So What

Day thirty-one, Albania. I am walking in the hills above Pogradec, looking at myself and my worries from a distance. From up here everything is fairly small.

The Assessor is quiet. And with him quiet I can see that he was never the only one working me. My ego knows a hundred ways to lead me around by the nose.

Most days I am in two minds about something. I doubt a thing, or a person, and at the same time I want to give myself to it completely, because that feels warm and safe. Up here it becomes obvious how much time and strength goes into wanting two opposite things at once. Out of the potatoes, into the potatoes, as we say at home. Exhausting.

My remedy at the moment is simply to watch the contradictions. I let them stand, I agree that they are there, and I say: so what.

It takes the tension out of the day. I feel a little freer.

In the evening I walk the lakefront at Pogradec. Children are playing. Old men sit together and talk. The water touches the stones.

This is the thing itself. This is what I pictured.

I don't know where the road goes. It is the right road.