In 1991, I lived in this funky dusty haphazard house in Oakland with a bunch of other young people w
In 1991, I lived in this funky dusty haphazard house in Oakland with a bunch of other young people wandering along the way. I got a bed for $150 monthly, which I made working in a restaurant kitchen staffed entirely by men of color, while the front of the restaurant was staffed by white folks (mostly women). Even at that time, a lot of white folks were insisting that racism was a thing of the past, but all I had to do was show up to work to see how stupid that was. However, the bright social dividing line in our house wasn’t so much race or culture, but student or not. The students did their thing, those of us who had no academic ambitions did ours.That’s me on the couch with the guitar and the hair in my face. The cute couple in the chair are Duncan and Hannah, who worked in the same restaurant as me. Tragically, they died when they fell through ice while skating on a frozen pond during a winter holiday. Their bodies were recovered holding hands and seemingly at peace. When the telephone call came to deliver the news, a devastating gloom fell over the house and the restaurant staff. For better or worse, by that point in my life I had already dealt with quite a lot of tragedy and death, and I was able to hold myself together (barely) and help some of my friends through the shock and grief. The most important thing in such situations is always the simplest thing in the world: being there. Offering love not advice, offering comfort not philosophy.Duncan was a self-described “ugly white boy” from a working class San Francisco background. He was as cynical, dark, and hard-nosed as I was idealistic and spiritually inclined, and we got along famously. Hannah was from the midwest, she was sweet and on the shy side and I never knew her so well, but she always wanted to lend a hand to whatever was happening. It was a blessing to cross paths with them, however briefly, and share some beauty and laughter in this tragicomic windstorm of life. -- source link