Welcome to my blog which is cold this
morning; yesterday we had rain which again made the garden so sodden could I
hardly walk in it. Today I have to go postering, having first to drive to
Bristol to pick up some tickets. So far, none have sold and I’ve had zero
emails making enquiries. I’d like to be feeling positive about the whole thing
but have nothing to grab hold of, nothing to comfort myself with. Meanwhile I
get a bank statement which puts me £4,000 in the red. Today would be a good day
for good news.
There again, it is all perspective.
My brother, who already has cancer, is now being tested for dementia. I’d hate
to be him and I’d hate to be his family. (Well, I am his family, but I mean his
wife and children.) Apparently he is
doing okay with it all but surely the outlook is grim with increasing isolation
and detachment likely to be his path. Whereas for me, I can be fretting about
this project and how I’ll recover financially, for him the grand projects are
over. Of course, having being engaged in ‘the world’ for most of his life, he
has a string of projects behind him and may even be grateful to let all that
go.
Though I doubt it.
Mind you, reflecting on my good
fortune as opposed to his, is not really positivity or confidence; more
whistling in the dark than anything real.
Have I done my best?
I guess I have.
…
I was very surprised the other day
that when arguing with Howard about the nature of things, I felt myself become
emotional and heard my voice shaking a little, as if tears weren’t too far
away. This puzzled me; why did I get like that? People that know him often say
they become frustrated and angry with him because he won’t listen and cuts
across them and indeed he kept doing this to me by assuming he knew my stance
and what I was going to say - which did piss me off. My problem, however, was
more my frustration at not finding the words and concepts I needed to explain
what it was I did want to convey and I was wishing I had the intellect and
reason of a Peter Wilberg to swipe away the midge of Howard’s ignorance.
Now I begin to remember what we were
talking about – the origins of Shaivism and Indian thought which Howard seemed
to think was animistic in its ‘religion’. When I think of the crafted classical
darshanas of Indian philosophy compared with the trivia of the modern
materialist (whose arguments were dismissed contemptuously a thousand years ago)
I find myself wanting to shout some sense into my Dawkins disciple but as
aggression is the mark of the fanatic rather than the gnostic, I must examine
myself rather than my imaginary opponent.
---
Not for the first time, Alison points
out the world around us. ‘That tree, this car, you say they are illusions?’
‘Yes,’ I reply. Then, thinking of my shaivism, I add, ‘real illusions’. I
shouldn’t have added that bit because it didn’t help.
---
I did put some posters up today. Not
a lot. I drove through one, mainly bypassed, town called Axbridge. It was very
strange because there were loads and loads of houses, old ones in the heart of
the town, new ones all around, but hardly any
people to be seen and only a couple of shops to be found, those in ‘the
medieval square’ at the centre of the
maze that now circumnavigates it. We asked, ‘Is this all there is?’ and
the few people we found all replied ‘yes.’ The teenagers said there was
absolutely nothing to do and that the town was ‘rubbish.’ They even thanked me
when I said I was putting up a poster for them to look at when they were bored.
Apparently Axbridge has a high rate of drug addiction. Pretty obvious why, a
dormitory town in every sense of the word.
Cheddar, a few miles down the road,
is totally different because it has the caves and hundreds of tourists buying
shit for stupid prices. The cafes and shops there weren’t very poster friendly
until Alison charmed a young man into putting five up in his shop and taking
another five to put in his dad’s shop. Of course, once he’s stopped being
dazzled by her smile and looked at the topic of the posters, he may well change
or have it changed by his dad.
…
This week I reread one of my favourite novels, ‘Sacred Games’
by Vikram Chandra. I read it first four or five years ago and immediately put
it near the top of my list. Earlier this year, my partner read it in Spanish
and enjoyed it as much as I had done. I’ve been rationing my novel reading of
late – in order to focus on the Day of the Dead – but the 900 pages of this
book have passed in a flash, or rather, I’ve become so engrossed that my bath
water has become cold by time I’ve forced myself to put the book down. (I do
most of my reading in the bath.) It is a beautifully written story that sheds
light on everything from murder and rape to the cosmic process. Amazing, and
far superior to anything the west could come up with. (Though I shouldn’t
forget Louis de Berniers.) Which reminds me that on Thursday I put Cervantes
(Don Quixote) and Dickens (Pickwick) into the recycling.
Having said that, I hope I don’t have to explain to the
authors why I’ve dismissed their efforts. I don’t suppose they’d be too keen on
Boggy Starless either.
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