Elsewhither

I've come to the very end, the part of the vacation where I start to relax--Rm. 17, The Traveler Inn, Mount Shasta, Ca.

Not that the time in Wyoming and in Portland wasn't relaxing, but it wasn't.

There was an NBA championship to contend with, a bicycle accident I was unprepared for, "The Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy, and my own recalcitrant novel that I'd written Forewards and Backwards hoping to finally find the Center.

Nothing much happened, though I did buy a house in Portland.

Then Something of a spiritual breakthrough occurred the other night in a small hotel room in Mt. Shasta on my way home.

I'd driven all day, from Portland south, and was unwinding from the road, soaking in a hot bath. Stretching my legs out in front of me until my toes touched the wall I was able to see clearly for the first time how much fun I've had with my body!

Forget the whole Mind/Body split, it doesn't exist, it was only a control technique in the first place.

Thrilled with the epiphany I unintentionally dropped the Hardy book in the water, a paperback edition I bought used, missing its first 108 pages. By this time I was on page 357, reading the passage where Hardy uses the word, "elsewhither," with a nod to James Joyce.

I know Hardy came before Joyce, but not that much before that either one of them couldn't have been influenced.

God I was tired of traveling! Of not knowing where things were, of putting things in the wrong places, of falling and getting up again, of eating in over priced restaurants where the chef uses too much salt.

All real literature is exhaustion, either of time, money, relationships etc. etc. The notion explains why some novels never end and others end too soon.