Day 6 Life tree rings falling off
The past week or so has felt more out of sync and reclusive than any week i can remember since i left for London in may of 2022. There are layers of division at work here, like rings on a tree shedding off until only the core of that tree remain. Independence from family first, then London itself many years later, and within that ring of London, the other pieces in europe I've held so dear and that have come and gone fall-like. Community too, the world of the sangha, that in so many ways is more unreal and more enchanted than any chapter in all the solo wanderings or the flashes of romance. Then, there is the undervalues freedom and connectivity of being able to walk to everywhere you need to be; there's something so integrating about moving through interconnected public third spaces that are used by human beings with their faces out in the open. I could continue going down the layers but it'll suffice to say that the degree of social alienation i have living with my mother in a suburb of st. Louis with very restricted transportation after 2.5 years wandering Europe absolutely absorbed in everything that world had to offer is a change so jarring, I've wondered if i've lost something of myself in the loss of all those rings.
Castlewood though, even today when i could barely hear to do my recent cold, and i didn't have the help of woods sounds to pull me into its ver heart and soul, the cloud cover broke twice in the wood in tunnels that stretched far into the distance and let in blades of light to highlight the beauty of everything it touched. And i thought to myself how the feeling of nature's ovwehelm of everything goreous may be the only reason that finally, at the age of 29, I no longer deeply crave a lover. I would like a nice one, like anyone would (monk's aside, god-bless), but the heights of human love that i knew once were, and always have been so fleeting in their purity and the innocent, unsexual ectacy that purity gives rise to, is but a crack in the door to the abundance that nature gives. not always in direct love, though that is for the having, but in the spleanour of the expression of itself. It is more interesting to love narure and learn it for itself that it ever has been to be held my the peace and grace of it. Like the children at the montessori school who rerely come to their teachers for physical closeness or warmth, because their envoronemnt makes them feel safe and they would so much rather be exploring.