Financial crisis

This is what the current financial crisis looks like:

And this is what a real crisis looks like:

Private August journallings #6

I woke early this morning from a strange dream wrapped up somehow in weird evangelical Christianity. I was walking along with Christian and another guy and we come across three men who were doing something New Agey (or perhaps being human statues). Anyway, the other guy who was with Christian and I held up his hand to one of the New Agey blokes (the one on the left) and said something like, you’ve got an object on you. I took it to mean something ‘spiritual’, like a demon or an illness, some blemish in his aura. I couldn’t see anything and thought given these guys looked fairly powerful in their New Aginess nothing would happen. But without touching him, just holding his hand there, the New Ager started staggering backwards and eventually fell to the floor, typical Christian stylee. Then more praying began, more people arrived, more holding up of hands and falling over and healings and conversions and such. It was all a bit mad. My old school friend Steve Phillips arrived and, being sceptical and atheistic and funny, I expected nothing from him. The hand went up. He made a joke. But then he got it also, did the falling backwards thing, lay on the ground. Soon there was a pretty massive crowd, some police ambling about and having a look, even Prince Charles coming over. I had to admit there was something going on, something I didn’t really understand. And I knew it was related to the long email I wrote to Christian yesterday in response to his sending me ten pictures of Jesus’s crucifixion with various, “this is what God looks like” messages on it. I mean, in the dream someone did try it on with me and, open as I was to something happening, nothing happened. But I think the crux was that sentence I just wrote there: “something was going on, something I didn’t really understand.” Maybe best to leave the Christians to their thing. Maybe it is just a beginners’ tool, a gateway drug. But, still, the gateway has its place, it’s one way to get people ‘hooked’. Leave ‘em be. Let ‘em play their beginners’ games and you move on to other things.

Unless, of course, they really do have/know something you don’t have/know. I’m always open to the possibility. Think, in moments like this, Christ, what if Jesus really is the only/right way? It smacks in the face of everything I think and believe to be true – everything I’ve learned from Amma and Yogananda and Conversations With God and Weiss and my own experience – but I suppose it’s good to leave a little room for the possibility. Even though nothing in my evidence possibly presents it as true. But a little doubt keeps you honest. Nothing wrong with that.

Anyways, I’ll guess I’ll paste that email that I wrote to Christian here –

Oh Christian...what am I supposed to do with that? S'a bit grim i'n't it? ;-)

How about some quotes?

"To die for a cause is easy. To live for a cause is a whole other matter."

(Buddha spent thirty-five years helping people; Amma gives 20+ hours every day to helping others, and has done since the early 80's. I'm not saying they're any higher than Jesus. But people sacrifice their lives every day for their "higher cause". Suicide bombers, for example. Jesus's life is the message, not his death. I really think it's time for Christianity to come out of its "death obsession" and martyr phase.)

"There's none so pious as the converted."

(It's funny I was thinking about you on the way home today, and about Mosaic and similar things. About the youthfulness of those involved. You've got the unlearned young teaching the unlearned young teaching more unlearned young and making those unlearned young into leaders. To be a bit more crass, the blind leading the blind. I'm not saying you're not beautiful lovely people - but it's a bit much to go parading around saying you know stuff about God when you're barely out of nappies.)

"Extremes create extremes."

(I was thinking of that when I was thinking about the Christian 'moshing' videos. It's probably why I mock them while just smile at genuine moshers. Genuine moshers say they're doing their mad crazy thing because it's fun; Christian moshers say they're doing their mad crazy thing because they're God's chosen people and everyone else is wrong and what they're doing is holy and good and God's will. Extremes create extremes. I think you'd do well to think about that. You try and push people in a certain direction they're either going to buckle or push back. Why is it Christians bear the brunt of atheist's attacks? Why not Hindus and Buddhists? Answer: probably because Hindus and Buddhists don't shove their religion down other people's throats.)

"Certainty can be a great mask for insecurity."

(One thing I've found: the more devout and public a person is in their faith, probably the more uncertainty and insecurity they have deep down. When you realise the truth you also realise you don't need anyone else to believe what you believe because your belief doesn't rely on theirs.)

"Ours is not the only way, ours is but another way."

(One day, hopefully, all religious extremists will just chill the eff out and realise this. Religion was chiefly borne of man's ego. Ego = separation = the opposite of God, which is Unity. If you think anyone is something other than God's child you're not seeing the whole picture. I understand why ego, why insecurity, why the need to be the chosen ones and to be right and for others to be wrong. But there's a better way than that. A smarter and wiser and bigger and more all-encompassing way.)

Have you heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant? Or the sick man and his doctor? They're good ones; I'll tell them you.

1. A man leads a blind man to an elephant and asks him to describe it to him. The blind man holds the elephant's ear and says, ah, yes, an elephant is big and flat and floppy. Another man describes its leg, like a tree trunk. Another it's tusk, smooth and tapered and curved. No no no, says the first blind man, that's not what an elephant is like, an elephant is big and fat and floppy. No no no, says the third man (and also the fourth, and the fifth) and they all start to fight thinking their own description is right.

2. A man goes to his doctor because of a certain ailment and his doctor prescribes him a medicine. The man goes home but instead of taking the medicine he makes an altar to the prescription and begins to worship it. No improvement. He returns to the doctor and the doctor explains, no no, look you have to actually use the prescription. Ah doc, says the man, you are so wise, I understand perfectly now. And off he goes and on the way holds the prescription and chants, one pill in the morning, two pills in the evening, one pill in the morning...and still no improvement. He returns to the doctor and the doctor explains again. Oh, you're so wise, says the man and off he goes. Returns home. And starts to castigate his neighbours and townsfolk telling them how useless their own doctors are and how wonderful his doctor is, how they're all fools for going to the wrong doctor. And still he doesn't take the medicine...

My child, you're ever such a young sprout. Find a bit of humility and open your eyes to the possibility that there just may be a great many things in this world beyond your current understanding. Check out the words of Ramakrishna, Amma, Julian of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing, St Francis of Assisi, Mother Meera, Paramahansa Yogananda, among many thousands of others. It's only your ignorance that allows you to say, "my doctor is the only true doctor that ever was and ever will be." Is it really so bad that there are other good doctors in the world and that there's still a trillion and one things to learn and understand, and plenty to unlearn too. The movement is from ignorance towards knowledge. From separation towards unity. From fear towards love. Which way do you want to go? This is my fear: that I see all these beautiful young shining minds and that instead of opening up further and further and growing into wonder they burrow ever deeper into narrow, indoctrinated beliefs, stuffing their ears to the nagging voice of reality, and becoming more and more 'certain' that they already have the truth they profess to seek. I really want to believe you're better than that.

Also: "belief is for things you don't KNOW, only hope to be true. The louder the belief, the less likely, alas, that you know."

You know it's only love that motivates me to say these things. Actually reading the Bible that partly prompted it. Some passage about the responsibility of saving others from their ignorance. Not sure I buy into that - so many of them! so few of us! - but, there you go, I done it.

Anyways, goodness only knows what prompted all that! ;-)

Big love,

Rory

– and then move on to what I really wanted to talk about, which was having another look at Shawn’s reading from a few months back, somehow drawn there this morning. Maybe one line at a time. So…

You perceive a gulf between the connection that once was to a perceived lack you now find within yourself.

That’s true. Or I guess it was. Haven’t really been thinking about it lately. Been too busy with work and also with thinking about other things like Greece and the psychotherapy course and refereeing and my life.

This lack, this perceived emptiness has created a yearning in you, a desire for connection, for purpose.

Ay, there’s the rub: a yearning for purpose, to feel useful, to have something more than [what I perceive as] shallow interactions with others and the world.

What must be understood is that it is only your perception which allows a distance from your connection, from the divine, from us. We have never left. The connection you feel has diminished has never retreated, in fact you are constantly being bathed in our light, in our energy it is only the aperture of your mind which has contracted leaving you feeling as though life has darkened.

Hm. Well maybe that I’m not thinking about my perceived lack of connection anymore is a sign that I’ve come to accept this statement as true and relax into it. Or maybe I just got busy with other things.

This constriction of flow has created a need to reach out, to find comfort in any way that you consider possible in your current state of perception.

You mean women? Lol. Or in busyness, work, looking for career, travel?

Probably in women, huh? Well I can’t argue with that. Although later on you do say something that makes me think my constant thoughts on women and relationship are actually okay and in accordance with the deeper desires of my soul. I do need another, on some level. But the reaching out is still there. Yes, I’m not at peace with the world, the way things are, feel a strong need to do something more with my life rather than just ‘being’, and so I’m reaching out. The thoughts on knuckling down – once again – to some writing. To doing something “with/for the world”. But what is that desire? For the world still turns and there are seven billion people in it and I, as one man – and one deeply flawed and unenlightened man – could never really do that much anyway.

Am I Ramana Maharshi’s outward-looking mind thinking I need to first wake everyone else up in my own dream? To be some sort of saviour? To…

Well, probably they’re the kind of fruitless speculations I don’t really need to get into here. The original point was “seeking comfort” – and, I suppose, more precisely seeking “mental comfort.” The mind wanting peace. The mind wanting to feel that it’s where it needs to be, not missing out, not wasting time. An image there of a basement flat in Leeds. And the thought of my life as recently lived, refereeing and working and slowly ticking ever onwards achieving very little tangible except the growth of a bank balance and a ticking off of days while the body ages and wrinkles and moves ever onwards into middle age and old age and death. Depressing thought. Terrifying thought. That I won’t crack the secret in my youth and will one day find myself grown up and no longer able to live mad and poor searching for my treasure.

In any case, I’m off to Greece tomorrow, and maybe all these speculations are in vain…

Loneliness is a self-made void that can never be filled by anything in the outer world. It is a vacuum which draws forth and is never satisfied.

Yup, I believe that.

Ask yourself why it is that you feel disconnected. Target that which separates you from the ever present flow which constantly strives to flow through you.

I think I asked myself. I’m not sure I really got an answer. Why do I feel disconnected? What is it that separates me from the “ever present flow”?

…

Fear. Fear of…various things, really. (I’m typing now without thinking, without foreknowledge of what is to come.) Fear that I’ll do something crazy (such as flying off to a country on a one-way ticket and abandoning my comfortable life just because I one morning had a vision of the name of a city in Greece). Fear that all this ‘spiritual stuff’ – “the promises of God” – is bunkum and make-believe and, yes, “too good to be true.” That it’s just mad people saying mad things. That I’d be better off settling down and being normal and committing myself to the material existence. That it’d be wiser and smarter to just work and get rich and buy a house. That I’m nothing special and all this God chasing is just making me crazy and leading me further and further away from the vast majority of men and where will it all end? Fear that I’m ruining my life with the crazy thoughts. Fear that…well, I seem to be getting away from the original question, started talking more about my fears for this upcoming trip to Greece. Original question was about the [perceived] separation from the “ever present flow.”

Hm. I guess it’s fear. Is the “ever present flow” the thing that presents wonderful ideas to my mind, ideas that I don’t act on ‘because of fear’? Ideas like those I had when I took the acid? Ideas about starting up a little church? Ideas I get excited about and roll around in and then push back out of my mind ‘cos they’re too difficult and different and crazy?

That’s fear, isn’t it? A lot of people go with ideas like that, and probably far crazier and more ill-intentioned people than me.

Ideas for writing, too. All these things that constantly burn within me that I don’t really do, unless in the short-term, momentary flickers on a good day like when I got all determined to ‘pray for others’ that afternoon behind 5 Hessle and just watching movies and being comfortable instead.

Maybe that’s what stops me. Maybe the flow is there and I just don’t “go with it.” I may have hit on something pretty big there. Maybe those ideas of a little group in Leeds, in my little flat, weren’t so crazy after all. But it’s like that time I tried to have a party as a teenager and nobody came. I’d just feel so devastated if nobody came to the party. I mean, that was a different party – a lame party where the only aim was to get drunk – but I know it’s stayed with me. I hate the thought of trying to get something going. But maybe it’s the not doing of it that is causing me my tension. I cry out to God for instructions of what I should do – probably deep down in inside more wanting an answer like, “fly to Canada” or “marry this amazingly hot girl” or “train to be a psychotherapist” – but perhaps God’s already suggested it. Perhaps those ideas of a little group are where it’s at. Or going to the canyon in Mexico. Or whatever writing ideas I’m presented with.

I really need to think about this. And to endeavour to “go with the flow” whatever that may be. And for the first time I see it may not be about leaving everything behind and just living one day at a time, on the road, with a backpack over my shoulder. It may be about something a little more ‘settled’ than that.

Your mind has been busy building reality in such a way that you may function in a world which is daunting to you. You perceive reality as something other than what it is.

This is a terrifying indictment and statement, if true. For what have I been doing with my time then if all it has been is trying to conform to a reality that isn’t reality at all? Yes, I’ve been trying to make it work in the so-called “real world.” Getting grounded. Associating with ‘normal people’. Becoming able to shoot the shit and chat about everyday things and function around blokes without wanting to tear my own head off. Able to rent a place and stay in it for more than to months. Able to tolerate supermarkets and a city built around shopping. Able to live with women. Able to contemplate career and check out the housing market. And even though it’s not truly satisfying, at least it’s ‘sane’ and functional. I was out there, man. I felt like life wanted to bring me to this place. And now you’re telling me it’s all been misguided? Or is that really what you’re telling me?

Your mind has been busy building reality in such a way that you may function in a world which is daunting to you.

Yes, the world is daunting to me. The world of work and of getting by in the day to day. Times I was amazed and staggered that people managed to find and do jobs, barely able to comprehend how I could make that leap. But I did it. And it wasn’t too hard. I found things which didn’t appear to hurt my soul – nor swell up my eyes – and it’s nigh on two years that I’ve been in Leeds. I’ve barely left. It’s not the most satisfying life – but then, that’s perhaps because I’ve neglected the things that could have satisfied me, such as writing – always satisfies me when I actually do it, no matter where I am – and those ideas of starting a little group, a church, a ‘whatever you want to call it’. Other people do that sort of thing. But then, is it not just me “looking outwards” again? Seeking to fill a hole with others? Again, “building reality so that I can function in this daunting world”? Or is it more than that? The “going with the flow”? The fulfilment of some divine purpose, the purpose that I cry out for?

I guess we’ll see. And…

You perceive reality as something other than what it is.

Okay. Good. So what is reality? If I perceive it as something other than what it is – if what I think of as reality isn’t really reality – then, pray tell me, what’s the frickin’ point in anything that I’m doing? If everything’s serving some false God? If every decision I make, thing I do, idea I have is all barking up the wrong tree anyway?

It’s all very well telling me I don’t know what reality is – but a far more useful thing would be to show me. Go on: show me, I dare you. Take me to some cave in Greece. Let me sit there in the dark with nothing but a drip of water for forty days. I get so bored of not doing something like that, of not knowing the answers to these, life’s biggest questions. Would that show me reality? Maybe abandoning everything and going to Greeceon a one-way ticket isn’t such a bad idea after all. Time once more for “death or glory”? Or just more hare-brained ideas powered by a delusion and inflated sense of “self-worth”?

What is reality? What is reality? I want to know.

Show me. Don’t let me give any more of my precious time to living for a false idea of truth. Man, it’s gonna be so frustrating if I get to the end of this life and then look back and see that I was living it all so totally wrong all along…

You long for the magic, the synchronicity and your idea that the world is a place devoid of this is mistaken.

You’re right, I know. And by “the world” I guess you mean “Leeds” or “the city.” Because if you mean “planet Earth” then I suppose I don’t really have much option for escape from that. But if you mean “the urban world versus the quiet and peaceful natural world”…well, I guess what I’m saying is, yes, I know one can find God in the city – theoretically, anyway (thinking Yogananda and Calcutta) – but then it hasn’t really been my experience and the noise and craziness of it doesn’t really work for me in the same way that nature does. More people in the city, and therefore more chances for people-based interactions – my recent encounter with the evangelicals testimony to “synchronicity in ‘the world’” – but those things are few and far between. The power of the environment. The mindset of the people therein. It does often feel like I’m surrounded purely by shoppers. I mean, I’ve lived here two years and not very much has happened when you think about it. And yet, for some reason, I haven’t been allowed to leave.

So what do you mean by “the world”? Planet Earth? Or the worldly urban life of work and living in an apartment and associating with footballers and drunkards and people who only think about their paycheck and what’s on TV? ‘Cos, okay, I know it’s not devoid – but it don’t seem to have as much “magic and synchronicity” as I would like. And maybe that’s my fault. Maybe because I haven’t worked “to put it there.” Maybe because I’ve stifled my candle and not acted on the ideas that I’ve had. Maybe ‘cos I’ve kept my mouth shut and just looked to others to provide the things that interest me. And then become dissatisfied. And then turned against.

Maybe it really is up to me. But who am I to think such things? Knowing the delusion, the “exaggerated feelings of self-worth”, and the fact that I don’t even know what reality is anyway?

Or is it true that: “it’s not necessary to know all the answers to lead others in the search for them. One needn’t be a teacher to set oneself as the head of a group – its founder, its organiser – because even as the head you can still learn along with everyone else. That’s honesty, humility – and far more value to your ‘students’ than trying to be Mr Wise One who has it all together and has solved the whole shebang”?

Interesting that as I write this I lean towards that idea of starting a group, here in Leeds, in my old basement flat. The other day I wrote and I came to the conclusion that I should be buggering off to Mexico and living in the canyon (with a woman) and writing about it. And you wonder why I don’t trust my own mind, my thoughts? Once upon a time this writing used to get me down to the heart of the matter: but now it seems I have many different hearts. Once upon a time the road was straight and true, the way to take obvious. But now it is filled with forks, crossroads, roundabouts, five divergent directions and no clear signs as to which way to head.

God, I suppose, will show me the way. It’s one step at a time and all I have to do right now is go to Greece. A decision will be made and what I think the most important thing to do once that’s happened is to keep on walking, to not look back, to try and break through into some whole new reality instead of forever confusing the past and the future and straddling many different realities at once. Email and the internet are partly to blame, keeping me forever harking back to women and places and ideas long gone. Time to move on. To blaze a trail into the glorious future. To forget about what I once was and to really embolden to “go with the flow” and “fulfil that mysterious will of God,” no matter how daunting or challenging it might be. That’s what I keep asking to do. I just don’t seem to have the braves to do it.

And the divergent directions? Just to name them and put them out there. Nicky and Ireland. Laura and Yorkshire. Psychotherapy. My dad’s shop. Canada. Brittney (God, I can’t believe I’m thinking about that one!) Eric and British Columbia. To “live where I belong.” Mexicoand my canyon. Writing vs working. Or both, but definitely writing. Leeds and refereeing and squash. Travelling and being a devil-sticking vagabond. And always California, even though my dreams forever portend it unfavourable (right now). Those are the things, the crossroads, the decisions. I won’t talk about them now. I’ll trust that the answers will come. Getting into them will only be an exercise in thinking, won’t provide any genuine answers because the time for answers isn’t now, I’d only flip-flop back and forth anyways. But just so you know what I’m thinking…

Calm your mind, open yourself, you will find that this material world is made of the same substance as that which flowed through you for a time when you finally opened yourself up to it. Go forth into the world as a child, with wonder and see it pregnant with possibilities as you once did.

Well…okay. I tried that a little by riding my bike and saying, “ma-ma” at everything and it kind of worked in making me feel like a child. But, you know, living in Leedsand paying your rent and thinking about jobs isn’t really “being as a child.” Nor contending with the minds of religious people. Nor having to deal with women. It’s not easy to be a man-child in this town when you work as a football referee and everything’s so concrete and everything. I mean, I pull it off pretty well – there’s no one gonna accuse me of being a grown-up (and I know you don’t mean, literally, be a child; I don’t mean to labour the point) – but it seems a lot easier to do it in the alternative lifestyle where you just gad about with a backpack and toss sticks in the air and –

So why don’t I just do that then?

Ha! That’s a bloody good question. ;-)

Calm my mind. Is this calming my mind? Is writing good for me or not? Or is it all just mind games, the ego, and the opposite of that which I seek? I’ve been remembering lately – in the wake of trying to quit writing my blog – that my best period of growth came in Mexico when I neither blogged nor went anywhere near the internet. The most synchronicities. The most magic. The internet and blogging and sharing things through writing had nothing to do with it. I’ll quit it for a while. I’ll try and be a bit more like that. Write on paper and then chuck it away (or not). Oh, to be back in 1996 and less connected times when there was only the future and old people were gone forever unless you carefully kept their names and addresses! Oh, the ancient Chinese curse of “being born in interesting times.”

This material world is made of the same substance as that which flowed through you for a time. Go forth into it as a child, with wonder, and see it pregnant with possibilities.

Ok. I will. I shall walk wide-eyed and open to whatever comes. I shall be present and think not of the past or the future. I shall get off that plane in Corfu devoid of plans and ideas and just go walking into the Greek sun. Get on a bus if I feel called that way. Spend my money without a thought for hoarding it. Chat with everyone and follow those I feel drawn to, and let those who feel drawn to me follow me. I shall blink like a child and not know where I am. And if it takes me three months to get to Korinth, that’s what it will take. I’m starting to feel glad I’m going only one-way. I don’t care what happens to me or to my wallet. The worst thing? That I spend a hundred, a hundred and fifty quid getting back instead of the sixty I spent getting there. Oh, boo hoo hoo. So I get there and I find out it’s not for me and I should have planned to come back to Leeds after two weeks after all. Oh well. To think I’m letting my mind get bent just at the thought of a bit of money! Foolish child. Spend it! That’s what it’s there for. Man, I’ve got so much. And plenty more where that came from too. Can’t believe I’ve become so tight. And getting worse with it all the time.

Go forth as a child.

I will. I need to relinquish adult things. I just want to be free.

And then you move swiftly on to talking about relationships with women and, wow, I’m right back to contemplating life as an ‘adult’…

You have progressed on your own and have reached a stand still. There is a stubbornness within you. A refusal to surrender as a means of self-protection. A time has come in which to carry on with your journey with a new opportunity to diminish the selfishness within your nature. This selfishness is not unusual or to be labeled as a negative trait, this notion will only strengthen it. You instinctively are aware that the way in which you may be able to accomplish this is with another. To share a life, to share a love with someone. To grow together, leapfrogging each other on your path of experience.

Ay ay ay…and there I am, rocketed right back to thinking about Laura, to thinking how she was ‘presented to me’, and to thinking how I’ve been avoiding being with her for nearly twelve years now. Is that my “refusal to surrender”? That at age 25 she and I were brought together and that I’ve gone nowhere since? Certainly, that’s about the time my growth stopped – felt most explicitly when I was in Victoria in 2001 chasing after Sara – and I know that was linked to women (to, more precisely, my mother issues, as Shawn’s angel pointed out). Twelve years and still she’s around and still I’m thinking about whether or not to be with her. So many reasons to go for it, and several reasons not to. How can I be with a woman I don’t find attractive? But then what of the lesson of Meg Ryan learned while watching When Harry Met Sally the other day? That, wow, she was so hot and sexy and attractive and, man, 25 years down the line she’s just gone wrong (as far as physical appearance goes). So what of basing one’s relationship on something so fleeting as that? At least “never making a pretty woman your wife” won’t be disappointing when age kicks in, as it invariably must, and as it will with me. Such silly shallowness! But then…

It’s not just that, it’s other things too. Her worrying. Her haranguing me about locking windows and doors even when we’re just sitting in the garden. I dunno, maybe they’re nothing things too. The other day, when off in Scarborough – and away from everything, and therefore with some time to really contemplate my life – I think of her and I think, wow, I actually feel bad for not being with her – feel bad for her – for the years 26 to 38 when maybe she could have been bouncing children by now, been a satisfied and happy wife and mother. Maybe I’ve deprived her, and maybe that’s really bad of me. Selfish and stubborn. And maybe it’s not done me any good either. My spiritual growth stopped around that time and though I’ve achieved certain things – university, my relationship with Sara, written a book, a bit of travel and a bit of learning – where have I really gone in my life? Mostly it feels like circles. Like treading water. Like being at standstill. Where God and spiritual experience and bliss? Meanwhile, happily married and daddy Shawn meets an Indian guru and merges with the oneness and gets the thing I crave. So maybe I’ve been silly and missed out. Maybe just twelve wasted years. Twelve years of going nowhere. Just stunted growth.

But then what of Nicky? The woman I met when I came back from Mexico and Israel with my mind fixed on “finding a wife”? Living in her yurt in the countryside in Ireland, loving nature and kind of embodying the dreams I once had for myself. Such connection and power during my emotional upheaval earlier this year. And yet so bored when I was actually with her. Did I really love her? Like her? I’m not sure I did. But then perhaps maybe a fault in me that I say that, and a fault that could be overcome. Would she really accept me as I am, the way Laura does, or is it the better me I presented when I was trying to win her back, and a me that I may not be able to sustain? I seem to be quite lazy and content to do not very much at heart, and I’d probably slide back into that given half a chance. Laura doesn’t really mind that; Nicky does, and that would create problems.

Laura, Nicky, Laura, Nicky…

I walk into an office with these thoughts in my mind and say to the security guard, wanting his surname for the form and half-remembering it from before, “is it Nicky?”

“Yes,” he says, and I can’t help but smile and shake my head at it, shades of Elijah and Rosemary and all weird California messages from before.

But then Laura’s story far more empowering, the message from Momma and her fulfilment of it earlier this year. The face-disappearing connections we have. The ease and comfort I feel with her. Rested and relaxed. And that “the place where I belong”? But if so, why such thoughts of Canada and Mexico? Or just more stubborn selfishness, refusal to surrender, escape hatches and running away?

I need somebody. I want to give my self, my life to a woman. I want it to be the right woman but even you say there is no right or wrong and I just don’t understand how that can be. I mean, I’ve chosen women before and, given that I’m no longer with them, I suppose they must have been ‘wrong’. I mean, Perlilly was awesome and, though there was nothing ‘wrong’ with her, she was certainly ‘wrong’ for me. So how can I know if Laura or Nicky or somebody else is going to be ‘right’?

This is the answer I seek in Greece. Let it be Grace. Let it be Brittney. Or let it be someone less glamorous and exotic and let it be Laura, in Wakefield, back home, where I always was. I don’t mind. I just want to get it on. And to try and be a little less selfish and stubborn and stunted. To learn something about love. To…

To grow together, leapfrogging each other on your path of experience.

This is the problem. Laura and I don’t leapfrog. Nicky and I did that, trading karma and growth. Laura watches X-Factor and cooks the tea. She’d make an excellent housewife and mother. Nicky, on the other hand, brought out that emotional side in me. But then maybe that was just my choice.

Oh fuck: what are Laura and I? You must please tell me. Just brother and sister, having made incestuous mistakes? Or something more than that: husband and wife? Lovers and the mother of my children? This is the other answer I seek in Greece. The answer to Momma’s original riddle. Was that not just Sara all along? It pointed to it at the time, and to Canada. But then…

You remember that I Ching sitting in Grimethorpe with Laura pondering the upcoming Canadian trip? “You can’t escape your destiny,” it had said – and I took that as a sign to go…

Well, I’ve written these things a million times: no point going over them again here. No answers to come today. No reason to dwell. Some mad, crazy cave in Greece and me pouring my heart out to God in wild reckless abandon and only leaving when incontrovertible, genuine answers come. Let’s move on.

Your mind, your self-created idea of yourself is your biggest obstacle. You attract what you are, this you know and when you encounter someone who is energetically matched to you, you see yourself and reject the person who you are with. This rejection is indicative of an unwillingness to reach inside and face the fears and misgivings you have born of a troubled past and a misguided sense of self-worth.

True. Can’t argue with that. Think I’m better than everyone else and still think, deep down, I’m some sort of Messiah, too holy to get involved in the mess of human romantic relationships, just preserving myself for the day when God plucks me from obscurity and booms out, “you are my beloved son and I’m putting you to work in a Jesus Christ stylee.” Such madness! But that is genuinely what I think.

As for the “rejecting someone who is energetically matched to me, someone who reflects myself” – well, there again, that seems to be pointing more to Nicky than Laura. Nicky was very much like me and, yes, I rejected the parts of myself that I didn’t like. Laura’s not really like me at all and I don’t reject her because of the things inside myself – or at least I don’t think I do – I reject her because I…because I don’t relish the idea of the life she offers me. Too humdrum. Too basic. Something like that – though that may be completely wrong, both in my idea of the life and in my interpretation of the rejection. I dunno. I do know that I want an answer though: Laura, Nicky, or someone else. That’s all that I care about. Not what the answer is, but that I get an answer and it’s an answer I can believe in enough to stick to it.

Dear one, you are a beacon of light hiding under an idea of yourself as a limited being. You have been given rare insight and experience and yet these fade into the background in favor of a more realistic outlook on life and your place in it.

So? What should I do with that? That just makes me confused, thinking maybe I should be out there Jesus-style and shining my light – and then a voice there screams: “forget about flipping Jesus!” Okay, maybe there’s a middle point somewhere in there: ie, not doing nothing, but not trying to live some weird ideas of modern-day Messiah. Oh, I don’t know: you tell me I’m a beacon of light, that I sacrifice that in favour of a more realistic – I read: materialistic – view of life and that just makes me want to be spirit-boy, forget all about marriage to a normal, worldly woman. Or can the two things marry up, a la Lahiri Mahasaya? If the latter actually the precursor to the former, a la, perhaps, Shawn and maybe even L.M. and Sri Yukteswar themselves? My path, pre-determined and destined, and for twelve years now ignored by me, marriage the gateway to realisation?

To say that you will attract what you are does not imply that you must become a better man, a more whole individual and then go forth to attract, you are at a place of stand still and require others to help you grow as you are in this moment. It is necessary to forgive yourself for your past and to forgive those things within you that you perceive as unworthy traits. This can be practiced and accomplished by doing the same in others with the understanding that the flaws and imperfections you see in others are only a reflection of that which you despise within yourself.

That’s Nicky and all the things we lived earlier this year all the way. I do forgive. I do understand her because I understand myself in her. But does that mean she’s the one I should commit to? The thing is, there’s nothing really about Laura that I “despise” – not that I’m aware of – so how could she be the one I’m pushing away?

You are a self-created being full of only light and love and the beauty of diversity, it is labels of good and bad which weigh like an anchor leaving you in stagnant waters. See in others this same beauty of diversity, learn to cherish it within them as well as yourself. Vanquish from your mind the ideal of the perfect partner because it is a false construct and not in line with your vibrational needs at this time. Do not fear making a wrong choice, ride the wave of life where it takes you, see the wonder and beauty in others, have a sense of humor about the labels which your mind persistently places on certain traits or ideals, only then can you allow yourself to surrender to another person and thus weaken the selfish tendencies and false ideals you have created. Through our eyes you are pure beauty and potential, a light which begs to stream forth into the world. Your mind-created ideals appear as murky shadows which lay over this light obscuring it. Stop worrying and thinking so much in regards to relationships and your own purpose, go forth and feel your way through each moment rather than ponder the moments to come. This must be done by you, for yourself. This is your own chosen journey and there is no benefit in being told what steps to take, you must feel your way through, you must walk away from the beach of the notion of this world of so-called reality and wade into the water of feeling and experience until you are ready to plunge into its depths. We are with you every moment, we are guiding you with the quietest of whispers, but the choices must be your own.

Where’s the key in all of that? “No perfect partner, not in line with my vibrational needs at this time.” “Cherish the diversity in others, as well as myself” – a challenge, that, controller that I am, and fearful of the whims of others, their potential infidelities, their possible dabblings in alcohol and drugs (perfect mirrors of me).

Real key is probably that “stop worrying about things and just feel your way through the world one moment at a time” – which of course appeals to my reluctance to commit and plan ahead, to forever keep myself ‘free’.

And the ending: “you must walk away from the beach of the notion of so-called reality and wade into the water of feeling and experience.” Wow. What a sentence. What an enticement. That wonderful though life is now it’s not even dipping one’s toe into true reality. That even wading is only a precursor to plunging into some unknown depths, some unimaginable experience. What is the way to that? Marriage? Staying in this city? Leaving it? Or, as is outlined here, and as I conclude every time I search for an answer, “taking one step, one moment at a time, using my feelings as my guide.”

I go to Greece. I hope to still my mind. I hope to be able to hear those quiet whispers. And I dream of a ridiculous, tearful reunion with Chaley – or even Sara – all the while praying it isn’t just the ego part of my mind wanting to shake a fist at the world and say, I told you so, I am awesome and especially blessed!

I guess something’s gotta change soon. I’ve been thinking that for a fair old while. But it’s all now coming to a head, what with the squeeze from the outside world. Refereeing and my dad’s shop and psychotherapy press down on me and I’m either going to buckle – to surrender to that – or I’m going to get out of the way, jump to the side, and emerge into some new way of life. Can’t go on the way I’m going though. More to offer than just riding a bike and coming back to an empty house and filling my time with internet and movies. At least, I hope so.

Writing. A relationship. Growth and God. Whatever I think, whenever I get pressed, it always comes down to that.

Amen.

Private August journallings #5

And so he finally sits down to write again. A relaxing empty day up early doing not much and playing some Mariokart Wii and then cycling to and from Otley with a women’s football match in between (that was nice: the banter and the sunshine and the being involved in the reffing, and makes me think positively of Yorkshire life). Then back to Yeadon for more pretty much nothing ‘cept watching the rest of When Harry Met Sally and trying to delete viruses off the family’s computer…

I’m still here in the family house in Yeadon, feeling strangely at home – but in a kind of strange way. I guess two and a bit weeks having it to myself I got well accustomed and then when they returned and said I should stay and the whole thing’s fine and…

Well, I don’t know. I’m just here. Pottering around. Not melancholy or wanting away. But I am going away anyway…

Tuesday seems like the day for a decision. I find a bunch of flights and eventually, with Ian and Jenny’s help, book one late into the evening. I write five down on slips of paper – one round-trip, four one-way – plus a slip that says, “figure it out yourself” – and then I get Ian to pick one and it’s the one I probably thought it would be all along. Not Edinburgh on the 16th or Kefalonia on the 18th but Leeds-Bradford to Corfuon the 22nd. That’s good. Ian’s mum’s dying and the five extra days should give him a bit of breathing space at work to sort all that out. So I’ll fulfil Leeds commitments and then be off. Not sure whether to buy a return before I go or not; will probably have a think. I’m a little bit excited and a little bit nervous too.

But let’s backtrack then to last Wednesday, and to the mad day of –

No, what I’ll do is write an email I can send to Brittney or Eric or somebody and just cut and paste it here:

So! Just as I’m trying to figure everything out and ‘get normal’ there I go again having such a very typical ‘Rory day’; for example, here was last Wednesday: I have work in the morning; then I tell my dad I’ll do the last hour or so in the shop for him; then I have an appointment with the counsellor 6 till 7 (thinking most likely to fire her off); then I’ve got to go ref a football match about a twenty-minute bike ride away 7.30 till say 9.15; then I’ve got to zoom back into town, swap bags, and make a train to Scarborough at 9.42 to rock up there at eleven in the dark and find somewhere to sleep for an interview the next day. Dad says guesthouses won’t be taking people in at that time. Boss says you don’t want to be camping and turning up to your interview with leaves in your hair. But of course that’s what I figure I’ll have to do so I stick a tent and sleeping bag in my bag – tent cost a tenner from Argos and leaks – and the plan’s all set. Except my bike gets a puncture on my way to my dad’s shop – like fifth in a month! – and I can’t find my repair kit. At five thirty I’m still looking at shit online and wondering whether to cancel the counsellor and make the football early and see if I can take buses where I need to go. But the bus/walk obviously takes twice as long as cycling – of course it does – and the whole thing seems impossible. Solution? Fire off counsellor early into the session and skedaddle outta there and hopefully kick off the match earlier. It’s 5.35 now. This is all so typical of me. If I need to be at work at 11am and it takes 7 minutes and forty seconds to get there – of course I’ve timed it – then I’ll still be sat in my sarong at 10.51 not even knowing where my shoes are. And if there’s a puncture needs fixing I figure still at least 10.40 before I need to get moving and maybe even time for a fried egg sandwich so…

At 5.55 still being no clearer I take one last look for the puncture repair kit and find it. The tyre has a hole in it. I tape some card in there and hope it stops the tube popping out while I wait for the glue to dry and then stick the patch on and wham it all back together and pump it up. It seems to be holding. I zoom on down to the counsellor’s and I’m only three minutes late. Pretty soon we get into loggerheads and I confess that I don’t trust her and don’t think she’s as smart as me and laugh about lots of things and by half past say, I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to call this a day and get on my way. We shake on it. She’s no doubt glad to see the back of me. Poor thing. She’s started bristling and defending and proving herself. But I got one or two good things out of it. Then I zoom on up to the football and hope the tyre holds. It holds.

Get the teams kicked off early. Ref the game. Two yellows and some meaty sliding challenges in the rain and typical amount of testerone bullshit flying about the pitch. It’s all water off the duck’s back to me by now. Who cares? The ball goes one way or the other and the ref makes a few errors here and there – who doesn’t? – and it’s all so silly to get so nasty about.

Game over. Someone wins 2-1. Some people are happy with me and the other fifty percent go home grumbling. Then I’m on my bike at a nice leisurely 9.11 and I’ve over half an hour to make that train. Back to dad’s shop. Get changed. Quickly run wet clothes and unneeded refereeing gear upstairs. Swap bags for pre-prepared one with tent in it. Cycle to station. Take a bit too much time and end up running for train – but then, when was the last time I didn’t run for a train and have to, you know, wedge my foot in the door and jump on huffing and puffing? I just don’t seem to do it any other way. Everything always at the last minute. Everything always crammed in and disorganised.

I’m making this sound like fun – but it weren’t no fun at the time…

Train. One hour twenty to Scarborough. Fairly mellow. Leaving town for first time in a long time. Something a bit open-ended. Nothing to get back for till Sunday. The interview and Scarboroughand…

I get there. It’s quiet and dark. I walk for an hour, right up to the castle on the headland, and search for a spot. Try to climb into the castle and scale a fifteen foot wall and then realise it’s all lit and locked up and guarded and get scared on the way down not able to see where my feet need to go. Use a tree instead. Then find a place and set up tent and muse. It’s mad to be 37 and out there like this just like it was when I was 23. I seem to have learned nothing. I seem incapable or making rational and sensible decisions. I’m supposed to be a grown man! But still I’m just turning up places with no plans and sleeping in crazy English patches of trees which only the bums do round here. I wonder what’s wrong with my brain…

And in the night, it rains. And the patter of the rain keeps me awake and I maybe sleep an hour, maybe two, in total. And the tent leaks and the water creeps in and pools in the corners and the sleeping bag gets a bit wet and all my clothes do too (I’ve just the one set, plus a pair of shorts that are already wet) yet in the morning it doesn’t seem to matter and once I’ve pulled on my damp jeans and realised everything’s okay it all just seems kind of funny. Not desperately tired. And twenty-five quid saved on a B&B. Who cares? Incapable is as incapable does.

I walk through town and am amazed at how ugly and base everyone appears. It’s like some horrible redneck nightmare; like the remnants of a failed nuclear experiment from the sixties. So much for Scarborough and the beautiful tranquil North Yorkshire coastline: I can see the sea and I haven’t seen the sea in nearly two years but I’m really not that bothered. Ho hum: a bunch of water. Mainly it’s MacDonald’s wrappers and pound shops and I know that’s a bit glum but, anyways, for some weird reason I decide to go eat breakfast in a pub and men are already ordering and sipping pints – it’s before 10a.m. – and it’s all I need since already feeling weird. I buy a book from the Oxfam about molecular biology and get stuck in: the cover says something about the link between genes and behaviour. I’ve been thinking lately maybe I’ve just got some very dodgy commitment or reliable or normal-making genes. Something that makes me incapable of making a sensible decision. Maybe something frontal lobe that’s gone awol or something inherited from one of my dodgy, disappearing dads and I’m, alas, just the same despite best intentions. This is one of the things that I’ve maybe stumbled on in the counselling sessions – the one I dominated and talked the whole way through figuring that was the best way to get my money’s worth, the poor counsellor’s interjections just annoying – that even though I may be able to improve on what they gave me I’m still in no ways actually in possession of the psyche and the ability to do that ideal thing and make it all the way to being stick-around middle-class dad. I guess I never realised that you could just be yourself even when yourself was imperfect and unable. Something like that. In any case, I’ve read the book – most of it was about research conducted on fruit fly – and I’m kind of thinking, hm, yes, I probably do have some mutant gene that compels me to illogically sleep in the rain in leaky tents and self-sabotage all pathways to middle-class money-security blisshood and the only difference between me and those scientifically screwed-up flies who run in the opposite direction to their cousins or do mating dances for the wrong sex or wake up way too early/too late is that I question my behaviour and somewhere know it’s wrong and they don’t. What gene causes a man to forever want to go off to a foreign country and go on unknown missions when he’s got a perfectly good life at home? What gene shuns good women for fantasy women, and then shun them too? What gene forever seeking answers and plans and then changing plans and then not knowing what to do but having to think of something anyway and probably choosing something mad? What gene drives me to this?

And, yes, not even important: important thing, perhaps, to just learn the lesson of the fly and instead of crippling oneself ‘cos observing one’s own particular mutation sending you oscillating away from the pack and trying to force oneself to join them/be like them just go gloriously and madly giving it and dance and whirl and spin away into the night because that’s what you were programmed to do. The fly can’t help it, has no choice in the matter, and doesn’t question. He’ll never know the pain of knowing one is flawed, and seeing so clearly what one should be, and even the steps that could bring one to it, but simply being unable.

I read of Neal Cassady and say, Neal, Neal, why didn’t you just stick working on the railroad and be a normal good husband for your wife and three kids with your swimming pool and neat little house instead of forever going off on mad journeys and loading yourself crazy with speed and flitting about all over the place for women who were no good for you – but how? How could he when that was the very way he was made. I’ve missed a trick there – not understood something very basic about the way human beings work – and maybe caused myself some stress and tension in the process. It’s all getting back to just doing and being whatever the fuck I want and marching to the beat of the weird fucked-up drummer within. How can I help it? How can I any longer pretend? Poor old Laura will just become another Carolyn Cassady always thinking that I can change into a ‘normal person’ and that change is just around the corner and, as she so truthfully predicts, really she’ll just get left “holding the baby” and much as I’ve tried to deny it all these years I’m starting to think, yes, that’s probably exactly what I’d do and maybe that’s something to therefore avoid or maybe it’s just my karma and there’s nothing I can do about it. Certainly, counsellor was right when she suggested that my unwillingness to even get into such a situation “until I was sure I would stick around” was partly based on a mistaken projection of possible future pain to some unborn, daddy-abandoned child (mine; me the daddy) because of what I myself experienced when, now I think of it, it wasn’t the single-parent thing that screwed me up but perhaps the quality of the parent I was left with. NC’s children grew up and became adults and, for better or for worse, exist in the world today. Maybe they took what he had and improved on it somewhat and are just those one or two steps closer to being “nice normal mom n pop n Buddy n sis” people that I kept thinking I wanted to be and could be but probably, reality accepting, just can’t. Maybe wrong of me too to stop the evolutionary chain thinking it’s got to be perfect or nothing – when perhaps it won’t be till great-grandson that one of my male line finally stops being mental and runaway and travelbug and responsibility-fearing. Biodad is off before I’ve even got feet and replacement dad is gone by six. Just maybe I could do better than that. But maybe not. Maybe best not to get into it at all. Point is: you’s got to be what you is, no?

I do something like that interview for the 4-year – four year! – course in psychotherapy and it’s a bit like being backed into a corner. Life diverges at that point and it’s a real moment of choice. No longer able to drift along or let the current take you where it will. No more deadend jobs that don’t need thinking about or living day-by-day. This is Big Decision Time: the decision that’ll take you into your forties and maybe define the whole rest of your life. On the one hand there’s financial commitment and commitment to a place and to the people that are in that place and also to a career – and the promise of money-security and not having to think about those things constantly and then the whole wife and family and home and not being skint thing once it’s all done and dusted and one is a swanky well-established shiny couch therapist – and on the other hand it’s like, well, is this really what you want to do and, if not, what’s the thing that you really want to do instead? It’s like when Tyler Durden’s got his gun to your head saying, what the fuck are you doing working in the Chucky Cheese if you spent your whole life dreaming of being a rodeo clown? I get backed into these corners and I always come out thinking about writing. Thinking about really knuckling down to it. Thinking about all the projects I have backed up in my brain; all the started but unfinished ones; all the times I’ve made that resolve and then forgot about it ‘cos it was mad or silly or nobody wanted it or I needed money or I just got lazy. Thinking how envious I am of those that just do it. Thinking I wish it was me. What is this lure of psychotherapy anyway? A path born out of fear and panic and weird ideas of some future me that probably isn’t me at all? But then what of the writing thing? Isn’t that just unrealistic and childish and never really going to put the roof over my head or provide any sort of true (child-raising) satisfaction? And yet it is what I dream of. Where does one go in this life? With dreams or with responsibilities? For not all dreamers and artists make their way. But then even some of those are eventually vindicated. Such madness! And it’s little wonder that life seems so unreal and pointless and confusing. Like I read the other day, you’d be hard-pressed to find twenty people that would sit and watch Van Gogh paint a picture – but you’d fill Wembley Stadium with paying punters to see him cut his ear off. It’s such a crazy-ass world. And now his paintings sell for tens of millions. Oh, for Van Gogh luxury of asylum-dwelling away from worlds of rent and food-shopping! I’m not even capable of feeding myself greens these days. And I’m not sure I could even learn. Everything is in my genes, my being – my dreaming, my inability, my laziness, my indecision and vacillating – and probably there’s nothing I can do about it. Oh, to be a clueless fly, bonkers but to have no idea that I should be anything else! To just run with program and live it out till the bitter end. To have no notion of any other way to be, just ‘cos the mass of society – the non-mutant flies all sitting at the light end of the bottle – have long since figured it out and sit content supping their sugary snacks in also blissful ignorance of their own programs and gears.

What me? To give in to this stupid fucking madness? Or to just marry the girl and live in Wakefield and grow old and –

Hm. There’s no way I can send that to Brittney or Eric now. Gone off on one. Lost all ability to write anything sensical. Which is generally the way. So much for writing dreams. When did I go loony? Or…

The other thing is that, give it six months and I generally look back on whatever I’ve typed with astonishment and glee and –

Let’s get back to the story. To Thursday after the interview – did I mention I got accepted? – and to napping a little on Scarborough beach amongst a truly horrifying selection of people – I really am a crazed and terrible snob and humanity-loather – and then doing the next crazy thing and instead of going back to Leeds or taking a train or a bus somewhere just instead walking and walking till I was out of Scarborough right along the main road for maybe five miles while the traffic roared by ceaselessly and I really can’t believe how many cars there are in this country and how often people use them. I thought there was supposed to be a recession and petrol prices were prohibitive? But everywhere you go the cars are speeding past at one per second, even on little village country roads, even on a Sunday. Today near Pool it was backed up from a crossroads. Where the fuck is everybody going? We’ve all gone insane and I know it wasn’t like this twenty or thirty years ago. When will it –

Seamer. I walked to Seamer and I spied a Morrison’s and I cried with delight. Supermarkets save my soul. Something you can rely on. A bag of dates and a bit of bread and maybe a bottle of fizzy water or even a couple of smoothies, if they’re on offer.

I hitch-hiked next and got picked up within three seconds, the first car that came past me. He took me down to Ganton – about eight miles down the road – and from there I walked up into the hills to get away from the road and saw dozens of (what I think were) peahens and also some cows and then put up my tent and read my book till dark. Again, it rained and my tent leaked, but I was a little more used to it now, got a bit more sleep. And in the morning a landowner came by and fulfilled my idea of what an Englishman discovering a camper would be like – in contrast to Mikey’s Germans – and told me it was private land, blah blah blah. Ah well: I was just off anyway. And tromp tromp tromp another three or four miles before thumbing another ride and getting taken all the way to Ferrybridge.

Walk to Cas. Train to Wakefield. Arrive just before Laura and meet her at the station and get taken up to hers and then have sex with her in her garden; what the hell. And then again that night.

This was Friday. I left Leeds Wednesday evening. I don’t know where the hell I am.

Saturday, Laura's to work and I’m back to Yeadon. Time to do nothing. Finish off the fruit flies and see if I can find any more clues about my state of being. Research that ’74 strat and find out it’s actually a ’73 and that two of the pickups are original and therefore maybe add a couple of hundred quid to the price or at least make it a damn sight more saleable. That was good and fun news.

And then it’s Sunday morning, and the Wii and the refereeing and the –

And now we’re here.

The thing is, this computer screen looks massive, like how it used to be when I was tired as a boy and the walls would start spinning and everything was up close. I’m definitely typing mad right now, not really thinking and just spurting it out whatever words come into my fingers so I can get it out and done before calling the whole thing a night. Poor Eric! One day they will edit this but, alas, not today and whoever has to read it like this has an unenviable job on their hands. Must learn how to type properly, however, if I’m to actually tackle that writer problem.

More crossroads coming up. Decisions to be made. Big and important ones. Laura and normality on the one hand and craziness and uncertainty on the other. Fuck! Glad I don’t have to decide now. Just off to Greeceand whatever crazy thing awaits me there. Gee whizz! I really must be off now. Four days till I fly. Hopefully everything gets sorted then. Something’s gotta give.

Plus: this is nothing like what I wanted to talk about, is it? But –

I’m knackered. Maybe shouldn’t even be bothering.

Tschus.

Private August journallings #4

Dog tired and ready for sleep so probably shouldn’t be up typing but just felt like I wanted to take a moment to say that was a better day and I feel good. Work was easy and stress-free, even though I was on my own. Whizzed round in three quick runs and had plenty of energy, unlike Friday and Monday. The key to the day, though, was probably getting launched over my handlebars on Briggate and taking a whack to the back of the head from the Hondo Les Paul copy I was carrying. It was too hilarious. Right there in front of all those shoppers. I laughed and scratched my head – and touched the decent-sized bump – and ever since then I’ve been pretty jolly. That and saying yes to the game of tennis with Nick. Good match. Served lots of aces. Played ruthless and quite aggressive. And won 6-2 6-2 6-1. To think, there was a part of me that really couldn’t be arsed, would just rather have gone home to…comfort. So glad I played. A bit of action and joy instead of all this endless thinking. Brings relief.

Before the tennis and the bump, though, there was seeing my dad, and seeing how miserable the shop is making him. He spent the weekend in Scarboroughand he obviously loved it. God plenty of sea air and outdoors time. And would have stayed if he could. And then after a few hours back in the shop he says he lost it big style and was really shouting at some customers, scared people out of the building. It’s bad. He stinks. And in the space of a few weeks he’s gone from talking about leaving it me in his will to wanting to give it to me next year, to wanting not only to give it to me now but to pay me to take it off him. It sounds ridiculous but I think he was serious: that’s how much he wants out. And instead of being overjoyed I shudder at the thought of it. That much commitment. That much work. That much being tied to one place and giving up on foreign country escapism dreams. My whole life would change and for what? A crummy old guitar shop that not even my dad can tolerate. How could I do it? Even though I would do it so differently to him. I’ve thought of this for so long but now that it’s here I’m just not sure. Not sure I could work it and not sure it’s even a viable business. What it probably means is a 40-hour week and all the stress that goes along with running your own business for about a hundred quid; not even approaching minimum wage. What’s the point in that? Although I’m sure I could improve it.

But is that what I want to spend the rest of my life doing?

Still, seems like it would be rude to say no…

The only other things I can remember from today are seeing a man’s tattoo of a maple leaf and clocking that poster in a County Arcade shop window that says something like, Travel. Return. Reminisce. Signs? Certainly that tattoo struck me – it came kind of weird, a bit like The Matrix white rabbit – but then later on I noticed a van with a Welsh dragon on it and realised how that could just as easily be taken in the same way but because I don’t have any kind of connection with Wales it’s almost as though it doesn’t register. Maybe I’m seeing flags and signs all the time but only giving significance to those that match something I’m feeling. Which would mean that they’re not signs at all.

I suppose that kind of thinking would mean more confusion if I was in the mood for being confused but I’m not: what I’m in the mood for is feeling nice and tired and smiling about my tennis and my bike spill and also enjoying that Ian and his wife are back and she’s said I can stay as long as I want. That takes the pressure off a little bit. Frees me up somewhat. She says I can come and go as I please. Leave stuff here. Go on holiday and come back. It’s perhaps more generous than the reality will allow but, for the moment, it feels nice. And, like I say, takes the pressure off from that idea of waking up tomorrow and being once more homeless. I dunno. Ali’s written from Ireland and talks lots of beauty and it sounds good where she is, in nature. I’d almost forgotten about her. Forgotten about tossing that coin that seemed to encourage me to sign up for the course she’s doing, right back when I was all smitten and gung ho and keen to make a go of it with her. All these thoughts and plans I’ve been having – Scarborough and Canadaand Greeceand Laura – but she’s been nowhere in my thinking. Maybe there’s still something there to be looked at, given our emotional symbiosis and the weirdness of our karma together. A mirror. Someone to grow with, to play spiritual leapfrog, to cry in front of and share everything. That’s what I want and that’s what I perhaps had with her for a little while.

Last thing I did last night was read journal entries from my mad times, my mid-life crisis times. Wanted to figure out where the whole psychotherapy thing had come from but instead it just put Ali into my brain.

Well, I wasn’t really thinking about her until I wrote this here. Damn writing! Can we just go back to tennis and bike crash would happiness please? And save whatever thinking needs doing for tomorrow, or even better for the time it needs doing?

I think of Brittney also. Dear sweet Brittney.

How can the world be so full of such amazing and beautiful women and yet we’re all so single. Me alone and Laura alone and Ali alone and Brittney probably alone too. All the amazing ones: alone.

Sad, isn’t it? When probably we all want somebody when you get right down to it.

Right. That’s way more than I was originally going to type. But sort of glad I did it.

God bless,

Rory

Private August journallings #3

Not the best of days yesterday. Woke up three thirty in the morning and, to my surprise, couldn’t get back to sleep. Usually a pretty awesome sleeper but have these nights every now and then. Things on my mind I guess. Was thinking about everything and decided it was time to consult the I Ching. Most pertinent question to ask – given still trying to leave everything else to “one step at a time” – was whether or not to go to the interview for the psychotherapy training on the 15th, seeing as that then determines any date for leaving for Greece. Feeling tells me it’s more like the 21st or so that I head over that way anyway, but impatience to get things moving and my living situation – ie, boss returns today and I’m therefore either homeless or living weirdly with my boss – makes me wanna just do it now.

Anyways, I asked the question – “What would the outcome be of my NOT going to that interview on the 15th?” – and I got Chapter 29 – ‘Dangerous Depths’ with one changing line in the 6th place. Seemed really, scarily, bang on pertinent, mostly talking about danger, not shying away from things, and the changing line stating that, “for three years one does not find the way. Misfortune.”

I really don’t want to not find the way. I really don’t want to skip out on this just to end up even more lost and back in the same position a few years down the line. But I don’t know how I ended up in this situation. How did it come to pass anyway? All born out of the Ali-inspired ‘mid-life crisis’: how I wish I’d just had the good sense to let it ride and not go round desperately looking for a solution. Not have the internet to search and have things come naturally. Just…

I sometimes wonder – often wonder – just why it is that everyone else seems to get to do whatever the hell they please while I’m bound by some controlling fate. The I Ching that says “yes” to some things and “no” to others and is always right. Denied by God in instances like the loss of my passport. Duty to my work. Other people do what they please and smile because of it. But I’m always second-guessing, overanalysing, denying myself and trying to pick the right way through the maze of life by using signs and intuitions and ancient Chinese oracles. There seems truth in it and it has worked so dramatically in the past I’d be a fool to ignore it. But the upshot is I no longer trust myself. My own thoughts and feelings and desires are frequently stupid and lead me up blind alleys. When I follow the I Ching I get to go good places. When I go against it everything goes wrong.

Who do you trust? Whose life is this anyway? It’s no wonder I get so confused…

And yet – I see an article yesterday asking, “what are the best decisions you’ve ever made?” and I know if I think about it they would have been totally illogical ones. Flying to Vancouverin ’98 on the spin of a coin. Going to Mexico a month later almost broke and on the spin of another coin. Flying off to see Sara in ’01 and ’02. All those things were mental. All inspired and backed by signs. No I Ching readings for any of them, save the last. But I guess I was a lot younger then also…

Oh, I don’t fuckin’ know. This whole thing is getting to be such a drag. I don’t know if I want to train as a psychotherapist and maybe I should be listening to those people who say I should check it out first to see if I like it. Or look more into counselling, the more speedy option to qualification and career. Is aiming for psychotherapy fuelled by egoistic ambition, much like when I ditched being a teaching assistant for teaching proper, wanting to be at the head of the class? ‘Cos that turned out to suck. I just don’t fuckin’ know.

Erin. The California girl. That’s screwed me up. Probably just Perlilly all over again – young and blonde and talented and sexy and exciting and fun and attractive and a musician – but nothing real. Also frivolous and pot-smoking and so very different, really, in our attitudes. I just don’t have the ability to have these flings with awesome beautiful women without giving a substantial piece of my heart. To not think of them constantly. To not be swayed. We spend one night together and then I’m dreaming of being her man in California. Probably to her it was just a bit of sex while passing through, in between some other bits of passing through sex. I must be some kind of idiot to fall for that again. And yet it has opened something up in me, that desire to give myself to someone and be open and emotional and real. I don’t know why I couldn’t do that with Laura. I guess a part of me thinks she’s not smart enough, has too many of her own problems. She’s so hesitant and neurotic and repressed. Takes everything so personally. But then maybe I’ve never really given her a chance to show me just how much love she’s got. Probably quite a lot. Maybe she’d surprise me.

I don’t know what to say to her. Whether to tell her all these things. To tell her that I’m probably just not capable of not leaving. To show her what a mess I can be at times.

This is not a good time for me. A tricky time. I hate being so swamped with all these decisions and how hard it is to find answers. People say I think too much and they’re right – but how can you not think about these things when they’re so imminent and need thinking about. So much on my brain. Urges for Greece and Canadaand the US and Mexico. Thoughts of all the different women – Laura and Erin and Nicky and Grace – and now Brittney. Nowhere to live. My dad wanting to give me his shop and commit to that. The psychotherapy training. Signs and feelings for Scarborough and Exeter. And always how to live, how to make money, even though I’m currently employed and have a very healthy bank balance. This job probably won’t last forever though. Yesterday I did it so slowly and in a daze, couldn’t really be arsed. But maybe that’s just because I’ve been working every day and am in need of a break. And probably because of my being up for a few hours in the middle of the night…

After the I Ching – which just got me feeling more troubled: the feeling of being trapped, I suppose, and stuck in something I don’t feel over the moon about – I went back to bed and listened to one of Brian Weiss’s past-life regression CDs. Not sure exactly what happened but I definitely felt in some kind of altered mental state. Different experience of inner-spatial awareness. My mouth slowly opening itself wide open, totally spontaneously. And small visions of unknown faces, flickers of places. No past-life memories to speak of – but certainly something more than I’ve experienced listening to those things before. Would be awesome to actually have a genuine experience of it. I can’t think of anything more exciting right now. For all my apparent faith in reincarnation and the immortality of the soul I can’t help but wonder whether I really have it truly deep down in my bones…

That kind of thing also makes me wonder about psychotherapy, and whether what I’m actually into is the hypnotherapy of someone like Brian Weiss. Something that seems to promote actual change rather than simple analysis and intellectual understanding. Everything’s so confusing right now.

I wonder also if listening to that CD wasn’t in part responsible for yesterday’s daze. Not that it was a bad daze to be in; I just sort of drifted through everything quite placidly and non-caring. Didn’t mind that I was cycling and walking so slowly. No hurry, no worry. And then quite dazed still at the evening’s football, sort of detached from proceedings and not bothered by all the complaints and shouting, just finding it funny. Well, that’s how I usually am anyway but even more so than usual.

Probably just tired. Don’t think I managed much of a nap either. Will be so glad when Ian gets back and I can take some proper time off work. If I can stop thinking so much and just get out of my head a bit I’ve a feeling a nice holiday in Greece could be just the ticket right now. I suppose on one level it’s been one hell of a year – what with Ali and the mid-life crisis and all those emotions and the uncertainty of my living situation, moving several times, always these aborted attempts to get away – plus the Christian experience – and perhaps I don’t give myself enough credit for that, don’t really even contemplate it in terms of what it might have done to me. I know I say I think about the past a lot, but that’s more the distant past. The past of this year and the weight of it all I don’t ever contemplate, my mind’s just focussed on the present and the near future and all these impending decisions. But I suppose it has been pretty intense and maybe I do need some time away from everything just to recharge and draw a line. Not sure I have the capability – when your primary focus in life is working things out and your inner-world they kind of follow you wherever you go – but a holiday [from myself] sure would be nice. I’m sure the angels would encourage it. Just not quite sure how to go about it.

Ah, to be into jet skis and drinking and shouting “whoop!” at a full moon party like a proper Brit abroad!