Went to my favorite place in Binghamton tonight.
It's a place I walk by every day. A place EVERYBODY seems to walk by all the time, without really noticing, or looking around. It's not any special place: there's no big monstrous statue, or building, just a nice patch of grass...
I never understood what it was about that place that drew me to it. I still don't understand. There's an energy there; a force, kind of. And when I walk there at night, it fills me with this sort of glorious bittersweetness. It's as though I can hear the history of the whole world echoing up from the ground there. It's as if I'm PART of the world, really a part of it, instead of just another person doing plain old day-by-day people things. It's as though empires are being built right there, and I can hear them.
I guess I don't always believe in God, or Goddess, or Whatever... Sometimes I do. But something about being in that place, especially at night, under the soft glow of streetlights, makes me know that there's some kind of force at work somewhere, somehow. It always kind of whispers to me, softly, beneath the racket of empires and castles, that things happen for reasons. Always, things happen for reasons. And that everything is really only a matter of finding the right timing.
The last time I was there, and really spent some time there, was mid-July... I lay there, sipping a peach tea, watching people pass me by, not even noticing me there. I wrote a long love letter. I cannot even read it now; it's scrawled in handwriting that's barely even mine. The things I suddenly felt were so intense, so passionate, that I couldn't even begin to express them in words. And so most of the love letter is just scrawly lines and words that don't really have any form. Read aloud, I suppose it would sound like silence; the kind you can hear and touch and see. The kind of silence that looks like candles and feels like the warmest moment before you fall asleep.
Tonight, there were no revelations. No knowledge of what ought to happen. No pictures in my head of how my future will look. Nothing of the sort. Just quiet, and a sort of sad peace. So I didn't stay long; just a moment. Just a moment, and then I walked home.
I had dinner at Lost Dog tonight with Chris. I don't know why they bother giving me a menu; I always get the same thing; the only thing I've EVER gotten at Lost Dog: peach tea with lemon, and penne à la vodka. In the olden days of Lost Dog, they used to call it rigatoni, but apparently "penne" is a lot more chic. Sounds to me like the Italian word for the male genitalia, but hey, I guess if that's what you're hungry for...
I need to get going. I've got bathwater, a book, and some tea waiting for me.
Love,
~Helena*
"...and lying here, I remember the time we danced... and the stories they all told me... seems so much more significant to the world than wars and politics... knowing right now that you can hear me if I speak, and so I'll not say anything, just let the wind blow... Feeling like that prayer from Sunday school: what was then is now and ever shall be. And shall be soon. Soon." --my last [nonsensical] love letter.