EPISODE 69: ON CHANGE

 Welcome to my blog which this week begins with the subject of change. As Palmer says: 

‘The only constant in the universe is change…Everything flows…Experiencing the flow permits you to direct it or to exist in harmony with it or to transform it. You welcome and experience the change – recognising new opportunities – or you struggle against and resist the change – thus experiencing suffering. Everything changes. Life and Death are both aspects of change. To live forever or to be dead forever are equally futile struggles.

Choosing to resist the experience you have chosen to experience (by your knowing or unknowing adoption of beliefs) creates the effect of suffering, of being swept alone, of being out of control. You create against yourself – feeling is replaced by thinking.

But when you change your attitude and experience what you have chosen to experience (acknowledging yourself as the source of the beliefs that attracted the experience), you may then create new beliefs as to what you experience you will attract next.

Those persons, places, events, conditions, viewpoints and ideas that you resist experiencing will continue to be created with slight variation until they are experienced as being in accord with the beliefs held by that particular stratum of consciousness that is creating them.’

I didn’t actually mean to quote that much but I was actually thinking about my friend Ella who recently has been somewhat ruthlessly dumped by her partner of six years.  I spent some hours with her yesterday and listened to and comforted her. It is always a delicate balance, of course, when someone is leaning on you for support and validation because you have to both absorb and acknowledge the suffering with genuine empathy while remembering this person needs empowering to get out of the situation that their body minded brain has got them into. As I was copying these words on change, I saw how I could help her reframe the story once she’s allowed herself to feel the feelings – something she is very reluctant to do.

Anyway, the change I wanted to write about is of a different variety. Until a week ago, the neighbour to my right was a slightly mad hippy woman who was almost entirely silent apart from when she drummed and wailed or was complaining about my complaining about her drumming and wailing. My partner had become intimidated by her and very disturbed by the noise and even wanted us to write to the Housing Association to see if we could get her moved – which I wouldn’t do for a number of reasons, not least because replacement neighbours could be much worse.

Last Monday, the hippy woman knocked on the door and said, ‘You won, John. I’m moving. Got a detached place where I can play my music.’ ‘That’s good,’ I said. And that was that. For the rest of the day there was banging and knocking and voices shouting and vans and cars arriving and going until at 6.00 pm there was another knock at the door and there was a small woman with grey hair and few teeth introducing herself in the broadest of somerset accents as Annie. By 7pm she was sitting on an armchair in the front garden, chatting to every single person who walked down the street.

On Tuesday morning, at about 10am, there was the sound of a chainsaw. A man was cutting down the hedge of next door’s front garden, so that her front window can see straight onto the street, and vice versa. This now means that my house is also revealed to the street; not absolutely, because I still have my own hedge, but enough to totally change how I lead my life, because up to now when I’ve opened my front door, I’ve been able to be in my front garden unseen, to sit in the sun (if there were any), to have a smoke, to breathe some air privately, to compose myself…not possible now. And if visitors came, no one would know which house they were coming to. Now they do.

On Wednesday, all the other neighbours came to chat and gawp at the damage.

On Thursday, my neighbour’s workman razed their back garden. First he chainsawed 18 years’ worth of miniature cultivated wilderness and then he set fire to the whole lot. It burned for twentyfour hours and has left my garden, and many others, smothered in black ash. The wildlife has screamed and it is like a burial ground. Throughout all, the cheery raucous somerset shrilling of my neighbours, chatting to her dog or yet more neighbours that she has known all her life.

Don’t they say, be careful what you wish for?

Tuesday Morning: The idea that grew too big for itself.

It is almost a year now since I had the thought, ‘I wonder what a Glastonbury day of the dead would be like?’ At this moment I seriously wish I’d noticed the thought, maybe played with it for a few minutes, and then forgotten it, as I do most of my thoughts and ideas.

For a start, I hardly know anyone in this town of 10,000 and the people I do know are mostly left of any centre you can think of, rarely do anything in the ‘real’ world and represent the tiniest percentage of the Glastonbury demography which is predominantly over 40, white, Christian and conservative.

Mind you, everyone dies. (Or no-one does.)

There is now some 10 weeks to go and the whole thing is insanely underprepared and unready. 

And I’m in panic.

Do something.

I have a megalist, some four A4 pages of things to do. I updated it last two weeks ago and not much has changed since.

So far I’ve not made one phonecall and basically everything has been done by email. Hence long waits not knowing if I’m sat in a junk box or have been considered and denied.

Here is a dilemma. A friend designed a poster for the event which I more or less liked. My eldest son has since designed a poster too. It couldn’t be more different. And it isn’t really appropriate, seeing as the event it advertises isn’t quite the one I’m designing. On the other hand, it is eye-catching and professional.

Here’s another dilemma. I really want to say yes to the brighton theatre group’s £1500 cut price offer. But there is no way I can recouperate that money. And it could take my potential losses up to 5 grand. (I’m already personally overdrawn.) I suppose all along I’ve been hoping someone will be inspired to hand over money because they are moved by the concept of the event. Nick Cage and mike Eavis have, so far, failed me. 

Friday morning:

So I solved my dilemmas by booking the theatre group and deciding to use both posters; one in glaston, one outside. Meanwhile, I made contact with a woman who had ideas about how to attract the death professionals and another woman who knows all about mask-making. A third woman, who had been going to put on an art exhibition before going incommunicado, has returned from her absence with an interest in honouring her committment. For a few days the panic subsides and I feel slightly excited. Who knows what changes next week will bring?

EPISODE 68: DIVYA DIKSHA.

Welcome to my blog which begins with the large size photo of Muktananda that dominates my small study and in front of which I do my occasional meditations. Last week I received a ‘Divya Diksha’ card from my friends in America which annually remembers August 15^th 1947 as the day that Baba Muktananda received the final initiation from his guru, the extraordinary Swami Nityananda. It is not untypical of Indian mythology that for most Indians this is the day of India’s independence from the Raj and the beginning of the dreadful mistake called Pakistan. Also not atypical is the local disputes about whether Muktananda was really the appointed successor or just seized the position for himself.

In his book, ‘Play of Consciousness,’ Baba describes his experiences in the most purple of prose. I no longer have the book because quite honestly a time came when everything in it seemed so far from my own experience as to be either lies or irrelevant. I was much happier with the down to earth Shaivism which was beautiful in its language and its truth without making me feel that my own meditations were feeble beyond belief. Why did Muktananda gets dancing goddesses and blue gods and all I got was a restless mind and lust?

Here’s an atrocious poem about Muktananda’s divya diksha written by a devotee.

Walking through a drizzle,
Muktananda sizzled.
 Nityananda had given to him
What was surely everything.
 

Into Muktananda's eyes, a penetrating beam arrived
That made his soul become alive,
And lit a fire inside his being,
So illusions would be fleeing.

Nityananda had also given him
His own sandals and prasad
And after this auspicious day
Muktananda traveled far

To the town of Sukhi
Where he meditated for hours.
He was absorbed
And could not ignore
The shakti's inner power.

Soon after he got to Sukhi
He saw the field outside ablaze.
“What,” he thought, “is happening to me.”
He was very, very crazed.

Then one day the inner fire rose
And, in meditation, he saw a naked woman.
He felt desire
From passion's pyre.
He did not know what was happening to him.


Distressed by what had happened
He took off his swami clothes
He left his hut and walked to Nagad
Where a landowner gave him a small home.

In that little hut in Nagad
Another yogi had lived.
“Read the book inside the cupboard,”
A voice said, and it had a lot to give.

The book describe the effects of shaktipat
Which he had received through Nityananda's grace.
And now Muktananda knew that all was good,
And light shone in his face.

So he went to see Zipruana
That naked avadhoot.
And Zipruana told him precious things,
Things he never knew.

Zipruana told him the woman
Was Kundalini herself,
And she was divesting him of sexual desire
So he could attain the greatest spiritual wealth.

Zipruana told him shaktipat
Would completely purify his being.
And he would become a supreme king
Since his essential nature shaktipat was freeing.


Zipruana told him that
What was happening to him was great.
Later, he would give grace to many thousands.
He had a blessed fate.

And the writer of this story poem
Was one of those many many folks.
If you asked me, “How important was
Muktananda's divya diksha day to you?”
My answer would be, “Of auspicious days to me,
It really was the most.”

After Muktananda died in 1982, his appointed successors, brother and sister Subash and Malti took over and then fell out. Out of the two, it seemed to me that Malti, who became Chidvilasananda and then Gurumayi, was the more impressive. A battle between the two ensued. By this time I was out of the movement and wasn’t that concerned to take on either one as my teacher. It was Gurumayi, however, who captured Ganeshpuri, Muktananda’s home ashram. I went to see her there once in the late eighties but felt none of the old magic and subsequently left and didn’t return until the beginning of last year. What I found then was emptiness. Where once there had been a thriving beautiful ashram was now dereliction, defensiveness and hostility. Gurumayi, I was told, hadn’t been seen for years. This I find extraordinary. How could a queen with two enormous palatial ashrams, in Ganeshpuri and upstate New York, simply disappear. How and why? It bothers me. Recently I was being told about a film, ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ which tells of a woman’s spiritual meeting with a guru in India before a trip to Bali in which she ‘found’ love. The guru in the story was, apparently, Gurumayi.

A young woman I know is so influenced by the film that she now wants to go to India and Bali, with the hope of having the same experiences. She’s the same age I was back in 1976 when I met Baba. I have often said that I feel sorry for our young because they don’t have a generational alternative to the status quo like we did back in those days. Okay, most, if not all, the gurus turned out to be money-mad deceivers, liars, smugglers, politicians, and philanderers, but the things they talked about were of a higher reality than the normal greed and materialism in our societies. Nowadays even communism is an unknown, so no hope at all for ‘spiritual’ values.

So when I meditate in front of my picture, I’ve no idea if I’m just teasing myself with the idea that Muktananda was special or whether it even matters as long as I get something from what I do. But do I really think that on August 15^th 1947, Swami Nityananda passed his power and lineage on to Muktananda in the way it is described in the book? Not really. Does that matter? Not at all.

___

This rather pointless reminiscing probably tells you all you need to know about my last week in which not a lot happened and I spent another three days in my grandson’s world where nearly all our communication is mediated through fantasy dialogues between Jedi Knights and Sith Lords. As these contain humour, philosophy, history, strategy and all types of life and death, they are not inconsequential, just difficult to maintain for ten hours a day. Not even torrential rain stopped him coming out into the back garden where my quiet smokes became unquiet and his pyjamas, which he only changes out of if made to, soaked.

___

On the day before going to the soggy midlands, I did in fact have a meeting with Alison about the day of the dead but no sooner had we started that she got a phonecall from her daughter’s father’s family in Wales, saying that the grandmother was about to die. Ten minutes later she and her daughter were on their way North to say goodbye and prepare for a funeral.

Death imitating art.

EPISODE 67: MY LIFE AS A DARK LORD

Welcome to my blog which has just spent two long days with a ten year old grandson spent mostly discussing an imaginary siege conducted by the forces of the Sith against the temple of the Jedi. As my grandson is the Jedi, the Siths are not allowed to actually win a war and any strategies they come up with are immediately thwarted by some awesome power just developed by his imagination which is pretty limitless. Consequently I have been forced to delve into Sith history to come up with new versions of old weapons, such as the Amulet of Invisibility, with which to temporarily surprise my grandson. Yesterday when he set his Walkers on me, I was able to momentarily silence him with my knowledge of three ways in which the Walkers have been defeated before. By 3pm I was getting pretty desperate with the conversations and was delighted for once to say, ‘Why don’t we watch the Olympics? The BMX cycling is on.’  

Although immune to the delights of football and cricket, my grandson does know sports that I don’t, such as canoeing, kayaking, archery, and BMX cycling who’s World Championships he had been to see. In fact the tv coverage was fairly dull because once they’d dropped down the first ramp it was impossible to see the whole of the race. The two british riders were favourites to do well in the final but trailed in last. It seems that the excitement is in watching the crashes.

Meanwhile the Olympian newspeak continued apace in the UK. Or is it GB now? There is much talk of Olympic legacy and the british Olympic winners are being put forward as models of perfect citizens, dedicating their lives and bodies to winning a freak show once in four years. Hard work brings rewards, we are told. Tell that to the labourers of the earth, to the factory workers, to the women of the world, to all those who know it isn’t true. Britain won a gold in a martial art. I watched the final; two women trying to kick each other in the head. Sporting excellence for our children to be inspired by? Or is that the dancing horses?

I struggle spending the day in a ten year old’s world. I want my own thoughts and to get on with my Day of the Dead but by time his parents come home, I am brainless.

The other day I was contemplating a row of nearby bungalows when I suddenly remembered my grandparent’s bungalow in stunning clarity. And there they were; grandpa, grandma and auntie bobbie, all smiling at me. In my grandfather’s garage which smelled of polished leather, was kept the mangle and I loved to push the washing through the rollers and feel it come out squeezed of liquid. 

Of course when I began to recall those days, I felt the tears welling up. But what was I crying at? Maybe one day young Louis will be walking past the house where he now lives and he’ll remember some of these days with his granddad and maybe he’ll shed a tear too and not know why. And maybe, for all my resistance, those interminable hours spent with him are the best thing I could be doing with my time.

Having written the above, I switch on the radio. For once, not the Olympics but the sick sad story of a 12 year old girl murdered by her grandmother’s lover, the man she called grandfather.

Okay, enough, lets watch the sport.

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On Monday I wrote this:

Today I was knocking out my begging emails and feeling good about my gig when I got a reply from Copperpiece, the theatre group I had surreptitiously allocated £500 towards getting. With them in place, I felt I had an event to be proud of. What they want is £11,000! I felt instantly mortified. I could feel it deep in my body, shame, foolishness and embarrassment. Small and stupid. Overeached himself. Got carried away. A dreamer. Fucking hate this feeling. (And a part of my mind adds them to a Day of the Dead of the future, maybe in Bristol next year. Or should I just realize that me and the Southbank, never the twain shall meet.)

Of course the temptation is to avoid feelings of failure rather than allow and expand the feeling to experience and discreate it. I’ve always been aware of my pessimism and negative internal chatter so it is no real surprise to find the self-critical voice of the non-existent person whinging loudly in my head. It isn’t having all its own way, however, for on another front, the writing one, I’m still expecting to suddenly make a fortune. Who knows? The man I sent my novel to may decide to publish it as an ebook or I may win that short story prize in November. Both are highly unlikely - the first guy isn't even a publisher. In fact I've got myself into a superstitious hole because although I want to finish doing this blog, which has served its purpose, I dare not for if I don't have a twist of success in the tale I'll always think 'if only i had kept doing the blog until the end of the year, what might have happened?'

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 We are plagued by mosquitos on the Somerset levels. Occassionally we can see clouds of them drifting above the waters. At night we have to close the windows, cover up the wrists and ankles, and burn citronella. If only the sun would shine it'd be like living abroad.

But the sun doesn't shine and the rain continues to fall.

 

EPISODE 66: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR DOESN'T SHOPLIFT, DOES WORK, AND CONTINUES TO NOT ENJOY XENEPHOBIA.

Welcome to my blog which is sitting in the kitchen where I can see the back garden which is abundant in flowers and vegetation that has become triffid like in the rains. The garden is such a treat because I never know what is going to appear next. Because it has been so wet, some flowers come and go between the storms and may never be seen. For me it is a quiet morning after a trip up North yesterday which became quite tiring as a 3.5 hour journey stretched into 4.5 both ways owing to accidents closing the motorway. This type of closure now seems to happen once in every three journeys and always there is the mixture of relief at not having been in the accident and of a reluctant acknowledgment that such a catastrophe could happen at any time.

What did happen was that at 8.30 in the morning, I called into the services for a cup of tea and to buy a pint of milk for the friend I was visiting who lives in a boat faraway from a shop. When I paid for the milk, the woman behind the counter said, ‘And what about the tobacco?’ ‘What tobacco?’ I asked. ‘The Drum Gold tobacco that you asked for and that I put on the counter,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask for tobacco,’ I said, ’and I didn’t see any on the counter’. She wasn’t satisfied with this. ‘I put it there,’ she reaffirmed. ‘You can check my pockets, if you like,’ I offered as I began to empty them, only to find that the first thing I took out was a packet of Drum Gold tobacco. ‘This can’t be the one you mean,’ I explained, ‘look, it is half empty.’ For a long five minutes we repeated ourselves until suddenly a look of horror appeared on her face and she said, ‘Oh, I am so sorry. I remember now, it was a different man. Really I’m too tired for this job, I’m no good at it, I’d rather work with animals.’

---

Nearly every moment this week has been focussed on the Day of the Dead. (Obviously that isn’t actually true. It just feels like that. The places where my mind has actually spent its week neither of us want to know.) On Tuesday morning I was despondent as I envisaged an ill-attended financially mortifying event losing me the best part of £5,000. This was always the danger of budgeting realistically. Fortunately, my friend Ali is an unmathematical optimist and she spent the best part of Tuesday and Wednesday rejigging the figures more rosily. A plan to increase the possible income by transferring the hip-hop event from one venue to another was scuppered by the ‘straighter’ venue which refused to have the vomiting and non-spending youth on their premises. I asked if we called the genre rural grunge rather than hip-hop, would we be allowed in but only got a wry smile in return.

Although I’ve resisted budgeting, the panic I’ve been feeling, ‘not enough people will come’ and ‘I’ll lose a small fortune’, are clearly budgeting thoughts that needed to be examined and, hopefully, discreated. The numbers I need not to lose money are quite considerable but not, I suppose, unattainable. In the meantime I’ve sent begging letters to Nick Cage and Mike Eavis. Once Ali had misaddedup me into a loss of £500, I found myself justifying a further allocation of £500 to the much desired (by me) Copperdollar n the grounds that this is my sixtieth year and I deserve to give myself a present I want.

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The temporary but Olympian North Koreanization of Britain by the BBC and the Tory government continues apace. As I speak the commentators are congratulating themselves that ‘the country has never felt like this before.’ It is truly embarrassing and seriously worrying. The same media are stirring the crowds to scream and shout idiotically whenever a british competitor appears, even though they probably compete in sports that precious few know or care about. This adoration of freakish brawn is positively primitive. When I say that we should have bigger crowds to watch scientists think about the universe, I am treated like Victor Meldrew. I’m not anti-sport and I felt really thrilled to watch the Ethiopian woman 10,000 metres runner storming to the finish with a big smile on her face but the combination of narrow patriotism and heroic hyperbole is driving me nuts.

(Incidentally, just heard Michael Phelps called ‘hugely talented.’ No; he’s a swimmer with big feet.)

For the past hour or so, I have been perusing my copy of ‘Deep Socialism’ by Wilberg to find a pithy quote to explain my disquiet with this abuse of intelligence called the british propaganda Olympics. (Which, by the way, has hastened the end of the adverb. Blair began it when he said ‘we will do it right’ but the sports world has taken the adverb abolition by storm.) Unfortunately there isn’t an axiom that says it all but basically it is to do with the market commodification of value. The nauseating sponsor-driven identikit ‘Team GB’, (cynically paid for by coco-cola and a host of other multinationals) is part of this turning of real human value into the symbolic value of a brand – the very economic Nazism that has allowed the fraudster banksters to impoverish the 80%, the huge global underclass, the under-nourished, the under-valued, the under-paid, the under-employed and unemployed.

So it goes.

EPISODE 65: A STRANGE MIX OF THE OLYMPICS AND KETAMINE.

Welcome to my blog which has been loving the hot sun and loathing the Olympic hype which last night saw the opening ceremony that, from the few seconds I saw, was totally spectacular and as meaningless and transient as any show could be. This past week I’ve had to leave the radio off because of the intolerable jingoism of the BBC and the word ‘excitement’. How excited are you? asked the phone-ins before cutting to a crowd cheering stupidly at a fake torch or at some other technological trickery. I’m sure Shakespeare had some suitably cutting remark about ostentatious frippery and a populace so stupid as to put away their knowledge of their bondage and to take to the streets to wave their flags and admire the show that has been created for the single purpose of deluding them and ripping them off of their money, pride and sensibilities.

Well done the british. Thick as shit. Why can’t we be the ones not to turn-up to the governmental and corporate displays of largesse? So embarrassing. If you like to watch a race between a bunch of people you don’t know, as I do, then watch it but what the hell is all this nonsense about? Let’s face it, most of these athletes will end up injured and slightly crippled, obese, and redundant by time they’re 35. Don’t you aspire to that? Are these meant to be our heroes; muscle-bound morons being famous for running a hundredth of a second faster than anyone else? Words like ‘heroic’ and ‘unbelievable’ and ‘incredible’ will be used, all utterly inappropriately, unless perhaps we have a black power salute or some similar overturning of the consensus.

Meanwhile, does anyone know when the 10,000 metres is on? There’s a race I don’t want to miss.

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Narada, one of my oldest friends, came round this morning and we talked about the Olympic opening ceremony. I admitted to my curmudgeonly attitude and in his presence was willing to mellow. After he left, I switched on the radio and, sure enough, the first thing I heard was an interviewee earnestly explaining just how excited she was. Turning to the news, I discovered that according to the press the British people as a whole have bought into the ‘feel good factor’ of the Olympics and that they agree with the politicians that we shouldn’t think about the economy, or Syria, or our education or of anything except whether or not some young lady from Nottingham can swim/run/cycle faster than another young lady (depending on your definition) from outer Mongolia.

…As it turns out, the british girl came third. The two leaders dominated the race and fought to the last. ‘But we don’t care about them,’ said the commentator, ‘we care about the british girl, becky allington.’ This was followed by a chat with Becky Allington lookalikes from her home town who said, ‘We’re not disappointed, she did us proud,’ in such sad voices that we knew they were disgusted and will never feel quite the same about her again. (Before the race she was the gold medal holder.)

***

You may remember that I included here a first draft of a story that I subsequently called ‘Barmi. I showed it to a friend who showed it to a friend of his who gave it to his friend who wants to publish it in a short story collection. When I was told this I went into my own ‘excitement’ and immediately sent off an entire novel ‘in case they’d like to read that too’. Then when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep because my mind was getting two novels published and preparing an acceptance speech for some literary award.

That’s excitement for you; an adrenalin high, a sleepless night, difficulty in being still. Another drug; up then down.

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Which takes me to ketamine. This is a horse and baby tranquilizer/anaesthetic that is remarkably popular with a section of the local youth. Prompted by someone who wants to experiment with it, I read a book called ‘The Little Book of Ketamine’ by Kit Kelly which, bar being written before the connection between ketamine and bladder damage had been established, is as fine and impartial report as one could wish.

Like LSD, mushrooms, sometimes alcohol, ketamine is an entheogen, i.e. it can give you experiences of divinity. In my own single trip on it, I experienced myself as Dennis Potter. Or that’s what I tell people I experienced. In fact it so long ago, I’ve no real recall beyond feeling absolutely lovely shortly before the come-down began. When I realized I would come down I said quite clearly, ‘I don’t want to come down. I mustn’t take this drug again.’ I think it was just the sheer horror of having to rely on such extreme drug to feel happy that made me take that attitude but there might have been more to it.

What is most fascinating about K is that it has been used with alcoholics with extraordinary results, similar to those achieved only by LSD and with the same catalyst, an experience of death and rebirth. I asked the would-be imbiber what experience she wanted and she said, ‘I want to experience myself as not me.’

From what I read, even the keenest experimenters with K would finally give up on it as a tool of enquiry and experience. Ultimately, I suppose, it is entirely a matter of one’s inclination. If you want to trip around a few universes, go for it. If you want the alchemist’s stone, you won’t find it on K, or if you do, you won’t be able to bring it back.

***

On Thursday July 26th, my middle son's wife gave birth to a daughter; my first grand-daughter. She awaits a name. My ex-wife, the son's mother, was visiting me at the time the phone-call came. This seems nicely appropriate. Our son's birth was extremely easy but within a week he had pneumonia and may have died on us.

But didn't.

So it goes.

 

EPISODE 64: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR SPEAKS TO HIS MIND AND WATCHES SOME SPORT.

Welcome to my blog which would be churlish not to acknowledge the sun for shining, the clouds for lifting and the jet stream for shifting north. Long may this continue?

Near the beginning of this novel/blog, I introduced an alter ego called Jack Heston who was, for want of a better word, American in character. (This is because being British and being super positive just don’t seem to go well together.) His job was to demand action and to create results. Looking back over the episodes, one would see that Jack hasn’t had much of a say. Probably this is because I’d only dig him out when I was quite desperate with myself. Mostly I’ve managed to muddle on without too much desperation though this period, as I indicated at the end of last week’s entry, has now come to an end. What I have realized now, however, is that it is too late to indulge in an occasional alter ego and that Jack and John must become one if the goal is to be accomplished.

Surprisingly, I did pick ten useful affirmations and turn them into primaries. When I saw that the first one I had chosen was, ‘I love to work’, my initial reaction was to consider rearranging the list because I couldn’t recall choosing ‘I love to work’ to be on it. As soon as I spoke it out, the resistances began. It seemed impossible that I could straight-faced say ‘I love to work’ when it has been a constant mantra of mine, that work is what slaves do. 

The exercise takes persistence, so I persisted. For some twenty minutes I was stuck. Then my mind came up with a twist. Instead of conceptualising work as an effort you have to make when you don’t really want to, my mind decided to think of ‘I love to work’ as I love to function properly. In other words I don’t want to be broken, I want to work. Suddenly the primary was created. ‘I love to work’ became true.

Now, one might think that changing the meaning of the words in your mind is not the same as creating the primary you started off working with. In this case, there are two reasons why this is not a form of avoidance. First; the book I took the words from didn’t define ‘work’. Secondly; someone who knows me said ‘but you do work a lot, you’re always doing something.’ Which is more or less true? It is ‘going to work’ I don’t like. Thirdly; after creating the primary, I worked bloody hard (for me) during a lot of the rest of the week and even made myself do 95% of the things I was tempted to procrastinate over. 

The ten primaries included the one above, the four I mentioned last week and four others; viz

The quality of my work increases every day,

I am receiving right now.

My work is satisfying to me.

Any task that there is to do is worthy of my full attention.

These I swept through without initial resistance although looking at them now, I’m inclined to think that the quality of my work increased for one day then slipped back to seeming untrue. The same may apply to the satisfaction. The last one hasn’t been so much an affirmation as a reminder. An eleventh primary which I rejected because it just wasn’t me was this one: I am willing to know what I want; I am willing to ask for it; and I am willing to receive more than I ask for’. On Friday, however, I was worrying about money for my event and I noticed that on one of my many lists was the instruction to myself; Write begging letters. So far, I have backed off writing to people asking for money because it feels tacky but I’ve reached a point where I can’t afford to be proud and can’t rely on wishful thinking either. This week, therefore, I will take this eleventh commandment and make it true.

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I’ve been away for the weekend – hence an early Monday morning madly trying to find my 1,000 words for this. Saturday was the first sunny day of the year and it happened to be my brother’s fortieth wedding anniversary. He has had, maybe still has, cancer. Because of recent experiences of turning up to see dying people too late, my children have become a little paranoid about not visiting the sick in time to say (mentally) their goodbyes and, in the Indian sense of things, to have a final darshan (seeing).  I had been disinclined to go myself but on the promptings of my youngest, I did so. 

Being with two sisters and a brother, none of whom I’ve been particularly close to in my life, is quite a strange experience when we are all in our sixties. Three of us are grandparents and my brother would love to be. I like my kids to know their kids although when I’m gone I don’t suppose they’ll meet much. My brother is clearly not the man he was at this point. It reminded me that when we were kids, he used to beat me at games and outplay me at cricket till one day it dawned me that I’d reached a point where I could beat him. However, rather than this be satisfying, I felt mortified. Throughout our lives, my brother has done the sensible thing and I’ve done the opposite. I’ve never known what he felt about me but now whenever I look towards him I see that he is gazing fondly at me and I look away without catching his eye because I don’t know how to respond.

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Yesterday I went with my youngest son to watch the test cricket in London between England and South Africa.  It was the fourth day of the match. Last time I saw a test match in England was at the same ground against the same country in 1965. When you’ve paid £70, as we did yesterday, you want to see the best. And we did. Hashim Amla of South Africa scored over 300 runs and Kallis, one of the best players ever, scored 182. South Africa finished on 637 for 2 and then declared. Two hours later, England was on 100 for 4 and was all but beaten. My son and I got to see the great Kevin Peterson bat. In fact he didn’t do very well but I felt chuffed that I’d seen him live. Last year, again because of my youngest I saw Federer play tennis. I’ve been racking my brains but can’t think of any other sportsmen that I now feel the need to see. (Sorry Olympics but you just don’t float my boat.)

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I arrived back home from London at about one in the morning. It is a three hour journey so I planned a halfway cup of tea break at a roadside garage. But no. The cafes shut at 9.30pm. ‘Tiredness kills,’ say the signs above the motorway, ‘take a break’. 

At this time of year, the traffic usually forms a 15 mile jam of west country bound tourists just by Stonehenge where the road becomes single carriageway. At midnight however, the henge was quiet and a giant new moon hung over it casually. Quite awesome, even at 70 mph.

When I got home I was knackered but I was aware that my blog was unwritten and the challenge I had set myself to produce it on Mondays was in danger of being failed.

So I wrote the first sentence and ended up here. Maybe I do love to work.

EPISODE 63: RAIN

Welcome to my blog which really ought to be about rain because yet again it has rained every day and in every way for a week. The other night I drove back from London on the M3 at one in the morning. Large puddles sat on the lanes and the rain continued to pelt. I was reminded of a couple of years ago, on a similar night, aquaplaning off one of the side roads and landing in field. By time I got to Stonehenge, the road was empty; at least I think it was because in the few miles without rain there was instead a sudden and drifting fog which removed any chance of actually seeing the stones in the distance.

It is now five years since we had a whole week of warm sun. Two days ago, it was colder than on christmas day. For the first time ever I’ve had to put the heating on in June and July. Only once this year have I left the house without a jumper.  I guarantee, however, that if we do have five days of heat over 25 degrees, by the fourth I’ll hear people complaining about the heatwave and, that regardless of the weather for the rest of the summer, these people will remember the summer as having been good. It is too late to be good.

Not that I mind the rain when it is falling because I like the sound and the sight. This morning I watched a blue tit by my window, sitting bedraggled on a twig in a bush, its wings waterlogged and too heavy to move. It looked weary and bemused. Another bird landed in the bush, causing a shower of water to fall on the blue tit which fell, rather than flew, to the ground where it sat forlornly for a couple minutes more before, with evident reluctance, flying off somewhere else.

It continues to rain. I live on a housing estate on the top of a hill. In the gaps between the houses one can see out over the Somerset levels which are now fifty per cent covered with water. 

So beautiful.

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Over the next few days (weeks and months), I have to focus on the day of the dead creation.  I find this considerably harder than allowing a story to unfold. Each time I sit at the puter to write an email, or a begging later or to apply my mind to the website or whatever, I discover some two hours, six teas and four smokes later that I’ve made a few notes about a children’s novel, started thinking about the next blog, pondered forgetting chris wafe and making the ebook myself, reminded myself I’ve six tv plays and three filmscripts that I’ll probably never finish and written pointless emails to people that I don’t know in far away countries either to vicariously go where they are or because they attract me. This is how I ended up (briefly) funding a Ugandan single mother, correcting the English of a devilishly pretty Russian girl and randomly communicating with people in Iran, Pakistan and Libya to explain that while I considered them to hold fundamentally deranged beliefs, in this they are no exception, being human after all, and despite their manifest flaws I personally had no wish to bomb them into the next world, even if that’s where they want to be. I’d then explain that the british people are almost as stupid as them and that’s why they voted for people like david Cameron to demonstrate our own devotion to mediocrity and self-defeating behaviour.

The replies I get to these emails generally seem quite mystified.

So it goes.

Meanwhile, not a lot gets done.

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Once or twice day I’m sitting here and I hear a car draw up, a car door slam and the sound of a brass gate being unlocked. I stop and momentarily wait for the knock on the door and then my mind says, oh no, it can’t be yours, your lock broke off ten years ago. I guess that’s what my granny meant about my being a slow learner.

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Between the ages of 13 and 16, I wrote poetry when I was particularly moody – which was most of the time. Somehow, over the years these poems have mostly evaded my chucking out processes. Diaries, novels, and short stories have all found their way to the rubbish while those first emotive outpourings have slipped past the time censor and hidden in a file. This week I found them yet again and once more begun to read through them, still liking the lines I’ve always liked and still grimacing at the ones that don’t quite do it. Then, to my surprise and subsequent regret, I scrumpled them up and threw them away. Now I really wish I hadn’t done it. Why go to the bother of having them for 45 years and then do that?

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Probably one of the most dog-eared looked-at books I have is Rebirthing, the science of enjoying all your life, by Jim Leonard and Phil Laut. In fact, most of the pages have now become loose. It is a great book both for definitions and primaries/affirmations. Here are some random definitions.

Blame: Holding someone or something in a negative context because of the thought that the person or thing is the creator of something in one’s reality that one is making wrong.

Boredom: A pattern of energy that occurs in one’s body when one is avoiding the further activation of an emotion that is already partially activated, usually anger.

Drama: Acting out one’s emotions rather than taking responsibility for them.

Responsibility: A context in which one both acknowledges oneself as the source of the content and acknowledges the perfection of the content.

I sometimes turn to this book when I become aware of how limited my thinking is being. For example, when I sat down to meditate this morning, I couldn’t help noticing that when my thoughts turned to the day of the Dead creation, I felt dread, inadequacy and that horrible (!) feeling of vulnerability akin to being caught with your trousers down. Failure, mortification, self-hate, the lot; all packed into a nano moment. What to do?

Planning and following my plans are two of my favourite pleasures.

I am completely willing to obey the orders I give myself.

My strong sense of purpose attracts those people and situations necessary to accomplish my desired result.

Everything works out more exquisitely than I plan it.

People often misunderstand affirmations. It isn’t a matter of repeating the words continuously in self-hypnosis (although this does work in the very long run, as our everyday experience proves) Their first function is to reveal what you actually presently think and feel, i.e. your prior creation. The more you wince at the unlikeliness of the affirmation, the more opportunity to reveal, challenge and change the prior creations.

So, maybe this week this is what I will do. I’ll take ten or so affirmations/primaries that would help me create this day of the dead more enthusiastically and see what happens. Walk the talk as they say. (Sarcastic voice at back of mind says, yeah right.)

I’ve only just remembered that my topic of the day was going to be ‘how not to depress the young’. I suppose the answer is, be happy.

Enthusiasm: Grateful acceptance of ALL of the following: one’s purpose, one’s present reality, one’s goals, one’s plans, one’s structures, one present activity, and oneself.

Time for a lie down.