vrijdag 14 maart 2014

Last few weeks of winter quarter

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.

Picnic party on the quad

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.

The Bay

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.

dinsdag 4 maart 2014

Dancing with water


                                                                                                                       Davis, March 3 2014

The bliss of that empty, light, new life has long gone by now. I was right to notice in those early beginnings that that degree of novelty couldn’t last. It’s a most precious, delicate, ephemeral feeling that will inevitably slip through your fingers. All you can do is gratefully relish the few moments in your life that you’ll feel it. By now, life is full once again, and pretty weighty at times. But I wouldn’t want it any other way. I am so grateful for what this empty new life has been filled with. Two main things fill my life here: my inside and my people.

Getting streaked by the Domies at our blanket fort party

My people…
I am so invested in the friendships I’m forging with all these incredible new people around me. They amaze me every day. Relationships develop so fast in a place where you get to know people in their home environment. Many people here are just as reflexive as I am, and I often go on long walks with them over campus, releasing and exchanging mind matter, inviting each other into our universes. I have come to love the insides of many people here. Since we share so much, it feels almost as important to tend to their minds as to my own. Our collective unconscious infuses the whole Tricoops area, you feel the air thickening, closing in around you as you bike in. And so making our collective mind a beautiful place will directly benefit each individual, because the boundary we draw between individual minds and their surroundings is a porous one, if one at all.

…my inside…
Sharing so much fills my mind not only with my own thoughts, but with others’ too. My head and heart are so full all the time, it’s sometimes hard to breathe. It’s only so short ago that I had no-one but myself to rely on for a while, so I still feel very strong and centered. But sometimes there are a lot of forces tugging at me, threatening to bring me off balance. I don’t think I’ve ever been this self-reflexive in my life. Every new experience, person, place that I encounter, my mind eyes them, picks them up and very consciously adds them to this great mash of impressions that’s growing wilder and wilder by the day and that my mind is trying so hard to make sense of. There is so much going on in my life that it’s been a month since I’ve had enough mental space to sit down and write about the experience in its entirety like this. I journal a lot, but those are just details, moments, conversations, insights, not the meta level bird’s eye view that I’m working from now.

…and where they meet
The porous boundary goes for my inside and my people too. They give me as much as I give them. It is in connection with two of them that I have come to my biggest self-insight here so far. For the first time, pieces of the puzzle fell together whose connection I hadn’t seen before. I now know why community and friendship are such a big deal to me. Why I am on this life long quest for ‘my kind’, for durable connection. I am looking for family. I am looking to fill the big emptiness that an erratic, fragmented, incomplete family has left me with. Coming to understand something so big about yourself is so powerful. The whole world started making a little more sense to me at that moment.

The Sierras

Fairytale meets reality
The other side of reality has finally tracked me down here on the other side of the world, and infiltrated my thus far unspoiled fairytale. The past two weeks have been filled with drama, confusion and sadness in the coops, fortunately followed by a remarkably fast recovery. Nothing terrible, just life. It’s good. My conception of the coops is more nuanced, more grounded now. More real. The events in the past two weeks have also drawn me in even deeper, and I feel I have permanently lost that ledge I jumped from all this time ago out of sight. Yep, the ledge is gone, and I’m in, definitely, permanently in.

That’s good too. I’ve made the inevitable tradeoff between oversight and involvement when I left the edge of this new world to jump into its vortex, and I wouldn’t want to be any less involved. Since I jumped in, I have been treading water, getting sucked in deeper and deeper, sinking in, until the waves went right over my head, crawled under my skin, submerged me entirely. There’s no fighting it, all I can and want to do is let it all wash over me, hands raised, eyes open. This is an open sea, a great river that I want to wade into, because it’s giving me so much. I’ll have to see where I resurface at the end of all this, but I have complete faith in this water.

Dancing with water

As I surrender, and let the waves close in all around me, I do know this: this great fluidity, this grand harmonious celestial dance with water is exactly right. It speaks to the eternal in me, centers and strengthens me like nothing else, is bringing me level to existence, and existence and I look each other in the eye as equals, friends, lovers. It whispers secrets into my ear about how to live my life: in connection, in dialectics, no boundaries, as mirrors, as two-in-one. And in mutual respect, understanding, and excitement, we join forces to make this life of mine, that is also just another of universe’s lives, the best it could be: real, full, beautiful, and in perpetual open generous connection with its surroundings. An optimized give-and-take. I’m dancing with the waves, playing with the current, my moves are guided by forces so much larger than me, but they are still my moves. This dance is what my whole journey has come to be all about: novelty, fluidity, and the vividness that transience brings. And so I have to keep moving. The one thing I feel I should watch out for here is settling in stagnant waters. Which is why I have applied to live in Pierce, the house next door, next quarter. I have become so comfortable in DSC, it’s time to expose myself to some unchartered waters again. Pierce has a magic about it that draws me, a different kind of very salient humanness that I feel could teach me a lot of new things that DSC couldn’t. DSC has given me so much, they were the first ones to see me, they took me into their midst and initiated me into this amazing world. For that, I am so grateful to them, and I will love and be alleged to them forever. But the water calls me on. This wild water washing over me is waking me up to a whole new way of living. This is not just a period. This is really huge. I know that wherever I’ll resurface I will never be the same again, and I will understand so much more about life, myself, and how we jam together. Like the great David Foster Wallace reminded us*, this life here keeps reminding me: This is water, this is water. And I don’t know what water means, but man, this is it. This is being alive.