Happy

One of the things people say when I’m expressing my glum despondency and insatiable desire to get away is: ah, man, it’s just February, everybody feels shitty in February: it’s a shitty month, and I kind of dig that. Is that all my wanderlust moaning and thrashing about is? Winter gloom and an inability to patiently sit through it? I look back on my life and notice, wow, pretty much every year around this time I make plans to escape, to change things, and frequently do. Last year I did the same, and that was where my relationship started to crumble.

T’would suck if it was an explanation as simple as that.

Anyways, that’s all a somewhat poignant preamble to what I really wanted to say: that today was a good day. That I woke up and pottered around – and then wrote over five thousand words to kick off this new book idea. Everything flowed and it was easy ‘cos I didn’t give a crap about the quality of it, merely focussed on the expression. Remembering those days when I was struggling with Discovering Beautiful and almost unable to get through a sentence without immediately rushing back and editing it. Crippling, that. But so far I seem to be in a state of just cracking on and knowing that it can all be fixed in the mix.

It’s all mad and flippant and wild – but then that’s my style, right? And there ain’t no greater knowing than you gots to be what you is.

Then I went outside to go ref some football and the day was super sunny and warm. Sunshine! Heat on my skin! A short-sleeved reffin’ top and no base layer or gloves. The sun in one’s eyes. The first inklings of spring. And as spring is in the air it’s in my bones and blood too. I feel it; a certain coming alive. A renewed positivity. And an emergence from that wintry cave of bemoaning and heartache and gloom.

It seems only natural to conclude that what I did next – after playing a decent second half at left-back for GeogSoc following my match – was due to that spring sun and my good mood, but fact of the matter is I’ve been planning it for a week or two. I asked a girl out. Which is a very rare thing for me.

In fact, I think it’s only the second time I’ve done that, and the first one never went any further, despite a positive response (I met someone I wanted to be in a relationship with in the time between asking and arranging a date).

So that was cool. And I guess we’ll see what develops there. It was inspired by a deepening of the realisation that, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And that if you see something you want, even if you think you might not get it, at least you’ve got to try. If you get knocked back you shrug your shoulders and move on – and smile heartily at having given it a go.

The man who never puts himself out there can’t expect life to give him much in return.

I’ve been that man too many times.

So now I retire to bed all happy and nervous and tired and aching, a knee moshed up in blood from slidetackling on the astro, a belly full of samosas and dates and chips, a pot of tea by my side. Tomorrow I’ll write some more and hopefully arrange a date with this girl. But tonight I deserve my rest.

An email to Shawn

Shawnioni! God, I been meaning to drop you a line for aaaaaaaages - ended up losing that SIM card I had for calling the US before I managed to get around to ringing you, which was lame and disappointing. And then I got in a funk over Christmas and New Years and...well, I just become altogether bad at emailing and stuff. But you've been in my head plenty - and even from the past, where I stumbled across a really old email you wrote me where you laid out all you went through after meeting that Indian guy and - you know, I realised that I didn't really understand it at the time, and even now it's way beyond me but...wow, it kinda made my eyes spin!

Anyways, I hope this finds you well. ;-)

So...I'm still in Leeds. Still procrastinating from writing. Still always dreaming of escapes. Canada and the US forever beckons - but then recently I had an interesting idea after I had what felt like an actual genuine vision, which ended with the word KORINTH big and massive in my brain. Didn't know what that was but got the old google out and turns out it's a ruined city in Greece, the town of St Paul and his Corinthians. So I started building ideas of a pilgrimage - have a nice long walk; why not? - and that's currently bubbling under. I dunno...I always have this idea of trying to make it being normal - but I just get so bored and useless and I don't seem to be able to make it around people. Too much of a misanthrope and weirdo. Too exacting and easily annoyed. I gots things wrong with my brain - you know the main problem with my last girlfriend? Lovely though she was in about a billion ways? She twirled her hair. Ha! Can you believe that?! Don't know why I'm such a perfectionist - though clever psychological people might put it down to feelings of inadequacy stemming from early formative years before a man could even crawl. Not sure I can argue with that. Such a strange, twisted life...

Lately I was thinking I wanted to die. Kind of bored and done with the whole place, ready for the next adventure. But I guess I still have one or two things left to achieve. Just would be nice if somebody told me what they were! I mean, the mystery is fun but - Christ! - it gets a bit confusing after a while. And so instead I just go to the supermarket and watch semi-lame movies in an effort to block out time while it ticks on and I make my way into the age of wrinkles and towards the time when I'll no longer be able to bed hot girls purely on the strength of whatever physical attractiveness I was lucky enough to be born with - and what will I do then?! (I say half-joking.)

God, it's an awful imposition to be putting emails upon you like this. Wouldn't it be grand if I could speak and type just like a normal person? ;-)

Anyways, probably what I should have done is have kids. Ain't nothin' better than that, eh? I've tried to be pretty careless with it lately - but even that don't seem to work. And so I'm once more all on my lonesome with a ton of time - still just earning my crust refereeing football - and a headful of mad thoughts and not much else besides.

Oh, if only you still did your angel channeling or weren't a million miles away. I still read some of those sometimes and am always amazed at the wisdom and clarity in them, the guidance I get from them. But what I wouldn't give for someone to just tell me, do this, go here, marry this woman.

But I guess that's half the problem. Cos another part of me remembers those certain teachings that say, but it's all up to you, man; it's whatever you want to do. And yet...if that's true, what of destiny and guidance, the impeccable timing and the words of the I Ching, which I still implicitly trust? Well I can't figure it out. I know it's supposed to be what's inside that counts. But boy do I have this wanderlust thing bad.

Lolz! I really was hoping that I could be at least four percent normal in this like first communicado in such a long time - but it really does seem beyond me. Then again, if anyone's gonna get it, it's you.

I love that you're out there, brother. The memories keep me going.

Hugs always,

Rory

Rory, Who Lives At Home

Woke up this morning from a dream in which exotic horrible bugs were all about me and biting into my flesh, a part of me aware they were maybe lethal. Had to rip all my clothes off to get at them and squish them in my fingers. I was wearing shorts that were like long johns and so my tallywhacker was hanging out. But to the assorted people around me I just said, it doesn’t matter, you’ve seen it all at the lifedrawing anyways. Then I opened my eyes and thought, hm, is that a warning against foreign travel?

Don’t leave the country, she’d said.

After that the Halifax called and the man was all apologetic and instantly offered me a refund on those charges I’d mentioned yesterday. He also apologised in case any more letters came. Great what you get when you complain! Just last week I received £72.60 in rail vouchers – a 100% refund – for all that kerfuffle I had getting down to Vipassana just before New Years. That made me smile. So I got my cake and ate it there too. And did I ever mention the awesome voucher I was sent by Northern Rail? I emailed them once cos a train was twenty minutes late and the electronic updates were useless: they sent me a pass for two free days travel anywhere on the network – which given that it stretches from Newcastle to Carlisle to Liverpool to Sheffield…well, two days of that is certainly worth a twenty minute wait on a three quid journey. Am thinking a daytrip up the old Settle-Carlisle railway, glide over some viaducts and whoop it up o’er hill and dale. Thirty quid these days to make it up there from Leeds.

I did a bit of complaining a few years back – always genuine, always deserved – and they pretty much never fail to send you stuff. Made me think about just writing to everyone I could think of with made up complaints and seeing what I could get. Probably make a decent article or something, for someone who’s that way inclined. I took some peaches back to Sainsbury’s once and they gave me double the value. Another time I said their cheese rolls had given me a rash and they gave me a five-pound food voucher. I believed it at the time – but later figured it was actually the girl I was visiting that night I was allergic to.

Anyways, more thoughts about that whole writing thing. Last night, for inspiration, I stayed up past midnight reading about how it was when I wrote my book. Can’t believe I made it! A hundred thousand words, a couple of full edits, a cover design and formatting and all the rest of it, all in less than a month. And all while I was dealing with girlfriend troubles and on a backpacking holiday to Spainand Morocco! Crazy times.

I’m not so bothered about the procrastination. It’ll all out in the end. Elizabeth Gilbert says all that stuff about a writer needing motivation and discipline is nothing compared to taking it easy on yourself. Self-forgiveness. I dig that.

Anyways, here for posterity – and the jogging of my mindcogs – is the original extended ending to Discovering Beautiful when I really didn’t know where I was going with the thing. A couple of people were like, save it for the next one, and I figured they were right.

Misc Thoughts

Thoughts in my brain

I sit down to write

At nine pee-em

Because that blog of mine

Lives again

And for some strange reason –

So that Martian moon-men

Ten thousand years hence

Will have a better understanding

Of us modern day

Ancient humans

Than we have of

The Stonhengers

And the Egyptians

The Lemurians

And even our grandparents –

Who shagged and

Sucked cock

And said

“Come on my tits!” too –

I have to record

The little detritus bits

Of my day

Like:

Did you know, despite all this mad stuff I write, I generally dress like a sporty bloke and go about my business refereeing football several times a week, and organising this squash league I created – now containing 70 players – plus doing the refs’ appointment for the Intramural football and –

Boring!

Okay: how about this? I had a Halifax bank account. They tried to charge me a tenner for some bullshit thing and I said “NO WAY!” I took all my money out the account except a penny. Then I wrote on the letter that they sent me (asking for nine pound ninety-nine) “I’m not going to give you this money [for such and such a reason] and actually I just want you to close the account. But keep the penny. Also, if you send me any more letters they will be subject to a handling fee of £10 per letter. Physical contact with this piece of paper by one of your employees constitutes your agreement to this charge” (to paraphrase). Then I went in the bank and gave the teller the bit of paper and stood there as he read it. He went off to find someone else, tried to direct me to another person. I said – as nicely as I could – “tell you the truth I’ve lost interest in all of this, I’ll just leave it with you” and walked off without my bank card or the letter, and that, as far as I’m concerned, is that.

I wonder what they’ll do? Many companies have tried to get tenners out of me – Vodafone, Virgin, Carphone Warehouse – but none have yet succeeded.

Also I was thinking: hm, I think about my ex a lot.

Also: movies. Yup, I watched a lot of movies lately. Me who thought at one stage last year that I was pretty much done with them. So many films! And why’d they bother with half of them? Just a pointless way to fill some –

Ah: but I needed time filling also. So I watched:

The Watch – this was funny. Made me LAUGH quite literally OUT LOUD. And anything that does that can’t be bad. Bit of a plot hole with Ayoade’s ‘coming out’. But – dun’t ma’er.

The Master – a little bit interesting in places – reminded me at the beginning of a lame version of what I got into in Mexico back in ’99 – but ultimately BORING and, boy, did it drag on. I left that one thinking, why did they even make this? Couldn’t see the point in its existence.

Glorious 39 – possibly the stupidest film I’ve seen in a long time. Except it’s confusing ‘cos it’s beautifully made and the acting’s terrific. Just a shame the plot repeatedly belies credulity. What’s a movie without its plot?

Argo – another confusing one. As it stands, it’s a taut, exciting thriller. But most of what makes it exciting is the thought that it actually happened. Yet having read an account of one of the hostages I know that’s not really the case, and knowing that then makes it something of a distasteful exercise in American rewriting of history. Still, the hair looks good – and there was one big belly laugh right at the end when a voiceover says, “and we upheld the integrity of our country (America) and we did it peacefully.” Excuse me? Wasn’t the whole mess caused by granting asylum to a genocidal maniac Americahad malevolently manipulated into power in order to get its hands on that ubiquitous troublemaker, oil? Never let the truth get in the way of a good story eh? A little bit later the credits state, “some scenes and dialogue in this film have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.” No shit. And so is history written by the victors, and those with the biggest movie cameras, and Ben Affleck.

Gangs of New York – watched this last night. Got it off my neighbour cos I didn’t have anything left to see. Kind of okay, I suppose – I guess it was well-made and acted and all the rest of it – but way too violent for me. I must be changing: after all those years of watching and loving horror I finally don’t have the stomach for it. What’s the benefit of taking in images of people hacking each other to pieces and being generally mean? I even covered the screen at one bit. I don’t like dark films anymore. I like dumbass comedies.

The Dictator – very funny! Laughed out loud A LOT. Amazing how many comedies don’t actually provoke that. But this got me. Better than I thought it was going to be having only seen the trailer. Didn’t even realise it was Anna Faris; previously one of my favourite hotties. Might have to rethink that.

Wreck It Ralph – lovely movie, flawlessly done. Made me close to tears a few times. Loved the chemistry between the little chap with the hammer and that smokin’ hot army bitch. Christ, what a woman! What I wouldn’t give to be manhandled by a dynamite gal like that. Vanellope was pretty cute too.

Jeff, Who Lives At Home – this was stupendously good. Watched it the night I couldn’t sleep all freaking out and mentally fraught. But the opening quote comes up – “Everything and everyone is interconnected in this universe. Stay pure of heart and you will see the signs. Follow the signs, and you will uncover your destiny.” – and I KNEW  it was for me. I shake my head: let’s face it, I AM JEFF. Me and him are soul-buddies. Kindred spirits. Bum chums. I related absolutely unequivocally with everything this movie had to say. Found encouragement for my own life path and belief. Wanted to get more out there and do more things like that. Good old Jeff. Loved the bit, too, where he’s saying, yeah, it’s groovy, but it’s not easy. Made me realise I put so much stock in not only living that way but also trying to maintain happiness at all times, like that should be my public face. But why not acknowledge that it’s hard and confusing and I don’t have to be smiley happy chappy always as though to display the rewards of raving mad living to others in order for them to believe it’s worthwhile. Not that I do that here of course. And so Jeff begins by talking about Signs – and now I’m talking about Jeff. But it’s all true, isn’t it? Isn’t it? I mean, it is true, right?

Safety Not Guaranteed – and a few weeks before I watched this film, and adored it too, and it wasn’t until after I’d seen Jeff that I found out they were the product of the same people. Great film. Good message (follow your mad dreams even in the face of public scorn and laughter). And not a gunshot fired in sight. I dunno, I’m just sick of looking at people shooting guns. I don’t get it. Why so many films with guns in them? What’s the obsession? Nearly every single one of us will live our lives without firing or seeing a gun, without knowing someone who got shot or shot someone else. They’re such negative things. There’s no need to put that energy out into the world: doesn’t do anyone any good. And so it was lovely to thoroughly dig this movie and to have a respite from that. Even most nice films have a gun in them at some point. Bloody Americans.

The Other Guys – which brings me to this: a dumbass comedy which was mostly nice but had lots of guns in it. Oh well: I still kinda liked it. I guess when guns are being silly they’re not so bad. A bit hit and miss but, overall, a…not unpleasant filler of time. Lol! There’s praise for ya! Did seriously love the bit where the two hero-cops jump off the building though. And I’ve always had a soft spot for Marky Mark.

Ted – which kind of makes this a shame. If The Other Guys was a bit hit and miss then this was a lot – and definitely too miss to want to sit through a second time. I’m trying to think of a good bit – but I can’t.

Before Sunset – magic. Makes me want to run off and live my life for mad things, believing that love is the only thing that matters and the rest of it’s nowt but crud. Like when I watched Castaway back in 2001 and next thing I knew I was penniless in Canada following a woman all on the whim of a dream. But what else is there? What reason not to be mad?

The Truman Show – I talk about this a lot. I never get tired of watching this. I long so much to grow the balls that could leave every little thing behind – your whole known universe – and sail right on out to the very edge of the world.

Avatar – I cried when I first watched this and wondered what mad creatures we were to have so crippled the planet that sustains us. Also marvelling at the little bits of floating stuff. But on a laptop, when you’re not feeling so hot, it looks like a daft cartoon.

The Big Lebowski – another guy who’s probably me. Someone said that not too long ago and I was like, no way, man. But then I watched this one morning sitting in my pink dressing gown in bed and at some point I knocked my pot of green tea all over the place and hot water and soggy tea leaves went into the carpet and plug points. But all I did was instantly put the kettle on and go for a piss and then remake my tea. What the hell, those tea leaves weren’t going nowhere. And all that fuss about water around electricity is a real overstatement. And then I got back into bed in my homeless-smelling dressing gown and giggled back down on my movie and farted. Whatever.

The Majestic – I bought this from a charity shop for like two quid: probably the first DVD I’ve bought in more than half a decade. Who cares? It’s for charity, right? And I do love my Jim Carrey. It was harmlessly decent, this film – another encouragement about leaving everything behind and recreating oneself anew – but, wow, got a couple of major flaws. Like how come the main chick, right at the beginning, has this cute little lousily-acted hiccup thing going on but then loses it when the plot turns its eye elsewhere? Like, d’yall just forget about that? Sheesh. Plus the music was majorly schmaltzy, as Frank Darabont generally is. Anyway, I still dug the message and probably cried here and there, like I do in all cheesy Hollywoodschmaltz fests.

The Breakfast Club – fun.

District 9 – thought it was really intense and groundbreaking the first time I saw this: pretty much blown away, really. But the second time I was more…well, all I can remember right now is how much the main bloke said the f-word and whether or not his accent was any good or did it keep slipping – much like Dicaprio’s and Diaz’s did in that crazy movie last night. Though Daniel Day Lewis was consistent, even if bizarre. But he’s got three Oscars, so there.

Anyways, out of all those – the new ones, at least – I’d say Safety Not Guaranteed and Jeff, Who Lives At Home were the best. Christ, I loved Jeff. I wanna be more like that! I wanna be more like how I used to be once upon a time, following the signs and –

Maybe a day or two later I saw a guy I know who, seeing my arms full of stuff, said, “you should buy a bag.” I had a bag but the zip’s been bust for like maybe a year and it looks like shit. So I thought, hm, a sign, I’ll go and buy one – and I did.

I was thinking about what I should do next. I went to campus and found myself walking behind a girl with a Canada flag sewn onto her rucksack – as they do. I thought: hm.

And then when I told the girl I work with in the sports department that I was thinking of going away and she immediately said, “Canada?” But I’ve mentioned that to her before so maybe it doesn’t count.

All these movies about doing the mad thing, and Conversations With God, and my turning against the domesticity instructions of Mother Meera and – are they all signs too?

That dream/vision I had, of the name of that ancient city in Greece. But like I said, it was at the end of a sequence about my dad’s guitar shop. And then a few days later he calls me up and says he wants me to go in and help them move into the internet age, the business is failing and they don’t know what else to do.

A task to be completed first? Before I earn my freedom? And ancient K –

Well it’s also the name of a city in the States just south of what may be a fairly easy border crossing in from the north. So again we’re in a limbo land, between two worlds, both the signs and my heart pointing in each opposite direction.

I sometimes think about forming a little group, like Leo’s Journey To The East.

A poster at uni asks, “Why Don’t You Walk Instead?” (or something like that), an answer perhaps to my wondering about cycling or hitchhiking or even buying a ten-year-old Jaguar and driving it to the Czech Republic to sell.

I want the signs to speak clear. I want –

I bought some dates today. Said to the woman – they were sixty pee – “well I’ve either got fifty-nine pence in change or a ten pound note.”

She said, “change is fine.”

“I’ll bring you in the penny next time,” I said, a winking smile acknowledging both the worthlessness of a penny but the necessity of paying one’s debts, “I won’t forget.”

“Well don’t leave the country,” she says.

Don’t leave the country! Ay ay ay: that’s all I need when I’m once more jettisoning my flat and dreaming mad dreams of just walking out the front door and keeping on walking – or even Forrest Gump running, like some poor man’s Eddie Izzard – or flying off to Canada.

Don’t leave the country? What’s a man to make of that?

I Ching, of course: that would clear things up. But I’m not quite ready for that. Can’t do an I Ching when you don’t really need to – and aren’t in the mood to be thwarted. Dreaming of escape is about all that keeps me going these days. Except –

I was down at my dad’s guitar shop again today, ostensibly furthering my work on their eBay page and website. Mostly what I do is complain about the stench – my dad still smokes in the shop, despite it being illegal since 2007 – and the whole place reeks like a homeless man (no exaggeration). They wonder why they have no customers given they’ve got some decent stock in – and I really do believe the smell and general demeanour of the place has a lot to do with it. People don’t want to go in shops that smell like rough seventies boozers anymore; where gruff old men sit watching Chinese upskirt videos and swearing their asses off while guitars sit dusty and unworking on the wall, neglected and overpriced. It’s old skool and an antidote to the plastic places staffed by schoolboys who don’t know their Zentas from their Zemaitises – but much as we hate phoney McDonalds Americanizations round these parts a little customer service wouldn’t go amiss. It’s probably too much for the old man to embrace the credo “the customer is king” – but why not a happy medium between that and the current shop philosophy, which appears to be “the customer is a turd”?

I can’t remember now where I was going with this. Looking back…dreams of escape and…well, maybe just feeling a little bit of excitement about doing more with the place. They want me to work one day a week putting stuff online and I’m happy to do that – but, problem is, it smells so bad I seriously need a hardcore shower and to wash all my clothes after even half an hour in there – and that’s when they smoke outside – that I can’t actually do it there, I have to go in, quickly take pictures, and then escape to uni to do it somewhere a little less unsanitary. On leaving there today I started to think that maybe one solution would be for me to do my stuff there and kind of banish them – my dad and his equally smelly partner – and just do all the shop stuff at the same time too. Perhaps an odd solution – giving myself twice the work for the pittance pay they’ve offered me – but it kind of made sense.

And there I am formulating thoughts in direct opposition to how I spend the greater part of my time thinking. I have a real-life friend who also reads this blog and she says it’s all just a record of my ever-changing whims, one minute I feel this way, the next that. She says I’m always changing my mind about everything. Funny thing is, I’m not really aware of that, I feel like I’m pretty much constant. Pretty much constant in my change, anyway. It’s not so much a back and forth as a moving through, a journeying through the cycles. Isn’t that what life is?

Anyways, this brings me back to my dad – cos he’s like a total nutjob in this regard, and I wonder if we’re not actually quite similar (which is gonna bring me around to another thing I’ve been thinking about – which is handy). My dad – ah: this is the man who wanted to sell his shop and did actually sell his house and bought a villa in Bulgaria and moved out there all excited and full of plans only to come home less than six weeks later sans wife and saying he couldn’t stand the place. Back to a bedsit in Holbeck. Sitting smoking in front of the TV. After ten years of marriage.

This is the guy who every time I see him – at least once a week – tells me either he’s got no interest in guitars or women or that he’s putting a band together and feeling the itch and chasing some broad. Tells me he chatted to a woman for a few hours the other day and is thinking maybe in a year or two he can sell the shop and just go live with her in some distant city/country. This is no exaggeration: he’s said this several times over the years, felt it about women he barely even knew in Polandand Holland and Texas. Came back from Poland once having had a brief romance with the mother of a girl he knows and, though she couldn’t speak English, was thinking of retiring out there. Then knocked it on the head two weeks later and spoke of it no more.

Maybe that’s where I get it from.

The other day I walked in and he was saying he was sick of life, if he got cancer or something he wouldn’t want to bother with the treatments, he’d just want to die as quick as possible. With a smile on my face I said, “I know exactly what you mean, I’d do the same.” He says, “well then let’s just end it, make a suicide pact right here.” I laughed, said we should do it live on youtube – but go for a curry first; might as well – but also I shuddered. I was like, hm, he’s kind of serious, I don’t think I’ve quite got the balls.

Anyways, he’ll have changed his mind in a day or two, got excited about some short-lived project – like the music video he made last year, the signature guitars that are apparently winging their way; him talking about finding a ghostwriter to write his musical memoirs (“anyone in mind, pop?” I didn’t ask); some woman in a far off land he’s talked to for like three minutes, taken for a beer, charmed in the shop. He’ll probably live forever, that man.

“When Keith Richards goes, then I’ll be worried,” he says, “but until then – well who’s to say me and Keith aren’t immortal?”

He says that and then the next day he says he can’t wait to get out of here, it’s a world full of idiots and he hates the bloody lot of ‘em.

I’ve got my foibles but…

Well it made me think when I was in my January funk – though quite happy and giggling to myself a lot and generally in good spirits even though all alone and lonesome in this world – that, here I am in my bed and I can’t think of a damn thing to do, pretty much zero in this whole workaday world of the city and concrete and shops and people’s busynesses, and so I just lie here and do not much, watch movies and wait until sleep and – well, isn’t that just what my parents do, my brother? It’s like I’ve fought the tide of time (whatever that means) all these years, what with my travelling and adventuring and gadding and education and learning and tap-tap-tapping away at this lovely, lovely keyboard and – and yet we all end up in the same place anyway. Not the coffin, you silly – but the bed, all run out of ideas, and waiting for the end.

My dad sits at home smoking and watching war films. A few years back he went through a stage of making and painting model tanks. They were pretty good. He buys and sells guitars. But you can’t say he really has a friend, even though he knows and is known by loads of people. He’s a lonesome man. He’s not that into people and he probably doesn’t know how to be with them. He’s all blustery and temper-filled. Sometimes philosophical but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him have a genuinely vulnerable moment. Without guitars I don’t know what he would have done. He’s played them his whole life, made them his hobby, his business, his occupation, his way of meeting people and women, gigged in pubs the best part of forty years, got his reason to get out of bed. But even on his days off he comes down the shop before opening hours to get online and look at crap, like we all do, because there’s nothing else to do. Sixty years on the planet and it comes to that.

My mum, on the other hand – well she has her husband, I guess, and through him they’ve got into things like holidays and walks and interior decorating and gardening and I guess that fills her time. But I’ve never really thought of her as having a friend either. And when I was a lad she pretty much gave up on everything and went to bed for more or less four or five years. Couldn’t think of anything to do, I guess. Left me and my brother to it. And now my brother lives in her house and though he’s not really gone in for the bed-occupying stuff – must have left that for me, taken my dad’s slightly less horizontal manner of filling time – I can’t say he does much else, has never had a job, nor friends since school days, is merely killing time between now and the end of his life – which is a real shame, being as he started on it when he was about twenty-three.

So that’s something I thought of when I was in bed run out of things to do. And I guess in a way I can congratulate myself on at least having done a few interesting things with my life – and yet you can only escape the weight and the baggage of one’s family karma and inheritance for so long. And so try as I might the bed and the end of activity done catch up with me after all. Ah, to be like one of those normal people who can find things to do with their time, and believe in those things too!

Still, I plot. I say I’ll toss it all off and go on mad adventures. And then I’ll one day write about those mad adventures and that’ll be my life, my dream life. How many years have I been saying that? That if I could do anything it would be to “go on big adventures and then write about them – and then use the money I make writing about them to go on more big adventures, and on and on and on.”

But what do I do instead? I just moan. That’s something I’ve thought about too: the humour of it all. That I moan for life to bring me something groovy. That I moan for life that I’m not a successful writer. That I moan for all the time I have and nothing to do with it. That I have all these ideas and really want to write something – can’t not write something – and moan about that too. And yet…

Well it’s a simpler conundrum than one add one, isn’t it? So why don’t I do it?

Absence of external pressure. The deadline. Those things work well.

And a reason. A belief in the purpose. Yet I tried to kill that during my MA, deciding all published writing was pointless.

I try to leave it behind but I can’t. I want to go on more adventures and I think –

Well, if I’m going away maybe I should just get all these words out of my system before I do. A deadline. A reason to not postpone it till tomorrow. And the promise of moving on, creating a space for the new to come. Much as I did in 2008, wanting so badly to get back on the road, feeling the weight of my unborn book – and going off to Mexico once I got it out of me and onto paper – and, come to think of it, I feel its weight no more.

It’s been a while now that I’ve been thinking to get out of here on March 21st. That’s the date I’ve told my landlord I’ll be off. That’s when spring hits – “when spring comes around” – and spring feels like a good time for the new. It’s also about enough time to fast-write some book-length splurge of words, or something of the sort, and given all this time I’ve got, and the bemoaning of nothing to fill it with – what procrastination! what utter foolishness and folly, the squandering of such time and opportunity! how ruefully I shall shake my head when this dread life is over! – I figured –

A Creative Project.

I made a list of what I had in my head. I could either:

1. Spend time putting all my old diaries into book form. Seems like a kind of dumb and vainglorious idea at first – but, in any case, it wasn’t my idea, it was Stevie’s, and I’m not really saying it has to come to anything, that there’s any merit in it. But might work well as a companion piece for when I’m dead and gone and a thousand years have passed. Or for someone who’s as loopy as I am and thinks it not an inconsiderable sum of money when it’s 69p on Kindle. Plus I’d love to have it all on paper, even as I mourn “the lost pages.” Anyways… 

2. The sequel to Discovering Beautiful. I’ve thought about this a lot, often composed stumbling and apologetic introductions about how none of what follows will make any sense, but then neither will my life. I ignored it for a long time cos I always thought I’d rather share only the goods that could help lead people to a happy place – as I imagined DB would also – but then…well maybe it’s like my good chum Harry said the other day, “sometimes you can learn more from other people’s mistakes than from their triumphs” (to paraphrase). In any case, it’s daunting but I’m kind of reconciled to doing it quick and slapdash and not really caring for the literary content, let the chips fall where they will. Who gives a fuck? No publishers or editors want me anyway. 

3. Man Woman Sex Love, the autobiographical sex and romance memoir I started just over a year ago – wrote twenty thousand words in four days – and haven’t added to since. I quite liked this – as did my tutors at university. Had the next sentence in my head all those months but never got round to writing it down. No reason to, I guess. Except probably a dozen very good ones. But without an external interest…well it’s easy for a boy like me to say, “what’s the point?” and just loll in bed watching rubbish movies instead, like a massive looser [sic]. 

4. Hit up publishers and agents once again. For what it’s worth. 

5. Try and record my songs properly. I like my songs. I’ve thought for a long time that I would love to have maybe five or six of them done in the studio with drums and other musicians and the full band effect. My dad’s been saying for years that he’ll pay to take me in and do it with me – but then he always cries off and says business is bad and he ain’t got the cash. In his head, fifteen grand ain’t enough to shake off feelings of being poor. 

6. Blog. Resurrect the blog. Get stuck into it. Blog my ass off. Which I guess is what I’m doing right now. ‘Cept –

 The dice rolled two. I did it two days ago. I haven’t started yet but I’ve been thinking about it. Monday’s my day off so I just did some shopping and worked on university sports things and went down my dad’s shop – some day off – and Sunday I was reffing pretty much all day and then too tired to do anything else ‘cept stay up too late and gaze at images of men chopping other men into pieces and snarling and being mean for a couple of hours. I guess at some point I will though, cos the dice has spoken and now that it’s made it to that stage I’ll really feel like some rotten looser [sic] if I don’t, knowing the time and the desire and the moaning that I do. Frickin’ writing! It’s like the perfect thing for me: a joy you can do all on your own in the comfort of your own home without having to associate with the madness and annoyance of the outside world – truly, the answer to just about everything I ever whinge about – and yet…I don’t bloody do it.

But I shall. Quality may not be my forte – but quantity-wise, I am perhaps without equal. All I was gonna do tonight was have a quick express and then go to bed with some other neighbour-provided mediocre flick (he hasn’t any dumbass comedies, just films with depth and guns) – but that’s another five thousand flippin’ words in two hours – t’other day was 2500wph too – and, well fuck it, if I could only take to heart the words of Elizabeth Gilbert:

“I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write.”

And I love that, and I wish that I could do it. And now it’s 11 o’clock and I think I’d better stop.

Part Three (The Other)

I wrote lots yesterday about “The Bad” but I don’t feel like I really touched on the issues of what made it really, really bad. Sure, there was the nightmare of Vipassana and all that brought up in me, but mainly it was all stuff about women. And that’s a problem because I want to try not to write about women anymore. At least not here, in public. It’s probably not very nice for them. But I suppose I could still write in secret…

I mentioned being lied to by my ex. Wow, that fucked me up. I didn’t sleep the whole of that night. Words like “devious” and “bitch” and “betrayal” swarming around in my brain. Thoughts of her and this other guy. But mainly just the breaking open of my heart. I guess I hadn’t felt much about since we’d separated back in the summer – and I realise now that’s because our separation hadn’t really registered. We still saw each other, still hung out and talked on the phone, shared our joys and woes, hugged and kissed and made love. I guess in my mind, in some way, we were still together. And I still thought lots about whether or not to make a real go of it with her. Sure, I’d been sleeping with other people, and I figured she had too and didn’t really mind that – but when the reality of it hit me – when I realised that she had maybe moved on – when I decided in my body that I had lost her – despite reasoning over and over that I didn’t really want her anyway – man, it hurt.

And more than any sense of her being with someone else, but the fact that there were lies, dishonesty. That threw me through a loop. I didn’t know what to do with that: as far as I was concerned she was like the most honest and trustworthy person I’d ever met. It’s not easy to trust women. I was screwed up for a few days after that.

Still, I’ll doubt there’s a person alive who’s been seeing more than one person at a time who’s never had to resort to some little fib now and again. It’s the price you pay for keeping that kind of thing going. Having your cake and eating it.

I include myself in that.

I suppose that was the other big thing that hit me when the hurt finally came home: karma, baby. Some people say karma is a bitch, but that’s only because it sometimes hurts so much. Karma is pretty neutral really – you reap what you sow – you get what you give – and the only reason it hurts is because we’ve put that hurt on another. I didn’t know it at the time but I do now. And so in amongst all that misery and heartbreak and suffering there was also the terrible realisation that this is most likely exactly what I’ve caused another to feel. The wrongdoing I’ve done. The careless ways I’ve handled another’s heart. I truly am a jackass.

And yet, even as I type this and remember what I thought to be the folly of my experiments in polyamory and free lovin’ – well, now that I’ve swallowed all my hurt feelings and made it up with my ex and come to a new place of freedom and expansion wherein I accept her brief stumbles into deceit and her other loves, isn’t it all just fine again once and for all? Man, I was suffering – but the question is: was I really suffering for the boomerang effects of the wrongs I’d done, or was it for the smallness of my ego, which believed in possessiveness and jealousy and fear?

The next time I saw her I could barely look at her. I felt anger and even some small measure of hate and I didn’t know what to do with that. Part of me figured the best thing would be to wipe my hands clean and move on, put her out of my mind. Somewhere in the midsts of that I passed a group of people talking and I overheard the words “you’ll forget about her” and I knew it was right, even in the middle of my pain. But after a while I reasoned the greater pain I was suffering was from not having her in my life anymore. She’s been probably my best friend for a long time. And I longed to have a text or call from her, or to text or call her myself. And the resistance of that hurt too.

The...

[1545 words I don't feel like sharing here]

...and to where it will all lead. Or if it just the way it’s supposed to be? The world right all along? Man and woman compelled to each other and one day joined in holy matrimony (a human invention, not holy) all for the making of children and the continuation of the species and me really all this time despite my million thinkings just a slave to that, to the will of life to continue, like Schopenhauer said?

Whatever. This is the other. I felt really frickin’ terrible for quite a long time but now I feel okay. “You’ll forget her,” they’d said – and they were right. Or, rather, “you’ll forget the pain that you feel around her.” All things must pass. You feel a pain like that and it feels like a pain that will be there forever. Impossible to imagine it moving. But move it does. I suppose a week’s a fairly long time to be in agony but I guess it ain’t so bad. Nice to feel nice again. Not quite 98% joy – but perhaps an increase in my percentage of wisdom.

Who knows? I might even be into double figures soon. ;-)

Part Two (The Bad)

It feels a bit weird sitting down to write now about The Bad but –

It’s like every time I think about writing a sequel to Discovering Beautiful

And I get overwhelmed by how complex the whole thing is

That there’s no longer the linear narrative of the road journey

And the steady progression of growth

But a mad web of things I don’t really understand

The life I lived

And the life I think I should have lived

The meanings behind the events

What I thought they meant at the time

And what I decided they actually meant later on

Decisions based on mistaken interpretations

Roads and tangents walked down

That should never have been

Lessons learned from that

But then later re-interpreted and transformed in my poor addled brain

And the overarching idea that so much of it was about being on the wrong track

Trying desperately to get back to the right track

Wishing it away

And wishing for something different

And like all these words I’ve just typed now

So little of it making sense

Or, at least,

So little of it making the kind of linear, narrative sense

That one hopes for in the written word

A jumble of times and experiences and thoughts

The horrible intricate weave of a human psyche gone awry

The impossible complexity

And the infinite depth

So many realisations, all the time

That I just can’t find the words

Yet always compelled to try

Realisations tracing forever back to the earliest days of my body

And the terrifying sense that so much of the life I’ve lived

Was lived not for what I am

But for something that went wrong

Before I could even speak

And now – just typing

More words

Reaching and grasping and forever falling short

But enjoying it, nonetheless

Ah, this life!

The wonders of it!

The –

Sitting by the fire and watching

Looking at nothing

As the sparks of understanding

Flare up

Little drops of consciousness

Falling in

And taking me…

To the next moment

The psychological universe within

Never tiresome

Ever new and surprisingly

A well-spring of information

A devious mad fairground

At least undull

Compared to the supermarket world

Women…

Provoking so much

Emotion

And therein, my greatest learnings

But – oh!

You can’t live with ‘em

You can’t live without ‘em

Wouldn’t want to

A strange conundrum…

And none of it makes sense

I came back up to Yorkshirethe day after Christmas. Ex’s dad was driving that way and I didn’t want to push my random divine wanderings too far, back once more to cold-dark-rain consciousness and seeking this time the path of least resistance: the back seat of his car silently slumbering and looking forward to my bed. I knew I had to be back down that way the next day – down to near Hereford, just along from Droitwich and Ludlow, to embark on a 10-day silent meditation retreat at the Vipassana Centre, my first in over a decade – but it kind of made sense. And yet…

Once again I’m wondering about the choices I didn’t make. The life I was perhaps supposed to live. The door I didn’t take. The places that might have brought me to.

And the corollary of that: the painful suspicion that the life one is currently living is not the right one at all – gone off track – not what the soul desired and imagined when it made this plan. Forever and ever grasping to get back to the right path. But how to reach there when forever and ever moving away?

And probably that’s not even real. But that’s the way it feels.

I…well, yes, the next part of this story is all wrapped up in women and sex and romance and the “tangled web I weaved” and I want to try and stop writing about those things here. It’s perhaps not nice for other people. It perhaps may cause me future problems, depending on who’s reading this. We’ve all had private histories and feelings but I for one don’t want to know about them – and I guess that makes me a hypocrite – or, rather, flamboyant, indulgent, ignorant, and flippant – for writing about mine here. I feel for other people. I curse this compulsion I have to write down every little thing. Even as I progress in it.

Needless to say, I hurt someone. I was riding along blissful and cocksure and thinking everything was great. Having my cake and eating it. Thinking I’d stumbled on the secret and the solution and that everything was grand. That I was grand.

And now off to Vipassana to finally get back into meditation and roll on into that blissful world wherein the final piece of the puzzle of satisfaction would slot into its place in my life and all would be complete. My little flat. My little job. My disinterest in the world. My “too much time.” And my longings for divine – truth – God – enlightenment – peace – bliss – love.

Meditation was the answer. The solution. The next logical step that I’ve avoided for too long. With that, everything would be groovy. No more distraction. No more pointless time-fillers/killers. Just me and my little necessaries and then – every day, hour after hour, sitting in my perfect peaceful cave journeying into the wonders within. Except…

Wow, it was hell. And it was all wrong too. The first day, I couldn’t get a ride. I tried two different spots. I got nowhere. Eventually I gave up and shelled out a monstrous amount of money on a train ticket, thinking abundance and striking a blow to my ever-increasing and sometimes crippling financial tightness. And then the trains were late anyway, and there was no way to get there, and I had to come all the way back to Yorkshire, which is where the pain and mess exploded. But seemed okay. And then the next day…

I made it to Vipassana. Five or six hours on trains when it should have been like three. Legs killing me. Sit in the hall. Flu setting in.

I lasted four days.

I swear, it was the worst four days of my life.

Number one, I couldn’t meditate. From a combination of football and trains my hamstrings were tighter than this Yorkshireman’s purse strings. I couldn’t sit still, get comfortable. Me, who in that very same place some eleven years before had sat meditating ten hours a day, full lotus, feeling nothing but bliss and contentment, satisfied merely with the slow soft flow of my breath as it drifted caressingly into my nostrils and dropped like liquid ecstasy into the enormous cavity of my heart. But even twenty minutes was too much.

I asked them for some help with my legs; just a little stretch or something, I was sure that would make it right.

They said they couldn’t touch me, that I would have to meditate through it, that it was probably my mind-stuff manifesting in the physical and that it would pass.

Mind-stuff?! Dude, I know what it is and where it came from: it was ‘cos I played football last week, after three months of not playing. They were tight then and a friend stretched them out and everything was fine.

But no, smiles the teacher, it’s against protocol.

I rage inside. Compose liturgies about lack of compassion. Search the Buddha’s teachings to show how heartless they are.

This teacher – pah! Now I remember why I left there in the first place. All that talk and peaceful smiling and sitting still such long hours, as though ‘not moving’ is what enlightenment is about. But zero heart, little love.

They say “May All Being Be Happy” but inside I just don’t see it.

Ego. Superiority. Silly games.

Is Goenka enlightened?

No.

Therefore how can he lead the way, when the top of the mountain eludes him?

Fuck them teachers!

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

Oh, my head! For suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m bombarded with regrets and confusions and simply enormous and overwhelming realisations that my whole life has been a massive waste and I’m a complete tit and I’ve done just about everything wrong.

The choices I’ve made. The ways I’ve behaved. The physical movements about this globe. The beliefs and ideals I’ve constructed. The hurts I’ve caused.

And the cockiness, the ego, the…

I really can’t put it into words. It’s been nearly two months and I guess it’s subsided. But it was fuckin’ hell: the worst hell I ever remember feeling.

To top it off, I got flu too. Had a fever one night. Coughed up some blood. Couldn’t sleep. Was in physical agony whether I sat cross-legged or in a chair or on a thousand cushions or even laid in bed.

I tried to stretch out my legs. Begged for help. Couldn’t get any.

On New Year’s Eve, I decided enough was enough. The whole thing was wrong. I should never have been there. I should never have tried it. But –

That wasn’t the worst of it either; the worst of it was this:

All these years I’ve been in the material world and farted around and procrastinated – chased women and attempted to build lives with them – dwelled in the realm of careers and mortgages and wondered muchly about that – run around with my sports and entertainment – shopped and moved cities – discovered amazing things and then got bored of them – watched movies – all throughout my dalliance with this concrete universe I’ve had this idea of myself that I would one day get back to meditation – that it always lay just on the other side of my distractions – and that on that day I would do it easily and be good at it and that God and enlightenment and wonders and true joy would be there waiting for me and that’s what I would do for the hours and days of my life.

An idea of myself. An imagination and a vision. A glorious dangling carrot assuring me always that there was something more, something better, something that I would be good at and that would satisfy, so that I needn’t worry.

It’s like how people who live near a park, even if they never go there, get a sense of well-being and a psychological boost simply knowing that it’s there.

It’s like having a goal to aim for. A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Even if the destination takes decades to reach, at least you know it’s there, and worthwhile, and that there’s something to look forward to despite whatever hardships the journey may throw up.

It’s like not ever minding the procrastination and time-wasting, because you know that if you do one day get bored of it, there’ll be something awesome waiting on the other side of the curtain.

I guess somewhere in my psyche and in my being I’d carried that comforting idea and it had sustained me. The thought of myself as a “spiritual being just waiting to happen.” Coiled-up potential. A true me inside the superficial, shambolic me.

A thought to retreat into whenever the world or criticism or failed romance threatened to call me out, tried to make me conform to their ideas of themselves.

They didn’t understand. They didn’t know what I was really up to. They didn’t know that I had that curtain to step through any moment I chose.

But one day they would. And then I’d show ‘em…

I used to be awesome at meditation. I had the clearest and purest and sweetest mind. The light shone forth and the light was undeniable.

But those days have gone; only the idea remains.

The ego: one’s image of oneself. But not necessarily based in reality.

Perhaps, hardly ever.

My ego crumbled. My hopes and dreams. Those four days showed me what a wretch I was, and that I had nothing waiting for me beyond my current existence.

I couldn’t meditate, and I probably never would. Dreams of ten-hour sessions in my own flat were over. Now those ten hours were…what? What to fill them with? What now, knowing the truth of my procrastinations and time-fillings? That they were just that: a horrible waste of life. And the years ticking onwards. And the gap between me and the ‘normal world’ ever-increasing, and yet no better world to enter into, left abandoned and floating in this void, unable to break into either.

What am I but a man who flew too high to ever come down, but who never had the wings to truly soar?

A man who could write a little bit, and had the compulsion, but never really the talent or the motivation or the disposition to make it all the way.

A man who saw something of spirit, but lacked the dedication and discipline and inherent ability to break into it full-time.

A man blessed with looks and some semblance of charm and the good fortune to meet a steady succession of gorgeous and interested young women, but whose character flaws and upbringing ever ruined it for him.

A man whose intellect and curiosity saw him transcend the world of violence and coal and pubs into which he was born, but who could never take the next step, find an occupation that could hold him, do the creative and interesting and wonderful things that those he admires are doing.

A man chained to this material world, for one reason or another, yet bewildered by its pace and stench and harshness and tedium.

A man who loves people so much it hurts, yet finds them almost always annoying and disappointing and stupid.

A man, in a nutshell, stuck forever in some netherworld which is neither here nor there, mostly alone, confused, compelled ever onward, yet with nowhere to go.

A man, I suppose, on the edge of madness. And yet, even there, neither willing nor able to go one way or the other.

And, yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself, and maybe being a little melodramatic and perhaps even just waxing lyrical for the sake of it like some Victorian Gothic writer whose plight was always and forever “the most wretched state ever visited upon a man” but –

Well, that ain’t nothin’ compared to the four days I had at Vipassana, nor many of the days I’ve had since. Today, like I say, even though I know I still dwell in the space between all those myriad worlds, I can’t say I feel it so much. But then that’s because I’m writing, and writing always make me feel good, no matter what the content. Should perhaps do it more. Should, perhaps, fill my pointless hours with the ever-stacking up projects and ideas that niggle away at my brain, that I’m forever fending off, that I –

I came home on New Year’s Eve. The train ride was interminable but at least there was something at the end of it. I used to think trains were the way to go, the luxury and the smarter choice when compared with the hell of long-distance coaches, but even that is being taken away from me. Four, five hours on an English train, with nothing to distract with/read…it makes me want to never leave Leeds again, even as I spend my days plotting my escape from here, future travels and movements brewing, always an urge to GO! and just keep going…

Another two worlds floating between. Stay or go; stay or go. But like The Clash sang…

I came home on New Year’s Eve. I fell sick and deflated into my bed. I stayed there for about four days solid. And then pretty much the whole of January. I couldn’t think of a single damn reason not to.

And still that’s not the worst of it.

Or maybe it is…

I guess at some stage I thought the worst of it was a couple of weeks back, when I caught my ex in some lies to me – lies to my face so she could spend the night with another man instead of me – but after last night I don’t feel so bad about that. Time passes and time is a healer. And expression and thinking and effort and communication too.

Still, there was a time when I really didn’t think I could take any more. After Vipassana. After the deflation of my meditation dream bubble. After the idea I’d had of myself as anything worthwhile had been shown for the shit it was and shoved in my face. After I’d screwed up and alienated a good friend and lover. And after I’d realised I had no interest in this crazy world whatsoever and couldn’t think of the tiniest little thing to do but had to go on living in it anyway. Yeah, that was pretty bad.

Lonely times. And I don’t get lonely except those moments when I feel so desperate and flooded with feeling and know how wonderful it would be to have someone to talk to and hold and then when I look around I realise there isn’t anyone. Sports buddies who are good and nice and fun but who don’t know the first thing about listening. Young people. Girls who were closer to me than anyone’s ever been but who no longer want to know, have moved on…

Then it hits me, what an all-alone life I live. All the bestest friends I ever had over three thousand miles away in America. Me here in concrete Leeds, the loveliest city I know, but so shiver-inducing when feeling this way and cycling its grey streets to buy bread in Morrison’s ‘cos there’s nothing better to do.

I feel this way and I look at the world and suddenly everybody seems alone. People walking everywhere on their own. Young attractive people coming home from work. People shopping. People hither and thither and for all their real-life friends and facebook friends and social lives and giddy times – so much aloneness too.

Well, I shouldn’t talk like that because it’s so rare I feel that way and, anyway, the world is but a mirror for what I’m feeling inside. When I leave the house today I won’t notice it at all. But back in those days when I felt and knew that I had no one…wow, how harsh and sad the whole world seemed.

How did it change? How did I exit those doldrums days of January, when I did literally spend all day in bed? Not depressed but – oh, how I longed for the blesséd relief of sad, switched off depression where at least the mind might have some respite from thought and restlessness and lie inert and hibernating, bleak misery surely better than the ceaseless churnings of these fevered braincogs as they endlessly seek answers and solutions and mull over all the ways in which we went wrong –

I…

I watched movies. I watched all the comedy shows I’ve already watched. And I watched Derren Brown. I watched whatever I could get my hands on and even though it hurt my brain and even though lying in bed hurt my legs, I didn’t know what else to do. And I kind of rejoiced in it, and I guess built up this idea of myself that I could celebrate and find amusing – dashing handsome Rory so used to adventure and sport now having given up on life and retiring depressed to his bed, dressing not and eating weirdly and –

Yes, I dressed it up in eccentricity, and made myself a hero. Too sensitive and colourful for this dreary world. Defeated by it and doing the only sensible thing left to do. Bored of the tedium, I claimed victory by leaving it alone. Oh, how we laughed…

And, yes, the students came back and my squash and football busyness kicked in again and gave me a reason to enjoin in activity. The buildings opened up and I had the internet once more. And I found a good fresh supply of movies and watched a ton of them, and mostly watched each one at least twice, to save me from thinking.

And I guess, too, time passed and all the trauma of Vipassana faded into memory, or integrated, or I was created anew. Now the thought of myself as someone who exists without that future meditation blanket doesn’t bother me. But back in the beginning – wow, it pained me so. I would contemplate the world and my place in it, and how pants it all was, and then my mind would begin to tell its same old story – don’t worry, Rory, one day you’ll give it all up and cross your legs and close your eyes and – poof! But the story couldn’t go on. All it gave me was a bolt of pain and sadness. That me was dead. I was grieving, I guess – but forgetting, too. Is that what it’s like when a loved one dies? You have a moment of thinking about them and just for a second you forget they’re gone? And then it hits you and –

Oh, fuck: they’re dead.

Oh, Christ: I’ll never see them again.

And: oh, shit, how much worse it is to have lived that moment when you’d forgotten they were gone and then the pain of remembrance had rushed in, a constant spear in the side, before the days of acceptance.

But what then, beyond acceptance, when even though the option of going forward has been removed, going back or simply staying where you are is impossible too?

Plans. The mind makes plans. The mind finds some other way.

A compromise, perhaps, between the recovered ego and its old idea of itself.

Whatever – I don’t know. I’m typing these things and they’re not things I’ve thought about before. They might have some meaning and might even be highfalutin’ – or they might just be bullshit. Alls I know is – things have got to change. The good things in my life right now may be good and awesome – but they’re not enough to keep me here, to satisfy me.

I could of course get a job – just about everyone’s solution to anything – but I’ve tried that and nothing’s arisen and past history has taught me that when that happens – when I haven’t got jobs I was even too qualified for – it’s because I’m in the wrong place. Indeed, the new story I’m telling myself is that I should have quit Leedsback when I first had the impulse, and felt the inner approval, just after my LSD trip and all the realisations that I had with that. I mean – Christ! – all these things I do – my uni squash league, the refereeing stuff, and whatever job I could imagine – they could all easily be done by someone else, someone who wouldn’t be pretending that they meant something, who wouldn’t be made miserable by them, who believed in them and aspired to them and wasn’t just doing them ‘cos they couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Sure, there’s a big part of me that thinks a job might be the answer to my problems – but then…

Well that’s another thing I’ve been battling with the last month or so – the myriad voices in my head.

The voice of society tells you you should work and buy things and go out to movies and eat in nice restaurants.

Drive a car and take a couple of holidays a year and get married (to one person).

The voice of society says you’re nobody if you don’t do those things. And much as I’ve dismissed that voice and rebelled against it, it’s still there deep inside my brain, and holds sway over me.

Still, we all know that story. And there are other voices besides – perhaps even more damaging ones…

The voice of Mother Meera. Mother Meera is that supposéd/maybe real Indian spiritual lady in Germany who I’ve been to see a bunch, and who I tell myself works as a force of good in my life. She doesn’t say anything, or do anything conspicuous, but that’s what I tell myself. Certainly, the first time I saw her I was undeniably moved, and felt changes within that transformed things in a positive way. Other times I can’t say I’ve felt that much, but things still seem to happen. Like how when I’ve been out to Germanypenniless and without a place to stay and it’s always worked out really well. Although that kind of happens anywhere, so I guess it could just be God. Or that time in Dublinwhen my leg was effin’ killing me and I literally wanted to die – and then I cried out “Mother!” and I was instantly made better. But I suppose that could just have been my mind. Or Amma. Or God. Also in 2011 when I went to see her not knowing what the future was going to bring and then I got the news the day I left there that I’d received the bursary to Leeds. Or in 2002 when I rang up massively lost and confused and through a few simple words ended up at university and on some sort of track. Or the times I’ve been miserable and wanting to change my situation, and then written her a letter and felt immediately better and also seen my situation change pretty quick.

Well, lots of things that I can tell myself to say, yeah, perhaps she is a mystical good-energy woman who can do unseen and wonderful things all through some mysterious power that us spiritual people call “God” and just about hardly anyone else believes in or experiences.

But then there’s her voice. And by her voice I mean the words of hers that I’ve read in a couple of books that are really just compilations of answers to questions other people have asked her about their own situations. Obviously, a lot of it doesn’t apply to me – but over and over she advises people to “stay where they are, continue in their jobs, get married and raise families and develop love and spirituality there, in their homes, and in their communities.” I like the sound of that – I just seem totally unable to do it.

Number one, I find it almost impossibly hard to stay in one place. I get bored. I find people boring. I find the way society has constructed itself to be weird and unhealthy and to have very little to do with what life is actually about. Sure, I can find my own way to live – but what you get then is this friction and loneliness and the constant battle with having to think always that just maybe the drunk and smoking and angry and begrudging masses are the ones who have got it right and peaceful and content and joyful but poor and possessionless and cold, shunned me is the one in the wrong.

Number two, I’m absolutely terrible at relationships, and even though I’ve been offered a tremendous string of lovely women who would all have married me at some point during our time together, I’ve always found some reason to push them away – and generally some petty and misguided reason at that. Now I’m thirty-seven and it’s starting to feel like the time for being in love and making babies is beginning to slip away…

Number three, I don’t even know if I want babies, and could probably never afford them anyway. I’m even worse at working than I am in relationships – God, I get bored so quickly! – and so money has pretty much always eluded me. Even though, as I type that, I realise that I’ve always had plenty more than I’ve ever needed and right now still have that two grand in the bank that’s been there for, like, ever.

But, jobs; yeah.

So Mother is in my head and it bothers me. How I wish that all I’d got from her was her energy, her influence, her silent guidance and help in doing what was in my heart to do rather than these confusing words that are perhaps well-suited to many other people, but probably not to me! How I wish I’d never read those books, nor ninety-nine percent of all the other self-development and spiritual books I’ve read over the years! All they really do is confuse you – make you schizophrenic – put a wedge between who you really are and who you’d like to be; give you ideas about that, but dangerous ideas because it’s nearly always more head-stuff than heart. I feel at breaking point with all that. I feel at breaking point with all things I’ve ever read that was supposedly uttered from the mouth of Mother Meera, even if I could never turn away from what she has given me elsewhere.

It’s a battle, and just one of the battles I’m currently waging, however subtly and without due disturbance as I go about my business, buy my bread and referee my football games. I had a bit of a battle with it in 2009, when I was living in London but filled with an urge to go off to Mexico. Stay put and be normal versus the mad idea to do what you really want. Mother Meera’s words versus my own desires. My own desires versus the confusion and the questioning of which part of me they’ve come from. I dwelled on it for months and turned it over every which way I could think of. I reached the point where I decided I just wasn’t like the vast majority of people and that, actually, my spirit and my being came to this Earth as a wanderer, as someone for whom movement about the globe was their very lifeblood. A hobo, yes. A travelling sort. A beatnik and an adventurer. A Columbus and a Kerouac. As if any of them could have stayed at home and lived the normal life. And what of Buddha and his family-abandoning antics? Even Mother Meera herself, who has neither children nor, as far as I can see, any kind of ‘normal’ marriage and who left her native Indiafor Germany. Why is it always a case of “do as I say, not as I do?”

This is the battle that rages in my head. You meet these amazing people, realise they know a whole bunch of shit you don’t, and then learn abut surrender and devotion and trusting the teacher and you think, boy, I’d better do that. But it’s hard. And confusing. And in my case, doesn’t seem to work.

Back in 2009 I broke free from this struggle thanks to the I Ching. I’d got everything set and knew where and when I wanted to go but still I doubted myself and my desires. So I did an I Ching and got the chapter ‘The Wanderer’ and it was like that magical old book – which I trust more than any other, for it only tells you what’s specific to the time and the moment (unlike, I suppose, every other book that was ever written) – endorsed me for what I actually was, and for what I wanted, and said, “go ahead, be yourself.”

Which is basically the only thing that Momma Lucas ever told me when I asked her what I should do, even if I was begging for something more complex and challenging and specific: “just be your sweet self, honey.”

I type all this and I wonder why I ever tried to be anything but. Feel sad for my sweet innocent youthful travelling days when I lived the best years of my life and was only ever doing what felt right in the moment. Before I’d even heard of spirituality or read any books that told me how I was supposed to be. When life guided me purely, because my life and my head were so pure and empty and all the knowledge that came to me came from within, naturally and unforced, and at the steady trickling pace of a crystal clear brook rather than the muddy tumult of the wildly thrashing floodwaters of our bookstores and libraries. Beginning to read was one of the worst things I ever did. If I could inspire only one thing in the eager young minds of future seekers it would be this:

Don’t search out books, they’ll only confuse you. If someone tells you you should read a certain book, shrug. If a second person tells you to read it, smile. And when the third person puts that book in your hand, read it, and apply whatever magic it has for you at that particular time in your life, and then forget it and move on.

It’s like signs. Signs appeared in my life and I felt them guiding me. I learned to read them and it was a thrilling and wondrous time. And then I got addicted to them and started seeking them out. Saw signs in everything. Got confused attempting to decipher them when they weren’t even signs to begin with. And descended into a dizzying hell where I could no longer tell my arse from my elbow and eventually decided the best thing to do would be to plant a stick of dynamite under the baby’s bath and blow the whole house to smithereens and pretend it never happened.

Pretty frustrating.

Ah, if I could turn back time…

But what I was talking about was voices. And what I’m thinking about right now is Conversations With God. Now there’s a book that I can recommend – one of about five in this whole damn universe – and a book that I feel has stayed true to me ever since I first read it back in the summer of ’99. A book also, not incidentally, that was given to me by a guy who picked me up hitchhiking, and which proved remarkably ‘in synch’ with everything I was living at the time.

A few weeks back I bought Mother Meera’s ‘Answers Book II’ thinking that since I believe in her and my life was a mess, perhaps embracing her teachings more fully would sort things out. But I read it and it just confused me. Couldn’t really apply any of it to my life. Even though the answers were good and logical and sound I felt nothing and put it down. Then I picked up Conversations With God and, wow, even though I’ve probably read it and several of its sequels many times now, all I found there was inspirational, true-feeling, and an endorsement to be what I am. Liberating. Encouraging. And heartfelt.

Christ, I love those books. I’ve loved them from the first moment I flicked open their pages and felt the impeccable poetry and reasoning of their words set my body all a-tingling, vibrating with the “ring of truth”, resonating with my soul.

Nothing’s changed in the years since. I know they are my Bible, and only ever make me feel good – so why these other words that intrude upon my brain?

This is the point I’m at with the words of Mother Meera. As with many other things, it’s breaking point, I feel. I’ve tried it and now I’ve decided it doesn’t work for me. I want to throw it all away, pretend I never laid eyes on those pages. Let Life teach me. Let Mother herself teach me. But let not my journey through life be swayed and bedevilled by instructions she and others never intended for my ears. Christ, those poor Christians constantly seeking to take instruction from words intended for one very specific group of people – or even person – at one very specific place in space and time. It’s laughable really – and yet it’s exactly the boat I’ve put myself in.

It’s a boat I now want to capsize. To climb out of. Or to sail, maybe, to the edge of the world. Like –

The Truman Show. Now there’s something I can take inspiration from. That may be mad but – well, wasn’t it watching that movie in ’98 that set me on the road to Mexico? And I’ve watched it again a few times lately and it’s always the same response. To abandon the known and the safe. To reach out beyond one’s limits. To forego everything everyone is telling you. To trust in your own heart and desires. And to put everything on the line.

He was a man between two worlds, once he realised the emptiness and illusion of the only one he knew. He didn’t know what was beyond that, if anything, but he went for it, risking everything he had. And he made it.

I guess I’ve been thinking about setting sail for a very long time. And maybe sometimes I have set sail, but I’ve always turned back when the storm’s hit.

Breaking free.

Breaking free.

All I’ve been the last God only knows how many years is pacing up and down this beach and staring out to sea, wondering if I had the guts to really go for it. And I haven’t. I keep dipping my toe. Wading out. Coming back. Yet slowly, slowly, the attractions of the beach are losing their charm, closing down and falling into ruin, the very sand that I stand upon being drawn back into the ocean and the beach itself growing smaller and smaller, becoming an island, an atoll, a tiny protrusion that I struggle now to balance on.

Nothing here. One coconut palm, maybe, but even its days are numbered.

Is that the choice? To make a break for it or to sit and wait while everything crumbles around you and you end up in the water anyways?

Breaking point. The choice needing to be made. The struggle within and the scales tipping this way and that. Women and jobs and dreams of fame – but all of it nothing in the grand scheme of things.

The ocean beckons, and the end of the world – but am I man enough for the ride?

Voices. The voice of society and the voice of Mother Meera. That moment when the True Man finally says “no” and decides it’s his own voice he’ll follow.

The voice of spirituality that tells me I should be doing something good, helping the poor and the needy, feeding the starving and working to save the planet. Yet all those things too currently on this side of the ocean, part of the material world, the illusion. Without true understanding…

Everybody knows what they really are, in their hearts. A great dancer or painter or writer or lover. And me? In my grandest moments I know that I’m a wanderer, a traveller, an adventurer, with dreams and desires placed in me from some unknown source, but a good source. Mexico 2009 was meant to be, was truly right. Leeds 2013 feels like nothing of the sort. What other guidance system should there be except one’s own feelings? Except feelings are scary, because feelings can run counter to just about everything the external world will try and tell you.

Society. Mother Meera. Teachers. Even friends and lovers.

Who knows the truth except the architect of all and perhaps your own heart?

“Be yourself” – that’s all Momma ever said to me.

And Amma? No instructions, not direct. Except to say, “I love you.” And, “Amma is in everyone, Amma is in every thing.” And: “We are none of us perfect, take it easy on yourself.”

And Mother Meera? Really, honestly, beyond those books? Nothing except, “have you got a job, a partner?” in 2002 when I was lost and bewildered and in some serious need of grounding.

It took me to university, it took me to Sophie, and that was all good.

But times move on. What worked back then doesn’t necessarily work now. I want something different. I want…

Plans. I have a dream. I’ve handed in the notice on my flat – again – but this time I can’t see me not doing it (unless Life, of course, brings me something wonderful within the next four weeks). There’s no way I can continue this life as I’m currently living it. Leedsis great but there’s not enough in sporadic refereeing and playing squash to sustain me. Really, that’s all it does – but I’m looking for more out of life than simple sustenance, survival. I need more. I want more. I choose more.

And if Life don’t bring it, don’t think that I could make it here – well then I’ll create it elsewhere.

I’ll go. I’ll jettison my possessions. And I’ll head off somewhere. I’ll get back in touch with the signs and I’ll follow them. I’ve an idea to either walk to Greece– or bike, or hitchhike, or take the train, or a combination of all four – or there’s always that mad scheme to break into America. But even that’s seeming less and less mad, now that I’m rediscovering my belief in myself and in what I want to do rather than someone else. To hell with the laws of man and his silly boundaries and ideas that it’s wrong to go against that! There truly is a higher law and I don’t think doing what I want to do could violate that. I need to be myself, free from every possible outside imposition. Or to at least try.

God, writing makes me feel amazing! I write like this and I feel like one kickass human being after all. I love you, typing. I love you, expression. I love you, computer and internet and blog. I really have been trying lately to do it in the real world, with real people – but, still, there’s something about doing it here to which nothing can compare. The unmatched openness and imagined audience attention, I suppose. That this nobody that I’m writing to is actually interested in every word I say, and understands it and loves me for it. Difficult – nay, impossible – to find that in the real world, amongst humans. Hell, I couldn’t give it and nor can they. But I can give it to myself.

Writing, I love you. Thanks for the way you make me feel.

You’re welcome, says Writing.

Now there’s a voice I can trust. :-)