Karma. Thinking back to Sophie and thinking back to the time in the build up to our breakup. Thinking of when I was working as a teacher and stressed out and despondent. Thinking of how I used to go walking alone in the woods of an evening and beseech the dark and the trees and moan for my predicament. So unhappy in my job. So wanting to break out and make a change and maybe go somewhere groovy instead of being stuck there in misery. And so unable to do what now seems the obvious thing and lay my head in her lap and tell her these things. Trying to figure it all out on my own. Not wanting to share myself with another. Convinced that was the right way to handle it. But isn’tt that just what Nicky did with me, the big realisation I mentioned several weeks back? And what a profound effect it had on me, and how I wished she’d behaved otherwise, couldn’t believe she hadn’t. But, yet again, by searching my own past I see I’ve done exactly the same thing. Everything little thing is karma or projection or lessons.
I think that maybe she never really gave herself to our relationship and that probably I should have seen it sooner. When we first got together she had plans to go to Mauritius but the whole thing kept getting postponed. A part of me wanted to tell her it was all meant to be so we could be together and maybe she shouldn’t go after all, could let go of those plans. But I didn’t, and she went. She was supposed to be away for six months and for those six months I looked forward to her return. I’m not saying I didn’t try things with others but she was always the one I thought seriously about. And then when the six months were up she decided to stay on another half a year. And then when she did come back she almost immediately went away to South America for four months with a friend. By this time we’d at least managed to spend a week or two together and committed to giving it a proper go. But wasn’t all this a sign of something? That having a real relationship wasn’t exactly at the top of her list of priorities, as it was mine? This is partly why I feel like I maybe wasted three years on her: we just didn’t want the same thing. I guess ever since I came back from Mexico in January 2010 a relationship has been my number one goal, and for some reason I thought it could work with her. But now I look back I see that, though she wanted it, it wasn’t exactly her number one goal. Travel and adventures and gadding about and having fun were more important to her. Why couldn’t I see that? It seems obvious now.
And at the end, too, travel and gadding about and having fun and living life as though it’s a postcard are still where she’s at. New places, new people. Having things to talk about. She buys a van and she buys a yurt and everything’s complete. But, for me, it’s making it work with another that stays at the top of my list, and everything else – the hows and wheres of living, etc – are secondary to that.
Am I just a man among many destined to choose the wrong kind of woman time and time again? I know I’ve got to stop thinking back to Sophie – and certainly to extinguish whatever foolish candle I still hold for her – but there are so many lessons and parallels in that relationship I can’t help thinking it’s still useful for me to remember it. Used to think she, too, was a girl who was more interested in living her life for the things she could write on a postcard than the reality of it. And maybe I was the same also. Life is…
Life is weird. There’s a big part of me that lives my life, I know, for the memories I’ll have on my deathbed and the things I write herein. Or, perhaps more accurately, for the fear of what those memories, this writing might not be. It’s like I feel pressured to do interesting things, not repeat myself, not squander my time in what I judge as ‘nothingness’. The idea of doing the same thing every day, such as the majority of the world seems to do, terrifies me, seems like such a terrible waste. I want to look back and say, well at least I didn’t live no humdrum life. I want to reminisce as a dying old man that, for better or for worse, I did every foolish thing I imagined and gave it my best shot, denied myself not. I want to have happy future memories and a mind free of regrets of things not done.
Except…there’s another part of me that believes that’s not what life is about, that life is more about what you’re being than what you do. When I’m in this zone life doesn’t seem to be about doing at all, and the desire to create these awesome future old man memories appears rather foolish. This part of me looks at the world and sees that nearly everything people do is actually rather irrelevant and doesn’t make any rational sense. But what they’re being does. That’s the spiritual part, I suppose: the part that feels it’s not the events but the emotions behind the events that matter. Being loving and kind and compassionate and joyful in whatever situation. The part of me, I suppose, that is living for the memories of the moment after the old man on his deathbed has passed. Which is probably the more important time. Then the spirit can look back and feel satisfied in a life lived well, and in the states of beingness it experienced. To see that it grew in love, which is just maybe the whole entire purpose of life. I mean, love has always been, throughout all times and places, even where and when nearly all the doingness we have available to us today didn’t exist. So, rationally, life must be about being, with doing the side effect of that. Does it really matter whether I spend my years carrying water and chopping wood and doing not much else and nothing grand? Lahiri Mahasaya worked for the Indian railways, but inside he was a giant. He had joy and love, and when I think like this I know that’s what really matters.
I think about this a lot. I’m trying to find something to do with my life and I feel the pressure of making it something grand, something that pays well, something that society (and my mum) will be proud of. Because I’m smart and got a brain. To be a doctor or something. Be able to buy a big fancy house and show it off.
Is that at the root of all of this? Have I just hit upon some great truth about myself?
Or are these pressures real, worthwhile, what I should be aspiring to?
Would I be happier? A better person? Feel, at the end of my life and beyond it that I’ve done the right thing?
Typing like this I get more and more convinced it’s about what you’re being, that the doing doesn’t matter and, actually, I’d probably be better off just getting a job in a supermarket and being lovely to everyone I meet and going home to a family in a nest that I work to make joyful and having that as my priority. To let go of thoughts of needing to do something major and “change/help the world.” To live my life for the growth and the benefits of the soul rather than the egocentric dreams of a future dying old man. I mean, what does it even matter if do I create those amazing memories and have that moment of lying there dying and thinking back to how grand everything has been – to all the places I’ve been and the things I’ve done and the adventures lived – because, for sure, that moment will pass, and beyond that there’ll be another me, and that will be the one looking back – and looking back, probably, on that moment of glorious reminiscence as a vain and cute and unimportant folly. Are we not spirits? Or are we merely here to create excitement in this one lifetime? And who is it, exactly, that wants to live for imagined postcards and novelty anyway?
If I think about, I see that I can find this “spiritual” perspective within this lifetime too. It’s just that it gets jumbled up with other things. So, for instance, when people talk about my travels and adventures on the road I’m liable to get caught up in the doing part of it, the excitement and the thrill. But what they don’t realise is: a) it’s a lot like my good friend Siridharma once pointed out: “you only travel like that if you’re sick” (ie, in need of healing, looking for something, dis-eased); and: b) that what was actually so great about those years was what was going on inside (ie, the being and the discoveries and the joy of growth). In fact, if we’re talking about favourite memories and things that feel truly worthwhile – things I long to experience more of – it’s definitely realisations and moments of becoming something more than I once was that stand out. I mean, what is better than love? What is better than healing a wounded part of yourself? Than realising you no longer act in ways that bring you unhappiness? Than watching your understanding of how life works increase? All those are internal experiences and totally unconnected to whatever one might be doing. Was the great thing about hitch-hiking around America the things I saw and the people I met – or was it the realisation of the perfection of life and the experience of the higher, unseen, magical power and the change of heart I had? For all the wonders of deserts and nature quite a few of my greatest experiences took place in kitchens and petrol stations. They might not be my best stories as far as humans generally determine – but they are the moments I wouldn’t want to be without. All the past travel and adventure and exotic locations and stories I’m not too bothered about. But the growth I’ve undertaken and the deeper realisations I’ve been gifted I couldn’t imagine living without. They are what has given me joy and healed my heart. And, again, I wonder if I couldn’t have experienced those had I just stayed where I was and lived “a normal life” all along. Isn’t it striving and feeling that brings about realisation and growth? Or must it always have been the way it was, that whole odyssey of moving this body so hither thither around this globe pre-destined and necessary?
Well, I dunno, and that’s not the point. The point is…I’m not sure what the point is. That I’ve been musing on doing vs being? Though it probably isn’t a “versus” anyway; the two obviously work in tandem.
That I’m maybe using this as an argument into giving up all notions of “freedom” and allowing myself to finally live that “normal life” I’ve so long avoided with Laura?
That I’ve projected onto both Nicky and Sophie the idea of women who want their lives to be more about what they can write someone on a postcard than the nitty-gritty of adult responsibilities and ‘reality’?
That I’m trying to work out whether I really do need to do something like train to be a psychotherapist or whether I could live equally as fulfilling a life doing something simple and less headachey?
All good questions, all no doubt with answers that will soon arise. But what I’m thinking now is that first Paul McKenna exercise I did and how it made me realise what a massive amount of ego I have invested in being seen by both myself and others as “being different.” I don’t know why this is but I do know that it’s there, and that it’s been there a really long time. Who would I be without that? I’d be a nobody, just like everybody else. Such ego! And so I keep myself separate and weird and refuse to live like others and plot crazy shenanigans for the future stories that will differentiate me further and…
Wow. That’s kinda depressing huh? But the whole thing’s supposed to be about letting go of ego; maybe I should just get married and work a nine-to-five and keep inside all this other stuff and just let it shine forth from my eyeballs if that’s what it wants to do. But I don’t know how long I can carry on like this…
Another question Paul McKenna asked was, “what would you be if you lived beyond fear?” and the answer I gave: “a married writer.”
It’s always the same. It goes right back to that cave in Israel in 2011 and that week of absolute clarity fasting in the hot springs in 2010: I want a partner and I want to write. And what stops me? That…
I keep getting with the wrong women. Or I keep messing it up when I get with one. Or the one who’s been there all along and who is maybe the right one I won’t get with because: a) I’m afraid to be trapped, knowing it won’t fail but will just keep on going forever and ever; and: b) the worst thing ever which shines a very horrible light on me – that I wish that she was prettier.
I’m shallow. I’m making my choices based on the contours of someone’s face rather than all that important stuff I spout about love. I wish I was different. But, currently, I’m not.
But why that? What stops you? Ideas that friends won’t massage your ego by telling you your girlfriend’s a hottie? Ideas that people will wonder about why you’re with her when you could obviously be doing “so much better”? Ideas that you won’t be able to feel one hundred percent love when gazing at one another in intimate bedroom moments?
Or is that all just the excuse you’ve given yourself to not get involved? That moment when, several years back, you thought you wanted to marry her and then had a vision of your future self pulling back the wedding veil and…again, you ran away, and ran into the arms of someone ‘pretty’ but absolutely wrong for you. And thought them weird looking after a while anyway.
I mean, sheesh, I don’t get tired of this one – feel absolutely comfortable with her – and, yes, feel love and caring and kinship and all that good stuff. And even feel attraction for her – funnily enough, mostly when I’ve just opened my heart.
Attraction comes from the heart, not from the eyes. At least in my case it does. But…
Yes, that all may be the symptom of my reluctance rather than the cause of it.
And so I got with Nicky instead, and that may have been based purely on sex, because sex was what I understood as acceptance and wanting to be together and maybe love also, and three years later I’m right back where I started. She was wrong and not wanting what I said I wanted and probably somewhere inside I knew it even in the beginning – but is right of me to say she wasted my time? No. It was me that did that through my ill-thought out choices.
I’m an idiot. I’m a fool. Or at least I have been until now. I mean – Christ! – I remember going to see Laura back before I got with Nicky and thinking about her and thinking we could give it a go – but she wouldn’t sleep with me and I moved on. Why did I see that as the key to the beginning of a relationship? Sex: it just fucks everything up. I’m glad to be done with it, for now; glad that Nicky slept with that guy in Ireland and put an end to whatever crazy prolonged situation we had going on; glad that Laura stopped sleeping with me and that we now just share platonic beds and baths and don’t have that added confusion and propensity for hurt. It’s awesome. I remember that first platonic night and how I felt some stirrings and lust. But nothing happened and now, after four or five platonic nights, I feel nothing. I just want to sleep. The sleeping’s nice. I might not even be wearing anything but there’s nothing there of arousal. Much better. You just have to not give into it once or twice for it to pass. And everything’s more clear.
I should have been better with this in my life. Nothing fucked up ever came from not sleeping with someone. Although…I have also been thinking that part of my problem is that I get everything with women in the wrong order, or things overlap. And by that I mean…
Well, Julia, for instance – I was in love with her at 14 and 16 and 26 but because of various things – right back in the beginning my inability to tell her what I was feeling and seek to make anything happen – we didn’t go anywhere. And now I still think of her and think, not that anything serious will ever come of it but I’d sure love to have made love with her once or twice. And, stupid thing is last year she wanted that and I didn’t do it ‘cos I said I had to go referee instead and didn’t even end up refereeing! And so…
Well this makes sense in my head; you might just have to bear with me for a second…
Same thing with Sophie. Met her in ’99 but nothing happened until 2003, by which time I’d already met Laura and so everything got overlapped. But what if I’d not been such a pussyass and had managed to get it going with Sophie when we first met and we could have lived our time and been done with it and everything would have been clear. Same thing with Nicky too: met her in 2007 and dug her but didn’t say it and then it was 2010 before we got it on, but 2011 before we proper started seeing each other – should have done and said more the year before – and…well again, if I’d just been brave and done the natural thing – hey, here’s a girl I truly dig, let’s not just smile shyly and then not see each other for three years but why not instead have a deep long conversation and see where that goes and then maybe start seeing each other and then fall in and out of love and learn tons and be in the position we’re in now except without all the overlapping and wasted time and won’t things be much clearer that way?
But all I’ve ever done since I was a young lad with women is bottle it and keep my feelings inside and not really get round to it till years later. Except the few occasions when I haven’t done that – with Eve and Perlilly, for example – when nothing was kept back and every avenue was explored and gone for and – you know what? – funnily enough I don’t have any regrets with either of them, despite those relationships not lasting, because it all feels kind of in order.
Still, we did keep sleeping together long after it had ended. Eve and I broke up in April 2001 but slept together a few times that summer and then again in spring and summer 2010. And Perlilly and I broke up in April 2009 but carried on sleeping together until I went away to Mexico in July and then resumed it the next summer when I was back living in London , right up until Christmas 2010. I always do this and I’m not sure how I feel about it – broke up with Sophie in February 2007 but were still sleeping together for another eight months; broke up with Nicky in June 2012 but were still sleeping together until last month; and on-off lover Caitlyn who I first got with in May 2010 and have had a couple of dalliances with over the last six months. Even one night stand Justine from February 2011 came up for a weekend last summer and resumed where we left off.
And throughout it all there’s Laura, lovers for periods of several months in 2001 and 2002 and 2007 and 2012, though never nothing more…
In a nutshell, I’m a skanky ho and I need to stop. Plus, also, I need to give up with all the overlapping and one way to do that would be to go for it right in the beginning rather than biting my tongue and being a coward and letting the years pile up. Probably I still wouldn’t be thinking about Grace if I’d done that with her also. I tells ya, the next time I live this life – or the advice I’m going to give to my son (should I ever have one) – the advice for my future self – is this: go for it, my boy! Don’t hold back. It probably won’t come to anything in the long run but at least you’ll have made the effort and won’t dwell on it and won’t look back later with regret. So say those things to Julia aged 14. Kiss her under the swings and hold her hand and make her your girlfriend and your ‘first time’ and then always look back on it with fondness. And then years later, when you’re off in Mexico, go for it with Sophie – don’t let her go, fer Chrissakes – and be with her for a few years and learn a ton and maybe even stick with her – but, if not, when you one day meet a lovely girl in a kitchen cooking tofu and she offers you some (even though you’re just there to view a room in her house) – take it, and chat with her, and even though it’s Leeds do the thing you’d do if you were travelling and less hung up on habits and suggest a few hours and an evening together and see where it goes. And when she says she’s jetting off to another country either talk her out of it or go with her. And then it won’t be 2013 when you’re finally done with her but several years earlier and you won’t be in such a panic or a rush to get it on with Laura – who you probably shouldn’t have slept with in the first place (only did ‘cos you wrote an unwise letter to your mother; one that the I Ching would definitely have vetoed) – and all this mad overlapping business will be fine. Fuck, what a life!
Excepting, of course, those moments of recent days and weeks when everything has seemed just perfect and in order and all happening at the right time…
And excepting too the main reason that I have all this damn overlapping and never really letting anybody go: that I’m probably just too nice, and don’t get with people who aren’t nice, and don’t have it in me to dislike or not care for anyone, even if they’ve hurt me. I forgive and love and encourage and care for because it reflects well on me, feels like the natural thing to do. But just maybe being such a skanky ho and having all these headaches doesn’t. Oh, for a bit of Christian morality and lust-resistance! Oh, for a bit of proper good old Yorkshire hate of one’s exes when the relationship’s over and broken! But all I do is stay friends and think fondly of, and there’s not a one of them I wouldn’t go out of my way to help in any way I could.
Too nice. And even then, not as nice as I could be, should be, want to be. But…
It just occurs to me: there I was earlier talking about how doing stuff and creating awesome memories may be kind of futile when all is said and done (ie, when this current life is over) – but then…could it be that all these things I say I wish I hadn’t done are some of the things I’ll look back on from post-life spirit state and say, now that was worthwhile? I dunno – but it does seem like we learn more from our mistakes. And…well, from the perspective of spirit all that stuff’s probably good and groovy and suitably awesome grist for the mill, perhaps.
No. I really don’t know what I’m saying, nor expressing it very well. Point is, in a nutshell, I’m a really rather very complicated chap who thinks too much yet isn’t all that good at expressing it clearly and maybe sometime soon I’m going to have to stop, even though in there somewhere amongst all the gunk there do appear kind of genuine sparks of realisation and seeds of growth, like realising how hung up on being different I am, and how so much of my woman troubles comes down to shallowness and being too quick out the blocks – and, conversely, holding back – and…
And that’s the end for now. I think I might talk to Nicky soon and share some of my latest realisations. It might be useful for her and it might be useful for me. Seems like I stopped when it became more about her than about me but that’s hardly fair. Further levels of truth telling. Plus, no doubt something will come of it. I texted her yesterday to say that I missed her. Probably that’s true, beyond wanting to play any mind games – but I guess what I really mean is that I’ve been thinking about her and have things I want to share.
And Laura. And my house (ten days left). And my everything else besides…
It’s all up in the air eh? It’s all up for grabs? I wonder where I’ll be when May hits – ‘cos, for sure, I won’t be living here.
Watch this space…
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