Bye Bye The Dug Up Joe!

Wednesday 12:20 a.m.
                                   I was expecting the Dug Up Joe, or it could have been the consigliere. Didn't matter. You either know how to put folk together or you don't. I'm sure the Dug Up Joe and the consigliere would have gotten along just fine. The consigliere thinks the Dug Up Joe is funny for one thing, and that's got to be a first. Compatible, they would have been. But although I was expecting the Dug Up Joe or the consigliere, who was standing there at the door but Brian Wilson, the saint of grossness, the fags sticking out of every hole in his face, the bottles of collapso grasped in both hands.
                                    It could have been a wee bit sophisticated, what with the Dug Up Joe and the consigliere both being non drinkers and dead smart in their different ways, and contemporaneous, though still too dumb to meditate ... I could have looked round at the telly while they had a wee rap, and it would have been so nicety nice, and they would have had a lot to say, and I could have landed softly on the wagon of departing desires.
                                   But with Brian Wilson arriving, the half chewed pig's face hanging out of his crumpled jacket pocket, in the end the two sober folk, who were the ones the gig was set up for, rushed off into the night of sobriety leaving moi to deal with Brian Wilson, and several trips to the off license and the silly non-sequitors like ... am I an alcoholic? Certainly not! That cart you pull behind you with the Chinese joe's liver attached with the wires and clicky beepy things is only your third liver, but who's keeping count?
                                   The Dug Up Joe is the poster boy for some eating disorder, so he was a good laugh anyway. I tried to get him to eat a piece of bread, and he said of course, and then only smelt it from a distance. Then he pretended he was going to take it away and left it behind, of course, like I knew he would what with him only weighing about seven stone and being five nine tall, a miserable skinimalink if ever you saw one.
                                   After the two interesting folk had to run away, Brian and I went to the off license again and then he became incoherent around ten o clock, and I was left with the carryout to finish on my own. This is why you should never socialise at all, especially with anyone else.
                                   Tomorrow I'm off to Newmains to sit in the kitchen with the mother-in-law. They won't be able to get at me there, Jack! No they won't!! Hurrah!

The Dug Up Joe looks a bit like this except half way through the hunger strike. Used to be a nice boy as well. Grief, sorrow, lamentations .... disillusionment, disappointment and despair ... suffering in this life. And, of course, too dumb to meditate!!!
                                 

In the War Against the Machines Part 5

Monday 12:15 a.m.
                              In order to be a writer these days apparently you have to spend hours and hours networking and enjoying the clicky clicky thing. This is nothing to do with writing, but something to do with self advertisement, and selling stuff on Kindle, and whatnot.
                              I am totally in favour of Kindle, by the way. Eventually, anything that's any good on these things will be stolen and all products will be free, and then the only people who write, because it will not be profitable, will be the folk who really want to write, or have that compulsion, and the people who want to write for money will all become chartered accountants instead.
                              If I was a young person and enjoyed the clicky clicky stuff as well as doing the writings, I'm sure I could make a go of this Kindle business. Because I think my stuff has some kind of value, at least to me. You could clicky clicky for about four hours a day and actually write for a couple of hours, and then the good stuff would rise to the surface because it would be free. The wonderful writings should be free. Did Julius Caesar expect to make any money out of the Gallic Wars? I do not think so, but what a great read that is!
                              So I think I should be making some kind of an effort with the clickiness, mainly because the consigliere has spent quite a bit of his valuable time on uploading this stuff, and I'm trying to do this tonight ... like tell someone to read one of my books on these thread things, and the fung Amazon monster tells me  it does not recognise me, and I can't do this unless I buy something. Well, I have done that, but would do it again, like buy something of my own since I will get 70% back anyway, and the giant monster corporation tells me that I do not have a device registered, even although I have just tried to buy this crap using this device.
                             And another nineteen year old kid has been arrested for being an autistic joe who only opens his door to let his mother hand in the take aways, and he's looking for .... is it more wee green men on the Pentagon computery shite things? Something like that.
                              I started reading books again when I was in Newmains where there are no beepy beepy things, and computery crap to steal your life away. I only got to the second chapter of Giovanni's Room. Smoke pot, read books, and throw all this computery beep beep shite into the bin!!! There is no peace. No calm. Well, everyone has a bit of autism, I suppose. Ars longa vita brevis!

The Pension!

Sunday 11:30 a.m.
                            I opened the envelope with the stuff about my pension in it this morning. Inhale, exhale. Hurrah! For the rest of my life I will be able to pay my bills and still lie in bed all day if I like. This is an amazing situation to be in. I don't know quite how I managed to get into this situation, but I must have been inadvertently been doing something right.
                            When I didn't die by the time I hit fifty two, which I had told myself for years and years was my life expectancy due to my old man dying at that age, I thought I should look at the rest of my life as a total bonus. So I took refuge and started meditating a lot more than I had been. Then I went part time a couple of years later and started meditating even more. Now that I don't have to work at all I'll be able to meditate even more.
                              And that's what I'm going to do, Jack. Meditate my socks off till I get this tummo juju to work properly. And I'm not going to drink and I'm not going to smoke, not for ages, ages anyway. Of course, I'll have to spend a good bit of the week in Newmains, but that will be good for me. Being with someone who is enduring flatheidedness in their nineties will be a great incentive to practice. Because that aint going to be me, Jack! Not if it just means not drinking or smoking for a couple of years whilst doing the bliss and heat.
                               I'm in the gravy, Jack! I'm in the gravy! Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!!

The disabled!

Sunday 12:34 a.m.
                           I couldn't go and see our friend with the MS this week because ... well, I couldn't be arsed. I could have gone to see her today after I got finished with  the bus journey from seeing the mother-in-law, and of course I couldn't go and see my own mother because I was supposed to be seeing my mother-in-law... only one of these disabled folk is my contemporary. Compared to my contemporary who is disabled, the rest of my so called friends are completely funged. At least, she is a nexus for compassion.
                          I was hearing from the old, toothless one today. He's been retired for about a year and a half. He does not have any hobbies apart from waving his lollipop pole at the men digging up the road, and when you tell him what he might do to stave off  the obsessive and compulsive decline, the tramlines leading to the brain rot, well, he just waves his lollipop pole at you, and what can you do against this kind of karma? Except say he is completely funged.
                         But he is a contemporary of mine. Another contemporary of mine, The Cadaver, is threatening to come and see me. The Cadaver tried to come and see me when I was engaged with the mother-in-law, but fortunately I was not at home. He brought with him his four cans of beer with no beer in them, and I would have had to sit there drinking this awfulness with him, and wishing I had some barbituates to go with them. Anyone else would have brought a bottle of whisky! Or some morphine . Or some decent dope of some kind.
                         These folk I know are all millionaires! But would they spit on you if you were on fire? I do not think so, Jack! This is the awfulness of the evil bourgeois, the disgusting ones who hated their parents and then, voila, turned out just the same. It must be something to do with their genes. Nature versus nurture. Give us a break. They're loaded with this horrible Scottish protestantishness from two cells in! Don't dance, don't sing, don't tell jokes. And don't have any drugs with them. God preserve us from the flatheided, neurotic, life denying basturns! The ninety plus year olds are far more fun!
                        So I'm  going to start being nice to folk in this blog. I'm not going to despise them, or cajole these flatheided, evil bourgeois basturns. I'm just going to say Good Luck! And bye, bye!
                         I got a letter today from the rest and be thankful pension folk. I have not opened it. Once the ninety plus year olds, who are so much more fun than the evil, why don't they strangle themselves, bourgeois basturns, have passed on, I'm going to the hut. No machines. Just vegetables.
                         This blog, however, will end on a nice note. I'm sorry you're funged. I'm sorry you are completely funged! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But it's not my fault that yous are too dumb to meditate. It really isn't. Right now I've enough on my plate with the ninety plus year olds without having to entertain sad basturns like the pond life morons that yous are!! As soon as the old people have passed on, I'm going incommunicado, and to hell with this stupid clicky clicky clickyness! So there!

Mind toys!

Saturday 8:55 p.m.
                            I've heard that someone coming to this bloggy might actually be interested in meditation. So this is for you. It has an interesting correspondence somehow.
                            You start with being dead, Jack. And when I die as I surely will.....they will be wrong of course, but they said the four elements, the structures of your mind start to collapse. I think the sequence is this:
                             You start with a mirage. I don't really know what this means, but I try to imagine the bit in Lawrence of Arabia when Omar Sharif appears out of the heat haze. Then imagine clouds of smoke. Then blue with little red fireflies bursting. Then as if flickering candlelight. Then white bliss. Red, then black.You've reached the ground.  Call it ground luminosity. You should be well into the bliss of course.
                             Then sometimes you might expand this into everything in the room, then your neighbourhood. Go to Scotland or wherever you live. Then expand out into the blue planet. Warp drive and you're looking at the Milky Way. Then all the galaxies, then go out again into the white bliss. Ground luminosity again. Then take it all the way back to you just sitting there in the bliss.
                              Wherever you go, it's ground luminosity.
                               It's the way the concentration goes, or the way one thought follows another that's important, I think.
                                I just thought I should write something. When you're in Newmains, it's nice just to read your book and write in your diary. I'm start to long a little for a time without the machines like it was in the long, long ago when I had time to read books, and such.
                       

Home for now!

Thursday 9:10 p.m.
                             Matter is composed of particles, like atoms and whatnot. Consciousness is made up of moments, one following the other. If they are composed of different things, some might say they have different origins to the extent that mind does not come from matter, that mind and matter are separate things. This is interesting if you are dead, Jack.
                            I don't think it is interesting at all, Hotboy. Well, Jack, does your body have a mind, or does your mind have a body? You might only find that out when you are dead.
                            All this buddhist stuff would be far easier if you believed in rebirth, but as the sole member and single representative of the Disbelieving Congregation ... well, I don't believe in anything but ignorance. But we seem to be stuck with cause and effect. If you do something, something else happens.
                            If you meditate, eventually you will land in the bliss, and sometime later is seems that you will get the heat. Of course, all this would be much easier if you were a purified joe or josephine with a mindstream unaffected except by being asleep and being away, but if you are a disbelieving, drunken bum like moi, it still seems work as long as you meditate. Yes, it will take a bit longer no doubt, but it will still work.
                            It works best if nothing much is happening except when you meditate because that is eventful and dynamic enough in the great Vajrayana, the juju of jujus. But if you have to sally back and forth and necessarily be in the company of flatheids, having to be infected by all their flatheided anxieties and stupidities, it is better if you stay sober and straight and do not succumb to the temptation of thinking it's going to be alright, and that the juju will work anyway if you just live for long enough.
                            So tonight the home brew finishes and I will try to get into a sober and straight modus operandi from now on in because my time is not my own and it cannot be all about moi for the foreseeable. Tomorrow I'll be going back to Newmains for the night and I'll be there from Wednesday through to Saturday next week.
                            I so loved being up the allotment this evening. My precious space and place!! I had hoped to spend a great deal of time there on my ownio now that I have given up gainful employment, but will have to grasp at it whenever other things permit.
                            It felt like peace to me, Jack. Perfect peace.

Back Home!

Wednesday 4:30 p.m.
                                 The several days just spent in Newmains were very re-assuring. Carers are coming in four times a day, so any personal care would be done by them, and I won't have anything to do with that. I guess I might end up there three or four nights a week, at the times when my mother in law's immediate family can't be there. She has a son who doesn't work and he and I can split up the weekdays, leaving the weekends to other folk. But the woman cannot be left in yon house on her own, so we'll see.
                                I was reading a book called The Bodhisattva Vow while I was there, and it was saying about the necessity to develop the altruistic intention. This situation with my mother in law must really be regarded by me as a great opportunity to do this.
                                I did not miss the machines at all.
                                I spent a lot of time during the last few days sitting in the kitchen with the Domestic Bliss and her mother. If I just close my eyes, I can meditate. It doesn't matter if anyone is talking or the telly is on. I'm getting a lot of heat and the meditations continue to progress. My mother in law is a little confused now and she is a sleepy old lady, so I expect I'll be spending quite some time in future sitting with her in the kitchen, speaking sometimes, sometimes doing the bliss, and being amazed. This could be really great for me.
                                I can run to Overtown and back in half an hour, which is how long some of the carers take. I can do tai chi sets in the back garden. It's a bit like camping in some ways, but it looks like progress to me.

Faith of our fathers!

Saturday 7:45 p.m.
                            I was in St Mary's Cathedral last night since the Domestic Bliss was performing in the chorus backing Capella Nova who were singing plain chant and stuff like that. Catholic music mainly from way back when. This is a perfect event for me. It wasn't busy and I could sit in the half lotus and close my eyes. No one in a church is going to bat an eye if you've got yours closed! I read once that listening to classical music can effect your brains waves a bit like meditation .. but it you can concentrate you mind and just let the sound go through you. Heavenly it was. The tears were streaming down my face a good bit of the time. I don't know why that is. There was a time when I didn't cry for about twenty years, but these days I weep when I hear the French National Anthem!! Dearie me! It was brilliant though.
                          The catholics have the best music. No doubt about it. I was once in Nice cathedral and there was an orchestra and hundreds of folk in the choir. They were doing classical stuff like bits of masses, stuff like Mozart's Requiem. The ridiculous thing was that the mass all these things were written for is no longer performed. The Tridentine Rite was abandoned for some Methodist crap just when I stopped going back about 1968 or 1969. I think the Nazi Papa is a secret fan though.

Another Bottie Afternoon!

Thursday 9:40 p.m.
                             I thought I'd check out the new batch of home brew last night, the one that blew the lid off the barrel. That might have been a hint! I wasn't expecting it to be that strong. Anyway, I stuck the last post on facebook and got two very complimentary messages about it before I took it down when I got to the machine this morning.
                             Very slow start to the day, as you might imagine. But I went to the Botanics this afternoon and sat under another tree for an hour and a half. I took the top two snaps there. Interesting patterns on the grass at Inverleith Park from the Moonwalk set up at the weekend, which I came across on the way to the allotment. I took the photie of the sweet peas on the way home after doing a bit of meditating and weeding. The Domestic Bliss is out singing and dancing this evening and I've been meditating in the lobby. I'll be back there soon.
                            Somebody bought a copy of the Demon Masters book from Kindle, the first one of that. Hurrah! Two of the other books have sold a couple and that's that. A publisher contacted me about the crime thriller, but I think it is the phonus balonus. Interesting that someone even noticed it.

The evil bourgeois and the new age.

Wednesday or Thursday 10:35 p.m.
                                                      We lived in a dugout hole in the ground and my name was Patrick. My several elder brothers were all called Patrick because there were no snakes around. Every other kind of pestilence had taken them down when they were babies, and they had gone to heaven without having to do any work, and I was the last Patrick. As a child, once I could sit up, they placed me in front of the fire and covered my nether regions with moss, but sometimes there was no moss and I just sat there. All around me the pigs and the dogs and the human beings squabbled and fought, and sometimes tried to kill each other. But they were always nice to me since all the other Patricks had died young, and everyone knows that only Protestants hate babies, and that's why they only have two of them, one real one, and another in case the first one dies.
                                                     Sometimes, when I was very young, I got smacked when I strayed towards the fire, but other than that I was left alone, and, in fact, I didn't have a name until I was about five when all the grown ups had decided that I might not die suddenly. Tentatively, I was called Patrick, like the other Patricks who had gone before.
                                                   When my auld maw got old, everyone was amazed because being old in those times meant that you lived till you were about thirty five, but when my auld maw got old, everyone was so amazed that they sat around and talked to her and asked her what it was like to be so old, and no one ever expected to be as old as she was. And she told us about the dragons that used to inhabit the land, and the elves, and the other fabulous beasts, and I could hear her telling this to the other bigger children when I sat there coming into understanding, in the ashes beside the fire.
                                               And when the auld maw could not look after herself properly, no one was surprised or bothered about this because, really, no one tried to look after themselves and no one could by themselves. There was just the wee ones sitting in the ashes by the fire, and the big ones fighting and squabbling and the old ones smoking their pipes by the fire near the wee ones, and hitting their fingers when they were going to get burned.
                                               What's all this about, Hotboy? I hate them, Jack, and I'm sorry that I do. They hate each other more than I could ever do! The evil bourgeois with their gardens and their walls and their different kinds of child and old people abuse, and all of that. I hate the compassionless, selfish basturns, every one. And I hope there is a hell waiting for them. I really do!

My kind of day!

Tuesday 6:00 p.m.
                            What a lovely day I had today! The first meditation lasted two hours. You have a wee break and then another meditation, and then you have to have lunch and a wee nap. This is a great way to start the day.
                             After the wee nap, I went up to the allotment and the weather was lovely and sunny. I sat outside and meditated and then I did a wee bit of weeding. Then I went across to the Botanics and sat meditating under a wonderful big chestnut tree.
                            If the flatheids can just hold it together, what a wonderful couple of years I'm going to have. Then I'll die happy!
                            You might think this sounds like a very boring day, but the less I do the more exciting it gets. The meditations are so dynamic, absorbing and interesting. I must have done a bit over four hours today. I do another couple of hours this evening .... and  ... Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!
                            The first three photies are of the allotment. The cabbages are coming along great. The last two are from where I was sitting in the Botanics. There was nothing much happening in the sky today since the weather was so good, but it looks as if it might get a bit interesting later on!
                           

Back to the nun!

Tuesday 1:20 a.m.
                           I did go up to the Samye Dzong tonight to sit for an hour with the nun and about ten other people. Today I've done hardly any meditating, about three hours, but I did spend all afternoon on the Cyclists book. I'm so pleased to have finished with that. I was swithering about whether to stick that up on Kindle due to the amount of over the top sex there is in it, but it is a true account of my time at the boxing and about my wonderful writings, though the perspective is a bit jaundiced. On the other hand, I did write it and the money I got for it did take me to India and Nepal, and I got the Buddha book out of that, so ...
                           I did a hundred prostrations when I got back from the meditations, and then ten of Mr Iyengar's jumpings, then six three minute rounds of shadow boxing the the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle. For a fat, drunken basturn I'm still quite fit.
                           All I'm waiting for is the kiddo to get another book cover to me and that'll be all the books up on Kindle. And I can put all that behind me. When the pension thing comes through, I'll go to the Samye and seek out the man.
                            The last of these photies wasn't taken today. It's a mistake. Anyway, it does show the "unexpected seascapes" Robert Louis Stevenson said were characteristic of Edinburgh. I didn't understand that remark when I first read it, but that's the view he would have had coming home from the uni. You can see the Forth.

Baldy!

Monday 12:15 p.m.
                             Brian Wilson kindly gave me a hair remover for my birthday, but after one shot of it, nobody would cut my hair. So I finally did it myself on Saturday evening. I'd been sprouting hair since the start of February, so that was a weight off my mind!
                             Also, I phoned the rest and be thankful works pension people this morning, and they haven't forgotten me. I'm on the list of old people still to do. Hurrah!!
                             One of the photies is of the Moonwalk pavilion in Inverleith Park. Well done to the thousands of folk who did the marathon walk for breast cancer.
                              Despite the distractions, I'm getting warmth in almost every vase breath. And I've promised myself that I'll start back at the Monday night meditations with the nun tonight.

David Benioff

Sunday 2:00 a.m.

                         Flicking the channels this evening as I polished off the last of the home brew. Troy was on. Brad Pitt is in it. I admire Brad Pitt because he had done his time when he needed to in the gym. Peter O' Toole was holding our end up for great acting. Christ, he must have been in his eighties when he was playing Priam. Anyway, at the end of this not so wonderful movie (maybe if you're an American fourteen year old ... ) I noticed that the screenplay was by David Benioff. 

                         He must have read the Illiad, which is more than I can remember doing. Once on a Greek island holiday I read The Odyssey, but ... Everybody should have read the Illiad. Or the Lliad. 

                         David Benioff wrote a brilliant book called The City of Thieves. About the siege of Leningrad in the Second World War. Really wonderful novel. It's about a David Balfour and Allan Breck kind of duo looking for some eggs. Much better than anything I could ever get near writing. Good thing about the jobbie I once had was getting kids to read stuff like that. 

                         Once I'm in this bar in Stockbridge with the Domestic Bliss and I gets the beers in and the barman looks oddly familiar. The second time I go up to the bar, I ask him if he's Mathew blah blah. The kid had long hair at school and played in a very good blues band, as I discovered later. He said: You were my school librarian. You got me to read Charles Bukowski. And so I did. Ham and Rye. A great book! Apart from all the crap ... maybe doing a wee bit of good here and there!

David Campbell

Saturday Noon
                       Yesterday I went to a book launch. It was a book about storytelling by a very interesting person called David Campbell. David commissioned me twice to write playets for educational broadcasting when he worked at BBC Radio Scotland. I think a new controller got rid of him because he liked talking to people. I think one of my playets was probably the last thing he produced. It started off with someone throwing up. He spent ages producing the throwing up. Soggy cornflakes plopping into a bucket with accompanying vocals. There really sounded like an awful lot of throwing up at the start of the recording. Then it says ... produced by the Education Unit of the BBC .... something like that. Good joke!
                      The last time I bumped into him I said I'd visit him, but didn't because ... well, what would I say? I'm getting shyer and shyer the older I get.  But I always say hello when I see him because he is a very interesting guy!
                      I didn't speak to anyone at the book launch. Shook David's hand and said hello. Had Brian Wilson come along with me we could have had quite a time! There seemed to be unlimited plonko collapso and very nice cake. Interesting music too!!
                      I'm going to spend most of the afternoon in the lobby, doing the bliss.

One Month Into Retirement!

Thursday 10:55 p.m.
                               It's a day over a month since I handed in my notice and walked off the jobbie for month's holiday.
                               So how's it been going then, Hotboy? Well, Jack, it's been going very well! Every day can be a wonderful Thursday now, and the meditations have improved faster than they would have otherwise. But I haven't quite settled down yet. There is still some stuff I have to do.
                                The machines are in retreat, so that now I can scan things if I want and still upload photies, like the ones above. I'm still fixing the scan for the Cyclists book and have still two thirds to do. I don't really have to do anything for the other books still waiting to be uploaded, and they're just waiting for the good offices of the consigliere and for the kiddo to get her computer fixed. Of course, in the war against the machines, there was was flanking movement and the machine she was working on had a hard drive failure. The consigliere has been massive in all this uploading stuff and I don't think I would have done it without him.
                                Nobody is buying the books of course. However, they might or they might not. Once my pension thingy is sorted out, it won't matter. I don't need the money. I'll have ten books on Kindle shortly and that's very nice really. I don't really care if nobody buys them. Personally, I've given up reading books and writing them. I'd much rather watch the telly!!
                               There is real warmth in the out-breath when I'm doing the vase breathing, but I'm not going to go on about the wonderful meditations  ... they will be more wonderful later, that's for sure!
                                My mother in law got out of hospital today and the Domestic Bliss is away in Newmains till tomorrow.
                                Apart from getting fatter and fatter from drinking too much home brew, I'm in love with my life at the moment. Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!
                               

Mare photies!

Tuesday 11:05 p.m.
                             Some of Cramond and some of trees blown down or half blown down. The allotment looks really green because it's covered now in wee weeds. The kirk is Cambusnethan Church in Newmains.