Interesting times...

Interesting times. Ever since the LSD really. Something seems to have shifted. Joy, like I say, 98% present and at quite a high and lovely level too. Not too much bothering me. Stirrings within and without, shaping themselves up to break through into something, perhaps...

I had those longings to go away, to abandon everything. And then I did the I Ching, did that meditation that showed me I could just toss away all my money and be free from that. The longings subsided. I added a bit of common sense to the mix. And slowly Leeds became wonderful. Frequent and random meetings with young Christians asking me questions about life and not even being that converty. My squash friend Dan coming over with his girlfriend and me excitedly talking about iboga and all manner of things of Dan saying, you should be a sage. And then my dad weirdly one day during a visit to his guitar shop says apropos of nothing, are you a prophet? and talks about wanting to give everything up and become a tramp, his friend Trevor channeling my thoughts to another geezer in answer to various questions - better answers than I could have come up with. Plus many other things besides.

I start to think of all the things I could do. Sharing the techniques I've learned over the years. Creating a little hub/hubbub right here in Leeds. Sufi dancing and meditation. Maybe even wilderness solos and vision quests. Iboga ceremonies, ayahuasca. The voyager returning home with the treasure to share among his brethren. Sharing really is where it's all at. I can tell people enough that there's joy to found, that life is great and groovy and all you've ever heard from saints and mystics and hippies really is actually true after all - but what use is it if you can't give them the experience? That would be something. Something I've started to want to happen.

But maybe it's not something that can be given: maybe it's something they have to work for. But even a taste, a little smidgen of bliss - like, perhaps, what John Milton gave me that first night I met him in Mexico. Or the praying Catholics at the hot springs. Or Lindsay and his electric hugs and undeniable happiness. People see the peace, remark on it, say how laidback and sorted I appear to be - and that's nice - but what I'd really love is to give them an unquestionable hit of it in their boots, set them on the path to something. Maybe that's what I'm doing anyway. Who knows? But words...

I think of mad things. Starting 'The Church of Rory' and just opening up my flat like some sort of weird gathering place/shop in which people can wander by, sample a mind-opening book or have a conversation. On Sundays there's singing and soup and meditation and sharing. On other days there might just be me and one other soul as they lay wrapped in my tent undergoing iboga therapy while I sit and care for them. Perhaps even acid too - been investigating Silk Road - or ayuahasca or DPT. Cracking open the healing again. Lots of ideas. But not necessarily the balls, the brains, the internal/eternal 'go ahead' to do them.

How on Earth does one start these things? Seems a bit tricky to me: so I carry on just meeting casually, randomly, synchronistically, spontaneously and doing whatever seems the thing to do in the moment. The poor soul I met in the steam room at uni one day, lost and troubled and searching and for over an hour we chatted in there, and it could have been Mexico '99 all over again. Just because it's Leeds 2012 and the world is concrete and drizzly and grey doesn't mean there's no magic...

Meanwhile, my attempts to escape have been interesting too. I don't feel it so much anymore - all the above thoughts and my joy and love at the things that are happening here in the day-to-day - squash and refereeing and interactions and still living very much the student life - and there's also a sense that things are being taken care of. I did another I Ching about leaving my flat and I got 'The Well' with changing lines 2, 4 and 6. It basically seemed to point to being in one place - like, uh, a well - and simultaneously, yes, digging deep and striking water, putting down roots - like, uh, a tree - but also being that constant, consistent presence from which people may come and drink. Well, we'll see...

The other thing was - the big thing - while I still wrestling with that feeling that I ought to go somewhere, that I had things I needed to do away from this place, for me, and yet not having the first idea where I should go was - well, one morning a week or two back I woke up and had a vision. Like, it felt, a proper genuine Biblical-type one. I've only had one before. I wrote about that here. It was last year and I was in my bed in London when I woke up and saw, with my eyes open or closed, for quite a few minutes, a scene of high rooftops with distinctive attic-type windows. I wondered what it meant. I thought I happened among a meaning. But it was only a month or two later when I went to Germany to see Mother Meera that I realised it was the rooftops of the houses there. Going to Mother Meera's, naturally, was an important time. I was in transition and I felt seeing her would give me clues as to where to go next. The day I left hers I got the message through that I'd been granted a full fees bursary to do an MA at Leeds. Sending me home. Plonking me here at the uni where I now sit. For all manner of reason. Yeah, Mother sorts it out...

I sent her a letter a week or two back. Can't remember whether it was before or after the vision. Anyway, the vision, such as it was - it kind of felt also like a lucid dream, in that I knew where I was - in my bed - and I knew that I was awake, but that I was still 'dreaming' too, and could 'see' the dream with my eyes open or closed - was of me climbing the stairs in my dad's guitar shop, right to the top floor where I used to live nearly twenty years ago, and where I generally store my possessions when I go gadding off to one place or another. And then when I got there I saw in big letters the word ******* - which I sort of immediately understood to be the answer to my questions/prayers about where I should go, having a dim recollection of it being perhaps a city or a district out ****** way, perhaps. No conscious recollection, mind. Nowhere I can recall, even now in my wakeful state, having come across it before. But almost immediately I googled it and - yup, of course, the ******* of ***********...

And the rest of that - maybe seven or eight paragraphs - has been censored by the toss of a coin. Just don't feel right sharing that just yet. Instead, I posted some I Ching readings I did last week, in the name of completion, and mused further on the last one. Which means I shall be deleting this blog pretty soon. Ho hum. :-)

Amazing jokes

What you're probably thinking right now is that I don't spend time thinking up terribly convoluted jokes that aren't really that funny. But you're wrong! In fact, I once had a very good friend with whom I would while away many a happy hour plucking random words from objects around the room to use as punchlines and then devising clumsy, ridiculous puns. I think by now we've made up hundreds. She sent me one the other day, something about an Australian insult for an Englishman/fruit made out of stone - the answer was "Pomegranate" - of course it was - you see the kind of thing - and that sent me on a whole new tangent of my own.

Highlight the hidden text below the 'joke' to learn the answer (assuming you're not smart enough to figure them out).

Q: What did the French-Australian call the potato he used to ward off Englishmen (much in the manner that a scarecrow is used to ward off crows)? (Don't get hung up on the scarecrow bit.)

A: He called it his POMME DETERER!! A-ha-ha-ha!

Q: What did the French-Australian grapefruit seller shout when he saw an Englishman pulling a large-antlered North American quadruped through the streets of Paris?

A: POMME PULL MOOSE!! A-hee-hee-hee!

Q: What's the difference between a Sex Pistols fan who spends his days campaigning to rid the world of a certain large-antlered North American quadruped - are you with me? - and a Franciscan or Benedictine holy renunciate man, for example, who enjoys nothing more than buffing up and bringing to a shine traditional English watering holes (ie, pubs)?

A: ONE'S A MOOSE-ABOLISHING PUNK AND THE OTHER'S A BOOZER-POLISHING MONK!!

Oh my word: that's clever. That's actually from ages ago but it was too good to let disappear. I bet you never knew I was some sort of comedic genius eh? Of course, it takes a special sort of wit to appreciate the complexity and depth of these jokes. They're working on many levels.

Q: What has a small sweet dessert traditionally left out for Santa at Christmas time (along with a glass of sherry) got in common with the British secret agent Double-O-8 (who is made out of Polos)?

A: THEY'RE BOTH MINT SPIES!! A-hoo-hoo-hoo!!

And finally...this is one of my favourites. I know you can't believe it but it just came to me. Only took like a minute or so to work out.

Q: Did you hear about the cowboy whose wife gave birth to a Docmartin? Even though the boy was a shoe it didn't stop his father from loving him: they were inseperable. In fact, when they were both killed in a terrible car crash all the cowboy's friends agreed: at least it was some consolation that he died with his boot son.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I'd love to tell you more but I'm afraid I'll get into trouble for causing your very seams to burst - and I don't want that.

God, it's great being amazing. :-)

A comment

Anonymous wrote:

Rory

I very much enjoyed your book, don't take it out of print, you'll be depriving others. I found these blogs because I was interested in the what happened next bit, you're an interesting guy, you remind me of people i met when i was young and studenty. I guess people probably tell you all the time to settle down and be normal, perhaps you make them feel uncomfortable in some way, I don't know. I'd say to ignore such advice.

You certainly made me review the decisions I've made in my life and their consequences - I would love to have adventured more, but I've tried to make a happy for home for children, and whilst you can certainly be adventurous with children, you can't do what you want when you want, which sometimes is a bit of a pain :)

I like the fact you do refereeing, you don't fit the character profile that most referees I've come across have - I'm still playing at 46, with lads more than half my age, but I love the slightly surreal, edgy, adrenaline filled experience of a match, it takes me out of the polite, gentle world I normally inhabit, and challenges me not to be the sad old guy, but still a functioning, competent, even talented, cog in the team wheel. I'm guessing you get similar enjoyment (not the old guy bit, just the 'out on the field running about and calming grown men down' bit).

Anyway sorry, I hadn't intended to talk about me, i meant to say well done, you're a good writer, I loved your book (apart from the extremely new age bit at the end - not my cuppa tea but then that's just me), write another book, people will enjoy it and you might quite enjoy doing it.

All the best

Mike


And Rory writes in reply:

Nice one Mike, really appreciate you taking the time to write and post such a lovely message: sure do make the whole thing a little more tolerable. Thanks for the kind words and encouragement: because of that, I will keep the book in print, even though sales are slowly trickling down towards the "zero per month" mark as we speak. But it must be there for a reason. I did have a vague idea that taking it out of "self-published print" might help me find an agent but that's probably just wishful thinking. Anyways, as the maybe-non-mythical immortal Indian holy man Babaji said to his equally outlandishly unbelievable sister one time in Autobiography of a Yogi: "The Lord has spoken his wish through thy lips" - and that's good enough for me.

Which is all just a rather tongue-in-cheek way of saying, wow, I'll take a sign from anywhere. And also to provide a nice segue into my next point, which is that - man, I'm sorry but I reckon if I do write another book - they're two which niggle away at my brain - it'll probably hold no interest for you at all. If you thought the end of Discovering Beautiful was New Agey...well, can you imagine what the sequel'll be? I guess I have a notion to tell the tale of "what happened next" - but it really was all spirituality from beginning to end (apart from the refereeing and squash and women). I think that's par for the course, really: you embark on a search for joy and truth and happiness and love, that's probably where you're gonna end up: meditation and spirituality and some horrendous realisation that, omg, this God thing really is about the best thing there is - 'cept it's nothing like all those crazy religious dudes have told us. Anyway...

I dig that you're out there Mike. Sorry I probably don't have another book in me that would appeal to you (although the other idea is to write a full-out autobiographical musings account of my romantic history and thoughts and ideas around that; probably anonymous) but, hey ho, you gots to be yourself. It was nice being 23. It's even nicer being 36. Contentment and happiness are more consistent. Kids are probably a really groovy thing: at least, that's what everyone tells me. Maybe give it a try one day...

Cheers for all. I shall keep you posted on the books.

All t'best,
Rory

I Ching readings

Q: I called my brother. He's such a frustrating character. He puts nothing into our interactions. Says his life is "terrible" but won't do anything about it. Is obviously unhappy. But nothing I have ever been able to do seems to have been any use and the sensible thing appears to be to wash my hands. But I'm always open to alternatives. Pray tell, sweet I Ching, what is the wisdom regarding my relationship with my brother?

A: 54 - The Marrying Maiden. Changing lines 1, 2, 4 and 5.

"Undertaking brings misfortune. Nothing that would further."

'Nuff said.

Q: What have you to say about my thought of giving away the vast majority of my money? Would it be beneficial or foolish? Is there a purpose for it perhaps in the near future that I have yet to see? Or should I proceed with that idea? Probably you have no preference - but I should like to know: what shall be the outcome of giving my money away?

A: 1 - The Creative. Changing lines 1, 3, 5 and 6.

I thought "yes" when I read the main chapter and that made me happy. But all the changing lines seem to strongly be saying "no".

I'll let it rest.

Q: What is the wisdom regarding the writing of this blog? It used to bring both myself and others a lot of good but now I'm not so sure that it brings it's doing anything of benefit for anyone, and perhaps even does some harm. Once I felt you definitely told me to continue it, and you were right. But that was long time ago and things have changed. What about now? Should it go on?

A: 39 - Obstruction. Changing line 3.

In the main chapter, many recurring themes from both other recent readings and from life. The idea of seeking out "the great man" - John Milton? Mother Meera? some hitherto unknown teacher? - and also of the finding likeminded people. Also, once more "the southwest" appears. Could that be the literal southwest - such as Wales, Glastonbury, Cornwall and England's spiritual, hippy heartlands - or even Mexico, Baja, California - or is it as the reading states, the place of retreat? If only there were likeminded souls, a great teacher to whom I could attach myself. That's long been my dream. But life doesn't seem to bring me those things...

Meanwhile the changing line states once again that "going leads to obstruction, hence he comes back". If I apply this and the main chapter directly to this blog, is it an instruction to desist? At least for the time-being. Seems to be. And seems very much in accord with what life is telling me about the writing I do here: that it's for no purpose; that nobody reads it - or, at least, if they do they take nothing of good from it, as they maybe did back in '98 and '99, and as they maybe do from my book; and that my endless splurging and word- and mindgames don't really do me any good either. I could write forever. Give me a million hours of unadulterated typing, and the arms to do it, and I would still be going. But for what benefit? Just to show that my mind is inexhaustible and unfathomably mad? When one drop of divine experience is treasure far beyond anything my words could bring me.

I know that, but I don't act on it. I keep reporting my worldly experiences, for little apparent purpose. I share everything in the hope that there's a reason in sharing and remembering in it - but the hope grows more faint all the time. And anyway, won't I remember everything that needs to be remembered, whether I write it here or not? Isn't that what I learned from writing my book? And haven't I learned that talking and sharing in the real world is really where it's at, what helps me to grow? The blog once served a purpose - a great purpose - a true purpose - but that time, perhaps, is no more - and maybe hasn't been for a long time.

Maybe I should let this rest too.

Or delete it.

I'll toss a coin...