There´s a crazy person having an imaginary phone-conversation very loudly by himself four seats behind me on the bus. He discusses things and protests, and talks about people pissing on his life.
Passing by Parliament Square, outside the Houses of Parlament, seeing Big Ben as a pillar of stable time watching over the river Thames. The crowds are out here, going to visit Westminster Cathedral, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and to walk past the Horse Guards into the courtyards that lead to Buckingham Palace.
As my bus passes by, one of the two horses that stand guard outside the entrance is waving its tounge around wildly outside its mouth, while the guard on it sits as still as the statue of George Washington by Parliament Square 500 meters away.
On a plinth of marble stairs sits and old man, resting. He looks just like the Gaffer from the movie version of Lord of the Rings. Not strange, really; the Shire was Tolkien´s own version of his England. The hobbits are very much what he saw the English as being like, and the idealised version he wished them to remain. Old Tolkien, born in 1892. Conservative Catholic, soldier at the Somme in the Great War, father of seven children and writer of books that will echo throughout the time of humans, until the elves shut down the whole shop and head for the Grey Shores.
According to some, this has already begun.
Thin curtains of rain open above the city, then vanish. The light is very clear here today; all the greys and all the colours and all the faces are seen with every detail visible. So many faces, here, so much life. London has a population of 9 million people; the Greater London Area, 15.
It often feels like they are all standing next to you. Here, all trains are full, all buses; free space around you is rare. You learn to find it and treasure it, to stop in it and rest, practice qigong and meditation if you´re into that, and let your system release again. Then again, big cities are a prime training ground if you are into the qigong and meditation-work from Daoism. Nowhere else will you get as much varied external pressure on your system, and a big city is just like a web: move here, and you are part of it. Same goes for towns too, and villages, it´s just the scale that goes down. The smaller, often the harder are the bindings that hold you in place, like a fly in a spider´s web.
The old saying: the most skilled Daoist lives in town.
Note: not the beginner.
But the more skilled practitioners will not only use all the energy and change and pressure to deepen their own practice, he or she will also use it to affect the people and the whole web through balancing it. One clear diamond, moving, hiding its light, but spreading it.
