Saturday!

4:35 p.m.
               Went to Liberton Hospital today. And what a bitching hot day!! It was the best summer's day you could imagine and it's  not May yet.
                I sat down to meditate yesterday morning at half past nine. I didn't stop till it was nearly twelve and this quite threw me for the rest of the day. I hadn't been expecting to sit for so long. I felt as if I'd lost an hour.
                 Last night I went to a show called Neu Reekie with Poisonous. Most enjoyable it was!! They had poets and music and animations and all for £5 to get in. The bottles of wifebeater weighed in at £2 a bottle, so it was a very worthwhile evening. Poisonous insisted in going to The World's End afterwards, mainly because it has an association with horror, but I'd run out of cash by that time so everyone got home safe.

The Emphysemic Express

Friday 5:20 p.m.

                         I did not go to Bellshill today because the auld maw was going to be watching the royal wedding, and I'd rather do just about anything else. So I meditated three times and went for a run along the Ravelstone Dykes and that's the day done. No time to read a paper or bugger all!

                         I've been out running about three times in the last eight days. I'm just getting into my secret training schedule to defeat the old, toothless one and gain possession of his vast quantity of pornographic DVDs. You should ideally do a short fast one, a regular run and then a long slow distance one. I'll start banging in the sprints as of next week. 

                         During the last run, I was wheezing along Ravelstone Terrace and completed freaked this couple, particularly the wummin who quite jumped to the side, shouting Oh My God, What's that!? as I plodded past. Her partner seemed to get a bit of a fright too. It's The Emphysemic Express, I shouted as I left them trailing in my coughing and hawking wake. But by the time the old, toothless one gets on the starting line I'll be ready!!!

                      

This City!

Tuesday!
              The first couple of photies are of the day. The bus stop. And the last four are of the afterwards.The alottment.
              The best bit of the day was rewarding the Africans girls for helping me at lunchtime. Oratile is far smarter than moi. Patience is her pal. Euan, the Scottish kid, was the best of the bunch. This is a joe you would want to be in the trenches with. Stolid, Scottish, Black Watch, few words, engineer, but heart of gold. I wrote them all references today. To take away. Into this hard, harsh world. Phone home when you get lost out there kiddos, and I will remember yous. They go on exam leave tomorrow.
               I wrote something on the other blog about ra bliss just before coming here. Or pragmatism..Oh, how happy I am to have that liberty, that escape from the pressure from the folk who don't give a damn really, the awfully appalling mismatched bits and pieces, the chappies who are my deep dear friends, the last of all the clickiness when I tried to discard everyone when the statcounter thingy went passed twenty, apart from the women in Shreveport and Skye, who are not cynical.
            Well, I got rid of the sociopath, but I did like him and he was my chummie. Still, I should get the currants out of my life, and no longer stand by and just stare and not bother.
            I think Marie Rex is a much better person than anyone else I know. I met  her once for a few hours. She's had her arms broken, jaw broken, been abused and abandoned ...  Albert is someone who would not try to hurt you, but lacks almost everything. To say that he would not try to hurt you doesn't mean he wouldn't phone up your estate agent and tell them that you're house is falling down just for a laugh, well, he's got a weird sense of humour. Mingin' is so unable to do yoga ... he and Albert share  this amazing stiffness ... it is the weird hatred that the evil bourgeios project on their children, this stiffness, self hate, and lack of empathy ... anyway, they don't meditate, do they, Jack? Of course, they don't, Hotboy. No bound for hell, just in hell, the stupid basturns!

Apple and Cherry Blossom time!

Easter Monday 7:05 p.m.
                                      I guess we had our summer today. Gorgeous in the allotment, so it was. The views without blossoms are from where I was sitting meditating.
                                      The old, toothless one is away in his caravanette to Spango for a couple of weeks. He told me he's  left me his vast collection of pornographic DVDs in his will. We went running on Thursday and he's been running nearly every day since he became unemployed over a year ago, so he was in much better shape for running than me. I'm carrying a least a stone in fat still. But by the time he comes back .... I'll pretend I haven't been running and challenge him to a race up yon hill down Costorphine. He's so competitive he's bound to have a heart attack half way up. So, I'll go out soon and do the Ravelstone Dykes run to start getting myself in shape. That'll be three runs in the last four days. Here comes Slim Jim!

Easter Sunday

8:40 p.m.
              This is the time of sunset,  a very good time to meditate, so I'll just go and do a bit of that now then! My cunning plan this month was not to make home brew and spend all my money before the end of the month. so I should be sober and straight till Thursday anyway. That'll be a change!!

Good Friday!

5:05 p.m.
              I never heard a thing and didn't know it was there till it was rubbing round my legs. A Mike Tyson of a pit bull crossbreed. Then it went away and came back and jumped up, and did this a few times. I crossed the road after the tee junction corner where I'd encountered the dog and wondered if it might get run over. It didn't seem too smart with the traffic. Crossed the road again, but everything missed it. There was a mixed group of young folk by a gate and an older couple a gate along. I wondered if the dog was their dog, but it wasn't. I went off to cross the road again at the place just before where I take these photies, and the dog went to rub round the legs of the young group of people. Then it went to the older couple.  The auld boy shouts over and asks if it's my dug. Naw, it's no ma dug!
              I reckon it had escaped from the breeding cages in the house next door to the auld maw's. A happier looking biting machine you couldn't have wished for.
              The auld maw will be watching the Royal Wedding on the telly next Friday. I said I'd be going to see if there was a disturbance on the Royal Mile since there was word of a spontaneous gathering of non-monarchists to be held there next Friday. The polis will lift you, says the auld maw. At sixty? Somehow I don't think so. If I could get Poisonous tanked up, they might lift him!!

Wonderful Thursday!

Noon
         That's me just finished the first meditation of the day. It lasted over two hours which is unusual. I can't sit in a lotus for two hours, but if I lay the legs flat on the floor ....
          This morning I put a statcounter on my new blog about the bliss and checked it soon after. There was one visitor and that one came from the Langholm area. What a good omen! It must have someone from the Samye Ling. The only person I've told about blogging from there is Germe, the Gatekeeper to Nirvana, who mans the reception desk. Quite often when I've been down there the only person I ever speak to is Germe; to say hello when I get there and goodbye when I leave. A wee while ago he told me he'd been there seventeen years and had only left to visit the dentist. What a fortunate creature he is!!
            After lunch I'll cycle down to Tesco's and spend some of the twenty quid I've got left till I get paid next Thursday. I'm going to buy lentils and flour and such so I won't have money left for any alcohol till next Thursday. Hurrah!!
2:50 p.m.
           I bought two kilos of stoneground flour, eight onions, five bananas, and a kilo of tatties for ..... £5. No wonder Tesco's are taking over the world. Dearie me!! I could still have four bottles of German beer tonight. Boo!
9:15 p.m.

          
        I went to meditate up at the allotment this afternoon. Sat outside the hut with my back to the post which holds up the wires the raspberries cling to. Then I sat there with my cardigan over my head because I didn't want to face the sun any longer. The old doll up to the right is a real asset. She talks. She's the best of the English accented middle classes you find in EH4. Between sittings I watered the tatties. She engaged me in conversation. She said the steam rising off the tattie rows just showed how hot the sun was today. Then it grew cold and I came home and found the consigliere waiting at my door.

       The first tattie leaves have started to show just as the daffodils have started to die away. Such is life. One of the photies if of shallots, I think. Cherry blossom and apple blossom. Life accelerates at such a pace at this time of year; it so dynamic, you can't keep pace. The winter seems so stable by comparison. When you live among and just with the pavements and the buildings, you don't notice all this stuff. Nature. Everything is so happening just now that you wish you had more eyes and could freeze it for a while maybe.
        The consigliere came round this evening and uploaded two books onto Kindle. That's three done, only seven to go!

The Way Ahead!

Wednesday 5:40 p.m.
                                 You don't want to have lots of this and that going through your mind if you want to spend time in higher meditative states. You don't want to be busy when you're not meditating, or picking up stress that will stop you minding quickly calming when you hit the cushion.
                                  I miss not writing just now, and I've sometimes told myself that I should go back to it, but working to get books uploaded onto Kindle has made me realise that I was right the first time. I have to do less things, not more things. I need life to become duller and quieter.
                                  I hope if I can just put in some effort over the next couple of weeks, after that I won't have to bother with anything for a long time. I've edited the scan of the City book and now I'll have to do the same for the Cyclists. I could get away with leaving it at that, but I think I should read the book about the town of Bugs and make sure it's okay, and read the Futures book (which is already on Kindle) to convince myself that it isn't complete crap. It's a long time since I had to read that and ....
                                  I'm  going to start another blog about the bliss soon. If you look at my profile for the writing blog, you'll be able to find the bliss blog as well. A couple of the books which are going to be put on Kindle have quite a connection to meditation and maybe folk interested in those books might fancy a look at a blog about meditation. I'm not going to allow comments on the new bliss blog. But I'll keep this blog up for the usual drunken rants.
                                  I'm not long out of the bath after doing the first decent run in about a month, maybe more. Considering the length of time ... it was really good and most enjoyable. Talking about meditation to the old, toothless one as we jogged down Ravelstone Dykes, which looks gorgeous just now with the cherry blossoms all aglow, made me realise that this blog is not appropriate for jotting down stuff about meditation.
                                  Flatheids just don't get the bliss, Jack. Don't even talk about it to the too dumb to meditate, Hotboy. They're never going to meditate. They'll just grow to resent you for it. It's a shame they're all going to die like dogs, Jack. So it is, Hotboy, but that's not your fault!!
10:21 p.m.
                                   I've just set up a blog about the bliss to complement the one about the writing, and there will be no comments from the halfheids, flatheids, the evil bourgeois, the disgustingly featherbedded and bound for hell .... apart from that, I wouldn't have minded letting Mary Queen of Scots and one or two others comment on it, but I don't know how to exclude some folk and not others. It's such a liberation to be able to write about the bliss and not be held back by concerning myself about an audience of complacent evil bourgeois basturns! So bye bye, and I'll be back here to insult you later. I'm just sorry I can't take little Jack with me.
                                  Well, Hotboy, not everyone can be in two places at once. Not yet, Jack. Not yet!

My diggings and plantings are over!

Tuesday 7:20 p.m.
                            I went up to the allotment today after coming home from the jobbie and finished the diggings and plantings for this year. Of course, the Domestic Bliss hasn't started her stuff yet, which is the cabbage and broccoli patch, but I've dug that over for her, and now all that left for me is the weedings and the grass cuttings.
                            I was seriously thinking of starting another blog today, one in which I write about meditation and the bliss, and such like. More of a personal blog with no comments and not telling anyone where it was.
                            There's no point in telling flatheids about meditation and the bliss and stuff like that, is there, Jack? It's only taken about six years to figure that one out, Hotboy. At least, they cannot say you never gave it a bash!
                             I'll keep this one up though for the drunken ramblings and allotmenteering and such like, and I'm going to put something on my writing blog right now!
                             Loved seeing the frog this evening. And I couldn't resist another fire!

The unmentionables!

11:50 p.m.
                I can't remember why I can't mention the names of  stuff I've written on this bloggy ... don't want stuff to be traced to me, I suppose.
                I finished editing a scan of a book I'd written in the 70s and 80s tonight. I haven't read it for decades. It was a bit purple on the prose front and I wouldn't have written it that way these days, but I did really like it. I never thought anything of it when I was writing it, but it does have something. It's a book about a city, or a state of mind.
                I'd forgotten lots of stuff that happened in that book so reading it was a bit of a revelation. I think some members of my family kind of had me marked down as the one who had that published. Of course, I didn't publish it. Other people did that and took the money.
                Despite its faults, I did enjoy editing it at the end, or through the second half. I think I must have tried quite hard to write it. I must have concentrated really hard and cared. Where did that joe go?

Almost the end of the diggings!!

Sunday 6:10 p.m.
                          We had our summer today in Chilly Jockoland, and I spent most of the afternoon up the allotment. I now only have a wee bit to dig and plant with onions down by the hut. I did an enormous dig for the Domestic Bliss so she could plant the cabbages and broccoli, and I'm now going to lie down in the bath and probably doze off!
                          But that's it just about over for another year. All I'll have to do now is weed and cut the grass along the edges. Hurrah!! For some reason the whole process has been much easier this year. I don't know why. But that's me finished before Easter and I can go back to the running, shadowboxing and whatnot. I've already organised to go for a run with the old, toothless one on Wednesday.
                           I love fire, Jack! I don't know what it is, but I just love it. Earth, air, water and fire, and the best of these is fire. Beautiful and dangerous and transforming. Where there was a dead bush .... there's just a grey mark on the ground. Now, for the bath time bliss!!

My deep, dear friend

Friday 12:10 p.m.
                           Just as I was about to give everything up, and was able to walk off the park of all the desires, I got a phone call from The Poisonous, who is my deep, dear friend! So instead of doing the bliss, and being amazed as I would have been, I tried to do some missionary work and discuss the blissiness with The Poisonous in the Cumberland Bar.
                          He is the end of all expectations.  He did not go to his mother's funeral. At least, his father had a funeral. He didn't go there either. His brother he doesn't like because his brother is a pervert. The big brother topped himself and his mother hated him. And after he topped himself, there was just silence. And the nice sister won't let the crazy brother near her children because they all know he is a pervert. What is a pervert in that house?
                       He is my deep dear friend. I haven't seen him for a while.We had some beers. They serve Erdinger in that bar.
                        I could have stayed at home.
                        Once when  St Teresa of Avila stayed at home, the archangel appeared and pierced her heart with a great big spear. He might have said: Here it comes, babes! Here is the giant spear. Take that!
                        It doesn't matter about the to dumb to meditate, and all that belief about the this and that. Pierced with a giant spear of love. What a day that would be!

The End of Scanning!

Friday 1:40 a.m.
                        I eventually got the damn computery scanner succubus to work this evening (after much travailing!) and have just finished scanning the Whitelight book. Of course, it was written by another joe since all my molecules have gone and been replaced several times since then. But I could see why it was published (thought it is a bit purpley!) as I looked at bits here and there. I did care about that book. I should have re-written it another twice, but it is what it is.
                       I heard on the radio that birds would never nest in a hole facing North. I wonder why. The wee bird box was facing north and, the first time I put it out, it was occupied almost immediately. But today I moved it round the hut and it now faces west. Because the west is the best. I planted two more beds of onions today.
                        You want something scanned, Jack? Just give it to me. I'll have to scan the Cyclists next and then I won't scan anything for ages, and the next time I have to do it, I'll have forgotten all I learned over the past week or so, and I'll hate having to learn about all this nonsense again. Well, such is life!
                        The wren's nest inside the hut is now fully formed, dry and awaiting an egg layer. I hope it gets one. The blossoms are coming out on a wee tree outside the hut. Can anybody guess what they are from?

More Scanning fun!

Thursday 8:10 p.m.
                             This morning I rechecked the CD I'd used to re-install the scanner. It's the wrong CD! For a Hewlett Packard scanner alright, but not a Scanjet 3300c. Why we had the CD is a mystery since we've only ever had one scanner.
                             Anyway, I went on the net and downloaded a driver for the Scanjet 3300c and got the scanner to work again! Hurrah!
                             When it was scanning the first eighty pages, it went slow at first, I think. I suppose using HP Intelligent Scanning Software it was getting used to the font or something. Anyway, it came good in the end that time.
                             So I've spent about four hours today trying to scan the rest of the book and it's not working at all. When you try to copy the text in the scanner box, it says: "The text is too difficult to process. Try selecting a smaller area (2127)".
                             (Of course, I tried to scan other bits of text on other bits of paper, some clearer than others and it said the same thing - too difficult to process)
                              It says in one of the help topic bits that you don't need to use a border thing with text. I tried putting a border on a wee bit of the text anyway, and it didn't work. But it's a wonderful message: "Try selecting a smaller area (2127)".
                              So four hours of my wonderful Thursday has been spent on achieving bugger all!
                              I told the consigliere a year ago that he could do what he liked with my books, but I wasn't doing anything. I didn't want involved. I just wanted to meditate. I changed my mind on this when I realised I could retire anytime now and got enthused about this Kindle thing.
                              If I have to go to the jobbie on Monday and start re-typing the second half of City Whitelight ... what a drag all this Kindle stuff is turning out to be!! I won't sell any books on it anyway!!
                              Last night I decided that today I'd just do a bit of digging and meditate. This morning I had a bright idea to download another driver and this bright idea has wasted so much of my previous life. I really don't like wasting time. Anyway, it's getting dark now and I'm away to the lobby to meditate, which is what I should have done in the first place!!!
                          

Wednesday Night Again!

10:40 p.m.
                Due to the amounts of ra bliss you may be getting, and such like, you think you can get away with it. You think you can buy an ounce of cannybliss and smoke it in ten days, and afterwards everything will be alright.   Or you think that maybe you can get over the nicotine addictions thus engendered by drinking some plonko collapso for a few nights thereafter and everything will be alright. You might even think you can handle the thoughts that arise as a consequence of these behavours, but I think this is delusional, Jack.
                 What thoughts aren't delusional, Hotboy? Don't give me this, Jack. I have to walk around in this world full of flatheids, and I would just like the thoughts that arise to be okay thoughts, and not have a savage bent to them.
                  So I  stopped smoking tobacco with the joints about four days ago. After four days you should be let out of jail, but you aren't really. There is still the addiction. There are still the unpleasant, and untrue, thoughts that arise. I have said before that nicotine withdrawal is a great lesson and helps you disbelieve in anything you are thinking about, but you still have to put up with it, and I'm going to really try and stop encountering this now.
                   How are you going to do that, Hotboy? By not smoking joints anymore, Jack. Won't you miss it, Hotboy?
                  I missed the fighting. I missed the adrenalin and the being alive and enduring the assaults. I missed the fornication, what little of it I had. But I did have it when I was in my prime, and I missed it when I stopped. And I missed the meat. And I missed the fish. And I missed the milk and the cheese. I still drink the beer. Franziskaner Weisbier.
                 Since I finished the cannybliss, it's been like being a flathied. Quite hard to settle. Quite hard to sit for long periods. Jumpy. Antsy. Flatheid.
                 But tomorrow is Thursday and there will be nothing to stop me doing the bliss. Unless you are doing it all the time, it's hard and it can be in prospect boring, but if you just do it all day, and ignore and disbelieve the stupid thoughts, you can ... do ra bliss, the satiation, the contentment. And so we struggle on, apart from the too dumb to meditate who just await the hammerblows!

Scanning Whitelight

Tuesday 9:25 p.m.
                            I started scanning the Whitelight book on Sunday. This is for Kindle. I don't have a digital copy. So I started scanning by failing to get the bloody thing to work. I thought it would be easy since I scanned all the other books on this scanner about six years ago and all it seemed to need was a new cable, which the consigliere got for me, and .... I couldn't get it to work. Day one of the nicotine withdrawals as well. After an hour and a half of trying to get the scanner to scan, I did get it to work, and spent some time scanning the first eighty pages.
                            I did the word processing on most of these pages over the last two days and went back to scan the rest of the book, but the scanner isn't working. There's a different reason for it not working just now. Before I didn't know what to do with the type of scan I was making (it took an hour and a half to realise I should be copying the text and pasting it!!), but this time it's not scanning at all.
                            It took a while to realise when the Domestic Bliss moved it (why?), it had become unconnected to the mains!!! Then it just wouldn't scan. So I uninstalled it and re-installed it and it still isn't working.
                            I started scanning about an hour and a half ago, and have scanned bugger all!
                            I hate machinery. I don't have a car. I never want to have a car. The Whitelight book was written on a manual typewriter. Wonderful, wonderful pieces of engineering are manual typewriters.

                            What did you think of the book, Hotboy? Well, that's the first time I've had to read it for some time, Jack. Lots and lots of adjectives. And suddenlys. I wrote it after writing two books and my chummies told me I should be writing something with a plot, so it was an attempt to do that, write something with pace that makes you want to keep reading it. Well, it does that. Actually, it was quite successful for me really. Hardback and paperback and I adapted it for a Monday Night Theatre on Radio 4. I just wish I could get the bloody scanner to work!
                            By Thursday night I would have been able to give it to the consigliere to upload onto Kindle and then I wouldn't have had to look at it ever again.
                            Normally, I haven't been attending to the writing business, and that's been fine. I want to spend as much time meditating as I can. I'm retired from the writing business as soon as I get all these books onto Kindle. I hate having all this crap on my mind.
                           Take me to the hut, Jack! Take me to the hut!
                          

The Hard Man

Monday 8:55 p.m.
                            We went to see The Hard Man at the Kings on Friday. Brilliant production! Fab acting! It was better than when I saw it in 1976, but there was an almost empty theatre, which was a shame. I hate going out on Fridays. I don't like going out, but I still go out quite a bit. So at least in the theatre there is a straight back, and I'm sometimes closing my eyes and falling into the bliss, and sometimes attending to the play.
                             Very evocative, it was. I visited Jimmy Boyle in the Special Unit in Barlinnie twice. The second time was for a meal. The first time I was there with my big brother. As I'm leaving his house in Riddrie, I stash the dope behind one of his pictures since I knew I'd be searched going into the jail. My brother asked me to carry a bottle of coke. When we got to the jail, I was searched, but my brother was not. In the cell he asked Jimmy if he wanted a drink, and Jimmy said no. So my brother and the Domestic Bliss tanned a half bottle of rum, of course with the coke. The second time we went there, the Domestic Bliss and I, I stashed the dope and smoked lots of it in the cell. Jimmy didn't smoke it.
                           Tom McGrath was standing at the end of a tunnel in the Little Lyceum. I was at the other end. I'm looking along at him and I think I should say hullo and thanks for getting me the three grand from the Scottish Arts Council, but I couldn't. All I had to do was walk up to him and say something. but I looked at him looking at the performance and I was stalled, and didn't. After his stroke, I sent him a letter saying thanks very much, but I don't know why I find it so difficult sometimes. Maybe it's because famous people could all be currants. But the famousy folk I've ever met have all been really nice.
                           One of the photies is of the new way to grow onions. Normally, you stick in the onion sets (wee onions) and they hardly grow at all. Last year I put some Growmore on top of them and that helped, but not much. The PHd botany wummin grew giant ones last year. She said fluffy compost base... blah, blah. Anyway, I've put every onion in a wee mound of compost and poured Growmore over them. This might not work, but the greater attention is because I work half time and have more money now; money to buy compost.