EPISODE 60: A CLEAR CASE OF MARKING TIME

Welcome to my blog which is being written to the familiar sound of mid-summer rain. I say midsummer because it is hard not to think that the passing of the longest day marks the beginning of the descent into the endless winter. In fact summer hasn’t even begun and we haven’t had a summer for three, four or more years. The last hot day was exactly 365 days ago. I remember it because we went to the beach – as did everyone else. 

As soon as the sun shines, anyone living within 2 hours of the coast starts up the car and joins the queue which ends in a car park somewhere within sight of the sea. By the car park will be a café with its own everlasting queues; an hour for a cup of tea, ninety minutes for food and twenty minutes for the toilet. Fortunately, you don’t have to queue to go in the sea; unfortunately, the sea is always too cold to want to be in unless you are a child, wearing a wet suit or one of those people from the North who wear shorts in the snow. Usually by time you’ve reached the beach you find a stiff sea breeze which will occasionally burn you but mostly leave you so cold that someone has to go back to the car to look for jumpers. Even if it is warm you will find cars with people in who just stare out to sea. Paul Theroux says the British are the only island people who do this wistful gazing at the waves and the horizon.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me

REFRAIN:
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me

Last night as I lay on my pillow
Last night as I lay on my bed
Last night as I lay on my pillow
I dreamt that my Bonnie was dead

Oh blow the winds o'er the ocean
And blow the winds o'er the sea
Oh blow the winds o'er the ocean
And bring back my Bonnie to me

The winds have blown over the ocean
The winds have blown over the sea
The winds have blown over the ocean
And brought back my Bonnie to me

I remember learning this ditty as a child and being moved by it. Maybe it was songs like this longing for the return of Bonnie Prince Charlie that have led us to turn our attention to the invisible distant shore. Mind you, thousands of British people stare at rivers and lakes in the name of angling so maybe we’re just a watery lot.

***

Chris Wafe, the man who said he would publish my book, has not been doing that for a year now. Last time I reminded him, he got very shirty and told me to find someone else. Then he repented and renewed his promise. I won’t pursue him but it’ll continue to bother me – possibly forever.

I haven’t yet read the story I wrote last week. The deadline is next Friday. I already know that I’ll change the ending which I rushed at first time around. I’m also writing yet another article about death which I hope won’t bore my readers as much as it has bored me.

***

On the radio yesterday, I heard a bunch of songs that were hits back in 1960 when I was 7 years old.  What puzzles me when I hear music from my past is that I still like the songs I always liked.  The first one played was by Jimmy Jones called ‘Timing’. In fact I’d always heard it as Timex and did yesterday. Another song played was by Adam Faith and it was called ‘Someone else’s baby’. This was the first pop song I ever heard. I remember being in a school classroom, waiting for our music and movement lesson to come on the radio. Presumably the teacher had tuned in too early and so the class got to listen to Adam Faith’s extraordinary diction. He would sing the word ‘baby’ in an absolutely unique way which was entirely foreign to my young ear. Fortunately my musical taste has developed over the years but the songs that affected me emotionally, such as Wooden Heart, still do. I only mention this because recently I was talking to a 23 year old about her life and she asked me if I felt that I was the same person I had been when I was younger. My answer is yes. 

***
 

As I’ve mentioned numerous times, one of the most significant meetings of my life was with Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa. I have a large picture of him on the small wall behind me as I write. I do not know whether he actually was an extraordinary being or whether we made it all up but I can not imagine how I would have managed in my life if not for that period when I met him and was presented with an alternative.

The 23 year old I mentioned sent me a message last night saying, ‘please bring down your how to be happy books.’ By this she means my Avatar books or maybe my books on meditation. When I met Muktananda, he told us that the best way to learn to meditate was to sit next to someone who was meditating. At the Ashram in India we were supposed to meditate a couple of hours a day. I never could meditate to my satisfaction, never felt ‘an unfathomable peace’, never had a vision, never travelled to another world, never lost myself. At one stage I had to lead meditation ‘sharing’ sessions in which the usual suspects would recount tales of amazing journeys and experiences of bliss. When Muktananda died in 1982 and I stopped being an official siddha yogi, I more or less gave up meditation.

Most mornings now, I meditate for half an hour or so. As before, nothing amazing happens but once in a while, for a moment or two, I feel calmed and just occasionally I sense peace. This momentary sense of peace is worth all the rest of the day put together. I am so grateful that I have this to turn to and that 40 years ago we were exposed to the teachings of the east because the young people don’t have that any more. Where we had mantras and spirituality they have diazepam and anti-depressants.

So it goes.