On The Beats

Last year or two I been really going off on some mild obsession with the whole Kerouac beat thing: I think it started the last time I was on the road in Mexico back in fall ’09, this weird draw I had to San Miguel Allende which I later found out was where Neal Cassady died and also re-reading On The Road for maybe the third or forth time when I was in Mexico City. I think I got it in my head that there was something of their spirit of restless It desire in me – not necessarily reincarnation, but perhaps a carrying over, a passing of the torch or something. Certainly, in my own writing and life I’ve mused much about the Kerouac connection, thinking my book – Discovering Beautiful – an in-parts companion piece – the wildness, the hedonism, the lost, the found, the search – but a then going-beyond into the spirituality that Kerouac and co flirted with – which is why I subtitled it ‘On The Road To Somewhere’ – but never quite broke through into, always backsliding, as it seems to me, to booze, to the search for thrills and kicks, intellectualism and mad poetry and expression – ya know, just words wrapping around each other in interesting sentences but ultimately meaningless, insubstantial madness – fun stuff, like the nonsense I like the write sometimes.
    Of course, Kerouac’s mastery of language and poetry and imagery and the sheer energy he puts into his words – particularly On The Road – is something I can only dream of: I ain’t got nothin’ in those regards. But as to life – well I gotta say I feel he failed somewhat at that, consciously drinking himself to death and losing himself in bitterness and anger: ‘cos first and foremost your loyalty, surely, is to creating yourself as a realised human being, looking in the mirror and polishing away the tarnishes, ironing out the creases, seeing what works and what doesn’t and going beyond it all, forsaking each level of reality for the next when it grows old and tired and like a caterpillar we are ready to emerge anew into some other layer of existence. But booze and anger ain’t it. And that’s why I say I think he failed.
    Cassady, for his part, does seem to have gone beyond somewhat – but not enough. Ah well, what do I know? Booze and wildness are powerful lures: the point is, I wonder why I’m so hung up and fascinated with these guys when all at once I find their lifestyles and even personalities so distasteful. There’s so much I love about On The Road – not much, I have to say, about his other works – but would I want to hang out with the characters in that book? Even for five minutes? Probably not: probably as much as I’d want to hang out with the drunks and tramps of Leeds. And not even with the people those characters became in their later, post-adolescent years. Bill Burroughs and his mad bony head all shooting up junk and rapping endlessly about young boys’ cocks? Neal Cassady bouncing up and down and saying “yass! yass!” and Alan Ginsberg’s long mad wailing ‘poetry’ on doldrums and Lord knows what else? And Kerouac’s bitter drunk nonsenses as they all puff cigar smoke in my face and pop bennies and loll around in a big old bed posturing Rimbaud and tin-pot Buddhism while soldiers fight and die and roll sadly home in great clomping army boots still caked with the mud and blood of a ruined French farm? No, I shouldn’t think so.
    So why this fascination? Why me sharing emails with still fiery Carolyn Cassady, now eighty-eight years of age? Why pulling out library copies of practically unreadable novels like Visions of Cody and Doctor Sax and giving them a go? Why always listening to audiobook of On The Road, and two copies of it right now by my bed – the published version, the Original Scroll – always dipping in and thrilling at sentences like “the man was a good man: his truck was poor” and “there was even a Chinese” and “bourbon-orooni” and “they were delicious” and “this is a table that’ll last a thousand years” – and yass and roared and groaned and moaned, and all those adjectives you throw in there to not mean anything but give the impression of meaning – make everything holy, make everything sad or mad, call everything “the night” – the vast empty sadness of the black American night – the groaning continent – the holy road, holy Neal, holy everything – and: wherefore goes this sentence? Wither goest thou America? I love it.
    Shawn always used to tell me in sweet moments of encouragement, “you could be the new Kerouac.” I used to think he said it cos I was a hitchhiker and cos I wrote about it. But then lately I’ve found new meaning in that. I can’t write as well as Kerouac – and I can’t capture no spirit of a generation – too old, don’t know what this generation is, if there is one (doesn’t seem to be) – but there’s something in our philosophies that seem the same: just wanting to write, to type, to get everything out there: to plunge down into the depths of our own beings and bring it all back up to the surface to show the world and say, see this is what we’re all like deep down, in our darks, in our subconscious – and I’ll share shamelessly so you can realise you don’t need to feel no shame. To show the possibilities of a life. And to relate that life in full extent. Kerouac has his Dulouz Legend – and more and more what I feel, if I’m to continue on this writing path – cos, for sure, I sometimes feel that if the cup could pass from my lips and I could still be happy and fulfilled – always the number one criteria – then I would gladly let it go (Jonah and his whale) – more and more what I feel is that what I want to share is the entirety of the life I’ve led, will lead – to put it all out there in autobiographical splurges – like blogging, I suppose – of romance and living and fear and hope and experience and loss and goodness and day-to-day and women and, yes, holy road, and search and find and all all all of that: just simply this: to relate everything I ever felt and thought and did. Wouldn’t that be useful? So that future generations could look back and say, “there was once this guy…” All we want these days is fiction – made-up stories – pretty little tales with arcs and drama – but what value even Midnight’s Children compared to an actual account and history of Indian independence? What that but another pretty little clever man’s empty tellings? And worth nothing next to the true history of scrawled Pompeiian toilet wall graffiti on whores and faeces – even On The Road, enhanced reality as it is, ain’t factual enough for me. Why not just what actually happened? What so wrong with that? And so to leave, for posterity and whatever, the totality of a life in its actuality is what, in my grandest moments, I think of doing. And then I take a shit, and do the washing up, and think, nah, let’s watch a movie instead, play a bit of squash, be nothing more than yet another slowly-ripening human compost plodder. But but but – it is getting to that stage where…no, fuck that.
    The point is: I’m fascinated. And I don’t know why. And to make some sense of it I suppose I ought to slow down, stop typing gibberish, put some –
    The funny thing is – and what you may not believe – is that I didn’t actually read On The Road until late 2000 when all my drinking and wild and hedonistic days were over. When America was over too: I haven’t been back since before then. But I’d had it on my list because, of course, when I was hitching back and forth across the States in ’98 and ’99 every tenth person who picked me up would say, have you read On The Road? I knew it was something – I imagined it was a book about a hitchhiking man from the past – and I avoided it because I thought, why read when you can do? And who, anyway – what young man – wants to be out there discovering his own magic and philosophies and wonderment and then sit down and read it all in some long-before book? Might as well just go home: experience is teacher, not library. So I didn’t read it until I was safely done with hitchhiking through America and, even funnier thing is, I actually read it when found upon a shelf in Paris bourgeois apartment of these three French people I was madly living with trying desperately to all become Buddhas and Christs and emissaries of The Light – thinking ourselves sometimes that – and all we thought about then was yoga and meditation and not eating preservatives.
    So I pulled it off the shelf – and I read – and I found it filled me with the fever of making me want to live –to LIVE – to be out there and doing everything and forgetting all hang-ups in the pursuit of the thing that, if you listen to it, your heart will say, this is what you really want to do. It ain’t about drinking, roadtripping, being wild, mad, bebop, beat: it’s about THAT. Throw it all out the window and go go go – go for it, whatever the it may be. Roadtrip, travel, love, spirituality – whatever is your it. It shows you that all the shit things of life really are shit – boring ass shopping, paying the bills, living a life based upon making sure your stomach is always heavy and fat and filled: it don’t matter what your thing – it may not be no mad thing, no jazz thing, no road thing – “what’s your road huh? rainbow road? guppy road? holy madman road?” – but it’s whatever you truly want and love and dig.
    And, of course, for me, it transpires that much of what I want and love and dig is the road, travel, the it, and woman and expression and the word. So that’s why I dig it – and never, ever, whenever I pick up to flick through a few pages and end up reading more has it failed to fill me with that fever when in moments of comfort. The fever! That’s what I always say. And sometimes, even, “oh, my head RINGS” – laughing out loud (not really; a mere smirk and imagination of laughing out loud). Yes, I like the fever: the fever is good.
    But then, I read other Kerouac books – Desolation Angels, Big Sur – and it wasn’t quite there. There’s something in them – but it’s mostly sadness. No need to be a bum no more. Exposure to Buddhism but just thinking, hey, if I sit around passing bottles with my buddies and rap on Buddhist words like Tathagatha and form then I’m a Buddhist – instead of the necessary basic steps like, er, abstaining from intoxicants and working hard in your mind to go beyond anger, attachment, ignorance, all that stuff. The door was opened and the man said, no thanks. Same old deal of an author putting one great work out there and then all his other stuff that would never have been signed up as stand-alones – as submissions under some unknown’s name – following on because that’s business and it ain’t just merit alone that these things find their way into print. Poor old Kerouac: if only someone could’ve got through to him that, hey, this just ain’t that good; and the way you’re living ain’t that good either; and – slap! – shake it all out of him and wake him up and say, hm, perhaps practise a little of that Buddhism you spout but don’t know. But now I’m just typing and blathering and it’s all just lessons anyway, things for me to take on board and try and improve – for oft times our teachers don’t teach by their good example, but by their bad, and from that we say, hey, look where they went wrong, I think I’ll do the opposite. And that’s what the young and the impressionable need to learn from Kerouac and Cassady – they need to look at where that road led, at the bigger picture – at the effects their lives had on their families (read Carolyn Cassady’s Off The Road, for example) – and the sad old pre-aged ruined and twisted loners and losers they ended up: a dead body found by the railroad tracks in Mexico; a bloody exploded mess of a man pickled in whiskey and not even fifty. Not even fifty! Kerouac was a high school and university football star and he shoulda still been running around and enjoying the beauty of life and physical exercise in the human body way beyond the time when he was effectively a ruined old man. Not even fifty? I’ve played squash with – and had my ass right royally kicked by – guys in their fifties and sixties; played soccer with a man aged 72 once; seen septuagenarians agile and sprightly flicking their wrists on the badminton courts and giving swaggering young bucks what for. It ain’t no glorious pot of gold to pickle and cripple and miserably kill yourself when still in youth and prime.
    Live healthy lives, and pursue happiness above all else, I guess is what I’m saying. Getting drunk is never compatible with that, unless you really are young and are just experimenting with all the things that the world has to offer so as to know it for yourself. But normally it’s a running away, a hiding, a distraction and a mask. And what do we hide from? From nothing but ourselves. Our pain. Our discomfort. Our awkwardness. Our lack of self-love and confidence and loneliness. From our disconnection with our essence – our hearts and minds and souls. Our bodies no doubt tell us the truth of what’s good for us, when it revolts and pukes and says, get this shit out of me! But we don’t listen to our body or our mind or soul. Get to know them: that’s what I says. That’s what the whole thing is about.
    And then there’s Neal Cassady, who I feel somewhat closer to having read Carolyn Cassady’s book – although that, of course, is nothing but imagination, and I won’t even pretend it’s true. But poor old Neal, cursed always with his restless manicness and need for kicks and women. I wouldn’t wanna be him – but that he turns up having inspired Kerouac and therefore the whole beat thing right there again at the dawn of the hippy thing in amongst Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters is just wonderful and staggering and tickles me no end. Ken Kesey who wrote One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Who dropped acid as part of some university program – the same acid that sent others like Richard Alpert off on mystical journeys to India where they found gurus and came back to the West full of glee and penned pivotal groovy hippy books like Be Here Now – and Tom Wolfe of course who wrote his sometimes awkwardly trying to be hip Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test with once more looming large Cassady bouncing across its pages – and so much of my life seems wrapped up in all that. Reading Tom Wolfe while sitting on the street in San Diego as a dumbass unschooled twenty-year-old. Loving OFoTCN endlessly in my teenage bedroom on Betamax with my old still-friend Steve. Alpert and Altered State’s flotation tanks and my own acid experience and then of course Owsley and Monterey and Hendrix, who dominated my youth and spoke to me from beyond the grave, fifteen-year-old ears thrilled by his lyrics, fifteen-year-old eyes in love with his movements, his words, his playing, on Berkeley and Woodstock and the ’73 movie. And Berkeley and San Fran where it all happened – where Yogi Bhajan arrived – which I just skirted briefly. The road – the American road – Kerouac and Cassady zooming past corners and highways I recognised ‘cos I’d stood there and hitched. A whole line stretching out from their first beat post-war New York days through Road and Kesey and Alpert and the hippies and also stretching back, to Joyce and Pound and Wilde and Lee Miller right back to eighteenth-century rubbish bohemian poets swooning in their attics and bemoaning the world – and where did that line lead? All these things have brushed up against me as I’ve voyaged on my own straight line through life – haven’t sought them, have maybe just reached out and picked them like berries by the side of the path – but: where line go? Did it end? Did it reach maturity? Did it find flower in the breaking through and dispensing of hedonism, in quiet lovely lives spent in work and family and meditation and yoga as one imagines Kerouac and Cassady and ilk should probably have done? Did the line find balance? And I am on the line or if it?
    I don’t have much time for poetics: I find nothing of substance in Ginsberg. The man wanted, in my opinion, someone to say, hey man, you’re not making any sense: we know it’s fun to spout all wild and rap and play with words but perhaps calm down and see a therapist and get some reality. There’s a video on youtube of him and Cassady sitting in a bookstore smoking – there’s a signal right there: it don’t take much intelligence to know there’s something up if a man sees nothing wrong with sucking on carcinogenic chemicals which his body revolts and screams at but he don’t listen – and I defy any living person to make even one little bit of sense out of what they’re saying. James Joyce’s Ulysses? Don’t make me laugh. Your first loyalty is to your own sweet head and to not be mad. Although I’ll grant that silly expression is fun: sometimes I like to thrash my guitar and howl and gibber and so I suppose in that way I’m a hypocrite – though I don’t pretend there’s anything meaningful and deep about it, that it speaks something about the grand society, about the way people live, about what’s going down on this Earth of ours. Hell knows, I been mad myself: I know what of I speak. But transcend: go beyond: that’s the answer, I says.
    So where is the line? Have the answer? If so, would like to hear it. Is it in the art of Damien Hirst? The avant garde? Fuck knows: I know so little about all that stuff all I can do here is show myself as ignorant and stupid: though there ain’t no shame in that. Though I do know that while some good things may be weird and challenging, not all weird and challenging things are good. Who cares? All I want to know is where is the line, if the line’s still there? Or has the line died, submerged by the new world religion of buying stuff and having nice homes?
    No – the line goes on: the line broke off into spirituality, into religion, just as it always threatened to do with Kerouac and his boys. Wasn’t there a chap called Alan Watts? Didn’t he meet Suzuki? And didn’t they frown on him and let him stumble back to his kicks that once youth had passed were really no longer kicks at all but sad staggerings and tears? Cassady, for his part, got into Cayce, dipped a toe into the New Age and karma and wanted to see where all this stuff came from: past lives and present life hang-ups in upbringing or lack of it. Psychology: all the stuff we’re into now. The dinosaurs died and the line entered the hippies and birthed them – and from that, beyond flower-power and pot, there came the real blooming of Westernised Eastern spirituality – as imported by The Beatles, Alpert (now Ram Dass) and also exported by Yogi Bhajan and Rajneesh and all those other Indian gurus who flew over and saw a nation ripe for evolution and also awash with pretty young sexually-liberated girls. We got into yoga and meditation and Vipassana happened and grew and grew and we said: this is better than booze, than kicks, than running around wild not really doing anything; better than self-destruction and stupid mad expression; better than drugs and random fucking and materialism. We got high on that, and for a time we loved it and thought we’d found the It – it was all wrapped up in soul and heart and connection and tenderness and a different kind of expression and being healthy and happy and holy – but then we transcended that too, having realised we were once again bonkers, lost in visions of Mayan 2012 apocalypse, everybody channelling angels and pointless profound messages at each other, paying charlatans to get our reiki and get our DNA fixed, going mad seeking out all our past lives and inventing them as we went along with everyone we met; staring for hours into one another’s eyes, bliss the new drug, thinking it better, natural, that we only get higher and never come down, not understanding that that too is addiction and that, yes, there is a comedown too; and believing everything under the sun, having emptied our minds thinking them the enemy so that all our brains and intellect and discretion had fallen out into a big mushy pile on the floor that we sufi-danced on in our heart-filled madness because we had made it, man, universal enlightenment and every man a Buddha or a Christ, and everywhere we went in the outside world too – real or not – confirmations of that reflected in the eyes of equally starry and lost young maidens high on yoga and all deluded together trapped in a hall of endlessly reflecting infinite mirrors until one day someone went – SMASH! – and the whole thing fell crashing down around us. Oh, we said, it was just mirrors – and wept amongst the shards for a real long time, having seen the nature of our delusions. But then, looking up, we saw there was a world beyond the mirrors and the world was called BALANCE and the world looked not unlike the world we had left behind back during the revolution – the world had trees and people and supermarkets and food. The world had jobs and work and we decided to give them a try and found that the jobs and work did us good. The world had families too – the families we’d run away from, sought therapy to exorcise, studied and looked at from every possible angle – most of them abstract – and once taken apart jettisoned because everything is our mother – but we gave them a go anyway and found they too were good. This world was like the old world – but it was better. The foundations were stronger. It was built on more pillars. And the pillars were called MATERIAL, FAMILY, SEX, WORK/MONEY, CREATIVITY, EXERCISE/PHYSICAL and SPIRIT. The old world was lacking some of those: the mirrored world too. And the new world’s pillars were all shiny and new, having been buffed and repaired during THE GREAT WORK which had taken place: wherein men stopped beating women and learned about their feelings; wherein we all stopped poisoning ourselves and came to finally treasure our human bodies; wherein we understood the value of the material world but didn’t make ourselves slaves to it; for also we understood the true treasure was in the befriending of our souls and spending a big chunk of our time playing with them – and playing, even, the games they wanted to play. All the pillars are universal – they are everywhere and everywhen – and we realised that some of our old pillars – half-pillars; they supported nothing – were merely but passing fads, never universal, particular only to one time or place. We tossed out all that was not universal, that was not beneficial – that, in a nutshell, didn’t work – and what worked became our guiding principal. We pushed aside certain things – like booze, like madness, like anger, like bitterness – not because they were morally wrong but because they simply didn’t work for us anymore – we could find as much satisfaction in them as a teenager could find in a baby’s rattle. We did what made us feel good – as all are doing always, of course – but the things had changed. We were born into the new world where work and family and spirituality and pursuing one’s own heartdream could all exist in compatibility, and we treasured our bodies and the things our bodies could do because we knew the body was life, and hurting the body was hating life. We no longer wanted to hate anything: even that for which we felt disdain we no longer hated, realising that the hate would still be ours, and hate paints an ugly spread on anybody’s face. We went beyond all we had previously known.
    Is that the line? Are those just words? Is it happening? Is it real? And where me in all this, shrouded as I am still by my own lackings in upbringing, by my own unwillingness to engage with the world and with life? Or is it enough merely to speak the words of the person who I may well be next lifetime but who, no matter how much I struggle and strive, and despite understanding with my brain and sometimes reaching out to touch and even feel, I simply always fall short of embodying and being? My vision is beyond my reality: ‘tis the nature of vision, I suppose. And even here an opportunity to relax, let go, smile and bring a light heart, for all is unfolding at correct pace and even though we do it never a real reason to get down on oneself: no purpose.
    So: shine a light.

Crisis?

Don’t know how it is round where you live but in these parts seems like you can’t open a newspaper or flick on the wireless without somebody going on about the so-called ‘financial crisis’. To be honest, it’s getting on my tits. Number one, can they not think of anything more useful to talk about? And, number two, where is this damned financial crisis anyway? ‘Cos when I look around me all I see is prosperity: people living in luxury, buying things they don’t need to, and splashing the cash left right and centre. Our society is state of the art and growing more and more fancy by the day: the government says there’s no dosh but then works on massively expensive projects like the London Crossrail and the upcoming high speed train link to Birmingham. Leeds is lovely and getting lovelier all the time: the town centre is practically a celebration of wealth, consumerist pilgrims paying alms and worshipping at their churches daily, in their tens of thousands. It certainly don’t look like no crisis to me.
    Here’s what I think a financial crisis looks like: people unable to buy food; no food in the shops anyway; desperation on the streets; tens of thousands losing their houses and made homeless; grim unhappiness and starvation and revolution. Think 1980s Romania; 1780s France; The Grapes of Wrath.
    And here’s what Britain looks like today: people without jobs buying LCD TVs; students driving nearly new cars and paying £1.30 for a litre of petrol; pubs and restaurants filled to bursting; people taking taxis everywhere; tons and tons of food thrown into the garbage; shopping sprees and overflowing wardrobes; obesity; foreign holidays and even your average Joe able to fly overseas several times a year if he feels like it; obscenely fancy phones and needless gadgets.
    Crisis? What crisis?
    And, also: we’ve never had it so good.

I’m supposing now that some people will be up in arms at that. They’ll point to job losses and debt and government cutbacks and things like that. Maybe, I’ll concede, all that stuff is real and it has affected some people’s lives for the worse: I’ll be honest and say I’m mostly ignorant in this matter. Still, to see how people live and shop you might perhaps forgive me if I don’t buy into it wholesale: consumerism seems unabated to me, and I hardly think “growth of only 0.1%” constitutes anything to worry about. Why grow anyway? Why not just stay the same? Nothing wrong with that. And, indeed, why not boom and bust, or feast and famine? ‘Tis sort of the way it’s always been. But I guess we like to think we’re beyond that.
    Students – of which I am one – are up in arms about tuition fee rises. I can’t say I have any sympathy. My general feeling on students is that they’re mostly in it for the party anyway – adolescents freed from home and responsibility on a jolly and a bender. I do tell myself that’s probably not true of the majority – but certainly in Leeds that’s the impression a great many of them give, and, alas, it’s the noisy few that tend to define the whole. What I see is 20-year-olds driving cars I could only dream of; big and regular nights out, which must cost a pretty penny; students forever jumping into taxis when I can’t say it’s occurred to me to take a taxi in years; and piles and piles of new clothes and bags and shoes and toys. No wonder they’ve got massive debts when they leave: but that’s hardly the system’s fault. When I did my BA I lived simply, worked a part-time job, left my student loan and overdraft untouched, and qualified debt-free with savings in the bank. The same, no doubt, will happen this time. But that’s because I’m older, smarter, and have taken responsibility for my finances. My dad instilled into me the idea that debt was prison and I’ve taken that to heart. I owe no man or institution and because of that I’m free. Any time I hear a news report talking up the average student debt – no doubt exaggerated for their headline figure – I feel pretty sure I know where it’s gone.
    Getting old, aren’t I? When my solution to the world’s problems is grow up and get a job. ;-)
    The other problem with students – getting slightly off topic here – is that they’ve somehow come to take this university education – and that it should be free – for granted. Sure, once upon a time we actually paid people to go to university and didn’t charge them fees but, thing is, they were the select few: they were the best and brightest minds and they were there because we believed it benefited us to further their education. Then things changed, and everybody started to go. Didn’t matter if you were smart or if you had anything to offer, you just went. You think that’s harsh? Well as a spyer on others’ essays, and a former teacher, I’ll tell you for a fact that some university students – doing quite well in their grades, mind – are producing work at about the level of a bright fourteen-year-old. One thing that surprised me about university work was how easy it was, how little effort it required. There’s no doubt been a dumbing down. And not that I went to Oxford or Cambridge – but I do know quite a few people that did, and I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in what I’ve just said (‘cept, of course, their backgrounds). We all say these days that a degree means nothing but I wonder if we really mean it. Because, fact is, we should.
    What that’s led to, of course, is a massive increase in what it costs the government and tax-payer to keep these students in education, and out of that has arisen the need for some contribution from the students themselves. But – surprise, surprise – they don’t like it: well who does like being told they’ve got to pay more money for something they used to get for free? So they get upset and say it should be like the good old days when students could have their jollies and leave the nest of academia debt-free – but what they don’t understand is that things were very different then, and the vast majority of those protesting tuition fees wouldn’t have been there in the first place. You can’t have it both ways: it’s either a state-funded institute for the brightest and the best, or it’s a come one, come all glorified extended sixth-form and postponement of what some like to call “the real world” which you’re forced to pay for yourself. The university system is too huge not to charge user fees. There is no third option.
     (I type that knowing full well that there’s always a third option: that’s something I believe in strongly. Also, that the third option is usually the right one. I also type all this slightly ashamed and afraid, deeply aware of how little I know about any of this, and of how it’s all just mad opinion based on a shallow understanding of the world and its systems. I know I ought to do more research and maybe form a balanced judgement but truth is I’m really not that interested: I like the way I think and I can find plenty of things in the world to support that opinion – every time I see a bunch of fancy-dressed students acting like arses as they stumble from pub to taxi, for example, I feel justified in everything I’ve just said. I know that’s not very nice and probably shallow and judgemental – but to all that I say: oh well. Honestly, I’ve got better things to do than try and understand fully the madness and complexity of the world in which we live: spouting off about stuff like this, for one. I guess that’s some sort of explanation, apology, and defence – and yet it won’t change a thing. Sorry about that – and back to the spouting.)
    So that’s students – and everybody else? Well, I don’t know, I don’t know that many people. I know my dad and I know he’s always talking about how little money he’s got, how times are tough and business is bad – but then he’s also got about sixteen grand in cash in the bank, maybe about the same in his own personal stock of guitars, a flat that’s fully paid for, and a debt-free business that provides for his every need, at which he works only a couple of days a week. Point being, all this is also – and perhaps mainly – a matter of perspective. He feels poor when he’s actually far from it. And some far wealthier people probably feel poor too, even though they’ve perhaps millions. What’s the ideal sum to live on? Generally, probably, about 30% more than you’ve already got, no matter what your income. This is all about satisfaction and perception: and no amount of financial tweaking is going to alter that, because if you’ve got a mentality that always wants more, you’ll never have enough. Seems to me like that’s the consciousness of our civilisation – as illustrated by the obsession with an economy – whatever that is – that doesn’t grow as much as you’d like it to, therefore constituting a crisis. But what if we suddenly decided enough was enough? What if we looked at our full fridges and fancy gadgetry and relatively free lives and said, wow, you know what? Compared to 99% of the people who have ever lived – and I’m including kings and queens and rulers of vast empires here – we’re living in unbelievable luxury. There’s a big chunk of this world lives a whole family to a single room. There’s a big chunk of this world that subsists and gets by day-to-day – that has what they need – food, shelter, water, security, clothing – if they’re lucky – and no more than that. And the weird thing is, they may actually exceed us in possessing the thing that matters most. Yup: happiness. It’s a cliché because it’s true.
    So are we in a crisis of finance or a crisis of perspective? Can any nation truly claim to be facing economic meltdown when one of the most pressing questions faced by a huge percentage of its citizens is whether to buy a new iPhone? When every weekend hundreds of thousands of people spend considerable amounts of money watching men with almost unimaginable wealth kick a ball around a field of grass? When we’ve still the required billions to fund military missions to far off places that have nothing to do with the defence of our land? Here are the signs of a financial crisis: when there’s not enough in the coffers to build a missile or submarine, even when you’re under attack; when the football stadiums stand half-empty because the die-hards can’t afford their match ticket; when being in 24-hour contact with everyone in the entire globe and playing ‘hungry pigeons’ (or whatever it’s called) is set aside for the want of a decent meal; when all this excess money that we simply waste on things we don’t need simply isn’t there anymore. Then we’ll know things are starting to get serious. But until then, we really are living like kings and queens.

I’m lucky. I chose the simple life and I’ve found the simple life suits me just fine. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke or do drugs and that saves me a fortune in work and/or debt. I live in a modest but adequate flat and, all in – my rent, my bills, my food and my hobbies – my living costs are about fifty-five pounds per week. As you can imagine, it doesn’t take much to raise that sort of money. But, like I say, I’m lucky: all the other things that so many other people seem to require to sustain them don’t have any hold on me. I’ve more than enough clothes and gadgets – sure, I’ve a phone: it cost me £9.95 several years back – and I can’t see a reason for any more. I don’t buy music, I don’t go out – save the occasional meal – and it’s not that I’m denying myself, it’s just that I’ve already pleasure enough in my life and doing all those things – dressing up, going shopping, hitting a pub – would, I feel, only diminish my pleasure rather than add to it. Certainly, I’m happy with my lot, and feel I’ve already more than enough – and truly believe, in my head and in my experience, that enough really is enough. What more could I want? In a word – besides the already-mentioned book deal – nothing.
    Why, then, do I feel that way when so many others apparently don’t? Like I say, I suppose I’m lucky: I sought a state of inner-satisfaction that didn’t depend on outer circumstances and I found it. How did I do that? By letting go of all the fripperies and externals of life and realising, through experience, that I didn’t need them. I took myself to a place of material emptiness and saw that, not only was I still happy, but that I was happier still: being without things was not just possible, it was better – lighter – more free. And, combined with this, I worked hard in my mind, to battle through negative ways of thinking and to come to the source of joy, which is not found in the outside world in any case, but within. Whatever crisis I may have once faced it wasn’t solved by fixing the external world but, purely and simply, by a change of perspective. Is there any reason why the world as a whole couldn’t do that?

Monday morning

And then Nicky came home, pleased that I’d last-minute tidied the house, and after ten days of weird solitude, and straight from my first wonderful day of the refereeing course, we met up at the all-you-can-eat curry place in Burley Park and stuffed our gullets. She was all golden glowing from Vipassana, had soft sweet meditation tales to tell: all I had talk of was my bent broken back and of watching too many movies. Oh, and cracking another abandoned bike combo lock; and my first returned essay; and my dad’s television woes. Then we went home and chatted some, drank a cup of tea, got into bed, and soon began the soft caressing of her long brown body and when awesome boobs are pressed up against you, and creamy smooth thighs clutch hairy man thigh, and kisses begin…there’s only one way that’s gonna go. I like the way Nicky makes love: 80% of the time it’s not long before I feel her magnet beams pulling me on top of her and I know for this one it don’t need no endless hours of foreplay – she wants it inside her – she loves the feel of it – she’s quite capable of reaching orgasm and fulfilment with but a modest amount of the soft gliding, the in and out, the skilful manipulation of angles, pressure, depths. Not one of these girls who will wank you off, suck you off, bring you to the very point of your own orgasm and ejaculation exhaustion – and then expect you to hard rock their world like they done seen in the movies. Those girls want too much.
    Nicky hits it and I know she’s hitting it and I think, well, an hour or so before she was saying, one thing I realised was it’s definitely not a good time to get pregnant right now, but I think I’ll hit it too: probably it’ll be okay. I let it go and upload myself into her. And then she says, I’m coming again – well that’s a first. Though later she tells me, no, it wasn’t that, it was just the longest orgasm I ever had, it just kept going and going in waves, I couldn’t believe it. And waves is what it felt like for me too.
    It’s good with women: the more they get to know you, the deeper their experience goes. Getting louder all the time, more into it, more loose. Her saying ‘longest orgasm ever’ is like me feeling I set a personal best, broke a record. Maybe mine, maybe some other guy’s. Sure, any mention of anything like that conjures images of other guys and me being me, and not liking images of other guys, I can’t say I one million percent dig that – but then, if I’m top of the tree I suppose I can reconcile it. That’s the way it goes I guess.
    All relaxed and sated it’s time for lights out and drift off into pleasant tired sleep. Except the night is weird and maybe it’s her Vipassana energy and maybe it’s the curry but neither of us can get off. I keep waking up to adjust my position, and then I’m dozing and have an awareness that I may or may not have just farted. But I’m sure I heard it, felt my arse-cheeks flapping, that it woke me up.
    Did I just fart?
    Yes.
    I’m sorry.
    It’s okay.
    Oh, I did it again.
    It’s okay.
    It smells of curry in this room, this bed: it really smells of curry. Some homecoming for the poor girl: ten days of Buddha bliss and now she’s lying next to some farting smelly man.
    God, it must be six a.m. When will I ever sleep?
    But it’s only midnight, two. And the farting goes on.
    Damn that curry. Damn all-you-can-eat. There’s no need for overstuffing anymore, bargain or not – the lying awake all night feeling my arse-cheeks truffle out whiffs and pongs just ain’t worth it.
    But we laugh. A woman who laughs at your endless trumps, loves your sex, almost always has the elusive intercourse orgasm and has it good – that’s pretty blessed. Not to mention the holy thousand other things besides (no probs with football and my other mad hobbies; lets you write about her; swallows; cooks; says cool things; isn’t barmy and mad; cares not about fancy fripperies and your income; appreciates your diy; wants to hit the road; and a whole lot more) – yeah, it’s time to look on the bright side. So what love? Nobody knows what that is anyway – and mostly it’s mad people that declare it: people who also bicker and hate and play stupid games of competition and one-up-manship and even hit and cheat and hurt. Love shmuv – I’d rather just be happy – and I’d much rather hear the one I’m with say, I feel happy with you than those three little words that really don’t mean anything anyway. You feel good, I’m glad: that’s what I want. You like me, like being with me – well, likewise. But to say you love? Then I have to say, what does that mean? And probably you don’t know. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you feel happy or good. It means you feel something, right? But what that feeling is…is it need? Want? Lust? I felt things before for people – felt incredible things – and those people turned out to be wrong for me. It’s all a big confusion.
    Honesty. That’s better than love. Nicky says, I thought about you a lot but I didn’t miss you, and I’m down with that. What matter whether she misses me or not? It adds nothing to her, nothing to me – better the other way around, in fact. Better, indeed, not to think of me at all, unless it relates to her – not when you’re on a Buddhist meditation retreat. Whole point is to be with yourself.
    I say, for my part, I missed you the first three or four days – but by day seven or eight I’d sort of forgotten about you, had to remind myself, oh yeah, there’s someone else lives here with me, they’ll be back soon – now what was their name? I thought that, saw it was real and that it interested me, and I thought about saying it when she got back – but then a voice said, you can’t, you’d better hold it in – and then I thought, but one really has to express these things if one is to deepen with another person, it’s just words – anyone who’d get upset to hear such dribble ain’t the one for me anyway, is far too hung up on modern world pretend romance pleasantries – and so after love-making during sweet before-sleep confessions I light-heartedly let it out and both parties giggled and gently nudged and I realised it really was nothing to think those things. Miss you? No need. But honestly express the things I feel and think and have them heard and accepted and giggled about with mature understanding this is the human experience ears? That’s treasure and gold right there. That’s the deepening of trust, sharing and togetherness, which is what it’s all about.
    I done hold back too much in my romantic life. I ain’t good husband or boyfriend material – in fact, I’m no doubt fairly rubbish husband and boyfriend material (I don’t think about the doing of things, like going out, like holding hands together and looking at stuff in windows, or coming home with lovely little frippery gifts just to please, I’m far too much into my own head and world and not sure I can get out) – but what I am is me. In fact, that’s all I am. Dig that, we’ll be okay. And not that I always dig it but…well, I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore. Just words, just birds, fluttering prettily in the sky, light and meaningless and transitory. The truth of the world is a man farting in bed and telling his heart while a woman laughs and their two naked bodies move closer every second to wrinkled old age and death: that’s what we’re all doing right now and probably we don’t even know it. But also what we’re doing is holding each other tight in the cold dark night while the world rages and buzzes outside our window, angel-headed children feeling the beauty of what it means to be alive and not alone, and sometimes remembering that, and sometimes appreciating it, and maybe that’s what love is too.

Clothes inventory

Sometimes I look down at what I'm wearing and I realise that everything I have on was either given to me or found. Then, a few days later, I look down again at a completely different outfit and find the same result. Made me realise that: a) I get given a lot of clothes; and b) I don't buy many. Also made me want to look at all the clothes I have and see where I'm at. So...

1. Jeans and trousers: the most important section

- 2 pairs of blue jeans, 1 gifted in Mexico City, the other gifted by Lee Cooper when I complained about some of their shoes (both have patches on the crotches)

- 1 pair of black jeans, bought because I needed something smart for a posh gig three years back. Never wear unless I'm doing something smart (which is maybe 3 times a year)

2. T-shirts: the second most important section

- 2 Jimi Hendrix t-shirts, both given to me by Diego

- 1 from Matt, 2 I found, 1 from Rik in Baja, 1 from Dave Fergie, and 2 from an ex-girlfriend

- 1 yellow t-shirt that I bought for two quid from a charity shop when caught short

3. Coats and hoodies: because it's cold now and they're getting a lot of use

- 2 hoodies, one from Dave Ferguson and one from Ali

- 1 green coat, given to me in Baja California

- 1 thin blue fleece, a gift from Leticia in Oaxaca

4. Shirts and stuff like that

- 4 semi-nice shirts, 2 I bought in a charity shop in London (£4 each) for waiting tables, 1 from Baja Rik, and 1 from ex-girlfriend's mum in 2004

- 1 fancy top that cost a lot of money, bought by an ex-girlfriend (rarely worn)

- 1 black jacket - bought by same ex-girlfriend - that I roll out for christenings, etc (two in last eighteen months)

5. Sports clothes

- 4 Everton shirts which cost about three quid each from eBay

- 1 white Nike football shirt, £3 from a charity shop

- 1 Ipswich goalie's top, off eBay

- 6 pairs of shorts, all of which I bought - one pair in Canada in 2005, now heavily-repaired - except for two pairs I found earlier this year. Total cost not more than ten pounds.

6. Socks

- Lots of black socks, only a few of which were found.

7. Shoes

- Asic runners

- Umbro 5v5 (fourth pair of those I've had)

- Nike astroturf boots

- Adidas football boots

- Karrimor walking-type trainers (should never have bought)

- Sterling teel-toecaps (bought for me by gardening boss)

That's a lot of shoes!

8. Misc.

- 2 jumpers, recent donations from Dave Fergie

- long johns, gifted in Israel

- 3 ties I found in a bin

- a pink dressing gown, found

- 15 gloves, all found, including two matching pairs

There. Now because that's such a fascinating stock-take I'm gonna unleash some maths on it and statisticise the whole thing. Which'll tell me:

- Not including socks and shoes I have 42 articles of clothing

- Of those 42, 20 were gifted, 14 were bought, and 8 were found

- Of the 14 bought, 10 were bought for sports and 3 for work

- Total spend on clothes over the last 2-3 years is approximately £45

- I reckon I have at least 9 items I don't wear and ought to get rid of

Brilliant. And if that's not the best blog entry you've read since the turn of the century I will eat my yellow t-shirt.

I want

a) a literary agent
b) a publisher
c) to write some new stuff

That's all.

Derren Brown and luck

I watched Derren Brown’s latest show the other day, all about luck: he’d created a rumour about a statue of a lucky dog in Todmorden and watched as the rumour spread across the town and people started believe it was true, some age old story. Naturally, the townsfolk who touched the dog and noticed good fortune in their lives made the connection and the belief grew stronger. Derren’s hypothesis, I suppose, was that there’s no such thing as this kind of ‘superstitious luck’, that it’s all a matter of attribution. More than that, though, by highlighting the case of one chap who believed himself cursed with bad luck and showing that, in actual fact, he simply wasn’t open to opportunities that could be called good luck, Derren seemed to be saying that luck is merely a question of how aware we are, our perceptions, and our willingness to let life in. In a nutshell: you truly do make your own luck, and the power’s right there in your own hands and mind. Not through any magical process, however, but simply through inviting it in. This was ‘proved’ when the unlucky man had a change of heart, chanced his arm, and saw his luck pay dividends. Touching scenes. Derren, I think, made a very good point.

All this is very interesting to me, of course, given my belief in what I think of as the mystical, magical side of life – and because I do generally think of myself as one of the luckiest people around. Although I suppose ‘blessed’ is the more appropriate term, in my current state of thinking. But maybe there’s more – or less – to it than that.

Phrases like ‘you make your own luck’ require explanation. How does one do that? How does that work? I suppose Derren answered those questions by showing how it’s perhaps linked to our willingness to pay attention to the opportunities that life brings us – to investigate intriguing doors that sit slightly ajar – to not walk around with the blinkers up but see more clearly that life is full of all kinds of things we might term ‘luck’ – good or bad – and that it’s up to us to grab them. Really, in that sense, there is no such thing as ‘luck’, there’s just awareness and the decision to either interact with life or shut it out. Still, I can’t help feeling, looking at my own experiences, that there’s more to it than that. And that’s what I want to write about this morning. I have this idea, see, that the blessings in my life began with my so-called ‘spiritual awakening’ – that tapping into that ‘greater power’ is what began the long and lovely procession of goodness I’ve had in my life. I go from there, I suppose, to thinking it’s something to do with God, and something to do with being Godly, and that the reason and the attribution lies outside myself – or, at least, that it’s a co-creative partnership. But is it even that? Was it merely a change of perception, of behaviour, that opened those doors? A rewriting, even, of my own story and the way I see the world and believe it works, fashioned only by my own brain? Let’s investigate.

I want to start by thinking about certain events that have happened in my life that when I look back on I ascribe to the miraculous – the things which make me feel lucky. This, I hope, will be an interesting exercise for the both of us.

1. In 1999 I was hitchhiking on I-10 near Tucson. At the time I was travelling without money, living merely on faith, and concentrating solely on the pursuit of my spiritual dream. While walking across a truck-stop in between rides I realised that I’d lost my toothbrush: big bummer. I loved brushing my teeth and apart from my passport it was about the only thing I didn’t want to lose: everything else I required – clothes, food, transport, shelter – I knew would come. But a toothbrush? No one was ever going to randomly give me one of those. Except, right then, a man on an old bicycle made a bee-line straight for me across the wide expanse of concrete, put a plastic bag in my hand, and then cycled away without saying a word. Naturally, in the bag was a brand new toothbrush. I was flabbergasted: you just didn’t see people on bikes in America, never mind in a truck-stop on the interstate miles from town. Not only that, it was the only time I was randomly given a toothbrush in all my travels: and it was the only time I needed one.

2. The miracle of the plane ticket. It was later on that year and I was really getting the sense that it was time to go back to England: my feelings, and various weird signs and ‘messages’ – that I won’t go into here – were telling me so. But I had no money: how was I ever going to get there? Well, right at the end of my first Vipassana meditation retreat, while sitting quietly and being aloof, not really wanting to talk to anyone, a man came over to me, said a few things, and then apropos of nothing said if I ever needed a plane ticket to anywhere he’d sort it out for me. I emailed him a few weeks later and not long after that I was on the plane back home.

3.A month or so before that I was sitting in LA waiting for a bus – I had merely the dollar fifty fare, probably earned from a quick blast of devil-sticking – and I suddenly got this notion that I was hungry. At that exact same moment I remember making eye contact with this woman who was walking past. Anyway, a few minutes later she reappeared and said, this is for you, placing a tray of lovely vegetarian Thai food into my hands. Then she walked away. I couldn’t believe it: I may have been on the road and penniless but I certainly didn’t look it. Nor would I have appeared anything other than well-nourished and happy. Magic.

4. Similarly, in India in 2000, having given all my money to charity and left myself penniless in Delhi with a few days to kill before my plane back home, I experienced perhaps one of my most striking examples of being provided for: for I never expected it to work in a place like India – the white guy no doubt assumed rich in a poor ass country. Except it did. I was sitting in a Sikh temple one morning chatting to some locals when this old bearded guy walked straight up to us – it was the parting of the waves, I swear – and pushed a hundred rupees into my hand and walked away. Double flabbergasted. A hundred rupees may not be much – about one pound forty – but it was a hundred rupees more than I had and plenty enough to live on for a couple of days. But how the hell did I know I was in need? Who would think such a thing of a young white traveller? It makes no logical sense.

And I’m suddenly realising this list is going to get very, very long. Skip to here if you want to get past the end of it.

5. I was in France in 2002 visiting my ex-girlfriend: we’d had a bit of a row and I’d walked out of her Paris apartment without a penny to my name. I was so mad I didn’t care. I headed up towards La Defense and still pretty much smack bang in the middle of the city I started hitchhiking: unbelievably, I got a ride almost straight away and was shuttled out to the suburbs by a nice man in a Mercedes. From there, a girl picked me up, offered to feed and shelter me for the night, and said she’d drive me to the station in the morning to catch a train to the ferry. I kept schtum about not being able to afford a ticket figuring I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. But she bought the ticket anyway, and gave me about sixty euros to use for the ferry. Madness. Turns out she was in the process of getting rid of all her possessions and with her sister was going to embark on a big ass pilgrimage living on trust. She was paying it forward, I guess, and said that my stories and general vibe had really inspired her, given her faith.

6. Which reminds me of the time I was staying in Albuquerque with this girl I was briefly seeing in 1999: she was feeding and sheltering me and was down with that arrangement, pretty much insisting, but her roommate wasn’t. Roommate said I needed to contribute some dollars: girl said she’d sort that out but me being me I felt like I’d be best off fleeing the tension and the sense of burden and try to work something out. I hitched up to Santa Fe – where I was randomly given twenty dollars – and then from there headed on towards a hot springs; one ride took me out of my way and dropped me in the middle of nowhere – big headache, I thought at the time – but while walking back to the highway an old lady standing in her garden shouted me over, disappeared into her house, and came back with some food for me. Also with the food was sixty dollars. Later that day another guy gave me five bucks. I headed on back to Albuquerque and gave it all to the roommate, who was stunned. I was too: in all my tens of thousands of miles of hitchhiking I’d been given maybe a total of twenty or thirty bucks – but in the one day when I needed it, triple that amount had come.

7. After Albuquerque – and before, I suppose – there was just this general sense of being taken care of. I pretty much never told people that I didn’t have money or that I may have been hungry – don’t think I got hungry in those days – but every day, day after day, I ate three meals, no matter what. When hitching, whether I rode with 2 people or 20, I’d get breakfast, lunch and dinner – though I’d only realise it when looking back. Indeed, my final trip, right back over to Charlottesville from New Mexico in January 2000 I didn’t even think about what I’d do for food I was so out of it – spiritually stoned – but the food always came, and by several weird twists of fate I managed to avoid all the many blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, horribly underdressed as I’m sure I was. I guess I just didn’t think about it anymore: it was so ingrained in me that the needs of the body would be provided for that I was able to devote my entire attention to other matters. I remember in LA this old woman coming over to talk to me in the street and after a few hours of chitter chatter and all that – and for once realising that I didn’t have anything – decided to press twenty dollars on me. All I could do was laugh: not being currently hungry, and knowing that all future requirements were assured, I had no need of it. I gave it immediately to some charity and continued on my merry way. In Santa Monica I met some people who offered me a place to stay: that happened a few times in LA.

8. Two years ago, when I was hitching from Cozumel in Mexico down to Guatemala I decided to give myself a little test and see if it still worked: entering Belize I skipped the money changers and said I’m going to cross the whole country without spending anything. Belize is a small country: I figured two or three days and if I didn’t eat then so be it, no big deal. I started walking and within thirty minutes of crossing the border I felt the hunger arise – and with it, the fear, and the wondering whether it might just be a really bad idea. Certainly, I wasn’t the man I used to be in respects of faith, of trust, of the whole spiritual drive. But just then a car stopped and I jumped in with this lovely Mexican family: after a while they stopped for lunch and I was like, oh, I’ll wait outside. The dad said nonsense and ushered me in. I sat down, not wanting to eat anything – hunger had probably passed – and a plate of food appeared in front of me: dad had ordered for everyone. I felt bad about taking their money – it wasn’t like the old days, I had cash in the bank and my pocket this time – but I saw a solution: they were Mexicans and I could give them some Mexican pesos. Dad, of course, refused, and off we went again, a little while later stopping at a display of Japanese culture that had a free buffet. Lovely people. My last ride that day was with an American who offered me a place to stay – bed, fan, shower, after a couple of days of sleeping on roofs and beaches – and also dinner, snacks, breakfast, and the following day – a Sunday – lunch with an Amish family. That night I ended up invited to eat and sleep with some evangelical Christians, and after they breakfasted me, I exited Belize. Two and a bit days, seven meals, and two nights of shelter, all without telling anyone my situation, without asking or begging or fishing for a thing. Him upstairs knows, I thought, and having satisfied that it still worked left it at that. In Guatemala and back in Mexico I had money in my pocket – and for the most part, I had to use it.

There is, of course, more than the being providing for – which is rather a basic and even non-essential thing once you’ve proved it to yourself – the understanding of the way things weave together: the random meetings that turn out to be perfect, the apparent getting lost and wasting time only to realise that it brings you something greater. Like on that Mexican trip when I spent two days trying to escape Palenque, then turned south instead of north, then stumbled along a muddy river bank for a few hours investigating a mad and pointless scheme to build a raft – only to immediately jump into a pickup truck with a lovely Israeli who introduced me to several dozen lovely people in Mexico City, whom I stayed with for nearly two months, and whom I met again in Israel earlier this year. That kind of thing is the overwhelming remembrance when it comes to living on trust – the real boon and benefit of putting yourself out there and saying to life, ‘I don’t know what’s best for me but I trust that you do, and if I give myself to you I believe you’ll bring me to it.’ That’s probably happened more than the basic thing of being given food – when I think of the people that came into my life because of that – life-changing people such as Dave Shapiro, Lindsay Young, Shawn and Shane and Saram and John Milton – and so many more…that’s the real blessing. Without that, I dread to think where I would have been – and again I do believe it’s all thanks to the higher power – or at least the co-creative relationship with the higher power – which may actually just be me, or a part of me that I’m not aware of, and that’s what I’m here to investigate. But back to the list.

9. I’m in the kitchen in Vipassana preparing parsnips a week or so before Shawn’s due to visit England; I’m supposed to be taking him on a tour but the organising of such a thing has always been beyond me and I don’t know where to start. I’m starting to fret. I’m thinking all this as I top and tail and absent-mindedly stand the parsnips up on their fat ends in a loose ring when a co-worker walks by and points and says, ‘Stonehenge.’ I laugh: it feels like my answer. I have my beginning and everything will flow from there. It does.

10. I’m in Germany and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that I need to go to Canada. I’m penniless: I’m working in a castle for my bread and cheese just down the road from Mother Meera’s. Some English women arrive, take a shine to me, invite me out for dinner and between them for some reason give me about forty-five pounds. I think, there’s a start. I set off hitching for England, wanting to save it, but then I say, no, trust, the universe is infinitely abundant and more will come. I buy a train ticket. I get back to Yorkshire. My nan and dad weirdly decide to give me my Christmas and birthday money over a month early. A woman who’s owed me seventy quid for some work I’d done four months before finally pays up, despite me hassling loads earlier. I bump into a guy who owes me twenty-five quid at a bus stop. The train I took back from Germany was two hours late and I get a free ticket which I sell for thirty quid. I’m about fifty pounds short and I hitchhike down to London and get weirdly diverted towards Heathrow airport: I think, wow, maybe something amazing will happen and I’ll get a wicked cheap ticket on standby and be on my way tonight. I ask around but standby’s a thing of the past, there’s nothing wicked cheap no more. I check out everything at the airport and there’s nothing there – but I’m convinced I’m there for a reason. Dispirited, I get in an elevator and the guy who’s already in there with his girlfriend looks at the guitar on my back and says, hey, you’ve got a guitar, do you want another one? He hands me this Washburn acoustic, tells me he can’t take it with him, and, knowing guitars as I do, I instantly clock that I can sell it for about the exact amount I need. I do. I buy my plane ticket. I have three quid to spare. And I fly to Canada.

11. In Canada, two main things happen. One is that a man I’ve only said hi to offers me a place to stay for about a month, and feeds me, and we become really good friends. Another is that the night I’m about to set off penniless hitching to Toronto from Vancouver – probably about three thousand miles, and this is mid-January – the friend I’m staying with (different friend) offers me some work which will pay the exact amount of money to buy a plane ticket instead. Plus it’s where I learn the real value of the I Ching.

I’m digressing here. I’m opening myself up to ridicule, in the face of some pretty good evidence already presented, when I bring up something like the I Ching. I’m not, in fact, much of a believer in things like the tarot, pendulums, that sort of thing – not any more – but the I Ching…the I Ching, I believe, is different. And it’s my experience that has got me believing this way. I’d been using the I Ching throughout ’99 and 2000 and I’d always found it useful: but Canada 2001/02 really changed that. See, I did this really stupid thing – tried to go down to America again, pumped up on longing and hope and forced optimism and the belief that just because so much of what I did went right, that meant everything I did was right – and they didn’t let me in, doubled my ban (which went from 2008 to 2020), and I got a whole load of shit when they bundled back into Canada. Real bad times: a total fool. But thinking the I Ching as something that exists beyond time – not just a tool that can see into the future, but also the past – I went to it and said, hey, what would you have told me if I’d asked you about going down to America? The answer I got was a big stonking NO. I resolved then and there to go to the I Ching whenever I was going to do something potentially stupid or life-changing and, on the whole, I have. She’s never let me down, even when she’s directed me into things I didn’t necessarily want to do. My best example is this:

I’d done my first year at uni and I was hating it. I didn’t like Religious Studies and I wanted out. Two plans I had: to switch from Kent to Canterbury Christchurch, which I believed offered a much better course; and to move to Exmouth to do a degree in Steiner Education, which would qualify me as a Steiner teacher. Both of these things I organised so that I didn’t have to repeat a year and all was green. Which one to do? Surprisingly, Steiner fell away first – can’t remember why – and I resolved to go to Christchurch. Everything about it felt right – I felt at home on the campus, I preferred the vibe of the students and the teachers, and the course had a much higher rating. But remembering my last dalliance with the US I thought I’d better just get confirmation from the I Ching. I remember so clearly sitting down to do the reading – the feeling of goodness that overwhelmed me – the smile I had on my face knowing that I was taking the right path – an improved path – and the I Ching was about to confirm it for me. I tossed my coins and everything felt amazing – but the reading came back very clearly saying, “stay where you are, don’t change anything,” and I slumped knowing I would be doing exactly what it said.

A week or two later I was in the modules office signing up for the year’s classes: they looked dull and uninspiring but I knew I had to follow the I Ching. Then a young guy came up next to me and started asking questions about the Creative Writing course. Creative Writing? I had no idea they offered it at Canterbury. All summer I’d been thinking about my situation and had basically come down to the conclusion that what I really wanted to do was write: and now here was an opening. I quickly scribbled out my choices, put the Creative Writing classes on my list, and things soon got better. I loved the classes, felt like I was really learning something, doing something I enjoyed, and I felt like I had the I Ching to thank for it. And even more so when the head of English called me in one day for an interview…

“What are you doing on these courses?” he asked. “You’re second year Religious Studies and these are third year Creative Writing classes.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know. I just signed up for them and they put me on the class list and as far as I knew everything was hunky-dory.

He frowned.

“I don’t know how you’ve done this,” he said, “sneaking in the backdoor like that…it really creates a problem for us.”

He paced. He did his best to let me know that he thought I was naughty. He hit me with his bombshell.

“You’ve completed the classes,” he said, “and your tutors tell me your work is good. Only thing I can see to fix this mess is to move you over permanently from Religious Studies to English and Creative Writing.”

The way he said it made me think he expected me not to like it, but that I was going to have to suffer it for the problems that I’d caused. Inside, though, I was dancing.

They did the paperwork. They got me out of the tedium of Religious Studies – it really was pants, so dry and insubstantial compared to the life of actually living it – and they got me full-time on Creative Writing.

I remember so clearly that feeling, walking down to Canterbury, veritably skipping, and all through my being the sense that I was finally in the right place doing the right thing. Everything just slotted. And the rest of my degree was a dream.

This is what I think of when I come to the I Ching. Ever since then I’ve used it for all my important decisions and it’s never let me down. Funnily enough, I just found that original post-border crossing shenanigans reading the other day and, boy oh boy, does it make for sober contemplation…

12. Talking of uni: when I went there I had a very strong sense that I didn’t want to get into debt: never have been in debt and never wanted to be beholden to anyone in that way. I had in my head that I wanted to live in a caravan – not only the saving money, but also the link to my previous way of existence – but how would I go about that? Well, after my interview, on my way out of Canterbury, a man in a van attracted by my backpack offered me a ride and told me of a place he knew that might need my needs. I checked it out: it was a piece of beautiful woodland on a dead-end road about ten minutes’ walk from campus. The owner liked to have someone stay there, for security, and he rented it me for five pounds per week. With the sixty quid I was given from opening a student bank account I managed to find a caravan (I’d rolled up to uni with about three quid in my pocket) and in it I lived for my entire first year. It was a fantastic experience. And rather than being in debt, I saved enough money through work and busking to take several trips abroad.

13. Also, this year, I was awarded a full-fees bursary to do this MA. That, I think, was marvellous luck. And perhaps no coincidence that I got the news right after going to see Mother Meera.

14. Speaking of Mother Meera: I remember visiting her once (early days I was always penniless) and, in the morning, I’d been with a German family (see campervan story below) who had put on a big spread for breakfast, which even included cake. I’d had a piece, and they’d said, go on, have another, but out of ‘politeness’ – the kind of politeness that isn’t really politeness at all – I’d refused. ‘Cept all day long all I could think of was that cake and what a fool I’d been in not taking it when I knew of course that I wanted it. Well, I got to Mother Meera’s and as I was sitting outside on a bench – was very early, no one else around – a woman walked over to me, opened this box, and presented me a lovely big slice of cake. Apparently Meera means miracle. No coincidence there.

15. Another time at Mother’s I’d rolled up in freezing late-November – actually, I think it was the same time, so would have been later on that night – and, without money or suitable clothing, etc, I was looking at a very cold night, snow on the ground, etc. Anyways, I’m walking down the dark, deserted road looking for somewhere to lay my head when a car pulls up and the guy inside says, Mother says you need a place to stay. I do, I say (I don’t know why I take this on board so easily!) and he drives me to an old castle where they give me a room. I stay there for the entirety of my visit – that’s the same castle and occasion as mentioned in number 10.

16. The aforementioned campervan: this was me going around Europe with Amma in autumn 2001, broke of course, but not really worrying about that, as there were always places to sleep and plenty of leftover food you could rescue from the bins: I’d made Paris no problem and was thinking about the rest of it when a young guy came up to me and asked me if I had a driving license. Sure, I says. Well there’s a guy, he says, who needs a driver: he’s got a campervan but he’s bust his leg and can’t work the clutch. I meet the man and he says he’ll give me a place to sleep and food everyday if I drive him – and we drive from Paris to Toulouse to Barcelona to Turin and then back up to Germany, where we say goodbye at his friends’ house – the people with the cake – and he gives me money for a train ticket up to Mother’s.

I think that’s all I need to mention. There were lots more little ones, of course – not to mention dozens of odd synchronicities in other fields (the meetings, the questions, the answers, the perfections) – but I guess there’s no need: the energy’s gone from that line of expression and I suppose has moved onto somewhere else. Where that is I imagine I’ll find out after I’ve been for a pee and started the next paragraph. Pssssss.

Hm. So what I thought this paragraph was going to be was musings on the theories of Derren Brown and linking it all in to what I’ve just said above. But what I was thinking while I was pissing was, wow, I’ve had a really charmed life and met some extraordinarily wonderful people; and also, oh yeah, remember that time you won that guitar with a raffle ticket you were given when going to a concert with a ticket someone gave you? And probably a load more things like that besides – except what I think there when I muse on that is, ah, yes, but that really was just luck – something nice coming into my life unexpectedly – but not the miraculous provision of something I need, or direction, or growth. Different categories in my brain: I observe that I really have no interest in investigating ‘luck’ such as the guitar story above. But why not? What is the difference? If there is one, that is.

I suppose I also ought to look back at the time ‘pre-spirituality’ – given that I see all these blessings having arisen because of and since my connection with the so-called higher power. But was it happening before then? Well, yes, I see that it was – but, then again, I wasn’t really living on trust – I always had cash; I always believed I needed it – so it’s not really the same. Still, things like that did on occasion come into my life, it’s just that, a) I would never have recognised it as such; and b) it didn’t really happen that often. It was all bonus, I guess – when a kindly driver bought me fries; when somebody slipped me the occasional five dollars – but not necessity because – well, I could have bought my own fries, I already had five dollars, and that’s why I see it as bonus.

I’m blabbing, I know – but what I’m getting at is this question: was it not always thus? Was it not merely that my perception changed, and not my experience?

First answer that springs to mind is: no. Certainly, before spirituality there was nothing like being given plane tickets; after, it happened three times in less than a year (which reminds me that Lindsay told me a story about being bought a plane ticket once, in Japan – did that open the door?). Food and shelter, though, did come, even though I could have always provided it for myself: indeed, during my first fifteen days of hitchhiking back in ’98 I was put up by seven different people, which is pretty good going. That time it had the effect of opening me up to the goodness of the people of the world, developed my trust in humanity; later on, I came to see it as more of a divine providence sort of thing, that all humanity was part of the one great whole, and it was the great whole that was being good and doing the providing. Mere change of perception? Or deepening understanding of the true nature reality? I’m not sure I know.

The other thing about pre-spirituality, when I look back, is that it’s very clear that I was being ‘guided’: that something was at work. The links that led me to the canyon, for instance, where everything happened, were incredibly well orchestrated: a guy in Wyoming sees me three times on the road; the third time he picks me up; he gives me Dave’s number in Missoula; I end up in Missoula after riding a freight train; Dave invites me to stay; I bump into Dave again in San Diego four months later when I’m not even supposed to be there; Dave’s on his way to Mexico and persuades me to go with him; we’re about to leave Baja when we bump into those girls; the girls tell us about the canyon; and we get to the canyon and Lindsay’s there and everything begins. It’s beautiful. Sometimes I think it worked better before I knew about it – before I tried to second guess it, figure it out – but I don’t know if that’s really true. The main difference is awareness – is living with awareness – and living without it. And I guess that brings us right back to Derren Brown.

To Derren, there are people who embrace the opportunities life presents us and those who don’t. He illustrates this with the supposedly unlucky man – who is actually just blind to what’s around him – won’t play a loaded scratchcard; won’t answer a pointless question that would have actually rewarded him with twenty quid – and with another guy who brushes off a stranger in need when helping him – as a naturally open person later does – would have brought him great reward. But what does this mean then? That life is constantly showering us with blessings and good fortune and whether we feel ourselves to be lucky or not is merely a question of how much we ourselves accept? I can sort of buy that – that it’s a constant, impersonal, merely natural and non-miraculous thing – and yet, when I look at the examples I gave above, I think it needs more than that: and the answer that comes to me is that life is somehow responding to our expectations. And that’s where the magical comes in.

When I travelled, because of various experiences, I came to believe that I would be provided for, no matter what I needed. It began small, but the more I experienced, the more I believed. And, perhaps, the more I believed, the more I experienced. It’s was a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose: some sort of circular, perpetual motion machine that just grew and grew. Experience led to belief led to experience led to belief led, ultimately, to expectation. After a certain point it wasn’t that I had to consciously believe anything to make it happen – I simply expected it. And that sort of expectation was beyond thinking: that sort of expectation was pure being. It was in the way I walked and it was in the fruits of that. So things came because I knew they would: I just knew it. Can it be that the universe, or life, is responding to that? That it’s our level of belief, expectation and knowing that create our experience?

Listen, little by little I came to believe that I didn’t need money to travel, that my transport and food and shelter would be provided for. Developing this involved slowly letting go of the things that said otherwise: for instance, if you’re travelling with money, and trying to save a little for tomorrow, that’s basically saying, I don’t trust that I’ll have enough and the future is uncertain. But supposing you keep experiencing that things get taken care of – as I did during my first six weeks in the canyon, when despite having some cash food always seemed to appear out of nowhere? You’d start to believe in it. You’d let go and you wouldn’t worry about it so much. You’d be down to your last five dollars and you’d spend it and not think about tomorrow because you’d trust that tomorrow would take care of itself. And those things are statements of faith – for belief is not just in what you say you think – in fact, not really at all – but in how you act.

Are you, for example, a Christian? And do you, therefore, believe in life after death, and in going to heaven – assuming you’ve been good – and that heaven is better than here? That’s nice. But saying it is one thing – and acting on it another. If you walk in fear of death – if you overly grieve the passing of another – if you cling to this life as though it was the only life you have – then all words of belief are meaningless. And, conversely, if you say you’re afraid of dying but live joyously and fearlessly comfortable in the inevitable prospect – well, again, it’s the actions that speak the loudest.

That, of course, is a different sort of example: a better one might be that of a Christian who says they believe that God will provide for them and that money isn’t the true reward in life but who goes around acting as though it is, hoarding it and worrying that there one day won’t be enough. That’s not trust or faith – and it’s not what brings the results of feeling provided for either. I guess I’ve been lucky: I’ve experienced it enough to know that it doesn’t matter if I lose everything and have to start from scratch I’ll be okay. Take all my possessions, my wealth, my home – it won’t really make that much difference. I’ll still be here (take my looks, my health – that’s a whole different matter, a level of faith I haven’t yet approached) and I’ll be okay and smiling. But that’s what I know from experience. Man, I really think everyone should experience that.

Imagine watching your house burn down, and everything in it, and knowing deep in your heart that it really is just stuff.

Imagine losing all your savings. Your work. And yet still having your body. You’d still be free to travel, to exist, to interact with the world and its people and experience the good things in life. You’d still have nature, some monastery you could go to, wonderful decades-long, global adventures to undertake. Or the opportunity to build it all back up.

All that I could handle: my health – to be crippled, disfigured, chained to a hospital bed or machinery – I’m not so sure about. To not be able to run or kick a ball? To never type again? Tough. But human beings do overcome the most incredible obstacles (thinking book-writing paraplegics; My Left Foot and all that). Better human beings than I.

I’ve got off topic; I can’t remember what the topic is. I guess ultimately I like the things that Derren Brown says: he challenges my perceptions and, sometimes, he shows them as being based on wrong beliefs. He seems to genuinely enlighten people, to shatter superstitions and self-defeating ideas, and that can only be a good thing. He deserves the stage and the accolades he has and long may he continue. Better him than some kiddy-fiddling priest propagating lies and convincing others of their worthlessness. But, ultimately, for me there’s more to his theories than mere physicality: there is still some power which, at our level of understanding, does appear ‘magical’. To say ‘we make our own luck’ doesn’t fully explain the hows of it. To dismiss the apparent healing powers of the mind by saying it’s just the ‘placebo effect’ tells us nothing of how that actually works. None of that is, in my opinion, in contradiction with Buddha’s assertion that “our thoughts create our reality” – or Jesus’s “by our faith so shall it be done” – or the New Age belief in manifestation and in harnessing the powers of creation. What I suppose I’d like Derren Brown to do is explain my list to me – to show how its nothing miraculous or linked to the so-called divine – to prove that this mysterious ‘higher power’ is nothing more than our perceptions and beliefs, that it can all be rationally accounted for in some other, atheistic philosophy. What I’d like Derren Brown to do is look at someone like Ammachi when investigating and supposedly disproving God rather than the hoary old Bible and its ridiculous stories, which, as I’ve said before, is a bit like walking down Wakefield Westgate of a Friday night and declaring impossible the existence of an intelligent human being. It’s just, simply put, looking in the wrong place, and debunking one crackpot scouse fake medium hardly debunks the whole concept of life beyond the human physical body. Still, having said all that, he’s probably doing more good cutting through all the fakeness rather than doing unbiased and balanced reporting of the issue as a whole, and I heartily applaud him for it. ‘Tis, probably, his divine machine after all (he types with a wink). And I don’t suppose he can help it – the poor man’s Evangelical upbringing has set him up quite naturally for the big swing to the other side – just as my atheistic upbringing did for me: ain’t none so pious as the converted, eh?

More digression. Not sure I really wanted to say anything questioning DB because, as I’ve said, I really do think he’s great. And he’s a whole lot smarter and more talented than I am. And 99% of what he does I’m at a loss to explain – other than maybe he really is magic after all (although after learning about thumb-writers…) – so all I can really say is, wow, keep it up, good on you. I mean, how the hell did that dice come down as a 4 on that third roll? How did he get that woman to win on the horse that time? Plus a thousand other things besides. Marvellous man. I’m convinced it’s all gonna lead somewhere grand one day, despite his occasional hiccups. Big things in store for that dude, I’m sure.

In conclusion: luck. You make it yourself, partly through keeping your eyes open, partly through your positive attitude, and partly through expecting it. And the more you expect it, the more you experience it, and on and on and on. Doesn’t mean, of course, that you’ll win the lottery – that’s what, I suppose, we all think of when we think of luck – and the big grand test when one says they’ve harnessed the power of luck: go on then, win the lottery if you think you can do anything – but then who says winning the lottery would be a good thing anyway? Not sure it would be of great benefit to my life, given what I believe my soul wants to achieve, which is what life’s about anyways. I’d get lazy, man, just bum around, forget about my growth, my aspirations, wouldn’t write. I’d have a big house with a 5-a-side football pitch and squash courts and just stock it with people who wanted to play games all day. I’d have a whole bunch of kids and they’d grow up spoiled and make me shake my head and wish I’d never bothered. I’d get into romantic entanglements attempting to prove the ‘many wives’ theory. It’d be a mess!

So, no, I suppose I’ll just keep what I have – my home, my plentiful supply of food, my every need provided for, my sexy girlfriend and my happy heart and body, and the promise of a good future, as well as my challenges – and try and feel grateful for that. Like I say, it really has been a charmed life – and if you’ve digested some of the evidence above, you’ll no doubt agree. And that, my friends, is just the surface of it.

Amen.

Looking back

Want to read something insane? How about what I was doing eleven years ago today?

What a nutter! :-)