FEELING STRANGE
Monday I don‘t think I left the house. Nothing pulled me out so I sat still all day and listened to music and read about the island of Hydra. I started Peel Me A Lotus by Charmian Clift about the years her Austrailian family lived on Hydra and then read some of A Theater For Dreamers by Polly Samson, a novel about the expatriate community escaping from various parts of the world to write and to paint and to live freely on Hydra. In both of them Leonard Cohen is central. I didn‘t finish either book, I was more interested in the feeling of living in a place where you felt fully alive than in following the story.
I wondered about my own malaise which I mentioned on Monday. It felt so odd to be in Swannanoa looking out at the Swannanoa Valley and the purple mountains beyond. How did I happen to drop here, to spend most of my life here, and why have I suddenly lost interest in leaving the house? I understand the language, I look like everyone else, I share the same cultural background, I repeat the same cliches. But for some reason this week Swannanoa doesn‘t turn me on. But I‘m not sure escaping to Hydra would be the solution. The people in these two books seem to have taken all of their tensions with them.
When I read the national political news and sense the fear of others on every side I feel like pulling into my shell and not leaving the house.
But I know that if I wait a week or two gradually I‘ll be back to where I was before I left two months ago, and it will seem as if I have never left and everything will seem normal, and a little dull, again.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 