“Over and in,” indeed! My annual summer trips to Canada usually are periods of time during which I focus on the inner life (more than usual). I had thought that such a time would prove ideal for rekindling the Papers for the Border blog, but the North had other plans.

It was a calm but fast-paced three weeks spent on Canada’s “South Coast” (Crystal Beach, on Lake Erie, about 15 minutes from Buffalo, NY and 25 minutes from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls). Genya and I made a brief foray into Buffalo and a slightly longer one into Rochester but, besides that, we stayed put, beaching, playing cards, playing with the dog, and mostly reading.

Writing was something I just didn’t want to do. I wanted to swallow words, not spit them out. Of course, I felt I should be writing, and I sat at the computer, frustrated dry fountain facing impassive page/screen, until I finally just went with the flow, and read. And read, and read.

I’m not the fastest reader in the world, but on the other hand John Crowley’s books do not reward light skimming. Last summer, I read his classic novel Little, Big in Canada. This July/August, I returned to the same author, reading from his Aegypt series. (I had started the first book in the series directly after reading Little, Big last year, and quickly got into a “pick-it-up, put-it-down” rut, only finishing it just before leaving for this summer’s Canada trip.) In Canada, I began Crowley’s second book in the series, Love & Sleep, and finished it after about a week.

Crowley’s Aegypt series deals with a lot of lofty topics, most of which I won’t get into here, but I will say that much ofLove & Sleep addresses the concepts of history and memory (both personal and universal). A firm believer in the non-existence of coincidence, I found that I was reading the book at precisely the right time. A year ago, just prior to 2007’s Canada trip, I got in touch with an old, close friend, a mentor, from my undergraduate days, who played a pivotal role in altering the course of my life by getting me to consider the difference between vocation and avocation. The cycle repeated this year: shortly before leaving for Canada, another old friend from the same time-period found me through the Internet, and we have reconnected, figuring out who each other is now and rekindling our friendship. The time in my life that both these friends initially were a part of was a time of intense self-discovery, not always easy, but absolutely exhilarating. I often refer to it as my “head-on-fire” year.

For many years I have tried to return to this “head-on-fire” way of experiencing and interacting with the world, without the ultimate incendiary self-destruction that I was headed for twenty years ago. Crowley’s Love & Sleep seemed to serve as a sort of instruction manual for remembering many events that I have (of necessity, probably), forgotten. Every night during the time I read this book I would wake, both during the middle of the night, and again in the morning, with the remnants of dreams, still hyper-clear in my mind. They would all contain or refer to people and events from my past (most, but not all, from the period of time mentioned above), and they would stay in my head all day.

It doesn’t get much more “inner” than this, and yet, as Crowley has said through the voices of many characters in both Little, Big and the Aegypt series, the universe which contains everything is itself contained within the littlest mote, and likewise can be contained within the human mind. The inner is the new outer!

(to be continued…)