I didn't have time to write anything new today, but, a short time ago I added a comment on the journal of a writer whom I admire, and it triggered an exchange which I think is worth saving; so I'll copy it here.
The writer of the original entry is M.P. Powers, and the text itself is fourfold: it consists of reflections on an Italian journey — here are linx: Day One; Day Two; Day Three; Day Four — the following text was sparked by the second installment.
Obligatory image
But first, above is the obligatory image for this blog post. It is a postcard ad that I affixed an extra dog-&-arm image to, plus I shifted the background's leftmost third to the far right. (Why? cuz this way the dog divides the picture while rivaling the height of the plant.) Its computer file is titled "A dog-n-arm overlay", just F.Y.I.
COMMENT EXCHANGE
First, I said:
I’m jealous of your ability to enjoy life. I love the advice against trying to “be everywhere all at the same time”; plus I love the notion of savoring “the return to the dark room in a strange city”. I myself know that even if I could take the identical trip, I’d be too nervous to have any appetite, and I’d be worried about getting lost, injured or sick… So, as I’ve said before, I’m thankful that I can appreciate these adventures thru your own mind’s eye. I also like how you can admit that “The place was now just a shell of its former self” and yet you manage to replenish its exuberance via the imagination. That always intrigues me: how stating that X is dead mentally resurrects X.
Then Powers replied:
I had never left the States till I was 38. I definitely understand the jealousy. For years, anytime I read about anyone’s experiences in Europe an intense envy and jealousy would eat away my insides. Now that I live here, I’m used to it, so it’s not such a big deal, but I still have great appreciation, hence all the travel blogs.
The nervous energy you get re; being in a foreign or unfamiliar place, I find fascinating. I would love to know more, or hear you tell more about the psychology of it, or the precise feelings that come over you at such times. You know Kant never traveled more than 10 miles from his home, but his mind was bigger than the whole world. I see you like that. Always ‘tending your garden’ in the Voltairian sense.
& lastly I said:
Yes! the garden-tending: that’s exactly right, which is funny because when I first read Voltaire’s Candide, I hated that ending: it really bothered me — probably there was something about it that I could detect would be my doom… maybe I’m predisposed like Caliban to recoil from mirrors. But now that I’m older, I love the idea. (By the way, the same hate-to-love reaction happened with Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” — when I first read it, I loathed it; yet now, years later, it has become my favorite poem.) And yes, also everything I know about Kant’s personal life rings all-too-true: I’m not kidding when I say that altho I haven’t even lived a single year in my new neighborhood, I’m sure that the neighbors are setting their clocks by my bike-rides, which occur with a regularity that rivals Kant’s notorious daily walks.
I always wonder if there’s a reason for my maintaining such a dull life and rote habits — & the best that I can come up with is this: When the exterior bodily existence is “tamed” into predictability, then the interior mental existence feels free to run wild. As you know, I’m a radical zealot for the imagination. But another thing that makes it hard for me to budge from my bias is that I have heroes like Kafka writing in his notebook stuff like the following (forgive me if I’ve quoted this to you before — I can’t stop repeating it, I love it so much):
There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can’t do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.
Nevertheless I believe in what Whitman says about the body and the soul, assuming that the former stands for external reality and the latter for the surreal interior:
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
So I keep trying to seek balance rather than dominance, and to avoid rooting myself too deeply in this all-mental stance. (There is more to heaven and earth than is contained in our philosophy, as Hamlet always sez.) That’s why I never give up on my dreams of traveling, despite being so Kantian in my Minnesota radius, which, even in this age of automobiles and aeroplanes, contends with the pedestrian philosopher’s 10-mile average (I just did an online search, out of curiosity, and found that this new-old house that I recently moved to is only 3.7 miles away from the house I grew up in. Now that’s pathetic!) — in fact, the more fixed I become in my routine, the more my personal sirens sing BREAKAWAY!
And when you ask about my “nervous energy” from foreign places, and say that you’d like to hear me “tell more about the psychology of it, or the precise feelings that come over you at such times” — I wish I could concoct a more romantic explanation, but it’s really very shamefully selfish, even narcissistic: When I find myself in unfamiliar surroundings, the control-freak inside of me starts whispering worrisome scenarios like “What if you need to pee & you can’t find a bathroom! God forbid that you wet yourself in front of all these people — then they’ll discover that you’re not a noble genius but just a stupid animal!” It’s low angst of the boringest type: it stems from my desire to make a perfect impression — it’s almost a fitting punishment for harboring an overinflated notion of my importance, now that I think about it. Intense shyness is the proof of intense arrogance, in my case: it’s the curse that attends upon my sky-high ambition. I think that this is what Jesus must’ve meant when he proclaimed “whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life shall save it.” (Mark 8:35) For I so dearly value my precious self, and I so desperately want to travel and to enjoy ALL times, that I end up squandering my life in frets and worries, and I barely dare to leave my house: consequently I end up enjoying ZERO times.
There’s a paperback book that attempts to treat anxiety disorder: it’s called Hope and Help for Your Nerves, by Claire Weekes. I don’t know about other people — everyone’s different — but this text worked for me so well that I now carry it around like a talisman everywhere. I only mention this fact because it shows how my adverse reaction to foreign situations is utterly explainable — the book nails down my situation to a tee: I wish I could claim otherwise and say that I’m actually a freak of science, like a Joseph-Merrick-of-the-Mind, some sort of Elephant Man of the Imagination. But it’s just the ancient curse of fight-or-flight: I mean the reaction that is common to most flesh… it’s just a tendency of my system to mismanage adrenaline.
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