YOKED

It’s happening again.   One of my good friends is on the other end of a telephone call, holding back tears as she recounts the details of her recent break-up. She is a strong, fiercely independent woman, who has counseled and coached the rest of us through the emotional train wreck of many collective break-ups.   Two years ago, she told me, “Maggi, when you end a relationship, you find yourself waking up every morning to a dull heart-ache perched upon your chest and you really, really believe your world is over.”   You roll yourself out of bed anyway. You make the route cup of coffee.   You stumble into the shower and let the steam swell around you.   If you’re feeling especially lifeless, you drape your hair over your ears, so that the cascade of hot water makes a deep rushing sound, like being swept beneath the sea to a powerfully calm, fetal state of being, where the roar of running water drowns out all the piercing thoughts in your head.   You...

The two of them sit together, pouring over a shared notepad, thinking intently about whatever question is written there.   He in a fleecy-looking blue sweatshirt, she in an equally roomy grey one.   A dainty pair of glasses slides down the slope of her nose and tuck behind locks of frizzy brown hair.   She is plain and unremarkable, unlike the slew of sorority girls gathering across the street, decked in ultra stylish dresses, synched with flattering waistlines. His elbow leans lightly upon her shoulder, draped in some expression of love and friendship.   In their unassuming comfort with each other, love is flaunted best.   I do not know if what they are gazing upon is a physics equation, or a crossword puzzle, but I do think that the rest of us should notice them, in their quiet ways. I do not doubt that he loves her body or her face or any of her feminine attributes.   They all congeal together to make her the dynamic person she is.   But he does not isolate the parts of her, c...

Whenever I attempt to describe my commitments as a JV, to things like simple living, spirituality, social justice and community, most of my Berkeley neighbors nod their dreads and reply, “ Oh, so like a commune?”   And as a child born in the eighties, I must confess that I have no idea whether JVC truly resembles a hippie commune or anything else people might randomly associate with my newly adopted lifestyle.   And while I find the four iconographic tenets of JVC to be helpful signposts for the journey, they do not fully capture the spirit that seems to animate our experiences thus far.   In just our first few months of living together, I cannot tell you the number of times my casamates and I have asked each other, in total bewilderment,   “Ohhh, so that’s what you mean be simple living?   That was not my understanding of it.” “You want to fast for what?   And what good does that accomplish?   How is any difference affected or justice accomplished by your fasting from food, or...

There are four white candles glowing on top of the cabinet and for tonight their golden sways wash the room in romance.   We lit  them because one half of our house goes without electricity.   It is one of the many challenges that have come with moving into our charming 1920’s white and cream colored home.   When Damon stumbled into his morning shower he did not realize that the hot and cold pipes were opposite of what the red and blue label suggested and so he bathed in a numbing mountain glacier stream.   While sudsing along its maiden voyage, the dishwater began to overflow with bubbles that ran steadily across the kitchen floor.   It was more comical than anything.   We have just come to accept the fact that we are living with imperfections, some of which may be fixed (like the electricity) and some that we must simply accommodate. The whole house has electricity now, which means we no longer have to chase light around the house.   Yet, I light the four candles anyway and turn of...