Allowing Disturbance

I am going for "small-time artist" these days, and finally achieving some disappearance. Summer is a good time to disappear: the leaves are grown, full coverage is possible. New York City in summer is relaxed and opened-wide, to be enjoyed or not, to be taken advantage of or not.

I'm in a process of replacing my ambition, whatever that means, with something more useful. "Useful" qualified here -- I'm not promising to be an activist, to help a single person for the rest of my life in any of the obvious ways. How can I justify a retreat from the world? By saying, it isn't a retreat, it's an entering-in. I want to broaden the rationales and ways by which I enter into the world. A whale, in plunging deep down into the ocean, creates energy/disturbance in the water, just as a whale breaching creates energy. The point is to create the disturbance.

Or even better, the point is to place yourself in some metaphysical body of water, so that you are in the position of having to deal with what comes by -- what comes up -- what hits you -- what disturbs you. This is what I am trying to set up, even within my enclosure, this place of quiet and privacy -- a flow, a constant running-over-me, so that I am spending my time reacting, coping, flailing (take me down, take me under!), improvising. Not initiating.