In this new and pleasing locale, it seems that my spirits sink with the sun. The shadow world also shadows my inner light. And I'm not sure what to do about it or how to cope.
Sometimes at night, I hear crying in my sleep. And I wake up to find out it was me. It's kind of odd that in this place that represents a very clear indicator of creation and beauty-two things that I'm high on-I can sink low simply because of the sun's setting. It's as if I'm a child, playing peek-a-boo, and believing that when I can't see others, they can't see me, or in this case, that when I can't see the world, it ceases to exist. It feels like I'm in a barren, arctic, moonscape when I hear the wind howl and my mind tells me I'm cold. Without the illusion of familiarity, even that familiarity that is destructive, I am alien.
Among the last of my family, up here in Washington it becomes clearer that this is the last of my family. I have no cell phone that functions, so I feel cut off from the world I know. When I reach out to those voices that are so familiar and comforting, I feel only a vacuum. No one here understands or appreciates my jokes and I even find my own sense of humor waning. It is cold. I can hear the wind.
But with the sun comes renewal. A new day is a new life. My life is meted out one day at a time. Indeed, my life is measured with each breath. Those breaths in the stillness of a peaceful day are like nirvana. I understand Schopenhaur and his aesthetic contemplation in these breaths. When I see this native land across the waters of the sound, I am quite free of will.
The moment, in these moments, simply is. It isn't as if I want to eat the land, or roll around in it, or even take a picture. On some instinctive level, I know that there really isn't anything I can do to enhance the experience. It isn't like some drug or spirit, where a little more has more effect. It is, in itself, the effect. And it is sublime.
But then the punchline of the cruel joke is delivered at dusk. Seriously, I don't know if it's because I'm out of contact with the world I thought I knew, or because I don't yet know the world I should, or the winter depression you hear about in Moscow and other northerly points. I am becoming aware, though, of the erosion of what I thought was an indestructible optimism and permanently jovial attitude. I am becoming like the water that swells and troughs with the wind.
But I am confident and even sure that this will help me. That this will further hone a character and spirit that perseveres despite itself. And one other thing, I need to get my hands on a piano. Stat!
PS-This is just how I feel right now. If any of you doubt that I'm down to get weak or that I still keep it po flo, mix in an email since you can't call me and I'll dominate whatever it is we're doing. But seriously, the psyche is in the repair shop at this moment. Maybe I need a drink or something. Or a fucking heater!
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