And then I had this brainwave: rather than trying to be one among about a billion arsehole bloggers who watch films and think, hm, I’ve got an opinion, I like it, let’s try and dress it up as a review – I mean, there are people who get paid for that kind of thing – why not just be what I am, which is someone who when they watch something great thinks, yeah, but it could have been better. Reviews schmiviews: who can be bothered trying to sound all smart and Guardianized anyways? So…
Last night I watched Chris ‘Really Wild Show’ Packham present a program called something like ‘Nature’s Weirdest Events’; it was of course very fascinating and cool and made you go “ug” and “ah” when whales exploded and toads got lost in the Thames and, yeah, it was 99% good. BUT –
Then there were these jaunty camera bits that were, okay, maybe they seemed like a good idea in somebody’s head but – they weren’t. Like whenever a new person came on – it might have just been some overexaggerating Australian on a bus – they made them stand there all grim and stary while the camera buzzed in and out and tried to create some ambience of doom or something; no need. Likewise, when Chris was talking excitedly and explaining things and gesticulating they’d for some stupid reason cut off from his face and mouth and show us his skew-whiff hands behind a skeleton or maybe the side of his head, which was a bit disconcerting. No need again: just stick with the nice man’s face and stop trying to be cool but actually just off-putting.
Apart from that: fine. In fact, excellent – and not even too American and over-dramatic, even with a title like that.
So! Welcome to Rory’s not yet another arsehole halfwit blogger thinks he can write things about movies and books that people’ll pay any attention to and make him sound like anything other than a tit but in fact Rory’s arsehole halfwit tit-shaped blo that doesn’t even bother with reviews beyond words like “good” and “cool” and instead just says that’s all a given, here’s what I think they could have done to make it better typed for no other reason than because I sort of enjoy it and I’ve got nothing better to do with all this infinite student time on my hands, etc. Hee!
In other news, I’ve finally put up – for some strange reason – every little bit of blog archive I could lay my hands on. Of course, much of it got lost in The Great Delete of 2002 but still plenty of tat to sit there on the internet gathering dust and waiting for me to every six or twelve months have a dip and exclaim, “my God! But wasn’t I a loon?” – even at this today feeling remarkably non-loony, no doubt. Here’s what you’ve missed if you thought you’d got it all:
And then when I’d finished that I was hit by this creeping sense of doom that had been loitering a little while but now finally burst through the curtains and into my room. It went, oh my fucking God, where have the last 12 years gone. It went, holy Jesus, we’ve just been saying the same thing over and over instead of actually living life. It went, what the hell, it’s 2012 and you’re gonna be thirty-six soon and there ain’t no reversing of time like you imagine there is in your head. You’re thirty-six and you live in an almost coldwater basement flat in Leeds and all you’ve got is stupid dreams about being a writer – and yet even these dreams you’ve come to hate, because of the life they’ve robbed you of these past 10 years, the road they’ve forced you down. Once a young man who lived a lot and occasionally typed it up. Then a young man who got swept away by book-fame dreams, by the multitude of people who told him, you gotta write a book, you’re gonna make it, man – before one day realising that “you should write a book” is what people say when they think your stories overlong and want you to shut up. Thirty-six! Twelve years! Holy shit, where has the life all gone?
Creeping doom crept closer to my room the other day when I was in email discussion with good old Stevie Jay and we were talking about me rewriting a scene from Charlottesville
I suddenly feel like I’ve wasted my life. It’s true, I’ve done pretty much everything I ever wanted to do, and in that I should feel grateful. I’ve travelled tons, adventured lots, loved several really good women, and written a good book, but…wow, there was just such a sense of speed about my growth from, say, 21-25 – and then it just seemed to stop. Ten goddamn years since I started university! And five since I first graduated. Five! I really don’t know what the hell I’ve done since then: and it pains me massively, as you’ll see if you read the email I wrote to Saram which reveals how much I feel like I’ve gotten off track and how I’m maybe five or even six years behind schedule and the whole thought of it makes me want to cry. Ten years: the ten years that take you from still young twenty-six – still gadding about and still wild and free and full of salt and vinegar and all other flavour of crisp – and suddenly thirty-six, and so seemingly the same – but so much closer to being too old to seriously gad – to seriously sleep under trees, and hitchhike, and be penniless and lost – all of which I think I was last year, incidentally, yet again – and…oh, I dunno, I just long to get out of it, to fix it, to get back on track, to find something of life – which I suppose is all I’ve been doing all along but – feels like everything I’ve done to try and find life has merely taken me further away from it. Women, relationships, the pursuit of that; the writing, the trying to make it into a career, my filthy, stupid book; mastering normality and grounding and being able to do smalltalk with robots and plebs; not being an up-in-the-sky spiritual fruitcake; playing football. Pah. It’s probably just a temporary feeling but – wow, it’s got me good for a day or two I reckon.
Having finally put back in place all my online journal – and, of course, having been re-reading a fair chunk of it – I was suddenly hit yesterday with the feeling that I really have been going on like a broken record: all those billions of words and you could mostly sum it up like this:
Hi, I’m Rory: man, I’m bored! I wish there was life, I wish it was how it used to be when I was spiritual. I’ll get back to that one day. In the meantime, I want to write – but, oh! I’m such a terrible procrastinator. Why won’t a publisher buy my book? I really want a woman; I’ve got a woman but I’m not sure I’ll stick with her. Want to hear my musings on love? Heehee, I’m incredibly happy – I love my life! Ah, piss and shit! Everything’s so fuckin’ boring, this world sucks. I think I’ll change the place I live in. I changed it: things are better. I discovered something new. I’m bored of that now. If only I could be like one of you normal people…
And that’s pretty much it, huh? Even this today. Heehee, I’ve just been going round in circles – ten damn years and not a thing to show for it. But wait! Let’s list exactly what we have done in those ten damn years and see if we’re being realistic:
1. I went to university. I got a degree in English and American Literature and Creative Writing. I did my first year in Religious Studies and out of that I learned some useful things about using the intellect to look at spirituality and I also learned that I didn’t want to study Religion academically. I got into writing and that was great. I put myself in a position where I was able to work as a teacher, which was my whole goal right back in the summer of 2002. I also transformed from being massively ungrounded and doolally – still at uni’s start walking barefoot in pigtails skipping and playing with teenagers and living in a caravan in the woods juggling for my income in clothes I found in the street – to being, I suppose, fairly normal and more settled within.
2. I had a four-year relationship with a girl I fell in love with in 1999, and always dreamed of being with, and almost married and even bought a house and made a baby with. I guess I learned a few things in that, and maybe improved some. I also had a fifteen-month relationship with another girl, and several flings besides.
3. I lived a year in Canada; two months in China; visited Morocco (twice) and India and Spain (twice) and Tibet; and went back to Mexico in 2009 and spent six months hitching across the country and ended up right back at my hot springs, which was magical, and maybe had some grand and tearful realisation there, which felt like reclaiming a little piece of my soul. I’ve skied, rode a camel, and hiked on The Great Wall of China. Also visited the cemetery from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which was something I’ve wanted half my life to do. But all that feels like, meh.
4. I’ve worked. I worked eight months in an office in Canada
5. I’ve owned a convertible, which was probably a long-held desire of mine. It was all right – but mainly what I learned was that being able to take the roof off your car ain’t the be all and end all of what life has to offer.
6. I’ve written a bunch of songs and got into singing in public, which was sort of a major thing given that I’d been completely traumatised about singing in front of anyone since I was about thirteen – though understandable, given how bloody awful I was. But I got better – still ain’t amazing; passable, probably – and I’ve done lots of gigs and open mics and it don’t affect me a jot no more. I’ve also learned a whole bunch of songs – something I’d never done previously – through my little stint as “musician” (actually, busking and playing in restaurants and pubs and at private parties and stuff with my ex-girlfriend) and that’s done me good too (something challenging and new, beyond comfort zone, etc).
7. I’ve written a book; yay! It’d been in my head since Spring 2002 and it took me over six years to get it done. Obviously I’m still fine-tuning it – ain’t exactly how I want it to be – but I suppose that was some sort of achievement. Six years of struggle and wanting! And how well I remember those days of sitting at the keyboard and just banging my head in frustration, absolutely unable to get more than a few words out. But I did it, and it’s there, in print, selling something like 20 copies a month and every now and then I get an email from someone saying, wow, great book, it sort of might change my life – which is nice.
8. I’ve played a lot of football, scored a lot of goals, and found a real love for the game (well, for the playing of it: watching it’s frankly mostly dull). Now I’m a qualified referee and about to begin a whole new journey/tangent/side street. I guess only time will tell whether that leads to something or nothing.
9. I’ve grown, I suppose – grown mostly downwards, it seems. Shaken off my semi-mad spiritual bliss and exchanged it for a curmudgeonly cynicism. Traded in my frantic wanderlust desperation and ecstasy for a settled and mostly peaceful mind that’s quite happy to sit in this room drinking tea and typing. Lost the child, and journeyed into baby adulthood – I remember that kicking in quite strongly, maybe around twenty-nine – and now I guess I’m moving towards being a grown-up. Still, in amongst a bit of wisdom there’s not that much of wisdom, if you get what I mean.
10. I’ve found a woman who’s mostly normal and sane: who doesn’t nag or go mental or make me feel insecure or try and be something I’m not: who accepts me totally for what I am and doesn’t want to change me at all. I’ve been out and in and out again with my mother, and am currently out and I really couldn’t give a damn, she’s such a hurtful and twisted old loon. I’ve made some good and great friends, in Eric and Matt and Easterly and, previously, Diego, and Abi. I’ve been in and out with a whole bunch of upper-middle class southerners, and tasted a new piece of life with them. And I’ve lived a total of about twenty months in London Leeds . I’ve learned a few things about the importance of where one puts oneself in the world. And now I’m doing a Masters’ in Writing, which is probably what I should have been doing five years back, if I hadn’t been so scared of the expense.
So that was my last ten years. Old curmudgeon that I am, even I have to admit that I’ve done one or two useful things in that time – which sort of surprises me. I mean, it’s not that I’d forgotten all about those things, just that they didn’t seem to mean much to me, mostly added up to naught. But now that I’ve written them down…I’m finding it very hard to continue in the manner I thought I would, which was to be like, see! Even though I’ve done a few things none of it means anything and it’s all just been a massive waste of time. But, suddenly, that voice is stilled. I feel a bit quiet inside. Maybe the whole real problem here is, like my preaching to the world about the so-called ‘financial crisis’, one of perspective.
I feel very quiet indeed. Contemplative. Brain has been shut up, for once, which is unusual for recent days, so busy has it been. I could, I suppose, stop typing now and lie here letting this feeling sink in. But I also find it an interesting thing to do to keep on typing while I’m feeling like this – typing much slower now, by the way; probably at about a half or even a quarter of my normal speed – and…wow. Feeling. Peace. A little glimmer of that longed for moment of realisation – part two to what I experienced during my 28-day wilderness solo – that puts everything into place and says, but it was all worthwhile and perfect, Rory, you just don’t see it, that’s all. The tapestry flips over: the mess of threads reveals itself as the inner-workings of a beautiful picture, and all that’s left to do is admire. That’s what I felt back then – experienced to the core of my bones – everything that had taken place prior to ’99 – all the madness and destruction of it – making perfect sense – and that’s what I long to feel again: to know that all the madness and aforementioned ‘wasted time’ has been exactly what I needed: just as Shawn’s Kind Angel once promised, “not a moment of your existence is wasted”. But can it really be true?
Well, can it?
Angels surround me at all times. They are here now. They see me and feel me from the inside out, know me better than I know myself. In times past I might have been able to utilise their presence, feel them and feel comforted by them. But perhaps forsaking spiritual practise has destroyed that connection. And yet here, I’m convinced, they remain: with me now, in my room, in my bed, in my heart, gazing lovingly down, always ready to wrap a comforting, invisible arm. One day, I suppose, I’ll go back up the mountain and make the effort to get back in touch. Mount Olympus ? Or glorious Shasta, to fall on snow cold knees and beg and say, “but what did it all mean? Explain yourselves, weird unseen guiding hands.”
Here’s another thing that always stays in my head, and pops up sometimes when I think of why my attempts at life aren’t fulfilling – why all the things other people seem perfectly content in doing can only ever satisfy me in the short-term:
No glamour, no illusion can long hold the man who has set himself the task of treading the razor-edged Path which leads, through the wilderness, through the thick-set forest, through the deep waters of sorrow and distress, through the valley of sacrifice and over the mountains of vision to the gate of Deliverance.
He may travel sometimes in the dark (and the illusion of darkness is very real); he may travel sometimes in a light so dazzling and bewildering that he can scarcely see the way ahead; he may know what it is to falter on the Path, and to drop under the fatigue of service and of strife; he may be temporarily side-tracked and wander down the by-paths of ambition, of self-interest and material enchantment, but the lapse will be but brief.
Nothing in heaven or hell, on earth or elsewhere can prevent the progress of the man who has awakened to the illusion, who has glimpsed the reality beyond the glamour of the astral plane, and who has heard, even if only once, the clarion call of his own soul.
I first read that in Autumn 2001: I don’t know where it came from. It rang true then, though, and in my questioning moments it rings true again. I have touched my soul. I have seen a reality beyond what we call reality. I take it as a commonplace experience and imagine a great many people have done likewise – but maybe it’s rarer than I think.
Is all of this merely getting temporarily side-tracked? Exhausting the by-paths of what the illusion appears to offer, but can’t? A lapse? A ten-year lapse into ambition and self-interest and trying to please women and fulfil the ultimate ambition of a twenty-first century Englishman, which is to buy a cube of bricks and seal himself in it? No doubt a large part of me is on that path – and yet even as I head towards it I don’t doubt that it’ll be as empty and ultimately unsatisfying as owning a car with a detachable roof. And yet I am only able to say that because I have experienced it, and know it in my bones: the house, the marriage, the children and the lure and carrot of fabled authorial success – which means, ultimately, never having to work a job I hate or think about money ever again (which I don’t actually have to do, am just unable not to, because of conditioning and lack of faith) – I simply theorise about, because I haven’t yet tasted them. But, please God – please don’t let me walk all that way, and spend all that time and effort, only to find out that, like certain women, and like certain jobs, and like being a teacher and like living in London – and like, perhaps, even sex – it was only something I had to do, purely and simply, to realise that I didn’t actually want to do it, I just thought I did. Is there not an easier way to exhaust all possibilities?
Apparently not.
Oh well, he types, I’ll bet you I’ll be reaping the rewards of all this in old age or maybe the next life; wink wink.
…
And then a ten minute break, to top up the teapot and have a wee and eat a breakfast of cheddar and pesto on toast (Burgens, natch) and contemplate one or two things, like…
– I’m glad I had that feeling after writing up what I’d actually done with the last ten years: it’s given me hope that it wasn’t all just a monumental waste of time – and that maybe one day I will actually get the realisation in my bones.
– Fourteen years ago almost this very month I wrote tongue-in-cheekly that I was having a mid-life crisis. Well, maybe it’s now actually beginning.
– The other day I dipped into Rob Breszny’s Freewill Astrology for like the first time in years – and there was this lovely horoscope mentioning self-publishing and that sort of triggered with one or two things that I’d been thinking about. Nice. Then, like ten minutes later, I get the self-same horoscope in an email from Stevie Jay – who though we have some emails these days, certainly not that many, and definitely not about Rob Breszny. Anyways, that was cool.
– The thoughts it corresponded with were these: to hell with all this madness beating my head trying to get an agent or a publisher; like all things just let it come if it wants to come – if it’s good for me – and in the meantime just blog your ass off like you always did and stick with the self-publishing, because at least that way you’re free to write and publish whatever you want, mistakes and all, and who gives a fuck whether it’s any more polished than the stuff you write here anyways? Seriously, you could toss off every book idea you’ve currently got rattling around in your brain – chuck them out in no more than a month each, freed from the shackles of trying to make it good – and then you’d be free. Because, wanting a proper publisher is not being free, it’s being constantly enslaved to a notion of chasing and emailing and needing to be in a particular place, on a computer, and not following wild mad travel dreams of disappearing down a wormhole or hiding out in a monastery for a year or two, and all that sucks because it’s dreams versus money and fame, and surely dreams ought to win that argument every time, right? So, yup, to hell with chasing publishers any more and let them come to me: I’ll churn out books if I want to, and publish them myself, and let them sell 3 copies a year, and it won’t matter a damn ‘cos the main thing is my head will no longer dwell on it and I’ll be off gallivanting in the sun rather than typing up proposals and chaining myself to the internet. The best things in life, don’tcha know, always come by word of mouth, by weird synchronicity or meeting, by fluttered piece of paper, by apparent wrong-turning, by bumping in the street, by mystic magic munificence. I’ve learned that many times – but I still don’t know it in completeness.
– Also I remembered once again that parable about the master and the student and how the student asks the master “what is the illusion?” and the master maybe just smiles and then some time later the student goes off and decides to live a worldly life, gets a wife and a child and works and laughs and cries and loves and grows old and muses back on everything and eventually dies – and then finds himself right back sitting with his master just after the question and the master says “that right there is the illusion”. I guess the whole point is that he has to live it to know. But, lucky sod, being a monkly parable and everything, they always get their cake and eat it and are always perfect beyond belief – talk about literary Rita Sues! – and I guess it doesn’t really happen like that. And not that I’m no monkly student or worthy even of any kind of comparison – but it sure do make me think about my own situation, and my relationship with John Milton, who has turned his back on me, and that little piece above, about “no glamour, no illusion…”
– Then I thought, hm, I wonder who reads this – really kind of imagining that no one does – that I write far too many words for any normal person to be able to daily digest – and that they’re probably not the kind of words anyone would want to anyway. But, still, I write it – and couldn’t probably not. That is something that’s in my bones – and even if no one read it, I know it would still do me good. Always has: often magically so. I write something here and I watch it change my reality. I’d be an idiot to turn my back on that. And with regard to what I said above about self-publishing and just writing without consideration of whether it was mistake-free or polished or good – well, this is the ultimate place for that, and it’s what I’ve always done, and it’s writing purely for writing’s sake – for the love of it, for the benefits it brings – without any consideration whatsoever for money or fame or stupid publishing world or recognition. Once upon a time those things didn’t exist – but people still wrote, still told stories and expressed themselves. That’s a universal, exists everywhere and everywhen: publishing and fame are merely a temporary.
– Still, with that in mind I really will try and cut down on repeating myself, having horrifiedly realised just how much and how long I’ve been saying things like “must use the internet less” or “I hate my computer” (I don’t) or “I want to write but I keep procrastinating” or “I don’t like my life and it’s not my fault”. No point in any of those things. Okay, maybe the last one I’ll keep… ;-)
In a nutshell: I write what the hell I want to write, the way I want it; maybe the last ten years haven’t been such a total waste – but it really is a shock to be able to look back at such an expanse of time and think it only yesterday; everything else is groovy and there’s always the hope that one day I’ll be done with temporary side-tracking and step back on the Path of glorious imagined mystical wonderment; and I’ve just once again typed nearly five thousand words and, man, I wonder how many words I’ve typed in this blog thing by now?
Also: no more movie reviews, just being a pain in the ass and saying, hm, I wouldn’t have done that if I was you.
Also: time to get up.
Cheers!
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