In the Thick of It

Thurs early evenin'. Back in the house after another day at work. Still chewing over the boiler possibilities at work, or lack of possibilities I should say. Haven't yet managed to send off the letter to the landlords stating our acceptance of their quote, and also indicating what kind of payment schedule we would be proposing. Whole thing makes me sick as a parrot, as the more I think about it the more I am sure we are not going to be around after the end of the current lease. This means we will have funded them to significantly improve the building whilst seeing little of the benefit ourselves.

Feel like I'm up against an immovable wall. Similar feeling that I have had at various points in my life and the whole friggin' thing just makes me feel like screaming out in frustration at the whole dirty doggin' deal. Don't know what else it is we can about the situation without going down the path of confrontation and that is what we have been trying to avoid all along. Shit situation, bummer. Simple as that.

Other than that work goes on pretty much the same. Weather brighter. This afternoon was really quite warm and the first hint of what might be ahead in terms of warmer climates for 2007 and the prospect of a long, hot summer. Could be good, yeah I'm sure we will all feel a helluva lot better at work if we are there sweating our arses off whilst we're paying out hand over foot for a new fuckin' heating system to be put in as well. I mean...what a joke!

Fri now, sunny morning. Supposed to rain today but maybe it will later. At the moment looks OK. Best analogy I can give of the boiler situation is that we are like card players and I am the player who is looking at his hand and realising that there aint much to play with, only a few more moves now and then the game is up. Best thing I can think of at the moment is to write to the landlords and say that this is what we propose as far as payment of the quote is concerned, but not actually confirm our acceptance. It is just a desperate measure to get a few more days stall time but it is the best I can come up with.

All I can do is put down our proposal and then ask them to confirm that it is acceptable, once they have we can then we confirm our acceptance of the quote by return. Sound good ? Not really but what other options are there at this point? To go back to the other quotes would indicate to the landlords that we are not going to go with them and that in turn would probably see the concessions that we have managed to get taken away from us at a stroke. Don't really want to do that because at the moment we are at least in the position of making the best out of a bad deal. One step further down from that is making the worst out of a bad deal which really would be hitting rock bottom. The worst would be to still end up using them to do the works but having to pay everything on time with no terms whatsoever for spreading the payments out. If we hang around for much longer that is a possibility. Definitely want to avoid that.

Funny feeling when you know you aint got much to play with in negotiation. They have the facts, they have the power, they have the property. We on the other hand are more often than not relying on blind luck to pull us through and at the end of the day it is misplaced faith because there aint no doubt about the fact that we are going to pay the price. They have it all, the knowledge the paperwork, the lawyers, the surety that in one way or another the work is going to get done with us funding it.

Fri evening now. Bulk of the stuff I ordered from Nepal came in today. All looked OK apart from the statues which are not the ones I saw when I was over there. Needless to say their quality is inferior. Will have to go through it all on Monday now. Tired and disappointed is what I feel, no, there aint no hiding the fact that I feel disappointed. Maybe things will look better on Monday. Hope so at least. Got 8 out of 10 boxes so I hope the other 2 boxes arrive without there being any problem. All this stuff! Good and bad, pain and grief; just trying to work my way through life at the end of the day aren't I?

Better look at the post, Flying into Kathmandu, if ya want some background on all this Nepal business. First impression of the statues is not that good though and that is a pity because I had real of hopes of it opening up a whole new area for us. Now I aint so sure. What do I say to Phunsok? He did a lot of work for me and for not very much so I can't express my dissatisfaction too strongly. It has left me feeling sore. That is all I can say. Feels like we need a break sometime soon. A change in fortune, a change for the better at that. It's OK, it's OK, I guess. Just could have been so much better. We'll see.

Most of the other stuff looks good however and I think that once we sort out the prices and the shipping to charge they will be fine. Chance to expand the website. Better to think positive. Before I left work at midday I dropped in the letter to the landlords stating our payment proposal. Mainly full of bluster but it buys us a few more days before we sign on the dotted line and let them have their pound of flesh. In the lap of the gods. Proper people, proper companies are prepared for such eventualities. They put things in place to ensure bad things don't happen to them. Don't think we have really got to that stage and I really don't know if we ever will. Maybe, maybe not.

Best thing to think about is the website and the fact that that is doing well. It is able to keep us going. Streamlining the operation. That is what it should be all about. Concentrating on only doing the things which generate a decent return. Maybe this is the mistake. Spending my whole life, or my whole working life at least, trying to make money out of Buddhism. There are plenty of righteous and sincere Buddhists out there who would be simply disgusted with what we are doing anyway. Buying and selling. Buddhas and meditation. OK yeah we need to make money because we have to play within the rules of the capitalist system. That is the game. But we there in another dimension as well. At least for me and I guess for all the others who work at Wisdom Books. That dimension is the belief we are doing something which in some way is making a difference. Trying to push some good out into the world. I hope we do that. Yeah well, maybe we do, maybe we don't.

Kind of writing a lot about work, about Wisdom Books. Well I guess the answer to that is that it takes up a fair proportion of my life so I might as well write about it and in the process let out steam, get my worries and frustrations out of my system. That is OK I think. Pretty harmless activity I guess. At least it is not hurting others. Not running other people down or anything like that. No one will read this anyway so no one is going to walk away feelin' depressed or upset by what they read. No, it is just for me, this Ghost Eternal business, so I can walk away once I have let it all out an' hopefully feel better. Who knows ,once in a blue moon I might even stumble across some answers. That is always the hope. Probably a pretty distant hope but we can but try to strike it lucky. I guess.

Into town tomorrow which is fine. Transporting costumes for the Tibetan community. It is their March 10th demonstration tomorrow. The march through Central London in commemoration of the March Uprising in Lhasa nearly 50 years ago against the invading Chinese communists. After the march there is the yearly cultural event and programme down in Victoria. That is where I come in as I have to take the dance costumes and various other bits of kit down to Victoria in the motor. So that is that, my Saturday taken care of.

Sat morn now. Up quite early these days. Keep waking up around 5.15 and then after that sleep is right out the fuckin' window. Quality of dreams has been nervy, edgy, recently. Various scenes all disconnected and an underlying sense that things are not quite right. Think it is now the worry of the statues from Nepal and the fact that we may have been ripped off that is playing on my mind. Really hope that does not turn out to be the case, otherwise it renders all that I wrote about in Flying Back into Kathmandu close to meaningless.

Just can't get those pictures out of my mind of when I first opened the paper wrapped statues yesterday from the box and how disappointed I was at the sight of them. Everything else OK, statues not OK. Guess it is that which I am going to have to tell Phunsok. Anyway all these worries I have at the end of the day are petty and insignificant I know. Just business, just about making money. It is more the fact that we have not got what we were promised that sticks with me. But what I can do? They are here now, the statues that is, and we will just have to learn to live with them. Try our best to fix the right price.

Best thing to do next week I think is take a bunch of them over to Robert's and see what he thinks. It was Robert who put me onto Phunsok in the first place and I think I might have briefly mentioned him in the Kathmandu post. Dunno. Anyway if I didn't then Robert is an artist who lives on Oxford and who over the course of many years has travelled to Kathmandu to buy Nepali art and Phunsok is his contact man there. So it was Robert who suggested I go to Kathmandu to see Phunsok and try to buy statues etc for Wisdom and the website. Yeah, if I take the statues over to Robert to let him cast his eye over them at least he will give me his opinion as to their quality and as to what he thinks a fair price should be to sell them at. Before he told me that we should go for around three times the price of what we pay for them, so I guess that should be our yardstick.

Business, business. Beginning to wonder if there is any hope of reaching any kind of spiritual understanding of life when I'm mixed up in all this. It seems that there is never a point when I break through into new territory where all looks calm and manageable. There is always going to be something around to either bug or worry the shit out of me. That is the deal. Better get used to it. If I can't stand the heat, then I better piss off. Sometimes writing about these things seems like retreading tired old mantras that I have muttered to myself for years and years. Well, have they actually made much difference? Don't think so. Well, I don't know.

Maybe they have...could be worse, I could be jumping off the ceiling over such things, punching the lights out of people, screaming down the blower that this is not how things should be. I have more or less got out of that way of behaving at least. Got out of that in order to be at the point where I am now and that point is writing this, feeling like a powerless victim at the mercy of fate. Next stage is therefore to try to take destiny in hand, have more control, more self-power. Maybe I'm just too nice. No, no, it is not that. When I don't want to be nice then I am not nice at all, definitely still have that capacity in me.

Think it is more to do with fear, an inability to look at the consequences if things go bad. I might think I'm a pessimist but in actual fact the results show that in many of my dealings in life I come across as a hopeless, really hopeless, optimist. Just having blind faith that things will turn out OK and then feeling crushed and acting like a victim when they don't. Well of course in one sense I am a victim, a victim of my own delusions. It is dangerous and superstitious to sit back and think that the gods are looking after me and that things will be OK. It just don't work like that.

Fact of the matter is that in order to be protected from experiences like the boiler and getting statues from places like Nepal you have to do a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure you are not exposed. You have to be far more hard headed. Maybe that only comes with experience. Maybe I was too trusting with the statues, paying for them up front with not too many questions asked. Assuming that because Phunsok seemed a nice guy and we had good time together in Kathmandu that things would be OK. Plus he was introduced to me by Robert. A little bit more of a reality check might have come in handy.

This is the pattern of my life and there is nothing to suggest it won't continue repeating itself. On and on, fuckin' forever, well at least for as long as I am here, before I play dead man for real. Different situations will come along, different problems, and to all of them my fundamental reaction will be the same; unless I learn the lessons that life as I live it throws up at me. Learn the lessons and move on...with dignity, or at least with as much dignity as I am able to muster. Learn and then try to do better.

From my side I know where I am coming from, as for others I can never be sure. Wait and see how things transpire, then act accordingly; but above all I need to observe and modify my behaviour in whatever way is dictated by the course of events. It is important for me to realise this, not to continually forget and be back at square one, like a religious man from the middle ages relying on his prayers. Don't get me wrong, there is a time and place for such things but maybe not so much in the world I have to operate in. Well, in fact there is a time and a place for prayers even in the world of business but the brutal truth of the matter is that I don't know how to say those prayers properly in order for them to cut much ice. To cut deep and have a bearing on the unseen pathways in which life moves, bringing us all along with it, whether we are aware of it to any great degree or not. The unseen and seemingly unexplainable pathways of life that bring to us one place or another; the great movement.