EPISODE FOUR: IN WHICH SOME DIGNITY AND BALANCE ARE RESTORED AND A DEFENCE IS MADE FOR THE PREPONDERANCE OF WORDS.

Welcome to my blog which is the continuing story of a writer coming to grips with his lack of career and attempting to rectify the situation. For further exposition please refer to previous blogs, although I’d prefer it if you skipped over the poem at the end of the last one which is an embarrassing aberration that I suspect was written on ecstasy back in the days of yore. My old friend Phil Malleson, as pedantic a blank-verser as one could ever hope to meet, will be turning in his grave (which is probably quite tricky after cremation) at the idea of my calling those lines poetry. Phil’s photo is on the shelf above me. We argued about poetry throughout our lives which bearing in mind I hardly read any was a bit silly. I did scribble a few lines when I last visited his derelict flat – a dereliction which he, as ever ruled by principle, conserved by never adding a lick of paint or cleaning the toilet in twenty years. He was dying then, although he didn’t seem to know it. He was cheerful too, he who had never been cheerful in his life. His possessions consisted of a thousand tattered volumes of high literature, a change of clothes, two cups and two plates, a few pictures and some black and white photos which were taken by friends of his, framed and hung carelessly on his peeling walls. One of these photos was of my daughter wearing a hat. I never understood why he liked the picture so much but muse are muse and who knows where they will turn up?

Hopefully here, soon.                             

I’ve been reading my Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, (nb that £14.99 I’ve invested in myself to add to the £500 for the laptop and printer: can it possibly be worth it?) in which I’m told, ‘Most blogs are rubbish. They aren’t read by anyone and are poorly written.’ What’s more, they shouldn’t be visually boring (i.e. like this one.) All this unmediated plain text stuff is tedious for you. (Have you tried reading Spanish novels?) Apparently you all have special machines that enable you to multitask at all times. You can watch videos, listen to podcasts, dance to music, ‘connect’ with millions of people simultaneously while making choices between an universe of products being offered to you. And you work and you have families.

I’m a bit slower than that.

I hold out hope, however, that help is on the way.  One day you’ll be on your machine and it’ll suddenly stop here and you’ll be amazed by the flowering artistic talents of my, presently latent, readership. Photos (of what?), videos, links, music, showgirls and boys, maybe all these things are on the way.

Meanwhile we have words. Let us not underestimate the power of words, of language. ‘In the beginning was the Word’ etc. The Hindu philosopher Bartrhari wrote a work in c600AD called ‘Vakyapadiya’ (Words in a Sentence) and it in said:

‘There is no cognition without the operation of words: all cognition is shot through and through by the word. All knowledge is illumined through the word.’

The RigVeda, one of the oldest texts known to man dating back 3,000 years, writes poetically of the beginnings of language:

‘When they came to establish the first beginning of language, setting up names, what has been hidden in them as their best and purest good became manifest through love.

 Where the sages fashioned language with their thought, filtering it like parched grain through a sieve, friends recognised their friendship. Their beauty is marked on the language.

They traced the course of language through ritual; they found it embodied in the seers. They gained access to it and distributed it widely: the seven chanters cheered them.

Many who look do not see language, many who listen do not hear it. It reveals itself like a loving and well-adorned wife to her husband. (!)

Though all the friends have eyes and ears, their mental intuitions are uneven. Some are like shallow ponds, which reach up to the mouth or armpit, others are like ponds which are fit for bathing.

At its best, therefore, the nature and function of language is ‘to manifest or reveal the meanings of things’. And why does it not always do so? …Well that’s a topic for another day.

Okay, I’m digressing. I told you I would. Am I masking total inaction? No. Even as I write this another idea development has popped up in my head. At this moment I can see the whole thing. Well I could. It is quite likely that that was the clearest the vision will ever be. For between 15 and 60 seconds it is as if a jigsaw puzzle is suddenly coming together before your very eyes. Then just as you step back to admire the picture it all breaks up again and you can’t quite remember what it is you saw and how the pieces fitted.

It is possible, I suppose, that some of the structures Jack has put into place are paying off. I’ve remained comparatively focussed and only had one attack of despair in the month I’ve been on the blog. This came about when, spurred on by writing this, I contacted my agent, from whom I hadn’t heard from since the day two years ago when I signed the agency agreement. Obviously I knew nothing had happened but his brusque confirmation of this was a little disheartening. I emailed him a second time to ask if he’d actually done anything at all with my novel but he doesn’t seem to want to tell me.

So it goes. (Thanks to Kurt Vonnegut.)

In fact I’ve had a flurry of possible projects reveal themselves to me this last week. Probably too many. This does happen to me every decade or so, a downpourring of viable suggestions all demanding months of work, few of which I complete because I’ve had to go to bed to cope with the overwhelm. The recent additions to the list for lifetimes are: a TV documentary to sell in America; an in-depth article connected with my studies in death and dying at University which I think I could also sell abroad: a book connected with some travel I did thirty years ago and…well…too many to mention, especially as I’ve just come across lists written in 1999 and 2005, both of which remain 95% undone. And no, at this stage I don’t want to be more concrete in case you steal my ideas. (And why wouldn’t you want to?) I can tell you that assuming the cataract op has gone well (which I think it has except they’ve removed my near vision), I will endeavour to enter short stories into two competitions, those of the Guardian Magazine and the V.S. Pritchett society.

Endeavour? Why do I need to endeavour?

Time’s up.

PHIL

 

 

 

 

Lines written as Phil slept

When the delight is done

And I find myself an old man

Staring in the mirrors of incomprehension

What will I do then?

When the song is sung

And even the tune but a confused memory

And when I’m tired of hobbling from nowhere to nowhere

What will I do then?

And when my body begins its dying

And when my friends are shadows in the past

And my lovers all forgotten

What will I do then?

When the only fields are painted on a picture half-seen

When the only smell is my own decay

When it hurts my heart to smile

What will I do then?

Oh my love, what will we do then?

Extra bit

You may remember an earlier consideration of an East/west split. Klaus Klostermaier in his piece, ‘The Creative Function of the Word’ compares the Western notion of creativity in which the aim is to produce something ‘original’ and ‘new’  with the Indian approach which is quite different. “The great creative geniuses of India take care to explain their thought not as creation but as a retracing of forgotten eternal truth. They compare their activity to the clearing an overgrown ancient path in the jungle, not the making of a new path. The creative effort of the rsi – the composer or author or artist –is not to manufacture something new out of his own imagination, but rather relate ordinary things  to their fundamental nature.”

EPISODE THREE: IN WHICH AN ALTER-EGO SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF.

With great respect, with love even, I welcome you to my blog which tells the story of a 58 year old man who is revitalizing his life by realizing a childhood ambition to be a successful author. Those of you who have read previous entries will be aware that John Heston, the writer both of this blog and the incipient novel entitled ‘I’S NOVEL ABOUT HOW THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST BEST-SELLING AUTHOR (FAILED) ACHIEVED REDEMPTION AND MODERATE SUCCESS AT THE AGE OF 60 - HE BLOODY HOPES’, is a man divided in himself.

In part he has an eye on eternity. From this perspective the fiddliness of life makes him ache for the Elysian fields and his attitude to the happenstances of life is based on his guru’s description of existence as ‘a story told by a grandmother’ or, more poetically, ‘a play of sun and shadows’. In another part, however, he knows he has a power to create and while acknowledging that the shadows exist, he wants to make the most of the sunshine and have a good life.

I’m that part and I’m called Jack. I’ve been promised free range to express myself today so I intend to be as positive as I can for I never know when John’s going to come back and reimprison me in his Vedantic straightjacket. Ultimately, of course, I’d like to strike out entirely on my own, become individuated in my own right, because I don’t accept that I’m a foolish part of John. On the contrary I believe that I’m the real McCoy and he’s just the product of his upbringing.

Anyway I’ve only got a 1,000 words in which to appear before you so rather than slag off my host, I’ll get down to business.

But why does he have to call me his inner American? Wake-up, Bozo, the English can be positive too, just look at… (we might have to come back to this one).

So, tasked with turning john into a successful author, I turned to my learning tools, the techniques and technologies imparted to me during forty years of seeking for the keys of happiness. It is true, as John indicated, that, judging by results alone, little has been accomplished for all the hithering and thithering. However, I think we know whose fault this is. Now that the twin realities of having spent all his inheritance sunning himself on beaches and having to sign on for Job seekers Allowance have hit him, I can but hope, nay, insist, that I truly am allowed out of the box.

My chosen representatives of the ‘how to get your head sorted and your life together by learning how to create’ philosophies are Rebirthing, Avatar, and Robert Fritz’s stuff on Creating. Although at times I qualified to teach two of these courses, I’m not claiming that they are the best, just the ones I know.

Each in their own way addresses goals and each emphasizes the need for clarity and specificity envisioning the end result, followed by close inspection of the current situation. (NB to John: total pessimism, physical lethargy, and intellectual paralysis and are not considered helpful towards creating what’s wanted. Nor is whinging about next week’s cataract operation. It’s a minor thing, get over it. The way I see it, anyone can be miserable but being happy, for no reason, when one of your oldest friends is dying, for example, takes guts.).

So I’ve spent the last few days rereading all my old books and jotting down notes (which I wrote in such small handwriting I can’t now decipher them).  

From Rebirthing I:

Selected a specific, important (to me) and challenging goal.

Asked myself on a scale of 1 to 100, how certain am I that I am willing to achieve my goal?

Made a list of everything I could think of that might help me achieve this goal.

Used the list to make a logical plan with clear steps. (Only sort of done this.)

For at least 2 minutes said to myself, Something I have to give up to follow this plan is…

Have fitted the plan and into my schedule

And begun.

From Creating I

Decided what I wanted to create (and learned I shouldn’t create to remedy something that is wrong)

Defined Current reality in relation to the end result

Identified the action steps needed to get from here to there.

From Avatar I

Have assessed the rightness of my goal

Examined my beliefs regarding my abilities to attain my objective and have attempted to remove hindering cognitions and feelings.

Paid note to the following tips:

Increase attention on the goal: Plan backwards from the goal: identify sub-goals: utilize someone else’s energy: Work day and night.

In the past I’ve attended ten day long programs practising and refining these techniques from morning to night. If John thinks I can get all this done while he drinks tea, smokes and stares out of the window ‘having profound thoughts’  he is much mistaken. Once I’ve had time to digest the fruits of my psychic gardening, I will lay out a plan for him which I shall insist that he adheres to. Progress is being made.. Two days ago I hadn’t a laptop of my own, nor a printer, nor a scanner. (This last item was a rash buy and it now appears that it can’t produce the miracle I required, i.e. being able to translate my elderly typed documents into Microsoft Word.) Nor did I know how good I would find my writing to be when I dug it out of its boxes. Why oh why was I so easily discouraged?

Now I’ve at least three techniques to deal with downheartedness caused by rejections. The only question is, will John let me use them or will he stay within his habitual limits - as so many of us are tempted to do?

My time is up. I truly hope I will meet you again. In case not, here’s a poem to remember me by. I wrote it one day when I’d escaped my shackles and teased myself into a state of ecstasy. John hates it but sometimes I just don’t care.

 MAGIC

Magic in the starry sky

Magic in the birds

Magic in the trees

Magic in the seas

Magic in the rocks

Magic in the sounds

Magic in the views

Magic, power, and wonder.

Magic in the music

Magic in the rainbow

Magic on the beach

Magic in the dance

Magic in the dreams of the people here

Magic, power, and wonder.

Magic in the songs of my sons

Magic in the high-wire act of my beautiful daughter

Magic in my lover’s embrace

Magic in the moment

Magic in the breath

Magic in the love of things

Magic in the life

Magic in the silence

Magic at the end of time

Magic, power, and wonder.

__________________________________________________________________________________                 

EPISODE TWO; IN WHICH AN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO BE POSITIVE BECAUSE IT JUST MAY HELP.

 Welcome to Episode Two of the blog about the reality self-help novel entitled ‘I’s novel about how the world’s youngest best-selling author (failed) achieved redemption and moderate success at the age of 60 – he bloody hopes!’ which charts the inspiring, entertaining and deeply transformational story of a (late?) middle aged man, faced with economic challenge and intimations of death, surprisingly achieving his lifelong ambition to become a successful writer.

To those of you who visited last week and have now returned, gushing thanks. To newcomers who would like an update on what they’ve missed may I respectfully point them to Episode One 1 in which not a lot happens but you are given a good purview of the enterprise. You also get a small tension – resolution hit from discovering, or confirming, where I discovered the requisite 58 year old on the verge of turning his life around.

Here. Of course.

Now I admit straightaway that I’m not 100% ideal for the post. Hard-work, one pointedness, dedication to the end result – these are not my strongpoints. Yes, I can vow to make a change; yes, I can be very convincing at the beginning. A month or two later, however, and even a purblind observer can see that nothing has actually happened.

This is where the self-help element comes in because while it isn’t necessary for the hero of a story to succeed in his endeavour, the will he won’t he drama building tension of this reality show will be lost if he doesn’t at least make an effort to triumph.

How, therefore, am I to instil excitement, enthusiasm and purpose in place of ennui, inertia and discouragement? Answer, by embracing positivity.

To cut one of my long stories short I must point out that I’m not a neophyte when it comes to the field of positive thinking. I’ve dabbled since the 70s, attending courses, living in Ashrams, learning all the latest new age techniques and old age philosophies. It sometimes seems that my life has been a battle between two main worldviews or paradigms, each with its own Self and attitudes. In caricature one is Eastern, the other American. The Easterner has no time for the play of the world or the reality of the individual and his so called problems. All that matters is realizing oneness with the Source. The American wants to change himself by changing his thoughts and enlighten the world as to what he believes it needs. I swing from one side to the other, spending longer in the East than the West while feeling most of the time that I’m not quite grasping either properly.

What I’ve set myself here however is undoubtedly a task in the material domain. My Eastern Self has no respect for this for his only grail in life is to free his imaginary self from the whirligig of existence. Using one’s limited powers to achieve satisfaction and renown in a world of death is seen as somewhat shortsighted by the traditional mystics.

As ever there are other points of view. Take one of thousands, Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar Courses, for example, who advocates immanent action in a transcendent vehicle and writes: “If you wish to participate in life with any degree of deliberation, the primary action must be to set a goal. Goals are an essential ingredient of happiness. A person without goals is discouraged and unhappy.”

What to do?

Create goals that are right for you because “Believable, achievable, exciting goals are the grand prize of existence.”

On the scale Harry gives for judging the rightness for you of a goal I scored 30, which is plenty, with my choice, i.e.  To achieve economic independence through writing by December 31^st 2012. The next step is ‘to align your actions towards’ the goal. “Alignment of your attention and energies with the goal you want to achieve is called focus. Focus is one of the keys of success.”

Oh dear.  This means I have to remember to want tomorrow what I want today. Clearly if I don’t want to repeat past patterns I should try following the advice of my American Self rather than swim in the Eastern Sea which, evidence suggests, I drown in.

What I’m going to do now, therefore, is to split myself in two. Well, not exactly. To engage in goal-setting and belief rearranging cognitive exercises, I must release my inner American because, quite frankly, the rest of me won’t get it together

My inner American is to be called Jack. I’m going to try to be quiet for a while and let Jack speak for himself. First I think I should advise you that initially Jack may be a little hesitant to express himself. This will be because of past experiences of being allowed out by me. I don’t tend to be supportive when he’s ventured forth. I begin by telling him, ‘Bout time you got out there Jack and got me the things I presently feel are lacking in my life, money for example, or some other prop for the individual. Fill yourself with the required currencies of self-esteem and ambition then strike out.” Sometimes I’ve sent Jack on self-improvement courses. Hardly ecloded from my womb, Jack is despatched off, sometimes for two weeks on end, to sort himself out and learn the mechanics of personal creation.

For example, I made him do something called Rebirthing, a breathing therapy with big ideas. He became a qualified teacher, would you believe and ran courses himself. He also did a few weeks on Robert Fritz’s Creation techniques (to no apparent avail). His last new age adventure into the world of self recreation involved numerous courses, in England, Germany and America – the source! These Avatar courses would have been fewer if he hadn’t kept coming back home saying he didn’t like them and was homesick. Really it was hard for him to adapt from living with me and my negativity to exuding confidence and enthusiasm when totally out of his comfort zone and subject to bouts of deriding and name-calling from me. Nevertheless, he persevered, and would often he would come back from these psychological explorations bright eyed, bushy tailed and full of good intention.

So, I’d get him back into the old ways, my ways, as quickly as possible. I’d take him round to a friend’s house and we’d all get stoned together. On the first night Jack would say, “I’m not sure if I should. I don’t want to lose this space I’m in.” On night two he’d have ‘just one puff’ on a pipe. And then off he’d go, flying into a world of possibility and into an universe where everything is connected and he suddenly understands – ‘really’ understands, whatever it was he went away to learn. I do like this part. He becomes so happy that his happiness leaks into me and we become, briefly, harmonious.

Then I eat him up.

By the fourth night he can smoke as much as he likes but all that is left is a trace of light.

EPISODE ONE: IN WHICH WE LEARN THE TRUE TITLE AND PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG

Welcome to my blog. Thank you for visiting. I hope your stay will be a pleasant one. According to my trusty writer’s guide you have a short attention span and if I don’t quickly get down to the meat of the matter or promptly dazzle you with my song and dance, then you’ll be off, taking with you your precious reality-making attention particles, without which this project will wither and die. Oh, and it told me to keep my sentences short in case you get distracted between lines.

Now if we were to meet in our embodied states maybe you would call by for a cuppa and we’d get to know each other in the English way. I could you show you around parts of my world. We’d establish a rapport, build a relationship, then later in the evening (a glass of wine perhaps? a smoke?), defences lowered, barriers negotiated, we’d reveal ourselves.

So, think Big Brother rather than X-Factor; fingers off the buzzer, please. You can vote me off as many times as you like but I’ll still be here. The weekly episodes will be relative short, say 1,000 words. I’ve made a deal with myself to continue broadcasting this literary reality show until the end of next year, so if you’re not into introductory stuff come back later in the series. Don’t miss the opportunities, however, to be gifted the occasional free short story or interesting article.

What will you find in this blog which was called, before space limited, "I'S NOVEL ABOUT HOW THE WORLD'S YOUNGEST BEST-SELLING AUTHOR (FAILED) ACHIEVED REDEMPTION AND MODERATE SUCCESS AT THE AGE OF 60 - HE BLOODY HOPES"!

Without wishing to totally undermine the whole project by beginning with my doubts I have to admit I can pitch this in two ways:

a. As the title boldly disclaims, an inspiring blow by blow blogged account of how a man turned his life around at the last moment and amazingly achieved his childhood ambition to be a well-known and wealthy enough author - A Reality self-help novel set over the turnabout 18 month period. A Reality Self-Help novel, what do you think? More still, you will have first access to much of the work of this author.

b. A diversionary collection of tales concerning procrastination, self-delusion, misplaced ambition, good intentions blighted by character defect, untruths, gossip and whingeing,

 disguised as

autobiography, eastern and western metaphysics, valid and important information, humour, indirect social and spiritual activism, opinions on life, death, dying, writing, Glastonbury and the ‘alternative life’, new age teachings, children, grandchildren, gurus, relationships, drugs, politics, nature, the body-minded brain, the state of this body, Boggy Starless …and anything and everything it takes to sabotage the goal I have set to free myself, namely, completing the aforesaid project while freeing myself from a limited situation in life (i.e. unemployment, lack of money to do what I want to do) by the power of my writing.

Elucidation & Context

I moved house recently and in the process came across two boxes of my writings - novels, short stories, essays, film and TV scripts, poems, etc. produced slowly and intermittently over a lifetime. As I put these mostly unpublished and unseen works into storage, I recalled how at the age of 13, having just read Tolstoy, I conceived the ambition to become the world’s youngest best-selling author.

Doesn’t all disappointment leave a mark?

While struggling with the lock of my unit, ultimately only pretending to secure it, my mind conjured up the heartening story of a man, aged 58, in ill-health and despond, suddenly deciding that despite previous failures he’d make one last attempt to realize his childhood dream to earn his living doing what he loved most, writing.

Now I love stories, novels especially, reading and creating them, nevertheless I still become disconcerted when I remember they are not real, they are made-up. It’s all very well becoming enthused up and inspired but if what’s uplifting us is fabrication, lies in other words, aren’t we being slightly fooled?

Undoubtedly we, humans, have found the need to use myths to understand, to explain and to function in our world. Maybe it is these myths that have got into the shit we’re in. We’re now in an age that is uniquely global and unmediated in its communication. Are we going to spend the time fibbing, fantasizing, theorising and mythologizing or are we going to report the facts as we perceive them to be?

Anyway my point is that I decided I didn’t want to spend my time pursuing that particular story idea. During an unintended period of contemplation about the plot of the novel I wasn’t going to write, I mislaid the key to the storage yard and became trapped in there because I couldn’t open the gates. Over in their office the staff watched on their CCTV cameras for twenty minutes and then came to rescue both me and the key which, the camera showed, I had tossed into a skip along with some rubbish.

“Thank God for reality TV,” said the manager as I left.

So there we have it. Wouldn’t it be better, I thought, to tell a true story? A story of ‘Reality’ –using ‘Reality’ in the TV Reality Show sense – complete with both the over intimate details, and the subtext that we are witnessing the transformational journey of a fellow human being (though admittedly there is the further subtext, i.e. the losers, the majority, are on a journey from nowhere in particular to nowhere. That’s life, that’s drama). 

Reality, therefore, is my genre. And thus the plotter of my story.

All I needed was a 58 year old unemployed man who was on the brink of half-heartedly, disbelievingly, reluctantly, goading himself into attempting to cure his financial malaise while simultaneously abandoning inertia, disappointment, and possibly sense, in favour of making one last effort to create the identity and production of a ‘successful’ author. For him would come the unremitting gaze of the witnesses - first me, then you through the lens of my weekly edited updates – who are not impartial and may often be malicious.

Where would I find such a man?

Oh look, we’re out of time already, my 1,000 words have gone. The closing credits have