Blog o’ Gnosis

I have not been feeling well lately. It’s nothing overt or Mahlerian, just a consistent feebleness, and an inability to eat without feeling mildly sick and feverish. I’m reduced to yogurt, with a few cereal flakes thrown in for fun. I really hardly notice it unless I try to work or think really hard. So long as I can just putter about doing errands and chores, resting occasionally, and having my own thoughts on my own time, things are fine. Too bad life in California in the early 21st century just isn’t like that. I’m not sick though, I’m just under the weather.

What a curious phrase that is: under the weather. Is there ever a time when we’re over the weather? Or can we be in some sense with the weather? Maybe if I were more accepting of my mild delirium, cruising along at half-speed with a Zen attitude, then I’d be with the weather, even though in my reality of striving and straining I’m still under the weather by any measure. Is weather just a state of mind?

Wednesday I drove up to Harbin Hot Springs for an overnight writing retreat. This is something I did regularly while writing my dissertation a few years ago — the enforced solitude helped me crank out the chapters and finish the whole project on time. Now that I’m working on turning that diss into a book (proposal), I need that space again, with no dogs to tend, no meals to cook, no wireless DSL to distract me.

My idea of a perfect time at Harbin is to have the pools to myself, to find the perfect well-lighted table in the restaurant where I can sit undisturbed with a good meal and a good book, and to never have to see anyone walk past my room while I’m in there working. I was hopeful that at least some of those conditions would occur, because not only was it the middle of the week, but it was pouring down rain the whole way up. Yes, thanks to the jet stream which has been taking a more southerly route across the west coast this year, we are having a very wet Spring around here. It’s been wonderful — green and lush, cool but not too cold, moderate winds, and when the sun comes out from behind the clouds it feels like warm honey on the skin.

There were only a few stalwart souls in the pools at Harbin Wednesday evening. I was just drinking it in — the warm, almost carbonated water, the stillness of the air, the gentle but insistent rain on my head and on the surface of the pool. I felt under the weather in a really good way then. Under it, exposed to it, and basking in it. The rain from above, and the volcanic heated water from below. It was the perfect fusion of elements, and while I noticed that my energy was a little off, it definitely felt like soaking in the weather was good for whatever ailed me.

Of course, the soaking was so healing and relaxing that I slept for 12 hours instead of writing like a maniac, but sometimes that’s what happens. Whatever this little bug is that my body is conversing with, I’m really glad it’s given me a few days of spacey-brain time, where I just have to lie around sometimes and appreciate the changing weather around me, and within me.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2005 at 7:12 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.