Exeter to London

We left Exeter in glorious sunshine
4 boys on a jolly to the big smoke
Roaring up the Devon coast
Traversing Bristol's Chiltern Hills
Across the Severn Bridge
(The longest bridge in the world)
And past the magic cities of
Oxford, Cambridge, Slough
Wow, Steve said
As dreaming spires rushed by,
If this is how amazing the journey is
Imagine what London's going to be like!
But just as we approached Heathrow
Dark storm clouds gathered overhead
Cars coming to a halt
In the grim asphalt spray
A traffic jam!
An hour to crawl thirteen miles!
I've heard of these, Steve said
But I never thought I'd see one
So many cars!
And why do all the drivers look so grey and scowling?
So desperate and tired?
Eventually we limp into London proper
Wheels turning slowly through litter-filled streets
Ramshackle fried chicken places
A city designed by someone who
Hated life, hated themself
The pavements filled with the walking dead
Shouting into ear pieces
Shoving one another
Grimaces and snarls
Where ARE we?
Asks Steve
Is this hell?
Did we die back there on the road?
Are we in the apocalypse?
A tramp rushes up to our window
Threatening violence and obscenities
Before a group of youths
Ten and eleven-year-olds
Pull him away
Leap on him
And kick him to death
Everything is covered in concrete.
Every road is clogged with traffic
The air tastes of disease and decay
The sky above filled with screaming noise
Up in front a billboard proclaims:
THE MAN WHO IS BORED OF LONDON
IS BORED OF LIFE!
ONLY LOSERS
DISLIKE IT HERE!
And then another tramp presses his face
Against our terrified window
And another
And another
All screaming
Get out boys while you can!
The man who said that
Died 230 years ago!
This wasn't what he was talking about
His London had fields
Spaces
No airports
No rattling underground tubes
The whole thing's a lie!

Light Club

You probably don’t know this but…

…back in the late-nineties, while I was off on my travels investigating the world and myself, I became a member of a secret society called ‘Light Club.’ I guess the idea was we were something like a less violent version of Brad Pitt’s ‘Fight Club’. We were going to change the world, but in a nice way. We were 24 guys n gals, all in our twenties, all on similar paths of exploration. Incredibly, once we were all together, we realised we’d formed a group made up of one of each gender for each sign of the zodiac. There was no planning in that; it just happened ‘coincidentally’.

Of course, we all knew “there are no coincidences.” This was divine plan. This was “meant to be.”

The group was started, I guess, by old Bob. He was a spiritual teacher. A wise man. A guy who had spent his entire life gathering knowledge, experience, taking journeys in mystical realms, burrowing his way to the heart of the matter, the source of all things, the transcendent reality so few get to taste, let alone know about or believe in. We were drawn to him from far and wide, converging on his little place in the mountains down in Spain. Americans, Australians, people from all over Europe. I was among the third wave. There were about a dozen of us by then. The rest we found on our own individual journeys once he had dispersed us in little packs back into the world.

Magic times there with old Bob! Learning meditation and martial arts, and secret, long-forgotten occult practices giving one mastery over physical objects and even the weather. One time we did a rain dance right in the middle of the long drought of 2001, and, whaddya know, the bloody thing worked. Whatever Bob said would happen, did. He told us we’d all soon take a trip to that mystical, transcendent realm, if we stuck at it. When it happened for me, it was a billion times better than anything I’d ever known. My life was set: this was the course I was now on. This was the happiness I’d always been searching for.

Old Bob died, but it didn’t stop the Light Club. We found our remaining members. We were one big happy soul family. Everybody glowed. Everybody beamed, all the time. When we were together, it was a non-stop festival of hugs and smiles and love. Affirmations and support. Wild experiences and realisations and growth. And wherever we went, strangers were drawn to us, not knowing why, but constantly exclaiming their surprise and puzzlement at the peace, the joy, the exuberance they felt in our presence.

We were yogis and shaman. Meditators and seers. Foragers and farmers. Herbalists and healers. Story tellers and counsellors. Channelers and prophets. Mystics and dreamers. Manifesters and miracle workers. We had all bases covered. We were fearless and devout. And when the time came – when the prophesied world changes arrived and the people of the planet were forced to turn away from their materialism and look towards something completely different – we were ready;. We would lead the frightened masses out of the darkness and into the light. And the world would enter a glorious new phase of spirituality, connection to nature, and love.

Of course, as we all know now, it didn’t quite work out like that. It didn’t work out that way for the world – there was no great financial meltdown, no tilting of the Earth on its axis, no universal shift in human consciousness, no mass dismantling of our technology, or visitation from aliens, or any of the other drastic changes we hoped for and expected – and it didn’t work out that way for the Light Club either. For, one by one, our happy band of spiritual travellers fell by the wayside.

I guess what we took to be a permanent state of bliss and enlightenment – that taste of the transcendent we had all come to experience through Bob’s tutelage and presence – wasn’t quite what it seemed. So many times we’d say, “this is like being on drugs, but without the come down, we just keep getting higher and higher.” But what we didn’t realise was it was exactly like being on drugs, only far longer lasting. For most of us, it took at least two years before the come down began. And when it did, things got messy.

Number one, we didn’t want to come down. We’d spent years getting high, and getting higher and higher, and there was no way we were going to let go of it. And so we struggled in vain to deny the inevitable, to find some way to cling to our bliss and so-called ‘enlightenment’. To keep at bay the approaching ‘return to Earth’. But nothing we tried would work.

And, number two, with this come down, with this ‘return to Earth’, there was a reassertion of all the pesky ‘human tendencies’ we’d believed our elevated states had freed us of for good. Emotional issues, familial relationships, problems with sex, money, work, ambition, insecurity. It was all there – always there – hiding beneath our temporary vacation from Earthly existence. We’d become disembodied spirits, hanging out in bliss. We were like trees who had grown mighty and beautiful and tall, but who had neglected to sink any roots into the ground. Of course, many had told us that growth worked both ways, but we laughed at them, dismissed them, figured they were just trying to ‘bring us down’, out of jealousy and envy. In truth, they were messengers from Life. And when Life grew tired of playing it subtle, Life sent a storm, and each and every one of those glorious tall trees came crashing to the ground with a bang.

(to be continued…)

Finkin'

Times ticks on. Remarkably, about 6 months since I sat down and wrote a proper journal entry – though there have been little bits here and there, and emails in between. I guess I got more into ‘facebook stories’ and memes and pictures. Those say something. Some kind of creative expression.

Even more disturbing, three whole months since I upped sticks from Leeds and quit the biking job – for, here I am, back in Leeds, back to a wee bit of biking, having mostly just bummed around and got sucked into my little world of online distractions. Though that’s not strictly true either: I’ve spent time with Matt and Easterly; landed lucrative and promising work with Matt – work I can do anywhere; visited Perlilly and fulfilled a few things with her; and stayed at Andrea’s and seen ever so clearly how incompatible both she and London are for me.

I’ve completed my refereeing promotion attempt. Now just to wait and hear how they’re not going to promote me and be free from that too.

Hard to believe that’s what played such a role in getting me back here. Silly dreams and ambitions of ‘making it’ as a ref. I’m obviously not that good at it, nor cut out. But at least I’ve found out for sure.

More and more of that mode of life: looking at things and watching them disappear. It feels like something, some sort of progression – shedding attachments, ideas, desires, in a real world way – but is it really? What about that quote from Amma, “searching for God outside ourselves is like trying to catch a fish by emptying the ocean”? That seemed kind of apposite. Is that what I’m doing? Emptying the ocean by investigating and then discarding every little non-God thing I can think of?

Anyway, it’s all by-the-by: decisions are going to have to be made soon. I’m supposed to be moving to Exeter next Wednesday! Yet every time I think about it I feel weary and always say it’s something I’m ‘supposed’ to be doing, not something I want to do, or feel to do. My enthusiasm for it has waned.

Then Carl offers me to live at his place in Rothwell, and maybe work for him too. Well, here I am back in Yorkshire at just the right time for that – but does it mean anything? Does it mean I should do it? I feel so little enthusiasm for that also.

And then there’s Mexico, the possibility of working in a school in Cabo. It may seem in accordance with the whole ‘plan’, for where I was at 9 months ago – picking up, perhaps, the trail that went cold? – but also little enthusiasm for that.

Meanwhile, I still have Colorado so strongly in my brain. Still see it everywhere I look. Talk to Abbie on the phone and feel genuine excitement, a wanting to do it, to break in again, to repeat the whole mad Canada and cross-border thing, much as it was when I talked to Shawn in May 2014, nearly two bloody years ago. My dreams and other people’s dreams. Crazy America! But it’s the only thing that appeals to me.

I don’t know what to do!

I don’t know what to do – but then, what else is new? At least I can say what I’ve done – though it doesn’t add up to much. Mostly what I’m thinking about it is my goddamn teeth, which probably means another trip to London. And being sort of committed to this refereeing up in Yorkshire at the end of the month. And how I wish it would all just stop, that I hadn’t got my teeth done, that I regret thinking myself so clever cashing in on free dentistry ‘while I’m here in England.’

Goddamnit, the body’s falling apart and there’s nothing I can do about it. That sucks.

Nothing much to say, you know. Too many directions and headaches for the future. Nothing to report from my past. People ask if I’m depressed but I don’t even understand the question. And my jaw aches. And the only person I’ve been jealous of in recent months was a woman dying of terminal cancer. She was sad cos she felt there was so much to live for. I couldn’t understand what she was on about. Travel? People? Fun? Felt like I’d done all that and had my fill. Felt like I could’ve happily traded places with her – but would I really? Or am I just being cavalier and flip, having contemplated death so much? Yet it will come to us all – so why not today? Why have to wait?

Being ready to die should give a man the greatest freedom: it means for him the world is done, there’s nothing more to hold him, but since he lives on anyway he may as well do what he wants. Living on, though, doesn’t seem to have that effect on me: I think, well, since I have to be here maybe I should do all the things I don’t want to do that will provide for perhaps a pleasant and stress-free existence, like work and buying a house and, even, ideas for providing for an old age. Isn’t that what it’s all about? My thoughts that I should have a property, so there’s some sort of income, so that I can go off and do whatever I feel? Why not just go off and do whatever you feel in the first place? Have I ever truly wanted for money, for something material?

No. I haven’t. Indeed, I’ve been blessed, with abundance. Even in America, when I perhaps shuddered a little at my financial situation, I was never at less than $300, and stayed in lovely places with good people. It’s just never been a problem for me. And now I’m seriously loaded. And being seriously loaded, as is my wont, I hold on to it tighter, and have an even greater desire to be more loaded still.

Mad, isn’t it?

I’ve got nothing to say, really. Just looking for an answer to all these questions. Should I give up on Exeter or not? Should I offload all my possessions in preparation for being free? Should I make plans for America once again, and perhaps once and for all? Should I leave behind this silly world of houses and too much computer use? And what about my bloody goddamn teeth?

And Rothwell and refereeing and Mexico and all these women who want me to make them pregnant…it is a bit much, isn’t it?

And: you know what? If it wasn’t for the internet I wouldn’t have any of this. I wouldn’t be getting messages from Carl. I wouldn’t have got the email from Veronica when I was in Cabo. And several other things besides. How bloody lame!

In a nutshell: quit the internet. Do what you always said you would and just have a phone number. Let people call you, and you call people, if you really want to get in touch. Make a decision about Exeter, and let Bart know. Go see Carl, if you must, and if there’s a feeling there then maybe follow it, but it doesn’t seem to have much promise, other than being something free and easy and yet another goddamn ‘place to write’ that you won’t write in anyway ‘cos you don’t have a goddamn ending – which, of course, Mexico or Colorado may provide.

Talk to the Mexico woman later (14.30), and feel heavy about that. Maybe call the psychic called Eileen, and hope for answers there. And maybe think more about Greece, a get away, something to do for the next few weeks. I ref on Sunday (the 10th). I need to get my teeth/face fixed. I’m supposed to ref again in Leeds on the 27th/1st. Nothing scheduled after that, ‘cept maybe some work for Matt. Time there in between. Maybe go to the doctor? I dunno. But I guess it’ll all work out.

Oh, if only I wasn’t so bloomin’ lazy! But I am. Oh well.