Books

Sunday 9:00 p.m.
I finished a novel a couple of days ago called City of Thieves by David Benioff. Excellent book. Set around the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. I think at the end of the Second World War, Joe Stalin suggested that the allies execute the top 50,000 Germans. Read this book and you might realise this was not such a bad idea.

I'm having trouble thinking about executing a rat, Jack. A dead rat! Ah, what company that would be! (Sam the Man)

I started reading Mystic River by Dennis Lehane today. I think it was recommended by the sensei and reverend as one of the top crime books. Even after only thirty pages, I know it's going to be fung brilliant!

Thank God I've given up trying to be a writer! There are far too many brilliant writers out there. It used to be just such stellar joes as Hemingway and Steinbeck, but now there are tons of brilliant writers I've never even heard about.

For some reason I've started reading books again. I haven't been reading books for years. So much so that I couldn't understand how I ever found the time to read so many books before. I thought it was because there weren't computers in those days, or I used to read books while I was smoking dope. I think I stopped reading novels because I was meditating all the time.

This was not a great day for meditating, but I put in about five hours anyway. That's what I can do. Meditate. I don't know why. Someone told me once that Belgians made great cyclists because they were dumb fungers and cycling for eight hours a day was what they could do because of this. Plodding persistence.

I think I'll start trying to write again. I might re-jig the crime book and put it into the first person because I find that easy. Try this time to write something amusing. Maybe have some first person and some third person stuff. First person is too facile. Pick your personality.

When I wakened up on Saturday morning, I felt totally re-assured about the flatheids, my deep dear friends. We have come to this planet in the best of possible times. Nobody had to go to war. You could get the dole. If you were sick, you got doctors for nothing. Heaven on earth really. Then I thought of all the folk I knew who were given the black spot and how well they all had handled it, at least in front of me. Happy times to be alive!

So I put this passed the Domestic Bliss. It seems she does not feel as if she's living the wonderful life, although it seems to me that she does. Poisonous went through our deep, dear friends and asked who was happy. Well, that was a bit disconcerting. They aren't sitting by a river in the Bongo Bongo as babies with worms eating out their eyes, but they are still not happy bunnies. So that's what I thought until I had the wee epiphany on Saturday morning when I thought they were all doing okay, and living in the best of possible worlds.

Anyway, if the flatheids are miserable even in the best of possible worlds, what can I do about that? Nothing. The too dumb to meditate are not happy people. Even if they are all nowadays richer than anyone from hundreds of years ago. Much better off. I don't care. I'm going to be happy anyway. No point in being miserable just because moi is surrounded by the too dumb to meditate. If they can't be happy with all they have, when can they be happy?

Maybe I'll resume my trying to be writer stuff and read books and meditate and be happier than anyone I know.

Anyone can get access to the bliss, Jack. The emptiness might be a bit trickier, but anyone can get access to the bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!