Journals from the Jungle I: Chasing a feeling

On the threshold between vacation and profound peak experience

The following are unedited journal excerpts. This is the first in a series of stories from my recent travels. XOR

DAY FOUR

What a great day. I did expect to be asleep by now, but some energy has me. A sensation like avoiding … work, writing (the book), and maybe avoiding sleep—wanting to prolong these days. Already I want to stay longer—I leave a week from tomorrow which feels suddenly so much shorter than not. How wrong I was about this trip being long, too long! And why was/am I so wrong about how it feels once I get here? Don’t I know by now? I also feel like time is moving quickly enough that I have not yet been able to fully connect here. As if there is some film between me and this exploding nature. Some gauze preventing me from the present, exactly. There’s a sensation I’m seeking. One that I know. I trust it will come. There is time still. It’s a sort of sync. A shaking off of dust, perhaps. And I wonder what it is that’s between us now? Screens? Routines? Conveniences of this comfortable place? Or even that this place is familiar and so, some novelty absent (or lessened—certainly not absent), which allows the eyes to glance over rather than being more intently drawn to—more clearly seeing? Is it some sense of liminality—knowing I leave in a few days? Is that truly soon, or actually far off? Should I resolve to do nothing down here rather than hoping to write? I only worry that I would regret not writing if my book doesn’t feel perfectly complete come delivery time.

I think … I will resolve to fully rest, and edit.

I love it here. I’m so relieved to feel well again, aye.