I'm now on an upswing. i wonder - since my knowledge of my moods is limited, as if I were a landscape viewed from an airplane with strange colourations visible on the soil from 30,000 feet you have no idea what mineral or rocks are responsible... i wonder if this is because I cut out caffeine two days ago (probably) or for some deeper reason of energy clearing and deep emotional process (ideally) or just because I had a good sleep (most likely). If I look anatomically at yesterday - the moment things started looking up - since my privilege as an unemployed writer is to analyse my moods minutely at all times - I would have to say it all started with the ant.
I was sitting on the Victoria Line on my way to Camden Town to meet Adam, a fellow comedian - crowded in by shoppers and commuters - when I noticed that there was an ant crawling on my hand. Where did that come from? And what to do? Keep the ant safe until we reached dry land, or flick it off my hand? As a sentimental insectist I had no intention of abandoning it to its fate - furthermore there is always the superstitious suggestion somewhere in my mind that fate has sent me these things - so I spent the next fifteen minutes ushering it around my fingers and away from the black hole of my coat sleeve so that it wouldn't meet a grisly fate up my armpit. I was so intensely concentrated on the task of keeping the ant - which was crawling fast and with a definite sense of purpose - at the top of my hands, that I didn't have time to even look up and wonder what the other commuters thought of my strange antics. Oh, get it - plaeese. And the fact that I had an insect on my hand. It briefly crossed my mind that they would think I was some kind of sinister bag lady ant keeper. but I didn't have time to care
And it was in that moment that I realised something. I had forgotten to think about myself for more than a minute. The mental relief was palpable, the lightness of being. I formed a theory, even as the ant grew exhausted and paused momentarily on my palm. Responsibility relieves the mind. So simple.
We changed trains and the ant slowed down again. I think it sensed that I needed its cooperation as we walked through the windy tunnel. Finally I deposited it in a garden in Camden Town.
Incidentally, the interchange between the Victoria and Northern Lines at Euston is one of the best in the world. Alongside the Bakerloo and Victoria line at Oxford Circus, of course. Of course!
After that things only looked up. It may be because of my happy meeting with Adam; it may be because of the latihan I did afterwards, or the cheese sandwich I bought from Pret a Manger to slake my sudden hunger; it may have been the crystal healing I experienced later that evening with a trainee healer called Abigail in a gorgeous flat in Lauderdale Road. It may have been an accumulation of all those things. But I think the ant did it.
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I had a somewhat different epiphany, but also involving the dissolution of the world outside the self, while travelling from Ox Circ to Elephant. I was listening to Paul Bley on the headphones. The music was so sublime I closed my eyes to hear it more deeply. Then I imagined everyone around me gone. Then the train itself. There was still the noise and vibration of travel. I imagined that gone. The I imagined myself gone and just the music left, with an intimation of nothingness around it. It was blissful and I wondered if this is what death would be like. But I would also need to let go of music.
ReplyDeleteBakerloo/Jubilee at Baker St is another top candidate, btw.