2024-12-12 Journal Entry

I haven’t really written in a while, which is a bit of a tragedy on multiple layers. For one thing, one skill I would really like to start building during my time off is my writing skill. I’d love to be more creative as part of all of this – I really want to be able to write stories and so on. So that’s something I’m going to do.

I surprisingly don’t really feel like I have all that much to say. But also I have everything to say. I’m travelling all the time now, which is a thing I’ve wanted to do for a now. It’s exciting, but it also poses a unique challenge in the sense that I can literally do anything at all, which is a bit of a harrowing thing to think about. To be sitting here and writing right now is a choice, and on the other side of things is actually literally anything, so making this choice instead of running around and seeing the whole wide world seems like a radical act.

Essay idea: basically what I just said, that the most terrifying thing about leaving a job where things are largely prescribed for you is that you’re now tasked with figuring out where the walls are.

And but so here I am now, being like oh I think writing fiction is the most important thing for me to be doing, or I think doing an extended meditation retreat is it, or something else or even something else. I think that’s a bit of why I’ve spent several of the past few days with afternoons where I just stare at YouTube for a few hours: I don’t actually quite have the reasoning skills to suss out if what I’m doing rigth now is actually the most important thing. Should I be drafting a scene with a character or something? What the hell will that do? Or should I just sit here dumping out all of my thoughts all the time? I don’t know.

And so here we are. I guess I just keep on writing all the words until something really happens. I guess you just wait and see. Except that that’s not really the appropriate attitude. Obviously I still don’t know how people really decide to do anything. Kobun Chino Roshi talks about this a bit, where spends some dharma talks pondering what it means for people to come and sit together. What that little gnawing thing inside of us is confused by what’s going on, what all of this is really about. I think the same thing goes for basically anything, why anyone does anything at all. Some of it truly is to provide some sense of security. It feels obvious that love is worth giving and receiving. But why do we work, why do we achieve things? Perhaps they’re really for nothing.

And that’s what all of these little words are, just tiny experiments in life to see where they go. Little bubbles that pop up on the surface and explode. Little waves. We can all trust that what is written just needs to be written, in some way or another.

And so that’s why we write all of these words down. We’re trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense. That sounds fun! Writing as dharma practice, as being outside of the self. There is writing happening. There is a story, out beyond the self, that is happening. It’s one of many stories, but we’re going to follow this one along, see it arising and passing, seeing it all happen before us.

It makes me look around this hotel room for real for the first time. I’m in a tiny little gueshouse in Greece. It was apparently once the guesthouse of a famouse Greek war hero from the Greek War of Independence, but me being a goddamn American it hadn’t really occurred to me that Greece had to go through a war of independence. But so the house belonged to him apparently and now houses a bunch of Americans and tourists who want to see a little Greek seaside town.

The room is probably much the same as it was 50 years ago, save for the TV and the rain shower. But the red chrystanthemum wallpaper, the gold-plated lamps, the autumn-colored drapery all reminds me much of the home of a mid-20th-century grandmother’s home. My guesthouse in Meteora was much the same in this regard, and I can only imagine that it’s a relic of a somewhat old-fashioned Greek sensibility. Perhaps it’s the nature of smaller Greek cities – Athens doesn’t seem to have this happen nearly as much – but around here the aesthetics really do feel geared towards older clientele. The tavernas all serve homemade food, and I mean that in an unfortunately pejorative sense. My parents made things homemade, but they were not exactly Michelin-star chefs, nor does that mean that they should open up a restaurant.