Now in September and temps for the next few days are set to be in their low to mid 20's. Should have worn a short sleeved shirt to work today but miscalculated. Tryin' to shrug off a cold, little bit of running nose and coughing is what I have now after a couple of nights of waking up with an incredibly dry throat. There is a faint buzzing in my ears as well. Think it must be down to a combination of doing quite a few things last week and seeing quite a lot of people - somewhere in there a few bugs must have been flying around. One or two have got me.
Slept deep last night, been taking some Tibetan medicine trying to shake off this cold and last night had some small black pills with anconite...numbed the whole of my body so that I could hardly move in my bed. Did the trick though and I feel well refreshed this morning. Think today I should see this thing off and then with the grace of the gods it is back to normal...whatever normal might be.
Spirit on the water
Darkness on the face of the deep
I keep thinking about you baby
I can't hardly sleep
Words above from Bob Dylan's "Spirit on the Water" second song in on "Modern Times" - the way he delivers those lines are one of my favourite parts of the album. It's the voice, it's all in the voice. Other highlight at present is "The Levee's Gonna Break" because it is just so easy to imagine how well this song is going to sound live, how absolutely rockin' it's gonna be.
Late night now, wrote the words above at the office this afternoon, in the middle of the day in other words when the light was at its brightest. Wrote a bit more this evening on this page not so long ago but I bombed out of it and forgot to save it and now those words are lost forever.
I was going on about basically living a worthwhile life and being able to get to the end of the game without having a heapful of regrets. Guess what I was saying was that sometimes I find myself wandering around this house I live in with my wife and feeling or thinking that there could have been so much more that I could have done with my time on earth and that when my time is up it aint never gonna be able to come back again. Then I might find myself full of regrets.
Maybe it is guilt. Maybe it boredom. Maybe it is fear. Fear that people will point their fingers and say that I haven't done enough...but who are these people who will point their fingers and what exactly will they be like? These are things that I truly do not know. So anyway I go around skulking, thinking these kind of things from time to time. Not all the time, just sometimes. Yes, I remember now...what I wrote before was that when it comes to making changes in my life it feels like I am pushing against two huge boulders that are either side of me and I am unable to move them an inch. Whatever I do to try to push against them it does no good and they stay exactly where they are. Maybe I don't need to change them anyway, with all the usual things that one has to put up with from living a life on planet Earth I have still gotta hold my hands up and say that when push comes to shove I would classify myself as being basically happy. Life's amazing on the whole - ain't that right?
Wrote the above last night. Been a warm day today with temps in the high 20s. Listened to 1/2 of "Modern Times" earlier this evening staring out at the full moon. By and large it felt good. The moon was bright. Funny to think that in reality it is a lifeless ball of rock in space with no light at all; all it's illumination comes from the sun. Beginning to think that the tracks I like best on "Modern Times" are the ones which are not getting the attention from all the reviewers - "Thunder on the Mountain", "Someday Baby" and "The Levee Gonna Break" are the ones which stand out for me at the moment. So easy to imagine Bob playing them live and when on song how he will make them sound utterly fantastic. In fact when I think about it, what Bob as done with his last 2 albums - "Love and Theft" and "Modern Times" - is create records which are as close to the experience of going to see him live as it is possible to get. That is why both those 2 records have so much more in common with each other than 97's "Time Out of Mind" which was a different beast all together.
People look for big songs from Bob and I guess in that sense the big ones on "Modern Times" are "Workingman's Blues #2", "Nettie Moore" and "Ain't Talkin'" but I don't know if that necessarily means that those are the ones which are the most fun to listen to. At the moment I have to say that I find the opening combination of "Thunder on the Mountain" and "Spirit on the Water" pretty hard to beat, maybe it has something to do with just the song titles themselves and how they evoke this picture of nature or maybe it is the fact that the rhymin' of the words and their intonation on "Thunder on the Mountain" make the song special in a triumphant kind of way and that the piano playing of Bob's on "Spirit on the Water" makes that song also pretty special. Oh well, we will just have to see how it goes. There is no doubt however that there are real echoes of previous Bob songs in some of the material in "Modern Times" and I mean that in an absolutely good way...I can hear "Cat's in the Well" in there, "Summer Days" and "Bye and Bye" too. Not to mention the mighty "Highway 61 Revisited" on "The Levee Gonna Break". The album is so much better and more interesting to listen to after I reflect on the fact that I have seen Bob 28 times and that there are so many memories of his performances to draw upon.
Tried to do some meditation after eating but all it did was nearly put me to sleep. If only I could put as much enthusiasm into meditation as I do into listening to Bob Dylan! Fact is though that after so many years trying to do it I have very little to go on and I know in my heart of hearts I remain at a very basic and shallow level of concentration. I am sure it has something to do with the fact that I just find it so difficult sometimes to get physically comfortable and that I have never been able to sit for any prolonged period of time on a cushion with my legs crossed. I just end up feeling crippled and a lot of the time is spent just doing my best to endure the pain and discomfort of the sitting position. I also notice how when I sit these days I soon become aware of large areas of stiffness and discomfort throughout my back and that those painful, hot and heavy sensations never go away. I read somewhere that those feelings of discomfort are indications of mental discomfort, manifestations of some kind of feeling ill at ease...well yes, that maybe so.
Slept late last night and feelin' it this morning. Some crazy kinda shuffle dreams came to me just before waking up but when I did the sky was blue and it was a new day. Managed to get out to Epping Forest this afternoon for a walk. Knocked off work at just before one and after driving back home and having some lunch I was back out in the sunshine. Really enjoyed the walk. Great therapy being among the trees and the light this afternoon was beautiful. The thing I like about the Forest is that although there is a road running right through the middle of it the trees and landscape seems very undisturbed, like everything has been just that way for many more years than all these assholes called people zooming through the middle of it all the time, going as fast as they can; completely ignorant of the great beauty that lies either side of them as they focus on just getting from A - B in the shortest possible time. That is how it is. The modern world, modern times. That is what we are living in, with general contempt shown for anything that cannot be bought and showed off to others as being some kind of status symbol. Truly makes me want to puke but one day it will all be over. The trees however, will remain, gawd bless 'em.
Walked up through the lower stretches of the Forest up to High Beach where there are a couple of tea bars and always a few people around. Like it up there. Always come back feeling refreshed, as if just being in that environment is enough to make my mind go off to some place different. It's old Epping Forest, it's really old and maybe its age is what soakes into you in some kind of unconscious inexplicable way. Well, whatever it is I love it and long my I continue to find it within me to get off my butt and walk among the trees and fantastic Western sunlight once in a very merry while.
Been a warm stretch of days, now just about over one week into September so of course the light is beginning to fade in the evenings now and hints of autumn time are coming on. Being in the Forest for a while makes all this a bit more noticeable.
Still having good sessions listening to "Modern Times". What a triumph of an album! So warm and so good to hear Bob sounding so happy and so completely in control. Whatever people say there just isn't anyone else capable of coming up with that kind of music. It is all in the lifestyle. The fact that Bob, although one of the most names on the planet and a millionaire many times over is still out there most of the time on the road playing to people. Why? Because that is what he does, simple as that. That is his path and when it is working as it should there is space and knowledge to be found the exprience of going out and watching him play live. Ain't no doubt about. Just like an audience with a master. Darshan. Whatever it is that you want to call it.
Haven't written for a few days and after this session I think I'll edit what I've done and load it up. Still warm, incredibly warm in fact. Thing on the news last night about the permafrost melting in Siberia and pumpin' all this methane into the sky, thus accelerating the build up of greenhouse gases. Easy to believe. Shape of things to come and we better get used to it.
Read a good book on meditation recently, one of the best I have come across. "Attention Revolution" by B. Alan Wallace. Talks about gaining lucidity in your dreams in one section and I have tried some of the recommendations out in my usual half arsed kind of way and certainly had dreams since then that have been a bit clearer but I have not woken up in them and realised that I am dreaming. Maybe that will come or maybe like most things I do I will forget about it after a few days and it will fade away.
That's it for all this, the various pieces above cover the last 2 weeks or more and now is the time to stick it all onto the incredible Ghost Eternal.
