Did I ever mention that I hate London?

A proper blog entry: like blog entries of old. One of those where you feel rubbish and clogged up and just have to get it out. One of those that works: like a prayer, the words spinning around inside before finally being released and expressed to the universe (ie, the creative force within) - and, no doubt, the universe will respond. But first, we need to release...

Sunday I came back to London: that's okay, 'cos I've got those plans - plans that take me up to lunchtime Tuesday. And then once they're done...wow! It's mere hours from getting back to my usual London bullshit of not knowing what to do with myself, where to go, what the point of it is. Listen...

As soon as I come back to London
I get
Housebound
Stuck inside
For there's
Nowhere to go
And nothing to do
Except television
And hours
And hours
And hours
Of internet
Well -
I suppose I could write:
Write some of those dozens of ideas
I've had when away
Just wanting a place
And a computer
To do it
And now that I have them...
Nothing comes
It's all in my head
My reality:
A little less
Glorious




I'd love to give up the thought of writing almost as much as I'd love to give up the thought of spirituality. Sometimes I just long to...disappear. Delete my facebook; shut down my email; wander off into a new town unknown to anyone; keep myself to myself; a little job, a little room...and start afresh. Sometimes it feels like...there's nothing in this world for me; I can't relate to anyone; neither am I interested in anyone. There's nothing to do, nothing I want to be, nothing I'm terribly interested in attaining. Ho hum. Except...that's pretty much only how I feel in London: elsewhere, lately, it's been a whole different story. And going back to February I've been determined that I've just got to get out of here. So why am I still here? Why am I still buzzing around this place that I despise so much, and which so clearly doesn't suit me?

1. My football team. Very attached to that - it has my name on it! - and I do love that when I'm playing. In fact, when I'm playing football on those Monday nights I wish all my nights were spent playing football. What could be better than that? But, I have to remind myself, there's football everywhere - and, no doubt, a new group of guys all lovely and good...

2. My house and my housemates - who I rapidly feel more and more alienated from. Not their fault - lovely guys - I just don't fit into this world. I feel too old for shouting and silliness and being rubbish at the boring old fogey stuff like cleaning and recycling. Not to mention this 'other world' of beer and ciggies and going out, which I find completely puzzling and weird: it's all 'emperor's new clothes' to me. I couldn't feel more strange were I dropped into a creche and expected to stick a dummy in my mouth and act like a baby.

3. That's pretty much it. Outside London, I'm okay, because there's places to go and nature and peace and quiet. There're trees and it's not just 24-hour sirens and aeroplanes and cars and people shouting and nothing to do except walk among shops and piles of bricks that have been arranged into buildings and -

The man who said
"When a man is tired of London
He is tired of life"
- Doctor Samuel Johnson -
Died in 1784
Over a hundred years
Before the internal combustion engine

Before it had become the norm
To sit miserable in
Poorly-ventilated
Underground tubes
Before women
Vomited and pissed
In the street
Before the man
Who wanted no part of this
Was judged to be a terrible bore
A curmudgeon
And a judge himself
Before aeroplanes
Terrorised the sky
Robbing gardens
And parks
Of any peace they once had
Before the tiny city
He had known
Sprawled and swallowed up
Every village and field
Within ten miles of the Thames
Before sirens
Before Topshop
Before fried chicken
And concrete
Before London had sold its soul
For a job
And a mortgage
And a life
On a keyboard




Well I don't know about any of that. And googling Doctor Johnson for his date of death I then find he wrote a poem about someone moaning about all the crime and corruption and squalor in the London of the 1730's and who decided he'd be much better off in the countryside; probably always been the same. Anyway, the point is it doesn't suit me and so I need to stop moaning about it and get out of here: for far too long I've been defining myself by the things I don't like - but how dull! How about defining myself by the things I do like - of which there are plenty. How about I finally get around to 'living life on my terms'? I mean, I'm allowed to, right?

Fuck it! I want to break free, as the song goes. Facebook's going for a Burton - right...now (done) - and I guess something else after that. This house? Damn my foolishness in signing a long lease! The boy's are lovely, like I say, but...it ain't me babe: at least the room's sublet.

Ah, fuck it all, yer basterds [sic] - I came here wanting to splurge my stupid life and all I've done is realise - yet-a-fucking-gen - that I need to get out of this hemmed in, noisy-as-fuck, concrete jungle of a hell of a city. Which is, probably, as far as cities go, quite a nice one - but big city's ain't for me. Balls!

Plan: Survive the weekend; play football on Monday; go to York on Tuesday (just bought a ticket); take it from there.

A poem for the royal wedding

How many millions

Right now

As I am

Are watching this wedding

The world over

On their TVs?

And how many

Among those millions

Watching Kate

In her dress

Are smiling

And remembering

And thinking

"I've fingered her"?

East Sussex logs

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Graveyard-Yorkshire-London

Yeah, so, I thought I'd try and get back into the regular thing of blogging on a Sunday, telling y'all about what happened in my week - about what actually happened, rather than going on and on about what I want to happen, what I'm temporarily feeling/thinking - and, who knows, I might even do it. This week was a good week: I woke up Monday morning in a graveyard in Newark - you know it's gonna be a good week when it starts in a graveyard - and then spent most of it in South Elmsall, with lovely lovely Laura. A day in Hebden Bridge; a coupla visits to Leeds for an MA interview (Creative Writing; went well) and an afternoon with my dad. Been well over a year since I spent any sort of time with him so we had four or five hours and it was cool, nice stories from his childhood and youth - a bit more detail than previous about hitching down to the Isle of Wight in 1970 (and leaving just as Jimi Hendrix was taking the stage) - and how my great gran would clap him round the head and chase him into the outdoor toilet for the slightest wrong. Discipline. The good old days. That's why I've turned out all right, he says. I don't know what else I did, 'cept write stuff down with pen on paper, little supposéd poems about thoughts and moments: the other plan is to type them here; that's mainly where I'm at these days. Hopefully it'll help wean me off the computer. Nice to realise that I can still write something without it.

Also this week, on Friday I went for a lovely long walk with Laura to Hemsworth to go check out this psychic/clairvoyant she's somehow got herself involved with; I guess she wanted my opinion on him or something, certain uncertainties. My opinion was that he's bonkers. Oh well; still possible she might get something good out of their interactions. And then on Saturday I went down to London, met up with my old friend Paul and went to see some spiritual Indian guy in Brent Town Hall, right where I had my famous Wembley acid trip. Nice to see the old streets again. And the guy was all right: usual mix of mellow vibe, friendly people, bewildering words, exhortations and lack of interest from me. Maybe he had something, maybe he didn't; I don't really care anymore. But I guess giving up the whole spiritual game is a bit like giving up drink: it rarely happens over night. Old habits die hard huh?

Selected:

An interesting thing I've noticed lately

With friends

And I mean good friends

When they're narky with me

And we've got down to the root of it

- and these are their conclusions, not mine -

- for I've always found it surprising -

Is that it's often jealousy that's the cause

They've said:

It's not fair, you always land on your feet

And:

I'd like to live like that but I can't

It's kind of weird

That their solution to these emotions

Is to bring me down

Rather than lift themselves up

Weird

But normal

I get jealous too

I'm not saying that smokers are the scum of the Earth

That they deserve to be shot

Or, at the very least,

Forced to crawl naked through the streets

And made to pick up

With their teeth

Every single foul butt

They've thus far thought it fine

To toss to the ground

I'm not saying that

But I am saying

That they stink

And they make the world stink

And will make you stink too

If you stand too close to them

I fuckin' love modern life

Wherever you go

There's something to do

Even in the deepest woods

The wildest moor

The highest peak

There's signal

Dear Tim Dowling

How did someone

So dull

So irrelevant

So mediocre at writing

Become such a prominent figure

With The Guardian?

Some people say The Guardian

Is the snobbiest

Most condescending

Most up-its-self

Of all British newspapers

Those people are right

In The Guardian weekend magazine today:

Complaining about bad lobster

Kunekune pigs

Being recognised by a chef

Being recognised by a child

Damaging your one million pound violin

A picture of two people looking up a naked pregnant woman's arsehole

Reading Francine Prose in bed

The word "bijou", twice

Some three hundred and sixty five pound trousers

A three hundred and ninety five pound pair of shorts

Casual mocking of provincial towns

White van men

Hooded kids

Lesser newspapers

And the North

An "austerity-busting" lunch

For just twentynine fifty

A nine hundred thousand pound house

Sold by Feng Shui

And

Posh bacon

"It's astounding how often the answer is a bit of bacon"

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall coos

I stayed the night at my friend's sister's flat in Chelsea

Right on the back of Stamford Bridge

Must be worth a pretty penny

It's a sunny Sunday morn

I'd like to open the windows

But the gap between the roar of the planes

Is only forty-five seconds long

And anyway

The gap is filled

With the sound of traffic and machinery

It's 8 a.m.!

Apparently in Windsor

Where the queen lives

Right by Eton

And right by Heathrow

People sleep with earplugs in

And the windows shake

A few times a minute

In Hounslow

They haven't sat in their gardens

For twenty years

Except when that volcanic ash cloud came over

And normal service resumed

Most of my recent little musings are about London; I shall have to get them tidied up and make a dedicated page or something, should have time this week. Off to the woods tomorrow, to throw some logs around and see if I can't burn off some of this winter fat, which is the best it's ever been. Who'da thought 150 grams of chocolate a day and four months off work woulda destroyed my muscle tone and made me go all roly-poly?

Back from the monkland

Back from a week in the monastery: probably learned a thing or two. Like: this whole spiritual quest thing of mine is over (I think that's the third or fourth time I've learned that). Also: that Christianity is weird. Also: that I really dig peace and nature and simple living and early nights and that when I'm living like that, even though I'm not really doing anything, I don't feel at all like I'm wasting my time. Which is in stark contrast to how I feel when I'm in the city. Although I did only do it for a week.

Anyways, this is just to say "I'm back" and also that I wrote about 5000 pages of musings and thoughts and that I've posted them here; roughly they fall into three categories:

The monastery and spirituality

Sex

Miscellaneous

You can read them if you want. Or, if you don't want, you can do something different.

Cheers!

Rory

Miscellaneous musings from recent weeks

Paul Heaton
Is a very talented man
Who sings
And writes songs
Who swears
And drinks too much
Once upon a time he was in a famous band
Who had hits
Were on TV
Sold millions
Now he plays
To 200 people
Looks out into a crowd of bald men
Middle-aged women
Where once there were groupies
I wonder what it’s like
To rise
And to fall?
Probably it’s all right
Depends on the person
We all grow old
And die



I was musing:
Before email and facebook and texts
Did we write to each other much?
Some of us sent letters
Though not many
So...
What did we do,
If not the written word?
We talked on the phone
- and worried not about our ‘minutes’ -
And we talked face-to-face
Did we say more?
Or less?
Where did we put
The things we now feel able to express
In type, in text?
Is it better?
Or worse?




Every time I try to make a plan
Even for the next week
A voice in my head goes:
One day at a time
And sometimes it says:
You never know what’s around the corner
Well, uh, okay
Seems to be working out so far




Isn’t nature beautiful?
There is something I can love
A tree
Some grass
A flower
The sun
Nature will never open her mouth
Blah on and on
Pollute the whole world
Cover it with motorways
And destroy herself
Though she will sometimes destroy us
And waves are quite noisy




Whenever people talk about Canada
They always say how clean it is
I never understood that
Now I do
They must have come from a place like South Elmsall




Is there a clumsier sentence
In the whole English language
Than
“The next station’s stop”?




Last year
I lived in London
I worked
I found a big posh house
I did certain London things
And at the end of the year
When I looked back
It seemed to me I’d done nothing
Except pay the rent:
I’d become a cog
In a machine
That exists to pay bills



I can imagine few worse things
Than finding your dream home
Or buying a piece of land
- maybe some cottage in the country
the quiet village steeple -
And then standing by and watching helplessly
As the diggers move in
A road is built
And peace is destroyed
Sometimes I think
We won’t ever be satisfied
Until every man, woman and child
Has 24-hour access
To the roar of a highway
Or the sound of a plane overhead




The worst toilet in the world is,
By general reckoning,
The one from the movie Trainspotting
But I think I’ve found
The number two
And speaking of number twos:
It was full of them
Even the cistern
And when you flushed it
The water ran brown



South Yorkshire
Is so different to West Yorkshire
Everything there
Is blue
And the people are trapped
In the 80s
The food is mostly tripe
There are no bananas
Or courgettes
South Yorkshire houses
Are made from houses demolished in West Yorkshire
Many decades ago
Even the trees
Lean a little sadder
South Yorkshire is Barnsley
Grimethorpe
Wothupondurn
West Yorkshire is Leeds
Haworth
Ilkley Moor
Though North Yorkshire
Pees on them both

Monastery-inspired musings on sex

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Monastery musings and religion/spirituality

What’s a monastery like?
A monastery is like this:
Several hundred acres
Of Cotswold countryside
A large ancient abbey
A well-stocked kitchen
All-you-can-eat
Though limited menu
Thirteen
Kindly
Hospitable
Peaceful
Monks
A chapel for them to pray in
And a separate bit for the laity too
Prayers every two hours
Food every four
Early mornings
And early nights
In my sweet cosy bedroom
Long sleeps
Long walks
Long baths
Quietness
Simplicity of existence
Solitude
And nobody saying
What do you want to do next?
No shopping
No planning
Bliss



The weird

The old monk
Holds up a circle of wafer
Looks at it intently
And says:
This is the lamb of God
Who takes away the sin of the world
Then he breaks the wafer
And gives it solemnly
To other monks
And to me
Who solemnly eat it



Every day
Every few hours
These monks
These western modern men
File into a chapel
And sing the words
Of a long dead Jew
- not Jesus; but David -
In voices
Slightly too high
To be taken seriously
Some of them have been doing it
For over 60 years



Is it wrong
I wonder
In a Catholic monastery
In a monk-made bed
While the brothers say their prayers
And Jesus looks down
To wank
While reading
A Bible?



Poor old Jesus!
No wonder he doesn’t return
For if he did
Everywhere he’d look
Crucifixes
As though he needs reminding
A bit like commemorating Diana
With a tunnel



Christianity,
I think
Doesn’t exist
Mostly what I hear
Is Old Wineskin irrelevance
Dubious evangelisms
And Paulian exhortations
To put his own doctor
Above all others
But all Jesus really said was this:
Love one another
And while you’re at it
Love everything else too



Does anybody know what sin is?
I can’t think of anything
At least, nothing I couldn’t attribute
To ignorance
Unconsciousness
Lack of education
Lack of parenting
Or love
At worst,
I can agree that we all make mistakes
No blame in that



I thought
Come on God
If you’re right here
Right now
And somewhere within me
It shouldn’t be too hard
All I’ve got to do
Is still my mind
Rein in my thoughts
Become one hundred percent present
And penetrate to the depths of my heart
Easy
But instead
All I did
Was think about poetry
Compose ‘wise words’
Come up with book ideas
And plot good deeds
I thought
Hm
Maybe that’s okay
I can live with that
At least I’ve seen that the inside of my brain
Is mostly positive these days
And then I picked up
The Cloud of Unknowing
And read:
This is what you’ll do to distract;
The mind is cunning
Hm again
It’s such a shame
That the greatest thing in life
Is basically unattainable.



Did the author of the Book of Revelation
When finished
Look at what he’d done and think
Ee, that’s good, that is?
I can’t imagine what it’s like
To be truly mad



Spirituality 2011

So here is the state of affairs:
Nobody knows anything
There is no instruction book
We’re all just groping around in the dark
Pissing in the wind
Searching for meaning wherever we can find it
Some in Hedonism
Some in Buddhism
Some in a New Age
Which embraces everything
- even things that are bona fide nutso -
And eagerly awaits 2012
For various reasons
Ranging from armageddon
To universal enlightenment
None of which will happen
And in 2013
The Mayan calender will be as done with
As Y2K
The second coming
And all the other millennial beliefs
Christians/UFOers up on hills
Arms raised
Watching watches
Feeling foolish
Maybe God doesn’t even exist
Or, at least, isn’t what we think It is
But the soul does
And the ‘something non-physical’ does
The otherworldly
The supernatural
The mystical
Love
And that’s enough for me
So who do we turn to?
Derren Brown?
Who seems to know plenty
And rightly asserts
That England is full of half-assed mediums
Spraying ‘messages’ willy-nilly
And nearly always missing
And everyone’s a healer
And healing’s so basic
For who will heal our hearts,
Our minds?
The Dalia Lama’s got wisdom
Got smiles
Got goodness
The pope...
The pope...
The pope’s a joke!
And Sai Baba’s a phoney
Youtube proves that
One among thousands
Of fake Indian babas
Even Yogananda
Has the stigma
Of careless little children
Spunked here and there
Like so many others
But listen! Fake gurus
If you want to fuck, fuck
Nobody’ll begrudge you
As long as you’re honest
And leave the little boys alone
But they still have their followers:
Osho and his Rollses
His machine guns and orgies
Even Franklin Jones
The maddest man who ever lived
Was revered by hundreds
As a God incarnate
Though thankfully dead now
Hopefully John de Ruiter soon
So who’s left?
Ken Wilber talks shite
And Andrew Cohen talks shite
And Chogyam Trungpa was a drunk
And I don’t care what anybody says
Mastering the art of not poisoning your own body
Is a basic
Ask Buddha
Who seems basically right on
Though who knows what he really said?
Five hundred years is a long time
Between speech and record
And the Theravedans and the Mahayanans
And the Burmese and the Tibetans
And the Chinese
And the Zen
Have all got their own way
Still, the old ones are the best huh?
No internet to discredit them
All heresies suppressed
All those old saints:
The blue-skinned Sri Krishna
The green-skinned Milarepa
Flying through space
Did they really exist?
And was Jesus
- whisper it -
Really the Son of God?
- whatever that means -
Or was that added on later?
Was he actually not quite there
A little bit drunk on the spirit
And carried away?
Moses parting waters
Noah and his Ark
It all seems, by modern standards
A little bit far-fetched
And so we come to Amma
Where miracles abound
Though I’ve never seen any
Beyond the peace that oozes from her
The way she can sit for fifteen hours
All through the night
Not eating or drinking
Always smiling
Always the same
Day after day
Month after month
Year after year
Receiving thousands
Holding them in her arms
Hugging them all
Loving them all
I do believe there’s never been a soul like her
On this Earth
And yet I’m still not convinced
She’s the one for me
My own path led to Germany
To a small Indian lady
Who doesn’t speak
Doesn’t do anything grand
Just looked in my eyes
And made my heart say a million times over
Thank you
And all she ever told me was
Be yourself
Get a job
Find a wife
Live a good life
And be happy




Spiritually speaking
Christianity seems a real primitive religion
No direction
No techniques
No goal
Just lots of madness
Earnest convictions
And I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone
Who’s walked that path
Who’s made it even a little ways
‘Cept in long dead tales
- Padre Pio, Therese Neumann -
Though I’d love to
What a shame that mad Bible
All doctored and twisted
Has been shoved down our throats
By nice white-skinned preachers
Ordained “to spread the gospel
and make disciples of all nations”
Though Jesus never said that
Someone added that in later
To justify their own cause
And make it seem right




I’m very harsh on Christianity at times
But there are hundreds of millions of Christians
So how can I generalise?
I’m sure most of them are awesome
Tolerate other faiths
Don’t think they’re the only ones
Maybe even know God
It’s just a shame that
The loudest
The ugliest
The most obnoxious
Of any clique
Are the ones who make the news




It started
Like life
With the best of intentions
All holy and pure
With longings for light
It wasn’t long, however
Before other things intruded
And it ended
Like life
Thinking mostly of tits




The Pursuit of Happiness

Happiness is the most important thing
Pursue it always
Sometimes you’ll find it in the things you do
Sometimes in the quiet times, doing nothing
If you have emotional problems
Root them out
You’ll feel better after
And if you do it often enough
You’ll feel good during too
Making decisions based on money is rarely pleasurable
Better to be homeless and poor
Than miserable
Though if you must be homeless
Better to do it somewhere warm
If you feel stuck
Have a think
The answer will be somewhere
If it’s not
The answer is probably to relax for a while
And while we’re on the subject:
Relaxation is good
As are siestas
There’s no obligation to do anything in particular
You really can do
Whatever you like
Of course,
Life is about a billion times more complex than this
But everything you need will be there
When you need it
Just remember:
Be yourself
And believe in yourself
Peace is good
And harmony is good
And avoiding the things that disturb your harmony
Is wisdom
It’s a long life
But if you spend it in the pursuit of happiness
You’ll never be bored