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.