For my travels in Britain, I brought Bukowski's Notes of a Dirty Old Man, because it's a collection of newspaper columns which are short with lots of logical stopping points. Somewhere on a rail car in the middle of the country, I read this passage where Buk explains why he's not well known as a poet:
I began late and lived too long alone in small rooms drinking wine. they always figure that a hermit is insane, and they may be right.
I related a bit too much to those sentences, especially out on the road by myself, living in small hotel rooms, often ending the day in them with beer or wine and television. It was just a road version of what I do at home: go do useful and productive things during the day, eat an early dinner, then stay in watching TV (possibly with wine) all night. I always hibernate a bit during the winter, but this year it has been even more hermit-tastic than usual. I have no inclination to change it, either. I kind of dig this life. Hence the insanity comment.
I tend to tie my mood tightly to my location. Seattle isn't doing it for me, so I hide indoors away from it. Or I leave it. Even living the same lone life in Great Britain, I was much much happier. I was back in the US for 3 days before I found a reason to leave again. I'm up early this morning to make the drive up to Vancouver, spend the day around my old Lower Mainland haunts, and then see the Habs and Canucks play tonight.
And now that spring is starting to appear in Seattle, I feel the need to get out of the house, to find things to do that improve my mood in spite of location.
Failing that, I have a trip planned every month for the next several. Mileage, mileage, mileage.
I am going... I am going... any which way the wind may be blowing... (name that Pogues tune)
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