GLORIOUS LAZINESS

There is so much to do today, and I won't burden myself by mentioning the long list. Oh, well, just a few, simply to delight in detail. Besides, detail is a wonderful dimension and small openings lead to it. Much of this doing is not about packing up for 7 months away from one of your homes, for that, compared to a ton of clerical, mental, miniscule tasks I have to perform about coming up with a good proposal for the book I have just completed THE SINGING GURU (I couldn't have done it without Payson, who spent about 24 hours in the last two days to help me with a large section of it) is almost a delight;  I'm enjoying thinking about which books to take, for they are a large part of my enjoyment of life. I can do without fancy food, eat stale bread with water (thought I haven't done this!) but have a good book to read, the kind I can sink my mental teeth into, taste, savor with the tongue of my mind, and savor it insatiably and without thought of calories. I love books that challenge my thinking and require attention. I'm going to take Gertrude Stein's LECTURES IN AMERICA simply because her style can be so unfriendly to a linear and clear way of reading, because she is like a babbler who makes so much bloody sense; I'm taking THE MEANING OF THE BODY, Aesthetics of Human Understanding, by Mark Johnson -- because I read a few pages and loved the way it is opening up my eyes to myself. There are many others, but I think I am tiring of details and must return to the subject of laziness. 

My definition of laziness today: all I want to do is putter from activity to activity, for active I must be today, none of which has anything to do what i ought to do (though I have only today left)  here, doing some what I call geriatric yoga, which means slow, slow, long stretches, and in between, doing the Shava (corpse asana), writing here, and nurture the garden a bit before I go. 

Yes, I enjoy writing here, even more than in my journal, because all my life I have avoided wanting an audience in my preferences for solitary privacy. But now something has changed. I think it is the sweetness of knowing that my privacy is shared by others. It is connection. It is commitment. It is establishing a bond. 

And it is business. I want to put out the word of my wonderful new book, THE SINGING GURU, Legends of Guru Nanak, Founder of the Sikhs. 

In a way I have prepared for this book all my life.