VIDYAVAJRA

DIARY 152 - Is It All About My Mother?

2012-02-19T13:05:00.002Z

Things appear, on the surface at least, to be returning to a vacuous type of normality. I'm back in Cambridge, with the usual people and surroundings providing some sense of reassurance ~ the comfort of the familiar. Tomorrow it will be a month since my Mother died, and well over a fortnight since the funeral. Jnanasalin has gone off on a nine day retreat, so I'm spending more time on my own. I've been finding communal social situations difficult anyway. The noise, banter and general busyness of it makes my nerves feel raw and I find a blanket of solitude protects me from its abrasiveness. Yet, when I am alone, I invariably find ways to distract myself with emotionally empty things. Logically I'd like the restoration of meaning and a re-engagement with life to return, but the heart for this has currently vacated the vicinity. I keep doing the things of life as I always do, but its as if the essence of me is locked away in some distant annex. The fact that these activities are what my life usually consists of, seems to make me want to reject or push them away, like an inedible meal. There is no hunger as yet for the life affirming present. This lack of congruence between what I do and what I feel like doing, is getting easier to manage simply through patience and familiarity, but its not yet ready to leave.

I have moments, when inconsolable sadness emerges unbidden. Grief appears at times to be an abstracted feeling, one not necessarily triggered by specific recollections, but fed by an underground force with a more existential imperative. A space has opened up in my psychic world, one that wasn't there before, a Mother shaped void that no one else but her could fill. I loved my Mother, and this was reciprocated. I felt I was my Mother's favourite child. After all I was the most like her ~ or was I? How much did I become formed in her likeness? It was often noted, how facially like her I was, and this was true, externally we were very similar. But it didn't stop there, I also took it to mean I was 'internally like' her as well. This was sometimes spoken of , and hence reinforced, by my Mother herself. It was a litany I came to loath the size and shape of. It wasn't that I disliked my Mother, but I did dislike being 'like my Mother.' The constant comparison, turned me into an identical person, one that as I grew up seemed not to allow me space to be fully me. Often her natural mothering desire to protect me from the worst of the world and the worst in myself, I could find quite suffocating. Who my Father is, has frequently remained a mystery to both my sister and I. How he's felt about things, like my being gay, I knew only through what my Mother told me. His quietly benign and genial presence was frequently overshadowed by my Mothers need for attention. Only now in my mature adulthood can I begin to see how like my Father I am.

Emotionally the insecurity and lack of confidence I have experienced at times during my life, is similar to that of my Mother's, but also to countless other people I've met. It it's unique only in the specific details, not in the generality. Its difficult now to retrospectively disentangle how much I picked up from her and how much is just an existential characteristic of me being me anyway. The more extravagant outgoing aspects of my nature has often found themselves fighting against being buried beneath a seeming avalanche of more introverted emotions. Perhaps I did unfairly blamed my Mother for this, for which I must ask forgiveness. Yes, its hard to take full responsibility for this, but now maybe the time to do so. Until my late teens/early twenties, I was too close and far too confiding in my Mother. My life gradually became more concealed as I made a life for myself, and became more active as a gay man. Hiding who I was when I went home, though often internally unbearable, became outwardly second nature. Yet this was just the beginning of my parents not really comprehending or, indeed, wanting to fully understand what their son's life was really about. Gay, artistic, a performer,a vegetarian, a Buddhist living in a community, why I wanted to be all these was somewhat incomprehensible to them. However much I dropped pennies into their well, I rarely got more than distant distorted echoes back. They really couldn't get it. So as they and I both got older, I ceased trying to build a bridge between my world and their's, for it would only have collapsed by the next time I visited.

I was often a shy child, over sensitive to perceived slights or criticisms. I was quite reserved and quiet in company, so my Mother took to talking for me, telling everyone present how I was doing, as if I'd just been suddenly struck dumb over dinner. This was something she was already had practice doing, having spent her married life speaking for her quietly self contained and undemonstrative husband, in public situations. As I moved into adulthood, this tendency to talk for me did continue, and I left it until quite late in my adult life, before I finally took the bull by the horns and told her to stop. I think I did publicly shame her in order to make my point all the more clearer, but it did cease from then on. It took me decades to gain confidence, and feel able to make my opinions and presence felt in social situations. I was rarely able to do that when my Mother was around. In order to feel able to discover and be who I was, had meant moving away, limiting communication, and putting some emotional distance between Mum and I. Sorry for that Mum, I know that must have hurt you. Yet you were sometimes like a radio station that took up far too much bandwidth, leaving an insufficient amount for anyone else. Everything had to pass through my Mother, like she was the whole families emotional conduit and censor. Now she is gone, its possible that my Father, Sister and I could now renegotiate our relationship. If we should want to get to know each other better, of course!

I think only now do I feel able to forgive my Mother and forgive myself too, for all this stuff. Its strange what a death can liberate. This week, I have been thinking what would have been once unthinkable. That, now she is no longer here, its possible for me to accept that I am to some extent like my Mother, and I'm done with pretending otherwise. I can be myself these days, without feeling smothered by the immediacy of my Mother's relationship with me. I've expended too much energy in the past trying to become someone, other than the son who's 'too like his Mother.' yet ironically bumping into it all the time. My sense of being independent was to some extent a necessary artifice, but also a reaction to a past dependence that still felt too emotionally loaded. Yet, my determination to create, to do what I wanted and be whatever I am, however unconventional it may be, my emotional steadiness, my quiet kindness and dependability are as much, if not more, a characteristic of my Father, than my Mother. So, perhaps for the first time, I'm perceiving what the real nature of my inheritance has been from my Mother ~ and my Father. Acceptance and forgiveness, may be my guiding watchwords over the coming weeks, months, if not years.

DIARY 151 - Eulogy

2012-02-05T18:57:00.001Z

JUNE MARGARET LUMB

12th June 1929 ~ 20th January 2012

I once worked in a crematorium inCambridge and over the period of two years I worked there, I heardhundreds of eulogies. As an unrelated observer I was frequentlypresented with a vivid picture of the deceased persons character, andoften deeply moved. These eulogies rarely put much emphasis on theirambitions, successes, careers or material achievements, but spokemostly of the effect the person had upon them, and what they loved orvalued about them. So, as I sit here writing this eulogy for my ownMother, I naturally find myself recollecting her personality,qualities, and general approach to life, and how these traits ofcharacter were often a response to the crucible of life.

My Mum with my Dad in the Summer of 2011

Most people if they met my Mother wouldfind themselves instantly put at ease by her warm lively andappreciative conversation. Though often overly self conscious,introverted and a little retiring by nature in larger gatherings, sherarely found connecting or talking one to one with people difficult.My Mother was intrigued by, and possessed an endless curiosity aboutpeople and their lives. She’d often said ‘I’m not being nosey,I’m just interested’ and though this was a tricky balance tomaintain ,this was indeed mostly how it was. She was alwaysrespectful, polite and never prurient in her interest. She was alsovery loyal too, with a good many friendships that lasted her wholelife. This ability to connect quickly and easily with people, wasfounded upon that very real caring interest, she was able to be afriend to many people, by being an empathic, humorous and supportivelistener. She might not be able to resolve a problem or dilemma, butshe could hear it fully, and with a receptive kind heart.

My Mother spent large parts of her lastdecade of life housebound. Though there were occasional trips out inher wheelchair to supermarkets, cafes and to visit close family.These became less and less frequent as the complicated, and oftencompounding, mixture of ailments she suffered from, began takingtheir toll. On the whole she bore the discomfort and suffering ofthese as philosophically as she could, without resentment and withgood humour. My Mother was always ready to have a laugh at life, atherself or her predicament. It was only in the last few months of herlife, when things were getting demonstrably more difficult, did herpatient, positive and usually cheerful demeanour begin to flag. Shebore this with honesty, and talked of it as lightly as she could,which often masked what she was actually feeling.

As a child, I remember my Mother asbeing kind and appreciative, but she also knew when and where toenforce discipline. The boundaries were laid out firmly, but fairly,and Janet and I crossed them at our peril. Any punishment that mayhave resulted from something stupid I had done, rarely feltdisproportionate or unjustified. I think this was because it wasfounded on a very real love and concern for us, and because both myMother and Father had themselves a clear idea of what social orethical behaviour was or was not acceptable, and sought to instilthat in us.

Over the years my Mother became anfluent talker and teller of stories. Though by no means an extrovert,nevertheless she had a strong presence in our family. Her mind,almost to the very end, had a sharpness and strength of recollectionfor that telling detail. So whenever I came home on a visit, thefirst evening would often consist of my Mother speaking, often ininexhaustible detail, of all the things that had happened to her,stories about members of my family, of her friends, places or events.Sometimes I have to say, I had no idea at all who, where or what shewas talking about, and I just took to nodding in all the appropriateplaces. She was the reliable repository of our families oral history,its tall stories and its myths. Those small incidents from ones earlychildhood, or teenage, which most Mothers still delight inembarrassing their grown up sons and daughters with. That faculty ofmemory and recollection was to keep her mentally alert, aware andactive, which made her physical deterioration all the harder for her.

There were times when I chose to dothings which didn’t necessarily match my parents expectations oraspirations for me. But, my parents have rarely been proscriptive,allowing both Janet and myself, to develop and go our own way inlife. The only proviso being that whatever we did would potentiallymake us happier. On this journey through life, I have been sustainedby knowing that I have been loved and appreciated. I have saidgoodbye to what physically remains of my Mother, but her love willalways be with me. For this I am profoundly grateful.

DIARY 150 - A Death in my Family

2012-02-05T18:46:00.002Z

In the early hours of the 20th January my Mother died. She'd been just ten days out of hospital. But the Mother I saw five days before on the15th January was not the same woman I'd visited barely a month before. She was frail, tired, dizzy and quite depressed after three weeks in hospital. Something of my Mother's spirit had been broken. A mild heart attack had left her with feet that could at any moment spontaneously start to jiggle. She kept regretfully recollecting the loss of her physical control, vitality and capability. It must be hard being still mentally alert, and hence fully aware of ones physical decline. Now she was dependent on carers to wash and clothe her. Whilst the constant loving attention of my Father tried to do the rest.

She perked up a bit over the weekend, and my last memory of her was the fond kiss and loving beam of her smile, as I left to catch my train. Her condition didn't improve much over the next few days, her blood sugar levels still fluctuating wildly. Then on Thursday night whilst brushing her teeth, she had a fatal heart attack and keeled over into the shower cubicle. The emergency services got her heart going again, but by the time she reached Scunthorpe General Hospital she'd not been breathing for quite some time. Reluctant to revive her because she would have lost all mental capability and consciousness, she was thankfully allowed to die.

I was on retreat at Padmaloka, just beginning the second day. That morning after meditation and breakfast I sat in my room, and heard much walking up and down the corridor outside. I thought 'one of those people is going to knock on my door.' As previously arranged, Jnanasalin had rung and left a message. My Mum had died, and he and Aryajaya were already half way to Padmaloka to pick me up. As soon as I hung up I sobbed heavily for a while, as yet that's the only crying I've done. Once back in Cambridge, and after a call to my sister, there was a quick turn around and re-packing before Jnanasalin and I set off for Crowle.

January is a busy time in Crematoriums, with all the backlog from the Christamas and New Year break to be caught up on. So my Mother's funeral ended up not being until the 1st February. The fortnight in-between I stayed with my Father, and Jnanasalin came, went and came back again. When he was here we went regularly out for coffee and cake in the morning and for a drink in a local pub in the evening ~ just so we got out of the house for a while. But mostly we cooked meals for my Dad and kept him company, went with him to register the death, and started sorting through draws and cupboards. Oh, and we watched lots of trashy day time TV, mostly quizzes and several antiques programmes. No, you really don't want to know which ones. They are addictive.

My Father seems outwardly fine, quite philosophical and, externally at least, emotionally equanimous. But then it really is impossible to read my Father, to tell how he's feeling, he gives absolutely nothing away. There's just his genial kind smile.The funeral when it did arrive, was a blessed relief. I wrote a eulogy that the minister read for me. Family and friends arrived. Jnansalin, is only known as my boyfriend to a handful of my closest relatives. I didn't think it appropriate to bluntly 'come out' to them at my Mother's funeral. My Mother would have been embarrassed and mortified. However, even though I quietly presented him as 'a good friend of mine' the cat was recognised as out of the bag, much more than anyone expected.

Anyway, I'm now back in Cambridge, and reacquainting myself with my life here, after the strange activity-less existence of my Crowle bardo. Tidying up is one of those things I like to do before I re-engage with something. So I've spent the last few days, re-organising, pruning the gently inflating range of my
possessions. I've been attending to the needs of my Dad, and that meant I had to put my own to one side. Today, I was walking to Tesco to print out some photos of my Mum & Dad and I felt grief-like emotions stirring themselves. I imagine that these will continue to ruffle the surface and depths for sometime to come.

The strongest moment so far,was the morning after Jnansalin and I had arrived at my Dad's. I came down stairs to take my usual morning shower, I instantly noticed there were blotches of my Mother's blood and scuff marks still remaining from where she'd fallen into the shower cubicle. I paused briefly, for a moment feel distinctly unsure as my emotions griped and churned. Then I took a deep breath, and had my shower, making sure these last tangible reminders of my own Mother's death, were washed away, so as not to perturb anyone else.

I Let Go - No 9 - The Things That Dreams Are Made Of

2011-12-28T19:30:00.001Z

Isuppose I may have dreamed whilst I was in the womb. What thosedreams consisted of is hard to say, probably vague unspecificfeelings of pleasure or discomfort. A babies experience in the wombmost likely consists of relatively unrefined sensation. Can they evendream? Is dreaming or the desire for something other than what is currently happening, dependent on having experience ofthere being a choice. If all you've ever known are the comfortingsusurrations of the womb, with no experience of unmuted light,freedomand sensory stimulus - would you nonetheless become bored with thedarkness, and the attendant limitations to movement and sensation?Wouldn't you dream of it being different? Receptive and affected, butable to do little about the containing envelope of ones own Mother'semotional states. Wouldn't you feel an impulse to kick at the wallsand rebel?

Ababies birth can be a thing of wonder, yet also a pain filled processa mother goes through. But what on earth must the baby be feelingabout it ? Does it want to stay put in the womb warmth that it lovesand knows? Has it dreamt for weeks and months of being released intowhatever is outside? It doesn't yet know that the outside world willfeel colder, more exposed and feel less interdependent. To live in anunfocused brightness, a place of shadows and voices, that will leerout at you from the unknown. Recognising only the familiar tones ofits parents voices. Does it fall into and welcome life, or is itreluctantly pushed? Expelled harshly from Eden.

Whilstpregnant with me, my Mother may have been understandably quiteanxious. She'd had a miscarriage between my sister's and my birth,shortly before my inception. I know from what my Mother has toldme,that my birth was prolonged; starting in the afternoon and onthrough the night. Until I finally popped out my head in the earlyhours of the 26^th June 1957. I was, what was consideredthen, a very big baby. Very pink, very wrinkled and very hairy,apparently, and well over nine pounds in weight. In the early days oflife asleep under fluffy blankets in my cot, what went through mymind? If I dreamt of anything specific, what was it I dreamt of? Howseminal an influence on my attitude towards the world was the ninemonths I spent in my Mother's womb, and the emerging from it into theworld?

Asmuch as I might be tempted to conjecture about this, it would befutile. What makes us how we are is a complex tangle of crossed wires. It's impossible to fully know or unpick thephilosophical underpinning, let alone the practical mechanisms of karma andrebirth. Not that it stops people putting huge amounts ofintellectual energy into trying to unravel or dismiss them. So I'dbest leave it there, and focus on to what I know and have experienced – The things that my dreams have been made of. Not the nocturnal,but the aspirational, the vocational, the ideal dreams I had, orstill have for my life.

ChildhoodDreams

A child dream or see theneed to become anything. They try on occupations as imaginative rolesfor play, they don't necessarily wish to become a King say, in laterlife. Nevertheless, this dressing up and acting out of an admittedlychildish view of adult life, helps them learn through broad mimicry,how a person might choose to live, work and play. We try things onfor size, copying how grown ups interact with the world, and find outwhat the consequences of behaving well or badly are. All from aposition of little or no understanding of what an job might reallyentail. Nor whether we will have the necessary talents, opportunityor determination to take it up as a career in later life. As a childwe wear our dreams lightly, with no sense of our making a longer termcommitment,

Ihad a dream of becoming a fireman

As a child, I had a redtrike. I threw anything I found in the streets into its swing liddedboot. Sometimes it would be leaves or earth, but quite often it wasstones or nails. I just loved the way they loudly rattled as I torearound cobbled back streets, and up and down snickets, making onehell of a row. In addition I made ringing noises like a fire engine.The neighbours complained, but I remained fond of seeing myself as afireman. A ragged shadow of this early enthusiasm passed brieflyacross my mind in my teens, as I imagined what my future might be.

Ihad a dream of going to Egypt

It's hard to say whatinitially sparked this. However, in 1956 ,the year before I was born,MGM's blockbuster The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston andYul Brynner, was released. I remember excitedly queuing to see it asa very young child. Most likely it was this that fired my imaginativeengagement. Whatever the prompt, the result for me was an earlycompulsion. From then on I avidly sought out and devoured any bookabout Egypt, and readily turned any tea towel into Phaoronicheaddress. This imaginative engagement has stayed with me. In 1988,inorder to fulfill a lifetimes desire I went there on holiday for threeweeks.

Ihad a dream of making perfume

Fired up to become youngentrepreneurs, a friend and I decided to become perfume makers. Westarted by collecting rose petals, well, we stole them really.Surreptitiously creeping along the gardens of our terraced street.Not paying too much attention to quality control, we just tore offflower heads till we had a bucket-load. I think to us perfumemanufacture seemed the same as beer making. We soaked the petals inwater as long as we thought appropriate, bottled up the result andwent round the self same house we'd stolen the petals from, to sellthem our 'rose perfume'. Well, there's capitalism in the raw for you.

Ihad a dream of becoming a vicar

When I was seven I had agood boy soprano voice. Being brought up a Methodist, there was nochoral tradition. So my parents obtained me an audition to join theHalifax Parish Church choir. This expanded my horizons, and nourishedmy appreciation of church architecture, music and ritual. For incomparison to the stripped back simple services of non-conformism,the Church of England seemed a much more ancient,richer andemotionally engaging seam of devotion than I was used to. At home, Ifound two small candlesticks, a wooden crucifix, turned my desk intoan altar and performed daily services for a while, casting myself asthe vicar.

Ihad a dream of joining the Royal Navy

There was a school tripto see a Royal Navy ship in Goole Docks. All I remember now, is thepack of cards with silhouette pictures of navy ships I was given.Never particularly fit or combative, I suddenly wanted to join theNavy. A life of heroic action wasn't what I wanted, it was to ride onthe ocean waves. I'd read adventure novels so I had a fictionalconception of what this might entail. The desire was to explore whatthe wider world was really like. I discovered I was largely anadventurer in carpet slippers. So a life in the Navy, was not to be.

Ihad a dream of becoming a historian

My early reading aboutAncient Egypt, Kings & Queens of England and Church architecture,built the foundations for a lifelong fascination with history. As achild I wanted to read about people and events that actuallyhappened, and not entirely imaginary versions. I thought then thatperhaps I'd become someone in the world of history, maybe anarchaeologist. No one seemed able to tell me what else might be donewith a love of history. Unable to discover what my options withhistory really were, I turned my face in an entirely differentdirection. History became demoted to an enthusiasm, not the personalvocation I had originally envisaged.

DIARY 149 ~ 14 Things I Treasured In 2011

2011-12-14T19:49:00.002Z

1 ~ MUSIC - Anna Calvi

2 ~ TELEVISION - The Killing Series 1 and 2

3 ~ NOVEL - An Awfully Big Adventure

4 ~ MUSIC - Niki and The Dove

5 ~ FILM - Animal Kingdom

6 ~ NOVEL - The Death Of Bunny Munroe

7 ~ DANCE - Far

8 ~ MUSIC - The Young Proffessionals

9 ~ BUDDHISM - Realizing Genjo Koan

10 ~ TELEVISION - Rev

11 ~ MUSIC - Capsule

12 ~ THEATRE - Earthquakes In London

13 - FILM - Of Gods And Men

14 ~ MUSIC - The Smiths Project

FEATURE 102 - Early Eno Video

2011-12-02T13:07:00.006Z

Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy is undoubtedly my favourite of Brian Eno's early albums. It's probably in my all time Top Ten too. I've owned it previously on vinyl, then cassette tape, and now on CD. The vinyl recording had a terrific screen print gatefold cover,with four different colour-ways of the same print, by the artist Peter Schmidt. Something which my CD insert cannot inevitable quite capture. I've listened to this album so closely in the past, to see what tape-looped tweets, clicks and moans were buried in the deeper layers of Eno's - 'Oblique Strategy' led recording process.

Here is a video that's just appeared on You Tube, from 1974 produced by Eno for Chins My China. Musically he throws everything into the song, lead guitar recorded and played in reverse, typewriter noise in percussive overlay. with nonsense cut up, stream of association lyrics. In other words, this was Eno at his most dissonant, edgy and experimental. The Dadaist & Velvet Underground influences abound, but its alive with fresh innovation, playfulness and wit. Something which, for all the aural beauty of his ambient sound-scapes, his later work sometimes sadly lacks. Lighten up dear.

Oh, and just in case you weren't entirely sure they're really meant to be there, those two women weren't in on the original recording of this track.

FEATURE 101 - Capsule

2011-12-01T17:39:00.002Z

Some of the coolest videos I've seen in a long while. By the Japanese Electro group Capsule.

I Let Go - No 8 - For Once In My Life

2011-12-01T14:22:00.013Z

Recollecting some of my past activity,

what I did, and what I would have wanted to do

Good times for a change
See, the luck I've had
Can make a good man
Turn bad

So please please please
Let me, let me, let me
Let me get what I want
This time

Haven't had a dream in a long time
See, the life I've had
Can make a good man bad

So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time
Lord knows, it would be the first time

Lyrics to - Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
by Morrissey / Marr

Such is the power of maudlin self pity to move me, when expressed via a song lyric. That Morrissey's melancholic, burdensome level of disappointment with life,as much an existential statement as it was popular poetry, struck a very plaintive chord with me. Why this was so, I'll sketch out here only in brief. For what I'm about to describe is the youthful optimism and the dreams and desires I held for myself, and how these gradually fell apart as they encountered the indifferent nature of concrete reality. It seems from a Buddhist perspective, thirty plus years later, that this was kind of inevitable, with things 'being impermanent by nature' etc. The affect on me,however, was much longer lasting than you'd think.

Like most young men in their late teens / early twenties,I was quite unprepared for my first contact with the world, as it actually was. My parents, the extended years as an art student, and my own unrealistic daydreaming, had all sheltered and protected me from the harsher realities of life, I would need to earn money, to afford a place of my own, to have food, clothes and a social life. To do the things I enjoyed would entail working. That a job that might have little meaning for you, could take a toll on the energy left spare at the end of a day, had never occurred to me. Nor that a life spent just earning a living, might wear thin your positivity, aspirations, and curiosity about life.

In the mid-seventies, the UK was in the midst of a dire economic recession. There was a huge level of unemployment,high inflation, and social unrest. A power struggle between the unions and the Labour government was on the brink of bringing the country to a standstill. If there was work available it was often low skilled,low paid, physically hard work. My dream, if I had one at all, about work (apart from not working at all) was only to do something I enjoyed. I left comprehensive school with a scattering of middling 'O' level grades, with a plan to go on to 'A' levels. During the lazy hot days of the summer holidays,a growing antipathy towards further study and exams burgeoned. Much to my parents consternation, I abandoned the previous plan to go on to further education.

I loved gardening and just getting my hands dirty. So I applied for, and got, a job working in the Scunthorpe Parks Department. I arrived on the first day, fresh faced and quite nervous, walking towards the staff hut with a flask of coffee and a lunchpack. I wonder now whether these more experienced men saw me coming, and wanted to test what my metal for hard physical work was. For on that first day, there was no gentle mowing or trimming of edges of flower beds. I was set to hoeing weeds from an uneven patch of ancient,but still extremely tough tarmac. By the end of a second day of this, my hands were raw and blistered, and suddenly further education seemed an infinitely more preferable option. This reversal further infuriated my parents, as they quickly tried to ascertain if I could still go to sixth form at all. I might have had to wait another year, as the new intake had already started. The Sixth Form Principal said he was still happy to have me, so I joined albeit a week or so late.

I'd been trying for years to determine what my future career might be. I had my dreams, but essentially I was scared of them. Mainly of what they might require me to do, and how secure they might be. I was naive, insecure and lacked sufficient confidence in my interests and talents to really get behind them. I subtly betrayed my integrity, by trying to sidestep my low self-esteem and high anxiety. This made settling on a career choice doubly difficult. My choices were made by what I unwittingly stumbled upon. These showed me one way forward, to follow the line of least resistance that I'd find easier to do.

From my childhood through to teenage years, history had been vaguely what I'd envisaged my life would revolve around. It was always my best subject, what I was most fascinated by, and loved. Had it not been for the confident encouragement of my art tutor at sixth form college, I might easily have become some fusty history teacher specialising in an obscure aspect of 12^th century monasticism. Perhaps instinctively I knew I might not be suited to the painstakingly detailed research of a career in history. Being an artist felt somehow sexier. So I remained an enthusiastic amateur, but didn't take up the route of making history my profession.

I have often found some aspects of my character difficult to explain, or find adequate expression for. Nothing seems to quite match my needs for long, I become restless for fresher fields all too soon. There's often been an uneasy relationship between the introverted and extroverted sides of my desires. I rarely finding myself truly comfortable with either for very long. Introversion can quickly turn into a stifling prison, whilst extroversion exposes the underlying raw anxiety, and scares me to death. I am simultaneously bigger and smaller than I imagine. Switching polarities all the time.

My eventual career in the arts was founded on a laudable, but admittedly naive dream. An impulse to improve or make the world a more beautiful place. This wasn't driven by an ardent desire for self-expression, but a more altruistic desire to put my creativity towards making something that was of practical benefit to everyone. I flirted with becoming an artist whilst on my Foundation Arts Course in Hull. Though, to be honest, I knew I'd find it hard to sell this idea with enough conviction to my parents. Who'd view ' being an artist.' as synonymous with being a sponger,drug taker and time waster. I had inculcated this inner pragmatic voice over the years of living with my parents. Frequently ruling out many dreams before I'd even tested or spoken of them.

So I decided to become a graphic designer instead of an artist. From today's perspective, it seems that somewhere in my late teens I did seem to surrender who I was, and what it was I wanted to do, up to the hands of fate. My decisions were directed by my dreams, only to the extent my levels of confidence and anxiety would allow them to be. Nevertheless, the alluring deluding siren of Art did captivate my imagination, and pulled my infatuation away from history. Whilst the pragmatic tone of my internal critic, did for a while stifle a fuller embrace of the pursuit of art. These days, I may view some of these decisions with a tinge of regret. But this is after all what I did, and it cannot be undone, just be more gently understood.

Old dreams can be difficult to really put to bed. Whilst your head might be being turned by fresher things taking place in the present, these dreams might simply be sulking in the corner of the pub, downing pint after to pint, dulling the experience of being ignored. One may have put down and turned aside from old dreams, but you may have not yet truly let go of them. It's as though, whilst there's still breath left in your body, there's still hope.

The graphic design course I eventually was accepted on, was at Leeds Polytechnic. It had a good reputation. As it progressed, we all got to know from painful experience that it's reputation was somewhat in tatters. Most of us became embroiled, and were used as pawns, in the egotistically driven power politics of the tutors in the department. Whose side you aligned yourself with, affected how much a tutor would help,support and guide you. In the end your allegiance could well decide the level of degree you'd be awarded. The head of the department, we found out later, had been having an affair with one student who ended up being awarded the highest degree in our year. That's indicative of how corrupt it was. By the second year, I'd extricated myself from being manipulated by certain tutors. I was disillusioned not just with the design course. I wasn't at all sure now that a career in graphic design was what I wanted to do with my life any more.

The final year of the course arrived, and my projects were incomplete and lacked a consistent aesthetic and design approach. Some of this was due to the uncertain confidence I had in them. This was, in part, what had led me in the first place into being pulled this way and that, by tutors with very differing ideas about design, and the creative process. By the time of my degree show, whilst a lot of my work showed promise, it had not been either refined or fulfilled. I had very few fully completed projects. What finished work there was, was achieved by hard graft and a personal determination not to be beaten by the dysfunctional ethos of the department. This was how my degree course drew to an end.

I finished in the early summer of 1980. Before I left, I was informed, in a rather patronising tone, by the Principal that I'd been given a degree (with no honours) almost as the best they could do under the circumstances. If I wanted to go on to teaching I'd have to retake my final year, and hope to get a better result. By then I just wanted out, the thought of staying on anywhere for another year seemed an horrendous prospect. Besides, I had only persisted with it this far in order to demonstrate to myself I could actually complete it. To have something to show to my parents to justify three years of further education. Unfortunately, I wasn't always able to so easily avoid disappointing them over the next few decades.

Out of necessity I had to return home, for ten rather frustrating and disheartening months. It was hard to re-accustom myself to the constrictions of living in a quiet rural village, with ones parents! Particularly after engaging in the life of a bustling city, with its freedom to do whatever I pleased. The contrast and sense of loss felt dramatic. Then there was the signing on for benefits. As I lived in a rural village I was sent a form once a fortnight, that I had to get someone outside my family to witness me signing. This entailed going into the local butcher, who seemed willing to oblige me in the midst of serving customers. As the months clocked up, this process felt more and more a humbling thing to do. Thus it went on throughout the summer,autumn and winter of 1980/81. The year before, the recently elected Thatcher Government had instigated a radical redirection of the countries economic priorities, and we were once again teetering on the edge of a recession. It seems that my career choices would always be taking place whilst the country was in the midst of one.

In the meantime I continued sending out job applications, with an increasing lack of confidence. This resulted over the ten months, in one weeks work experience in a design studio in Grimsby, and two job interviews. I was almost about to give up, when the second of these, thankfully landed me a job in the design department of a book publisher in Mayfair, London. So in April 1981, I finally started my career as a graphic designer, and moved to London. I ended up living in North London, because family friends there offered to put me up for a while. The suburbs of Crouch End, Muswell Hill and East Finchley, were my stomping ground for all the years I lived in London.

The job at the publishers showed me what day to day work as a graphic designer was actually like. It was all a bit humdrum and pedestrian really. The Art Director chose the images for the book covers, often even down to the style of lettering. What creative input you had, might only be doing the artwork, choosing the colour on the spine, or the text size etc. As our Art Director was somewhat colour blind, and I have a good eye for colour, this job of selecting colours often fell my way. Occasionally, I was given an enjoyable layout job for the inside of an annual film review book, or an illustrated compendium of Sherlock Holmes stories. But this was rare, and it felt as if my time on the degree course had been lived in an entirely alternative universe, one I was unlikely ever to see again.

Towards the end of that year the publisher I worked for was bought by an American company. They sold off a popular imprint, and instigated a series of staff cuts across all departments. As the last one to join the art studio, I was first to be given the push. So, seven months after starting my first job, I lost it. To say I was devastated, would be an understatement. I eked out my redundancy money into the New Year. Telling no one, least of all my parents, that I'd lost my job. The whole idea of going back on the job hunting trail, dragging my portfolio across London, appalled me.

After one desultory visit to a design studio, where my work had been viewed in the same manner you'd casually flick through a Sunday magazine. I felt pissed off and angry, as I sat on the Northern Line heading back home to East Finchley. As I got off the train and walked up the side path leading to the estate where I lived, it suddenly came to me that I didn't have to do this any more, if I didn't want to. In fact I wasn't going to do this any more. I'd be prepared to do anything, I didn't mind what - dig holes – sweep the streets – be a newspaper vendor -anything but this. This is the only time, that in one moment I completely let go. I completely and irreversibly let go of the idea of being a graphic designer. The effect on me was instantaneous and immense relief. There was an ebullient, if not intoxicating, sense of liberation from a commitment that had become oppressive and restrictive.

The first such job I got was as an Art Shop Assistant in Barnet, My arts background, meant I was ideally suited to working in Art Shops. I was not to know then, that this step would be so significant. For working in retail would consequently absorb most of my working life. I worked in this shop in Barnet for about eighteen months. When the business was sold to new owners, they kept me on long enough to learn the ropes from me. Then on my first day back after a summer holiday, they made me redundant. Sending me off with a few weeks money and a cheap transistor radio ( the sort of thing you get given free with stationery deals) as my parting gift.

Though I found another job in an Art Shop in Crouch End within a few weeks, being made redundant twice within two years did somewhat strangle the life out of any remaining idealism I had. Over the following years - the erratic sleep pattern I still suffer from started - I became increasingly biting and cynical in my conversation - the viewpoint that 'I never got what I wanted' gradually became more firmly entrenched. It remained there unquestioned and unanalysed until I'd been a practising Buddhist for many years.

By the time The Smiths had become famous in 1983, I was twenty five years old. I'd already given up on a career in design, and lost my job twice. So some of the keening phrases of 'Please, please, please, let me get what I want' expressed the tone of sentiment and despair, that lurked hidden beneath my external shell of hardened apathy. I did still care about my life, and what I did with it. I just couldn't bring myself to be idealistic about it, and hence vulnerable to disappointment. I hadn't allowed myself a dream in a long time. Pragmatism and aesthetic distraction, were now the rules of my life.

Every subsequent set back, heartbreak, business failure, or dream that got deflated, further reinforced the view that 'I never got what I wanted.' It actively cultivated a spirit of discontent with whatever was happening around me, and an inability to stay for long with situations that disappointed or disillusioned me. Until much later in life, this prevented me from seeing how fortunate I'd been to stay employed despite all the numerous recessions. Nor the true value of other benefits my life, jobs and circumstances had brought me. Though perhaps not fully meeting my ambitions, I've still been able to do a huge amount with my life, however underpinned it may have been by despair, and wavering levels of self-belief and confidence. Perhaps this had not been what I desired in my dreams, and 'never getting what I want' was really a melancholics habitual way of saying - my life turned out entirely different to how I first dreamt of it.

I let go
I turn aside
I put down
what I have been
or would have wished to be in the past

I Let Go - No 7 - Past Activities

2011-12-01T13:53:00.008Z

I let go, I turn aside, I put down

all agreeable or painful memories

relating to what I have done

or would have wished to do in the past

relating to all the episodes of my past activity.

I am packing to leave a place where I've been staying with a group of friends. I'm stuffing things into my holdall in a hurry, roughly throwing a seemingly odd selection of items into it. My friends wait impatiently upstairs for me to get my act together. Finally I pull the zip up, and put the bag down whilst I go find my friends, to tell them I'm ready. When it comes time to leave the gallery we are now in, there are many similar bags strewn in parts of the room. I start searching for mine but cannot find it. The bag contains important things such as my most treasured paintings and writing. What follows is a relentless, exasperating and ultimately fruitless search to find where the bag now is.

I have dreamt this dream, or a variant on this dream many times over a number of decades. Each time there is an important bag to be found. The emotional impetus is to find what has been lost. The dreams have their own individual 'feeling tone' related to what has been lost and why it has to be found. This can be driven by a nostalgic urgency to rediscover, be confused or bewildered by conflicting pulls, be disorientated in unfamiliar surroundings, or be driven by an unspecified existential anxiety. What does the bag mean?

Though I cannot recollect these previous occasions in minute detail, I believe this type of dream does happens at specific times in my life. When I find myself in a place of unknowing. For what ever reason, my faith or spiritual compass has become unreliable or unreadable. I look back over my shoulder to the past as a way of regaining my bearings, or reconnect with something I seem temporarily to have lost sight of. I believe it really is as simple as that. The dream puts me through the mangle of emotional distress, and out I come pressed flat on the other side. Perhaps this is in order to wring some sense out of me, or to demonstrate the barren futility of looking backwards with sentimental eyes.

Whether its real, nostalgic or a dream, we cling to a sense of our personality and its history as a drowning person does to a buoy. To have no memories at all, would feel like we had lost all sense of who we were. It seems its important for us to know where we've come from, in order to have continuity and meaning in the present. What we've done in the past, who we've been, the successes and failures, its pleasures and its pain, all contributed, for good or ill, to who we believe we now are. Our self-image, our self-esteem, our self-confidence rest on the imperfectly remembered foundations of what we've previously experienced. These memories are so frequently double edged ones, simultaneously telling us who we are and who we are not. What we can and what we cannot be. What we are capable of achieving and what we are not capable of achieving. In this way memories can be both a blessing and a curse, the very act of definition placing a limitation. Inverting the commas, inserting the closed brackets and full stops.

We cannot avoid having 'agreeable and painful memories' they are the psychological outcomes, the sifted residue of every experience we've ever had. Well, perhaps not the original experience itself, but more the emotional responses we've subsequently had to that original experience. Falling off a bicycle and cutting ones leg, is an undoubtedly painful experience. We make this sense of personal injury more acute if we subsequently self-recriminate and punish ourselves over a perceived personal failing, or remonstrate internally or actually with someone else whom we see as the cause of our emotional pain. All our feelings, whether agreeable or not, are twofold; they have a physical and a mental companion. The Buddha referred to these as the twin arrows that cause us to feel pained; first by the event and then our response to it.

Its worth noting that our emotional reactions to an event, whether we felt hurt or pleased, is often the only thing we end up remembering. These subjective recollections based on our feelings, are seldom about the objective facts of the original situation at all. Retrospectively we self-justify how we have responded by turning these feelings into a incontrovertible hard fact, where even the the irrational can be rationalised.

Imagine there is a friend whom you work with. They appear to be evading your company. Don't stop to talk to you, turns away or ignores you when they pass in the office corridor. It would be very easy to feel hurt and to take it personally, to start assuming what the motives are behind this behaviour. Perhaps you've done something to upset them, or maybe they want to dump you as a friend because they think you're boring, or they're just trying to further their career and see you as holding them back – after all they were always quite selfish and looked after No1. It doesn't take long to actively cultivated a dislike, if not a hatred for them. Then one day, they confide to you that they've been struggling to come to terms with having a quite serious illness. Suddenly this fact puts everything you've experienced into a different perspective. Your assumptions we're not based on fact at all. They came more out of personal negativity, weak self-esteem or mild paranoia, which perhaps now you can take responsibility for – and rightly feel ashamed of. There was no rational basis at all for what was assumed.

The first of our verses refers to two events that these 'agreeable or painful memories' emerge in response too – 'what I have done or would have wished to do in the past.' In other words, what we wanted to happen, and what actually happened – the dream and the rather more mundane reality. Sometimes what is dreamed of and desired, does actually happen. We generally find that an agreeable experience, and this causes us to feel to some degree of personal pleasure or happiness. Sometimes what is dreamed of and desired, doesn't happen. Mostly we find this disagreeable, and it causes us to feel pain, disillusion and unhappiness. There is the desire, then what actually happens. Our response will be coloured by to what degree our original desire was fulfilled or not. If we find ourselves experiencing huge amounts of emotional suffering, then the source of it will rarely be found in a single event, but in our general expectations of life. Our desires and cravings for a specific, pleasurable outcome.

' The tragedy is not that we don't get what we want, but that we do get what we want, and then we're stuck with it, and very often we find that it's not what we wanted at all.'1

Counter intuitive as what Sangharakshita is saying may sound, he is pointing us towards two really fundamental human delusions - that we think we know what we want, and believe reality can be conformed to our desires. Every time we do get what we want, our confidence in this delusive tendency is revived and reinvigorated. Even if the number of times we're disappointed with the result, or not getting what we want vastly outnumber the times we do. What is it that would keep a gambler betting on racing horses when they lose nine times out of ten - can it just be hope springing eternally?

A child might go to bed every day ardently wishing for a wonderful new toy for their birthday or for Christmas. A starving man in a drought stricken country might kneel to his gods, fervently praying and wishing for rain and food. A woman might not be able to start her day before she's checked what her stars say on an astrology website. A young couple wanting good weather for their wedding, keep looking at the Met Office advance weather forecast for reassurance. We travel hopefully, but rarely confidently. All sorts of people, from vastly different backgrounds or cultures, act on the basis of superstitions, they carry talismans, wear lucky clothes or shoes, or perform certain ritual behaviours in an attempt to determine or fix a wished for outcome. We can hold a strong belief in the power of our thoughts, that the depth of our heartfelt desire can determine the conclusion we want. We can do this without fully realising its what we are doing. I certainly have had a version of this view right into my adult life. Ironically, after all my years of wishing and hoping and still not getting what I wanted, it wasn't the inadequacy of wishing where I placed the blame, but on myself and the inadequate feebleness of my wishing. This contributed in the long term to the cultivation of a view of myself as someone 'who never got what he wanted.'

I let go
I turn aside

I put down

what I have been

or would have wished to be in the past

1 - Taken from Peace Is A Fire, By Sangharakshita , published by Windhorse Publications 1995

FEATURE 100 - Rev

2011-11-24T19:31:00.003Z

My current favourite TV comedy - a subtle little delicacy.

REVIEW - Of Gods & Men

2011-11-19T18:19:00.007Z

Via the opening slow pans and absence of dialogue you are already being drawn into a quieter and calmer pace of life. By deft editing, the Director-Xavier Beauvois creates a monastic timescale and atmosphere around you. Slowly you calm down and become one with them, up in the mountains of Algeria.

Based on a true story, its set in the mid-1990's as the Algerian Civil War is about to explode. The French Cistercian monks carry on living peaceably next door to the local village. They support the villagers, by providing free medicine, treatment and counselling. Indeed their lives as monks are carefully woven into the fabric of the villagers. As word starts coming through of atrocities in the area committed by Islamic extremists, the monks have to decide whether they are to stay or go. Initially they are divided, but stay nevertheless because a consensus has not yet been reached. We then see each monk go through all forms of self-questioning and doubt, even a crisis of faith. Lead by their Abbot Christian, played with beautiful understatement by Lambert Wilson, they gradually all decide they have no option but to stay, whatever the outcome may be.

The film has a number of major moments that are decisive. The most crucial and moving takes place before the evening the terrorists turn up. They are sat around their dining table, the monk who is a trained Doctor comes in with two bottles of red wine, and puts a tape on of Swan Lake. As the music plays, the camera moves around the table from face to face. We first read the pleasure and uplift in their faces. Followed by a strong sense of the real love for each other, and the sense of common purpose and brotherhood that has grown up between them. It concludes with a sense of their hearts being visibly broken, as they know they are about to lose everything they value, their life, their practice and their friendship. It gave me a real feeling of their spiritual fellowship, which we'd call Sangha.

The film ends as it began with a final long shot without dialogue, as the abducted monks and their captors stumbling through the snow and fog until they gradually become indistinguishable and disappear into the distance.

FEATURE 99 - Biscuit Base

2011-11-19T18:16:00.001Z

Fun Stuff, well edited too.

I Let Go - No 6 - Threefold Natures

2011-11-19T17:51:00.008Z

From time to time I decide to sift through my material possessions with the intention of trimming them down. This desire to physically throw out, give away, or recycle some aspect of my extended family of stuff and things, is familiar territory. When I was younger I lived for several years in the bedsit land that spreads in terraced braids across North London. If you've ever lived in, or visited, a single person bedsit, you'll know that space is at a high premium. There'll be a bed, sink, cooker, wardrobe, armchair and not much else. I had to live with the minimum possessions the room could hold. As an avid reader and music enthusiast I regularly had to prune my bookshelves and record collections, before I ran out of floor or shelf space. It seemed the only way to manage this gradual acquisitive accretion. Unless,of course, I preferred to live with books and records stacked and strewn across the floor like an endlessly shifting tide of scum. I didn't, but some people do.

The motives for this regular purging were mostly practical ones. I knew my interests were often fleeting, passing intoxications. Basically, just personal fads. Much of what I read I knew I'd never read again. The fast moving trends in my musical tastes meant that artists I was passionate about one month, I'd be indifferent towards the next. So to some extent this pruning, refined and adjusted my possessions to keep them up to date. Aligning them with where my current enthusiasms were. It was in the nature of this craving for the new, that it satiated my hunger only for a while. I became used to the shifting impermanence of my musical appetites. As long as I could buy myself a thrill, then I was happy.

This restless craving has been frequently matched by another- a craving for pastures new. The desire to find a place where I could be free from dissatisfaction,disappointment and boredom. To date I've moved house or town not once or twice, but nearly two dozens of times. Only in the process of moving, as the boxes of packed up belongings mounts, that you notice exactly how much you own. Do I own enough to fill a small white van,once, twice or thrice,or is it now measured in the number of transit or full scale removal vans? To move is stressful because of the practical as well as psychological logistics. The difficulties in relocating the external aura of our possessions mirrors that for ourselves. After all, we are packing up and relocating our whole extended identity. As this cardboard haystack gradually fills up the removal van, it can feel like its getting psychically heavier. As though our spirit and ability to be free to spontaneously up sticks and just move, is being seriously hampered by having to cart our beloved possessions along behind us.

We tend to accumulate possessions in situations where we feel settled. Its an essential part of putting down roots - when our belongings find a place to belong too. They fix us to a particular place and way of living. As we filter through what we own, we are bound to review or weigh up who we've been and who we currently are. Should we keep that book – is it time we jettisoned that gift we've never used, but sentimentally still hold onto? We instinctively understand that we could discard forever all the residual memorabilia of who we once were. There are other things perhaps we'd like psychologically to put behind us, but can't. To be rid of the objects that remind us of a difficult period in our lives, to erase all evidence that the pain of it ever existed – might be a seen as a first step in getting over it.

Our possessions are like exhibits in a museum that holds all our past life experiences, a physical memory bank. A person, a place, a snapshot image of us – enshrined in a book, record, picture, ornament, piece of furniture or clothes. These define, but also confine who we are, or can be. Today, the size and range of what I own, I can sometimes find imprisoning. The sense of ownership feeling oppressive. Its as if I'm existentially being held under water. Drowning under the weight of my physical possessions. No longer able to swim freely or unencumbered. Over the years the number of my dependants has grown obese through regular feeding, clothing and emotional support. A drastic diet is nearly always called for.

This weightiness is felt on a gut level. I really don't need them resting so heavily on my shoulders. If I visualise myself as being free, I see myself throwing of clothes as I run naked across an open field. As if I'm casting off all the cares, concerns and obligations my world and I place upon myself. Leaving everything scattered behind me as I run free of all physical, mental or spiritual possessions. This visionary image pre-dates my life as a practising Buddhist, which in a way was begun as a practical way of actuating it. The Buddha himself, described the state of Enlightenment, as feeling like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, as though he'd put down a burden he'd been carrying, How to be truly free, is a question that often drives humanities search for meaning and purpose.

These days, as a 'good Buddhist' I frequently question myself about the whys and wherefores, of whether I should really be owning so much? Wouldn't I feel so much better if I was free of it all? and think that I would. These things, however, are never quite as simple as one might first think. If anything the act of throwing away is the easy bit. What is difficult is examining and scrutinising what ones reasons for doing so are. What was your volition and motive in doing this? Our motives are generally either mixed or conflicted, which is OK, just as long as we know they are. The degree of clear-headedness and purity in our motivation to take action,will define how spiritually effective our renunciation will be. It is, therefore, hard to dispose of our possessions in a vague, superficial or absent minded way. To consciously throw something away, put it down and walk away from it, is a deliberated act.

Tradition says that when the Buddha left behind his princely life of wealth and privilege, he took nothing with him. He let go of owning anything other than the most basic of possessions required to survive - a robe and a bowl. He instinctively knew he had to do this if he was to achieve what he wanted to spiritually. This 'going forth' as its traditionally called, into a homeless, possession-less life became the prerequisite act, an essential foundation for the future spiritual progress of his disciples. It has become synonymous with the beginning of a persons aspiration for liberation.

My past life, my present life, the history of my desires and attachments are preserved in all my material possessions. They represent outwardly who I am. Who I am has a threefold nature – there is the real true me - the me I desire to be - and the me I want the world to see. The Vidyavajra that others see, ranges across a spectrum from the authentic to the artificial. My possessions are hence also a mixture of those that truly represent me and my interests, and those that are window dressing. Contemporary Western consumer culture exploits this threefold nature of - who we currently are - what we'd like to be - and how we want others to see us – in order to get us to buy things. We buy because of the need for one brief moment to transcend our limitations. Quite often we are trying to overcome the dullness of our poor self image. To possess something we imagine will complete who we want to be, or be seen as. To have it - is to be it. This is not just an expression of our individuality, but the living out of a worldly form of liberation. I am free because I can buy whatever I want.

For this to work, one hasn't to care too much about what maybe the exploitative origins in distant lands, where much of what we buy is made. One person's liberty can often come at a cost to someone else's, far far away. Its rare for any material possession to have an origin entirely free of some veins of exploitation, guilt, embarrassment or some level of distaste or regret. Our wealth and need for self-expression can therefore carry with it something uneasy and unethical lurking in the background. So if we can let go and be free of the need to fulfil the craving and desire to buy it can be quite uplifting and insightful, even an ethical release.

Ajahn Brahm, defines freedom in a different way to this, one that is important to our reflections on letting go;~

'Freedom is being content to be where you are.

Prison is wanting to be somewhere else.

The Free World is the world experienced by one who is content.

The real freedom is freedom from desire, never freedom of desire.' 1

So being free to have anything we want, can have its origins in a deep seated, even unconscious discontentment. We often don't care what we do in order to get some relief from this, just so long as we get it. We are imprisoned by our need to be someone else other than who we actually are. So looked at from the perspective of freedom, the process of letting go as outlined in the verses, are pointing towards a way to liberate us from the compulsive following of our desires. First, when we put something down,we are saying we have the intention at least, to be content to stay put, and be with who we are. Secondly, we turn our attention away from any desire or attachment to being anyone else or anywhere other than right here. Thirdly, we conclude by discovering we have developed a contentment with who we actually are, and are no longer pulled all over the place by our desires and attachments. So we have here - setting the intention to be free, the desire to find a way to be free, and to be really free. To put down, to turn aside, to let go.

So finally, we have come to look at our verses, and what is the first thing we notice about them? Well, it is significant that each individual verse is prefaced by the same three phases – I let go – I turn aside – I put down. It would be a mistake perhaps to say these are sequential in how they should be read. We don't necessarily first let go, then turn aside and finally put down. As I've previously suggested, the opposite is experientially more true - that first we put things down, then we learn to turn our attention aside from them, and somewhere further down this road we realise we've let go of them. This is just my way of viewing and couching this. It might equally true be to say that letting go, turning aside and putting down are threefold aspects of one progressive cycle. One we go around and around. Perhaps spiralling upward with each circuit of putting down, turning aside and letting go. It may be the same impulse 'to let go' that is driving it all the way through, but it gradually permeates ever more widely and comprehensively.

Currently I view these threefold stages of letting go, as linked to the Buddha's Threefold Path, of Wisdom, Meditation and Ethics. I put down, seems an ethical impulse to stop doing something because it is in some way spiritually detrimental. It's weighing too heavily upon our spirits. We may not yet fully see the wisdom underpinning this, but we feel its ethical imperative nonetheless. But that compulsion alone is not going to be sufficient. Habit will keep drawing, if not sucking, us back into picking up what we've only recently put down. One has to keep turning aside ones gaze and mental attention from dwelling upon it once more. This requires a kind but vigilant awareness, a disciplined form of mindful attention. Something that is primarily cultivated and deepened through Meditation. This practice of turning ones attention away time after time, will gradually wear out and rub away all trace, and erase the root mechanism of our original attachment.

We leave no track marks in this epic journey. Its a journey that is curiously one of self-forgetting. A form of deliberate amnesia created by repeatedly turning your face away from the ardour of ones love for a thing. Until the ardour vanishes. When these things finally dip well below the conscious radar, when we've truly forgotten our attachment, then we might truly see that we've let go. Perhaps there is real wisdom in this seeing. Though our former love or attachment may still be surrounded by an aura of nostalgia, it is now seen for what it was, and more importantly for what it was not. The wisdom, lies in the seeing through. The process of letting go concludes when we can see right through our former love and attachment to something. What was once seen as a solid tangibly visible object of attention, is now seen as a figment of our fevered imagination. Seeing through the self-conjured nature of our love-filled attachments, is true wisdom.

The moment I start to consider throwing possessions away, is the moment I feel my attachment to them most strongly. This is often the moment,at the first hurdle, that my whole intention of putting things down starts to wobble. In order say, to make the process of disposing of redundant books easier, I've taken to making several piles to represent the full spectrum and degree of my attachment. Starting on one side with the stuff 'I definitely will not bin', the next being 'I would, if I was brave enough', then 'I ought to, but wont' then 'maybe, but not just yet' and ending in 'definitely wont, these are too precious' When these sort of responses emerge my intention to have a thorough clear out, falters badly. If I don't develop some firm resolve to see through my intention, the whole exercise will be a waste of time. I'm not turning aside from my attachment, I'm experiencing it and cuddling up to it, like a teddy I'm still rather too fond of.

This is not a new, nor that unique a response. It's not just me who experiences attachments, we all do, Our becoming attached is part and parcel of our coming into closer relationship with anyone or anything. The issue is really whether we can use this as a means of gaining personal insight or not. To create some distance from our attachments so we have some sense of there being a choice whether to respond or not. Otherwise we simply become ever more tightly enmeshed with and bonded to them? We all need to eat food in order to survive, to have energy for all the things we like to do. We can also enjoy and love good food, without it necessarily becoming a problem. There is no point when living in a world of pain, in prematurely eschewing the little pleasures that life can bring us. But when our love of food becomes more akin to an obsession, or a compulsive behaviour, causing us to balloon in weight and size. When love of food makes us become dangerously obese, then something has gone seriously wrong with this pursuit of pleasure.

Freedom to desire, to buy whatever I want when I want it, will not make me permanently healthy and happy. It may well bring about the opposite. Overtime, my youthful enjoyment of what was new and invigorating in popular music, began to lack depth. It drifted from being a simple pleasurable pastime into something I had to do, no matter what. Art that is genuinely new and innovative, can quite easily slip into being merely novelty. Though thrill inducing it may be thin beer, with no aesthetic life or enjoyment beyond its initial effects. Eventually I did lose not just my perspective, but also my desire and enjoyment of music for quite some time.

When I first became a Buddhist, I mistakenly thought I'd have to forgo enjoyments such as poplar music. However, this side of Enlightenment, when we are not yet free of our desires and attachments, and the depth of our practice is still too shallow to replace more worldly pleasures, we do still need them when things get emotionally difficult. We can do so in full knowledge that that's what we are doing. As Sangharakshita said regarding times when we encounter difficult mental states:~

'When all else fails, distract yourself' 2

1 - Taken from Who Ordered This Truckload Of Dung? by Ajahn Brahm, Published by Wisdom Publishing

2 - taken from Peace Is A Fire by Sangharakshita, Published by Windhorse Publishing.

REVIEW - Earthquakes In London

2011-11-12T16:14:00.025Z

Headlong Theatre Company - Cambridge Arts Theatre - Friday 11th 2011

This new play by Mike Bartlett has grand ambitions. Sweeping back and forth across time and in its visionary scope. The back ground to this drama, styled as if in the Brechtian tradition, is the personal and political origins and consequences of climate change. Three sisters, all daughters of an absent but influential climate change scientist, live disparate and hence mutually antagonistic lifestyles. The eldest,Sarah, is a Lib Dem Coalition minister responsible for the environment. The middle daughter, Freya is an anxious,highly strung and very reluctant Mother. The youngest,Jasmine, is a head in the sand hedonist. Their father in the late 60's allowed his environmental research into the possible effects of widespread air travel to be compromised by corporate sponsorship. His personal integrity as both a scientist and a human being, is forever haunted by this self-betrayal. In the eyes of the daughters he's estranged from. he's a complete shit. As this family dynamic is played out, we see how this has influenced their personal ethics, ideals and life choices.

Headlong, under the artistic direction of Rupert Goold, has developed a reputation for boldly executed dramas tackling thorny contemporary issues, such as in the multiple award winning - Enron. All of which are staged with great colour, verve and innovative punch. The original London production had the audience in the midst of the actors and staging. For this National Theatre Touring production, this has been adapted to suit the smaller, more traditional proscenium arched regional theatre. Earthquakes In London, makes extensive use of a double stage revolve. that allows swift and frequently overlapping scenes. This multi-layered visual narrative style frequently achieves quite startling dramatic effects, and gives the production its primary visual dynamism.

The ambitions of both play and the staging of it, are indeed EPIC. At over three hours long, the production needs to keep on the move. In the midst of its sprawling narrative, there were inevitably moments when the production lost focus and momentum. This was often when it fell fowl of its own artistic pretensions, with too many story lines clogging up the narrative arteries like cholesterol. As if we were being forced to eat too much all at once. At times the staging held your breath, whilst the drama caught up.

As the play hurtled towards its finish, it reminded me of a speeding train trying desperately to come to a halt at its designated station, with all its passengers and carriages still intact. It shuddered,stopping and starting like a Mahler Symphony, through a sequence of possible endings. Just when you're prepared for the end, up popped yet another scene. When it finally reached its conclusion, Bartlett had to sidestep the immediacy of the personal, economic, political and practical costs of climate catastrophe, in order to introduce a more mythic level of resolution in the year 2525 (Yes, as in the 60's song by Zager & Evans) In the midst of all this,what punchline there was. got lost.

These quibbles aside, it's undoubtedly a brave, hugely enjoyable and a thought provoking production. One that's rightly been described as carnivalesque in style. It has several truly memorable moments, often found in seemingly fleeting and inconsequential scenes. The Mother's party on Parliament Hill where they are all dressed like Anna Wintour pushing their designer prams and singing about Happiness. Or the scene with the woman who loved the shop Libertys. So much so, that she changed her name to Liberty. Got a job working for Libertys and chooses her cloths so they compliment the Liberty colours. Demonstrating simply how Western Consumer Individualism encourages our self-preoccupation and whims - at liberty to be whatever we want to be. However contrived, bogus or fairytale that may be. This hunger for individual self expression being fed by the very globalised commerce that is having such a huge environmental effect.

The best example of multi-layered visual narrative had Freya the pregnant daughter in birthing agony on a hospital stretcher, in the background, her brother in law and younger sister cavorting drunkenly to a track by Arcade Fire, in the middle ground,whilst the elder sister says goodbye to a lobbyist for an airplane manufacturer she's just had sex with, in the foreground. This showed the personal desperation, infidelity and moral indifference that was earth-shatteringly sad.

The multiple story lines left no time to touch more than lightly on the many issues it raises. Just one quick sideways swipe, rather than a carefully aimed hit at its target. In this sense it didn't quite match its Brectian antecedents. It was never entirely clear what the overarching point Earthquakes In London was trying to make, other than WE ARE ALL DOOMED! IN A BIG WAY!! It ticked all the usual boxes, and pointed a wagging finger at all the usual targets. To be fair, it was being more honest than polemical (polemic often makes for stillborn or deathly drama) Bartlett, like us, has no answers or quick fixes. We're in a mess, and no one knows really if we are really capable of getting ourselves out of it. In the play,the daughters father makes it thunderously clear, that we are already too late. The earthquakes of chaos and catastrophe are already rumbling in the distance.

I Let Go - No5 - Hand Jive

2011-11-05T15:38:00.018Z

Should I start by thanking my hands? I suppose I should, but not in a polite round of applause thoroughly English way. That might seem a trifle formal, if not patronising attitude to take towards them. It's certainly inadequate considering what they can do, what they have done, and what they still continue doing. They're vastly underrated, consistently overlooked and taken for granted. My hands have served me well. I'm seeing this now, when perhaps it's getting too late, in an evening that has no discernible moonlight. For there are times when my fine hands can't do exactly what I want them to, or can't do things quite as well as formerly, or as I'd presently like. I have this sense of being a passive observer as my body slowly slowly loses its treasured faculties. This is hard to see as ennobling. For in truth they weren't that treasured until they started betraying signs of being impermanent things. Hands can fail to function. Then they become treasured. One must have appreciated and loved, before one can allow these things to pass, and let ones affection go.

So, there is a premonition of their future theft. As though my hands have become these warning oracles. the lines and mounts of palmistry telling my fortune. The feeling of being prematurely bereft is humbling. One is belittled by bereavement. Ought one to bow down out of respect? Should ones heart be swollen with feelings of gratitude? Sorry to hear your leaving, but thanks a million anyway! It's difficult in the midst of a predicted loss, to feel anything other than existentially betrayed, buggered or baying for blood to be spilt. Life should be made to pay for this, or make reparations.

Meanwhile, I still bear on the ends of my arms these ten digits. Fingers and thumbs pivoting on wrists until the bitter end. From these I shall not part, until I too will bereave someone I love. Their warm hands will touch the wintry coldness of my face, and know I am gone, that I am lost to them. No hands could shake me awake from this sleep. When I have relinquished up the flesh and the bones of being loved. Hands will lower me into the ground of my resting place, or push my coffin into the furious heat of a cremation oven. Handkerchiefs will soak up the tears, muffle the sobs and grip tightly the hands of bystanders. They might even wave me off.

Hands can be loving, have a smoothing calming effect on the troubled surfaces of experience. They break through invisible hurts, divorces or barriers. The empty spaces that can emerges between bodies. Hands physically connect with what has become isolated by touching the skin of me, by touching the skins of them. Yes them, the bright haired handymen and women walking the same grey streets, travelling the same road, on the same train, the same bus as me. Imagine embracing them all, in one nocturnal handshake. Hands pressed together in greeting, in collective prayer or supplication. Faithfully devoted. Kissing hands, bottom hugging hands, the entwined clasping of hands that are in love. A light brush down a lovers back, a feathery stroke outlining a silken face, fingers drift sketchily along lips, hands pressing a ruffle across a chest. These are some of the tasks that hands do for me, that bring me pleasure, besides - the raising of a refreshing cup of coffee - the drawing of a line across a piece of paper - the waving to friends across the street – they help me swim.

I cannot speak or enumerate the full range of their qualities. The attributes they bring, enable me to sculpt the world I want to live and love in. Impossible without their ability to actively grasp, hold, form, twist, whip, lunge, catch, throw, break, bow, turn, throw, drop, swing, swim, whirl, pull, drag, lift, bend, or hang. The padding, the petting, the patting, the paddling, the laying on of hands. An immensely courageous kindness of hand and heart, is the caressing back rub that is empathic and compassionate.

Thumb and forefinger have held paintbrushes for me, with just enough of a pinch. Not too much so it would snap, or too little so it would slip between my fingers. They direct the paint filled mop head in smooth washes and swathes across the surfaces of walls, doors, paper, canvas and floors. Hands have maintained for me a lifetime of too many creative flourishes to mention. They've painted out an idea, an approximate representation of who I believe I am. Who I would, like, love, wish, even will myself into being. This is what I portray by portraying. The spontaneous surface of artistry disguises the innate skill required for its execution. I've spent a whole lifetime in pursuit of an elusive goal. Riding on the back of this-then-that artistic rocking horse. Backing the entirely wrong horse, or thrown from the saddle of bucking broncos. Sometimes hands have to take the reins, the strain, and the pain.

They've taken me far, and yet not far enough for my liking or my racing desire. Hands have done my bidding, but nothing to permanently satisfy the hungry jaws of a half empty pit. I carry projects loyally in my minds eye, in a richly coloured portfolio. Much more comprehensive and better executed than the actual ones were, or will be. These are all mind made hand-me-downs kept in a reserve bottom draw. Designs I'll never get round to resolving or bringing to a conclusion. These ideas can stay pristine, unsullied and clean of poor execution, the unimagined obstacles, the compromised or even the lack of opportunity to bring them to fruition. No way to bring them about now, to expose them to the unflinching light of day or the distorted florescence of the night, or nightmare. These things fade.

Talented hands have nevertheless externalised something of what I imagined. Tried to express essentially the inexpressible. To breathe something alive onto a lifeless parchment. Birth as always is an exciting event, painful and a bit of a struggle. A wrestling match between the idea and the limits of my ability. Ending in an expression, an emission, a submission to history however impoverished or small. Creation is a fleeting temporary high, followed by the melodrama of the withdrawal symptoms. However, its always been disappointment that spurred me on to the next 'big thing.' The skill of my hands is in executing flexibly. To get the vision out of the way of the handiwork. I just observe the flustered birds of confidence, the febrile nature of frustration, and I shrug. Palms outstretch expectantly. Palms cupped like petals around a calyx hope to catch some divine nectar. I've drunk from that cup. A vessel that my hands created out of nothing.

Hands can be actors too, they've performed like shadow puppets behind a large screen. Hand gestures have played their part in producing a character, a likable comedy, a black and white version of reality. Blocked out, a stage movement of hands upstage will prompt the dialogue and the expression of the faked emotion. I learnt to portray a love, weakness or power that I do not possess. To be a person I am not, or am only in a theatrical dimension. I have mimed the making of miracles using these hands. I've loved every false hand movement, until I tired of the verisimilitude. My dissembling stumbled in the reciting of other peoples words. Though they were not my words, I sneaked my feelings in through the back door. Through my vocal intonation and the loaned language of my body. Simultaneously shielding and picking at my own sores for raw material, which was handy. Eventually my hands would write and perform their own words.

My hands could also slap out a big beat. Tap on the tables and floors, para diddle upon my thighs. They held my pint, tipped the pint into my mouth, or drunkenly spilt it on the floor. I put down my pint only so I could dance. To pogo like a demented pile-driver let loose across the floors and foil clad walls of Seventies discotheques. They flapped around wildly on the end of my arms. Like the ineffective wings of gosling's in a first attempt at flight. Hands Charleston, hokey cokey and jived, dragging the rest of my bending body with them. Surrendering to the hearts beat, its blood throbbing compulsive thrust. The intoxicating rhythm amplified my life's pulse. Whether the dance floor was in my bedsit, the disco or the concert hall. I clapped hands hard together as though I was experienced in flamenco Both my hands should be applauding loudly a life that has been, and is still being well lived. If they are not, its because they're busy nursing themselves, rubbing Ibuprofen Gel into inflamed thumb joints.

I Let Go - No4 - Losers Weepers

2011-10-25T18:12:00.017Z

In the midst of a busy day doing countless things, our minds are being eased into letting go. It's happening all the time. Mostly without any conscious effort whatsoever. The things we were enthusiastic about or thought vitally important yesterday, today seem silly, irrelevant, of no merit or consequence. Such changes may have had some time for deliberation, but this is unlikely to have been a conscious tussle. We quietly out grow them, without any coercive urging word being spoken. We barely notice this happening. So, when we finally 'put away childish things,' its done with the minimum amount of fuss.

In my early teens I was a huge fan of Marc Bolan and T.Rex. I waited with huge anticipation every new single or album release. Turning the radio up as loud as possible whenever I heard them broadcast. At the time, this was an extremely crucial, life enhancing, thing in my young life. I saw Bolan as a sort of musical guru whose every song was unadulterated genius. His overt camp posturing during the tinselled tackiness that was the Seventies Glam Rock era, became an early touchstone for my then barely understood sexuality. This the idolisation to some extent helped me approach, explore and expose.

It's in the nature of being a 'fanatic' that you surrender your critical faculty to the adulation. Wholeheartedly gazing upwards towards something or someone seen as greater. Was there a conscious moment when I stopped being a fan,where I decided that was it with buying T.Rex? I'm not sure there was. The fanatical edge of my idolisation waned incrementally over time. A number of lacklustre, and clearly naff singles undoubtedly dealt it repeated and severe blows. The godlike Marc Bolan demonstrated his fallibility and fell off his guitar amp.

When Bolan actually died in a car crash a few years later, I was quite deeply stirred up. However much I'd grown out of actively being a fan, he still stood for something. What this consisted of had shifted over the intervening years. Moving from idolisation, to disillusionment, to a nostalgic sentiment for a golden age now irredeemably tarnished or vanished. Was this mourning then for him, or for the ideal of godlike human perfection that he'd once stood for in my eyes? It was clear he was no genius, and my disillusion when it arrived was deafening. My belief in him had expired long before he did. His untimely death proved to be an additional and unexpected stage in my waking up. He wasn't immortal either, and neither was I. The death of a person or of an ideal, can highlight the imperfect and impermanent nature of everything you're left with. A solemn assurance that there will be further things to say goodbye to.

This variety of letting go lies forgotten whilst we loosen our bonds of love and attachment. What was once prominently placed in the foreground gradually fades into the background. Bright new things start to grab our attention. So by the time that we recognise we've let go of an old way of being, it has been gone quite a while. Recognition of letting go happens in retrospect. Its part of the conscious winding up phase of what has been until then a largely unconscious process. A process that wasn't necessarily kicked off by a prior decision to let go. They've left without properly saying goodbye, so we need to grieve for their newly identified absence - 'Oh I really used to love Marc Bolan.'

It seems to be entirely in character that letting go should happen quietly and imperceptibly. The human life cycle too, is subtle and silent. Everything within it is interlocked, is changing, is readjusting. It runs according to its own rolling agenda. A baby leaves the womb, that baby becomes a child, the child becomes a teenager, the teenager becomes an adult, the adult becomes a middle aged person, and that middle aged person becomes older and older until their body dies, and that body will become manure. Life itself is a seamless process of letting go and becoming. Of course there's always a possibility we might die prematurely of an unexpected disease or accident. The assumption is that our life will unfold smoothly without a hiccup, that it will have a reliable steady constancy to it. However, I know of no life that doesn't have its fair share of sudden swerves, diversions, obstacles and opportunities that arise unforeseen along the way. What has consistency and actively maintains our sense of their being a continuity, is the perspective we confine our experiences within. This deliberately mis-perceives reality as incrementally stable, flying in the face of its slow slow quick quick slow shifting style of evolution.

The delusion is ours, and ours alone, and is commonly ruptured by sickness, the symptoms of old age, or death. Only then do we experience what's really happening, and never liking what it is we see. We don't like gazing on the deathly palour of that face at all. Everyday life moves constantly through cycles of growth, degeneration and death. This is the stuff, the grist and gist, of life. Its what being alive is wrapped around. Humans are propelled unwillingly forward into an as yet unformed, unknown future. Frequently forced to let go of a way of living, to mourn the loss of a loved one, or even to die ourselves, against our will. We cannot stay the hands of death. So when we grieve, our grief is invariably twofold; we grieve for what has already gone, and for what is yet to go. But leave us it will.

Ageing brings its own distinctive forms of letting go, turning aside or putting down. Usually prompted by our physical condition or mental agility deteriorating. Getting older ushers in unwelcome challenges, arriving like a smelly tramp at a genteel tea party. Initially, it might start with small departures from an established life style. We aren't prepared to stay up dancing or partying till dawn, because the tiredness and bodily aching that follows becomes a greater deterrent. Physically demanding activities gradually drop off the list of things you like to do at weekends. Quieter, gentler, less exerting, more sedate activities start to have more appeal. We have to stop doing things, not because we want to, but because we can no longer do them. What is doable starts to trump our desires.

Once I entered my fifties, physical ailments that had previously been niggly, but manageable, began to significantly affect the quality of my daily life. An occasionally troublesome back, now quickly rose to a throbbing discomfort if I stood for too long, or walked too far without a break. Hip and shoulder pain causes me to turn restlessly in bed or wake in the early hours because they're too sensitive to lie on any longer. The texture of my sleep becoming more frayed at the edges. Osteoarthritis inflames and damages the joints in my hands. This stiffens the dexterity and weakens the strength of my fingers. Simple tasks like opening jars, turning anything that's stiff or requires force, holding weighty objects, fastening shirt cuff buttons, keeping screws in place whilst you screw them in, painting walls with a roller, doing delicate paintwork or sawing wood, all are becoming difficult to execute without there being a painful consequence. Gradually this wears out the spirit that wants to carry on regardless. We become exasperated, if not exhausted, by the effort to just keep going.

I can't let go of these ailments nor the pain they cause, they are how my body is. Our horizons tend naturally to narrow anyway. As we get older we refine our objectives. Yet what we are, and what we have been, is so tied up with what we are able to do. So each embodied deterioration requires another readjustment of what I see myself doing, not just now, but also in future. Redefining what makes me, me. Pain imposes its own constraints. Previously straightforward desires are reconsidered in the light of a possibly painful outcome. Taking off for long treks in the hills or along the coastline, moving or lifting heavy objects, or creating detailed things using ones hands. These are either going to happen less frequently, or just not happen at all. The moment for them is on the wane.

I've losing personal control here, by small degrees. The ability to direct my life in whatever way or direction I wish is being frustrated. When I was younger, I had abundant energy and power with which to take charge of my life and circumstances. As I age, those same life and circumstances seem to be starting to take charge of me. There is still an element of choice, but its more in the realms of when I will have to surrender to the inevitable. When fighting them off uses too much energy, then I'll let them win. Through such small relinquishings I hand over my power and destiny to conditions and circumstance. This is a reluctant parting, one tinged with regret. Letting go of the things that I've loved doing, existentially hits right at the core of my being. My sense of who I am is being rocked. I'm having to bring something to an end, accompanied by the sort of mental states I normally associate with a premeditated murder.

Though this experience of ageing saddens me, I am becoming more resigned to it. There is no doubt much weeping and gnashing of teeth, some 'raging against the dying of the light' yet to be done with. It bears its own vein of poison - poignancy, because it matters not one jot how much I rage against the deterioration of my physical capabilities, there is nothing I can do about it. No magic wand can reverse this. The osteoarthritis slowly damages joint linings, that lining is irreparable, affecting what a hand can do. Hands cannot be replaced, relined, and their sensitivity and control regained. The usefulness of my hands is being 'malevolently' eaten away from the inside. I'm left impotent, holding the redundant remnants of desires and aspirations, that can no longer be fully fulfilled. Even my self-pity and hankering has to be let go of. But lets be honest here, such concerns will vanish anyway when my mind eventually goes gaga. Dementia has one benefit and one benefit only, in that I really will be past caring.

It would be tempting to be cynical or bitter about this, but so far I've resisted such slippery slopes. I have, however, found myself experiencing regretful melancholy and yearnings for things I've not done, and now will never do again. Dreamy ideals that I've had to abandon. Though physical disability is undoubtedly a major limiting factor, its not alone. It has a world weary companion called – I can't be bothered with all this any more. As youthful energy and enthusiasms tapers off, the range of things I wish to put time and effort into, also dwindles. I want a cleaner life, cleared of useless clutter, paired down to the essentials, somewhat radically simplified.

I no longer want to put huge effort or initiative into making things happen either. I've been there, done that, enjoyed the successes or endured the failures. I don't necessarily have the need to do it one more time, or start again from scratch on a new venture or career. Time, energy and ability is running out for such things. These are the sort of aspirations or dreams, that in old age we let go, turn aside and put down, and for their loss we silently grieve. There's been no great insight into them, we may not have even out grown them necessarily,nor a mature perspective been arrived at. We've just given up wanting to try.

Life contains many of these 'little deaths', where one becomes resigned to letting go of something we previously have loved. Its similar to the end of a long and passionate love affair. At the close of any romantic relationship a decision is taken to part, but the letting go the sense of intimacy takes longer. The love and attachment we've felt, and indeed may still feel, doesn't drop away in an instant they tend to linger and mope. It may be many months before you realise you're no longer in love with them. No longer grieving for the loss of their love. No longer feeling betrayed or hurt by their leaving you, for someone or something else. The tumble of emotions you were once engulfed by, does eventually evaporate. Letting go, as a process, is similar to this. Yet whilst we were weeping inconsolably for what was absent, we were unaware of what was present. After the grieving is over, is the time when you're emotionally freed and fired up to move on, to see everything anew. The benefit of letting go is in the feeling of release. The liberation from bondage. What was shackled is now free.

FEATURE 98 - Rosas Danst Rosas

2011-10-16T17:04:00.003Z

I saw this in the early 1980's, i think as part of Dance Umbrella at The Place in London, though it may have been at the ICA. can't quite remember now. It was knock out then, and still is now. Yes, I am revisiting it because Beyonce has just ripped off bits of its dance style for her video for the song Countdown. Well, I guess its flattering, but this wholesale unacknowledged borrowing is getting to be a habit with Beyonce.

FEATURE 97 - Niki & The Dove

2011-10-16T16:49:00.003Z

Oh, I feel a new enthusiasm burgeoning for this duo from Gothenberg. Like The Knife, Fever Ray,and even Bjork, they manage to produce quirky, electronic pop, dance-able but with a darker almost pagan edge. These two videos using 'found films' are pretty representative of the breadth of their current style.

FEATURE 96 - Florence & the Machine

2011-10-10T17:26:00.001Z

The latest single from Florrie - I think this one could be massive.

I Let Go - No3 - Two Doors

2011-10-10T07:27:00.004Z

He sat in the armchair for seemingly hours, hours that were really minutes pulled unrecognisably out of shape and then plumped up like cushions. He rested heavily on them, glancing at the doors that lay at either end of the room he was in. One door, he knew was the door he'd entered the room by, but that was a long time ago. Sometimes he'd prop the door slightly ajar so he could glimpse inside. The room was very much like the one he was in, but wallpapered with fusty, melancholic memories. In the summer, the room smelt sweaty and soured like blue cheese. He had a fondness for what he remembered, just so long as they sat quietly in his lap like a cat. He didn't like it when they stretched out their paws and stuck their claws in his thighs.

He'd always a strong tendency towards restlessness. Physically he fidgeted, one minute his feet were on the ground, the next his legs were crossed left over right, then swapped to right over left, or slung rakishly over the armrest. In his mind, the images he conjured up in his head would change constantly too, he couldn't stop it, he didn't want to stop it. He could imagine himself as being anyone or anything he wanted, and be whatever it was to a superlative degree. His body would posture, in preparation for his vision to be made flesh. There was a thrill, a creative excitement, a sense of potency, of virility, for the possibilities within his imagination were literally endless. However, what usually became endless, was the waiting. The waiting for the dreams to be fulfilled, to reach fruition, as the days,weeks, months of expectation cranked themselves up. It was as though he was stood on a station platform waiting for a lover to arrive on a train. With each empty train his anticipation became more anxious and tense. His heartbeat turned heavier, began preparing itself, not for victory, but for defeat. As the last train of the day hit the buffers, he'd walk away alone, with yet another crumpled design filed away in his briefcase.

Ah! the potency of the dreaming, designed to quell the regretful tide, designed to stop the murky river from bursting its banks. Dreams kept him going, kept him from going insane. So he understood one door, at least he knew what lay behind that. Tarnished things, painful sensitive things he couldn't really forget or erase the memory of, no matter how much he'd have liked to. What was the other side of the second door he knew not, but that in itself made it all the more enticing a prospect to imagine. Was it a room empty of history, empty of disruptive emotions, a room for the un-dreamt of, where anything was possible? A room where unbridled desire might run rampant.

This turning from door to door, from the definite past, to the indefinite future, was as though he was observing a tennis match that no one else could see. Nothing came or went without him knowing about it. He believed he decided what would stay and what he would let go. Yet even when he was heartily sick of something, would it leave, even when he'd pointed out the exit? No! In extremis he'd have to pick the darned thing up, and kick it firmly into the past. That didn't necessarily solve the problem. It seeped back under the door like smoke, and hung around as the ghost of a fire that was not yet extinguished.

He started to regret his impulsive behaviour, wishing dreams would come back, so he could say he was sorry. Every dream became an intimate, personal friend. When they fell out, he wanted to make amends. His past never seemed to remain benign, inert or fully dead. Old decrepit dreams, half forgotten or half realised were still half alive, just awaiting a fresh magical spell to restore their potency.

FEATURE 95 - Mrs Slocombe's Pussy

2011-10-09T17:20:00.002Z

As a tribute to the late great David Croft - here's a compilation of Mrs Slocombe's pussy jokes from Are You Being Served?

REVIEW - Bridget Riley - Kettles Yard

2011-10-09T14:10:00.005Z

Bridget Riley's early Op Art became one of the visual touchstone of the swinging 60's. Her visual experiments have continued since then with the introduction of vibrant bands of colour. The result, though carefully structured and prepared for, is never sterile, it has warmth. Riley seems not at all concerned with putting her heart or the psychological mess of her mind on the canvas. No shock values or the messiness of self-expression here. What her paintings possess is an abundant sense of enjoyment with what she is doing with colour, shape, pattern and form. That said, her paintings do communicate something of her personality, a certain steadiness and balance, an unfussy unpretentious clarity.

Looked at closely, her paintings are never super pristine. The edges are not ultra sharp, the surfaces she paints on are rough watercolour paper or coarse linen, which mitigates against perfectly clean execution. This paint surface, however, does benefit by bringing greater depth and a richer softness to the colour quality. That said, Riley's paintings shimmer, and resist the eye settling on any particular area. Your gaze is kept constantly moving, engaging with being visually scintillated. Reproductions can never quite capture the immediate effect of her painting upon your perception. Her work is ripped off constantly, she's always been accessible and her ideas are readily adopted by popular commercial media, via wrapping papers, cards or wallpaper designs. They have to tame her though, by toning down the colour contrasts and oscillating quality that she revels in.

Other painters like Freud or Bacon might grab the headlines, for what they tell us about the grisly end of the human condition. However,Riley creates huge masterly work that celebrates another aspect of being human, our capacity to express and enjoy our exuberance. This is joyful painting, one that is optically experimental, but also uplifting and affirmative. It also possesses a truth and universality that can be undervalued in the pursuit of, and wallowing in, the oppressive shadows.

I Let Go - No2 - Finders Keepers

2011-10-09T13:48:00.005Z

My teenage years were largely agnostic. Followed by a decade or so of rather indecisive atheism that lasted well into my late twenties. Once I passed thirty I seemed to overcome any residual hostility and began looking seriously into what 'a spiritual life' might actually be like, for me. Reading mostly about Taoism, I knew little or nothing about Buddhism as yet. So, when I bought Nirvana Tao* from a bookshop in Camden Town, I was more attracted by the 'Tao' than the 'Nirvana'. As a book I wasn't particularly taken with it. It was structured in two halves; one half looked at the Taoist approach to The Way; the second half the Buddhist approach to Nirvana. Its title implied a philosophical alignment between these two religious strands by placing them in comparative proximity. Yet it made no attempt to forge links at all. It just outlined the beliefs or practices of these two non-theistic traditions. Both traditions, as they were portrayed in this book, appeared to deliberately obscure what a spiritual life in practice might be. Mostly behind an esoteric veneer of inscrutability or circumspection.

Taoism had kick started my spiritual investigations in the late.1980's. Within a short space of time I was very familiar with its basic philosophy and outlook. Even though I remained intrigued, I was also incredibly frustrated and perplexed by it. For all its evident insights into the sources of human dissatisfaction,Taoism seemed deliberately vague about the details. What would you actually do as a consequence of these insights? Where were the Taoist practices? Indeed where were the Taoist practitioners, who could instruct you in the rediscovery of that natural union with the Way? Nada ! 'Nirvana Tao', despite trumpeting about containing the secret meditation techniques of the Taoist Masters, told me no such thing.

The approach to Nirvana, I now recognise was pure Vajrayana Buddhism, Tibetan style. Retrospectively cobbling the Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana strands of Buddhism into one seamless progressive path of practice leading to Nirvana. It described the various stages of higher consciousness in such precise detail, that they became quite dense and incomprehensible. I remember finding this an off putting presentation of what the Buddhist path was all about. If this was anything to go by, it didn't seem to be about real human experience at all, but something more akin to an intricately wrought flight of fancy.

Yet smuggled into the pages of these baffling expositions I did find a gem - some short verses about letting go,turning aside and putting down. At the time, I copied them out by hand and kept them pinned above my desk. Where they no doubt stayed until something else grabbed the focus of my spiritual enthusiasm. Whenever I've read them since, what I find in them seems superficially the same, but also subtly different. The relevance they had for me in my early thirties, is not like today's. At the time there was an obvious immediacy that impacted upon me. I recognised the emotional and mental preoccupations the verses covered. Inexperienced spiritually, I knew nothing yet about meditation or even what everyday spiritual practice might be, nor how they might help. I connected with these verses because I thought, somewhat naively, I might be able to do what they said. I was to remain clueless for quite sometime.

Letting go,turning aside and putting down is not concerned with secret teachings on higher levels of consciousness, about which I'd had no experience, and of whose existence I remained unconvinced. Nor is it theoretical or fantastical. It points directly to a multiplicity of attachments that are at the root of suffering, including my own. This was a reality I lived in every day. My life then, had very prominent veins of frustration and discontent sticking out and ruining its health and vitality. I was a deeply dissatisfied person at heart, frequently subject to prolonged bouts of melancholic sadness. Letting go,turning aside and putting down offered some kind of hope.

Traditionally, these verses were meant to be learnt, recited and inwardly reflected upon, but most of all practised. They present the full spectrum of our expectations, aspirations and experiences of life. The implication is that the ideals we hold about our lives, about how they should be, can become a form of prison or tyranny. Expectation and desire is indeed what engages us with our lives. It motivates us to carry on, to not accept defeat at the hands of misfortune. However,this very persistence can also turn on us and become our tormentor. Frequently, what we think we want is not what we really want at all. Our determination can become a substitute for self-belief. By loosening our insistent emotional grip upon these ideals, paradoxically, we could release more energy and a deeper sense of liberty. To be content or at peace with ourselves in the world, but primarily, to be able to just be. To just be, being more than enough.

Now, after a few decades of Buddhist practice, I'm in my fifties. From this time and perspective I can compare myself now with then, and recognise things have moved on. The emphasis I place upon my needs, perceptions and experience have undergone a slow but substantial transformation. Buddhist practice has been a great self-healer. I've a better grasp on the views and conditionings that maintain my unhelpful mental tendencies and emotional attachments. Though I'm still learning how you cultivate better ones. Today these verses on letting go,turning aside and putting down are stimulating a desire to gently put to rest some of the residual ghosts of past pain. Plus the thoughts and behaviours that accompany and ride in its wake. To let the fading spectre of youthful ambitions go. Relieve myself of the regret and the grief for them, that still lingers on in those easy to overlook corners of my present life.

This is the primary reason why I'm returning to these verses now. It's not just out of a fondness or idle curiosity. I've reached a particularly dry and intransigent phase on my spiritual path. Things I used to value highly are presently lacking the import they once had. Perhaps these verses are striking a deeper more resonant chord, because they're pointing towards something that's long overdue. Now is the right time for letting go.

We all tend to carry excess baggage, things we bear, or put up with, however burdensome and weighty they are. Old ideas and desires, the dreams we know we should have said farewell to years ago. We sentimentally regard these treasured past ideals, however moribund. They take up not just psychic space, but also act as a drag on our growth spiritually. Even though we've stopped actively pursuing them, we may still be holding out a slim chance they might happen one day. Lost ideals might yet be found, so we must remain the keeper of their flame.

They might appear innocuous or innocent on the surface, and not something to really worry about. However, I'm finding their background interference induces from time to time a heavy heartedness. One that quietly dampens my fully embracing whatever is currently in the foreground of my everyday life. It's like listening to a pop song on the radio that you really love, but each time it appears on the play-list somewhere in the background Radio Moscow keeps blaring in, hampering the depth and pleasure in your enjoyment. Until I really let go of these remnants of past times, turn aside from them, or simply put them down as underlying motivators, my instinct is telling me this current situation may not only persist, but worsen.

With what remains of my life an unknown quantity, though obviously daily diminishing. These are my final days, weeks, years or decades, so the quality, as well as quantity, of my life is becoming ever more precious. Something within me is asking me to change. The ground I'm currently occupying and working from, is putting in a request for a thorough make-over. I'm taking these verses on letting go,turning aside and putting down to be a sort of guiding guru, that I can learn from line by line. I intend to probe into and investigate them. To see what they evoke or conjure up, in terms of past, present or future perceptions, of dreams and aspirations, random connections or tenuous associations. What will be unearthed, or erupt from my imaginarium, as bit by bit I dig deeper into the emotional sediment they're buried in? We shall see.

FEATURE 94 - The Best of Arisa

2011-10-08T11:18:00.004Z

Arisa, so far as I know, is an organisation that runs gay club events in Israel. To publicise them they produce these fun videos, mostly featuring Uriel Yekutiel ( the one in drag) and Eliad Cohen (The Hairy Hunk). All the videos are set to somewhast traditional sounding songs, but the visuals are far from it. Here's a small selection of the best of Arisa.

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FEATURE 93 - Young Proffessionals

2011-10-01T16:46:00.002Z

I doubt this needs much explanation or extolling the virtues of

FEATURE 92 - Wim Mertens - Whisper Me

2011-09-17T16:44:00.003Z

In the 1980's I saw at the ICA, and later at the Albert Hall, a performance piece by Jan Fabre. It was very controversial, but groundbreaking at the time. As it was the first time a performance work began to become noticed as part of mainstream culture. The piece by Fabre was called The Power of Theatrical Madness. The final part consisted of a man standing upstage and a woman lying downstage. The man rushes downstage and picks the women up and places her upstage by him. She then gets up and trips lightly, dancing downstage back exactly to where she was before. This goes on for twenty minutes or more, the man getting ever more tired sometimes the woman slipping from his grasp because of his exhaustion.

This music - Whisper Me by Wim Mertens accompanied this strongly poignant expression of the unresolvable nature of human relations. How the two desires of male and female struggle to meet on equal terms, but fall into roles that keep them stuck using differing means to exert their independence and power. It had, and still does exert, a great influence on my imagination. As soon as I hear this music I see the show vividly in my minds eye.

DIARY 148 - Controlling things from beyond the grave

2011-09-17T14:14:00.016Z

It's taken me years even to get to this point. Years of reluctance, over an apprehension that writing a Will might presage, or advance the date of my death. As most people die intestate, I assume this superstition is not uncommon as a reason for delay. It's not even a complicated Will to administer. I haven't huge amounts of money,property or investments, my executors will have a relatively straightforward task, disposing of my possessions and sorting out my meagre finances. There has been no substantial reason for my procrastination, other than procrastination itself.

I bought a 'Write Your Own Will' pack a couple of years ago, which then gathered dust on a shelf in a plastic square cut folder. On my solitary in May, I finally made the time to draft it. In the end it didn't take that long. The thing I pondered over most was not who would get what, that was actually the straightforward bit, but the content of my funeral service.

Whilst working in Cambridge Crematorium, I'd witnessed some highly impersonal services, rushed and perfunctory, often glaringly inappropriate. I know that the style of service, the choice of readings and music lies very much in the hands, if not the tastes, of your nearest and dearest e.g. an 88 year old Grandma's coffin can indeed enter the chapel to the raucous metal screech of Iron Maiden! I guess this has informed my intentions with regard to my own funeral service - to not leave nothing to chance and state exactly what I want.

Once I'd written out my Will, decided on music and readings, then I found myself feeling profoundly sad. Here was something, however much I might envisage it in my minds eye, plan or organise it to the minutest degree, I would never see or experience. I'd never hear what people said about me or the service. It was like I was devising this one last theatrical spectacular like some sort of parting gift, to evoke or say something about me, about who I thought I was, what I thought my life was about,expressing, or is it imposing my tastes, refinements or sensibilities on the world. This one concluding show is to sum it all up, and be performed without rehearsal. I can let go enough of it now, to accept that even these best laid plans may indeed very much go astray.

What people say about you at your funeral is out of your control. You hope they'll focus on the good bits, if there are good bits, and gloss over the darker stains on your carpet. Those eulogies are the final testament of the effect you've had on the people who'll survive you. Though even that effect will be brief, lasting only the lifetimes of your close friends, relatives and colleagues. Soon, who you were, what you were like, or what you did with your life, the sense of you as an individual will forever be fading towards complete forgetfulness. Nothing will survive of you for long. Your self possession, and your effect upon the world, becomes revealed as a collective collusion, if not delusion of grandeur.

What moved me most about planning my funeral service was my absence. It would be the one event concerning my life I would not be there to witness, one thing I was bound to miss. So, why was I so concerned about what happened after my death? Was I trying to ensure that in some way my life was not all in vain? For I have witnessed funeral services for people where no one turned up. Where no one alive cared enough to say goodbye, bar the funeral director, a vicar for hire, and if you were lucky a care home assistant who'd nursed you till your crumpled into death. Whilst it's ignoble and humbling, and what no one wants, it does happen. All we can hope is that we'll be too gaga to notice or care that much before we die. Through trying to control things beyond the grave, my ego is trying to fight off the idea that in the bigger picture my life was merely a blip and mattered for nought.

So, though I've written my Will out, in my neatest handwriting, I still have two things to do; confirm who my executors will be; and sign the dratted thing in front of two witnesses. That, I can see, might be worthy of some further procrastination, before I finally set the seal, and let go, of what I want to happen after I die.

I Let Go - No 1 - The Verses

2011-09-07T13:22:00.010Z

Over the next few weeks, if not months I'll be posting short articles based on, or arising from, issues that the following verses raise. These verses so far as I know have their origins in Tibetan Buddhism, but I've no idea how old they are. In a way that's an entirely irrelevant consideration. The most important thing is how one responds to them, and whether they prove beneficial to furthering ones spiritual practice. So, here we goes

ON LETTING GO, TURNING ASIDE & PUTTING DOWN

I let go,
I turn aside,
I put down
all agreeable or painful memories
relating to what I have done
or would have wanted to do in the past
relating to all the episodes of my past activity.

I let go,
I turn aside,
I put down
what I have been
or would have wished to be in the past

I let go
I turn aside
I put down
the impressions that I have felt,
I discharge and strip myself of them.

I let go,
I turn aside
I put down
all that preoccupies me now,
all that relates to my present activity
and to that which would be able to touch me
in the activity of other people;
my ambitions;
my fears;
everything that my interest carries me towards.

I let go,
I turn aside,
I put down
all cares concerning the future,
the projects of spiritual or material order;
desire for success;
fear of failure;
whatever they may be;
all certainties;
all doubts;
as to what I will be
or to what will happen to me
tomorrow or in the distant future.

DIARY 147 - Death has its own cutting edge

2011-09-07T11:16:00.015Z

In the Triratna Buddhist Community to which I belong, having a 'cutting edge' is a commonly used term. It's short hand for 'the cutting edge of your practice', and theoretically at least, one is always supposed to have one, know what it is, or at least know where you can locate it, if lost. It can be a way of keeping ones mind focused on what your practice actually is, instead of it remaining abstract, which can be another way of being vague about practical application.

Recently, Arthapriya raised an interesting query about having a 'cutting edge'. He wondered as a metaphor, whether it was appropriate for experienced middle aged practitioners to use. Having a 'cutting edge', has a more youthful, thrusting vitality to it. its certainly not how I feel or respond to my practice now. But if I still expect myself to have 'a cutting edge', I put unhelpful pressure on myself to find one, even if it in no way mirrors how I currently experience practice.

I've been trying to come up with an alternative term, and have so far failed to find one. I'm beginning to see what it is that has changed for me is my perception of the proximity of death. When I was younger death seemed almost in another world from mine. Other, older people than I died. It was as though I was looking through a telescope from the wrong end, and mortality's event horizon seemed a very long way off. When all your life seems still to be stretched out before you, the stream of your life can appear able to be self-directed, all your energy and purpose goes into rowing your own boat. The 'cutting edge' of one's practice there, is all about integration, and the forging your spiritual volition and vision on the anvil of the world.

At my age (fifty four), its not that I've become jaded or cynical about this youthful style of practice, but my perspective on it has changed. Physical and mental deterioration, is starting to impact on my ability to create anything new in the world. It's as though my telescope has turned around, and all I see is the same things over and over, as death looms ever larger in my vision. I'm finding fewer invigorating refreshing things. Practice now, seems more about consolidating or building on already established foundations, to find new levels and depths in them. The stream of my practice is less self-directed and more other-directed by circumstance, conditions and environment. My spiritual volition and vision is now being forged by the anvil of the world, not on it.

Whether youthful or mature, both viewpoints are false and exaggerated. The telescope miniaturises and pushes death further away than it may be, or magnifies it to bring it nearer than it may be. What telescopes and turns the perspective around is me. It's also me that is either apathetic or anxious about the perceived imperative for practice, before my death arrives. Such a heightened exaggerated perspective is a distorted one,and hence deluded.

Life or death happens right here, in this immediate moment. The illusion of time lengthening or shortening is just that, an illusion of perception. What there is to be striven for in my mature adulthood, in this moment, is equanimity, with myself, with what I have become and what I have done or not done with my life. Now you could see that as a 'cutting edge' if you want, but for me it is more a 'letting go' of some of my 'thought coverings'**

** a phrase from Edward Conze's translation of The Heart Sutra

DIARY 146 - Reports of my death have been exaggerated

2011-09-04T11:38:00.014Z

In ways that are not without impact or significance, what makes me tick can often remain a puzzling mystery, even to myself. After years practicing mindfulness and self-awareness, I understand some aspects of my psyche better. The major patterns, trends and habits in my physical and mental behaviour, I can be more prepared for them, to avert, divert or simply bare with them, as all these things do pass.

Sometimes though, I have a strong emotional response to a situation, whose cause appears to go beyond immediate circumstance alone. These, are more existential in colour and tone, and hence not easily fathomed by personal or historical analysis. Because they come cloaked in emotion I don't at first recognise them, as some unusual feeling is masking its more familiar face. Then, suddenly it does become apparent, I see it -'Ah, its you again' Staying with this, uses up huge amounts of energy, not to mention a dogged perseverance.

When these moments occur, it's as if I'm precariously perched on a fence, quite often in danger of falling off backwards into my past, into sentiment, into a sense for things lost, to be grieved over, toppling into a deep melancholic stream of regret for what might have, or never now will be. I can metaphorically give up the ghost, and want to abandon, clear away and divest myself of everything old and worn.

Or I can topple forwards, into the future, with its ever shortening horizon, with its reminder of how close the expiry date on my mortal coil is. I become anxious, in a panic, to get a grip, get things done, achieved before time or capability run out. I'm like a devil driving a cart with no wheels, propelled not by a galvanised faith, but by the horror of an importunate death, that needs to have a resolved and fulfilled life preceding it.

These are the two ways I tend to react to the impermanence of my body and mind, of the death of this thing known as me. They both disguise this issue, behind either apathy or anxiety. I flip between - there's really nothing I can do about this - to - there's something I must urgently do about this. In Buddhism there is said to be always a Middle Way in any circumstance, though it can be difficult to discern when ones viewpoint is so entangled in the conditioned world. If all roads have a left and a right lane, the middle way isn't along the central reservation. It's probably not on the road your on at all. It's not some half arsed compromise or improbable balancing act either, nor is it achieved by stitching together something torn to make it wearable. It has a more radical twist to it, presenting a simple more balanced viewpoint, that is not necessarily predicated on the immediate circumstances. It has to go beyond being apathetic or anxious. Trying to work out what that middle way might be for me, is what I'm pondering on at present. As yet no answer has been forthcoming, but I'll keep you posted.

FEATURE 91 - Joan Halifax on Compassion

2011-09-03T10:44:00.001Z

Joan socks it to them.

FEATURE 90 - Laura Marling/Mumford&Sons/DharoharProject

2011-09-02T17:26:00.002Z

A brilliant fusion of folk music from across many oceans and mountains, based on Devils Spoke a Laura Marling song from her last album 'I speak because I can.' Energy by the bucketload

FEATURE 89 - What The Water Gave Me

2011-08-27T09:50:00.004Z

The new single from Florence & the Machine, which opens with a chord change lifted straight from The Cure circa 'A Forest', then builds slowly into a stomping song repeatedly urging us all to put stones in our pockets and drown. Gosh, she's a cheery woman. Wasn't sure about it at first, but its grown on me to the point I'm humming it at work. Bodes well for the new album.

The video is an unadventurous blend of studio recording shots and outside miming, with Florence in her Mystic Meg lacy flounce. I have to say, she looks a little haggard here and on edge, if not out of it. She did seem to overwork and be in danger of overexposure last year, because she was literally everywhere after 'Lungs' struck gold. I hope she's not holding all of it together with the aid of chemicals.

POEM - Automobile

2011-08-27T08:06:00.005Z

It feels as though

I've applied the brakes,

brought the automobile

suddenly to a halt,

and now I'm sat in that car looking out

at the salted streets and people,

feeling withdrawn from

but still contained by

the exegesis of the Dharma.

The keys are still in the ignition.

I can restart the car

anytime I want,

should want arise,

but for now

all apparent motion

has been stopped.

I could get out of the car,

take my legs for a walk

in the dessicated alleys

mingling with those folk out there,

gain a spurious sense

of freedom,

the liberty to do, or be

something else for

the duration of a short stroll

and then get back in the car.

Now, what purpose

would that serve?

VIDYAVAJRA

Written 24/04/2011

DIARY 145 - The Scores On The Doors

2011-08-17T19:46:00.012Z

Well, just so you know, we finished converting eleven doors in our first community yesterday. Hurrah 1 Hurrah 2 Hurrah 3!!!! It took a total of 21 days spread over 5 weeks, and approximately 238 Man-hours. There was a lot of trial and error, where more time was given to working out what would or would not be the best way of doing stuff, than we'll be doing subsequently. I expect the next community to not take anything quite as long, because its got about a quarter less rooms, we know what we're doing now, and we are a three person team not a two. Well.....lets just see what transpires eh?

FEATURE 88 - Honest Magic

2011-08-14T07:52:00.001Z

FEATURE 87 - Marion & Geoff

2011-08-13T18:23:00.003Z

Comedy and sadness sit uncomfortably side by side in these short episodes from Marion & Geoff. Rob Brydon plays Keith Barret a taxi driver. All these to camera monologues show us is how Keith attempts rather simplemindedly to make the best of a bad job, and sometimes not to see what's glaringly obvious to the viewer, that he's being walked all over and treated appallingly.

DIARY 144 - By the creaking of my bones

2011-08-13T14:15:00.019Z

The local council recently changed the way they wished to designate our Buddhist communities. It used to be as some sort of nominal family type house, now they want to call us a house of multiple occupancy, or HOM's for short. What makes a communal house not a community is an interesting topic. But to base your decision on - either its a family home, or it must be a HOM, seems dreadfully simplistic. Windhorse has been fighting this designation change for the last few years, but finally they've had to throw in the towel. Once so designated the houses all had to be inspected, registered and a raft of very expensive alterations float in its wake. For which you get no financial support, only a timeline, by the end of which you're expected to have completed all the work required.

The main thing that's been done is having fire doors and automatic door closers fitted on all the rooms in these community houses. My project, is to salvage some self-respect and dignity from this unwanted intrusion, by applying panel molding to the external surfaces of the fire doors. This makes them look less institutional, and more in keeping with the age of our properties, which is generally late 19th century. On the surface this might seem quite a nice simple straightforward, if not pleasant and rewarding, project for me to do. I thought so too...once.

I had an unexpectedly intense emotional response whilst I sanded and scraped away at old paintwork. I experienced strong feelings of desperation and loneliness, an 'Oh No, not again' response, battled with huge resistances and with wanting to run away from it all. Though I'm not doing this alone, I am working with someone whom I don't know, and in one of our most dimly lit, oppressively cramped and rambling terrace buildings. What this triggered were discomforting feelings surrounding two previous projects;running my own business, and the Ipswich Buddhist Centre decoration. Both of which I did carry out largely on my own. Each was at an emotionally difficult time, in one I was struggling single-handed to keep my business afloat, in the other I used every spare hour I had to get the new centre ready to open. The latter was also during the first year after my ordination, a challenging period for anyone. But aside from such difficulties, there was a touchy relationship with an individual I lived and worked with. If my response is anything to go by, I've not fully got over either of these difficult periods in my life.

Whilst the fire doors were installed, the paintwork on the period door frames had been bashed about quite a bit. So initially the job was to scrape off the loose and sand down the fractured nibbled edges of the existing paintwork. In addition we also had to learn how to work round there being at least two, and on some days four community members around in their rooms. Any idea we'd be able to proceed systematically through the building, had swiftly to be rethought. daily we were having to rejig or abandon our work schedule or plans. I can do logistic, organisation and planning, but even at the best of times I derive no pleasure or satisfaction from it. If I end up doing too much of it, or become frustrated in the doing of it, I can become a very unhappy man. This year has contained a little too much of such activity.

The door project consists of a sequence of laborious, if not tedious, tasks, most requiring the simple application of elbow grease, and persistence. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not averse to hard work, or a bit of tedium and tenacity, but there is the matter of scale, and how much time, to take into account. There's been a huge amount of preparatory work involved in getting all eleven doors of one community ready to paint. The sanding, scraping, filling, priming, sawing, drawing, sticking, followed by more filling, priming, final sanding before glossing. Its felt interminable, as if I've been a treadmill that would never reach its end.......and this is just the first community, there are four more scheduled to do. The total project has in the region of 45-55 doors, and we've yet to complete 11.

So, at first it was the hugely daunting nature of the task itself, and my mental/emotional response to doing it. Then came a physical consequence;the severe inflammation of the osteo-arthritis in my hands. I can do the sanding, the scraping,the sawing and the painting, but it always results in some level of increased inflammation and pain in my hand joints. Each task is repetitive, requiring I hold my hands in one way, tensely and repeatedly for long periods of time. The hand sawing of 144 mitred pieces of panel molding was one marathon endeavour that took two and a half days. So I've been learning to bear with these throbbing tender painful things on the end of my arms. This constant pain in my hands did bring me to tears this week. Working whilst enduring it, has also become quite exhausting. I can't grip or hold things with them. I can't hold even not very heavy things other than in the palm of my hand, I have to ask someone else to open bottles for me, all of which is humbling.

By Wednesday lunchtime my energy was running low, and I began to feel slightly nauseous. This is often an early sign I'm coming down with something. By the next day I had an intense migraine type head cold and spent much of the next few days in bed. This enforced time at home, mindlessly watching lots of I-Player, has allowed both me and my hands to take a break and recover, a bit. But I do have to take what's happened seriously, and reconsider if, under the current set-up, I can continue to undertake the completion of the 3-4 month project as originally outlined. I may have to acknowledge I physically can't do such a large scale painting project anymore. This is, I believe, what I've found most upsetting, the diminishing of my physical capabilities. No doubt one of many, on the slippery slope to getting older, and death. Dylan Thomas talked about raging against the dying of the light, I felt I've understood this week, from my direct experience, exactly what he meant by that. But I can rage all I like, it wont make it go away.

FILM REVIEW - Animal Kingdom

2011-08-07T08:43:00.006Z

Joe's 17, and his mum has just died from an overdose. He rings his Gran to ask for her help. This is after all what Gran does, she always sorts out other peoples messes. His Mother was estranged from her family, partly to protect her son from their influence, with, as it turns out, good reason. For when Joe moves into the family home, he sees first hand the casual criminality of his uncles, a criminality he tries to keep his distance from. As events unfold, he finds he cannot avoid becoming implicated. The police are after all his Uncles, but most notably the eldest, Pope. Eventually this results in the cold- blooded murder of one of them by the police. His family take revenge with the indiscriminate murder of two policemen. Joe is held for questioning. Subsequently he finds out his girlfriend has been killed by Pope, his Uncle. Whose side will Joe eventually turn out to be on?

Animal Kingdom, is a gripping, intelligent film about the emotional bonds in this disarmingly ordinary criminal family. Joe remarks in the opening few minutes of the movie, that every criminal knows his time at liberty will run out some day, that the consequences of their actions eventually will catch up with them. This mood of fearful expectancy pervades the whole movie, when will these guys get there comeuppance?

There are three stand out performances. At the centre is James Frecheville, as Joe. who is sometimes blank and numb, at other times clearly scared and horrified. His performance is subtly understated, as this teenager on the cusp of being a grown man, thrown into the maelstrom of his treacherous family. The second is Ben Mendelson as Pope, the eldest and most vicious Uncle. When Gran says to him, in an passing remark over lunch -'don't you think you should start taking your medication again?' you can see in his face that he's more than a little out of control. All the really tense menacing moments in the movie are when Pope is around. Jackie Weaver as Gran, is a superlative performance, as the families Matriarch. She is the one who quietly holds everything together with the sentimentality of her kisses, gently scolds the men for having gone too far in taking revenge for their friends murder, and always, always tries to put things right. Outwardly warm and un-involved, but really a cold-hearted and dispassionate pragmatist who'd murder her own Grandson, if it proved necessary. It's a scarily impressive performance, for which she has deservedly won numerous film awards.

The film script rarely puts a foot wrong, portraying these people as people with all their personal idiosyncrasies, however dangerous their impulses might be. What violence there is, though occasionally graphic, is sparingly used. When intensity and apprehension is called for, its built through the deft use of long lingering shots and musical inference. There is something magnificently mythic about the world painted in Animal Kingdom, where the small details of the story echo much larger human and universal themes of love, loss and loyalty. This turns the film into something that is strongly reminiscent of a modern day Greek Tragedy.

DIARY 143 - The stuff of dreams

2011-08-02T19:57:00.011Z

If you've had a tough week,and nothing you usually do seems to quite hit the mark, you're feeling generally apathetic and listless. Well, sometimes you just need to get away from your usual environs. Jnanasalin and I both felt a bit ragged and run down, so we went out for a day in Sheringham, which from Cambridge is about a two and a half hour journey. But, its always been worth it. Even in the height of Summer, when the streets and beaches are swarming with holiday makers. Lounging around on a beach reading a newspaper, rather than visiting our usual Cambridge Coffee House Of Choice, is a more than refreshing change. I was quite surprised at how quickly I perked up, just with the thought of going there. Whilst there, we nurtured colourful ideas of opening Sheringham's first bijou Art Deco Tea Room, with a superlative range of teas, coffees and cakes. Ah! the stuff of dreams.

FEATURE 86 - Love is a losing game

2011-07-26T16:42:00.000Z

FEATURE 85 - PONPONPON

2011-07-24T20:20:00.001Z

With thanks to Jnanasalin for this particularly 'odd' Japanese video. What drug were these people taking when they made this!

FEATURE 84 - Pendulum Waves

2011-07-15T14:42:00.002Z

DIARY 141 - Solitary Notes No 2 - Plane with the grain.

2011-06-27T18:10:00.010Z

There's an old Taoist saying that if you're encountering lots of rough turbulence, constantly stopping or starting, find yourself digging your heals in, and not really developing any forward momentum in ones spiritual life, its probably because you're 'planing the wood against the grain.' This can make 'planing the wood with the grain' sound a bit like taking the less challenging easier route. but imagine you are trying to make something of yourself, you're the raw unfinished lumber, that needs its rough bark removing, its surface planed, sanded and varnished to reveal the beauty of the underlying grain. Well, practicing the spiritual life is more like that to me, I'm trying to bring out the underlying beauty, and that wont happen if I'm planing against the grain all the time.

This flow diagram below, is one way of visualising the basic framework of my practice, how I can more effectively 'plane with the grain.' of my life experience.

Rather than setting my sights on some remote 'enlightened' horizon, my working ground is right here in my every day life 'to discover the jewel in the dungheap.' And within that my principle areas of practice are three:

MY PRINCIPLE PRACTICES

1 - The Allure of Beauty

Whatever I do has to be beautiful, be attractive, be alluring, to draw people in, to engage them on a more deeper level with things. I also need to be drawn in, to engage with beautiful things, because without them imaginatively I turn into a desert. If I'm to maintain creativity I need to feed and nourish my heart and 'soul'. I've always done that through art, theatre, cinema that's emotionally and imaginatively rich, and through contact with nature. Its vital I do this, otherwise I feel increasingly impoverished. I don't get enough of this sort of nourishment, so I come perilously close to running on empty. I have to give this a higher priority.

2 - Kalyana Mitrata

I've talked about how important this is to me before. How I imagine it's scope has expanded in recent years to pretty much incorporate everything I do - all forms of interaction with others, from rituals, art projects, friendships, relationships. Being a Kalyana Mitra is ideally to be a 'beautiful friend' to cultivate the attractive, alluring, engaging, virtuous spiritual qualities of the 'beautiful friend.' I need to constantly check out how I'm doing with this, sometimes I do go into auto-pilot with it. Essentially I'm cultivating spiritual beauty.

3 - Prattitya Samutpada

It took me a while to settle on this term. Initially the quality I was struck by was a need to feel connected, which manifested itself in my enthusiasm for collective practices, communities, sangha and kalyana mitrata. But it also cropped up in my love of biographies, oral and conventional histories, archaeology,nature. So it stretches from connectedness in the immediate present experience, through to a sense of empathy and connectedness with cultures and people from the past.

Then it seemed inter-connectedness was a better term, and then prattitya samutpada, sometimes translated as 'interdependent origination' or 'conditioned co-production.' A term that incorporates both connectedness and interconnectedness, the smaller individual perspective and the larger universal perspective. I've found my thoughts and writing dwell, and get excited by the theme of prattitya samutpada quite regularly. In reflecting on my experience, on how I could cultivate beauty or Kalyana Mitrata, I inevitably coming up against my self, my conditioning, my limitations,my disconnectedness, my loss of the larger perspective when focus narrows to my smaller self preoccupations.

I've given these three principle practices an imaginative description in that they all behave 'Like three shoals of golden fish' alluring, fascinating and yet fleeting. The flow diagram has two further levels practice, each triadic group of practices interacts and supports each other. One can never practice one without encountering the others. There are also cross connections between The Allure of Beauty, Kalyana Mitrata & Prattitya Samutpada, and the practice of Sila(ethics) Samadhi(meditation) & Prajna(wisdom) - 'Like a book with three covers' - and the practice/fruit of these, my Pure Land, that would be recognised by the presence of Stillness, Simplicity & Contentment -'Like three silver spheres on a mirror' each individually perfectly poised, stable and stationary, yet each reflected and absorbing itself into the universe that surrounds it.

DIARY 140 - Solitary Notes No 1 - Giving up on Enlightenment in this life

2011-06-26T14:40:00.010Z

My fortnights solitary, was a time for reflecting on times past, present and future. This sort of spacious solitude I just don't find in my everyday life. My life is composed of a variety of relationships and interactions, ones that rarely leave sufficient psychic space for touching base with the one primary relationship - with me. That isn't a complaint, more an observation, that I am still pondering the implications and consequences of. One seems to be getting out of touch with where I'm actually at, and exhibiting the early signs of burning out. Certainly, over the last seven months it has been one huge creative project after the other. I'm aware that during this creative and organisational ferment I've been keeping inadequate tabs on how I was doing, Only in passing noting the desire to meditate drying up and the disillusioned ennui that seemingly surrounded it. Well, a fortnight away started a process of reappraisal, and what consequences this will have for how I practice the spiritual life.

During the first week I reviewed what my current spiritual ideals were. The solitary chalets windows began to resemble a rug made up of post it note strips, with ideals, connections, desires, interests and enthusiasms written on them. I still held one ideal that I've had for over forty years; to only bring things of beauty into the world. How I envisage doing that has changed, but the underlying ideal remains intact. Today its also about my relationship with beauty itself, whether its in the form of art, friendships, virtue or nature, as much as my creating beautiful objects or rituals.

I came up with a number of headings that eventually morphed into a flow diagram. This began with my basic working ground and principle practices, and flowed upwards to how my Pure Land might manifest itself. After twenty years of practice I needed to acknowledge that 'Enlightenment in this life,' rather than motivating me, had become an actively demotivating factor. I no longer envisage myself achieving this, I clearly don't desire it enough. The desire I'm left with, is a rather perverted greedy and envious one, a headmasterly disciplinarian, that compares and reprimands me for my apparent shortcomings as a Buddhist practitioner. This can leave me bereft of faith in the effectiveness and achievements of what I'm actually doing. If I do a formal structured meditation practice such as Mindfulness of Breathing I flounder in the inadequacy of it, and the energy I'm willing to put into it rapidly dissipates. I took a book on Mindfulness by Ajhan Brahm with me, which I had to abandon reading. I was fine cultivating a silent present moment awareness, even focusing on the breath, but as soon as he started talking about, nimittas, beautiful breaths and dhyanas, I mentally switched off. My diminshed ability to sustain interest is quite pronounced.

I see this actually as good, its honest, its liberating to reconsider, in the light of letting go of Enlightenment in this life, where that leaves my practice. Basically in a more healthy balanced relationship between my ideals and how I'm choosing to live them out. This doesn't necessarily mean I need to throw everything else away. I'm not rejecting the Buddhist path, just adjusting and realigning myself with it. I'm moving the goalposts into the field where I'm playing ball. The actual, rather than the virtual playground.

FEATURE 83 - Anna Calvi

2011-05-21T17:19:00.005Z

Been a slow grower this one, but I'm becoming quite captivated. Her voice is sometimes has the stridency of a Siouxie, as bellowing as Florence Welsh, and as mournful as Souad Massi, but all with a richer more operatic tone. The songs have grand touches here and there of Bowie, Morrisey or Nick Cave, but are altogether more grand for being embellished by the velvet throttle of that voice. The passionate flames of Spanish flamenco flicker, not just in her dress sense, but through her soulful guitar playing. She should team up and do a duet with Marc Almond. If she can make or find her audience, this woman could be big.

FEATURE 82 - Unfolding Of The Lotus

2011-05-21T13:09:00.003Z

Here is a link to the Windhorse scrapbook blog, with a brief report in pictures of the Wesak mornings event.

windhorse:scrapbook: 2011 ARCHIVE - Unfolding Of The Lotus - Wesak Cele...: "Though this was only our second Windhorse Wesak Celebration, it has quickly become a substantial annual event that brings the Buddhists in t..."

DIARY 139 - The Fluctuations Of Sraddha

2011-05-21T12:44:00.014Z

The last few weeks have been full on, all consuming ones, mostly preparing, planning or setting up for Wesak. Waiting to fully kick off the plans for Unfolding Of The Lotus, holding them mentally in a pending tray, strayed into being hard to bare at times. I'm beginning to recognise a pattern to situations where the execution of plans is delayed or becomes protracted. I become strained emotionally, easily overwhelmed, slightly tetchy, and a weary fatalism, if not apathy, emerges. Something similar to this happened with the length of time the Show Of Hands Project took to complete.

The preparations for the CALM & Wesak events, unfortunately took place at a time when I've experienced an undermining doubt concerning the effectiveness of my connection with Going For Refuge To The Three Jewels. Emotionally its been a tightrope I've walked. One minute, planning, for the benefit of others, this huge expression of sraddha in the significance of Buddha's Enlightenment, whilst having days where I was dowsed in depression at finding myself profoundly disconnected and distant from that sraddha and significance. In retrospect I'm experiencing this differently. This divisiveness feels incorrectly perceived - as if it was a smoke screen, and not about what was on the surface at all. The level of time and spiritual commitment required to pull Wesak off was indicative of more than a stoical persistence. Perversely, the fact that it did aggravate, provoke or exacerbate the levels of doubt, points towards a strong sraddha, not a weak one. As if an unanswered question was mistakenly given to the voice of a gremlin, instead of a guru.

Both the CALM Project and Unfolding Of The Lotus went extremely well. I've had very positive feedback about them, that I need to remember well, when my confidence lapses about whether folk really appreciate what I'm doing. I know there's always likely to be some carping, envious, if not jealous comments behind closed doors. I am, after all, in the very privileged position of being able to put my creative energies into these aesthetic projects. Not many people can do that as part of their job remit. So I can see how what I do could become a bone of contention for some - why me and not them?

All I can say, is that I found devising and putting on CALM & Wesak ultimately enjoyable and immensely satisfying by virtue of the fact that both rituals were executed collectively. At times even I was surprised by how moving or simply FAB the end result was. Any ritual can bring the collective zeitgeist of the Bodhicitta into being, and this then moves, inspires and leads it. My role in this? I'm just a bus conductor, I tell people when to get on and off.

FEATURE 81 - Kathy Kirby

2011-05-21T12:09:00.004Z

I remember Kathy Kirby being a regular on the Billy Cotton Band Show on a Saturday night. My Mother hated her, mostly for her blaring vocal style, and the lip gloss. Was there lip gloss before Kirby? It lent a certain quivering shimmering quality to her mouth warbling.

In this early sixties clip, she sings her Bop Shoo Wop version of, Doris Day's - Secret Love. She bore one thing in common with Ms Day, she was a gay icon. Kirby's dress sense, with outfits often dripping with pearl drops or diamante, was theatrical. It sort of went with the vocal histrionics - lets go really really over the top here!

Kirby's decline from the seventies onwards, was, in retrospect, inevitable. With the arrival of singer songwriters, people lost interest in that manufactured sixties style of intense singing. All the major British singers of that period - Dusty - Sandie Shaw - Cilla - either went into enforced retirement, never to re-emerge, or diversified into TV or fashion. Kirby, defrauded of her money by her manager, went into a sad hearted obscurity.

But here she is in her hey day, walking precariously down the steep ramp of a TV set, unable to walk or dance properly, or move her arms more than a shrugs distance from her hips. 'What ever you do Miss Kirby keep it minimal, or you'll fall flat on your face in front of millions of viewers.'

FEATURE 80 - Thomas Heatherwick

2011-05-18T06:11:00.001Z

These architectural ideas are simply mind blowing

DIARY 138 - Paralysis & Imperfection

2011-05-08T06:34:00.010Z

I've been busy, always busy. So busy, you'd not be wrong in thinking I'm still diverting my attention away from those less manageable thoughts and feelings I mentioned in my last diary posting. Staying positive and holding these off, is a full time occupation. I have moments when I just loose heart, or want to rebel or let go of this self-imposed constraint. With two Creating A Lotus Mandala events, and a mornings celebration of Wesak to prepare for, I am busy, far too busy, to allow myself to dwell on these things yet. These seemingly irresolvable things, mmm....must rush.

The CALM events, are a bit of a first, at least for me. I've never executed a creative project collectively before. I'm finding that these are taking more, not less, strategic planning. There is the usual devising how something will look, followed by working out how on earth this might be executed by 20-30 people. How do you make something easy for people, not only to engage with, but also to feel at ease with their differing levels of skills and confidence? This week, everyone was cutting out the stencils, next week its the spraying into position. All done within a Buddhist ritual framework. The first part went well, so I'm feeling more confident that next week will also be fine.

The ritual was structured around the

Dedication Ceremony. It was loose and rough around the edges, and that was OK, almost how it should be. That seemed to be what helped it work. This has led me to reflect on planning, as a way I reduce the chance of chaotic, unpredictable elements disrupting the desired result. Despite careful planning, the raw, un-mediated, the unexpected will inevitable erupt into it. I've almost come to expect, even relish its arising, because these raw, rougher elements seem to be what bring a ritual to life, and bring life to life too. At some point me and my desire to be in full control, has to step out of the way. A ritual needs to have space for these 'soulful' earthy anarchic elements to be present, it can't just be forcibly strained through a spiritual Buddhist sieve. The desire for a perfect ritual intercourse or transcendent climax, can simply end up castrating it, produce a premature ejaculation, or worse a still born child. To over extend the sexual metaphor, but you get my drift.

Modern life experience is excessively mediated through a desire for order and control, and this is also present in me too. Imagining that by taking charge of forming the experience, the happier, safer and more satisfied I will be with the result. But this pursuit of the perfect artifice, can merely make my life feel constrained and dull. Managing experience, prevents one from being fully with it in the moment, and less alive to it. Hence I can find anxiety about anarchy breaking out, paralyses me for days before an event. Its all so unnecessary, but I appear unable to do much to change it at present. The fear of being bitten by my experience, remains almost worse than the actual bite.

FEATURE 79 - Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong

2011-05-07T18:48:00.002Z

This one is giving me pause for thought

FEATURE 78 - Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight

2011-04-23T19:52:00.004Z

Fascinating talk by Jill Bolte Taylor recounting in vivid detail her experience of having a stroke. The conclusions she draws about the choices we have regarding our mind is revelatory.

QUOTATION MARKS 34

2011-04-23T14:03:00.004Z

You learn what it is

that you are trying to do

in the process

of trying to do it

SANGHARAKSHITA

DIARY 137 - The Rituals of Faith

2011-04-23T11:00:00.011Z

The last couple of months I've been working on the text and form of the upcoming Wesak at Windhorse event -Unfolding Of The Lotus, to celebrate the Buddha's Enlightenment. It's still three weeks or so away on the 17th May. We are now in the finalising and preparation phase, of making what is planned come into being.

During the fortnight prior,I've organised a collective project to

install a stenciled Lotus border around the Stupa Area in the Warehouse. This has two discreet stages, first, over 200 lotus stencils need to be cut, and second, these are formed into stencil and sprayed onto the warehouse floor. Currently I'm working out how to set this collective action into a ritualised context.

The morning of Wesak is being conceived as a long processional sequence of storytelling. At various stages we'll stop to hear an aspect of the Buddha's journey towards Enlightenment, plus verse and chorus responses adapted from early suttas. I'm hoping it will be quite rowdy and cacophonous should people let their hair down, as we spiral from the Shrine Room to the Stupa Area, inside and outside the warehouse. Once completed, there will be a Meditation and Sevenfold Puja to conclude. It sounds simple, but the logistics of how to successfully move 40+ people around is proving difficult to imagine. Inevitably it will have its chaotic moments. I have my periods of anxiety about this, but mostly I'm excitedly looking forward to it.

Paradoxically, in amongst all this creativity devising Buddhist

rituals etc, I've found myself really struggling with where my spiritual life is currently at. The imperative to just keep going, and get on with all the various projects I'm involved in, overrides a level of spiritual ennui I've not experienced in quite this way before. I'm generally feeling tired - of meditation, or applying myself to Dharma Study, and dare I say it, Buddhism in general. Even Dogen, my usual source of refuge and inspiration in barren times of spiritual struggle, doesn't quite match or elevate my mood. I've definitely come to the end of something, but what, if anything will take its place I really cannot tell. If you don't know how, or what it is you've lost, its hard to know where to start looking to regain, or rebuild it. I guess its this aspect of not knowing, of what I could be doing to help myself, that makes it most disconcerting.

As a result, much of what I currently do is like a book without its binding, nothing is there to hold all its individual pages together, to prevent them blowing away. Though what I'm doing is no doubt spiritually beneficial to others, it feels empty of the personal Sraddha to give it a more transcendent purpose. Having let go of a long held view that I could find a creative vocation, I launched myself on a more selfless vocation last year, to put what talents I have entirely at the service of Buddhism, the business and others. Now, it may be that my vision for this has run out of steam, the process maybe incomplete, or flawed. It could be I'm undergoing some sort of reaction to this decision, or I currently lack the depth of practice to sustain it, or I'm not sufficiently grounded enough. Whatever it is I'm experiencing a feeling of alienation from what I'd previously 'set my heart upon.'

My confidence that all this will eventually work out, wavers from day to day. So I have my moments of quiet despair, after which I just pick myself up and carry on devising rituals as if something in the doing of this will provide the answer I'm seeking. I hope that I am right.

QUOTATION MARKS 33 - Buckminster Fuller

2011-04-23T10:53:00.004Z

I am quite confident that I can say with authority

that Einstein, when he wanted to study,

didn't sit in the middle of a school room.

That is probably the poorest place he could have gone to study

When an individual is really thinking,

he is tremendously isolated.

He may manage to isolate himself in Grand Central Station,

but it is despite the environment rather than because of it.

The place to study is not in a school room

R BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Taken from Education Automation

FEATURE 77 - A Bukowski Poem

2011-04-23T09:42:00.005Z

Read through some late poems this morning from The Last Night On Earth by Charles Bukowski, written two years before he died in 1994 at the age of 73. Unsurprisingly there's plenty of reflection on the growing immanence of his death, and rather sanguine summaries of a lifetime lived largely on the edge of poverty and success. He kept himself afloat on a stream of sex-drink-gambling-fights -and most of all writing.

Reading this poem - Air and light and time and space - somehow resonated with me, probably because I know I've done what he's describing -waiting for the right time or space to arrive for creativity - which rarely does of course.

Bukowski spent most of his life working long hours in deadbeat jobs, but wrote none the less, mostly by depriving himself of sleep to write through the night. To write he had to make it something he just had to do, in spite of, not because of the circumstances he found himself in. In the past I know I made the incompatibility of my circumstances an excuse for my lack of creative accomplishment - if only I didn't have to work! Impatiently waiting for that right moment of air, light, time or space, to arrive.

According to Bukowski these only arrive if you're prepared to make huge personal sacrifices to obtain them, and that this will greatly inconvenience you, and be discomforting. He'd say any work arrived at without that element of personal sacrifice, will inevitably become a contrived artifice and indulgent, and what's worse would be existentially untruthful.

AIR AND LIGHT AND TIME AND SPACE

"-you know,I've either had a family, a job, something

has always been in the

way

but now

I've sold my house, I've found this

place, a large studio, you should see the space and

the light

for the first time in my life I'm going to have a place and the time to

create"

no baby, if you're going to create

you're going to create

you're going to create whether you work

16 hours a day in a coal mine

you're going to create in a small room with 3 children

while you're on

welfare,

you're going to create with part of your mind and your

body blown

away,

you're going to create blind

crippled

demented,

you're going to create with a cat crawling up your

back while

the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,

flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space

have nothing to do with it

and don't create anything

except maybe a longer life to find

new excuses

for.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

from The Last Night on Earth.

published byECCO

POEM - Blurred Vision

2011-04-17T17:13:00.007Z

BLURRED VISION

Not sure,

just not sure

whether I can

even settle

on vagueness

as a definition

for sure.

There maybe

a clear reason

an underlying

sediment to

everything

But

how sure

could anyone

be about that?

Could vagueness

be just

out of focus

doubt?

Doubt

beautifully

shot through crinkled water

or smears of Vaseline

Doubt

concealed

behind the

smokescreen

of other emotions

Doubt

with the headlights

switched off.

Doubt

whispered

rather than declaimed

spoken

sotto voce

to imaginary friends

after midnight

Doubt

smothered

under my pillow

whilst I was

half asleep.

VIDYAVAJRA

17th April 2011

FEATURE 76 - Yazumi Beauty Salon

2011-04-15T20:39:00.000Z

This time with gorgeous subtitles

The Residents - Moisture

2011-04-15T19:59:00.000Z

FEATURE 75 - Fever Ray - Stranger Than Kindness

2011-04-15T19:20:00.001Z

Few bands can match or exceed the early Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Song - Stranger Than Kindness. But here's Fever Ray giving it a creepy going over. Great Video too.

FEATURE 74 - Elbow - Neat Little Rows

2011-04-15T19:15:00.002Z

FEATURE 73 - Yazima Beauty Salon

2011-04-15T19:12:00.003Z

The campest thing I've seen in years

WORK IN PROGRESS - Show Of Hands Project Finished

2011-02-18T11:06:00.015Z

After three months, 100+hours of work, including back strain and fatigue, the Show Of Hands project is finally finished. Here's a quick resume of the painting process as documented in photographs. If you miss the auto-play click on Show Of Hands in the bottom left corner and then click play.

Here it is installed in all its glory at the entrance to the warehouse. It's relief to have finally finished this project, one that has dragged on for considerably longer than I'd originally envisaged. But still, it is good to see it up there, loud and proud.

What ever next. Well, I'm already turning my mind to celebrations for Buddha Day/Wesak in May. I also have projects to develop our photo archive, improve the aesthetics of the Stupa Area, the end of the warehouse nearest the offices where the hanging is, plus ideas for future collective based projects, either in terms of subject matter or involvement. In other words, more ideas than I have either the time nor energy to carry out.

POEM - The Unbeknown

2011-02-12T15:58:00.009Z

THE UNBEKNOWN

Who knows

are there jungle birds not yet documented?

are there mountains no boots have stepped upon?

are there caves and oceans left unexplored?

are there bulls that never rage?

are there shackled limbs yet to be liberated?

are there wars that achieve their stated aim?

are there hearts that will never break?

are there things still unseen by human eyes

thought by human minds

or felt by human hearts?

like

higher states of consciousness

or are such things

just taunts

the cultivation of a hope

to jolly ourselves along with

are we simply lost

foundering

in the exploration

of our own mystery

whilst our persistent irritable bowels

punctuate with farts

a string of poorly drawn metaphors

that fist fight with death

we remain

unbeknown

to the point

that our pain weeps for itself

we capture our emptiness

hold it high

and vaingloriously cheer

at a dark green beer bottle

it's such a languid hold

we have on life

as if we already know

we're done for

what our real legacy

will be

that

most of us

heroically

stoically

will live

below our potential.

Written 12/2/2011 by

VIDYAVAJRA

BOOK REVIEW - Patti Smith - Just KIds

2011-02-12T06:40:00.016Z

You could call this a combined autobiography and a biography. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe seem, at least from her re-telling, to have become joined at the hip from almost from the first moment they met. Both in New York, both trying to become the artists they feel themselves to be, each inspired and encouraged the other to be bold, to go further. Their early love and relationship, found them living in and out of each others rather thinly financed pockets. This life together began shaping their own unique talents.

Patti Smith appears to have been very muse like, willingly devoting herself to Mapplethorpe's talent, sometimes at a great cost to her own. She seemed to lack confidence, not quite knowing where to focus her effort, in comparison to Mapplethorpe who's impulsive instinctive temperament was somehow sure he was on the right track. Ironically it was Smith who achieved her fame first, melding her poetry with rock music, in one of the most distinctive debut albums in popular music history - Horses. With Mapplethorpe providing the iconic photo of Smith on the cover.

Mapplethorpe becomes more on the outer fringes of Smith's life as the book progresses as her fame arrives, he gradually discovers his real sexual predilections, and simultaneously the subject matter for much of his classic photography. Here Smith cannot follow him, she can seem touchingly naive and unsullied for a rock n roller. The subject matter of his photography -often sexually graphic was and still is controversial, combining classical beauty with explicitness.

Smith's writing can sometimes be sparse, sometimes richly detailed, or poetically refined,but always evocative. She captures the feeling of the times, whether its the late sixties or early seventies New York. The days of Woodstock, of Max's Kansas City, and CBGB's jump off the pages, the eccentrics. the trannies, the druggies, and the bands. Its pages are colourfully peopled with the late, and often great, Smith and Mapplethorpe seemingly colliding with many stars on either their ascendancy or decline. Whilst they lived in the Chelsea Hotel, people, now of note, but struggling then to make their name, lived literally on the same floor as them.

At times it can sound like Smith is name dropping constantly, or leaves the impression that she was some sort of guide or seminal influence on the people she met. There is a token amount of self-mythologising and reshaping of the past to more accurately predict or prefigure the present. I lost count of the number of times in the early chapters, she tells Mapplethorpe he should try photography. But, that's often the case, one refines what ones life, and the lives of others, are about through the process of retelling them. I can see why this book has garnered critical awards. She has a flair for conjuring up the zeitgeist of a period, its visual motifs , its times and places. Her verbal fluency is subtle and well crafted, avoiding the overwrought. The result has a unique beauty, a truthfulness that, though often quirky, is very grounded. A bit like Patti Smith.

FEATURE 72 - Don't be a drag, Just be a queen

2011-02-12T06:18:00.012Z

Well, she's trying very very very hard to write an anthem here, and there is no doubt that this will be a real dance floor filler in the gay clubs. It's disco sound is rather old hat, but it is a very polished and superior gay stomp all the same. Lady Gaga is never going to be ground breaking musically, if anything she's rather predictable, being both on trend and retro at the same time. You could be kind and say this is an homage to that 'Material Woman', but really, no. Gaga's strategy for pop stardom is starting to look like it's been entirely modeled on Madonna's. She should be had up for career plagiarism.

God knows she can write an addictive tune though, and seeds them with plenty of lyrical catch phrases to hook onto, and chant them loudly as you dance - 'Don't be a drag, Just be a queen'. This invocation to be yourself usually ends up as - don't be a drudge, just copy me - because most of us don't have a clue who we really want to be, so we begin by borrowing or imitating. That said, Born this way's tone of defiance seems dated, as if she's picking an easy fight, one that's already been won - by someone else (the Big M). There is heaps of Lady Gaga self-mythologising going on here, where being yourself is equated with an extravagant dress sense, how long will it be before it all becomes self-parody, we wonder.

Still, this stomps along rather nicely with its glitter ball and platform boots in tow - 'Just put your paws up' she urges. I can already see the cat clawing at the curtains dance routine. Lets just hope the video is an improvement on the dire one she did for Alejandro, which was another Madonna retread. Gaga has to visually be a feast of style innovation, because the music rarely is.

QUOTATION MARKS 32

2011-02-06T09:28:00.003Z

We try not to have opinions about things we cannot affect

GILBERT & GEORGE

FEATURE 71 - Adele

2011-02-04T20:25:00.005Z

Oh, I can't find enough superlatives, to match the feeling she's conjuring up in me, so I wont try. Here's three of the best live recordings, always a good test of real talent.

DIARY 136 - Saying 'No' More Often

2011-02-04T19:39:00.010Z

I've started swimming regularly since January swept in. Only once a week as yet, but I'm planning to up it to twice a week by the end of this month. This has generally been helping my back and Osteo-arthritis. It can make my joints ache more the day after, but the rest of the week is generally characterised by less joint pain and stiffness. So far so good.

This week I've had an underlying feeling of irritation, quite what about

remained spectacularly unspecific. I can take a guess at what I think is the right ball park. I believe it comes down to time on the Show of Hands project getting squeezed by other commitments I've made. Its another of my intentions for this year to give more consideration to what I agree to being involved in, to say 'No' more often. Until this current project is finished I can't really begin in earnest with newer projects such as :improvements to the Stupa Area; gathering a group together to organise and pool ideas for this years Windhorse Wesak.

My parents gave me a cheque for Christmas, quite a substantial one, which surprised me. It's some sort ofhanding on money so the tax man can't get his mittens on it. Anyway, this has prompted me to set up a savings Cash ISA and make a Standing Order to set aside a regular amount per month. Being able to save money is something that's very new for me. Most of my life I've just got by on whatever I have, and making it last till the end of the month. Saving obviously will require me to reduce my weekly spending a bit, which is probably no bad thing. I'll have to learn to say 'No' more often.

However, Jnanasalin and I are planning a long weekend away in Oxford at the end of the month, which I'm saving for, and looking forward to. I went there last year with Saddharaja, but we barely scratched the surface of what there is to see. I think there will be as much focus on good food as good places to visit. Usually we are quite lucky with weather on our early breaks, so fingers crossed it stays true to form.

I'm listening to Patti Smith's seminal album Horses, Birdland is playing in the background as I write. I'm reacquainting myself with how radical, earthy and really really out there she actually is. I've also bought her book Just Kids about her love for and creative relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I'm barely a third of the way through, but it is colourfully evocative re-telling and extremely well written, as you'd expect from a poet.

One down side of my Osteo-arthritis is I'm experiencing periods of waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning. My major joints becoming so tender they say 'No' to slumber. I end up tossing and turning fitfully for my remaining hours in bed. When Jnansalin is away, as he is at the moment, I tend to put the light on , or get up. Today I was up drinking coffee and having breakfast at 3.30am, watched a couple of Time Team episodes consecutively and found some great videos of my new fave rave singer Adele, of whom there will no doubt be more later. Sometimes one can find simple compensations for everything.

WORK IN PROGRESS - Show of Hands - Stages 7+8+9

2011-02-04T18:27:00.017Z

Though I haven't written about it since I resumed painting at the end of December,I have been plugging away at the Show of Hands hanging, ever since. Week on week it gets closer to completion. I estimate I'm about a fortnight away from finishing.

I have one more hand to collect, and I know whose that will be. Since the New Year I've struggled to maintain my enthusiasm for the project. The methodical pace and meticulously followed sequencing my painting always entails, does eventually drive me potty. I just want to get it finished! I want to be free of thinking about it, to be able to follow up new ideas. As it is I'm spending every moment of project time devoted to it.

The painting sequence is by this stage so hard wired, it has to be followed rigorously. After I finished painting the background stripes - I was painting all the hands white - then painting them alternating gold and iridescent gold - then outlining the gold hand squares in dark blue -then varnishing the background with matt varnish - then varnishing the hands in gloss varnish, then outlining the iridescent gold hand squares in gold framing paint - all the while touching up the bits where paint still flakes off - drat it!

There's still quite a bit to do, but what remains is not as labour intensive,and hence less time consuming. The final hand needs collecting, painting white, then iridescent white, then background matt varnished, the hand gloss varnished and gold outlined - The green border needs re-painting - Thin battening needs buying, priming, painting white and fastening to the canvas. - The squares need to be re-numbered, and decide whether the names should go on there as well. - I need to produce a 'legend' of whose hand is where - the title and explanation of what it is needs painting on the bottom - Finally I need to figure out how to move it without cracking the surface, and how to get it high up on the end of a warehouse aisle. Then of course to carry these manoeuvres out. Once hung, then, as Quentin Crisp phrased it, it will most probably hang there 'until its dead.'

FEATURE 70 - Test Dept - Total State Machine & Bang On It

2011-01-09T18:51:00.011Z

Ah! in the bygone days of the eighties, when 'Industrial' ruled the musical fringes of a new world. The natives were getting ready to revolt over the Poll Tax. Test Dept were cutting and edgy then, stripped to the waste as if imitating the hard physical toil of an industrial steelworker. Their early releases,such as 'Total State Machine' from 1984 were terrifying, consisting of metal sheets being whacked by metal pipes, grossly over amplified. The resulting sound possessed all the impressive theatrical grandeur and sweaty magnificence of a Marxist state sponsored event. Though it bore tinges of homo-eroticism, it remains a predominantly masculine music, similar to Heavy Metal. I would guess female fans would be rare. It was never for the faint hearted, those with insipid or overly refined musical tastes, or anyone whose humanity had been completely drained of semen or blood.

Here by the mid-nineties they've embraced the then prevalent dance culture, its a more accessible sound, though still with the metal clashing and bashing. 'Music is a weapon of the Truth' someone intones portentously over the opening of 'Bang on it'. Though they were often too overtly political for my tastes, we need such passionate and committed people now. Where are they when you need them? Who will awaken them from sleep? They're probably drinking real ale down the pub, nursing their beer guts and grudges about the continuing parlous state of socialism.

FEATURE 69 - The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Faith Healer

2011-01-08T18:25:00.004Z

I remember I first heard SAHB Faithhealer emerging menacingly from the radio. I was simply just so blown away by the atmosphere of it, I rushed out and bought the vinyl album 'Next' with its striking black and silver stripped artwork. I think I had to take it back a few times because the pressing I bought skipped and jumped through out this track, eventually, years later I bought a tape version. Now I don't even have to buy it again, I can just listen to it to my hearts content on Spotify. The wonders and benefits of the advancing technology.

DIARY 135 - Sitting On The Bluest Of Edges

2011-01-02T09:39:00.016Z

A deep existential melancholy fell upon me early in this New Year, like a dense fog it shrouded and wove itself into the bedrock of everything I encountered. Like the weather, it did blow over, retreating over the horizon, out of sight and of mind. Covered over once more with the cheery disposition that I habitually present to the world. Yet everything that arises and falls does so in response to all the internal and external conditioning phenomena fluctuating and changing. So this view I have of an immutable me, however much I might reify it, is subject to the same subtle adjustments, shifting transitions, whether slow or rapid in time. Moods change, but each mood change itself taints and colours my next experience. It changes because my response to responses changes, and so it goes - like dominoes.

So I had this existential weariness compiled from a wide range of influences and responses. Initially it seemed triggered on Boxing Day by sitting through a film I was not remotely interested in. To be further compounded by two days of unremitting boredom manning Reception at work. After the never ceasing run of activity in the run up to Christmas, I was looking forward to that relentless sequence of planning and buying, to stop. But that was when the mood slapped me in the face. It showed me exactly how tired I was, physically, mentally and spiritually. Nothing seemed worth lighting a candle for any more, let alone putting further effort into. Why indeed should I bother?

My back had been troubled since the end of November. I spend most days, these days, trying to manage or minimise the conditions that cause the arising of joint pain. The Osteo-arthritis in my hands continues at a pace. Every joint from my wrist and up the thumb having become tender and sharply painful three months ago, and remained so. When I was younger I'd help my Grandma open jam jars because her Osteo meant she no longer could. At its worst this is becoming my situation too. Humbled by no longer being able to carry heavy objects in one hand alone. I'm also getting the feeling the Osteo is beginning to set up shop in my elbows too. This tenderness in the joints means my sleep is regularly restless so I regularly awaken tired, stiff and aching.

When all these conspire to be at there worst simultaneously, I can feel so weary. I have in the past relished putting my energy into things. But now, anything I do of a physical nature has a painful consequence either instantly or the next day, and sometimes can linger on for days, weeks, even months. The pain, aided and abetted by my response to it, has a draining effect on my energy. I am having to get used to becoming easily tired, adapting my work rate to assume a slower and more measured pace.

Unsurprisingly my daily meditation practise has collapsed. I haven't the energy or resolve to discipline myself on two fronts, just getting my body up and ready for work is enough. If I forced myself to meditate any remaining desire to practise the spiritual life would be swallowed up in corrosive resentment. Reluctantly, I've had to let go of any expectation that I can, or should, meditate regularly. On retreat, with no other drains on energy, then I can meditate. Another conditioning factor is that for many years my meditation hasn't exactly been sparkling with life, it's become rather innocuous. The motivation to arise early for yet another grapple with a lifeless squib, is just not there any more. Should conditions change then this situation might change, though ironically its my own physical conditions I don't have complete control over.

This means the major arena for my spiritual practise is now firmly in everyday life. Specifically two areas; how I respond and deal with the inevitability of decreasing energy and increasing physical limitations; and the creativity I can bring to my work day to day. One strongly affects the other ,so inextricable linked are they. This incipient dwindling of my physical capacities is the first substantial whiff of my body ageing and ultimately its impermanence. Arising from this swamp is the sour hearted beast of unsatisfactoriness, blowing hot and cold on my sense of who I am,the foundations of how I like to be, in myself, and in the world. Oh bugger!

DIARY 134 - And A Merry Christmas Was Had By All

2010-12-26T18:15:00.018Z

With three folk down and out, the remaining four of us in Abbey House No 1 Community, still managed to lay out a good festive spread. Dressing up the table and ourselves. It was quite an occasion and fun too!

THE MENU :-

Starters - Garlic Mushrooms with lemon tarragon mayonaise & green salad

Main Course -Homemade Nut Roast, all the festive vegetables, Quorn Roast, Yorkshire Puds, Veggie Sausages wrapped in fake bacon, freshly made gravy.

Dessert - Homemade Christmas Pudding with brandy sauce.

Drinks - Grape Schloer or water.

After a brief break to wash up, we prepared a table of nibbles for a few friends who were coming round after 3pm. The fire was lit, and we watched White Christmas, tucking into cheese and biscuits, homemade Christmas Cake & Mince Pies etc etc, until we were all thoroughly stuffed.

WORK IN PROGRESS - Show of Hands - Stage 5+6

2010-12-26T17:11:00.014Z

I had to abandon the December 18th deadline because of severe back pain exacerbated by the build up of stress as other projects/commitments increasingly demanding my attention. So, after nearly a months enforced break ( bending over a large canvas laid out across a floor did me no favours ) I tentatively renewed work on the Show Of Hands painting. I'm attemping to pace myself, but back strain seems to occur retrospectively hours after I've already done too much, making it hard to monitor in the moment.

I've stopped working on it at home. It needs to be laid out permanently flat from now on. All that rolling up overnight didn't help the 'flaky paint syndrome'. The original PVA I used to stabilise this, was just some old stuff I had lying around, the fresh stuff I bought recently, turned out to be washable. As soon as I put acrylic paint on it a chemical reaction that presumably makes it washable produces a crackling effect in the paint surface. Who knows I might be able to consciously use this effect in the future, but in this project its a bit of a pain. It disappears as soon as I apply a second coat, ( more work ! ) some colours are only thin washes, not solid colour, so a second coat would make them too dark. You can't really see the crackling from a distance, its one of those accidental mistakes I'm just having to learn to live with.

As far as the collecting of hand out lines goes I'm now down to the last few hands. I know who's missing and I'll no doubt get these four over the next few weeks. If not I'll just have to get more creative. I've already had some fun with it, creating squares for the Buddha's hand and for BooBoo - Sundara's dog.

This week I re-painted the border a darker green/grey colour which brought the colours of the hand squares much further forward. The end

effect I'm working for will have a subtle depth effect going on between alternate squares. The new border colour also gives it a more even finish. I've been battling for weeks with little bits of the old terracotta border flaking off and sticking to areas I've freshly painted. Through this process I've discovered that to stabilise the canvas surface I should've not only primed it with waterproof PVA, but slapped layers of white emulsion on it. This would also have produced a smoother painting surface. Too late now of course. This painting has produced lots of such difficulties and learning curves.

I'd estimate I'm about two thirds of the way through. I can see what the future stages of work will be to take me towards the finishing line. If next week is quiet in the warehouse I could make substantial progress. Keeping a weather eye on my back as I go, of course.

FEATURE 68 - These New Puritans

2010-12-20T19:50:00.003Z

Not that sure about these guys, sometimes their vision and ambition just tips over into a tight arsed pompous pretension. But this track We Want War has such a grand magnificence to its sweep I can't help but find it addictive. Their chosen palette ranges across a broad musical spectrum from Holger Hiller and early Test Department on the arty left wing to Rammstein and Laibach on the slightly uncomfortable echoes of fascism right wing. This video is a suitably enigmatic performance that places itself left of centre.

TOP TUNES OF 2010

2010-12-18T14:25:00.011Z

HARD TO PICK JUST ONE SONG FROM 'THE SUBURBS' BUT THIS ONE WILL DO

ONE HELL OF A STRONG SONG SUNG WITH GREAT POIGNANCY

FEET TAPPING EXHILARATION - SHAME THE REST OF THE ALBUM DIDN'T QUITE MATCH IT

MUCH UNDERRATED SONG - THIS ORIGINAL VIDEO IS CRACKING - IT'S THE ALIEN DANCER THAT MAKES IT !

A STUNNING TUNE BEAUTIFULLY SUNG - I'M STILL CAPTIVATED BY THIS WOMAN'S VOICE

MOODY MAGNIFICENCE FROM THE SWEDISH TREE SHAMAN

I CHALLENGE ANYONE NOT TO TAP YOUR FEET OR GET UP AND DANCE WHEN THIS IS ON

ADDICTIVE SONG PERFORMED WITH A LIFE AFFIRMING ZEAL, WHICH REMAINS TOUCHING

CLASSIC GAGA SONG GRAFTED ONTO THIS HOMAGE TO TARANTINO - IT COULD ONLY BE DOWN HILL FROM HERE ON - AND IT WAS

WINNING THIS YEARS MUSICAL MINIMALISM AWARD

PLUS AN OLD ONE I'M STILL FOND OF FROM THE FIRST COCTEAU TWINS ALBUM - FILLED WITH SHIMMERS OF MAGIC AND DARK FOREBODING

FEATURE 67 - The Late Great Captain Beefheart

2010-12-18T09:13:00.000Z

FEATURE 66 - Jeremy Hunt rhymes with.....

2010-12-06T18:18:00.003Z

Somewhat disbelieving that I heard what I thought I'd heard on the Today programme. But yes, the venerable Naughtie did indeed accidentally exchange the C from Culture Secretary with the H of Hunt. Laugh, I nearly wet my crotch with spilt coffee.

FEATURE 65 - Kraftwerk - Autobahn

2010-12-05T09:25:00.004Z

Seriously surreal - this is the original animated film created for Autobahn by two British animators- quite odd in a 'what are they trying to say with this' sort of way, and probably very much of its time too perhaps, well its just been given it to the BFI Archive.

FEATURE 64 - Miranda

2010-12-03T16:48:00.005Z

Oh great great joy, now Miranda is back on the BEEB. The first series was such an innocent pleasure, cheesy in a good way, old fashioned whilst being ever so knowing, all those pratfalls, slapstick, farce and confessionals to the audience, not to mention the winks! You think - I'm too old to be laughing at this sort of stuff - just before you splutter half chewed mini Cheddar's onto your carpet at the 'nude fondue' line. It's also good to laugh because it's genuinely witty, not rude, unpleasant, or littered with so called edgy cringe inducing humour (i.e more expletives than adjectives ) She's pure unadulterated genius - Hurrah for Monday nights!!

WORK IN PROGRESS - Show of Hands - Stage 4

2010-11-29T21:28:00.011Z

After a whole weekends work

its moved on considerable, the final form its going to have is almost fixed now. Still a lot of 'colouring in' to be done between now and the 18th December when it ideally should be finished.

WORK IN PROGRESS - Show of Hands - Stage 3

2010-11-27T08:20:00.011Z

Well,things progress slowly but surely. But it is pretty clear to me now what the real size and scale of this project is, its huge. A lot of intense work will have to take place if it's to be finished by the 17th Dec. Still not certain I will be able to do it. This anxiety has made me bring it home with me, to work on it over the weekend, hopefully to push it on more significantly.

Because painting time during the week is precious, I've not been able to complete collecting hand outlines this week. I do however have the majority, 80 out of a possible 107ish. Only 27 more to go! Though using the recycled packaging for the canvas was a good idea, its not proving that stable a surface. It takes the paint but only as a skin that tends to flake off in places where the textile is creased or uneven. I've base coated it in polyurethane varnish, followed by PVA Glue, the latter usually fixes most things, but not 100% here. Too late, I've realised I should have fully coated the canvas with PVA first, before applying the primer. But that said it is manageable. It means every time I move it some surface will come off that I'll have to re-paint later. So moving has to be kept to a minimum. In the meantime I'll just keep slapping on layers of PVA until it holds.

The 'colouring in' is going well, and looks good too. Because I'm painting something five and a half by one and a half metres, I went for the cheapest student range of acrylics I could afford. In terms of time this has probable not been a cost effective choice. My colourways were worked out in artists quality acrylic, which covered well,and gave good density in one coat, whereas the student quality takes a couple of coats to cover and achieve a moderate density. I've doubled my workload by making this choice. However, my outlay on paint would have more than doubled otherwise.

Considering I've never painted something of quite this size before, I actually think I'm doing really well.

CD REVIEW - Brian Eno/Small Craft On A Milky Sea

2010-11-21T10:37:00.006Z

It's quite a while since I've been excited by the stuff that Eno's released over recent decades. Either he's released more ambience into the world than it either needs, cares for, or can take, or its the well modulated, smooth, sonically controlled songs of Another Day On Earth. Though these have been pleasant additions to the lexicon, they elict no cigars for innovation. Only in his collaborative work, has there ever been some sense of exploration. But this has always been so, from Roxy through Talking Heads, Bowie and U2 on. Working with other peoples ideas in conjunction with his own appears to loosens the creative reins of control, where something random and often magically unexpected happens.

His work with Fripp having long ago reached an impasse, it was only on Drawn from Life with Peter Schwalm, (2001) that we last saw Eno really make a concerted attempt at breaking out of his neat oblique process. It surprises me that this process, allegedly so experimental and changeable, can end up producing a body of recent work so uniformly consistent in character. Perhaps he has indeed become defined, if not confined, within his own working process and created his own musical category - Enoesque

Small Craft on a Milky Sea, however, does frequently gouge new grooves into his undoubtedly broad range of recordings. Maybe this comes from the 'improvisatory' nature of the source material. On 'Horse','2 Forms of Anger,Flint March' 'Paleosonic' and 'Dust Shuffle' we hear an Eno I thought had almost become extinct, one with sharp, aggressive, harsh, even discordant edges. Music one might even cut oneself on, or find difficult listening. To someone brought up on 'No Pussyfooting' oh what great joy it is to hear these tracks!

Yes, there are still plenty of the recumbent, languid landscapes, as on 'Emerald and Lime' and the rather beautiful title track 'Small Craft on a Milky Sea, but these are rather contained, refined examples of the form he created. The album moves through a range of film like moods, suggestive of reflection, apprehension, transcendence, anger or fearfulness, in equal measure. Just when you've relaxed into a dreamy imaginary sunset, there comes an exultant storm of energy. Producing one of his most satisfying albums for quite some time.

POEM - Can I Help?

2010-11-15T21:24:00.005Z

CAN I HELP?

I sit and listen

often for eons

as some doctor

would attend a patient

ready to speak

that apposite thing

to pin it correctly

wherever it truly

belongs

I wait

and wait, perhaps

it's this

perhaps

not, or not now,

perhaps, maybe

there is no clue

perhaps, no answer

that on hearing

will crystallise

or freeze mud

nothing is ever said

like an

un-flawed diamond

perfectly

which is

oddly disconcerting

as if all life

or at least mine

were to depend on it

for ease of purpose

I lift a crook hand

point its arthritic finger

at the moon

and sigh

like a sack butt

at the impossibility

of really knowing

Dh Vidyavajra

written 24/10/2010

WORK IN PROGRESS - Show of Hands - Stages 1 + 2

2010-11-15T17:52:00.012Z

I've started work on an artwork/hanging, which will include all the hand outlines of everyone in the business I work for. I hope it will be an enjoyable collective process to be part of, and conclude by creating a unifying visual image for Windhorse

THE FIRST STAGE

Has been preparing the canvas, painting it white, and putting PVA Glue on the edges to stop them fraying further. The canvas is made from eight flattened out product packaging, this is made from a woven synthetic fabric that was wrapped around some jute rugs we sell

THE SECOND STAGE

I drew out a grid of 108 squares into which the hands will be eventually be drawn, and painting the surrounding border a terracotta red.

I'm currently working out the basic background pattern that will go behind the hands, and the colours I'm going to use. This week I start harvesting the hand outlines, which no doubt will be a unique event in itself.

WHAT WAS THAT? - Example No 1

2010-11-14T16:17:00.003Z

In Cambridge Central Library, a man with two young children. one looks up to his Father and asks ' Dad, what are those books called where nothing happens in them, and they help you relax?'

Indeed, what are they? I'd really love to know.

DIARY 133 - There is a light and it never goes out

2010-11-12T18:10:00.010Z

This has not been a sleep friendly week. Opposite our bedroom window in Abbey House is the back entrance to a Homeless Access Clinic. Since the arrival of Autumn and denuded trees, there is nothing between us and 'them'. So at night there is a light, supposed to be activated by motion, that turns off after twenty seconds, though this week,once on, its stayed on all night. It's a very very bright lamp, shining like a perpetual new dawn, or a prison camp searchlight trained onto our windows, lest we should escape into the land of slumber.

The consequence for me is, that even if I do manage to get to sleep, I wake two hours later thinking its morning, and a return to sleep eludes me. On one of the two nights when the light didn't illuminate the entire Western world, the area had a power cut that set off a burglar alarm in a building near by. This proceeded to tweet disconsolately all night. So I've tried wearing an eye mask ( hot, sweaty and uncomfortable after a while ) or ear plugs. Neither of which provides a fully comfortable solution I'm afraid.

As the week has progressed I've gradually become internally more grumpy, on edge, and easily irritated by inconsequential things. On Thursday I was picking in the warehouse and found negative views of others taking me over, really getting into grinding on old axes. I tried my best to temper it, but it has to be said not always effectively. Sad to have to acknowledge that my practice has yet to reach some areas, though I guess I should give myself credit for at least noticing. But today on my ninth day of sleep deprivation, I do understand why its such an effective tool for torturers. Your will does get increasingly sapped of resolve, as physically it gets harder to hold your life together. So this Saturday, finding a blackout blanket, to hell with the expense, is a priority. I feel as though I'm faltering on some sort of mental and physical precipice. that I don't want to fall over.

FEATURE - Bellowhead - New York Girls

2010-11-07T19:33:00.002Z

As a Morris Dancer of old, this music just makes me want to get up and shake a leg around in gay abandon.