little town that houses
the collection of all our dreams for these years. I could go on for hours
recounting hundreds upon hundreds of such little moments that I walk in and out
of day to day. Put together, they cumulate into something so huge and magical
that it’s swallowed me whole, purely by virtue of the combination of so many
amazing individuals and their all their eccentric skills and inside worlds and
ideas.
Hot Springs, Sierraville
Many big things have happened in the past two weeks. We went
on Trico-op trip to the hot springs in the Sierras. My first encounter with
California’s big nature. We had reserved an entire hotel for ourselves in a
deserted old Gold Rush town, set in the middle of the expansive plains of the
Sierra foothills. Getting drunk and silly, making dinner and music, and playing
games and acroyoga together, until we stumbled upstairs exhausted and recreated
home with our housemates in these unfamiliar rooms for the night.
Berkeley co-ops
A week later we went on house trip, just us DSC. We visited
the co-ops in Berkeley. My God. I had no idea. I’ve never lived in co-operative
living before, and so the Trico-ops and affiliated communities around Davis
(three more co-ops and the Domes), altogether about a hundred people, is the
only frame of reference I had. The Berkeley Student Co-operative is something else
entirely. In between their 12 co-ops, Berkeley counts about a thousand co-opers. We visited three
co-ops that night, counting 50, 150, and 120 inhabitants respectively.
Especially their flagship co-op, Cloyne, left a deep impression on me. It was
so similar and yet so different to us. They were just like us, the same kind of
people, drinking out of mason jars, painting murals on the walls, having chores
and communal dinners. But they had our creativity and eccentricity tenfold. What erupts when you put all of
that together is a huge old hotel that over the course of a century has become
infused with the personality of the community it houses to the very last inch. There’s
not a wall in the vast building that doesn’t bear the most incredible murals. We
visited late on a quiet night, and not many people were home. But I liked it
that way. Just like when I first got to Davis, deserted as it was on the tail
of winter break, I got the chance to become acquainted with the space first,
before its quiet voice would be drowned out by all the people. And still, I
felt welcomed by scores of people, and learnt so much about the place. These
walls told me the stories of those who lived and had lived there, throughout
the years. This place was an extension of its people, they’d poured their
inside worlds out onto these walls. I remembered that this was one of the big
reasons why I wanted to live in the co-ops in Davis: Being able to mold your
living space, give it shape so that it becomes your natural habitat, so that it
comes to express who you are, so that it can become your home. It’s what I’d
always missed in UCUs sterile campus grounds where we weren’t allowed to leave
any physical trace of our culture. You couldn’t tell by looking at our campus
what people lived here. In Cloyne, very much so. These were the most articulate
walls I’d ever met. The air inside breathed history and character, the voices
of all the generations still echoed throughout the hallways and common rooms.
Crazy too, was how a moment that lasts a second can throw your whole journey on
a different course. I walked into the Cloyne dining area (huge space), slightly
buzzed, and saw a face. Something in my brain clicked, and I waited for a
moment to have it confirmed. When I heard the Dutch accent, I shouted, “Utrecht!!”
and there she was, a girl from UCU
that had gone on exchange to Berkeley, and lived in Cloyne now! Out of all
those 150 people, she was there, at that time, in that place! Being on the
other side of the ocean, this world and the ones back at home seem so separate,
how could they ever blend? Yet here she was, teleported from another dimension
into my journey in California! For the rest of the night, she took me all over
Cloyne, and then CZ, another co-op, and showed and told me everything. Wauw
universe, you’re crazy!
Being in an urban setting again, and on a hill, made such a
difference too. Sitting on the roof of Kingman, another co-op, we had a view of
the Bay, thousands of light sparkling in the night sky. Sather tower, UC
Berkeley’s landmark, in our left eye’s corner, and the Golden Gate Bridge in
the distance in our right eye’s corner, being elevated above so much life brought
things back into perspective. Davis is flat like Holland, no hill from which to
look down upon your life and see how it loses its urgent significance amidst
countless other lives. The lives in Davis aren’t countless either, it’s a small
town set in the middle of agricultural
land stretching for miles and miles in all directions. Only 60,000 lives in a
vast sea of space. Too easy to lose yourself in living, on ground level like
that, surrounded by people who are all part of your tiny life. But seeing
Berkeley’s scale also made me realize that part of why I love Davis so much is
precisely its small little cuteness. It’s an easy place to love, so personal
and intimate and homely. And I imagine that 44 people more readily feels like a
close-knit family than a 150 people. Either way, our visit to Berkeley jerked
my fairytale dream-like life back into perspective. Made me realize how tiny it
is, and how much I have come to love the people in it. Housemates are a special
kind of friends. You share an allegiance, a kinship, a familiarity, a frame of
reference that forges a deep and dear bond. I returned home with a renewed
appreciation and gratitude for this place.
Dark Sparkle
The next night, last Saturday, was a big one. It was Dark
Sparkle, a huge dance party a half hour drive outside Davis. Everyone had been
living up to this night for weeks. As the evening progressed, our drive filled
up with cars, all old Trico-opers and friends who used our houses as a homebase
to get ready for the party. I won’t go in-depth, but suffice it to say, it was crazy.
A Burning Man camp in the middle of dark sodden fields (that we sprinted into
barefoot at one point), with campfires and fire dancers, and a drag show and
glittering lights, and tents and barns with sick beats and an oven for pizza
making and 500 souls burning through all their saved-up excitement, living it
up. Man, what a great night. A pearl amongst my memories, this one gets a
special drawer.
Pierce
Lastly, the big change is that I’ve been accepted into
Pierce, the house next door. I said before why I felt I was ready to pick up my
bags and get moving again. I have to keep flowing, because that is the nature
of this journey, and how I feel best and grow most. Winter quarter only ends
next week, but I’ve already half moved out because of some minor issue with my
lease. So now I’m treating these last two weeks as a transition phase in
between DSC and Pierce. I was planning to just do some roaming, sleep somewhere
else every night, which reminds me a little of my nomad life last semester in
between Utrecht, Amsterdam, and The Hague. But having almost completed one week
of roaming, I feel pretty liminal. Last night, I started missing DSC so much I
picked up my bedding and moved back to my old bed for the night. Waking up to
the familiar view, with my roommates Lili and Karen in our cluttered room, was
glorious. Walking downstairs and preparing breakfast in the familiar kitchen,
where most of the dishes are done, it doesn’t smell like dank old food
leftovers, and we get the Eastern morning sun that Pierce doesn’t, made me so
happy. Listening to the morning thoughts of my familiar morning people made me
feel so at place. I’m realizing now that what I said about DSC last time, about
becoming almost too comfortable in it, like stagnant water, is also really
valuable to me. DSC has seamlessly taken over the role of a home in my life,
and I love it and I’ll miss it dearly. Nevertheless, I’ll gladly trade it for
Pierce. I applied because the people in Pierce draw me very much and because I
was ready for something new. Now, I’m starting to see what a master move it’s
been. The first house meeting I attended, a day after Dark Sparkle, blew my
mind. The meeting was very efficient and fast-paced, but when we got to appreciations,
at the end, we slowed down and sunk into a different stream. Everyone was so
heartfelt, so warm and so loving in their genuine appreciation for each other
and their experiences in the past week. All the big and small things received a
shower of gratitude, and the atmosphere was so palpably positive it caught my
breath. Now, all the time spent hanging out in friends’ rooms, studying, making
music, hanging out, talking, is filled future and an excitement about all the
great moments still to come. My friends keep reminding me, during some of the
many great moments, “you’ll be living with us next quarter.” Yep, I will, and
it’s gonna be great.
Woei I feel better now. My dearest friend Lili showed me a
quote: “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect”. Yes I think
that’s a big reason of why I write. But I also write to take a step back
sometimes, distance myself from the moment, from this all-consuming dream-life,
and not lose myself in it too much. It steadies me, keeps me sane, and makes me
understand myself better. Glad to be sharing that with you.
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