EPISODE 56: A WEEKEND AWAY

Welcome to my blog which, for the first time, is a little late this week partly because I had an unusually busy weekend and partly because I’ve run out of things to say. Quite how I’m going to capture your interest, or even my own, I’m not sure.

This last week has been summer. It may be the only summer we have or it may herald the stonking best summer since 1976. Yesterday I woke up in Manchester. This wasn’t a surprise to me because I had driven up the day before; two hundred motorway miles at a steady 80mph, restraining myself as much as possible because I was caught speeding a few months ago and already have to do a speed awareness course. (In fact I’m always aware of my speed; my problem is in knowing what speed the speed camera wants me to be going at.) My three speed convictions in fifteen years have all come at the same place, a camera by a set of traffic lights in Bristol. I looked again yesterday and I’m sure there’s no sign on that stretch of road to say what the limit is. (Presumably it is there but deliberately hidden.) I don’t quibble too much with the overall justice of my being caught because I always speed.

I was in Manchester to celebrate the 60^th birthday of the mother of my eldest child. She was at Teacher’s Training College when we met and I was waiting to go to university in Birmingham. Before long we had in the fashion of the times ‘dropped-out’ of our respective fully-funded and granted courses. I suppose we may both have reason to regret that choice, because neither of us subsequently settled in professions or careers. Yes, she now has a doctorate and I have two Masters Degrees but that initial sundering from the system was never really rectified. What would have happened if she had secured her teaching certificate and me my silly degree in ‘Behavioural Sciences’ is of course, an unknown. Maybe she would be a retiring headmistress or me a Professor. I don’t regret the decision I made then but I do think it had consequences to our lives that we couldn’t have foreseen.

As it was, we moved to Bristol. How that came about, I don’t know as neither of us knew the place. There I became a roadsweeper and she worked in a bookshop. Being a roadsweeper wasn’t great but it was mostly easy because once the traffic woke-up the busy roads were too busy to clean and I spent most of my days loitering around Clifton zoo listening to the animals and resweeping the same leaves.

The best thing about the job was that we were allowed to take our overtime when we wanted. I remember two or three of us would take our carts out in the middle of the night, drop acid on the Downs at Clifton, wonder around for a few hours and then return back to base to claim our doubletime. Even in those days I was nervous taking acid but I recall that she (my ex) was always fun to trip with because she was funny and insouciant.

Her sixtieth birthday was hard for her, because she was sixty but more because her lifelong partner (after me) died a few months ago, having fallen ill about this time last year. Of course people told her she doesn’t look sixty but she does. A year of misery shows on her face. We were young and beautiful, now look at us.

No don’t.

***

From Manchester I went to Derby. Actually, I went from South Manchester to North Manchester and then back again, (hard to map read and drive at the same time) and then I headed for Derby to meet my friends. It was as perfect a day as one would wish for when crossing the Pennines. I hadn’t driven that road before and it was a shame that despite having set off 90 minutes early I was soon pressed for time and that I had to concentrate on the driving because the views were stunning with rivers and hills and wild moors.

Having set off after just one piece of bread and one cup of tea, my intention was to breakfast on the way but as time passed I thought it best to make the appointment and nourish myself when I got to the marina café where I was to meet my friend.  As I got out of the car, however, my friend, Steve, was ready for action. “We’ve started the boats,” he said excitedly. “If you’re up for it we could jump right on and then take a break in half an hour when we get to the first lock.”

I needed a pee, needed a coffee (or at least a tea) and I needed to eat. Surely I could wait just half an hour more?

Five hours later, I still needed a pee, a coffee and something to eat.

Steve has had his boat for four years. Essentially our meetings are for business but we’ve become friends and have some interests, for example football, that we share. I usually spend a couple of hours with him in his house and increasingly he has enthused about the idea of my going on a little trip on his boat. For politeness sake, in the hope that we’d be done with it and because the weather was gorgeous, I agreed that this time we’d chug for a couple of hours. I imagined lying on a deck, listening to the birds, smoking a pipe and drinking cups of tea.

Canal boats are noisy. The river is busy on a summer Sunday. There was nowhere to sit and Steve had no teabags. I had no suncream. Steve’s girlfriend at one point said, “I’ll get us a drink.” My hopes soared but she returned with beer – which I don’t drink. Because the river was so busy they couldn’t find a place to moor so we went on. And on. The sun beat down. We’d come to a lock and everything would get even slower. Off the boat, on the boat. Pull a rope, hold a rope, feel the rope burning your hands. Push this lock gate shut. Hold this rope again. Pull the boat back. What fun this is. And everyone is so friendly and while I’m standing there falsely smiling, they ask about the boat and tell me all about theirs. ‘Carried coal, it did. Last worked in 1985.’

Steve and girlfriend so delighted to be showing me their pride and joy. ‘Wonderful,’ I say.

When I finally get back to my car, I’m four hours late for my next appointment which is 200 miles away. My phone is full of messages asking where I am and if I’m alright. Which, once I’ve had a cup of tea and accelerated to a calming 80mph, I am.

EPISODE 55: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR REMEMBERS BEING 14 AND DECIDES HE HASN'T CHANGED MUCH

Welcome to my blog which has purpose if not direction.

Forty-four years ago, almost to the day, I was put on a train in London and despatched to Llandudno junction. I was fifteen and had just been expelled from my grammar school for reasons which I’ve explained before. I don’t remember exactly what I felt that day but generally at that time I was miserable because I was discovering the joys of falling in love with numerous girls while being too shy to be proactive. I do recall the book I was reading, ‘War and Peace’. I was a quick reader and it was a long journey. Russian novels were my staple, primarily because they were the longest books in the library. ‘War and Peace’ became my favourite book of all time, so I when I wrote to Louis Berniers to compare his ‘Bird Without Wings’ to Tolstoy, it was the highest praise I could give it.

My Welsh sojourn lasted maybe 3 months, from May 11^th 1968 to the end of July, by when I’d finished taking my ‘O’ Levels. After countless years of trauma and trouble with the Jesuits and the demands of the catholic religion, ‘Hen Ysgol’ in Talsanau, near Penrhyndeudreath, was an oasis of peace and freedom.

I think there were very few of us there; less than twenty I’d say. The only person I remember was a local girl called Rhianna who I met at local café in Penrhyndeudreath that had a jukebox on which I’d repetitively play ‘Child of the Moon’ by the Rolling Stones, ‘Young Girl’ by Gary Puckett and ‘Honey’ by Bobby Goldsborough, (a sickly song about death). After the few tutorials of the day, I’d get on my bike and ride down to the village for cups of tea and a look at the girls. The freedom was extraordinary. On Catholic holidays I was given the whole day off, so I’d cycle to the beaches at Harlech and Portmadog and relax by the sea, safe in the knowing that no-one would ask me if I had actually been to Mass.

For a romantic country-loving boy, the environment was perfect. I loved wondering off in the hills, disclaiming to the sheep and discovering empty spaces inside myself. One day, a friend and I, (I recall he was Lebanese) ‘discovered’ Port Merion, the extraordinary village designed by Clough Williams-Ellis and later used in ‘The Prisoner’. To stumble on such a place unwittingly was a delight and, in the modern parlance, awesome.

I didn’t do particularly well in my exams apart from passing French. This was managed mainly because my French teacher told me all the answers and when we had an oral exam she spoke to me in an English accent so that I could understand what she was saying. After years of abuse from teachers, that act of kindness was of particular note.

At the end of July I went back to Surrey and in September 1968 was accepted back by Wimbledon College who then had me for another term before expelling me for a second time.

***

Last week I read ‘The War of Women’ by Dumas. I read it because I’ve decided it is too long since I addressed the classics. The local library isn’t that strong on books and the classics section is tiny and consists mainly of Dickens, Trollope and Thackery, all of which I have read. (In fact I haven’t read much Dickens. My father used to have the complete works and whenever I looked at them they oozed boredom. I know I’ve actually enjoyed them in the past but the reluctance remains.

The Dumas tale was brilliantly written. Although neither the story nor the characters were in themselves of any great interest to me, it is a rollicking read, full of good dialogue and pace. Most of my reading takes place in the bath at night. This week I’ve been in there for an hour a night, a hundred pages or so and I relearned that one of the reasons these authors’ books are ‘classics’ is because they are so damn well written.

I returned to the library today with the hope of finding ‘War and Peace’ or any of the classic Russian authors but had no luck. A choice of Martin Chuzzlewit, Moby Dick or G.K. Chesterton sent me home empty handed.

By some strange coincidence, the very day I was recalling Tolstoy’s Katya and Natasha, I received an email from a woman in Arkhangelsk in Northern Russia called Mariya. She is 25 and says she is a trainee dentist who is about to be sent to the UK for a month for special training sponsored by a scholarship. So far, so good. She’s contacted me because she likes the look of my profile.

 

What profile?

 I’m not aware of having one. Did she mean my facebook page? She included a rather pretty headshot of herself. I responded with a polite ‘I think you’ve made a mistake’ only to receive back an email with my own photo attached together with six pictures of her and a quite passionate letter asking ‘for your friendship at least’. In the pictures she is depicted either in short skirts or nighties and in the letter she confesses that she works as a stripper but ‘would never sell my body for sex.’  Of course I am assuming that there is some scam going on but so far can’t guess what the point of it is. My ignoring of this letter was followed by a third one from her, repeating much the same story and adding five nude pictures of herself. She signs herself ‘your passionate tigress’ and begs me to meet her when she reaches the UK.

I guess my facebook picture must make me look either stupid or gullible, both of which I am. But not stupid enough to think a golden hearted perfect bodied multilingual Russian stripper and dentist has fallen in love with me.

I’ve just remembered that when I was 13 I began corresponding with teenage girls in Finland. Quite quickly these letters turned into mutual filth and fantasy. One girl in particular seemed to chime with me and our letters were frequently ten or more pages long. Then, to my horror, I discovered she was being allowed to visit London for a week with a couple of older friends. She wanted me to meet her and have sex with her. When the day came to meet her, I set off to school as usual but stayed on the train and went into central London. We’d agreed to rendezvous outside a hotel in Green Park. I arrived early and stood some distance away. I was desperate to have sex and terrified. After an hour I saw the three girls. My god they were stunning; all blond, all beautiful, all in the miniest of mini-skirts newly acquired from Biba in Kensington.

I turned and made my way back to the tube station.

***

My last strained link to Russia and teenaging concerns communism and socialism. My early emotional fervour for the revolution was tempered by a visit to Communist Eastern Europe and Russia in 1967; nevertheless I have never been inclined to accept either the inevitability or the justice of global or social capitalism. In fact at times it seems incredible to me that the 99% allow the 1%, or the 80% allow the 20%, to get away with it. For this reason I have been delighted to read Peter Wilber’s book, ‘Deep Socialism, A New manifesto of Marxist Ethics and Economics’. I hope that with a little time I will be able to digest his ideas and communicate hthem accurately. Everything he writes is fascinating and relevant. Just this morning I was reading his chapter on ‘Currencies, Languages and the National ‘Ethos’ while on the news came the latest panic about the Euro. If only the world leaders would read the fucking book and do what he tells them to do. Mind you, it isn’t down the leaders is it? It’s our job.

EPISODE 54: ON ATTITUDE

A few weeks ago I was musing on mood. Mood is ‘A frame of mind or state of feelings.’ Last week, as I demonstrated, I was mostly in a poor mood. At the end of my piece, I quoted Harry Palmer on discouragement. This is also from Harry:

‘An indication of a successful session is that the student relaxedly pours out of the rom and doesn’t have much to say for a while. The student is okay where he or she is, and this appreciation causes the disappearance of more and more levels of self-definition.

An indication of a problem session is that the student finishes more hyperactive and or agitated than he or she began. They are stressed and often seek relief by compulsively creating. Creation is an effort to relieve stress.’

As if often the case, Harry has it right. In some moods you just feel a relaxed flow and in others tension predominates and the internal dialogue becomes tetchy and disgruntled. Of course we all know about moods. The question is, what to do about them, if anything? Now I am in a better mood, it seems obvious to me that this mood is preferable in that it feels more expanded and lighter. It reminds me that I can feel like this.

Is it pure chance that I’m in a better mood?

Harry’s observations on Discouragement appealed to me because I recognised both the ‘seriousness’ I had sunk into and the symptoms of being in a creation called ‘discouraged’ which I acted out by being withdrawn and, as it were, wearing a pair of dark glasses from where I was peering out into the world.

Did I follow Harry’s advice and take 5 positive actions to counterbalance each opportunity to be downcast? No.

What I did do was to go for a couple of walks in which I consciously did my ‘feel-it’ exercises. Almost immediately the act of throwing my attention out onto the forms around me, shifted my experience of self. I realized then that for the past week or so, maybe much longer, I have almost totally internalized my attention I’ve been locked in my own feeling and failed to genuinely put my attention on them. When I can do that, I know that in most cases, I then literally lighten up and begin to feel more empowered, less self-defined. What I need to do to is practise this so it becomes second nature. If I’d prepared myself properly, (and not got stoned), I’m sure the Totnes thing would have gone considerably better.

My great friend John Ryan used to read the most marvellous enlightenment books and then practise their teachings on his acquaintances. I don’t mean this meanly when applied to John for he would genuinely apply himself to any disciplines that might serve him. I’m more likely to read a book and then think all my friends need to do whatever it is in the book, whether I actually do it myself or not. The Avatar stuff, however, is what I do do when I’m stuck in my functioning.

Why does it work so well? 

I wish I hadn’t asked that because I don’t really know the answer. It begins with the moving of attention. You can put your attention on a car, on a tree, on the sky, on a pain in the body; it might not stay there, might slip back to a problem or concern, but it is you who moves that attention. In a similar way, doing these exercises slowly leads you into the point of view of a creator.

***

At which point I was interrupted and lost my thread for two days. This is what happens when a large child comes to visit a small home. Obviously it is a pleasure to have the youngest home for a weekend but once I’ve handed over my room for the duration, I lose my centre and find it quite impossible to do anything. On the other hand we watched a football match together and because we share the same allegiance we were emotionally bound as the team went from winning to losing to winning.

The very modern obsession with football as a legitimate form of emotional expression is a curious one. The nine rasas, emotional expressions, in Indian thought are said to be: shringara (erotic love), karuna (compassion), adbhuta (awe, wonderment), shant (peace, equanimity), hasya (laughter, mirth), veer (valour, heroism), bhaya (fear), vibhatsa (disgust) and raudra (anger, fury).  My reader will know from previous mentions that Abhinavagupta and the Indian aesthetes were keen on theatre and that the purpose of drama is to have you identify with and then transcend these emotions. A football game provides the same journey and the same opportunity.

(Incidentally, should anyone doubt the erotic element they just need to listen to some of the early commentaries on Lionel Messi which seemed to frequently mention his bottom or ponder on the fact that soccer in denial about homosexuality and yet it is legitimate for men to have posters of their male loved ones on the wall.)

If we examine our lives of only the past month or so, we will find how vulnerable we are to emotional imbalances. Because we are mostly unaware or at best superficially aware of our emotional lives, we tend to allow one or two rasas to dominate us. For instance, hasya if we are the light-hearted sort, or raudra if we are hotheaded and easy to take offence. We continue to affirm this imbalance through our behaviour, which becomes lopsided in favour of our rasa of choice and it gradually becomes our chosen response to life situations. Hence we become a certain ‘kind’ of person. This emotional conditioning keeps us from experiencing life in all its fullness, and we remain tied to limited views of our selves, unable to even grasp the vastness of our true potential, let alone actualise it. (Swati Chopra.)

Here we have it. Emotional states colouring our days. Emotional states are states of mind. We may treat them as separate from mind, as chaotic random arisings in the body to which we are victim, or can we embrace and acknowledge them as a choice and then we can choose differently.

Perhaps.

This characteristic of having a dominant rasa with which we approach life can be called bhav. My predilection is to be lighthearted, to have a humourous bhav. On the other hand if there is work to be done my bhav is reluctant. According to the Indian philosophies the highest bhav is that of being, well, what to call it, source, pure consciousness, god,…

As put by Swami Atmaswarupananda:

It is this bhav—that feels that it is the Lord that is doing our yoga, that everything is the Lord—that can make any yoga successful. It can be an individual yoga or integral yoga. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is the bhav with which we do our practice: That which is doing the yoga is nothing except the Lord Himself, because there is nothing except the Lord. Even the feeling that there is separation is nothing except the Lord. It is this understanding that will lead us towards our goal and make our present yoga successful.

EPISODE 53: BELTANE AND BALDERDASH

Welcome.

On May 1^st, last Tuesday, Glastonbury had one of its stranger days. At 11.30am a performance of sorts took place at the Market Cross. I say ‘of sorts’ not to decry it but because I couldn’t really see what was happening. If I had been feeling less unwell and self-preoccupied, I would have asked someone to explain what was going on in the midst of an encircling crowd but from my observation I could at least detect a battle between two dragons and then the enactment of a story about the Ice King having kidnapped someone. (I’ve just googled this but found nothing to relate to what I saw.)

In fact I should know a lot more than I’ve told you because my friend (when he is) was the Ice King and he has been prattling on about this Beltane celebration for a couple of months. Beltane, a Celtic festival, marks the beginning of summer and sure enough half-way through the day the rain stopped and the sun came out. By that time the ritual had moved from the centre of town to Bushy Coombe on the side of Chalice Hill where about 300 people joined hands to form a circle. Then for the rest of the afternoon they danced around a May Pole, had a picnic and sunbathed, a few nakedly, though I was still wearing two jumpers and a coat.

Quite possibly this was the best attended Beltane celebration in Glastonbury since the Middle Ages. The costumes worn were eclectic, some Druids, green men, witches, cowboys; whatever people had or felt like wearing. Covens had come from Spain and their Latin panache and good humour added a necessary vibrancy to the English greyness.

I watched all this in a number of minds. In six months’ time I hope to produce an even bigger procession because in theory I understand the need for communities to celebrate together. (While in practise I never join in.) Why these people want to don these garbs and express themselves neo-paganistically, I have no idea, but I am grateful that they do. Because of the success of the day, there is renewed enthusiasm for establishing a regular calendar of Celtish events, most particularly, Samhain. For this there appears to be even less of a known tradition to follow, so it will be entertaining to see what they come up with. Both Beltane and Samhain are ‘supposed’ to feature bonfires; Beltane didn’t and at this point I’ve no idea where I would put one either. 

*****

I decided earlier this week to concentrate entirely upon the Day of the Dead creation and forget about everything else. This came about as a response to being very down on myself and finding the whole thing too much to think about. My despondency at not performing well in Totnes – as confirmed by no correspondence from anyone there in the past week – increased as the days went by. If I can’t impress fluffies, my thinking goes, I’m not going to be much use with a more challenging audience. What is wrong with me? Why can I sometimes be managing quite well only to hear my voice begin to waver and my kidneys begin to ache?

The day after Beltane I went for a meeting about the website. As a supplicant to the designer whom I know to be intolerant of feedback, I felt what had been fixed become more difficult and I went away with a bunch of instructions which I don’t know how to follow. The following two days I spent staring at this screen, not actually doing anything.

One of those days was my partner’s birthday. I have discovered that while for me birthdays have (nearly) always been easy times, for many others this is not the case and even in adulthood trepidation comes with the date. It so happened that an indulgently late start to the day meant that phone calls and the post arrived during breakfast. By the end of the meal, she had discovered yet another job had eluded her and I had found both my overdraft to be considerably more than expected and the Tax Credit’s I’m supposed to receive had been halted for reasons that no-one could tell me because the system was down.

In the afternoon spirits were lifted when her friends came round for tea. Four hours later one of her guests had been taken to hospital thirty miles away because a blood-test had revealed a potentially fatal condition. All in all, not a great day.

As I write this, I am thinking two things. First, that maybe I haven’t been too well this week. Today I feel quite bright and looking back it seems as if I’ve been in a rather strange world with paranoid feelings arising frequently during the day. This isn’t really like me. Either I’ve been off-colour or I’ve fucked myself up inwardly worrying about something that really doesn’t matter, i.e. the Day of the Dead creation. Or rather, it is something that doesn’t need to matter and is only mattering because I’ve blindly marched into it thinking that the money side of it will work itself out and that if it doesn’t somehow I’ll find the pennies. 

This is contrary to my experience of me in life. I always think the money will work out and it never does.

The second thing I’m thinking is that I could abandon the whole idea. After all, it is only an idea. My unwillingness to give up bothers me. Is this more blithe optimism? Or is it a foolish pride? One would like to think that it is because this thing is important to me, but it isn’t. I’d like to think it was something I believed in, or was passionate about, but it ain’t; it really is just an idea.

And it is an idea I no longer feel excited about. So why not give up? I don’t know. But I better have a good think about it.

***

'Discouragment arises as a result of attention becomming fixed on the obstacles and opponents to a goal (interference) rather than oon actions in alignment with the goal. Discouragement left unhandled will lead to quitting and failure. No matter how ratiponal and logical an excuse for failure appears, the real reason for failure is always discouragement.'  Harry Palmer.