Favorite Thing

It occurred to me the other day that my favorite thing to do is just to exist in the same world as the people I love and admire. And I get to do that every day.

Gorgeous Nightmare

Ramallah, Summer 2004. Soon the crescent moon shone faintly in a sky all the pale shades of a child’s dream of heaven, the hills and their white houses turning pale, pretty colors as the sun sank into the horizon, space all around, valleys drifting by, everything tiny and toy-like and immense. I was like a child-idiot, I couldn’t get over it, and I resisted the urge to be self-conscious. Still, who looks at the moon like that at this age, full of fancies and dreams? And I used to be a physicist! I’m glad, though. I wouldn’t trade moonlove for any kind of silly respectability. I do want to live life in reality, but society is full of dark fancies and superstitions as well, and the natural world is, simply is a fancy dream. A gorgeous nightmare, a horrible blessed vision. Drifters like me, who have nothing immediate to occupy ourselves with, we can become part of the dream. Well, we’re all part of it, but we’re not always aware of it beyond our immediate life and needs. And I don’t blame Palestinians, e.g., for being focused on the immediate! If they don’t focus, they as a people and culture will perish, and no more olive-picking dreamers will inhabit this land any longer.

Anyway, on this day, for the first time, I felt really glad to be here, really content and excited and wise in my choice to do what I was doing. I wasn’t looking forward or back, I was just here, now, and happy. Exercise, competition, physical social interaction, these things mean so much to my well-being. Strange. I really am an animal, and thinking only does so much good, and then I must satisfy my body to let my mind relax and smile. I’m so boyish in some ways, and then today I was Arabic dancing half-naked in the mirror, looking admiringly at my pretty girl’s body, my slender, tanned wrists and my white, strong abs, and I wore the gorgeous silver necklace with the three panels covered with silver shapes and stones of muted colors that I got for 2 JD in Amman, and I feel like life, friendly life, blessed me in every way it could, gave me everything I needed, even the hardships and imperfections, to be who and what she whispered to me to try to be. So what if I’m her pawn? I get to be me, and somehow she also allowed me to be happy to be who I am, even proud sometimes, even though I can claim no credit. There’s no one I envy, no one I’d rather be. Almost nothing in my life I’d change. Aren’t I silly? Best of all possible worlds. Nature allowed me this strange little window of contentment. Blind contentment, maybe. The best kind.

In other ways I want nothing more than to have my last illusion shattered, my last veil lifted. Every one shattered so far has been painful, horrible, and exhilarating and left me stronger and calmer and happier. Imagine if this process can keep going? To what end I don’t know, but stronger and calmer and happier is end enough, and the means have been star-studded cruel beauty as well. Like Goldmund, I have nothing to show for it, nothing concrete to offer, but now and then someone recognizes the Masters degree in life I’ve picked up, the aimless, naïve striving towards a PhD in being human in my own specialized field, which I haven’t figured out yet. I’m a fool, but I’ve been given a gorgeous quest, a gorgeous path, in a sad, wilting, magnificent world. I get to live many lives, be many people, love many people, superficially sometimes perhaps, but always genuinely. I’d be a great spy. I pass, incognito, harmless-looking, through the world with shifting outer identity and restless but confident waiting center. Waiting to come into harmony with its surroundings.