It is hot and I have not written much on the incredible Ghost Eternal blog for a good few weeks. In fact I guess if you read the last few entries you could say that I am still recovering from seeing Bob Dylan. Don’t think there is much more to add to that.
If people are wondering whether or not temperatures are getting hotter in the world I think we might be getting close to show time. Tomorrow is possibly going to break the record for the hottest July day ever in Britain, or at least since they started recording these things. As I sit here in the office in Ilford the temperature is low ‘90s. It is bearable but things get slow, especially time, (when the mirage of escaping the office, going home and resting in the back garden looms large on the horizon) ; it is also when you end up doing things not quite as well as you usually do because your attention is not quite there, and there is a certain level agitation buzzing around somewhere in the back of your consciousness.
Above was written over a week ago now and in a way nothing much has changed. It is still hot and looks like it is going to continue being so for the next few days at least. Each of these pieces is being written at speed in the office and I guess I will post them up onto the blog before we go to Ireland at the end of the week. Ireland. Hired a cottage in County Kerry. Never been there before so we are both looking forward to seeing how expectations dissolve into reality. How close will it be to what we imagine? Work is ticking over, not excessively busy but enough to do without making me want to freak out and think the whole thing is going to come crashing down around me. Would it be such a bad thing if it did?
London in the summer heat is heavy. Well, in London there is always that constant feeling of being on the edge of the apocalypse. It has so many places where the atmosphere and attitude of the people on the streets is such that you can almost taste it. One false move and you’re a dead man. Stuff like that. Especially over on the east side of town which is where I happen to live and work. It is an overwhelming feeling. So much so that I don’t think it will ever go away. Maybe when I was younger I would have been able to kid myself that I would rise above it, but I am at least wiser than that now and have a better grasp of my own limitations. It goes when I am not in London but that is it. When I’m here there feeling is there and it is just a question of degree, in other words sometimes I am full of it and other times not so much. Fear and trepidation.
Began to write a few notes last night bemoaning the fact I hadn’t seem to have got around after nearly 46 years on this earth of getting myself a decent hobby. You know something that I can go away and quietly work on and become a bit of an expert on whilst causing no harm to anyone. Just hasn’t come together in that regard. The two main things I do outside of work and trying to be a good husband is read books and listen to music. They can keep me going for quite a while most days but I guess there comes a point when I wish there was also something else. In fact I am reading a pretty amazing book at the moment about an English mercenary from the late 14th century. Name of the book is after the man, Hawkwood. He led such a hell of a life that it is difficult to imagine what it must have been like, it comes from out of another age, another time, no doubt about that. There is something amazing and fascinating about trying to picture what it would be ever been like to be in the same room as him. How would he have looked? What would have been his vibration? Would it be possible to sit down and have a conversation with him about life? He was a soldier of fortune simple as that and he came from Essex. He was inured to any form of discomfort and the weird thing is that he didn’t really make a name for himself until he was already past 40 which I guess for the times must have made him quite old already. Where was his turf? Italy.
So - working through this mid to late July blog. Weather today is hot and sticky, by the looks of the people on the street they are finding it pretty hard to handle. No doubt that you have to take things slowly. But all this is just a sign of things to come. Summers ain't never gonna be cold again that's for sure. If people don't understand why I will tell them to take a look at the number of vehicles on the road all pumping out their gunk and the number of planes in the sky all pumping out their gunk too. We're on a big wheel now and there is little we can do to alter its speed. Just take it as it comes and let evolution take care of the rest, as it most surely will.
Was thinking earlier today just how difficult it is for me to get a handle on my feelings, articulate them and make them explainable in some kind of sensible way. For the most part I think the conculsion is that there is simply not much to say. What am I after all? A guy in his mid-40's who has never been in a life threatening situation and who has probably never done anything in his life which has not already been done by others thousands of times before. I guess in one way though I am just glad to be alive. All you have to do is look back into the past and see that it was the exception rather than the norm not really so very long ago to ever make it past 40. Even now people are dying all over the world at all ages and at various stages of the game. So in that respect it is still great just to be player.
Had a bit of stiff neck now for the last few days. Must be related I guess to the weather and the heat which just won't go away. No that I'm complaining, I love the simplicity of the hot weather. Shorts and shirt and not much else required at least as far as I'm concerned. I like sleeping on the bed with no covers and briefly waking up at around 5 am to crawl under the sheets as by then the temperature has dropped. Awake and then asleep again, slipping in and out of dreams that carry their feeling with me throughout the day but the content of which I can never remember. Like they point either to the distant past or the distant future and situations where the truth seems more real somehow although I would never be able to explain in what way.
Writing this on the laptop ties my back up. My have something to do with my neck and with the heat but when I sit back it really hits me. Got a good cup of tea on the go and it is 4pm. After this session I will do some exercises and then go on my indoor bike and really work up a bit of sweat. Then after that the reward will be a long cold shower. So anyway this peice when it is finished will have covered a few days in the second half of July in this year of my life 2006. Come what may I will post this all up onto the incredible Ghost Eterrnal tomorrow as on Friday Tamdin and I are off to Ireland on holiday for a week. Looking forward to it, never been to Ireland so I wanna see how imagination accords with reality. Think I've written about this already at the beginning of this blog but it don't matter, it is worth repeating. Well, to me at least.
The post will will have to come from work tomorrow. That will Thursay 27th July. There will just be me and Leigh in the office as Mike is taking a long weekend. Should be OK. Work is not too much, just ticking over but there is enough to keep things busy. We're all busy working away in the background on the new website which will almost ceratainly be up and running by the middle of August. Can't help but feel pretty excited about it as in my humble opinion it is a state of the art website and it can only stand to do us favours. We will see. But the address is going to be www.wisdom-books.com and it will take over from the current one which has been how it is for about the last four years and which has served us really well. The changing sands of time. The nature of the business that we're in - which is basically selling books on Buddhism - has chnaged dramatically over the years and now it has come to this. Websites offering the best there is in design technology stuffed full of product which is on offer at reduced prices. We will do anything to survive I can assure you of that. We will get any book from anywhere and sell it on to our customers. That is what we do, simple as that. After taking our cut along the way.
Now the day after what I just wrote in the few paras above. Still hot, hotter in fact than it has been before. Like swimming through a heat soup. Can't write much now, am in the office early afternoon and my mind is blank. Too full of work.
Back on the laptop now and it is early evening time in the middle of a heavy burst of rain. Don't know if it is going to be enough to turn the heat away but we shall see. Tomorrow we're going on holiday so I guess my thoughts are now turning to that. Seems funny in a not very funny at all kind of way when I turn on the tv at the moment and see all the destruction that is being caused in the Middle East. Israel and the Lebanon. How would I feel if a bomb fell out of the sky and landed on my house? This is what is happening to people in Beirut and other cities at the moment and I can't help feeling that there is going to be a price to pay for all this. It basically seems like the West are just giving the Israelis the green light to go and get on with it and in the process a lot of people who just seem like they want to get by are seeing their lives literally blown apart. It is all down to where you are in this world. In the wrong place at the wrong time then better watch out because there is little protection.
Still a few really dark clouds on the horizon but the rain has done nothing to take away the heat. Sitting here in shorts and not much else. Came back from work and had a cold shower. What else? Got a bit of Quo on the laptop, a rather long playlist I compiled that I have called Station Quo. Pretty good name for a Quo playlist if you ask me but it will probably be lost on the vast majority of people, not that there are any people who will bother to read this. Actually I've got back into the Counting Crows again after a bit of a prolonged break and I have to say that they really are an excellent band. One of the best. I've had nearly all their studio for a while so I picked up a couple of their live ones the other and I'm very much their live interpretations of their recorded material. Remind me in a way of Dylan.
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