I left work early today because I could not stand to start on all of the peer reviews that I'm supposed to be writing. Also, I had preordered Robin McKinley's new book, 'Dragonhaven', and received it earlier this week (perhaps even yesterday, but I can't remember - time is running together), and I really wanted to read it. Robin McKinley, as loyal readers may know, has written some of my favorite books - 'Sunshine', 'The Hero and the Crown', 'The Blue Sword', 'Beauty', 'Deerskin' - the list goes on and on. I won't spend a lot of time on plot synopsis, other than to say that 'Dragonhaven' is, as you guessed about dragons, although to say that it's about dragons is the same as saying 'Sunshine' is about vampires, when really both of them are about one person struggling to come to terms with fate and life and all of the weird internal struggles that we all go through but can never quite articulate.
I think what attracts me to McKinley's novels is that many of them (particularly 'Sunshine' and 'Dragonhaven', which are both first-person, highly-conversational, almost stream-of-consciousness) are written in such a way that I feel like I'm walking through a quiet, private labyrinth when I'm reading them. I was not a completely huge fan of 'Sunshine' when I first read it, but every subsequent reading pulls me further down and further in to the labyrinth. I mean 'labyrinth' in the meditative, contemplative sense here - like the elaborate labyrinths in European cathedrals, or even the silly Snoopy labyrinth that Ritu, Maneesh and I walked through at the Charles Schultz Museum in Sonoma, which are meant to be used for meditation.
So as I was reading 'Dragonhaven' tonight, it was not just about the story...it seemed to be stripping away everything that was making me so frenzied at work this week, all of the worries and concerns and thoughts about my future, and helped to ground me. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of the story, I kind of just want to go back and read it again. That's the interesting thing about written forms of 'meditation' - for example, this blog. 95% of the time, I'm writing drivel, more intended to let people know I'm alive than to really get anything out. But the other 5%, I am attempting to tackle something at least somewhat real, even if the real personal development is happening offline in my journal. And with written communication, I often feel like I'm in a labyrinth - that I keep walking in circles, but occasionally get back to a place where I can recognize the intuition that I was struggling to express several days/weeks/months previously, and even if I still can't name that intuition, I am at least getting closer to understanding its meaning in my life. And I suppose what I'm trying to say about Robin McKinley is that she is the author who most helps me to focus my thoughts in a meditative way; romance novels are good for relaxing, much like Meteos or watching 'The Lord of the Rings', but I feel like her books help me to focus enough that I can come to greater awareness of myself.
Anyway, what I shall do with this awareness, I do not know. I think I'm going to take as much time to myself as possible this weekend - I have to do some work, but other than that, I really just need some time to relax and think. That's the other good thing about these books, though - they slow down my mind, which is an amazingly restful feeling, since generally my brain never stops. I wouldn't want to live in this state all the time, since I do typically enjoy the weird paths that my mind races down, but it's nice once in awhile. Now, though, I'm going to go to bed - sleep would probably help more than just about anything right now.
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