It's art, Jim, but not as we know it!

Sunday 12:15 a.m.
                            Watched a show about westerns on BBC Four this evening. Interpretations of westerns. How they applied to their times. Made me realise that some cats got it and some cats aint. John Ford.
                             Anyway, I'm starting to write something again these days, but when I watched that,  I realised that I couldn't write a decent novel to save myself. I haven't even read anything about how to do this. I have read a few novels, but didn't dissect them at all to try to find out how they were written. What are you supposed to do  if you want to produce one, that sort of thing?
                            I only ever got into writing as a lowest common denominator. I did want to do something creative, anything, something like that. Ask yourself what can you do. I did an arts degree at university. Any moron can do an arts degree. If you've got any brains at all, you should be doing mathematical physics. I realised that I couldn't do that kind of stuff, the stuff you need brains for, so I ended up doing an arts degree, one where all you had to do was learn how to produce an argument, write it down, and remember stuff. I knew smart folk did science, particularly physics. Sums.
                         To be good at meditating, you have to be able to sit, and try hard. I know that one josephine who comes here doesn't like to hear that you have to try hard, but maybe it's okay for them, but trying hard is all I've ever been able to offer. Effort. Make an effort.
                         I'm going down to the Samye Ling in a couple of weeks, and I can't say I'm really looking forward to this. The last time I was there to meditate, the moles crawled under my back, under the floor of the tent,  and exhausted me and I had to come home.
                         But it is a thing which requires no talent at all. For some reason you just have to want to do it.  So, over the last few days, the meditations have been wonderful, the progress has been progress, and I am not scared of walking along this way. The developments have been such that I cannot say there is anything bad or retrograde about this. This is ra bliss! This is ra bliss! This is ra bliss!