Twelve angry men

1.

I felt a tremor replace the emptiness of the completion of Part One: the words of Charlottesville, those first, half-formed paragraphs and disconnected memories started speaking to me, and I couldn't handle it. Part One has been a comfort – a simple read-through, a word, a comma here and there – but now we've said goodbye and the new and the unknown has begun its knocking. I felt it clearly; I wanted it to go away. "I can't do it," I said, and it began to recede. "Maybe in a few months," I said, hoping that it would be there then, when I was ready, knowing that it would.

2.

I then read of Kerouac and his "roll" – I thought that sounded like rather a good idea. I thought that maybe I'd have to write this painstakingly, the whole start-to-finish thing – and then discard it and do it all again in one mad rush. I liked the sound of that. If I have to do it ten times over to get it right, if that's what it takes, I will.

3.

One day I'll leave all this behind: I'll say goodbye to mobile phone and facebook and internet and I'll jettison all non-necessary possessions and just disappear, and tell nobody where I've gone. I could just go driving off down the M1, and then into the continent, and from there, who knows? I could reappear one day in the deserts of America, me and my thumb seeking wide open spaces and minds, freight trains and mountaintops, legally or otherwise, having hacked through Canadian border forests following a printed google satellite map. Or I could lose myself in India, in Israel, in the mass of Asia; anything is possible. In the mean time, though, I bide my time, and do my duty, with work, in England. Quiz show producers ask me, "what will you do with the money?" and are surprised, knowing my history, when I don't say travel. But I know I'm in the right place, and I know it's not time for that – yet. I hold it in my mind and my heart, and she whispers to me like a sweetheart, "one day, my son, I'll come for you…"

4.

I dreamed this week an extraordinary, vivid dream of Mother Meera and of her at some gathering, answering questions from excited followers and her excited too and giving decidedly unlike her answers, flamboyant and energetic and amused. In my heart I felt finally I could get the answer on X – and on my love-life in general – and it burned impatient in me to ask her, to get my turn. I got my turn, and I got my answer – shorter than those she gave the others, but no less satisfying, and clear, and patently correct. I woke soon after – and promptly forgot what she had said. Slightly frustrating.

5.

Others have said, "get back with her" or, "you obviously don't love her" or, "maybe you should be polyamorous" – and it's only the third that seems to have had any 'ring of truth' for me (taking it as 'loving all' rather than 'sleeping around'). But maybe I've been looking for an answer when there isn't one, necessarily, just out of habit, out of some mental compulsion. Maybe my reality is my answer. What should I be? Look around you, see what you're doing, be that. What about the future? Cross that bridge when you come to it. What about this decision, or that decision, what should I do? What decision? If you don't have the answer, then the moment of decision isn't upon you; when the moment comes, the answer will be there. Relax. Don't think about it. Everything's okay.

6.

I'm eating too many dates; I ate a kilo on Wednesday, and another kilo between yesterday afternoon and just now. I don't know if that's bad for you, but it certainly doesn't feel good. Contrary to what a few people have said, though, it doesn't really do anything to make you shit – that's more apricots and prunes. If you ever want to have some nasty, smelly, sloppy shits, eat a big bag of dried apricots – those things are evil. Me and apricots are no longer on speaking terms. And that's official.

7.

When I die I'm going to have a good old giggle; I've no doubt that this life of mine is going to be quite entertaining in the selected highlights and slow-motion run-through that takes place in that celestial editing suite/review room in the sky. I can see myself now, slapping my forehead at all the missed clues – and tittering at the mishaps and madnesses, the choices I made, the confusion illuminated by the benefits of hindsight and foresight and full on, all encompassing, ten dimensional soul-sight. How funny, and mouth-watering, and tantalising that will be – and, also, how inconsequential to the soul newly released from body and mind, and identity and name, this whole lifetime that I currently call Rory put back into place alongside the hundreds of thousands of others I have lived. This whole lifetime another memory, another experience, as comparable in the lifetime of a soul as any given ten minute period is to my present body and mind.

8.

On a more serious note, I was thinking that the Earth is kind of a dark place, and it doesn't seem fair that one should have to struggle so hard to discover one's light in such a dense, materialistic environment. Given that even the concept of saving the planet – never mind the actuality of it – is futile and naïve, it seems only rational that it should be possible to graduate this world of ours, and get a chance elsewhere, where things aren't quite so hard, once you've transcended Earth. I think that's what our job is – how we do graduate – and I think that's what I'd like. I can't think of much left here to interest me.

9.

When you look at the great souls that have walked this Earth – let's take Jesus and Buddha and Amma as three examples – you can see that they all lived pretty selfish lives, and always did exactly what they wanted to do, whether others liked it – or even hated it – or not. Jesus did his whole desert and pissing off the Jews thing; Buddha left his wife and kid and disappeared into the forest; and Amma was barking mad, bringing shame on her family and burying herself in sand. Basically, they always did what they wanted (at least, until they found themselves, and then they gave selflessly, though still pissed people off and only did exactly what they wanted to do). I think there's a lot to be learned from that. I think some people get too carried away with involving themselves in others, or trying to save the planet, without ever having got to know themselves, truly tried to save themselves. I think that's why we're here – to realise ourselves, to grow in spirit – and nothing else. I mean, use others along the way, but don't depend on them, because no matter who or what it is – wife or child, job or home – they could be taken away in an instant. You will remain, though – and even after the you that you think you are has gone, you will still remain.

10.

I went to some sort of 'high school reunion' yesterday – it wasn't really that, but that's the nearest thing I can call it without having to go into too much detail – and it was sort of interesting. It involved eating Chinese food and then going to various bars in Doncaster town centre, which seems to be something I've been doing a little more of since the smoking ban came into effect. It's kind of any eye-opener to me that people still live this life, going out, getting dolled-up – I mean, spending hours getting dolled-up – and then crowding into cramped, noisy rooms to shout sub-intelligent conversations at each other and fill their bodies with intoxicating and expensive liquids that render them zombie and retard-like and make them fall over and wake up in bed with people that they hardly know and maybe don't even like, and perhaps not even remember any of it. I know that people like that stuff – otherwise why would they do it? – but it's sort of beyond me (even though I used to do it, which seems like so many lifetimes ago the memory of it comes to me only as a distant, childhood dream). Still, I can tolerate an hour or so of it every now and then, and as long as I don't stay too late I don't get too much of the hangover-by-osmosis, and it can be quite entertaining. Last night I talked funninesses with an old school chum and a woman I didn't know who was convinced I was gay (she said I was too nice, and listened too well to be straight; that probably says more about the men of Doncaster than it does about me) and then made my escape at the not-so-advanced hour of 9.30, more to catch the last train than to do some sort of disappearing act, although it was probably about the right time, before my colleagues got too sloshed and our wavelengths diverged more than is comfortable. I fell asleep waiting at the station in Leeds for my connection for about five minutes and woke up gloriously disorientated – like the disorientation of waking up in a room full of people in India my second afternoon there and taking five minutes to piece myself together again, as human, as Rory, as inhabitant of planet Earth, one leg forward, breathe, you're in a body, good – and ran again for my third train of the day, which I always seem to be doing (running for trains). The men in Doncaster appear to have a fondness for wearing smart jackets and ties of a Saturday night; I wonder if there are other regional variations around these parts? I tend to wear the same thing wherever I go; I don't really think much about that sort of thing.

11.

I was thinking, though, in light of some talk about bringing Britain into line with America and raising the drinking age to 21 that maybe they should go a step further and sort of put not just a minimum age requirement on it, but also a maximum, upper limit. Wouldn't that be fun? Imagine how that would change the country? I would make it something like fourteen to twenty-seven or eighteen to twenty-four, depending on my mood. I mean, from my perspective drinking should be a young person's thing, like playing with drugs or experimenting with your sexuality – or, for that matter, like playing with rattles or experimenting with piercings and hair dye, and no-one wants to see groups of men crawling down the high street in nappies and chasing little plastic balls and crying because they can't have a lollipop or because their mummy won't pick them up, do they? So it's not that getting drunk is wrong, just that it's a young person's thing, and that there's a time and a place for it – just as there's nothing wrong with playing with rattles, or shitting your diaper, or being so intolerably and unrealistically demanding of another that you exclude the whole world and their feelings and see only your own, immature and excessive wants and desires; no, those things aren't wrong, in their time, in their place, but out of it, they're…well, even then, not wrong – that would be silly – but just rather sad. And that's why I propose we implement a maximum drinking age as well as a minimum – and why I stand no chance of ever being elected to anything, in this country, at least (as well as my total lack of interest in being elected to anything and my almost complete ignorance on all the things that someone who wanted to be elected would need to know).

12.

If a duck quacks in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does Mickey Rooney scramble an egg? If Simon and Garfunkel got married, which one would change their name, and would they name their children after the various types of beans available to them in their local supermarket/grocery store? What is greater: the largest hen in the world, or a seventeen gallon drum of pickled bagpipes? Who came first: your uncle, or your aunt? If a man flies backwards through space and talks to himself while doing the ironing at twice the speed of light squared by the root of some ancient Chinese ginseng and a large bottle of Ambrosia creamed rice, does he wish he'd never waded waist-deep into Willy's wonky waterwheel wagon, or is he grateful for asparagus? And finally, what do you get if you cross a dog's favourite slipper factory with an artificially created geranium on stilts? Answers are printed on page 42 of the next magazine you read, words 12, 17, 36, 81, 104, and 219. Send 'em in and maybe win the star prize of your choosing! (As long as it's a cup). Cheers!