HARPER ALERION

[harperalerion]

A dear friend recently suggested that our college companions and we begin vlogging as a way to continue sharing our lives with one another from afar.  This is the inaugural video, a love letter to my native Virginia. TRANSCRIPT: Hello, friends!   While preparing to edit this video, I realized that I had a lot of unused footage from late fall that I also wanted to share, so I thought it might be fun to give you all a little taste of Virginia through the seasons, transitioning from autumn to spring.  So grab your caffeinated beverage of choice, and settle in for a short journey through the Southern wild. You might’ve heard me mention a time or two that autumn is my favorite season here.  All of the season’s classic features have been glorified to the point of rendering them cliche, but there is something truly magical about them, especially in the Mid-Atlantic states and New England, where the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot, the scent of spiced apple cider pouring out of a nearby coffeeshop, and the sight of painted trees are enjoyed against the backdrop of 18th and 19th century architecture and primal, untamed wilderness.  Autumn is a time for brown butter caramel-apple pie, pumpkin pie, and mushroom-chicken pot pie.  It’s a…it’s a time for pie is what I’m getting at here. Spring, unsurprisingly, is a time for flowers and is every bit as much a feast for the eyes as autumn is.  Birds sing merrily from the trees, just beginning to fill out their naked limbs with fresh green leaves, still bare enough for the woodland path behind my house to be seen.  Wisteria grows wild in the woods, and it comes alive with the hum of bees on a warm day.  Whenever the pull of life’s many crossroads stretches me too thin or I feel overwhelmed by daily obligations, it’s wonderful to be able to step outside of the four walls I call home and see how easily life flows in the forest. “All Eastern Virginians are Shintoists under the skin,” historian Douglas Southall Freeman wrote in 1940.  For many of us native to the state, there is something sacred in the fields and rivers and mountains that surround us.  With flooding waters, wind-torn trees, and freezing winters, we are keenly aware that we are at the mercy of nature, a power higher than ourselves.  There is even something sacred in the tools we use to shape and support the structure of our lives—our books to pass the time, our kettles to brew our tea, our candles to light our way when lightning leaves us in the dark. Although I miss you all more than I can bear at times, although economic pressures may usher me into a more urban environment, although myriad corners of the world call out for me to explore them, I will always belong to Virginia in a way I will never belong anywhere else. Thinking of every single one of you every day, my friends.

[harperalerion]

The Divinity Axis

     You’re seated in the balcony of a regal theater, and the symphony of strings sounding from the stage washes over you, sending a satisfying chill up your spine.        You witness a young man helping an elderly woman gather her dropped groceries, and a feeling of warmth spreads throughout your limbs.  You smile.  You might even assist them and feel that much more pleased when the three of you go your separate ways.      You stand before a vast lake, and a breeze carries the scent of the water and surrounding flowers toward you.  Beyond the opposite bank lies a range of hazy blue mountains.  Beyond the range glows a radiant sunset.  You breathe in deeply, and you feel small yet somehow secure in the knowledge that you are but a single part of a greater world.      In each of these scenarios (and many more like them), you have accessed the divinity axis.  In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt explores the three axes that support and define human relationships: the “x-axis” of closeness (accessed through social relationships and reciprocity), the “y-axis” of hierarchy (accessed through an understanding of one’s role in society), and the “z-axis” of divinity.  The word “divinity” may call to mind images of angels, gods, and churches, but in choosing areligious examples of accessing the divinity axis, I hope to illustrate the fact that this axis is accessible to all—theists and atheists alike.        The divinity axis is associated with feelings of disgust (on the low end) and awe (on the high end).  To borrow biblical language, we feel profane (or low on the divinity axis) when we—or others—transgress certain rules, unspoken or otherwise, pertaining to moral or bodily cleanliness.  Conversely, we feel sacred when witnessing or expressing moral or physical beauty.  “Feeling sacred” entails such emotions and sensations as gratitude, strength, warmth, unity, humility, and reverence—often in combination.  It is a simultaneous turning inward, turning outward, and rising upward.  The boundaries necessitated by the existence of a “self,” separate and apart, dissolve as that self communes with the world.      Although the divinity axis is often portrayed as being accessed unintentionally, I believe it can just as frequently be accessed with intent.  When we choose to act kindly toward a stranger, when we choose to bask in nature’s glory, when we choose to revel in the arts of music and dance, we choose to elevate ourselves and to honor that which is humane in us all.  The paradoxical beauty of the divinity axis lies in its ability to make us feel both limited and limitless.  When we acknowledge and feel so palpably our place in the universe, we understand almost intuitively where our power does and doesn’t lie in shaping it.  This brings peace, and with wisdom, that power can be used to draw out the best in our lives and the lives of others.

[harperalerion]

Dragons & Flowers: A Personal Statement

     Well, folks, it may not have gotten me into law school, but I'm still quite proud of this personal statement.  Here's hoping you find in reading it the same catharsis I found in writing it. 

     The midsummer sun weaves its rays through the straw that lines the flea market, spinning the stalks into gold. Shade is scarce in the Village Square, but freckled and fortified by lemonade, I stroll past the stalls, slowly, the tables of treasure and trinkets level with my curious six-year-old eyes. The light catches on something smooth and white, and my eyes come to rest on a porcelain lady, dressed in traditional Chinese garb. These mass-manufactured caricatures of foreign femininity are a dime a dozen, I now know at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, but to my young mind, I had made the greatest archaeological find of the century. Her graceful posture, her flowing robe, her gentle face—she seemed to float from the table into my eager hands after my grandparents exchanged a few quarters for her. Sometimes, when I was alone, I would hold her outstretched hand and pretend she was leading me into a new world—a world so very different from the one encircling my impoverished rural childhood.           Six years later, my cousin would give me a set of chopsticks, having given up on mastering their usage. I appeared at the dinner table with them that very night, proudly brandishing them with the expectation that my family’s fascination would match my own, but the warmth of pride and joy dissipated when my grandparents began to ridicule me. “Put those down. You can’t even use them right. Forks aren’t good enough for you anymore?” I was left with cold resolve. Every night those chopsticks accompanied me to the table, and every night my family’s reprimands grew less severe, finally simmering to a scornful silence.          When high school arrived, my adolescence in full swing, little had changed. I still burned with questions that were more often punished than rewarded by my own blood, and I still dreamed of a world that I had long since despaired of ever seeing. Books being cheaper than plane tickets, the pages would roll beneath my fingers like so many waves, bearing me along on what I feared would be the only voyage I would ever take.           Then came college. And three-thousand miles away from the shackles I had shed at home, I felt as terrified as I did liberated, for I had journeyed for the first time into the unknown. The palm trees, barren mountains, and city lights of Southern California were unlike anything I had ever seen in the green wilds of the Virginian countryside. I knew nothing and no one in this new place, yet I was determined to prove myself. Foreign language classes were required, and I chose to study Chinese. The language’s logograms had enchanted me all my life, beckoning me from scrolls hanging on the walls of antique shops, from stoneware teacups, and from ancient paintings in gallery halls. This tonal tongue seemed impossible to match with my English one. The writing system being equally challenging, I had to drill characters so often that, when I dreamed of rain, they were what poured from the sky.           Five years later, hastily devouring takeout during my lunch break in the coffeeshop where I worked, I would hear a small voice spilling over the counter. “Wow! Those are cool. How do you eat with them?” Glancing down, I see a young boy, his wide eyes fixed on my chopsticks. I let him take a closer look and offer to teach him, but he suddenly grows shy, intimidated by his own ignorance while also longing to dispel it. The recognition of this feeling is immediate, as is the recognition of my six-year-old self in this child. He becomes a regular at the small-town shop, and I entertain and answer every question he asks. Every time I do so, I can feel old wounds stitching themselves together.          That April, using some of the money I had saved from working as a part-time barista and freelance editor, I traveled to China. I walked along the Bund in the chilly April night, gazing upon the glaring neon glow of the skyscrapers, standing tall against the starless Shanghai sky, their colorful lights scattered across the water like the sparks of silent fireworks. Perched atop a mountain, I ran my fingers across the coarse stone carvings of dragons and flowers that adorned the temple grounds and watched the sun set over the city of Nanjing, the red lanterns coming on one by one, guiding me down from my monastic vantage point. And one day, in Mochou Lake Park, I found my porcelain lady, taller—much taller—but clad in the same flowing dress, smiling the same gentle smile. She had been waiting for me, alone in those quiet waters, to welcome me out of my dream and into the reality I had forged for myself, to testify that I could achieve impossible things, and to raise the bar higher.           “Have you thought of law school?” a friend asks me over the coffeeshop counter. “I remember you talking about it in college. You haven’t given up on it, have you?” Setting the kettle aside to boil, I brace myself against the counter and think of the places I’ve been and the places I still yearn to go. If I could find my way to the other side of the world, perhaps I could even find my way to the bar.          “No,” I say. “I haven’t.” Lifting the kettle, I begin brewing another batch of coffee, and I watch the steam rise.