energy & how water moves,
[I’ve not done much I’ve loved too little And I’m tired of running] - Frank O’Hara, from ‘Lines Across the United States’, Poems Retrieved Tin, It's past midday, Energy has been low for a while and I tell myself, is it just - to go more slowly, or is that - death shows its shadow and shows us what it is not to live? I try to go deep, but energy dictates everything. One wants to run down the mountain but moves like a sloth, turning the pages of a rain drenched book, an old rusted train unused for centuries. Then I think: spirit wants me back. Nature calls for me. It's there one must go rather than the endless productivity that dictates our times. Perhaps it is not the time for finishing writing, instead to clear through...to open up after this last year and a half of constraints, of collective fear and hesitation. I remember how water calms. I've been spending time recently with those who struggle to notice or appreciate poetry. Os spends most of her time inside or at work and there she is content. I cannot name where our attraction to each other came from, but feel a little foolish for it now. Perhaps loneliness accumulates. Perhaps one sometimes goes exactly in the direction where one is not heading in order, for the millionth time, to know what it is that one needs. I don't understand her at all, or perhaps I do, and this worries me more. The mechanisms of comfort, of predictability - ways to ward off the chaos that attacks us from all angles. And in that ruin, I find strength, and in it - she cleans and scrubs and tidies away that which can creep in unexpectedly. I led a yoga session yesterday and she said, "I feel nothing" and my heart sank. "Mr Duffy lived a short distance away from his body..." - James Joyce But I had missed / being held. And I've been with C in the north of Catalonia, who's living beside a large lake. At least with him we've been heading out to nature, having emotional talks at night. But I confess I miss literature. I miss the challenge to intellect. There is so much safety, routine...soon, I tell myself. Soon all of that will disappear and for the next month slow travels will await. Hiking, meeting some friends. You, snorkelling. How is it to live so close to such a vibrant sea? Have you noticed differences over the years of the life that can be found there? I went to the sea last week with C. Speedboats everywhere. Back on the island where I've been living since April it's much better for wilderness areas, but even then - boats everywhere. I long for a sea too rough for sailing, or too cold, too unpredictable. What happened with your March? We have much to catch up on... I often make Kombucha just with like it is, but sometimes add things like mint. I find it interesting to experiment with the kinds of tea... Fear. There is so much of it everywhere. I will have to go far, far from the city to get away from it. Here in Barcelona I feel it immediately. It's far different from the lake where C lives. I suppose it's my first direct confrontation with it. Fear attacks the immune system, the health inside, all the good we carry. Survival instinct kicks in, but when it never has an off button, because it's constant - exhaustion comes. I've been doing a lot of breath work the last months. It's helped a lot, though I have to be careful to keep up with it while travelling, as it's easy to resist all kinds of routine when away from it. Sometimes I just focus on releasing all the poison from the body and mind with the outbreath. The longer I can go the better. But I feel time also slipping away, as if all this period of inactivity...events to separate the days - brings time into a collective soup of which is there is little escape routes. The lentils cling to us and then there is no way out. The spontaneous is more important than ever but can that be forgotten, or is there some secret stash of the wild left in all beings? Those monitoring lizards are crafty...here it's bats, instead. The stories that best serve us... Perhaps it is just those that go towards
understanding, wisdom. But how to select them? I'm reading a book of a man's walk across Afghanistan currently. I found it in the garage of C of books travellers had left. I walk in the streets of Barcelona and see donkeys and deserts. Perhaps there is little worthwhile news stories, and what has worth is the personal, the way back to our origins, to the nests of where we belong. And breath, the body, the wind, gleaming eyes, animals. The rest - media seems to be stronger and stronger and leaves me weak. Little by little, disentangling, giving it up... My heart would be full of underground passages, some accessible, some not so much. C told me that I'm so much more open about my past than we last met seven years ago, on the way down to Morocco in his camper van. That I speak of my childhood without hesitation, of my father and the darkness there that envelopes. I keep reminding myself of gratitude. It helps a lot. My brother is becoming an ordained Hindu monk next week. It's like getting married / only to an elephant god (amongst others) rather than to another person. Been doing a lot of ancestral work recently, of the past - but I'm somewhat allergic to people romanticising the ancestors. For some of it - this is where trauma gets passed down - all the unresolved - the conflicts, the turned away from, that which is repelled. I for one am not particularly proud of my blood...but it's good to imagine some that are. I prefer, when offering a drink to the land, for it to be pachamama and not my ancestors, who likely had enough alcohol in life and don't need it in death too. You're in rain season now? On the island there are continuous floods even in summer. The lands are changing and people refuse to believe it. For years it brought me great despair to witness the extinctions, the loss of habitat. Somehow now, though the sadness and despair still remains - it almost rejoices, for perhaps now people finally realise. And we will not be forever. And some beings can take our place, and perhaps they will take better care... Well, a hug. One last day in the city, and more and more it makes less sense. Jass