Deep South trance

I finally made it to the South, more specifically to eastern North Carolina, town of Durham. It's a beautiful place, full of the feeling of the South as well as Duke University. Went to a minor league baseball game, featuring the Durham Bulls, and had a great time eating french fries and shouting encouragement to some players who looked like they were trying hard even though few people in the crowd knew their names or anything about them. I felt very at peace, caught up in the slower pace of life here and enjoying a hometown sport as a Yankee visitor.

I wandered around the Duke University campus while my host did a few tasks at her new graduate student office. It's a nice place, with big stone buildings built from old tobacco money in the 1930's. They have a huge collection of gardens, very manicured and expansive by my standards. I wandered past magnolias, pines, hyacinths, beech trees, some pin oaks, and flowers whose name I'll never know.

I moseyed into the "Asiatic Aboretum" which was an odd and pretty mix of Asian trees and shrubs as well as some palm trees and native North Carolinian plants. The feel of Asia was greatly enhanced by the simple gates with the Chinese style roofs that you pass under as you enter. I thought it was a nice gesture that they have this corner of the gardens. But I found a moment of true serenity when I came across a secluded peace garden, with a small Japanese style hut at the edge of a pond with a bamboo-edged bridge crossing it. I sat on the minimalist wooden benches and took it all in - the pale green water, the soft gray gravel path, the sparse bushes along the banks, the delicate fingers of a few Japanese maples.

The plaque there said that it was a Garden for Peace, so that the world may find peace through the beauty of such places. I certainly found peace - the serenity of this place in the middle of my summer journeys touched me deeply. I felt the possibility for peace if people can come together in beautiful places and share quiet moments together, where we cease some of endless chatter (like blogging :-) and rationalizations about our lives, where we can reflect in the stillness, where we don't have to fear the abyss that Nietzsche said would stare back, where we can ponder our possible situation in the universe, where we can be grateful to be together with friends and loved ones, where we can hold hands and appreciate the simple beauty of each other. Keeping it simple, keeping it simple...