Finding Your Magik Place
Finding Your Magik Place
Ask for A Place You Know Is You
If you haven’t found your magik place, ask for it.
My Magik Place is McMenamins Grand Lodge. From it, I learned I don’t choose my Magik Place. It chooses me.
SPOILER ALERT—don’t read this paragraph if you plan to watch Sandman. The Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman features the enchanting character, Fiddler’s Green. Winsomely played by Stephen Fry, he’s a reincarnation of G.K. Chesterton, down to the pince nez and the walking-stick sword. We find out he isn’t a human being but a place—Fiddler’s Green, and that his magik comes from his being a beautiful grove where we can rest, refresh, renew.
For me, McMenamins is rest, refreshment, and renewal. I didn’t know it till I got there.
Pam and I got there because, via my cashed-in pension, we flew to Forest Grove, Oregon, and stayed there the night before we bought Betty, the 1973 VW Camper I surprised Pam with. The seller recommended McMenamin’s as a meeting place. As I recount in TransCountry, one night turned into a week of stays.
Though we were despondent (because Betty broke down, had to go to the local VW doctor, got broken into there, and broke us of a significant chunk of the aforementioned pension), McMenamins kept renewing us. It’s filled with lush gardens, old buildings, magikal people, delightful ghosts, paintings galore, and rooms devoted to authors like Ursula K. LeGuin. We strolled, imbibed rejuvenating spirits and ales, lounged, and enjoyed ourselves despite the predicament called life.
That’s magik.
I’d have never known McMenamins Grand Lodge existed had it not been for the Pandemic, Betty breaking down, and the seven years of corporate slavery in my 20s that created a pension to cash in.
In my unknown peril, McMenamins Grand Lodge happened to me.
So, we went back in March 2021 for a planned stay, and McMenamins happened to me all over again.
I don’t have the means to make McMenamins Grand Lodge my permanent home, but I would if I could. Maybe it would then lose its Magik. To adapt Cookie Monster’s wisdom: “Magik Places are a sometimes food.”
But if you grew up with the original Cookie Monster, like I did, you know he started out with Magikal Cookies being an all the time food. Yum! I think the Grand Lodge has more than enough Magik to sustain me.
It’s still with me, you see. I carry it with me. For it is me.
And your Magik Place is you.
Places are not objects we visit but mansions of our hearts. If we dare, we let our Magik Places find us.
Just ask.
They greet us unexpectedly, rescuing us before we know our peril.
Ask.
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