i have to admit i feel off-balance 75% of the time. for example, i arrived at the lookout after four days off. it was dark. the wind blew hard. unwisely, i carried my first load up the road and lookout steps, overburdened. i'd driven most of the day, a total of seven hours. no wonder i lurched badly sideways ascending the steps. as usual, i forged ahead without thinking what i was doing. i reached the landing, thank god, then had trouble inserting the key in the lock. once i did, the siren went off.
the relief lookout had set the alarm. boy, it damn near broke my ear drums. hastily, i rushed to the basement and punched the buttons. thankfully, the sound stopped. by now i was at least alert. this is just one example of rushing through the world and almost losing it. at times i seem to forget how to walk. making it conscious, i have trouble putting one foot in front of another. it's mostly mental. when my confidence returns and my self-consciousness subsides, i move through the world like nothing ever happened.
of course, physical equilibrium is the least of my problems. all summer i've thought about suicide, i'm even reading a book about it SUICIDAL, WHY PEOPLE KILL THEMSELVES by Jesse Bering. this isn't really something new. at 17 i remember being afraid to sleep in a room with knives, afraid i'd do myself harm. maybe i'm always trying escape, as the author surmises. escape from what, you may ask? sometimes it seems hard to do anything i need to do, like pick a pencil up from off the floor. there's a resistance to any action.
so far, i've been able to pick up that pencil. and i wonder why on earth it seems so difficult? other times i clean the dishes, wash the clothes, and proceed without any hesitation. i do think it has something to do with mental balance, that which comes and goes. often if i can perform the right action, i'm standing back on my own two feet. living alone in a room, everything stable around me, i dive off the deep end into a desire for non-existence. and this doesn't seem to happen, when i'm in motion, when i travel.
for example, last week i reached the end of my tether, worrying about the end of the season and leaving the lookout in a couple weeks. i'd planned a trip east and no one, even friends and family, wanted a visitor who might bring covid. my support system dropped right out from under me. okay, i decided to make a test run. i drove to san francisco and stayed in a youth hostel. they put one person into a room and i had four beds to myself. that was great luck. i had a chance to practice traveling in relative safety.
for the next two days i visited museums: the De Young, SFMOMA, and the Asian Museum. i soaked up the art as i always do, a vision of perfect worlds. artists create places we can go when life becomes too much for us, this time when nothing seems ever finished - fires and viruses - a chaos without true order. security doesn't really exist except as a result of the imagination.
to finish off the trip i walked up grant street through chinatown. certainly eerie, 90% of the stores and restaurants closed, and browsed in my old haunt of 60 years ago, CITY LIGHTS BOOKS. it brought back a certain peace. it had changed very little. i sat in a rocking chair upstairs in the poetry room and surveyed the shelves. true, i felt my own poetry could never compete with all this, yet i kept looking for a new poet, stumbling across the old ones. finally, only my own standby, FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA, brought me the solace in needed.
yes, i did stumble blindly on the steps, in the dark and high wind, and two days later the euphoria of travel has worn off a bit. this morning i woke up anxious, wondering if i'd caught the virus. i took a tylenol to calm down. still when i think about it, i enjoyed setting myself up in the hostel room. even the homeless on the corners with all their oddities give a kind of consolation. and sitting in the cafe at the de Young, bathing in the sunlight and observing the folks eating and chatting without masks, brings back a sense of normality, and enjoyable existence. i hope i've broken the spell, regained my balance, and am ready to travel again.
