A week in the city has my head spinning. Too much free time, with too little focus, plus too much concentration on the spiritual, has made everything lose meaning, in the same way that repeating a word over and over turns it into noise. All that talk and action, incessant around me … i hadn’t till now realized the salubrious effect of living on the coast — the mere proximity of the endless ocean, or the view of mountains not laced with streets and houses. There’s so little mental space in the city.
The people in the cafes never stop talking. All that burning interest — in their jobs, their ideas, their hopes, their friends’ jobs, ideas and hopes. Usually i eavesdrop, shamelessly, compulsively. So much they seem to be filling their lives with. Me, today i seem to be interested in almost nothing. I make a list. It’s short:
- walking around and watching the world
- banging on a drum (these days, one of Robert’s pot lids)
- getting some kind of handle on my rootless, aimless existence
I feel stagnant, dysfunctional, inert, among these people burning up with passion all around me. I have nothing at all to say to them. The girls, every one of them, look beautiful, and i want them all. I want to hold them, envelop them, to have something substantial to hang onto.
I know that coming unmoored is part of the game, part of the process. You read about it in the Zen books (obliquely as always) — abandoning all fixed points of reference, becoming comfortable with rootlessness, embracing nothingness. I see now why the sages prefer natural surroundings. Being in the city, today, makes me feel like a failure.
Greg Blee 