After spending most of the day in the hot ,hot bus, sluggishly completing homework tasks (with the exception of using a phone to talk with sir Stu and having a bath outside) I felt mentally constipated and was on the verge of experiencing a headache. A ride to the local shops can be an invaluable way of readjusting back to a healthy state of homeostasis, so off I went.
I live near a hill that's popularly known as 'Spencer Hill' and I had not yet visited it. To tell you the truth, I had become rather paranoid of wondering around on my own after encountering a menacing, pasty-faced, grease-freak who tried to lure me into his car at 7.45am a few days after I arrived here.
Alas, it felt like it was the right time to wonder to 'Spencer Hill' so I rode there after the visit to the shops. I felt some relief after finally going there. I realised how strange it felt to live in an area but to not know anything about it except for the things I use, like the place I live in, the road that I take to and from town and the shops.
In fact, I don't even pay much attention to the places I frequent. I just sort of use everything that I am in and around and that I pass and have so far failed to slow down and pay attention and consider things, but I think it is really important for me to do so, just judging by how much more wholesome and multi dimensional I feel when I do. Like, on the walking track around 'Spencer Hill', I felt my frequency slowing down a whole lot and I realised that I was actually effectively living in 'the bush'. I was wheeling my bike along a sandy track and there was just this old red hill, some eucalypts and kites (the bird, not the colourful object that flies in the sky ). When I was littler, (like probably since I was a kid right up until I was 20) I'd always wish that I was living somewhere that was close to 'wilderness'. I think my wish was quite informed by my envy of the children in 'The Enchanted Wood'. The only 'wild place' I had access to at the time was a creek that was quickly being encroached upon by suburban sprawl.
So realising that I was really somewhere other than where I had been was somewhat astounding and I thought, wow, I am actually here, living in this strange town, which is surrounded by this strange, ancient landscape and I made it here. I paid more attention to the ants and stopped to commune with a tree that looked young and virile and the breath in my body seemed to reach further within me.
So paying attention to one's surroundings is one way of getting the mind to slow the the fuck down and to get more real. It's nice to realise this for the thousandth time and it's strange that it is something to learn and unlearn again, maybe ad infinitum. I accept that life's simplest lessons are the hardest to learn.
