Hut time!

Tuesday 7:30 p.m.
                            The Life of Milarepa is definitely one of my favourite books and I'm much enjoying re-reading wee bits ever now and again. When he finally got Marpa to give him an initiation, he went off and walled himself into seclusion and meditated for eleven months. Stuff like that makes me feel like a complete wimp!!
                            I spent from three till six in the hut this afternoon. I had two pairs of trousers on, but my legs still got cold. Next time it's three pairs!! My fingers got a wee bit cold too though I was wearing heavy duty gloves. Then  a big greeny jelly blob came to eat me up and I ran away!!

Haunted!

Tuesday 1:00 a.m.

                           Got out of bed because I was feeling a bit haunted by this bit I watched on youtube about Gerald McClellan this morning, the boy who had the brain haemorrhage whilst fighting Nigel Benn in 2005. 

                            I watched all these super middleweight fights on the telly in those days. Two of those that I watched resulted in horrible injuries. They were on prime time on Saturday nights. You could have been watching these with your kids. What is the matter with that man, daddy? Why isn't he getting up?

                           I'm going to watch the fight again. Gerald McClellan was four to one on to beat Nigel Benn. And maybe the fight was only going to last two rounds, and maybe that's why Gerald McClellan had in that weird gumshield which, apparently, only American footballers wear. For fast, explosive movement. Not any good for the long haul. How can you be a world champion and not have a decent gutta percha gumshield? 

                          You could see the way the boy went down on one knee and took the count that he wasn't right. The blinking. No way was Nigel Benn winning that fight. Anyway, the boy is blind now and eighty percent deaf and getting looked after by his sisters.No insurance maybe. Don't be poor in America. 

                          Anyway, I'm going to watch the fight now. The boy was beautiful until he walked into that ring.
Later
        Maybe I forgot how unremitting Nigel Benn was in that fight. 

Crisp and deep and even!

Monday 6:10 p.m.

                   One photie is of Cambusnethan kirk from the mother in law's back garden.
                   The jobbie got snowed off today. Hurrah!! I went up to the hut in the afternoon and meditated there for an hour and a half. With the gloves and hat and scarf and long johns, all you get is a wee bit of a chilly nose. Tomorrow the jobbie is snowed off again. Hurrah!!!

Alan Cummings!

Sunday 10:26 p.m.
                              Just  finished watching a programme on the wonderful BBC Four teevee channel about Cabaret, and Christopher Isherwood,  and being in Germany in the 1930s. It was presented by Alan Cummings, who I do like although not like that, although he got me into a Traverse party once after I met him in the toilet, and made demands. But it's great to see Scottishy people getting ahead. I also saw a programme about his ancestors once and that was brilliant as well. So I hope to see some more of that kind of thing from him on the telly.
                            I have a great affection for Christopher Isherwood. I'm not sure why. Here's some of the things I can remember that I liked anyway.
1) I read in an autobiographical thing from him once that when he'd left uni, (a chap without a degree! Oh no!) he went to Eastbourne and spent the summer writing his first novel. He wrote it in longhand SEVENTEEN  times. This has ever since been my benchmark. It's like being a music producer. You have to be able to listen to the bugger again and again and again. Anyway, his prose is full of semi-colons, colons, etcetera like you might expect from someone well educated in Latin, Greek, grammar, etc. These are the days before copy and paste and all that word processing stuff, when you had to think. I can almost remember trying to write like that. Make a mistake and you have to re-type the whole page.
2) None of his books were that good. The boy didn't have a plot in him. Prater Violet is, however, a fantastic description of a person and far better than anything I could ever aspire to.
3) I saw him interviewed by Kenneth Alsop who was a titan of Newsnight in the early seventies. This would have been after his autobiographical book came out, Christopher and his Friends, I think it might have been called. Kenneth Allsop asked him about going to Germany and corrupting these German boys. I think Christopher Isherwood said they were far more corrupt already than he was.
4) His pal said you shouldn't sell what was dear cheap, as regards him writing screenplays in California. Auden. He said he sold what was dear dear.
5) He funged off to California when the second world war was getting awkward. Why want to fight for a country which puts you in jail because of your sexual preferences.
6) He said when he got back to London much later that he liked it better because it was full of people who were cosmopolitan, like black and brown and polka dot.
                         I don't know why I like Christopher Isherwood so much, but I do. The concentration on the malleability of the prose which means that the seventeenth time it will be better .... Why stop at seventeen times? I think you should maybe write the one book seventeen times in your life, and just keep writing the bugger. So the prose had to keep up with you.
                         You're never going to make any money thinking like that, Hotboy. No, Jack. But I would have just spent all the money on drink and drugs. Some painters must have painted the same scene over and over as they grew older, and it would have changed as they changed.
                         They all ended up in the gutter, Hotboy. The evil bourgeois all end up in hell, Jack. Hell's too good for them!

The auld maw!

Saturday 12:50 a.m.
                              Of course, I'm very fond of the auld maw. Although she changes. I started going to see her every week when I was looking after the kiddo. When the kiddo appeared, I  thought I should take her through to Bellshill, and I did this every week.I'd take the kiddo through every Monday. These are your people. Then, when the kiddo had other things to do I thought  I should go every week because the auld maw was by then about seventy, and I thought she might not last so long. Now, she's ninety two.I still go every week.
                            I'm not a real man. I can talk to folk. I can ask them about things. I'm not a stookie. A lot of men are like that.
                            Anyway, she canny hear too well these days. She won't put in her hearing aid either. Last week, I got there a bit later because of a mix up with the train. So I wasn't there so long. Today, after we had the chatting as we do when I first get there, she asked if I'd some time left for the meditation. Yippee! So I says that I don't have to go this week for another hour, and we go upstairs so she can lie down and I can sit, and we can listen to the Dharmapadda. After the wonderful first meditation I had before going to Bellshill, I knew this would be a treat. I don't know what she makes of the Dharmapadda, but she says she's still with us because of the tapes. A contented mind. This wummin has one. She's always had this ability to lie down and tell the world to go fung itself.
                         Before she lies down, she tells me she's going to give me a week at the Samye Ling for my sixtieth birthday. How much would that cost? About £250, and a bit rich for me. But she says okay. Christ alone knows what that amount of money means to her. But she's got it and she doesn't care. Not as if she can go out and spend it.
                         I can do ra bliss and all, but I'm not as good as she is. But at least I'm her son.
                         The tree is in Bellshill. The view is off the Telford Bridge on the way home. Part of the beautiful, wonderful city!
                    

Pre Bellshill!

11:10 a.m.
                I've just had the best meditation ever, for me anyway. Everything just opened up like a gorgeous great blossomy thing. It was just wonderful!! The most brilliant sensations of lightness and bliss. But I had to stop since  I have to go to Bellshill. Oh well, it'll be there when I get back, the cushion that is!

Chardonnay!

Thursday 10:15 p.m.
                              I've been drinking more collapso since the new Scotmid opened. They sometimes say it's half price. Anyone know about the plonko collapso out there? This purports to be 2009 Reserve. Chardonnay Verdelho. Wine of Australia. Banrock Station. Weighing in at 13.5% and costing £4.99, supposedly at half price.
                              They've got to do something about the cheapness of the alk, Jack! I know it's more expensive here in Chilly Jockoland than in most countries, but they're not pissheids in most countries. In Scandinavia this wine would probably be ...
                              I'm just going to tan this bottle then and write crap with my headphones on, so yous can all fung off as well!
                              I must say it tastes quite nice. I'm having it with cream crackers dipped in peanut butter.
                              I haven't been doing dairy for about five months now, and I haven't lost an ounce of fat. But I had to give up all the tasty tastes I had left, or had developed, since I gave up the cannibalism.
                              I used to make the most delicious ham rib soup. That was the worst deprivation from stopping being a cannibal. Hmmm ... I can still taste it. Since I gave up the milk and butter and cheese, I had to give up the taste of home made toasted breid, butter and banana. You have no idea how much I savoured that. Since July up until last week, I've been eating tatties and onions, usually boiling and then frying the tatties, but I finished all the tatties last week, I think, and now I'm eating soup make with vegetables from the shop. Even if you chuck in cumin, coriander, curry powder and any old spice that you can find, it still doesn't taste of much when the vegetables are from the shop. And no ham ribs in it.
                              Eventually, other tastes will arise and you can tell yourself that these are delicious, and you will believe it because they will be delicious. I think it's called projection. Or fat. Things with fat in it are bound to taste better because you're geared to the calorific values. Maybe a bit of projection and a bit of fat combined.
                              I didn't do any writing today though I did feel like it. Thought I should meditate when I should have been writing.
                              Things have improved since I signed a deal with the consiglieri. I like the consiglieri and we can smoke cannybliss together and have a laugh. I might have to segue into a stand up comedian because of this association, but that might be alright now that I've nothing better to do.. Writers who do reading are just stand up comedians who are not funny. Anyway, it makes you think that something might happen even although it probably won't. It has some kind of potential attaching whereas previously all I had was the initiations, ra bliss and the chance to become a buddha in one lifetime. Oh well. I need to get out of the jobbie and if I don't turn into a stand up comedian without jokes I'll have to work till I'm dead. Which wouldn't be all that bad.
                           I hate comprehensive education. It's a blight on working class kids. In this city with these kinds of schools and schoolteachers. The evil coalition pipsqueak says they should fast track military chaps into being school teachers and ... I'm afraid the moron has something here. Last week, the science techie showed up in the staff room and spoke to the Business Manager, whom I was sitting beside, and told him about a fracas in the bogs. So the Business Manager goes to see about this. I said I'd go as well to back him up, which is a position I've never been in before. I did it because I knew the Business Manager had never worked with kids before. His last jobbie was as a personnel manager with British Rail.  He is not in loco parentis. Neither am I. Neither is the science techie. So we're throwing these fourth year boys out of the lavvies where they have probably been torturing someone, and where are the school teaching basturns? They're having their tea break. Where were the senior management team? Hiding as usual. Up against the wall with the lot of them!!! Send your kid to the evil bourgeois schools if you have any money. They will turn out to be evil bourgeois basturns, but at least they will be able to spell.
                         The interesting thing is that nobody notices that this, this denial of birthright from being Scottishy, is happening. It's not seeing the wood for the trees. Also, most of the folk working in schools are stupid. They really are. We should have the best brains in
1) Medicine
2) Education
                          Obviously, the really smart folk should be given government grants to sit in caves and understand non-self and emptiness, but try telling the dumb to meditate why that would be a good thing! Try to ... Oh, dearie me! The plonko is one glass from finito. Must mooch off to bed then!!
                           Or read on in the Life of Milarepa. I'm a fan of Marpa. Milarepa is  wuss compared to Marpa. I'd like to read more about this stuff. Anyway, it's very inspiring, but not for yous, the too dumb to meditate. Thank  God, I am not so gross at that! Fancy never having even tried. Better to have loved and lost than been happy to be a self satisfied moronic flatheid! God preserve us from the flatheids!