that feeling is like cold ground around a transplanted root, bruised root. dumb about whether to breathe or grow. and sending out one long, blind, constantly seeking feeler, looking for the old bearing - are you there are you there are you there? hunting, fossicking. disturbing the earth. interrupting every train of thought. unsettling every environment and every routine. I've only just come to not feel it for a little while, it seems, although maybe there were other times. right now it's back in force.

N says there is a cafe with a second story and a view over the lake. If I set up there tomorrow morning I  may find an orientation. if that isn't suitable I'll just go back to the cafe at the women's museum. comfy chairs. busy, but in a nice way, just non-English chatter. people in their thirties, forties, fifties, with books and business papers, newspapers. one skinny older man walked through in aviator glasses and leather gloves, smoking a cigarillo as he went. young waitress smiling and quick to help us at every turn.

Writing orients me; a plan to write begins it. this is the most important thing, more important than whether or not to go to Ha Long Bay, a question which has worried me all day, because I could not resolve whether it would bring me closer to writing or further away. the contradictory answers perfectly balanced, the feeler-root confused, unable to go further this way or that. confused between the true thing which is a substitute for the long-loved false thing, and the false thing which was sat in the place of the true and was a nurse to the true, and might still....

oh - I mean - amour-de-soi, I think, vs amour-propre. because the recommendation for Ha Long Bay came from "the subject supposed to know". and oh but DID know, DID know! besides which it's a world heritage site. and maybe the healing effect of nature would outbalance self-disgust at participating in the desecration of nature? or stay in the city with horns.