Exeter, Devon

The maddest thing I've done in a long time
Leaving Leeds
When everything seemed so wonderful
A nice home
Two well-paying jobs
Stacks of money piling up in the bank
Squash and football
Forever seeing people I knew in the streets
My dad wanting to give me his shop
But still I left.
I guess we need a prologue...

Prologue

One morning last December
I wake up to a genuine 'vision'
The word KORINTH
Emblazoned massive upon the inside of my forehead
I don't know what it means
Then I think maybe it's an old city in Turkey
And googling shows I'm nearly right
I think about it...
And later on I go
Following other signs
Following the whims of a coin
And it all adds up to something -
unorthodox, yes -
But wonderful
I realise that I can trust myself
Trust my unorthodoxy
And I decide to go for the next one
Which is: EXETER
The way I feel every time I see the word
The way it keeps cropping up
The way I finally notice it - well, Exerta anyway -
Written on the back of my bin-found trainers
And one other thing too
So I fly back to Leeds
Pack my things
And make a wonky bee-line
Via London and Kent
For a town where I know no one
Know nothing about
Research not a jot
Just go

1.

And everything's groovy
And I like the people
And though I'm sort of indistinguishable from a homeless chap
Save for my overstuffed bank balance
I feel happy and content
Walking hither thither
Tossing coins
Following up clues
Playing the "Yes Man"
And doing things I wouldn't normally do
I'm anonymous, I guess
A whole new me
Anyway

2.

One clue takes me to a nearby beach
Turns out you have to walk through a tunnel to get there
And the beach is pretty much deserted
And beautiful too
There I do my usual thing
Of speaking to 'The Man'
Of feeling gleeful and glad
Chortling at myself and my life
And there I find waiting
Written in pebbles
In a sentence forty-feet long
"YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE INTERNET"

3.

I'm camping in trees
I'm following the signs
Living one hour at a time
Gumtreeing not
Minimal contact with the past
For the other thing I realised in Greece:
Wow, my life was so much better before the 'net
Before, at least, the way I've been using it
Word of mouth
Overheard conversations
Strange coincidences.

You probably won't agree
But it works for me

4.

It's amazing to feel so much peace
So much glee
So much casual giggling happiness
When outer circumstances are such
But then -
The other thing I realised yesterday
Amongst all the rest
Was how utterly futile it is
To think about communicating these things to the world
The greatest things aren't youtubeable
Bloggable
Filmable
Writable
For instance -
The way my heart moves when I accidentally break a spider's web
I can't show that to anyone
Nor record it
But it is amazing
And one of the best things about me

Herne Bay, Kent

Came down to London
On the £13 train
More degradation
In those first fifteen minutes
Than in my whole time in Greece
And Mexico too
But walked slowly and content
All the way to Elephant and Castle
To spend the night with a friend
And have good Godly chats
Then the next day: Kent
Close old friends
Their three children
One, my godson
Lots of playing
Lots of navigating
The minefields of wee ones' emotions
Lots of getting lovely cuddles
And their adorable smiles
Could I do it?
Does seem rather a headache
But rich, I guess

Greece in brief

Yesterday

As I was making dice-dictated decisions about the future

(With a dice I found miraculously in a cave at Delphi)

(A cave I spent several hours bricked inside)

I asked about this blog

Options ranging from

Full annihilation

To full resumption

The dice chose number 4

Update with locations and something brief

So…

I’m in Leeds

I’m back from Greece

18 days there

The first nine on mountains

Alone in the sun

Blissful solitude

And realising

Wow

In the city, with all its people and possibilities

I feel so alone and bored

And sitting here

Quietly under trees

With nothing to do and no one around

I feel full and complete and content

Slept five nights in a monastery up a foot-only trail

Ate beautiful monk-cooked food

Saw turtles, both alive and upturned and dead

Fed wasps

Hacked through trees

Scrambled up rock faces

Felt young again

Felt close to God

Felt restored

And back in touch

Realised

I really can trust myself

At odds though I am

And saw my future

Then I left the mountain

Became a tourist

Tasted the good and the bad of that

A night sleeping slap bang in the middle of Athens

Ten feet from a fellow homeless man

A day at Delphi

Meeting genuine goddesses secretly chanting to genuine gods

Drinking out of ancient holy springs

Sitting happy in that bricked-up cave

Sleeping in Itea under somebody’s porch

Hitch-hiking all the way to crazy, horrendous Thessaloniki

But there meeting a monk

And talking for four hours

On the bus to holy Mount Athos

My one night in a hotel in Ouranopolis

Where a dream tells me

“No more solitude mountain nature time for you –

Go home!”

And so home I go

But not before racing up Mount Olympus

In world record time

And the beauty of the hike from Litochoro

An hour in touristy Meteora

And then finally some fabled Greek hospitality

God

Miracles

Providence

And nature

A really wonderful trip

Which I will write about lots

And maybe share in full
One day

And now

I'm in Leeds

100% happy

And looking forward

I can’t believe I lost myself!

And I’m so very grateful to be back

He smiles

He smiles

He smiles

Hand-written journal #2

Just woke from the most extraordinarily lovely dream about Brit. A full-blown relationship. Like a Cameron Crowe movie. We were riding freight trains together. Bloodied from a snowy bus crash. Held one another tight. We were amazed by the other. Working out domestic chores and duties. Semantics. "How much time do you like to spend cleaning the bedroom?" Initially misunderstanding what that means and then sitting down and working it out. Being really groovy, living together. Really beautiful and wild.

Dice resists contacting her though. Mind thinks, that's not the new.

But really quite stunning though. I was a good man in that dream.

I can't help but plot...

Hand-written journal #1

And just as I was waking up a young Japanese (?) girl was on the phone saying she needed to get closer to me. And a young Japanese (?) guy was saying I had to come to his party. Something to do with my book, and Canada. And my first thoughts of the day are about trips and travels and the way they arise - the spontaneous ones - the ones guided by newness and above. Too many thoughts in my brain guided by old, by the world (the internet). God is newness. God speaks...in unexpected, futuristic ways. By that I mean in contrast to the mind, which is based on past experiences and what is known, what is thinkable. Have to be more free, more open. The world's a blank canvas. My mind wants to go on recreating the past. My spirit wants to step forward into newness, into blankness, into empty, uncreated space. Was Eve in there too? Or just another reminder of the mental attachment to the past? And the places journies into newness can take us? It's not safe - but it is growth, and interesting.

The new
Slough off the old
Step bravely
Into a whole new world
An empty world
An uncreated world
Naked as a newborn babe
Carrying not the safety net
Of internet address book
And old friends
There, you get what you know
But I want something new
I've already done the old
I know what that means

Even Canada, perhaps, is old, is known, is familiar. Even writing. Everything my mind leaps to. But what was the other big lesson of Greece?

1. I can trust myself.
2. Travel with God is a moment by moment thing. No need to know the future. Korinth > Loutraki > one monastery > the next > my home. And that was great. And then the mind took me on tourist trips, to places known and past, and that was...okay, because I made it so. But it wasn't the same.

Okay, God, you lead the way. Everything must serve You. To throw myself in the river. To do Your will. To follow...the signs. The path. Free of human - internet - mental - interference.

The new. The new. The new...

Lesson #3:

It was better back then
'98, '99
When there was no internet
Christ!
The greatest time of my life
Those first 4 months in Mexico
I never went near it at all
But life was amazing
And the '99 that followed...
Now far too much reliance on computer
It drags me to it
Keeps me in the past
Keeps me...tethered
And away from God
I know that
Every man alive will tell me I'm wrong
Oh well
They are known
I want...the unknown

What to take with me to Exeter:

Contact Devon FA/leagues? Yes.
Go via London? Yes.
Via Kent? Yes.
When? Tuesday.
Take guitar? No.
Take devil sticks? Yes.
Take tent? Yes.
Take ref gear? No.
Not even basic kit? No.
Hard drive/laptop? No.
Winter clothes? No.

Cool.

Pictures from Greece

A nice Austrian man called Simon sent these to me. They're the only pictures I have from Greece. In fact, they're the only pictures I have from the last two years. Is having photos of yourself something that decreases with age? Anyway -

This is near the top of Mount Olympus. I'd climbed it the previous day. Had hiked up from Litochoro to Prionia in the morning but then when I got there they said it was too late to reach the top. It was about 2.45 and apparently six hours to the summit. I figured that was six for a normal person though. I stashed my bag in a tree, took a rain jacket - had heard it was less than five degrees at the top - and started running. Figured it would be a good exercise in pushing my body, that at some point I'd reach exhaustion and then things would get interesting. Going beyond the pain barrier like that time in the Superstitions. But in the event it was pretty easy. Climbed eighteen hundred metres in a little under three hours. The last bit to the peak of Mytikas was a little frightening though. And maybe kind of pointless. Even though I'm driven to it I do wonder why. By far the best bit of the trail was the bit that hardly anyone does, between Litochoro and Prionia. Incredibly beautiful clear water pools and super peaceful and hardly any people; the mountain proper's kind of bleak and cold and crowded. Peaks are for the ego. But mountain peace and beauty you can probably find on most mountains, and that's for the soul.

Met all these people the next morning. Nice folk. Most were going up to the peak but I figured once was enough. Anyway, as you can see, not much of a view.

Myself and these two lovely Austrians came down together. The girl was an awesome hiker, an absolute machine on the trail.

Simon really like to take pictures. Not sure what this one is of.

He also really liked my adherence to coin slipping. This was me deciding where they were going to drop me off. I had four Euros left at this point and to my surprise it said to disembark at Larrisa, right on the east of the city when I was going west. I walked across town. I wondered what would happen. I had three nights before my plane. I needn't have worried. Amazing things transpired.