Note: I missed a day in my daily writing practice, yesterday. The circumstances of my Sunday in LA began with me waking up somewhere in Pasadena and not getting back to Silverlake until around 5pm–with a flight leaving shortly after 8–so trying to squeeze in an entry in that relatively narrow time window was unrealistic (my laptop, of course, had not come with me on my adventures the night before, so I was without my writing tool most of the day), and though I had envisioned writing while on the plane, the truth is that once they pressurized the cabin, I lost consciousness almost immediately. Perhaps it’s all best in the end, as the thoughts I’d wished to write about may not have coalesced so gracefully in my drunken/exhausted state.

Sunday, as I sat on the patio of Basix in the heart of West Hollywood, sipping bottomless mimosas and cackling with laughter in conversation with my four fellow homos–two of whom I’d known for less than twenty-four hours–I was marveling inwardly at how easily connection can sometimes be felt; at how many commonalities there seem to be within the various cultures I am enmeshed with and what a familiar language and anthropological similarity we have. I may only speak one language in the most literal sense (to my own shame; I wish the value of learning “foreign” languages would have been understood by my teenage self so I could have actually learned one in High School), but within many subcultures and social strata, there are certain navigable paths which are obfuscated to outsiders; often this distinction is referred to (with some amount of derision on both sides of the fence) as being “scene” or “non-scene”. People who, by choice or circumstance, do not know the common parlance or fixed points of reference in a particular scene–be it BDSM, drag, fashion, a particular genre of music, etc–are “non-scene” folks. As for me, I’ve always managed to straddle a multitude of scenes…never feeling that I belong entirely to any of them, but immersed deeply enough in those with which I participate that I am recognized as “safe” by those around me.

That having been said, it never fails to feel refreshing and life-affirming to me when I can make connection and share an authentic moment with other people from whatever scene/s, even if we’ve just met. That language, that common context: it gives me a greater and greater trust that no one is alone in this life. That if you walk out into this wide world with an open heart, an open mind, and a spirit of adventure, your fellow travelers will recognize you and share with you along your way.

This weekend reminded me of an important part of myself which I lose sight of all too easily as I grow older and become more attached to certain ideas of security and self-preservation: my ability to just go limp and trust my life to carry me to where I need to go. I booked the weekend in LA with very little plan in mind; even the place I stayed was the home of two people I had barely even met in person before showing up on their doorstep. As the weekend progressed, people and plans shifted and changed, things were shuffled around; in the end, only one person I had set out to visit went unseen, and I got real quality time with the rest…but just as importantly, I made new connections. I spent time getting to better know multiple people (including my hosts) who had been in various scenes with me for lengths of time without our really learning one another, and I met new people who I had the blessing of sharing authentic experiences with. That is the real currency in life, to me; indeed, it is the biggest factor in what has brought me this far.

I knew on some spiritual level that I needed this trip to LA (ironic, considering the perceived spiritual rift between NorCal and SoCal culture), but I wouldn’t have guessed before embarking on my journey just what part of Spirit called me to go. As I process the experiences I had, the message emerges as one I have been continually learning and re-learning since about the time I was fifteen:

All the journeys worth taking begin with a leap of faith, however small.