Uncle Rory's Time-Travelling Tent

Uncle Rory’s Time Travelling Tent

Peony, Gilbert and Clemmy were sitting in the kitchen listening to The Flight of the Conchords.

“What’s your favourite Flight of the Conchords song?” said Gilbert.

“Mine’s the one about the Hiphopapotamus,” said Clemmy.

“Why’s that?” asked Gilbert, inquisitively.

“Because they keep saying ‘motherflippin’’. That’s such a funny word.”

“I’m the motherflippin’!” shouted Gilbert.

“No, I’m the motherflippin’,” said Peony.

Just then Mummy walked in the room, carrying a mop and a bucket and with a certain expression on her face. You know the one: the one that says, ‘okay kids, it’s time to do some chores’.

Gilbert tried to make a break for it. He ran towards the front door.

“I’ve got some homework to do,” he said, as he slid past the moppet and buck.

“Moppet and buck?” said Peony. “Don’t you mean ‘bucket and mop’?”

“Sorry,” said the author.

“No problem,” said Peony. “Now can we get back to the story?”

“Sure thing,” said the author, “but where was I?”

“You were just about to type a sentence describing how mum was going to try to get us to do some chores,” said Peony.

“Thanks,” said the author, tapping keys on the keyboard, and enjoying the sun in the hammock.

A cool breeze blew, rustling the leaves in the trees; softly wafting the clothes on the line; gently rocking the hammock.

Birds tweeted. The Gilbert not in the story came to see what was happening, leaning over daddy’s shoulder.

“How about drawing the waterfall?” said mummy. “I’ve never seen it. Could you describe it?”

Gilbert walked back into the kitchen. In his head he was thinking about a chicken taco he had eaten three days previously, while on a roadtrip through the desert. Actually, he was thinking about four or five chicken tacos, all at the same time.

That was the kind of guy he was: not one of those kids who could only think about one taco at a time, and not even only four or five, but even as many as six or seven.

One time he even thought about eight chicken tacos and a plate of nachos. But that was a pretty special occasion, and he wasn’t sure if he could do it again. Probably if he sat down and made a special effort. Probably if he concentrated really hard.

Probably if there was an event in the Olympics for thinking about chicken tacos Gilbert would win it.

“I must ask daddy,” he thought, “when this silly writing competition is over, if they have ‘Thinking About Chicken Tacos’ at the Olympics. Or maybe the Commonwealth Games. Or at least there must be a Kent Local Championships.” And in his head he pictured himself standing on a podium in his blue and white striped track suit bending over to receive a medal from the Queen while the national anthem played; while TV cameras zoomed in on his proud smile; while the crowd stood cheering and applauding; while the commentators told all the millions of viewers at home how amazing his achievement was; and while the whole world watched as he was crowned ‘Champion of Thinking About Chicken Tacos of the Entire World and Universe and Beyond.’

Meanwhile, back in the story, Peony, Clementine and Gilbert had an idea.

“You know what?” said Clementine.

“What?” said Peony and Gilbert.

“Well,” she said, with a delicious little cunning happy smile on her face, and a twinkle in her eye, “do you remember how Rory said that his tent was a time-travelling tent that could take people back in time?”

“Oh yeah!” said Peony. “I think I know what you’re going to say.”

“What’s she going to say?” asked Gilbert. “Is she going to say that we should eat some bean-a-ritos and play Marco Polo in the river?”

“No,” said Peony, “I don’t think that’s it. I think she’s going to tell us that – “

“Let me speak!” shouted Clementine, really really loud, so that everyone jumped, and even the neighbour’s Mexican dogs were startled and afraid, and wondering why people had to make so much noise.

“Sorry,” said Peony.

“Pish,” said Gilbert.

“Hey,” said mummy, “am I just going to be standing here with his muppet and bock – sorry, I mean ‘bucket and mop’ – while you guys whisper over there about how to get out of doing your chores? It doesn’t seem very realistic that you would have all this time to talk while I’m just standing here, now does it?”

She glared suspiciously at the author and knitted her brow. The guy typing felt a little quiver of fear. Well, he’d pretty much always been frightened of strong, beautiful women, just about his whole life. Maybe it was something to do with the nurse who had delivered him, the way she’d held his feet just after he’d been born; the way she’d shushed him the first time he wanted to cry.

Or maybe it was that dental assistant when he was eight years old; the one he thought had pulled his thumbs until they were really, really long, as though they were made out of elastic.

Though probably that was just the laughing gas.

In any case, he knew he’d made a booboo: he knew that she was right. It wasn’t realistic at all that mom would have made her entrance and then been silent while the kids figured out how to escape that damned and dreaded mucket and fop – I mean – well, you know what I mean: ‘pucket and – no, that’s not it – and –

Oh no: no one can figure out where this sentence is going; what we need is –

“Stoooooooooooop!” cried Clementine. “It’s simple: mum came in, put down the bucket and mop – see,” she said, “it’s not difficult to get that right – and then she said something about how she’d be back in a minute to put me and Gilbert and Peony to work –”

“Gilbert, Peony and I,” mum interrupted – and she was right.

“– because,” continued Clementine, “she had to go and help daddy with his diarrhoea, after he’d woken up in the night and realised he’d shit the bed and made the sheet a little bit brown and – ”

“Hey,” said the mummy, who wasn’t in the story, “no swearing.”

“But you swear, mummy,” said Gilbert, “remember when you saw that snake and said – “

“Yes, okay, Gilbert,” said the mummy who wasn’t in the story, “we all know what I said when I saw the snake.”

“You said – “

“Enough!” said mummy. “Please don’t remind me of that. At least, not till later: it’s just that we’ve got a story to tell and it really should have made more progress than this. Not your fault, kiddies, it’s this silly author, forever getting distracted by real life versions of characters in the story but also outside the story, as well as talking about his own sitting in the hammock typing away, which is kind of immaterial to the main thrust of the narrative, which really ought to moving along quicker than it is, and –“

“I’m lost,” said Clementine. “I don’t know what’s happening. Which one am I? The one in the story or the one outside the story? Which one is Gilbert? Which one are you?”

“I’m lost too,” said Peony. “How many of me are there? I think there’s two, but maybe there’s even more than that.”

“Oh, you girls,” said Gilbert. “it’s easy: first of all, there’s the main narrative of the story, which currently has the three of us sitting in the kitchen having just talked about our favourite Flight of the Conchords song; then mummy walked in with the splocket and flop – I mean, ‘picket and dop’ – and now we’re listening to Clementine tell us her idea about how to get out of chores while mummy helps daddy clean up his poorly bumpipe after his nighttime diarrhoea adventures. Meanwhile...”

“Wait,” interrupted Peony, “so which one are you?”

“I’m the one who keeps walking in and out of the house to see what’s going on while everyone else writes, and while an imaginary version of mummy tells the author where he’s going wrong.”

“But why is the author even in the story?” said Peony. “Shouldn’t authors be invisible, like good waiters, merely there to serve the reader, and not get in the way?”

“That’s mainly true,” smiled Gilbert, “though some writers do find it fun to put themselves in their own story.”

“Well I don’t like it,” said Peony, “it seems a bit egoistic to me. Also tends to complicate things a bit. Also – “

“Can we please get on with the story!” shouted Gilbert. “All this diverting and talking about people commenting on the story when they’re supposed to be in it doing cool things is driving me batty. Hell’s teeth, man! Just get on with it. There’s only fifteen minutes left and you’ve barely even made any progress at all!”

“Goddamn,” said the author, shaking his head and trying to ignore the cries of the real life Clemmy as she whined about how she couldn’t think of anything to write, “this really isn’t easy at all.”

“Waaaah-waaaah-waaaaah,” said Clemmy, sounding actually quite like an eighteen month-old baby, and not a five-year-old girl at all.

Daddy looked up from his work and shook his head.

“The death of thought,” he said, wisely and sagely, while Gilbert glared at the author.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Gilbert, “I’ll count to three, and if you don’t get back to the main point of the narrative – which, I’m guessing by the title, is something to do with a time travelling tent – I’m going to go around the side of the garage, pick up one of those rusty machetes, walk back here, and chop off one toe for each minute of my life you waste, you rotten curséd scoundrel, you.”

“Gulp,” said the author, trying desperately to usher his thoughts in the right and necessary direction – and yet, even now, still writing about things outside the story, such as this imagined ushering of thoughts and –

“One,” said Gilbert, holding up an imaginary knife and relating clearly with the expression in his eyes what would happen if the author didn’t stop this madness – even this current madness, which is still not the story at all – and –

Just then, there was a enormous smash of glass; and the appearance of two boots crashing through the window; and a masked man in a cape and hat, holding a sword, came swinging on a rope and landed next to the hammock.

“It’s Zorro!” cried Gilbert, gleefully, and clapping his hands together.

“That’s weird,” thought the author, “he came swinging on that rope through the window from the inside (I hope by the way that when mummy is reading this – assuming that she agrees to do so – that she utilises the italics).”

“Enough!” cried Zorro. “Unhand that computer! Give it to me! You’ve proved yourself categorically and undeniably unsuited to the task, and despite being given multiple opportunities, have refused time and time again to the tell the really rather excellent story of what happened when these three darling and wonderful kiddies had their chore-avoiding adventure with the time-travelling tent!”

The author quivered. He quivered so much he tipped over the hammock and fell face down in the dirt. Sand got in his mouth. And some poo.

“Pfff,” he spat. “Diarrhoea. Daddy’s diarrhoea. Daddyrrhoea.”

“Ha!” laughed Gilbert, “that’s actually quite good.”

“Best thing he’s written all day,” smiled Zorro, “but now it’s time for a real man to take over the reins.”

Zorro reached down for the computer. Cracked his knuckles. Looked at the keyboard. And then started to cry.

“Actually,” he said, “thing is...I don’t know how to type. Nobody ever told me. Not my mummy. And certainly not my daddy – he left home when I was three years old; I never saw him again. I...”

Zorro blubbed. He lifted his mask and wiped multiple tears from his eyes.

The children looked at him with sympathetic expressions on their faces – well, the girls did, anyway.

Just as Peony was handing him a piece of toilet paper (unused) Gilbert came running at him with the machete.

“Yaaaaaaaargh!” he screamed, “all I wanted was a simple story of how Peony and Clementine and I travelled through time to escape doing chores by sitting in Rory’s tent and going on amazing adventures through dinosaur times and even into the future where there are flying cars and laser weapons and people have robot bodies and heads that live in jars and you silly grownups have had to go and spoil it all with your meta ramblings and existential woes masquerading as pseudo-clever pontifications when it would be so much easier just to get on with it and – “

“Okay then,” said the author and Zorro together, both now crying – both holding one another in a consoling embrace – “you do it.”

They held out the computer to Gilbert. Gilbert threw down the machete – poor old Zorro half jumped out of his skin – and took in his hands and began to type.

“Once upon a time,” he wrote, “Peony, Gilbert and Clemmy were sitting in the kitchen listening to The Flight of the Conchords.”

“What’s your favourite Flight of the Conchords song?” said Gilbert.

“Mine’s the one about the Hiphopapotamus,” said Clemmy.

“Why’s that?” asked Gilbert, inquisitively.

“Because they keep saying ‘motherflippin’’,” said Clemmy.

“Wait a minute,” said the author, “isn’t this just the same story again?”

“So it is,” said Gilbert, with a strangely wicked smile upon his face, “but that’s because...”

“Hold on,” said Clemmy, “does that mean...?”

“Oh my God,” said Peony, “all this time I thought that the unnamed author typing in the hammock was Rory but...”

“That’s right,” said Gilbert, with an expression of triumph, “I fooled you all. The writer is me. The Gilbert in the story is me. And the two Gilberts outside the story too. There are loads of us. We are everywhere. We are legion, and legendary, and leisurely (American pronunciation) too.”

Mummy said the f-word. So did Peony. And so did Clementine.

Zorro fully removed his mask, only to reveal another Gilbert.

“Quick,” shouted Clementine, “let’s go to Rory’s tent!”

So she and Peony and mummy and daddy – who was clutching his buttocks, so as to keep them from exploding – raced across the yard as fast as they could, while about seven dozen Gilberts chased wildly after them.

They got to the tent. They unzipped the door. They gasped as they saw – no! it couldn’t possibly be! – yet another Gilbert lying in there asleep.

“What’s going on?” cried Clementine, “my poor old brain won’t take this!”

Just then Rory came strolling in after peeing in the grass.

“Quick,” he said, “get in the tent – we haven’t got much time.”

They all dived in and he zipped up the door behind them.

The Gilberts were getting closer and closer – though you’d have thought they’d have been there by now, what with the tent only being about three seconds away, and when you factor in for the delay of the stopping one they saw Gilbert, and the little bit of dialogue but...

Well, they weren’t. There was still time. Just like in a movie – or, indeed, in an episode of Zorro.

“Thing is,” said Rory, calmly, as though they had all the time in the world, when they clearly didn’t, “Gilbert’s having a dream. He’s dreaming that he’s writing a story. And the story has come true – in a way.”

“What do you mean ‘in a way’?” asked Peony.

“What I mean,” he said, ignoring the clumsy way the author was using dialogue as a plot exposition tool, “is that we’re all actually inside Gilbert’s dream, including the Gilbert that was writing the story.”

“So, in a sense,” said Peony, “we don’t actually exist?”

“That’s correct,” said Dan Brown, “and neither does the Gilbert who is writing the story. He’s just in the dream. And when the dream is over, the story is too.”

“So everything will go back to normal?” asked Clementine. “All we have to do is wake him up?”

“Yes and no,” said Dan Brown, looking idly at a cup, “the problem is, if we wake him up now, there will be too many hydrogen atoms in the superheated magnesium coil sprocket, and that could literally mean the end of life on Earth as we know it.”

“You mean – ” said Peony.

“Yes, that’s right,” whispered Dan Brown, while simultaneously peeling the skin off a second-hand onion, “the dissolution of the coil sprocket would cause such a distortion to the space time continuum that a black hole would form right there where the snake hole is, and –“

“You mean –“ said Peony again.

“Indeed,” he nodded sagely, and everyone understood, even though it was far from clear where that sentence was going.

“So what should we do?” asked Clementine.

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Dan Brown, “since this is a time-travelling tent, all we have to do is go back in time to just before Gilbert fall asleep – probably via dinosaur times first, so as to have lots of adventures, and give a sense that everything was going to go wrong – and, either tell him to dream of something harmless, like cheese or chicken tacos – or both, if we so wish – or just not let him fall asleep in the first place.”

“How would we do that?” asked Clementine.

“Just sat fire to his socks or something,” said Dan Brown. “No one can sleep while their socks are burning.”

“Just like the song,” daddy mused, “’How Can We Sleep While Our Socks Are Burning?’”

“Midnight Oil?” said Rory.

“No thanks,” said daddy, “I never drink oil after ten thirty” – and they all laughed.

Meanwhile, the screaming crazy horde of Gilberts and Zorros was getting closer – which is hardly surprising, really, when you consider how much story time has passed, and how short the distance they had to cover was.

“Okay,” said Dan Brown finally, after a little siesta, “all we have to do is this: all think of a date – the time a couple of minutes before Gilbert fell asleep should be good – and while we’re doing that can someone play this drum so as to jump start the time travel mechanism that makes the whole thing work? It will need to be someone with excellent timing and rhythm.”

“Clementine can do it,” said Peony, “she’s great on the drums. ‘Clem-in-time’, they call her, she’s so metronomic and accurate.”

“Okay,” said Dan Brown, the hero of the whole thing, and he handed Clementine the drum. “Just go like this – bang – bang – bang – bang – and we’ll all concentrate on getting back to the right time and everything should be okay.”

Clementine started banging out her rhythm, just as the hero Dan Brown had shown her.

Then, suddenly –

“Quick!” shouted daddy, “they’re almost here!”

Clementine banged. Everyone squeezed their eyes tight shut in concentration. The tent started shaking and juddering and whirling, just as though it was travelling through time.

“Hold on!” shouted Dan Brown, heroically, “this is the crucial bit!”

The tent was full of stars. Angels and demons swirled and hovered around everybody’s heads. Black holes and supernovas blinked into and out of existence. Daddy did a poo.

Then everything was silent.

Everybody said, “wow”.

There was no noise whatsoever: no screaming Gilberts; no tweeting of birds; or tapping of keyboard; or mummy saying the f-word over and over again.

“We made it,” said Peony.

They all looked down at Gilbert lying on Rory’s amazing mattress, and smiled.

“I think I’ll take a nap,” said Gilbert – the real Gilbert – the genuine, actual Gilbert – and not one of the phoney ones at all – and everyone laughed and shouted “nooooo!” and he looked at them confused.

“Why not?”he said.

“Oh,” said Peony, “it’s a long story. And not a very good one, I’ll wager.”

“Hahaha,” everybody else said. “Great joke, Peony. ‘I’ll wager.’ Hahaha.”

They were all smiling and relieved, just like at the end of a corny TV show when all the danger has been averted and nobody cares anymore or acts like real people.

Still, at least there wasn’t a ridiculous twist in the tale, like other corny TV shows.

Or was there?

“Oh my God,” said Dan Brown, who had unzipped the tent and was looking into the yard.

“What is it?” everybody asked, all at the same time, in perfect unison.

“Peony,” he said, “what time were you thinking of when I said, ‘let’s all think of the time just before Gilbert fell asleep.”

“Well,” said Peony, “I must confess, I think I thought of dinosaur times also. Maybe just a little bit.”

“And you, Easterly?”

“Er...dinosaur times too.”

“Matt?”

“I was thinking about going back to the time just before Gilbert fell asleep.”

“Really?”

“No. Not really. I was thinking about whether or not travelling through time would sort out my diarrhoea. And dinosaurs.”

Dan Brown rolled his eyes. He asked Clementine, Rory, and even the sleeping Gilbert, and they all said that they had accidentally been thinking about dinosaur times.

“Why?” said Clemmy, “does it matter?”

“I’ll say,” said Dan Brown. “Take a look at this.”

He threw back the tent door. Everybody gasped.

Outside the tent was a T-Rex, a brontosaurus, and a whole flock of those big dinosaur birds that begin with the letter ‘p’ that nobody can spell.

Pterradactyls – or something like that.

“The f-word,” said mummy, “eff eff eff eff eff.”

“Don’t worry, mummy,” said Gilbert, “everything will be okay.”

They all stepped gingerly outside of the tent and looked around. Dinosaurs were everywhere. They were the only humans around.

“How will we ever get out of this?” wondered Clementine.

“I don’t know,” said Rory, “but probably it’s going to be a really excellent adventure. I’m sure it will all make a great story one day – or maybe a whole series of great stories, if we end up travelling to loads of different other times first, before we finally make it back home.”

“Yes,” said mummy, “for example: Victorian times; Roman times; Egyptian times; that sort of thing.”

“Anything’s possible,” said Peony. “Anything at all.”

“Well,” said Dan Brown, “it all depends on who’s writing it.”

Everyone laughed – even the T-Rex, whose massive eye was right next to them all.

“Hahahahahahahaha,” they said.

What a weird, lame ending for a story. 

Car dreams and stress

Monday 10th April, 7.38am

On Saturday morning I woke up unhappy from various things, and also from a dream of a car setting on fire. Immediate waking thought was: shouldn’t drive today. And then I wrote, and felt much, much better.

In any case, I drove, and the car broke down, and after several hours of intense mental and emotional activity and stress, from about 11am to 5pm, something broke and I finally became relaxed. The pressure to please others, to give Matt and Easterly the ‘perfect holiday’ went. They didn’t care about anything. The kids were loving whatever happened. All my little plans and intentions: nothing mattered.

I was exhausted and beat, felt queasy, sick, couldn’t eat, still couldn’t sleep – but something had ‘let go’.

They’re happy. I no longer care so much. I see them enjoy all – even the lack of water – and everything’s fine.

Just got to get car running so we can enjoy the rest of our time to the max, however it may look, and kick back as they’re doing.

They don’t need me to provide for them. The hot springs and Baja is enough. Dusty old Baja. Mad old dog-filled Baja. This crazy house: they’re loving it all.

As Matt said: all this stuff going wrong and shenanigans and stress is normal for them, they’re used to it. Three kids and a busy life and all the coming and going.

Not me. I keep things simple – and when they get complicated, I fall apart.

Am I really peaceful, or do I do nothing more than (mostly) avoid things that would take away peace?

Moments like these, these guys – even with their smoking and drinking – seem much more accepting and joyful than I.

Makes ya think. Though probably I’d be the same in their position. Just as I was with Pearl and the break-in.

Makes ya think – but I shouldn’t let it make me think too much. Just nice that that drive to please, to organise, to sort everything for them, has faded.

Gracias Dios. Y ahora...hoy!

A splurge

I’ve been feeling a bit down the last few days. Troubles and fallings out with Ernesto. Listening too much once again to the complaining Canadian women. Abbie no longer talking to me. And further embroilments with people like Jenna and Jay and Alejandro.

I like them well enough – but when they come into my breakfast camp and fire and start smoking and talking about alcohol and swearing...I just think, what the hell? What are they thinking? Why am I subjected to this?

What happened here? What happened to the boy who just loved to play in the water, chat with the occasional person, mostly just dig the beauty?

I hardly ever go into the hot springs anymore, for one reason or another. Hardly ever go up to the waterfalls. Things just gone kind of weird...

A week ago I came back from my hike. I guess I have a memory of typing things out and coming to the conclusion that “going up the canyon” was the next logical step.

I went. It was pretty amazing. I loved it. Or rather...

That first day was magical, incredible, intoxicating, exhilarating. Ten hours walking and jumping and climbing and bouldering. Beauty incomparable. Excitement, and even a little danger. My shoes falling to pieces. Pigs and discoveries. And then the miracle of the camping gear hanging in the tree.

I felt so good that first night. Slept so happy. What a wonderful day.

But the next day my mind was full of lonesomeness. Lots of song lyrics circling around my brain on the subject. I thought of Tammy, and couldn’t work out why. I guess I took it all as a sign that being alone up there wasn’t what I needed, that it was other people.

But what if I got it wrong? What if it was just a layer of something being peeled off? The layer of lonesomeness? And some other deeper, better layer to be arrived at once that had been done dealt with?

I didn’t deal with it. I felt it, experienced it – but always planned to move on, to return to the world, civilization, other people.

I missed other people. Wanted Tammy. Wanted Philipp and Cabo. And wanted that feeling of movement and the joy in simply ‘walking’ that I’d had the first day.

No, the second day wasn’t as good. I ate more. Maybe I was trying to do or be something that didn’t really suit me. More stationary, more quiet.

Oh, for the purity and goodness and sheer holiness of that first day! But –

I had my mission. Source for my soul, and Ocean for the ego. And on I walked...

I reached the source – what I think was the source – after more beauty and wonder and adventure. La Ultima Puerta. The thirty-foot dry waterfall. Stumbles and falls, and the narrowing of the channel. Clambering through the brush. Climbing and climbing, and finally coming to the top of that hill, where I...

A snake was right there waiting for me when I arrived. It stayed a while and then I said “hello” and it slithered off. I wondered if it was meaningful, or perhaps just one of those things.

I looked it up later and figure it was a “Rosy Boa” – harmless, docile, a favourite of those wanting a snake as a pet.

I didn’t linger long at the source, and later regretted it. All those years of wanting to get up there – and once there, tossing it off and merely interested in making my way down. Laughing, even, at the initial belief that “there was nothing there” – another Israel, another America, another Chaley (so many others) – just an empty desire fulfilled, and chalked off the list.

Perhaps I sell myself short with that. Perhaps I once again fail to understand that it’s not during the doing of something that one gets their reward – to sit in meditation, and see colours and angels – but later, when life has returned, and the changes that occur.

I struggle my way down, and beyond the waterfall of unbelievable paradisiacal beauty, it was mostly tedium and tired drudgery and, perhaps, mistake.

Truly, if Ocean was for ego, I got my reward.

But I made it back, to the dark highway of night, and slept (eventually) of the Pescadero porch, and dreamed all night of snakes, in such strange and vivid ways.

I don’t remember it now, but upon wakening it was as though one of those nights where, after fifteen hours of driving, the nighttime brain is full to the brim of same. But that snake was only there for a few seconds – so why my head so overflowing with snakes all night?

A few nights later I dream the most incredible dream of being bitten by a rattlesnake. A dream that seems to last a half hour and include every detail of the process, from the initial bite and my initial reaction and feeling, through the changes in my physical body – swelling in my feet, the sensation of the toxin pulsing through me – as well as my emotional state, my mental state, and my thought process.

I try to meditate with it, be calm and aware. I think of John, and what he did. I wonder about seeking help, but also about the spiritual implications. Sometimes it seems everything is going to be all right, and sometimes it feels as though something terrible is going to happen.

Near the end, I look in the mirror and see blue and red lines almost tattooed on my skin.

Is it the poison, working through my system, the effects of it on my body, injuring and maybe killing it, or something else?

So vivid and striking and seemingly relevant.

But what does it mean? What does it mean? Is there something I should be doing? Is there a message I should be taking from this? Or is it more like an indication of a process that is happening, something beyond my control, my ever-changing inner-being reflected in my subconscious?

I tend to the latter. But still...

Something is happening. This hardship in being around others (again). This impatience and intolerance of their words. This feeling that I’ve heard everything, that there’s nothing new and it’s all boring. Tired of hearing about bloody drugs – sorry, plant medicine – and all the other post-New Age paraphernalia.

First I get sick of the material. Then the New Age. And now the jaded New Age.

There must be something more. There must always be something more.

“One must ever be prepared to leave one’s reality behind,” said Mother Meera.

Am I prepared? Am I ready? And will the new reality rise up to meet me?

It’s hard to conceive of a new reality, I’ve been so long in this one.

Where can it possibly be in this world? Where is there even room for it?

The New Age was always there, sitting on bookshop shelves, I just never looked at them. But now I find it hard to imagine there are shelves unexamined – or is the next reality somewhere beyond words?

Are there really a whole bunch of humans out there living and experiencing something infinitely beyond my current imagining? Why have I never found them? Brushed against them? Got even the littlest taste?

Do I have to live this current reality until I’m so completely sick of it that being in it is pretty much impossible? Something like how it was when I was first here, and touched by Lindsay – and the Hand of God – and knew I had to change. Wanted to. No going back.

Christ! I’m forty-one years old! Where will it end? And where will I begin?

I kind of wish Matt and Easterly weren’t coming. Though maybe it’ll be lovely. But I dread having to be the host, and having to be responsible for their holiday. And yet – they’ve done so much for me, and Matt has been ever so good giving me work, and basically safeguarding my material future.

I think of Susan and her offer of the land. Would it be crazy not to take her up on that? Why does it leave me so cold?

Would I really want to spend the next twenty years sitting on a bit of scrub outside El Chorro? And what need for ‘permanent structure’ when the tent is just perfect? When every little addition to that just adds complication?

Poor Susan – she seems so stressed and overwhelmed and lonesome. Working so hard for the watering of plants that no one wants to eat.

I guess I’m mostly afraid to get swept along with that – and next thing I know I’ll be toiling in dirt to pay for something I don’t even want or need, and all the while stuck once more listening to the complaining Canadians.

Poor old Lynn thinks I don’t like her – and maybe I don’t.

I mean, it doesn’t mean I dislike her – is that what she means? For that’s not the case – but I guess it’s true: for what is there to like?

I can’t understand her. She has such a strange way of speaking. Poor thing.

And Jeanetti – if she was as out of the way as Susan, or Helene and Alban, or a little less giving and sharing, would I spend as much time at hers and with her as I do?

Do I merely take advantage? Or is it more the price of the deal we’ve entered in on? The things I get from her – this computer, water, electricity, food – in exchange for my ears for her to complain into, and my arms to occasionally lift something heavy.

How did it come to this, that I got so embroiled in the village, when my heart always used to be pointed up-canyon?

To change it? To get back to the way it once was? For returning to nature very rarely seems like the backwards step returning to human life, or to a particular mode of human life, often does.

Nature is every new. A great reflector of one’s state of being – and people too, but new people, new places, new ways of interaction, not old, not familiar, not past.

I need to have more alone time, more nature time, more time growing and reaching out to Spirit – and less time listening to complaints, using others for my own ends, biting my tongue, or lashing out.

I need to take care of myself. To ask myself, “is this who I am? Is this who I want to be?”

Something somewhere along the line has gone a little wrong. Maybe starting with Pearl. Or maybe this is the way it was always going to be. Just time passing and the inevitable surfacing and resurfacing of my inner traits, my foibles and flaws.

“Wherever you go, there you are.”

Certainly, I’m losing patience with others. Taking out my general complaining Canadian frustrations on Susan. Scapegoating Jay for the intolerable mass of monologuing Americans. Dismissing Alex and Jenna for the barrage of Ayahuasca suppers.

And what of Ayahuasca? Should I just sup it myself, and see? “If you can’t beat ‘em, join em’ – that sort of thing?

It would be interesting. I wouldn’t want it to cost too much money. I’d probably prefer it without all the paraphernalia and ceremony. To drop into my life more naturally than the way it seems to be working for most people.

Just to shut up the voice in my head that judges, dismisses, looks down on.

But then again – it does seem like the Reiki of spirituality. You pays your money and you gets your kick. So typically Norte Americano.

And what good does all the years of so-called “ceremony” seem to have done someone like Jeanetti? (But then, meditation also.)

God, you see how much I hate the terminology. “Ceremony”. “Medicine”. “Indigenous.” A whole world I’m surrounded by, sort of fit into, understand but...am outside of.

Alienation.

In the beginning, of course, we are all the same

Wanting our toys

Loving our television

Eating our fish and chips

Stealing a little

Lying some

Discovering sex

Dreaming of our assured

Future riches and fame

And then

Somewhere down the line

We look around our office cubicles and

Something doesn’t feel quite right

Are we living in The Matrix?

Is this

The Truman Show?

Why do people seem so weird?

So false? So

Fake?

What are they saying?

What can’t we relate?

Why does everything make us

So crazy and sad?

Feel like that for a while

Let the feeling grow

And then –

Break out

Go to yoga

Get into meditation

Discover some

Happy, healthy, glowing

Exuberant people

And enter into our own bliss

Where everything now makes sense

Life has purpose and meaning

A new grander future is assured

And we don’t have to be slaves to the machine

Isn’t everything marvellous?

But

What happens

What happens to the few

What happens to those

For whom

Even these glistening walls start crumbling?

For those who begin to feel

The platitudes

The philosophies

The health fads

The gurus and techniques

Come also as

Nails down a chalkboard

See through this level of

The Illusion

Can be around yogaheads

As easily as the yogaheads

Can sit happy in crack houses

Listening to gunshots

Where do they go?

Where do we go?

Where do I go?

This is indeed

“A great and terrible world”

And –

“Up the mountain. Up the mountain. Up the mountain.”

These are the words that I hear in my head right now. Same answer as it was two weeks ago. Same answer, perhaps, as it ever will be. But –

What of Tammy, down here? What of Matt and Easterly, coming soon, and arrangements to be made? What of my desire to do something, to knuckle down and write, to at least have a go?

Householder concerns, eh? And isn’t that what I am? A material fellow? A man with women and stuff and computers on his mind?

Up the mountain I go, to be alone and miserable and thinking of others. Or – down the mountain I can stay, and be with others and miserable and thinking of getting away.

Ha! And – anyway – up the mountain isn’t miserable, it’s purity and goodness and heaven. It’s holy and peaceful. It’s great.

It just takes a bit of effort, that’s all. Some carting of food. Some planning, and some giving up of other things, such as company and comforts and tostadas.

Two weeks till Matt and Easterly come. Tammy only on the weekends anyway. Not that much required in the way of food or whatever, now I know the camping gear’s there.

Cool, it is, up those mountains. No Mexican music, or loud-mouthed Americans.

Nobody talking about Ayahuasca, or complaining about thieves.

Nobody haranguing me for twenty-five pesos, and no one to run away and hide from, or avoid.

Perhaps I need to go up there and cry tears. Perhaps I need to go up there and feel my aloneness, as I once did during wilderness solos nearly twenty years ago.

Perhaps I need, too, to listen to endless annoying song lyrics, and go mental.

I just hate to punish myself. To do the wrong thing. To force myself again into ‘austerity’ for some misguided purpose, when better things – and by “better” I mean, “the more right things” – await me down here, in the world, and in the company of others, as so often has been the case in the past.

But there’s a draw there, and an appeal. To experience the magnificence of it once more, and to see what’s there for me.

And to escape this situation, too, and this feeling.

To escape this feeling – is that what this is all about? A mere fleeing from current sadness? A sadness caused by doing things I should know better about?

I need to do certain things, whether I go back up the mountain or not.

I need to sort out Matt and Easterly, find out when they’re arriving, and how long they’re staying.

I need to make amends with Ernesto, and also Jeanetti.

I need to find a way to avoid Ayahuasca crowds, and smokers, and Jay.

I need to not get drawn into having to listen to complaining Canadians. And the best way to do that would be to stop using them and relying on them for certain things.

Also, I could choose instead to visit someone like Michael and Conny, a much more healthy choice.

I need a little food, perhaps. Or not.

Not that much, really. In fact, hardly anything.

I could check out Susan’s little solar tablet idea, and perhaps put the door up for her.

I could see Tammy this weekend, and go up after that.

I could get someone to have a look at the AC problem in the car, which I think is seriously sucking up the fuel economy.

It’s genuinely hardly anything:

1.         Go online. See what Matt and Easterly say. Arrange with Michael. Plan to be there for to pick them up at the airport.

2.         Talk with Ernesto, perhaps with Tammy’s help.

3.         Write a little letter to Jeanetti, explaining why I didn’t tell her sooner. But tell her to her face. And say you’ll make it right.

4.         Get some food for the mountain.

5.         Stop listening to people so much (just as you were doing in the beginning).

6.         Walk away from talk of drink and drugs and other things that no longer interest you.

7.         If you have to visit someone, make it Michael and Conny (although, pay attention to whether they actually want to be visited or not.)

8.         Go see Susan today, perhaps just before she goes to the birthday party in Santiago. Do the door thing for her. Don’t get involved in chat.

That seems like a plan. The main thing is to avoid complainers, and to not complain. That’s what this journal is for, and it works well.

Oh, what manner of fool am I! That I can climb so high – both literally and figuratively – and slump so low!

To be sneaking in past aged Mexicans, to save a couple of quid.

To be denting a kind lady’s car, and taking weeks and weeks to tell her about it.

To be getting so angry at good young people who are doing nothing wrong – and mixed-up older people, who are so obviously in pain.

To be thinking always of a thing, and doing nothing about it.

To be wanting sex, and following women.

To be losing and wasting so much precious time – or at least to be labouring under the illusion that that’s what I’m doing.

To have been granted so much, and to do so little with it.

To be on this collision course with oblivion, and helpless to do anything about it.

Only God can help me now – or, perhaps, one of His earthly representatives, if there are any.

Only God’s words can soothe my ears – or, at least, that’s what it feels like, when all human talk has failed.

Only God –

But, yes, I am a fool; of course I am. And lost in delusion, and in the Illusion. And, without pure self-knowledge of my true heart and intentions, my true body and mind, unsure of what to do next.

Whether to build a sweatlodge, and a place here in this piece of cowpat-covered squatted land.

Whether to write my books, as well as I am able.

Whether to walk up that mountain, and wrestle with my brain.

Whether to be nice to people, or shun them forever.

Whether to fuck women, and perhaps even marry one, or resist the urges of my pecker and my arms.

Whether to leave this canyon, and find some new place in the world, that is perhaps out there waiting to offer me more.

Whether to let the rattlesnake bite me, or whether to protect my body with all I can.

Whether to keep my mouth shut, and just smile, or to speak my mind and my opinions, harsh though they may be.

Whether to –

I don’t know. I trust that writing all this will have had some effect. That reality is now changed, both within me and out there. That they way will be made obvious and clear. That I don’t need to answers right now, in this instant, but that they will come, in due course.

That typing these words will weave magic, as it has done so often in the past.

I close the computer. I go to eat my breakfast – it’s 10.04 – and I walk, probably, once more into the village, to do what needs to be done, and to then leave.

And I do believe, that’s all.

El Chorro semi-blues

Well here we are again, feeling certain things and wondering certain things, and being a bit disgruntled and tired and lacking enthusiasm for things, all because of…

Today I’m beat because of yesterday, which beat me up (or down) – that conversation with Abbie which left me feeling drained and exhausted and sad. Just felt like a lot of words and fighting for my corner and being misunderstood. All those things I said weeks and even months ago, stored in her head and returned to me with interest.

Makes me feel like I wish I hadn’t said those things. Hadn’t shared myself with her. Had been more careful with my words.

Words. Just like I was thinking with Peter. Be careful with words. Realise their impact.

Is that what’s going on right now? I was saying that I didn’t really feel I had much to learn/work on at the moment.

And then the rest of it: what to do with my life, my near future, that whole business. Matt and Easterly and kids look like coming; that’ll mean another 5 or 6 weeks here, for sure.

Should I fix up the Santuario? Put some signs on the tree? Build up the sweat lodge and offer groovy things? Sit there and continue my hot springs maintenance and see who swings by?

Or hike up the canyon first and see who I am/what the world is after that?

That feels like a bit of a “yes”.

Then there’s always the writing…the idea that this could be the perfect place to do it…that all I need is some power and some shade and I’m good to go.

I think about that a lot. And I do still like it here. I’ve just had a bit much with people and talking and listening and all their complaints and opinions and chatter.

Hard work. All the village women (Conny excepted), and some o’ them visiting ones too.

I should have been less caustic with Jenna (and, to an extent, Lily and Abbie and Peter).

I don’t like it so much anymore. I do it to fit in, and because I sort of can. But if I don’t appreciate it when it comes back to me, I shouldn’t give it out (like that time with Shamus).

I probably got a bit arrogant too, a wee bit flip with my tongue, bashing Americans and blowhards like Pete and Jay, etc.

Showing off in front of the girls. Enjoying that sardonic jaded sarcasm.

Yes, it can be fun – but only for the right ears, and certainly not so much of it that I start to take it seriously.

Wasn’t that what I loved about not being able to communicate with people? That I couldn’t complain?

Sitting in the hot springs wondering why people were choosing to focus their minds and words on such negativities, when surrounded by so much beauty – but didn’t I end up doing the same?

I need to think more before I speak – and even to think more before I think.

What do I really mean? What do I really want to be?

Where is peace and niceness? Isn’t everything beautiful? What reason to be so mean in words?

I need to be better. I can hardly complain if I get my ass kicked, after all the nonsense I’ve been handing out.

Abbie smokes and swears and drinks. She may not be the best influence or company for me. If truth be told, much as I like her, I don’t know if I can really trust her – don’t know if I really know the real her.

She’s a good soul. She’s hip and nice and good at doing the right thing. But I’m not so sure she’s so good at being real.

She talks and talks, and spouts and spouts – non-stop, ceaseless, neverending – but when I hold her in my arms, everything goes quiet and she becomes tender and sweet.

Who is she, under all that bluster and ‘tough guy’ exterior?

And I shouldn’t have said anything about Stefan. Naturally she was protective, and defensive. She’s known him a long time. They were together three years. She has an investment in him not being a schmuck – because that reflects on her.

These are examples of thinking more deeply. In attempting to go beyond what people are merely saying, and feeling out what’s really going on for them.

It’s not enough for me to just say what’s going on for me. Though when was the last time I really got to talk? I guess we’re in one of those zones again.

It sort of shines a new rosy light on my time with Pearl – even though I was screaming to get out of there by the end of it (and several days before the end of it too).

Was Pearl the beginning of my downfall here? I was plenty happy before that. Dreams of books dissolved in experiences of women.

Wherefore went the hilarity of my OJ idea, and even the resurrection of MSWL?

Is that what I should be doing? Or should I be thinking San Miguel and San Pancho?

Sure, the rocks and water here may suit me – but are the people really on my vibration?

And Tamahara, of course – that was an interesting one. Weirded out, at first – the way she followed me to the rocks, stared at me, snuggled up into me, told me she’d be sleeping with me – but it was actually quite nice.

The softness of her body. Her giggles. Her laughing at my jokes (biting and sardonic though many of them were). And the way we didn’t have sex or kiss or do much of any of that sort of thing, really. Just wanting to fall asleep. Just wanting to feel another body close by.

I need to go up the canyon.

I’m afraid of what waits for me there.

It’s hot in the sun and cool at night.

It’s a long, lonely way – and perhaps impossible, and foolish.

I want to lie down and feel...

God. God. God.

Always my mind goes to God, in times like these.

A defence mechanism? An excuse, and a justification?

Or something deeper than that?

What difference my urge to leave behind North American complaining and chitter chatter than my urge to escape everything and find something more the first time I was here, in ’99?

Oh Momma. Oh Buddha. Oh Jesus. Oh Amma.

I knew nothing of all of you when I first came here, a young nobody, just 22.

Now I’m 41. Some things have changed; and some have stayed the same. But is the whole show beginning once more?

No John, no Shane, no Shawn, no Lindsay. That was all unknown and unforeseen back then. That whole mad unimagined world that I stepped into.

And now...a new world, a new way of life desired. Not the world of Abbie, of Biosana, of Jeanetti and Susan. Something different, something more.

Is something else unimagined still possible? I’m not sure it is. But I’d sure love it if it were.

Is it waiting for me, up that mountain, finally?

Or is that just more pipe dreams, like Israel desert, like a dozen more before?

What left is there? Save more of the same, and maybe just writing what has been?

Up the canyon we go, I guess. Nothing left to wait for – no pot lucks, no airport rides, no movie nights, no girls or people.

One month till Matt and Easterly arrive. A few good weeks then, I’m sure. And in the meantime...

Well, You see me: see what’s going on. See the people and opportunities that exist around here.

See the whole rest of the world, too, and know how to get me to move around it.

Erica in San Pancho?

That intrigued me, once upon a time – though the thought of her and mainland has faded somewhat.

In a nutshell: I have to be a better man. I have to get off my arse and go hike up that river, finally. I have to talk less. Find something more. Get myself back on track, and not be distracted by women and fruitlessness.

Also, watching a bit of comedy and telly might help. Snaps the brain out of its rut. A little light relief.

Laugh at other mad people, not real. :-)

[And then Tammy turned up and, as I type now, four days later, the idea that I was ever “disgruntled” seems sort of ludicrous. Thanks, Tammy! J]