Creating Meaning

Recently I’ve realized that all the good and beautiful times here obscure two concerns that have chronically put me on edge: the traveler’s black line, and the graduate’s black hole.

Black line on the horizon

Tuesday September 20. It is still as hot and sunny as midsummer. I’m biking across campus, two days before we’re all set to embark on another school year. I feel a heavy weight settle on my chest. As exciting as all this is – all my old friends are back in town, and new Piercians are trickling into the house every day now – the beginning of Fall quarter also means the beginning of my autumn here. For the first time in months, after I’d managed to push it beyond my horizon with the extension of my visa, that black line looms on the edge of my sight again. I came here alone, but I can’t imagine how alone I’ll feel leaving this place. What will I do without all these people? My life feels as it should here: people dancing morning dances in the kitchen with me, holding me up for an hour or more when I'm just passing through, people to cook for, brushing their teeth with me, calling good night! from the living room, falling asleep in the bunk bed over my head… Just people everywhere, intermixed in every other little moment of my day. It’s unbearable to feel that richness slip away as the days tick by. I have all these visions of arriving on the airport in Amsterdam, and lying on my mom’s couch, lethargic and lonely, all these voices that surround me now still ringing in my ears. This time it’s final, and I’ll have to come to terms with my immanent departure.

For two weeks after that bike ride across campus, I walked around feeling dejected and empty. A stark contrast to my usual mood. I was entering a process of mourning while finding myself surrounded by so much newness and excitement. I had a whole new house (11 out of 14 new Piercians!), and community to help build and nurture. Amidst my resignation to letting go, I was still forging all these new connections. It was a strange double life. What was I doing? Shouldn’t I enjoy whatever precious time was left to me here? Why could I not even find the motivation to try to be happy again? How could I forget so fast what carefree happiness felt like? But I didn’t want to rush out of that premature melancholy. I wanted to sit with it, long and deep enough, until I’d figure out how I would want to relate to it. Ignore it or embrace it? I journaled a lot, wrote and performed a song about it, and talked to a lot of people. Interestingly, I felt myself increasingly drawn to old co-opers: to their history, my legacy. I was very sensitive to the realization of how many before me and mine had swept through this place, and had their lives transformed by it and hearts broken when they had to leave. I took to the Trico-ops’ history as I realized I myself would soon be history to this place.

The Trico-ops biggest problem, in my view, is the loss of institutional memory due to high resident turnover and lack of documentation. An opportunity lay for me here to contribute. I have begun compiling a new Pierce hand book. It will contain not only the logistics and practicalities of how to clean cast irons and shop for 14 ravenous students, but more importantly, stories. Over the past few weeks, I have been reaching out to a lot of old Piercians to collect anecdotes they wouldn’t want to be forgotten. ‘The Pierce chronicler’, a friend called me, doing my part in building that bridge between present co-opers and their legacy. It is as much a gift to the community as it is therapeutic for me.

To top off my two weeks of intentional melancholy, I went on a trip to visit a friend in the Bay who I knew had had a very hard time leaving the Trico-ops three years ago. I figured he might have something useful to say about my sadness. He did. By this time, I was starting to get impatient with my sadness and was on the lookout for a word of wisdom that would pull me out. Unexpectedly, it was a very nihilistic remark that did it for me: “You’re asking me what’s the point of it all? There is no point. We were never supposed to have evolved this far. We’re a fluke. But it’s still fucking awesome that we get to experience all of this.” When I came home from that, I felt I had given my sadness the attention it needed and deserved, and resolved to turning to life again. The next morning, I rose early, worked out with my friend, and was dancing a breakfast dance for my housemates in the kitchen again. ‘I guess we’re done being sad…’ I thought to myself, and so it was. Done and ready to embrace the last round of countless precious moments. All I can do is just be grateful for getting to experience all of this. Staying active and daring to reach out for help showed me how surrounded by love I am. What goes around comes around. I’m so thankful for all these friends I’ve invested in so much, who were so ready to jump in with comforting words, warm embraces and fond smiles that will echo inside me long long long after I'm gone. Whether I'm here for another 2 days, 2 months or 2 decades, each moment here lived in full surrender feels like it will fulfill me for a lifetime.

Dinner at the Domes. Photo by Tanya

So why would I leave?

From time to time people will blurt it out when we land on the topic: “Stephanie stay forever!” I know they mean well, but for them it’s just a thoughtless, impulsive remark. Their lives won’t change significantly whether I’m here or gone. But me… It doesn’t make it easier to have them so casually drop that line while I’m trying to convince myself that isn’t an option.

Now that I have graduated, there’s no real purpose to me being here anymore. I’m already out of place, living amongst full-time students, having to fill my days while they all study for papers and exams. I could find a new purpose, like work, but my visa won’t allow me to get a real job. The only visa I could readily get after this is a tourist visa, for only 3 months.

And we’re in a college town. This is inherently a place of transience, the Trico-ops ultimately nothing but a backdrop to a few ephemeral college years. Whether it’s 1 or 3 or 5 years, it ends. It was very comforting to hear a friend tell me I’d probably seen as much in one year as he had in his three years in the Trico-ops. I’ve been living my life in such surrender, cognizant of every opportunity likely being the only one I’d ever get. I’ve really been soaking it up, but I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t scheduled to leave.

And I know myself too well, I’m afraid, to know what trap is waiting for me should I decide to stay. The same as what happened with University College: I’d fall into my Curse of Comparison, wallow in regret, because nothing could ever beat that magical novelty of the first year. Besides, all my friends would graduate and disperse one by one. I can come back to this place, but not to the experience. Time marches on mercilessly, and there’s no going back, and no standing still. Another great comfort was my friend’s observation that while my people may vanish from the scene, I will always be a part of this community. Hopefully future Trico-opers will gladly receive me because they’ll love me for loving this place. It reminds me of that Garden State quote: “Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.”

And lastly, there’s a lot to say for leaving at my peak. I like to leave parties before they die. I like them fluid, when I’m allowed to move freely from scene to scene before I get bored and jaded. This is the same. Of course, living your whole life like that is highly unsustainable. I hope that with all that I’ve learnt here, I’ll one day find a community that I’ll want  and can  commit to growing with for an extended period of time.

In short: yes, I would love to come back to California. I have fallen in love with this land just as I have fallen in love with its children. But it would have to be with a new purpose, and a new life.

Creating your own meaning

Friends here – still in school – tell me how they would gladly trade my freedom with me. Of course, it is such a relief not to feel stressed out or guilty about school all the time. It’s as if summer break never ended. It surprised me how quickly that chronic stress dissipates from your system and it becomes harder and harder to fully empathize with others’ homework distress. It is such a blessing to have all my time available to fully experience rich life in the wider Davis co-op community. I acknowledge and greatly appreciate my easy livin’, but there’s more to it than that.

We have become so used to this giant structure that we can lean back into and let create meaning for us. All we need to do is follow the rules, play the game well, and we’ll end up with a nice piece of paper at the end of those four years. And then the structure falls away, and while your life still looks the same, you sense this gaping nothingness. Your feet are dangling in it. People are scared of it, or pressured not to venture there: they flee into grad school, or internships, or a career. But if you take a minute to stare it in its terrible face, with unsteady eyes, it’s definitely, undeniably there. And you realize that this time, you need to create your own meaning. It’s in living in the face of the great nothingness of existence that awesome, inspiring, unique lives are forged. Terrifying though it is, that’s where I want to be.

People ask me all the time, ‘What are you going to do when you go back?’ Well I don’t know. What even is a Liberal Arts degree? I feel very qualified, but I have no idea for what. Work? What can I do? What do I want to do? What opportunities are there? I didn’t learn anything about that in school… And I don’t want to rush any decision about a master’s degree. Right now there’s no one interest of mine that stands out enough to deserve my prolonged and undivided funding and attention. What’s more, for years I’ve felt I would want a break from college upon graduating, in acknowledgement of the many other angles from which to approach life. I’ve been in school for almost two straight decades, the very vast majority of my life! Time for a shift in perspective. Time for all the other parts of my being that matter to me and I haven’t had time to explore and develop: my art and music, my health and strength, craftsmanship, practical life skills, engineering my own dwellings and transportation, knowing and growing my own food…

Garden party

But before all that, I still have some time here that I need to create meaning for. I keep myself busy, which is easy enough around here. I bike all around town visiting friends in all the different co-ops. I spend entire days just hanging out with people. And then in the weekends there’s always the parties. Just in the last 5 weeks: at the Domes, under the Trico-op fig tree, at a farm festival, in the Turtle House, a renegade dance party in the Arboretum, in a Berkeley co-op, my graduation ceremony, Halloween, an ‘intimate house show’ celebrating our remodeled living room… With all that hanging out, and absolutely zilch external structure or scheduling, I need to be very intentional about blocking off times in my days to work on projects that will give my final weeks meaning. Organizing events, painting murals, building a spiral herb garden with the bricks of our old chimney, and most of all, compiling and writing that new Pierce handbook. I want to contribute, make my time here count, leave this incredible, transformative community better than I found it. That would give me purpose. And after that? We’ll see…