Agents of the old life arrive
Four weeks
into the quarter, MAMA came to visit me! A few months ago, the thought of
having to receive someone here from back home made me claustrophobic. But by now,
I was so ready to receive her. It made me so happy to think that when I will
come back to the Netherlands, eventually, there will be some people who will somewhat
understand what this place means to me. It was a wild week, I took her with me
everywhere. To working on the Student Farm, to my hapkido class, to a party at
our homes, on a hike with friends, to the weekly Farmer’s Market, to my
favorite cafes… I was very grateful to
Spencer for sharing my mom with me. He took her on walks, and had a movie night
with her in his home on J Street. It gave me the opportunity from time to time to
go on a little solo adventure in my private Davis world, like in the olden days
(last quarter); something I feel I rarely get a chance to nowadays. It was also
a wild week because of who my mom is. The first day after her arrival, I was
woken up at 7:30 in the morning, after a party night, because my mother wanted
to practice her Taekwondo kicks on me. Dig this: me still half asleep, too staggered
to protest, holding a big pillow against
my hip, with my mother taking it out on me in the early hours in the living
room of my student co-op in California. How did I end up in this bizarre life?
But man, you gotta appreciate the woman who raised you. She came in a great time
of need, and I got to finally share all the things I hadn’t been able to share
with anyone here with my graceful, wise, loving mother. Nothing like a mother’s
listening ear, and a mother’s words of wisdom, and a mother’s fond embrace from
a place of the deepest love and acceptance.
Shadow land
Having both
her and Spencer over shed yet another new light on my life here. Both of them
are so real to me. People I have invested
so much of myself in, people who know the
person they are in this long and deep relationship with. It made me think: what
do all my relationships here mean? What can any relationship mean after a mere five
months? Compared to my mother and Spencer, representatives from a world
overseas with a dense network of deep-reaching roots, this place is like a shadow
land. Erratic and unpredictable, because it’s so unknown. Do these people I
call my friends really know me at all? Who knows they’ll turn their backs on me
tomorrow, when they get to know me a little better and discover they haven’t
been in a relationship with me, but with a projection of their own. All of a
sudden, it felt like this big transformative process of mine was just me
dabbling on the surface of a whole world that functioned perfectly without me.
What does it all mean?
But then you
take it one step further, and you realize this world is more real than anything
else, because it is the present moment. The past is gone, nothing but memories,
and the future mere illusions. Those are the real shadow lands. Perhaps my
challenge here is to re-engage with this giant simulacrum, and make it as real
to me as I can. To me, that means two things:
Taking ownership
I had an
interesting conversation with an old friend of the community the other day. He
had talked to me about the tall grass around the Trico-ops that needed to be
mowed, but how no-one who actually lived in the Trico-ops was taking the
initiative. A few days later, he showed up in our kitchen at eight in the
morning, where I was waiting for him. We went outside and he handed me safety
goggles and a weed whacker. When I asked him where to mow, he told me: “You
tell me, it’s your garden!” He was
exactly right. The problem with this place is its high turnover. To many of the
residents here, the Trico-ops are an inherently transient place, a background
setting to their tumultuous short college years. It’s not a home that they need to take proactive ownership of. But of course, we should. This is a very rare place,
where we have extraordinary freedom to really make this space what we want it
to be. It’s our privilege, not our burden. Some may disagree, but if anything,
it’s our responsibility. I needed that little push, I feel like hadn’t been
taking enough ownership of the Trico-ops, and of my life in a larger sense.
Simplifying & Prioritizing
When I was
forced to partially divert my attention away from my life here when Spencer and
mom arrived, I suddenly saw how I had been here when alone: maniacal. I had
been so restless, always wanting more and more of it all, fluttering
uncontrollably from moment to moment. I had been stretching myself so far,
spreading myself so thin, that I felt I had disintegrated into many pieces,
scattered widely, but shallowly, on the surface of this life. I had wanted to
be a part of everything, everyone, everywhere is this wild beautiful world.
Suddenly, when forced to take a step back, the whole social edifice I had
constructed became too heavy to hold up. Suddenly, I felt a need for
groundedness, knowing where I stand. I felt a desire to thin out my long list
of projects and pursuits, and pay more attention to the few relationships that
actually meant something more to me, with people who I felt had better sense of
who they were dealing with, and that in knowing me I could rely on.
Spencer
I will need
those people, that bit of realness, for when Spencer will be gone. This quarter
has been crazy for me mostly for one big reason: my dealings with him. My whole
life was whacked into a completely different course from the one it was on in
the previous quarter. I had known, had felt it coming, and braced myself, but I
had to live through it to come to understand what it meant.
My pure and
undisturbed relationship with my own naked existence has thrown me into a new
light here that was so refreshing, so empowering. To be alone in a foreign land…
I drank in all the new colors and impressions like a baby. To craft a new life,
and through it be reborn myself, has been deeply transformative. This was a
deeply personal journey, where all my attention was on me and my existence. This
process was not one to be interrupted, or shared. This was something I had to
do alone.
But Spencer did
not come here not to visit. He had come to stay for the rest of my journey, and
become a part it. Spencer is such a big part of who I am, has reached so deep
into my being, that there is no way of existing in a place and not sharing it
with him. Back home, I happily shared my life with him, because he was an inherent
part of it. But this new life has streamed in around me, in a perfect Stephanie-shape.
All of that
wasn’t clear to me however. I didn’t understand why I had awaited Spencer’s
arrival for all those months with great anxiety. Why I went into straight
shellshock the moment I saw him. Why I felt such a great disconnection. Why I
couldn’t reach through my wall, out to the man I love, even when I saw how he was
being hurt by my withdrawal. I wasn’t ready yet to turn away from my new life
here. I did not want to hurt him. I felt forced to make a choice I did not want
to make.
I was eaten
up by feelings of guilt at being unable to incorporate him into my profoundly inward
process here. Yet he already was, here, undeniably. Awfully slowly I began to accept
that this would not be a quarter so blissfully for me and me alone like the
first one had been. But I was too slow, and too reluctant. The moment came
where I was presented with the harsh consequences of my being pitted in between
these two giant worlds. After a month and a half of these huge submerged forces
had been tugging at us, turning the sea between us into a raging silent storm, Spencer
sat me down and told me it looked like things would end here.
After that,
like magic, it was as if the floodgates were opened again. All the feelings I
had been numbed to stirred back to life and began to flow again. I was freed
from my asphyxiation with a big blow, and gulped for air. Suddenly, all my
attention, frantic and fragmented as it had been, was jerked back to a single
focus point in all its intensity. Suddenly, it wasn’t hard at all to make a
choice. In those dark nights that followed, this life seemed meaningless and
bleak in comparison to the enormity and depth of the sacred sea between us. And
then I finally realized there was a difference between loving Spencer, and
pursuing my own path. While our paths were diverging, and we were for some
reason unable to support each other with our presence on each of our paths, the
sacred space between us was still so pure, so filled with love, so valuable to
me. It made no sense to me to cut that off just because we all walk on windy
roads. Asking him to let me go, and allowing him to go, had nothing to do with a
change in the love between us. If anything, letting each other continue our own
journeys felt like a most graceful act of purest love, totally in the spirit of
our love how I’ve always known it. In the four weeks that followed, Spencer and
I found each other back in full connection. The positivity of that process of
letting each other go was so precious. Our eyes and hearts were so open, we
were so mindful of our appreciation and admiration for each other. Last weekend
we camped outside Auburn, overlooking a beautiful canyon with candles and a
bottle of champagne. Here, our 2 ½ months long ongoing, ever-developing conversation
culminated in a last ceremony of closure, appreciation, and celebration. He
leaves this Saturday.
And then… I will
be alone once more. And strangely, as much as I longed for it, and couldn’t sacrifice
it before, I know it will now feel bewildering to have this whole world to
myself again. My main process of growth has shifted to Spencer this quarter,
and I suspect that transitioning back to that individual process will feel a
little uncomfortable. It’s unbelievable how we can live such wildly distinct
lives, in the same geographical location. We all live in separate realms, and
we’re lucky to find someone who has some overlap with our experience. But, as I’ve
witnessed in these past months, even as individuals we can switch entire
dimensions. Humans are crazy.
I’m staying
There is one
last thing to tell. The reason why I eventually found the patience to turn away
from my personal journey and engage in deep work with Spencer, was because of
this: I made up my mind to extend my visa for another six months. Especially with
these last two and a half months given away to my process with Spencer, and not
feeling like I’ve fully engaged with the people and places and experiences here
in that time, I’ve realized I cannot leave just yet. . I am not done here. This
place is doing too much for me. It challenges me, delivering me to reliance on
nothing and no-one but myself. It empowers me, giving me the opportunity to
prove to myself that I am very capable of taking my life into my own hands and
making it a wonderful, powerful, engaging life I am grateful for living. It
transforms me, with the warmth and high spirits of those zestful colorful
Californians and their gorgeous land.
And, as my uncle pointed out, it does something else I hadn’t realized yet
myself: It is healing me. For as long as I can remember, I have looked for
places and people where I would belong. Now, with the world of the student co-operatives,
I feel I have found I way of living that I belong to. I am adding a few people
to my inner circle of closest soul friends. And, alone as I stand in this
beautiful bright life, I am finding out how to belong with myself.
In the
coming six months, I will take on challenge 2.0: not just crafting a new life
from scratch, but sticking with it, diving deeper, taking ownership. I can grow
my new tender roots a little deeper, make this world a little more real to me,
and see what that brings me. Also, I will take the plunge from the only
conscious life I’ve ever known, the school life, into the world of work and
adulthood. That plunge is one most people in my life stage fear and feel unprepared
for, and I with them. I will initiate my working life by exploring the world of
education: I am attending the Summer Institute for Educators at the Greater
Good Science Institute in Berkeley, where I’ll come into contact with awesome
people and cutting edge knowledge about social learning. I got a job as a
substitute teacher at a preschool that grounds its child-centered education on
the principle that children are wise and autonomous and innately eager to learn.
And I went kayaking the other day with someone who works at the State
Department of Education who has a whole range of awesome projects lined up and
may be able to get me involved. I’m excited to take on this challenge 2.0 and
prove to myself that I am as capable in this school-to-work transition as I’ve
proven to be in other areas of life. Succeeding in that, by a measure
concordant with my own values, will be another big step on my road to
self-actualization.
I realized I
had to stay when we were talking in my Sociology of Social Movements class
about why it’s so often college students that participate in social movements.
One theory says it’s because of their ‘biographical availability’: no spouse,
no children, no job, no mortgage, they’re free as birds to put their entire
lives on hold to pursue something awesome. That was it. I knew, This is the
moment. I’m free! Whoo! I can’t believe it! It’s real! The first place I’ve
ever been outside my home country where, even after a few weeks, I could
actually really picture myself living for an extended period of time. I LOVE
this place so much. The people, the nature, and their close connection. The
language, the learning, the ease and love of life. The climate, the culture,
the promise of this nursery of the future. At home in my new homeland for just
a little longer!
