In any case, nothing much happened last week. Apart from, oh yeah, talking to Stevie Jay, and also sharing some lovely emails with long ago Leah, which were healing and nice. But all four of my refereeing games were called off because of the freezing temperatures and apart from squash I did nada. I woke up every day knowing what the next chapter of my book was going to be – and everyday I managed to avoid it. But it’ll happen I’m sure at some point.
I ended the week by watching The Truman Show, which has once again driven me mad. Not the pure, life-changing madness of ’98, when I exited the movie theatre in Wakefield and stood twirling by the roundabout watching the silly little cars go round and round and seeing no more reality in what they were doing than in his made-up world within another made-up world that sent me rocketing just weeks later back into discovery mode and soon led me to Mexico, where everything began. But a kind of madness nonetheless. The madness that whispers, but you can still make it Rory-boy. Look at Truman. Look at what he did. He sailed to edge of his universe and put his life on the line – and that’s what you must do. That’s what Buddha did. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what all those who have realised the depths of their souls have done. But you play it safe with cups and mortgages and reading about celebrities and you know where that road will lead. Remember when you had light? Remember when little boys thought you were holy – and maybe you were? Remember when you were on some path and life made sense? And now you referee and seek to pacify drunks and it’s all such a long way away from those days of yore.
And who’s even typing this stuff anyway? I just feel like I’m taking dictation.
Even that sentence there.
And that one too.
I…I feel like I can’t speak. Every sentence I come to type down I’ve already heard in my head the instant I go to begin. All I’m doing is taking dictation. And then I want to know why. And who it is that’s dictating these thoughts. And what the point of me typing it is. Knowing full well that all those thoughts too are mere dictation.
But dictation by who? By me. But that doesn’t make any sense – for if it is I have no idea how I’m doing it.
What I feel like is there’s a little bug in my brain handling gear sticks and levers and piloting this great lunking machine called Rory who mistakenly thinks he’s got a brain but really all he is is a casing for this lever-pulling bug. And the bug says “type” and the man hands type and I think it’s me. The bug is controlling me. He’s making me type things! And he won’t let me stop.
Maybe I swallowed a bee or something when I was little.
In any case, what the fuck, every word I go to type I’ve already heard several seconds before my fingers reach the keys and I’m playing some impossible game of catch-up, always several words or sentences behind. And the bug is in my head and I’m a lunking fool who’s not what he thinks he is but – what difference does it make anyway? I’m not what I think I am, I am what I think I am – same outcome, same foolish ideas. The I thinks it watched The Truman Show and felt some things and now wants to express them – and the I realises that it’s just a typist for a dictating inside-head bug that is actually the real I – but what I is it? I looking through Rory’s eyes? Eyes elsewhere, looking through…
Yes, gone mad. Gone Truman Show mad. But what sort of mad? What brain-destroying mad is you?
Truman Show. Changed life in ’98. Watched a few times since but no life-changing then. And now watched yesterday and spurs on to think once more about Buddha dreams and this tinpot world where the pinnacle of achievement would be what? Writing stupid TV shows like Eastenders for idiots to stuff themselves with so that they didn’t have to think for half an hour and can go on glugging and fizzing and pissing themselves to sleep? Or trading in the bricks that someone else owns for bricks that bug-powered body can own, like some lumbering, clunking caveman saying, ug, these are my bricks?
Show me something worthwhile in this world and I’ll take it! You lying piece of shit! Show me a man who has truly made something of himself, and not just some self-satisfied grinning oyster who smiles inanities into his wine glass and makes fancy women chortle! Some real man. Some good man. Some deep man. Some realised man. And then I’ll stop being mad and buy nice shoes, like him.
Forty days and forty nights. To put one’s life on the line and sail to the edge of the universe. To boldly go or to turn back to pretend insurance salesman’s job while God and angels rub their hands in glee and laugh at all your sillinesses.
Those are the questions.
But what if Buddha’s a fairly tale? What if there was no wife-leaving prince who sat in forests starving and ultimately penetrating to the depths of his soul? What if everything’s just make-believe and the atheists are right and I’m just a simpleton swallowing charlatans’ lies and –
No. This is entirely too conscious. Thoughts of how it’ll go on blog. Thoughts of being read by Eric and how he’ll tut and say “interminable”. Thoughts of madheads like Eve then reading and chirping in with spaced-out advice. Thoughts of poetry and needing to sound like a good writer ‘cos that’s what I’m supposed to be, even though I’m clearly not. All those thoughts mean I’m not writing for myself, not writing from my heart. Need to write more true, write to God or to Mother Meera or Amma, from whom I hide behind no falseness: only then, really, does my humility and anger come out. Everything else is just pretend. Just the bug trying to wax. Just –
You see: I ponder over that sentence ‘cos three “justs” provide better metre.
But no reason to say any more.
And even all that is just taking dictation.
Who is speaking!? That’s something I’d like to know. Dear God, are you even real? Can you hear me? Do you give a damn for me sitting down here going loony tunes not even knowing if you actually exist? Caught up in tales of yogis and swamis and saints and supposed Messiahs, which no one knows if they’re true or not? Believing things that are important to life but maybe actually just bonkers? Looking round at a world populated by people I don’t aspire to be, but wondering if I’m the one who’s wrong? And then sometimes happy ‘cos I can swing a bat or kick a ball? But sex and the buying of things and any kind of occupation and women and conversation and TV and all the stuff that everyone else does totally unfulfilling? And then saying that and knowing that there’s a word for that, and pills too? And nobody knows the truth of everything except one time something worked for me once and then that thing stopped working and doing the opposite worked – I’m talking spirituality, and then grounding – and now I’ve continued in that and I’m wondering whether to flip again and jettison out, like I did after Wakefield ’98, and never settling, and look what it brought me, something new and wonderful and I walked out of this door and left everything behind would you bring me again to something new and wonderful or would you just leaving me crying and mad and ruing the wasted years ‘cos I was just a foolish wandering madman too old for sleeping under stars and chasing young man’s dreams of enlightenment and God?
Forty days and forty nights – death or glory, that’s what I dream of. Is it true or is it not? Did the founder of reiki really do that going up the mountain thing or is that myth? Is there really a reality to crack on into and should I go for it or is it best to remain here in normal land of Leeds where no one cares about these things – as far as I can tell – and just chug slowly along maybe meditating every now and again – as if I know how to do that – until an old man and mortgage all settled up and then fulfil once again the Indian ideal of youth who finds himself – householder and family man – aged renunciate of the world going once more to meet his maker before dying under tree where the eagles pick his bones. Certainly, seems a better way to go than how we’ve got it mapped in this land of ours.
Ramana, do you hear where I’m coming from? Does any of this make sense to you, oh gentle-eyed gazing one? As you look down at me with infinite patience and perhaps pity.
Or mad storied Babaji, who apparently comes when called upon, but really a bit too far-fetched to be true, don’t you think so Mr Yogananda? And what anyway of the children you supposedly bore and hid, which you’d have to admit would be naughty, right?
Inspiration. Truth. Out there? In here? Direction please. Once it was there – but now it’s not. And the evil dictating bug is just getting madder and madder still, not making sense with these mad typing larks.
Can anybody understand this? Or is even Joyce turning in his grave, despite the non-lack of grammar?
And all those suicidal writers and drunks and junkies and misery-guts – pff! As if I want to be like them. If this degree is teaching me one thing it’s that: that writing is pointless, and chasing publishers is a waste of life, and academicspeak is as devoid of content as managespeak. All them books! All them words! And such a tiny fraction of a dot of a percent of them of any worth.
So much straw huh? What the fuck!
But, still, see it out I must. Seven more months and then freedom. Something will come: maybe a baby, given the caution with which we seek to prevent it (ie, none, ‘cept a diagnosis for polycystic ovary syndrome) or maybe something else. But if the road if blank and free…you can be damn sure I’m gonna walk it. And I will type everything out of me and leave it there as my legacy (am I just mad Kevin Spacey-type endlessly writing mad character like in Seven?) so as to be well and truly free. I don’t know anything. I’m not drunk. Although I did have several cheese sandwiches.
I also played a game of chess on the way home – a real one, mind. I think that upset the balance of my brain. It was my first game since I quite the internet thing after taking the iboga last June – no, that hasn’t made me mad – and although I thought doing it in the real world would be okay I don’t think it was. I felt a bit sick afterwards. My head was swimming and it all seemed really pointless. Male youths talking quack quack h2-h4 Sicilian this and that, thoroughly serious and also good. One minute games with pieces flying like crazy. But what of life, hunh? Just robots and machines memorising patterns and then playing them out over and over to increase personal numbers and all really much more quickly and neatly organised by Rory’s own (TM) chess program which I mentioned last year and which goes: are you better than me? Then you win. Am I better than you? Then I win. And no need for pointless formalities of shuffling pieces around and staring at board and ultimately making either foolish or brainy moves: conclusion exactly the same.
Goddamn, if I type for a million years I will never run out of things to say!
And to think how little I say in the real life, and how little confidence I have in the words there I utter; it’s a funny old game.
But what was I saying?
Oh yeah: Truman Show. Gotta go pee. It’s made me mad. Or I’m already mad. Or I’m busting out. Or there’s truth in it after all. Or I’m just a mad-typing fool. Or there really is a bug in my head.
If only Janette still read me, she’d have some drugs to prescribe, laugh out loud.
But: no, no: you’d have to prove yourself first before I followed your approach, Doctor Langley. What’s that? Yes? You’ve walked in my shoes a thousand miles and know exactly what I’m feeling? And you’re well-balanced and blissful and can laugh even more than I can, which is a hell of a lot as it goes. Well then, sure, I’ll take your medicine, having studied your life and looked into the depths of your soul and eyes. I’ll trust that. I’ll take it you know what you’re talking about.
But…Doctor Langley?
Yes.
Are you out there? Are you human? What’s your number? Can I come visit you?
Doctor Langley?
Doctor Langley?
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