What We Need?

Do we have what we need? I sometimes wonder what I really need. Food, water, shelter, clothing, right? And yet, and yet as time has gone on it seems I have taken on more epicurean sorts of needs. Tea, sourdough bread, cookies with the tea, certain mugs and tents, other backpacking gear…
I wonder how long I could go without certain things, and if I would miss them or not?
One thing I miss is a sense of community. I think everyone is feeling that nowadays. Community doesn’t really exist online. It has to involve inhabiting space with people.
I wonder how much we need, and how much we all miss, and if that will change as time goes on.
There is a theory that successive generations of people do not sense the loss of environments or animals because we are born into a world where there is a new baseline. So I guess it is also possible to say there are things that we cannot know that we miss.
Today I am listening to Erik Satie. I took a few photos on a film camera from the 70s that I got off ebay last week
—The crank winds the film with a ratcheting sound. The exposure is shown on a needle in the small viewfinder. The leaf shutter clicks and the picture scene is imprinted—
Maybe film photography is something I missed. I notice that I am noticing even more—looking for those old angles and patterns of light. And yet the ability and desire to write also has not ceased. Maybe, if I can keep up both of these things up I will get to where I have always been going. Which looks like, to me, a greater awareness of being filled with whatever each moment has to offer. It may sound woozy or sentimental, but I’ve found that even the feeling of warm pavement on my feet feels as good as almost anything else.
Where do you go?
Some end of a road
In a dense thicket of blackberry brambles
bursting sticky fruit scenting the hot summer air
covering the black asphalt
Where do you go?
Some end of the road
The side trails, you can still see
This is important.
They lead under cedar boughs.
Where do you go?
Under the gravel of the river beyond
Are bones of the earth
The beginning of another road
As always the end is a beginning
Of infinite endings and beginnings
Spreading out in all directions
Where do you go?
And how do you know
it is worth the going?
Waves under waves
soothe the gravel into sand
an estuary, a bog
dipping clear water
from a rainwater pond
to drink for breakfast
Sunrise, sunset
this is the beginning
and end
of this song.