6.40 am London time. A poor night's sleep. Again. Second night in a row. Funny how things go in phases. Nothing quite like lying in bed in the dark with thoughts swimming around your head, repetitive thoughts that get sillier and sillier every time they re-present themselves. All this began today at 5.10 am when I opened my eyes, and after an hour or so of it I'd had enough. And so here I am. Actually I think the reason why I got up is because of indigestion. Last night I had a mix of kidney beans and chickpeas in a kind of spinach curry soup, and boy have they made their presence felt over the last few hours! Things have been a bit blowy to say the least. Have to watch that recipe in future. No repeats.
Well, the short trip I made out to India and Nepal seems quite far away now I have to say. In fact we are still within the first 10 days of Feb and it feels like the dark weather has gone on forever. Don't know what we can do about this. Think I have mentioned before that sometimes it feels that pushing down the barriers in life and making things change requires daunting effort. And anyway, what is it exactly I want to change? Well sometimes it would be nice to live somewhere warmer and nicer than London at least. But where I have no idea. In general those thoughts don't last that long anyway. London is great for me most of the time. The Capitol. Awesome city, make no mistake.
Need to do things to the house. Keep it all in order. Those kind of things always make me feel stressful. Maybe because I am useless when it comes to fixing things. I put it down to having a small pair of hands and the fact that when I was a kid and watched my dad have a crack at odd jobs there was always an overriding tension that he was going to cock it up and therefore everything was directed soley towards getting the job done and out of the way as quickly as possible so that he could then forget about it. There was no joy in the process for him in other words, no space created in his mind to try to take it in and learn. And all that anxiety when it comes to doing anything remotely useful and practical has certainly been passed down to me. I know how to change a lightbulb but much else beyond that can become a bit challenging. Unless it is a flat pack from Ikea of course. For some reason I have always scored a high success rate with those kind of things, mainly because I know that to have any chance of doing it right you have to follow the instructions exactly, without any deviation from the diagrams whatsoever. No, it is more when it comes to creativity and imagination with things practical that I have a problem. If things go wrong I would far rather adapt and live with them rather than spend the time working out what it is that needs to be put right. This is because I have almost no doubt in my mind that whatever I try to do to try to solve it will only end in failure. Depressing. Defeatist. I know.
Anyway at the moment there is a small leak under a couple of tiles in the kitchen which I think is coming from the dishwasher. The best way for me to find whether this is correct or not is to look under the boards when I trurn the dishwasher on. If it is then I guess it is just a simple case of calling up the insurance and getting someone around to fix it. That's what we pay the money for after all. There is probably going to be no chance of me figuring it out myself so I might as well not even try. That is just a small example of what I mean from what I wrote above.
There are other things as well, things I can't necessarily think of at the moment but believe they are lurking around somewhere. Guess in general the place needs a bit of a face lift. The house that is. We have been thinking for a while of ripping out the bolier and hot air heating system and putting in central heating, but that is major major job and will costs thousands of pounds. Certainly there will be nothing I would be able to contribute besides helping to bank roll it. But so what? We ain't got debts, we ain't got kids or nuthin' like that. It might be good though, to clear out the old heating system, knock down the shaft, thus creating more living space, and then filling it with a new load of furniture! Stuff we can go out and buy! Spend hours in places like Bluewater and Lakeside checking out what we want. Don't sound too bad at all actually.
That will make me feel that I am getting things done, moving along in life. Otherwise I hate that feeling of living day in day out with the same old things around, in the same old arrangements. Don't know what it is about it that gets to me. Need to shake things about it. Fear it might be. Mabye it is because I am so ill equipped to tinker with things and make minor adjustments. I just sit there instead and worry that I am about to let things go...something like that anyway. Probably not explaining it that well. It is a tricky one for me to describe with any degree of coherence as it is close to trying to my describe creature habits. The shell of living, the shell of life. Gettin' inside my shell, having a poke around and seeing what it is that makes me tick.
Guess I could have got up and done some meditation this morning but I have not been in the mood to meditate for a while now. Just got no inspiration. I know I should and that it probably will at the very least not do me any harm but I just can't bring myself to the cushion. Even when I am lying there in bed in the dark with my eyes wide open I still find it almost impossible to break out of it and go and sit in the meditation room. Maybe it is because even if sleep has disappeared the bed is still nice and warm. Lazy in other words. I'm getting lazy. Maybe always have been. If that is the case there can never be any comeback if later in life I end up walking through the valley of regrets. No comeback at all. The opportunity was there and I just didn't take it. Only myself to blame in such situations. Well it all might just come back. The inspiration to sit that is. After all it was not so long ago that I was enjoyed an extended spell of good sits on the cushion, maybe once the lighter, warmer weather comes along so will my enthusiasm for meditation return. And I don't think there is any doubt that the warmer weather will appear at some point as 2007 is predicted to be another warm year.
Seems to be a western obsession: global warming and what to do about it. Personally I don't see many people in the east being that unduly worried about it. They just get on with doing things. Livin' life. At the end of the day, whenever the shake out happens there will be some who make it and some who won't. It is not as if there are not enough people in the world anyway. It is quite probable that something mighty is rumbling away in the distance but I think it is safe to say there is not much we can do about it now. Maybe there would have been a couple of hundred years ago if we had thought things through before the industrial revolution and been fully aware of the potential consequences of our new found power over nature. But we didn't, we just got on with it. And that is simply because people at that time did not have the luxury to wait around. That is the story of mankind really, battling for comfort on this planet in virtually the middle of nowehere, so what do you expect if we fuck things up? Big deal. We are not gods, we are not enlightened. Sure with hindsight we might have done things different but the fact it we didn't and so here we are, in this current position, whatever it is.
Wow, what a rant above! Must have had the early mornin' blues I guess. Anyway it is evening now so what was wrote up till this paragraph now seems a long way behind me. Just downloaded an album I nearly bought today on CD when I was in HMV on Oxford Street. Better going for the download though as it has turned out to half the price. Album in question? "Heart of Mine: The Love Songs of Bob Dylan" by Maria Muldaur. Good? You bet. Since I'm a big Bob Dylan fan I've have had my eyes on this release for a couple of months now. Just getting into all this download stuff and I think that if I ain't careful I could end up spending quite a bit of dough. It's just so damn easy to buy stuff on itunes, especially once they have your credit card.
This afternoon ended going into town. Well I had to go to Waterloo to see off Tamdin who has now gone to Brussels for six days work. After that I walked into the West End where after a bit of searching I bought "No Quarter" by Page & Plant (surprisingly difficult to find and I guess in retrospect it would have been easier to download it, but there you go), "Fate of Nations" by Robert Plant (there was some indecision over this particular purchase on my part as I know it is coming out in a couple of months in a remastered edition with extra tracks, but it was only 8 quid so what the fuck) and finally the remastered, expanded edition of John Martyn's "Inside Out" (now this one I do have the old edition but that can now go down the charity shop first thing tomorrow mornin'). So there you go, another successful top-up for my music habit.
London was cold and grey today that there was no doubt about. People had their heads down most of the time but that didn't stop me from seeing a few people in need of help as well. Seeing them as in observing them as I was walking past. There was the young man in HMV who was walking down the ailes and taking to himself for a start. Where was his head at? At first I just assumed he was talkin' on his mobile, having a rant at someone until I realised that just was not the case at all. Poor guy. And another chap talking to himself on Waterloo station. Trying to light a fag, he looked like he was 100 years old. So many people in London that make you think the whole thing is just gonna come crashing down. And yet...what do I do, what can I do to help them? Not much, really not much. It is all so fast, people walk fast and I walk fast also, up and down the stairs and into the tube barely getting to look at the people as they pass me by. It's a race. Only the strong will survive. That is London. Somewhere in the city people are making millions but they will never come close to the life the vast majority have to live in order to get by. Extremes. Too many have too little and a fair number just fall right out the bottom.
Got out of town as soon as could really. Didn't fancy hanging around so after picking up the music I wanted I was on my way back east again. Returned by 5 and set about clearing things and putting a few things in order. Compulsive cleaner is what I guess you could call me despite the fact I know nothing of general fix-it things as mentioned in quite some detail above.
Now getting on into the evening. Got Page & Plant playing next to me. Good stuff, the unledded version of the "Physical Graffiti" classic "Kashmir". Spent a lot of time over the last two or three weeks or so playing around with my ipod. Creating and then tweaking no end of playlists. Latest one is a compilation of some latter Rolling Stones tracks called "Rocky Stones". S'ppose the title speaks for itself. Main albums I have mined being "A Bigger Bang", "Steel Wheels", "Voodoo Lounge", "Bridges to Babylon" and pits and pieces from some of their other stuff as well. Funny thing, playlists. Brings me right back to the early days of tape compilations in many respects I have to admit, although of course with ipods things are infinitely more flexible. Still, guess I need to get a grip on things at some point though and stop spending so much time and money on the whole damn business.
That's it. Time to post an' end this blog...well, for today at least.
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