I haven't updated my webpage in weeks, and I haven't been reading. In fact, apart from "working" on the novel I've been saying for years I was going to write, I haven't been doing much of anything, besides going outside. From my current domicile I can trek along a rolling dirt road into the nearest village, where a winding path behind the local market threads its way through woods and field to meet the river. Passing thin coppices of birch, wading through a meadow of waist-high ferns, wild mint, and st john's wort, an invisible animal track cuts through wild berries to a rocky beach overlooking a slow spot in the water. Slightly lower than the dirt bank and concealed by the high brush, this secret spot is hidden from any motivated hikers or bicyclists, enjoying the exotic notion of rural nature, who might pass by. Even my own knowledge of this magical place was predicated on my possession of a hand-drawn map with detailed instructions on how to get there.
From exiting the front door to the river and back is a journey of about 10km (or just over 6 miles)βat a casual, contemplative pace it takes me an hour to get there. The water is still cold, but on very hot days there is nothing like the shock of the water: your lungs seizing, gasping, your mind immediately perfectly clear and still. I am hesitant to wax too poetic about how powerful my connection to the water is, afraid to entice cliches given my name, but having found myself in the kind of slump where I am like a rooster, picking sticks up off the ground and dropping them just as something to do, I need as much psychic and spiritual purification as I can get. Of course, walking 10km every day has been contributing positively towards my well-being too, I'm sure.
I ordered a new book to read, since whatever unsettled mood I am in seems to have decided nothing I've got piled up and kicking around is what I want, and I've been putting my head down and working on my writing in earnest. I'm drinking more than I want to, but being good about smoking less tobacco (as a consequence I am, perhaps, smoking more than I should of other herbs), but I tell myself that every great writer went through at least one summer, late-20s, gravely underemployed, constantly inebriated, and some great classic has come of it. Afraid of squandering everything, I am taking advantage of my circumstance to pay greater attention to the outdoors and my surroundings. I am keeping a journal of all the birds I can hear from my window, or my riverbank, or the table in the pub garden I've taken to considering mine.
