Overcast all day.
Managed to finally wake up early today with the help of my cheap ass alarm clock, in hopes of seeing the sunrise, but there were too many clouds for that to happen.
Spent a large part of the day reading. Took my coffee to the beach and started to read a collection of poems by David Matias called, “The Fifth Season,” a series he wrote between the time he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and his eventual death. Once this yielded a rather wild emotional response from me, I decided that it was enough for one morning. Emotions come very easily here, which is very nice, but also very alarming.
I suppose reading the poems made me feel overwhelmingly thankful for my health -- something I so easily take for granted, as I think many of us do.
I followed this with a Buddhist philosophy text, which offered this provocative advice:
The causes for all personal unhappiness and interpersonal conflict in life lie in “the 3 poisons:”
1.) Craving
2.) Anger
3.) Delusion
On a daily basis in New York, I feel all these things. Often times within the length of time it takes me to walk from one street block to the next. I covet that great looking person with the designer clothes coming out of their beautiful car. I feel angry when the person walking in front of me is smoking or walking too slowly. I delude myself into thinking that the percentage of my salary that goes toward paying rent is reasonable.
I know this when I am living in New York, but it takes being away from there, being out of it, to see the effect it has on my whole being. There is an unconsciousness I experience there that is gratifying. Even a completely uneventful day in Manhattan feels thrilling. But there are those moments when it catches up, when you can’t remember the last night you didn’t have a drink.
There is the opposite effect here. With so little in the way of distraction, I feel extremely conscious of everything around me, but completely at peace with it, and almost a part of its rhythm.
2 comments:
Michael,
when I first left living in Manhattan, I thought that foolish people live there because they want to, and thoughtful people live there because they need to. Granted, I worked for a fashion photographer; talk about a skewed/ warped perspective on reality.
But life in the city will always be a different experience from a life
closer to the earth. One can't compare the two, even though the same basic concepts of seeing, breathing and eating are the same.
Congratulations on having the ability to see the distinctions between the two. I think there's good and bad in both hectic urban life as well as rural simplicity. The balance is there, but not always easily recognized!
Love this post, Michael. Thanks for your honesty. I find the more aware I can be about the 3 poisons popping up (eventually raising them to the level of consciousness), I can learn to build self-regulation, love, and mindfulness.
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