The Jacket

Saturday 1:20 a.m.
Around about May, or maybe just after Easter, I put away my winter jacket and put on my summer jacket. I've had the same summer jacket for years. It was in a photie which was taken in the lobby here as I was about to go to Nepal around fourteen years ago. I think the jacket must be eighteen years old. The kiddo did the glass thing of the photie.

The Domestic Bliss has confiscated the jacket and is sending it to jacket heaven even although it was good for at least another ten years. She has bought me another jacket. When I wear this other jacket, I am transformed from the care-in-the-community joe and become the kind of joe who is about twelve and whose mother buys him nice, practical clothes. I suppose I should pay more attention.

Standing outside the International Bar this evening ... across the road two very striking and totally gorgeous women were swaying and swinging along. The little black dresses, the provocative just being there. They looked across. I didn't wave. Hello, boys! The Domestic Bliss said they were two of the Ladyboys from Bangkok, who have a show every Festival in the Meadows. She said when have you ever seen a woman walking along the road like that? Going through the West End in the taxi ... there weren't any women quite in your face like that. Hmmm?

I'm going to have to give up all this juju and try to get some money, Jack! I tried this evening to get onto Wordpress so I could bail out of this bloggy, but it looked too complicated for moi! If I do leave here, I'll let the three or four folk who come here know where I've gone. This samsara has no discernible beginning and no discernible end. Neither has the juju, at least as far as the end is concerned. I go back to the jobbie on Monday. Maybe I'll set up a new bloggy then.

Ancient Futures

Friday 8:55 p.m.
The Domestic Bliss did a jobbie swop and I ended up in Perth, Australia in 1990. When I left Edinburgh, there was a play of mine still running at the Traverse, but I left my Amstrad word processor behind me. The house in Australia had a PC. I'd never used one before.

So I thought I'd better write a novel. I was sitting down working out a plotline for a couple of months when I came upon this book about plotlines in the local library. It turns out that the plotline I'm half way through corresponds almost completely with the archetypal hero myth epic. That was a bit weird.

I starts writing this hero myth epic crap and it takes me nearly three years to finish it. Of course, I'm the primary carer for the kiddo and she's only three when I start on this book, but about six when I finish it.

It's not like anything else I've ever wrote. It's more like the stuff you would write if you were wanting to be a professional writer, the writer who writes books for folk to read on the beach.

It's kind of set in a mythical middle east except the middle east in this book looks a lot like West Australia. It took me about three years to write it and after I finished it, I had no idea what to do with it. It's like an adventure story, a kind of romance with hubris. I have no idea what the hell it was trying to be! I think it might be the worst thing I've ever written. I only person I can ever remember reading it was Beef McDuck and he seemed to quite like it.

For 86 pence what the fung do you expect?! You can download it to Kindley things. You can read it on a laptop or on your fiddly phone, apparently. This will lead to masses of folk going blind. If you downloaded it to your desktop, you could print it.

I suspect all my books which are unpublished (seven or eight!) will end up on sites like this. This is very good. I don't care if nobody reads them, but it's nice that they're available.

Two good things I like about this book.

1. The sensei was round visiting me once and I went to the bog. When I got back, he was looking at this bit of scrap paper he'd found stuck to the fridge with a magnet. I used to give the kiddo heaps of scrap A4 sheets to draw on. I think the sensei had turned round the drawing. On the back was a bit of the book, an account of a nightmare I'd had which I'd put in the book. Anyway, he said he really liked it and got it published in Rebel Inc., the same edition with this brilliant story about a visit to Disneyland by Irvine Welsh, which I think might have fired somebody's rockets.

2. There is a bit in the book I really liked. There's not many bits of my books I can say that about.The bit I really liked was a discourse between this monky guy and a supposedly illiterate librarian about how you would find a book in a library.

Of course, when all's said and done, the book's a masterpiece of invention and should have been made into a film starring Victor Mature and Stewart Granger. I mean, what was I doing writing a sand and sandals epic?

I decided to become a school teacher shortly after this and wrote Are You Boys Cyclists? as a parting shot. I think that took me under six months.

The only person who's read Ancient Futures that I know of is Beef McDuck. He wrote a review of it for me which I cannot find at the moment, but I don't think he didn't like it.

Fancy writing an adventure story? I'd have loved to have written Beau Geste!

Cyclista!

Friday 9:30 a.m.
I wakened up at seven and lay in bed for two hours there. Sometimes I was on my back and sometimes on my side, but just about all the time I was in some kind of bliss condition. Not zinging bliss, the kind you sometimes get sitting up, but a kind of background, very pleasant bliss. I'm very happy to be able to do this.

I've got a long day in front of me with much cycling and dealing with the grannies. At least, the weather has improved and I can go an meditate for an hour before I get the train.

Normal!

12:15 a.m.
Of course, I don't believe in thoughts, but I hate everything about being normal. I hate the standing up. I hate the sitting down. I despise it all. The people I tend to see in the normal mode are bourgeois. At least, the working class are funny. They say funny things to you. If you can do ra bliss and then you have to converse with your usual bourgeois ... well, I spent two hours today doing the bliss, and it was wonderful and it had progressed. If I have a choice between doing the bliss and sitting quietly and doing nothing, and conversing with the evil bourgeois ... well, the evil bourgeois are dumb. Straights are stupid. The old, toothless one was great to talk to this evening, but what is the point of wasting your life in conversing with the appallingly idiotic, the evil bourgeois on the side. I want to stay in my hut, Jack! Then I will have overcome the Nicotine Dragon and the Beer Monster, and I will say to everyone no thanks. Sorry, I've got stuff to do. I'd like to be normal, but the normal is appalling.

There's no way back, Jack! No, Hotboy, there is no way back. I'm not a flatheid, at least, not as much as they are. And I'm not going to be normal ever again, so fung them! Just fung them! Even with all the compassion you could muster, there is no point in discoursing with flatheids. Not middle class ones! I'd rather blow my brains out, so I would!

But I will try to be normal tomorrow. But it's not going to work, is it, Jack? No, Hotboy, it won't work. Just try to be nice and don't talk to the flatheids about ra bliss. They are completely funged and doing that doesn't help.

Kindle

Thursday 5:40 p.m.
I went out to see the consiglieri yesterday to show how normal I could be. We uploaded one of my books to the Kindle thing on Amazon. They say it takes a couple of days to review it before it's downloadable, and if it goes ahead, I'll write something about it. Of course, nobody will know it's there and nobody will buy it, but it was interesting to see how easily it was done.

If it happens, it will be available in the states for a dollar and in Blighty for seventy five pence. This was the lowest price you were allowed to charge. I think I'm due about 26p a download, but the consiglieri will be due 15% of that, so I get about 20p a download.

Rich! Rich, Jack! I'm going to be rich!

Do you know anyone who owns a Kindle thing, Hotboy? Erm, no, Jack. Have you ever seen one? No, I haven't. Oh well.

Fortuitous circumstances!

Tuesday or Wednesday 11:54 p.m.
First fortuitous circumstance: Every night for ages they've settled down to watch a DVD in here. They eat huge meals then watch a movie. I'm joining in now since the Domestic Bliss is having a week's holiday. So I'm joining in, or trying to, so I am. Last night, I was going to really join in and try to watch a movie en famille, but it turned out to be a dead violent movie, and it had subtitles. Subtitles! Apart from the sound effects of folk getting the shit kicked out of them, etc., ... I just sat there with my eyes closed doing the bliss!

Second fortuitous circumstance: I get to go to classical musical stuff with the Domestic Bliss sometimes. This lunchtime I was at a free thing in St Mary's Cathedral. On such business, I have been in lots of churches around the middle of the beautiful, wonderful city, but this one is for Kafflicks. After the hustle I've been getting from the Tibetans, was getting to the Kafflick cathedral apropos or what? Anyway, the songs were in German and Russian and I could just sit there doing the bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Then I got taken to St John's Church in the West End and we saw these Tibetan monks making a mandala. Worth a visit, so it was, but I never wanted to be a monk. I also never wanted to become a priest, when that was something that was offered to me as a kid. Do you have a vocation? Fung off!

So are we going to march in line (def dight; def dight, def dight) or are we not, Hotboy?

I've been getting wonderful feelings thinking about the lama, as in the guru yoga juju, but I am supposed to be one of the folk who are not marching in line. My jobbie in the juju is not to march in line. I am supposed to have read the book they don't like, and to have been unable to properly bond with the masters of the juju, and I'm not supposed to care about crashing and burning.

Who is it who is going to crash and burn? Tell me that, eh?

It's going to be you, Hotboy. You have to take it one step at a time.

Hmmm? I think one has to use one's common sense here. I can't stop doing some vase breathing because of the wonderful, wonderful effects it has. Having developed that, what would be the point of abandoning it now? The connection between breath and bliss is what I've been surfing on for years. Just use it sparingly!

So I'm stuck with generation stage. There is the ecstasy in the generation stage. You can do that there. You can do the ecstasy in the calmiing meditations. I'm going to get the bliss if I just sit in the auditorium, maybe listening to some classical joe's music.

Also, what is the matter with visualising the symbols? So you do the generation stage then go to the symbols ... I think I've got to be less like a teenager with their parent's car. Just do a deep breath when life seems a little dull. That sometimes happens when you've lost the plot and are just sitting there like a moron. So, then you are maybe allowed to do a vase breath to crank you up a bit.

As far as raising the awareness through the symbols is concerned, with the vase breath ... fair enough, that will only be done on the rare occasions when you are pretty pissed with life, and need a mega jump into a happier zone.

My toys have been taken off me, but am I walking off the park, Jack? Am I spitting out the dummy? You are close to spitting out the dummy, Hotboy, but you know ... you know ... you know ... how to handle this.

You need more abiding in the bliss. Less ambition.

For most of the last ten years I have had a great obsession, or a change of obsession. My obsession changed anyway. It looks as if my second obsession has been as difficult to achieve as my first obsession, which was about writing things down.

I can close my eyes most times, Jack, and the bliss will be there. It's like a default position. That's very clever, Hotboy, but so what?

I think I should try to find a middle way between my first and second obsessions.

I do not think this is going to work. My second obsession is so much better than my first obsession. But if I stop meditating so much ... and I have been doing thirty to forty hours a week now for years and years ... I'll have to find something else to do. Hmmm?

The Hotboy Escort Agency is now open for business.

Last Week Resume

Sunday 10:14 p.m.
The best laid plans ... I must say this holiday has not turned out quite as I hoped. Rarely have I done nine hours meditating a day. I only slept in the hut one night. I have had a good rest though!

I'm still niggling myself sometimes with this prostrations and hundred syllable mantra business. It's difficult to see the point. Seems a touch formulaic, eh, Jack? Just get on with it, Hotboy. In Tibet people speak tibetan and it isn't gobbledegook to them. I say mantras to myself all the blinking time as it is. Such like aggravations occurred today.

Instead of prostrating myself, I did the five hills run tonight. The Mull half marathon was run today so the old, toothless one is probably in the undertakers as I write since he was supposed to be running in it today. Or jogging, or plodding, vomiting, passing out and rolling over unconscious, giving all that knew him a red neck. But would he listen? A person of his age and decrepitude should have stuck to playing darts in the old men's huts.

The meditations I have managed to do have been most gratifying, but I've been thinking of becoming more normal.

Saturday!

Saturday 12:25 a.m.
This is the Edinburgh in the festival. Also, there is a second batch of raspberries every summer. I felt very itchy today and had to go for a walk. What a fortunate creature to be able to walk through a city like this.

More Friday Photies!

Friday 11:16 p.m.
I did ten of Mr Iyengar's yogic jumpings this evening. Then I did the hundred prostrations. By about twenty five, the sweat was starting to mark the linoleum on the kitchen floor. By about fifty you wanted to watch how closely you touched your brow since it was running in sweat, and you didn't want that to transfer to your palms since that would make you skid about, and you don't want that.My teeshirt was soaked in sweat, and my hair was wet with sweat by the end. I could get into this prostrations lark, so I could!

Seems years since I'd been in the allotment, far less the hut. I went up for a couple of hours this afternoon and it was wonderful. I collected the food in the photie and came home between showers. The flowers don't show up so good in the dark between showers. But it was oddly warm. I loved being out. I've been meditating in the mouldy room too much.

I've just had a great day! The meditations were a great joy! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Different Kind of Friday!

Friday 1:05 p.m.
The Domestic Bliss is at another wedding today and won't be back till the early hours. I'm thinking of cleaning up my room since I spend a lot more time in there these days. Maybe later.

I've been so fortunate with these meditations. During the first one today I just resided in the various degrees of bliss. Just being happy to be able to be there, and be there almost immediately no matter what I've been up to. That's certainly something worth having.

Weather's crap. I may stay in today. I'm not doing the Lanarkshire cycle due to seeing these folk yesterday. Hurrah!

Wedding!

Friday 12:15 a.m.
Interesting wedding day. Wonderful people. Both the bride and groom cried. There was a lot of dead people at that wedding. I left with two rolls with square sausages in them. Square sausages? You cannot get square sausages anywhere else. I wonder why that is.

Dr Jeykll !

Wednesday 2:30 p.m.
I feel as if I've just spent a couple of days with id. Hello, id! How is Mr Hyde doing these days, Hotboy? He's too alive and well, Jack, stalled in the corner with his viking helmet still on. Hmmm? Well, we're just going to keep him there, aren't we, Hotboy? Yes, we are, Jack. Yes, we are.

You need a metronome existence. Get up at the same time, go to the hut at the same time ... keep everything the same so you can concentrate on what your're supposed to be concentrating on. Chaos arrived with the summons from the McDuck's last Tuesday. That took out the gross body for Wednesday and then there was just Thursday before I had to break off for the cycle to the grannies. All day Saturday I was waiting for the man. Good on Saturday, good on Sunday, bad boy on Monday.

The Charles Bukowski show made me realise I'm still desperate to write. That's waiting in the corner of the room across from Mr Hyde.

There is not a vast expanse of time in front of me now where I could imagine sitting in the hut for days at a time. This is the end of all elaborate plans, my friend. Still, the holiday has had its moments and there's still twelve days to go!!

11:30 p.m.
Feel fabulous this evening. Today, I stayed in all day. Managed a headstand, backbend, dog poses, a tai chi set and twenty of Mr Iyengar's yogic jumpings and a hundred prostrations. Felt so much better after doing the prostrations and jumpings this evening. Sometimes taking exercise does feel great.

Just when I've got myself sorted out .... I'm going to a wedding tomorrow. Once more into the breach, dear friends .... Oh, no!

Despite myself!

Tuesday 4:55 p.m.
After the stumblebumming about the place and the generally bad boy stuff from yesterday, the meditations today have been of a different order yet again. So there's no point in agonising about this stuff. You just have to get on with it.

The lama said the all-over heat you get is a natural part of the meditation, so I guess you reach the heat without the vajrayana. Straightforward calming meditation should get you to heat eventually. I don't know. The heat that rushes up your central channel and fries your pineal gland is the stuff you've got to watch out for, it seems. I've been getting more than usual of the first kind of heat in the brilliant, brilliant meditations I've had today so far.

I have been slightly timorous about the vase breathing since speaking to the lama, but I was casually throwing them in today without forcing it at all and without any channels or symbols and all that jazz. It just feels so right. You've got to listen to yourself as well!!

And the flat has been empty all day, so I've stayed put.

Charles Bukowski

Monday 9:30 p.m.
It was another grey dull day and I felt as if I had been in too long, and so I hadn't been settled, or something like that, and I couldn't get the wee bit of the movie out of my head, the one I saw a bit of last night before sleeping. Factotum. It was supposed to be about Charles Bukowski.

Lance Flynn, who once stayed with the sensei, told me about Charles Bukowski. It takes the shy like moi a long time to find out about anything. So I went and read a novel or two, one I remember about being a postman. Not written seventeen times in longhand, etc., but had something you could't quite put your finger on.

We went for a weekend to the Holy Isle, just off Arran, to help with the building work. Dearie me! I spent the three days in a tent, and refused to come out. Before that, we'd been sheltering in this hovel place and one of the books there was a book of poetry by Charles Bukowski. I hung around in there for hours waiting for the rain to stop, and read half of this poetry book. I don't read poetry books. Really loved it.

I saw a telly show about Charles Bukowski and he did not show up in a very good light. Maybe not somebody you'd really want to know. Not nicety nice. Certainly not.

Then I read Ham on Rye, which is a kind of autobiographical thing. It is a wonderful book! It is a bit gross, but the boy is right in your face. A brilliant book.

I read a book once called A Thief's Journal (?) by Jean Genet. A fabulous book. It's about Jean Genet really and he does not seem to have been a very nice person either.

I must say I saw this BBC2 show about Jean Genet when he was old and living in Morocco. (Where else?) I remember him as very charming.

Above all others, to thine own self be true

There's something about being a misfit and losing yourself in the writing process and producing something like that. The Autobiography of a Murderer by Hugh Collins is book of great class as well.

Once when I was a couple of months off the beer, I found an obituary about Charles Bukowski in the Observer on Sunday afternoon, and immediately went for a drink. There's something about Charles Bukowski. Glad I gave all that writing crap up, of course. Mug's game!

I'm so much more fortunate than Charles Bukowski, but I did go out on the beer this afternoon and considered my tao.

Prostrations!

Sunday 10:30 p.m.
I did my first prostration session this evening. Half and hour. I think a prostration takes about twelve seconds, so that's about one hundred and fifty prostrations. (Get me an ambulance, Jack!)So there's only ninety nine thousand eight hundred and fifty to go. I reckon you can do a hundred in twenty minutes, so that's the way to go. Def dight; def dight; def dight!

This joe on the telly prostrated his way from Mongolia to Varanasi in Northern India. He said he knew the size of the world because he'd measured it with his body. Obviously, the boy's brain had gone. I think he said it took him three years.

Actually, he said he felt dead serene when he got to Varanasi.

The can of home brew costs £8:50. That makes forty pints. It's about twenty five pence a pint and tastes like rat's piss.