Monkish

And so. . . I seek the monkish life.  When things go bad, I most often think that I want to live in a monastery.  I romanticize monastic life.  It seems so peaceful, contemplative and quiet, but I am sure that it gets as boring as everything else.  I've tried to prepare myself to be a monk for many years, practicing meditation and Baba Ram Dass's "Be Here Now" philosophy.  But I get lazy and fall away from it like a Catholic from the church, never blaspheming, really, but just getting lazy.  

But I have been concentrating again on monkish things while staying in the world.  Oh, it would be a luxurious monk, for sure, eating and drinking well and sleeping under wonderful blankets and comforters.  But I am OK with that.  I am ready to concentrate on the environment I make ("ou habitez-vous?" is a serious question), and the food I eat, on walking and looking and listening with full awareness.  Sounds simple, but it is really setting the bar high.  

What I want is very simple and so very difficult.  I want to live a full emotional life without depending on others to provide it.  I don't want to deaden my emotions but to heighten them.  And so I will stay alive in my rituals and routines without letting them become deadened habits.  Not easy.  I'm struggling to remember a phrase, but it won't come.  Ah, yes. . . a secular transcendence.  No, that is not quite it.  Frustrating.  

I called a bookie.  He's making odds.  

It has stayed unusually cold here, below freezing, for three nights.  But the days are clear and bright and the light quite magical. Hemingway had it right, though, when he said, "at night it's another thing."