Wanderer, there is no road

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There is nothing like being homeless in a new city. Well perhaps not homeless – perhaps Jewish wanderer, couch surfer, pad crasher. I do have a mattress or cushions to curl up on every night, whether it is in a hallway, in a sleeping bag, or there is another body in my bed. If for some reason I cannot find my way through a door, I do know of a rope-web spun 30 feet up in a redwood tree with a mattress in it. It’s a bit treacherous to climb, and I’m not sure how I would get my suitcase up there, but I would surely have magical dreams.

For the past two weeks I have been couch surfing while I find a good long-term home- I had to move out of my au pair job and I have been hosted by 5 friends so far. It’s been a difficult experience to be uprooted and not know where I will live at the end of the week, and to sleep in some less than ideal locations. But it has also been extremely liberating and exciting. I’ve had to learn to trust that I will be taken care of and that “the universe will provide”. This is like a Berkeley mantra, everytime I explain my rootlessness to a new face, I receive that response. I’ve met so many amazing people and seen crazy new things, and I believe the dependency has humbled me, reminded me that no one owes me anything here, that I do not necessarily deserve the chesed, loving kindness, bestowed on me, or sometimes withheld from me. I also feel more empathetic to the many living in Berkeley who does not have a home. So far I have always had a roof over my head, thanks to the generosity of the people I meet, and with the help of the unique Berkeley universe.

For the next four days I am staying in a gay, polygamous, polyamorous household with four husbands. The household is Jewish – it has a mezuzah on the front door and the men have signed a Ketuba, a Jewish marriage document, with over a hundred witnesses. The document begins,

“This Ketubah witnesses that at one time, rather long ago, four men decided to join their fates for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, for however so long they can tolerate each other.”

The house is beautiful with a rich growing garden farm in the backyard. I feel so blessed to be sleeping in my own room (the husbands are out of town) and wonder where I will be when Friday comes. I can honestly say to you that I would not have expected my adventure to lead me here, and what a thrill that is!

Unlike my living quarters, my job is stable and familiar. Every day, 8:30 – 5:00, sitting at my desk with my own keyboard rest, tea coaster, and candy drawer. There have been days when I sigh with relief to have a space that is mine, the corner of a sunny green office room. Of course I also have Brittany’s weird gnome collecting habits and Luba’s stories of eating dog testes to spice up my work day.

When I am not editing reports and scheduling interviews, I stalk craigslist for housing and research rabbinical school. My daily musings consist of: should I get a Conservative degree or some alternative renewal rabbinical training? Keep my 9-5 and become a Jewish leader on my own, assembling my own curriculum? Follow my friend Micah’s example, and do a year of study in an egalitarian yeshiva?

It’s is hard to make life changing decisions and remember that whatever “path” I chose is a made up idea, a set of actions my community has attributed to becoming something. I think this poem by Antonio Machado, shared with me by my current partner in crime Andrea Mia, speaks in many ways to my current process:

Wanderer, your footsteps are

the road, and nothing more;

wanderer, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

By walking one makes the road,

and upon glancing backone sees the path

that must never be trod again.

Wanderer, there is no road--

Only wakes upon the sea.



As I seek and learn, I see that I am already making wakes upon the sea. There is something special going on in the young adult Jewish community in Berkeley, and I feel like an important part of it. I also love that the poem has an important lesson for our relationship with our parents - "see the path that must never be trod again". We are forever differentiating our paths from our parents’, struggling with how much like them we want to be, and how much like them we innately are. It will be important to remember these days of pathlessness when we guide our own children into the world.

Bound by a computer and desk, I use music and quotes and eyes closed to remind myself: I have been unleashed. I am groundless, limitless, soaring, opening. It is my mind widening and my heart wondering. It is the sound of the unlocking and the lift away.



Chag Sukkot Sameach,

Ariel

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