I do appreciate e-mail, and I consider it rude not to respond; but lack of time and energy in synergy with congenital inefficiency conspire to make it difficult for me to answer everything. I am also temperamentally disinclined to acquiesce in mindless American hyperkineticism, in accordance with the Italian saying:
Dolce Far Niente
Sweet To Do Nothing
which saying, were it not for the inefficiency lately mentioned, would have been by now inscribed above my stoa. My paternal grandfather had it emblazoned on his pergola, and more 'nothing' transpires on my stoa than ever did beneath his pergola.
So time each day must be devoted to 'doing nothing': meditating, traipsing around in the local mountains, contemplating sunrises and moonsets, sunsets and moonrises, and taking naps, naps punctuated on one end by bed-reading and on the other by yet more coffee-drinking. Without a sizable admixture of such 'nothing' I cannot see how a life would be worth living.
And that explains why I arise at 2:00 AM. The morning is a most excellent time to do nothing, and so a huge quantity of morning must be allotted to this 'activity.' All practitioners agree that meditation goes best in the morning. It is also the best time to put into practice Thoreau's admonition to "Read not The Times, but the Eternities." As for traipsing around in the local mountains, you want to be on the trail before sunrise to greet its arrival as it kisses with golden light the peaks and spires, and to avoid the varmints of the two-legged kind whose palaver and very presence often prove an annoyance and a distraction.
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