POST 477 THE WANDERER

Seasick Steve

The day was closing fast and it was a damp drizzle sweaty strange January late afternoon awkward climate of late, there seemed to be a lack of oxygen and it was neither cold nor warm.

I had come out of the supermarket after purchasing some veggies and had a cup of free tea because I had a store card; it was an Earl Grey without milk or sugar.  I sat down on a damp wooden backed type garden seat in the street and sipped my drink.

It is an area which is middle high class and most of the cars are expensive and the supermarket has very high standards of so called luxury foods and the clientèle matches that, I am often looked at with suspicion with my beard and woollen pull on hat and somewhat tatty ancient coat.  I go in there because I spend a little and one can get reasonably fresh and organic food. My purchase usually consists of half a dozen carrots, a bag of celery, a small cucumber, some raw beets, some avocado, broccoli, some small apples and banana. My salad I get from somewhere else and occasionally some organic eggs.

Anyway there was a woman who came up to me in the past and thought I was homeless and offered me some warm soup and I had a job to convince her I was not. Sometimes as I sit on this seat which is near the bus stop I get people shout at me, get a job, get a life, smarten up and so on.

I looked in a quiet way, no particular thought in mind this late afternoon and watched the rush hour start, lots of people coming out of some offices, shops and going to the car parks, buses getting full and generally the noise and confusion that can happen or seems to as people are eager to get home and do what they like doing other than work.

I then felt very open and pensive in a way, I felt strange, like when I came back from my wanderings in the wilds and travels in nature and less populated and so called civilised country.  The nights I spent just when the sun was setting in a large open space with a wooden gate stuck right in the middle of nowhere, there might have been a field there some day; I leaned on the gate which was about half a mile from the sea and some small cliffs and could pick out faintly the African coast.  The silence was profound and the soft lapping of the waves seemed far off. I went into a soft meditation and all was well.  The sun went down quickly and set and the view of the setting sun and the red hews as it set was my TV for I neither had electricity, radio, telephone or any gadgets and it was well before mobile / cell phones.

Then on some travels I walked down disused railway lines, with weeds and grass growing over the sleepers and rusty rails, looking back into a distant railways vista where the lines seemed to meet and converge and the same into a future that looked like the past.

I then felt what is the use of materialism and felt very basic and simple in my needs, and then when I had money and the cars I had and paraphernalia which took a lot of looking after and care and as I now sat watching the scurrying worrying looking people that seemed like ants wandering willy-nilly and did they realise that commodities, yea even our bodies are temporary, expedient transient, in fact does it matter to them or me, and should there be a them and me?

I felt naked and yet content and was content to let the world go by. I do not have family as I am odds with them, no one’s fault or blame, I am a square peg in a round hole and they are lovely, however we have no interface and its OK. Friends I have but a few, acquaintances many.

I had no one to care or love me and I do not love or care for anybody, and yet I have a great love and compassion for many, not in a binding way but a free happy easy come and easy go, yes I do get my ‘pants hitched up’ at times but the winds of wrath and malice quickly subside and blow out.

When I was a therapist at St. James Church Piccadilly in London UK I had many clients and witnessed many woes and worries, we were a voluntary healing clinic with doctors and therapists giving their service freely and without pay. There were tramps / hobos some who were PH.D’s, one or two who were wealthy business people who packed up and went off grid or homeless and found that materialism, university education, success in one case a well known celebrity left them cold and not satisfied, yet they survived in a kind of sad yet reasonable kind of ‘cold life’ and somewhat cynical, then there was the distinct experience of Forensics and its horror events and then the scientists who were frankly puzzled by the atom being so empty and so on, the psychiatrists who could not delve or solve some minds and the dilemma of just saying it is hormone or chemical imbalance and prescribing pills and realising they were stop gap only, I suggested there is a state of mind where there is a sort of emptiness but was cool and compassionate with inner peace which I experienced spasmodically, we agreed to disagree.  

Then there was a folk singer named Seasick Steve whose version of ‘Gentle on my Mind’ and the haunting lyrics of the hobo jumping trains living in junk yards and maybe looking for work or just exploring the countryside free of charge looking for the ‘place to be’ and find happiness or something, and the drug users running from or too something.

So I sat there on my seat and wondered what happens in peoples heads; did they question where life began and ends, were they running from the ‘grim reaper’, were we all running from death, were we all putting off by work, materialism, media, entertainment and burying our heads in the sand not wanting to face the inimitable-- –I may not be here as long as I think?

It was time to go home not because of any particular reason, the seat was damp, I felt whole and refreshed there was no one at home to greet me, I had long got over someone to care and look for me, not because of being afraid of relationships but because I have a kind of notion that Life gave me Life and so maybe I should trust Life and it is Life at home and away from home, so in a way I'm always at home. I ask myself where is there not Life?

SHACK

The Times.co.uk