As the reading has been interrupted for a moment, a few quick thoughts:
The ability to get to southern Europe in the next few months
for an extended nomad trek is shaping up to be an existential objective, as
they say. Given where I stand after past
events, I can’t hold this position. The
adversities are likely pushing me towards a simple throwing the hands up,
dropping all work, and seeking animal survival in the city, but that simply won’t
happen. It would no longer recognizably
be me, and the obligation to preserve the self is higher than the obligation to
play the option with the highest percentage of animal survival.
Running through the events of the last three months, I can
honestly say that only a handful of the people I’ve ever met could have
survived that sequence of days, while continuing to work and think. This is a very different country when you’re
placed outside the charm of things. And
it has been over ten years since that reality began in force. Iron discipline, of course. Teetotal as always when I don't have a place of my own. Daily physical and spiritual exercise. Never mendicancy. Respect all laws. Christmas chocs allowed when 75% off in January. (Seriously, chocolate is a survival food, not a luxury. It is good fuel.)
So, I must get there.
And I will be able to work there, and provide a minimally sufficient
life. And there will be time enough, and
pocket-change enough for theatre, music, and coffee. And I will continue to
discover the place, whichever one of the likely half -dozen it turns out to be.
The critical point is that although the primary motive in
selecting that region is that, even in these circumstances, I can have a minimally
sufficient material existence, material sustenance and housing are not the
highest ideals.
The work must continue, because that is what I am, and if I
were to surrender it, the thing that would surrender it would no longer recognizably
be me. The Samurai must survive as Samurai. The thinker must survive as thinker.