Big splurge

And then I had this idea that I could map the story of my life onto Joseph Campbell’s Myth Blueprint and make it a fictionalised account. I went through the stages and most of it was there and in order; I’ve thought that before. I did it with three different interpretations of his ‘formula’ and the third time I snagged on the last three points and it made me think perhaps I hadn’t quite reached the end: hadn’t completed ‘elixir’ and ‘home’ (which I translated as ‘publishing my story’ and ‘the mysterious unknown thing that follows that’). Also, mapping my life to that formula gets me thinking about the alternative lives that I’ve led: the one that I did lead wherein I believe I took all sorts of wrong turns and got stupidly lost and distracted; and the one that I didn’t lead but I sometimes create in my head, thinking that was the life I should be looking back on if only I’d been a little bit smarter. And that then sent me on a big mad midnight typing frenzy...

MY LIFE

Everything was smooth right up to meeting Brad. Then I should have gone home. But I didn’t, I went to Mexico.

Eventually I did go home – perhaps five or six weeks late.

Back to Lindsay, Vipassana, India – which led me on to Mother Meera and the job in Amsterdam: THE CALL TO RETURN.

REFUSAL OF THE CALL: quit the job, tried to fly back to America, ended up meeting Eve (very lost and high by now).

Eve brings me back to Earth. Sophie completes the deal. Early 2002. But, even before that – summer 2001, when I was back in Wakefield and met Laura – there was the call to Bretton, to writing. And again in Ireland, the need to be a student in order to further the writing. RETURN completed by going to university.

Doing the undergraduate. Sidelined by living in Canada, by going into teaching and then Oxfam and then other jobs. But September 2011 I begin the masters – 5 years and 5 months after Patricia first suggested it to me. Five years! What did I do in those five years? I worked, I shagged Perlilly, I wrote a failed book, I had a go at London. I returned to Mexico and found a part of my soul. I finally went to Israel.

Israel. Completion of the journey. Final realisation. Should have done that a long time ago. Done now.

Perhaps it should have gone like this:

Go to uni in 2000/2001. Graduate 2003/2004. Do a masters and graduate from that 2004/2005. Write the book and spread it out into the world. Win the girl.

Dear God, did I totally screw this up? Will you help me get back on track? I feel lost with all of this: it doesn’t feel like part of the plan, it feels like opportunities lost. Although I can’t deny I learned a hell of a lot on the way – though, really, it was almost stuff that I should have known all along, and would’ve if I hadn’t been such a tool, had listened to those wiser than me, hadn’t been so mental and lost. Six or seven years! Maybe eight. I’m 35 now – I’ll be 36 when this is done. I could’ve still been in my twenties, full of piss and vinegar and real belief, not cynical and jaded. I got distracted from the path. You never told me what to do.

Mother Meera: get a job (May 2000)

John Milton: get a job (February 2001)

That Buddhist monk: get a job (October 1999)

Plus plenty of others besides. But I didn’t get it into my thick skull until April 2002, until I reached rock bottom. I didn’t get to uni until September 2002 – with Your blessing. And I didn’t get to start the masters until 2011 – again, only with Your help. Mexico 2009 was meant to be – but was that not maybe just help from without pulling me out of the mire once again? Coco, Cuauhtémoc? Yair – and Yair finally drawing me on to Israel, when I missed the opportunity at the end of 2008, with Perlilly and her song. Israel. When should I have gone there? 2000 instead of flying Shawn over to the UK and blowing all my dosh on gadding?

Back to England for Christmas ’99. Then to Israel – no real signs for India – though India is what brought me Mother Meera (no, Paul and then Glastonbury did that) – and then the mad stupid Jesus walk in the rain laughing and realising it was all bobbins and back to my true desire: to have a wife, and to write.

But where does Sophie come into all this? Matt and Easterly? All the other mad things I’ve done – like Peony’s finger, Guatemala, Paris and Amsterdam and London? Canterbury, China, Guelph? Was it all just barking up the wrong tree? Stupid lessons to teach me not to do stupid stuff? Any of it of any worth? Or just running around in circles wasting time till I finally got myself back on track? And am I on track now? Just women, pussies, fingers and panting and orgasms – fleeting moments of satisfaction so short, so ultimately pointless. Just money and earnings and paying the rent so that the body can sleep under a roof and have fripperies to entertain it – but time ticks on for no noticeable reward and the body slowly crumbles around the soul that has long since stopped moving. Just dalliances and ‘fun’, run around a field to kick a ball every week – and that’s okay, it’s good for you – but it shouldn’t be what your life is built around. Nothing will happen, I feel, unless I pull my finger out. But, God only knows, I need some help in this. I’m all alone. Nobody wants me. Haven’t I tried pretty much everything.

Well try again. Never give up.

That means write once more to agents in America. See if you can get them interested in your book. On The Road comes out in 2012 and the market might be ripe for your kind of thing.

You procrastinate.

Could I stop?

Yes. You could. With an almighty display of willpower.

But then…there’s the question of doing it too soon, tugging on the grass, not allowing things to take their shape naturally: I do believe in that, feel that I’ve experienced it.

Yes. That’s true. But having the writing prepared won’t be any negative for you. Man Woman Sex Love. All your ideas. Sure, it’s true nothing can happen until the time is right – until the fruit is ready to drop. And in any case…

It’s the course requirements I need to be dealing with now. My short film draft. My research proposal. My script. I’m leaving them unfinished, sort of sated by being 95% there. But I still need to do them.

I wish my tutors would encourage me. I wish they would tell me whether they thought I was any good or not.

I wish somebody would.

Some people do.

But how the fuck can you really tell for sure? They could be idiots. I could be an idiot, for pursuing this so fervently.

Sometimes, you just have to believe. Follow your passion. Go out on a limb.

But then I look at all the time I’ve wasted…

Time wasted working, trying to be normal! And what you’re saying you should have been doing was following your heart, your path, your dream: writing! You know what being normal feels like: a waste of life. Does writing? No. You love it with all your heart, with one hell of a passion. You know that never feels like time ill-spent. You look back on it with such fondness, such pride and joy. You love it.

You’re right. In my head I think: let’s get it on – let’s ignore everything of the world – let’s get disciplined. A vision of me knuckling down, shutting everything else out –

It’s what you have to do.

– but then the reality of what I know myself to be –

What you have been thus far.

– and that scares me. I know how easily distracted, how difficult I find this –

But you don’t find it difficult.

– difficult to start, to stick at when the going gets tough –

The mind is hard to control: the body less so. Luckily it’s the body that does this work. If there’s nothing else for the mind to do –

You mean force it.

Yes.

I could do it, couldn’t I? Even if nothing came of it at least it would be done. I could write like a mad fool the whole doo-long-day – and then at least I’d be free, one way or the other, by the end of it. Otherwise I’ll be sat here again come September faced with the prospect of a shitty job, a desire to get away – and all these writing ideas hanging over my head and torturing me and me knowing that I couldn’t be free unless I dealt with them. America will certainly have to wait until it’s done. Bah humbug.

Anyways, there’s nothing much more to say, is there? You simply have to sleep on it, and have a think, and in the morning – either get it on – your uni work – or not. But rest assured: there is no end to the number of mediocre films this world has provided for you to watch. And when the time comes for this life to end, if that’s all you’ve done, you’re not going to be satisfied.

Freedom from distraction. Easier said than done.