Freedom!

Monday 5:00 p.m.
                            I was visiting the geriatric and disabled on Thursday, Friday and Saturday over the last two weeks and I'm not doing that again. It's just too many disabled people. It's three days out of my week lost, and then there are the bits the flatheids take off you just as a matter of course, and the relatives to see, and  ... it's just too much. As far as I can work out, I don't have to see anyone till Thursday now and that's great. It almost feels as if I'm in charge of my life for once!
                           Today is really the start of the allotmenteering for this year. I visited the plot and took the last of the brussel sprouts and nearly the last of the leeks. This is almost the last plate of allotment soup - once you add the kail from the buddhist woman's plot - for this year. The allotment food has lasted three months longer than it usually does. I've still got onions and tatties.
                            I'm running so slowly these days that I'm going to start doing short runs. I did one today. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes with a wee bit of pace. This will speed up the longer runs I'll do later on and give me some acceleration. Terrible not having any gears. It's when you run out of gears completely that the running will stop.
                             The meditations this morning were great. I went to bed sober last night. No smoking, no drinking. Long may it last!!
                           

Sixty one and one.

Friday 10:51 p.m.
                           I'm over the best of it; I'm over the worst of it. I thought I was going to be able to do just what I wanted to do, and have all these oceans of time to myself, Even then, I'm  a total disgrace. But although I cannot do what I want to do because I have relatives, well, they give you presents on your birthday. Great things. Gardening gloves. Sporty.  When I wear them anyway. And some seed potatoes. You need them. Right now I'm back here at the junkyard, and I think that could be what men are supposed to do. Decorate. What? Moi? Certainly not. As long as there are no rats.
                          Tomorrow I've got to get my arse up to Liberton Hospital to visit with our friend with the MS. For occasions such as this and visiting the auld maw one should try to be at one's best. But it's a lot of disability. But only for me to look at. Don't look so good from their side either, I don't suppose. Well, it says to me that the  drinking has to stop completely .... Oh no! Boxing. Di Niro. Must go.

On Becoming sixty one!

Wednesday 3:50 p.m.
                                 It is hard to imagine being better at sixty one. So I'm in my twenties and someone comes up and says this is how you are going to be at sixty one.
                                 No jobbie! Hurrah! Hurrah! You are not starving in the gutter! Hurrah! You have enough money to pay your bills until you are dead as long as you will be dead in about five years. Hurrah!! Hurrah!! You spend as much time as you can manage in higher meditative states.

                                 HURRAH!! HURRAH!! HIGHER MEDITATIVE STATES! WAY TO GO! WAY TO GO!

                                  (Sorry about you being a flatheid and all, and not knowing what a higher meditative state might be, but that's not my fault, I'm afraid. And as death approaches, well, good luck with that flatheid stuff!!)

                                 It looks as though I'm selling about a book a day to folk with Kindles. This is as good as it could be from the point of view that I once wanted to be a writer. Well, I've got a reader. Just one a day. But there's probably going to be someone somewhere in the world reading one of my books today. Of course, it will have been written by someone long gone, but ... passing on thoughts through writing is weird.

                                 On the downside, I'm  a fat, old basturn and I can't run anything like as fast as I used to be able to. You've got to work to be normal. Go and stand on Wishaw Main Street if you want to be normal. We're not doing normal here! We're doing exaggeratedly wonderful! Generating wonderful thoughts! Arising from nothing, abiding in nowhere, declining into the void.

                                   So the boy in the book says it's all mind. There is nothing but mind. This computery thing is mind. Hmmm? But is has an existence outside of your mind, Hotboy. This is obvious. It is both obvious that it has an existence outside your mind and that it exists in your mind, because there is nowhere else for it to exist.
                                   They're stretching your mind, Jack, these Tibetan Buddhists. I think they'd like you to think that this mind that everything exists in is bigger than moi. It's the Holy Ghostie Men. You have to lose your meagre loneliness in the big sense of self. It's okay with these joes until you realise there is a jump which takes you from experience into faith.
                                   Well, we don't do faith. In the Disbelieving Congregation we do knowledge. Fortunately, we have seen the big self. But this is not such a help since the big self is not here right now.

Doggies!

Tuesday 7:16 p.m.
                           The top photie is there by mistake. It's from yesterday. The other ones should have been taken in Inverleith Park this evening.
                           So I'm sitting in the usual half lotus looking across the vastness towards Edinburgh Castle. I'd been reading about everything being mind and whatnot. So the castle is mind, like everything else. You might say that the castle is appearance and emptiness co-emerging. I'm gazing across the park to the horizon when a dog appears from under me.
                          You can't get that angle unless you sit in a half lotus. You're on a park bench. The dog's head appears from under you. It's the colour of cardboard and has a squoshed head.
                           Just over twenty years ago, I was meditating like this in a park in Doubleview, a suburb of Perth, Australia. I had my eyes closed. When I opened them, there was a dog sitting in front of me staring up at my face.

Tempis Fugit.

Monday 6:20 p.m.
                           I did the Ravelstone Dykes run today (Just noticed the date and time on the photies. They are wrong!) and almost enjoyed it. Since I'm running so slowly these days, I took along my camera and the photies are the result. Lovely evening, so it was.
                           By the time I got back from Liberton Hospital on Saturday. I'd had enough of public transport. Public transport and Scottish winters do not go together. From leaving here on Thursday to getting back from the hospital, I'd been on ten buses and two trains. Three days to the flatheids is too much as well. You've got no life left. No time to write or meditate. And you're squeezed the rest of the time. I have to go out tonight and I should see Beef McDuck before I go back to Lanarkshire, and the kiddo and her pal will be here on Wednesday for my birthday. And I just want to be left alone, Jack!! I just want to be left alone!!

Where is the Beef?

Friday 9:55 p.m.
                        I was expecting to fall into an open grave this evening as Beef McDuck is back in town, but when I got home from Bellshill, I meditated for a bit and probably missed him. I phoned just before six. I guess by then he'd be in the pub.
                       Even the-just-dug-up one would feel revitalised by a visit to Wishaw Main Street. I stood there today for forty minutes because the first bus didn't stop. Terrible looking folk! Fat, plooky, smoking, ill-dressed fat basturns the lot of them! Really not healthy looking at all!! It might be the not-working population which skews the view a little, but people in the Far East on the whole aren't as ugly as us. We're really ugly. Of course, I'm gorgeous, but it's a shame about most of the rest of them.
                       All this travelling on public transport and thinking I'd be going out to the pub and whatnot ... well, the meditations are not getting the settled situation in which to flower, but tomorrow ... Oh, I've got to go the Liberton Hospital tomorrow. Dearie me! As soon as you start trying to emanate as the Medicine Buddha, you start getting surrounded by sick people. I should have tried emanating as a tantric sex god and maybe I'd be surrounded by gorgeous babes by this time. Maybe not.
                     

Changing days!

Wednesday 7:40 p.m.
                                 The photie was taken in the coffee shop this afternoon. I like going to the coffee shop now and I like the big black coffee with four sugars. I read the paper there or try to read my current Mahamudra book.
                                  This afternoon was a bit different since I didn't meditate this afternoon. After the wee apres luncho lie down and dozing in the bliss, I got up and went for the five hill run. Only once or twice did I feel the doubt, and want to abandon it. But I didn't. It was almost enjoyable. It was a lovely day. I used to do this run in around 32 to 34 minutes. Today it took 45 minutes. I've invented the new jogging for fat, old people. It's called walking.
                                   After lying in the bath for an hour, I wrote my book for a bit and then went out to Costas to read the paper.
                                    My morning was somewhat stymied by drinking the bottle of collapso whilst watching the footie last night. One day I will give up all that malarkey. I felt fine in the morning, but I had some things to do and that always makes me mad.
                                    I tried to get tickets for a talk by the Dalai Lama in Caird Hall, and failed. Then I came to the bad bit. The bad bit was going to happen when I tried to move money from my savings account into my current account. My birthday is in February. So I want to move a year's worth of money this month. After failing to remember my username, I decided that I should try this at the bank though I thought with this account you had to use the phone or the computery thing. The girl at the bank switched the money and I felt suddenly rich. I had a whole year's worth of spending money in my current account. And no more dealing with bank accounts for another whole year! Also, kind of stashed a grand in my savings account for going to India. Hurrah!
                                     I'll have to buy a second hand guitar soon. Then that'll be it, the end of the presents to me from me. The leather jacket, the wee camera, the guitar and ... the trip to India.
                                      It is still wonderful that the unemployment with some money happened to me so suddenly and unexpectedly. I love not having a jobbie!!! I just love it!
                                       Tomorrow, I go to the ancient mother in law and on Friday I go to the auld maw, and then on Saturday I have to get to Liberton Hospital to see our friend with the MS. I haven't been visiting her when she's been there since I started going to Newmains. But now I'm only going to stay in Lanarkshire for the one night .... It's a lot of disability. It makes me feel sorry for the flatheids who just do not get the bliss, and it makes me want to meditate more.
                                      It's still light around half five at night. This is wonderful. Everything is getting better.