Bliss Diary!

Thursday 9:25 p.m.
Tai chi set, headstand, dog pose, back bend ... ran to Costorphine and up yon great muckle hill in 1 hour 40 minutes ... made soup ....meditated so far for about five hours. The warmth checked in during the last one, just finished. Now, I'm away to visit the allotment. Really wonderful day so far. Just a great day! Really enjoyed the run. Despite the runnings and jumpings and giving up dairy, I don't seem to have lost an ounce!! Still twelve stone. Dearie me!

Goji Berries!

Thursday 7:05 p.m.
I think if I'm going to get any good as this juju, I'm going to have to live at least as long as Li Ching-yuen, so I went down to Waitrose looking for goji berries. I got a packet of mixed stuff. I was hoping to be able to germinate some of the berries, but the Domestic Bliss says they've been processed. Apparently, the bushes grow anywhere and you can buy them on the web, but I've never bought anything on the web, so it's back to the drawing board.

I bought soup stuff as well. In that pot are lentils, potatoes, cabbage, mustard greens, onion, carrot, broccoli ... kidney beans and chick peas ... salt, pepper, garlic, tumeric, coriander, curry powder, cumin ... and pasta sauce.

I had a photie extra so I took one of my guitar. I bought it from the pawn shop twenty years ago and it's been battered to death. I really need a new one. It's a copy of a hummingbird.

Thursday's Bliss Diary

Thursday 9:45 p.m.
Just after the first meditation of the day.

Things have started at such a high point. What a day I'm going to have!

Guru Yoga is a very difficult for me since I am so full of moi! But it is integral to this juju, being one of the skilful means.

Wonderments and amazingnesses may be mine today, but I'm not claiming that it's because of what I'm doing. I'm just trying to get onto the park in the hope that someone will pass me the ball. I don't think Lama Yeshe went into his darkness retreat last year, or did all those other solitary retreats, for himself. I think he did them for me. Maybe not just for me, but for me as well. Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. You're not going to become the buddha that he surely is unless you've developed that. Sometimes today I've felt like he was the sun shining down on me. You've got to try to get your head into that space, I think. Plug yourself into the lineage that goes back to Milarepa, back to Shakymuni. This must help to get the moi out of moi!

These meditations tend to get better and better as the day goes on. Set your controls for the heart of the sun!

Mare Strange Folk

Wednesday 8:35 p.m.
After being intrigued by the buddha boy and Prahlad Jani, I came across Li Ching-yuen, who is supposed to have lived for over 250 years. Well, he might have lived till he was only 167 or so years, but his mother lost his birth certificate maybe!

He ate goji berries. I've never heard of goji berries. Maybe I could try growing a few bushes in the allotment. I wonder where I'd get the seeds. Anyway, he also did Qigong, which is a kind of tai chi, I think. The Taoists were into immortality, or becoming Immortals. I've never really understood Taoism. I mean, all I want to do, Jack, is to be able to emanate as a deity and then do a voluntary exit from my body. That's not asking for too much, is it? Why would anybody want to be immortal?

I was at the tai chi last night. You do a warm up, then a set of 108 moves (it's like a weird slow dance if you've never seen it) and then you have a break. Right at the end of the set, this joe comes up to moi, offers a handshake and says you look like a master.

I'm not any good at tai chi, but in the joe's defence he was just a beginner ... but afterwards thought this was a weird thing for one joe to say to another anyway. Then I remember putting something about masters and slaves into a dirty book I got published once and then I thought ... have I been getting chatted up by gay men all my life and never noticed?

A woman is never going to come up to you and introduce herself with a remark like that. You look like a master. Yeah? Hmmm?

Unlike the Iyengar yoga classes I used to go to, which were full of gorgeous bendy babes, and a great many with fabulous butts, I doubt if any of the women at the tai chi class are under sixty. The woman who teaches it was an old age pensioner fifteen years ago when I started going. She must be hitting eighty by now, and looks much the same actually. A wee sparrow, so she is. If the joe had decent eyes in his head he'd realise that she is a master of the 108 moves.

So I've got the verbal diarrhoea immediately when this joe starts talking to me. Strange flatheids make me nervous. It turns out he's a horticulturist. I asked him about the weeds. It seems I'm doing the right thing with the weeds as long as there aren't too many of them. He said something about biomass, whatever that is. He's involved in some ecology project in Portobello, hustling fruit trees into open spaces. He says he'd love to have an allotment. I told him I wanted to have a hut so I could sit in it. I can non-sequitur anybody, so I can. Just tell them you want a hut so you can learn to sit in it for days and days and days. Fung off, flatheids!

I was taking the weeds out from between the onions tonight. I found a strawberry the Domestic Bliss must have missed when she was up there last night. The lupins are turning into seed pods, passed their glorious best. They planted themselves as they have for years. I'm going to try seeding them in the slopes created by the disappearing ground.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about ra bliss, Jack! No jobbie tomorrow! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Monday night again!

Monday 9:40 p.m.
I swear I've only (so far) had one lemonade bottle of home brew and look at the photies. Doubles, triples ...more drinks coming up.

When I got back from the meditation I was at tonight, I did a session of six threes and then had the drink. Straight into the blood stream. Hurrah!

Folk who don't train and drink never get this. Me and my pal Gerry first experienced this after boxing training down at Meadowbank Stadium when I was just over my mid-twenties. Train for two hours, have two pints, and you're flying. Oh, well, I'll go and get another lemonade bottle then.

I went to the Theosophical Society building in Great King Street tonight for the first time in months ... maybe since last year ... to meditate with the nun.

I've got a lot of respect for the nun. The nun did the four year retreat. I've got a lot of respect for anyone who has done these big retreats. It must be like tempering steel. You won't be the same joe or josephine if you've put yourself through that.

She asked me where I'd been. Had I been in Edinburgh? I told her I'd been counting my pennies. She said to come along even if I was skint.

Due to spending all my money on drink and drugs, sometimes I haven't got much for the last two weeks of the month ... you don't go. You stay in. It's the pride that cometh before the next payday and the chance to get into the drink and drugs again.

But there were no flatheids in the room. Everybody was meditating for an hour. It's great that! It doesn't matter if you don't get the bliss or any of that malarkey yet. It's just being with people doing it. So that was great. I've got fifty quid left of my overdraft limit and I probably get paid in seven days. This is much better than usual. Usually, I've got twenty quid to do me over the last two weeks. Loaded, so I am. I hope to go back next week. It was great.

I'm really quite shy. I don't like talking about myself. This is because when I start telling folk about myself I sound fung amazing even to moi! Can write books, stand on his heid, do ra bliss, etc. Are there no end to the wonderments? Thank God I'm going to drink myself to death! It's the only thing I can do for the flatheids to give themselves a chance to smirk and sneer.

Oh, aye, he could write books, stand on his heid, do fabuloso shadow boxing at nearly sixty, and almost emanate as a deity, but what a stupid basturn ... he drank himself to death!

Actually, drinking yourself to death is too much like hard work. Eighty pints of home brew a month isn't going to do it unless I starve myself to death as well.

I'll be sixty next year. You should be dead by this time alreadys, Hotboy! I know, Jack! It's too late for me to drink myself to death. It's like saying a ninety year old drank himself to death. It's stupid. What age was Brendan Behan when he drank himself to death? I bet he wasn't over 48. You should get liver failure before you're thirty five if you're really going for it.

I'm nearly sixty, Jack! Isn't that wonderful. Took refuge at the age my old man died at. That's eight years in the gravy!! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

The fresh air photies were taken last night coming home from the park. The rest were at the Theosophical Society where I went to meditate tonight. One was from a leaflet showing the nun and the lama. One is of the copula at the top of the stairs. I came out much better than you'd think because of the wonky colours from the camera. The surrounds were actually light blue. I think the nun missed me. I said hullo, and as soon as the sitting finished, left straight away as usual. I'd like to be sociable, but if you start that, Jack, you end up invading Poland.

Some photies

Saturday 6:20 p.m.
As I was leaving the allotment, the buddhist woman with the fabulous butt straightened up, turned round, and offered me a bunch of mustard greens. I have no idea what they are. I took a photie of them on the way home. The shopkeeper said you can steam them and eat them with lamb. I'll just eat them.


She has a fabulous allotment, this woman. She's young. She's American. I like American women. Some days you just like any kind of women. She asked me if I'd like to attend a medicine buddha puja this evening. They were going to have some eats afterwards. I demurred.

I'm so hot for you. I'm so hot for you. I'm so hot for you. And you're so cold. (The Rolling Stones) Yab Yum. Hmmm?

She said she was doing a PHd in Botany. I could have asked her about the weeds.

Just as well I've got leprosy, eh, Jack? It's a blessing in disguise, Hotboy. A blessing in disguise.

I had the first ripe strawberry of the year. Hurrah! It did taste fantastic!

Sympathy for the Devil!

Saturday 8:20 a.m.
I had a vivid dream this morning where I ended up trying to console Wayne Rooney, who was caught on camera last night complaining about getting booed by the English fans.

I wakened up this morning feeling very calm.

I like hearing the Liverpool accents of some of the English players like Gerrard and Carragher. I like working class English accents. It's the evil bourgeois southerners who stick in my craw. I think when I get acclaimed President of the Scottish Socialist Republic, which I expect to happen soon after I start floating about, I'll annex the whole of the north of England down to the Wash. I can segue from this petty nationalism into the class war no bother.

Wayne Rooney wears a rosary round his neck when he plays. He's one of us!

If the Little Englanders do get out of the group stage, we can see them crash and burn at some penalty shoot out later on.

Come on, the English basturns!

He's scouse!
He's fat!
He'll come and screw your flat!
Wayne Rooney! Wayne Rooney!

I fell off the wagon last night at half time so I could be more enthusiastic in my support for the Algerians.

You can run and cycle from here till doomsday, but if you eat and drink like that, you will stay a fat basturn, Hotboy!