Urbana, 2011
Staying indoors due to smog, I worked on a photo From October, 2011
Chiang Mai is currently enveloped in a thick haze of polluted smog. The past couple of days were so bad that I decided to stay indoors. I wanted to run this morning but when I looked out from the balcony I could not see the mountain. On the heavy days my eyes burn. I am surprised that I have had no asthma, rather, my breathing has been clean and strong. I have decided that having cats and a dog were the cause of my constant asthma and breathing problems, so the rest of my days will have to be lived without these sweet animals.
Because of the unhealthy atmospheric conditions I was thinking of getting out of Chiang Mai for one or two weeks and heading south to an island. Also in the back of my mind is the passage from Nausea about adventure - I have an impish desire to board a train to see where it will take me. The drawback to leaving, however, is I already paid for the apartment for the month of March. Perhaps I will remain in my room and experience adventures inside my head. There are so many possibilities for growth and learning, as long as I am open to it.
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The past few weeks I have made good progress with the guitar, and I am not sure why or how. I consider myself lucky in some things, one of them being that if I work at something consistently, progress is usually accomplished, and after a few years the "doors of perception" are opened further and I can glimpse the activity on a deeper level. I believe one of the doors has recently been opened and the guitar is once again something new and bewildering, but unlike when I began these sensations are not from a feeling of ignorance, but rather a heightened awareness of my relationship with it. It is one of the more pleasing things about life, this getting to know something on a deeper level.
This is the point of the guitar quest which I have been waiting for, the reason I began this journal - how did I arrive, and what did I do to make it happen? The journal over time gives a detailed explanation of my practice methods, hopes, setbacks, and perseverance in the midst of doubt and confusion. Once again, part of it is just luck, I can't explain why all of a sudden I can do things I could not do a few months ago. I recall reading interviews with people who saw more deeply into their activity than most, and even they have no explanation as to how they got there. Bobby Fischer was asked how he became a grandmaster at 13, and he replied, "I just got good." That being said, I remain a beginner and when compared to other guitarists am very poor, but, I have gone further than what I thought possible, and I can't precisely say why.
