Returning from my recent trip to NYC has left me refreshed, hopeful, at peace with lots of things. This year has been an interesting adventure, where I’ve been sewing spirals of thought & experience together, creating a stronger Life Quilt for myself. I’m able to breathe more easily now, more strongly, with more confidence.

I got lots of reading done on my vacation (four books), and there happened to be many overlapping themes, one of which dealt with peace v. happiness. Gretchen explored this theme recently on her blog, gretchenadventures.blogspot.com, where she talked about joy v. happiness, and how joy (peace) seems to be more transitory but also more attainable, more “everyday” but also more powerful because we can grasp those everyday moments regularly. (I am paraphrasing here or, more accurately, spinning my own idea from her words.) One of my favorite writers, Francesca Lia Block, has a great line in Weetzie Bat that reads, “I don’t know about happily ever after…but I know about happily.” This is a wise way of saying it, too. In other words, if we spend too much time trying to be Happy (capital H intended), we’re going to face lots of struggles and lots of disappointment. But if we focus on letting happiness and sadness flow together, if we allow moments of peace and joy to spark us, shape us, keep us motivated, then we’ll be more at ease in our own skins and in what’s to come, both the good and the bad. Life is tough. But Life is also wondrous.

Here are some passages that really struck me from my recent reads; you’ll notice that the latter echoes/complements the quote I recently posted from Mark Frost’s The List of 7. (All copyrights belong to Madeleine L’Engle and Ray Bradbury, respectively.)

From Madeleine L’Engle’s Many Waters:

“The earth was still in the process of being created. The stability of rock was no more than an illusion. Earthquake, hurricane, volcano, flood, all part of the continuing creation of the cosmos, groaning in travail.

The song of the wind softened, gentled. Behind the violence of the birthing of galaxies and stars and planets came a quiet and tender melody, a gentle love song. All the raging of the creation, the continuing hydrogen explosions of the countless suns, the heaving of planetary bodies, all was enfolded in a patient, waiting love.”

From Ray Bradbury’s From the Dust Returned:
(*this passage/dialogue is spoken by a possible vampire in the novel, but I can hear all “Others” speaking it, those who are marginalized, those who live and breathe and feast in the corners and edges of mainstream society)

“Listen, now, let me provide the history of the rising tide of disbelief. The Judeo-Christian world is a devastation. The burning bush of Moses will not fire. Christ, from the tomb, fears to come forth should he be unrecognized by doubting Thomas. The shadow of Allah melts at noon. So Christians and Muslims confront a world torn by many wars to finalize yet a larger. Moses did not walk down the mountain for he never walked up. Christ did not die for he was never born. All this, all this mind you, is of great importance to us, for we are the reverse side of the coin tossed in the air to fall heads or tails. Does the unholy or the holy win? Ah, but look: the answer is neither one or what? Not only is Jesus lonely and Nazareth in ruins, but the populace at large believes in Nothing. There is no room for either glorious or terrible. We are in danger, too, trapped in the tomb with an uncrucified carpenter, blown away with the burning bush as the east’s Black Cubicle cracks its mortar and falls. The world is at war. They do not name us the Enemy, no, for that would give us flesh and substance. You must see the face or the mask in order to strike through one to deface the other. They war against us by pretending, no, assuring each other we have no flesh and substance. It is a figment war. And if we believe as these disbelievers believe, we will flake our bones to litter the winds…

“Once the war was simply between Christians and Muslims and ourselves. As long as they believed in their sermoned lives, and disbelieved in us, we had more than a mythical flesh. We had something to fight for to survive. But now that the world is filled with warriors who do not attack, but simply turn away or walk through us, who do not even argue us as half unreal, we find ourselves weaponless. One more tidal wave of neglect, one more titanic rainfall of nothings from nowhere and the Apocalypse, arriving, will with one neglectful gust blow out our candles. A dust storm of sorts will sneeze across the world and our Family will be no more. Destroyed by a single phrase which, if listened to and leaned on, simply says: you do not exist, you did not exist, you never were.”

Aaron picked me up at the airport when I landed at JFK, and this meant the world to me, that he would greet me, especially since it’d been so long since we’d spent time together. And, as always, Aaron and Jordan were wonderful hosts, and we had lots of time to walk their dogs in Prospect Park, eat lots of good food, play videogames, watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, drink too much, sleep too much (thank god), listen to great music, and chat away with one another.

I loved Peter Shaffer’s Equus, directed by Thea Sharrock and starring Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe (he of Harry Potter fame). The story was one I immediately, innately connected with. Once in a while a work of art comes along (a play, novel, portrait, you name it), and our soul just goes, “Yep, I’m with you, thanks for reminding me there are others out there who see things the way I do, at least in part.” That was my experience with Equus. Talk about powerful, disturbing, sad, poetic, homoerotic, haunting, with an ache of Loneliness – Loneliness almost its own character – that longs for human connection, a “mate” so its identity can almost be shaped into something else entirely. This may be the best play I’ve ever seen. And Jordan – fellow lover of horses and their kin, unicorns, pegasuses, the list goes on – was the perfect person to see it with.

Went to the Met, loved the Egyptian and African collections most.

Loved seeing Karin, Ida, Stephenie, Jim, Carl, others.

Shared some awesome “Nathan Time Moments” where I went for walks, treated myself to coffee at a local café, curled up on Jordan’s couch in such a way that the sunlight bathed and warmed me for hours….

Danced my ass off (as best my gimpy knee would allow me) to Rusted Root at their concert.

Wrote pieces of poems in my head.

Embraced gluttony.

Embraced relaxation.

Right now, I’m a happy camper (or would that be joyous camper or peaceful camper?), made happier even because Mom and I shared an amazing day upon my return, where we shimmied over to Sauvie Island, picked out misfit/deformed pumpkins for Glenn and me to carve, ate amazing corn-on-the-cob and caramel apples, and stopped at a yard sale where we picked up a three-foot Barbie wearing an Amish-looking dress who now is propped in the kitchen window so she looks like she’s screaming for help out into the alley just in time for Halloween. Sigh. Good times!

Jordan and Aaron – I love you, and I miss you like crazy already. Can’t wait for Christmas.