Inner Workings

Up today at 6:30, qi gong, shower, and breakfast--finally--of eggs, ham, hash browns, fried toast, stewed tomatoes. Feeling very fortified.

I packed up my stuff to move to the 14-girl dorm room for the weekend. Seven bunk beds; I snagged the bottom bunk in a corner near the window. I wonder whether I'll be the den mother of the group. There are older-than-I women at the Y, but they seem to be in singles rooms.

I walked most of the morning after breakfast, heading for the bus station and taking a wrong turn in the area of North Bridge. Ended up south of the Avon in Widcombe. I made my way back mostly by following my nose. Checked into which bus to take on Monday to start my walk to Farmborough. Am hoping for dry weather for the walk. And that my back and feet hold up carrying all my gear.

I bought a semi-autobiographical book about Audrey Hepburn last night (a slim volume full of her own quotes), and found another reference to her today in a thrift shop--a VHS set of her movies. I've been open to guidance on life intentions. Not clear what to make of these signs right now.

Walked toward the Crescent again today on the way to the Widcombe open artists' studios and wandered in and out of a few shops, especially art galleries. So many marvelous paintings and statues and cards and wall hangings to buy. So little space to put them in now.

I feel sad, a little, to not be buying art things--nowhere to put them but into storage now that Whimsor's out of my life. And happy to not be acquiring more stuff. And growing more aware that I'm becoming less attached to the stuff I still have at home. And feeling curious about how we humans are always creating more stuff to put onto store shelves.

Stuff, stuff, stuff. All of this stuff we create will go somewhere else on the planet--onto people's walls and floors and tabletops, into galleries, to thrift stores, antique stores, museums perhaps, into a landfill at some time in the future. Passed down through wills or family lines or the need to pawn for cash. Maybe even be assessed at some remake of the Antique Road Show, Year 2237.

Stuff. Lots of it. We build, craft, paint, dismantle, rearrange, regurgitate, recycle, refresh all in the natural progression of creating, marketing, selling, taking home, dragging along, moving along.

How would this planet be different if people went to each other and asked to have something they liked or needed made, instead of people making lots of something and then trying to convince others why they should have it?

Would "industry" gain a deeper meaing of being fully absorbed in the act of creation, in being more present to that which we are making because we personally know the one who will use it? Would love be poured more readily into the product? Would we pause a bit longer when the work was done, gain more free time to live instead of work, to be with each other, to be still without needing to explain why we are idle in between bouts of production?

Factories could still produce, but by fulfilling demand and special orders, not by glutting the world with supply, and then trying to generate demand for the overproduction. Would such an economy collapse or thrive? Would it bring social imbalance or greater connection? Would it feed a sense of abundance or continue the sense of scarcity that underlies our current economic choices?

How did I get off on that topic? A clarity for myself: I don't want to produce stuff for a living. I don't want to create art in a form that sits on a shelf or that hangs on a wall. Let others who have such skill create them. I would like to make art that people can walk around, be organically part of, that lives lightly on the planet. That the planet can take back easily if needed.

I am sitting and writing all this right now at the Bath Ales House for lunch, which may be coming shortly. Meals arrive very leisurely in a pub. Good, once you get to know it that way. Not so good if you're on a deadline.

It's funny. I am here in Bath and could, despite the many accents and uniquely aged buildings around me, be just about anywhere else in the world, the scenes are so universal.

Small parties of people cluster around tables not two feet round. Two mates, twenty- or thirty-somethings, dressed in jeans and T-shirts work on pints of beer. A group of five chatters in French in a corner at my right, laughing, interrupting each other, sharing the minutiae of their lives.

A server walks by, and the floorboards give beneath the wooden stool I sit on. How many feet have these planks yielded to over the years? To what myriad collection of heels and soles and body weights?

A couple in their 20s sits at their small round table at my left. She is blonde, in jeans and aqua jacket and pumps, a foot propped on the rung of the empty stool next to her at the table. He leans onto the tabletop as they talk. He is brunette, in black jeans, soiled trainers, an untucked shirt with rolled up sleeves and a hair style that stands up in a cock's crown of six spikes from nape to forehead. A gal at the Y said it takes lots of gel to create that effect.

Now that makes sense to me--body art, turning your body into a canvas with hair gel or tattoo paint. I suppose we all do this with our wardrobes--turn our bodies into a canvas each time we dress. Saw a woman my first day here who was a splash of red and oranges and hot pink and chartreuse combined in garishly mismatched patterns of jacket, shirt, skirt, leggings, and a shock of red hair, all under an umbrella of equally brilliant hues and pattern. She pulled it off. I would look like a dork.

My travels are not about touring. I came to Britain to reclaim my vision. I need a place to sit and think. A comfortable place, with food and bed and room to write in and spaces to walk in. A place without the obligation to tour, to shop, to be out, to be among people. Even the effort of meeting people feels like a chore today. Meeting people, being outgoing is not my life's work right now. I came here to meet with my Self. Or, rather, my Self called me here to meet.

Napped back at my room after a game attempt to hook into the local music scene at the Orange Spiegaltent this afternoon. Left after one song. Couldn't take the amps, and the brass was too shrill in the tiny space. Trying too much to like what other folks seem to like. Trying it on and finding it doesn't fit.

Remembering A. Hepburn's words, "Know who you are and who you are not." right now, I would add, "Be OK with both of them."