Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Autumn Spandana


THE soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,
The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;
Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!

Walt Whitman

Life is both dreadful and wonderful.
Thich Nhat Hanh

...was inspired to pick up a book called Adventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis, after seeing it mentioned in Yoga Bitch...(though, as it turns out, I got the wrong book...a sequel, I think, but that’s okay)...(everything’s a sequel and prequel to something or other, I suspect)...about an old-time wandering adventurer, doing’ his thing in the modern world.....inspiring, predictably enough a wanderlust in me...

...but, then, that’s typical for this time of year...the time for hunkering down, preparing to hibernate...a resistance to natural cycles I suspect may be every bit as natural as the cycles themselves...

...right now feeling ponderous and creative, if not with any particular object...wanting to be an adventurer of the mind, but with mundane work that needs to be done, in the service of bills that need to be paid......always that conflict between practical matters and the passions...vocations and avocations...and how easy to get stuck in the middle, not doing much of anything, stagnating...though that, too, might be one essential half of a pulse...spandana...

... have some tentative plans to get away this winter, along with the requisite financial insecurities making those inadvisable...and, anyway, right now they all seem so tame...not like working on tramp steamers of dubious legality or in haunted coal mines where I’ll have traumatic experiences that’ll leave me in the kind of deep, romantic despair nobody describes quite like those great Latin American writers, who understand so well that life is unspeakably funny and unbearably sad at the same time...

4 comments:

Lydia said...

Nice post, highly suitable for my own mood. I really understand that pull away from "mundane work that needs to be done" and am feeling such ennui. A break away would do the trick. Since that's not in the cards for me I strongly urge you to carve out that special time for yourself. Do it if you can. Then tell us about it!

the walking man said...

You could always occupy something or somewhere and get a riot stick in the head, that is an adventure if you've never done it before. Or swear at a cop for giving you a done nothing ticket so he can cuff you and take you to the alley precinct before booking you. I have all kinds of adventures that go against the cycle if you need more suggestions.

Meredith LeBlanc said...

Goal: attention to passions, less to detail of the mundane variety...

Kate said...

"right now feeling ponderous and creative, if not with any particular object...wanting to be an adventurer of the mind, but with mundane work that needs to be done..."

I feel like I'm in that same spot. I just finished a 6 month long work project and a 4 month long school project, though, so much more creative time that I am putting to good use!