Tues nite now. Raining outside, much needed rain. Got Dylan Unplugged on the Pod. Yeah man, poddin'it to Dylan an' when the time is right there aint nuthin' better than that. I know this might sound kinda incredible but I have hardly listened to Bob's Unplugged since I bought it when it was released over a dozen years ago. Amazing really 'coz it is only recently that I have realised that is not half bad. Think I must have been influenced by all those jackass so called Dylan experts all those years who gave it an almost instant thumbs down. In it thoroughly deserves an emphatic thumbs up, so there ya go.
Work just as full of stuff as ever. Worries about going bust, down the fuckin' tube one minute, then thinkin' about ways of making a killing by buying in a shit load of stuff from the States the next. Crazy stuff and I really dunno what or where it is all gonna lead to. Maybe all this work distraction shit is what is keepin' me away from bloggin' it proper. Yeah man, just seem to have fallen outta fluent valley recently an' I aint go no clue of the way back. Y'know when all the words just run right out of ya. Keep getting blocks, head blocks, and they just stop me in my flow, before the flow even. Leave me hanging round, scratchin' round for things to write about and yeah I guess it shows. Stop an' start. Maybe the fires of enthusiasm just aint burnin' as bright as should at the moment and as to why that might be I just ain't gotta clue.
Still wakin' up quite often in the deep dark night. Kinda quite enjoy it in a shady kinda way. The deep night hours when memories of the past can come back so clearly, the long past of childhood, early childhood an' stuff like. Aint nuthin' wrong about that I gotta say so there ya go. Just roll with it. Wake up and let it all rock along. Maybe ya get back to sleep and maybe ya don't. If you're lying down it don't matter too much I don't think as ya body is still gonna be gettin' some kinda rest I'm pretty sure about that.
combing his hair back, his future looks thin
he bites the bullet as he looks within - for dignity
so many dead ends and I'm at the end of the lake
sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take to find dignity
Yeah man that's Bob Dylan. Still got Unplugged on the pod and it's flowing along quite nicely I gotta say. Nice to find it again after all these years.
Wed now. Early afternoon. Grey day with a dash of rain but tomorrow is supposed to be hot. Gotta go up me parents later on this afternoon and be taken for a meal in a pub. Boozer food. Well me old ma reckons it is a pub bistro so we shall see. Up in Harpenden where they live. Place supposed to be on the Luton side of town. Might set off early and take a drive through the country roads of Essex and Herts and get there for around 5.30. Go the slow way. See some fields and other country scenes, just ta remind myself that those places exist. Livin' an' workin' in London it is sometimes all too easy to forget that. Well livin' in Woodford aint too bad of course as it is on the edge of town and close to Epping Forest. Ilford though where Wisdom is a different matter. Full of people these days that are strange looking and look at you strangely in turn. Fall out from all our bossing the world around for too many centuries and decades I guess.
Tamdin still away in Sweden. Usually I'm at home all day on Wed but this week I have done the morning at Wisdom. Sitting there hoping a few more orders are gonna come along and rescue us from the money holes we are always so close to falling right into. Slept well last night, slept heavy. All the way through from 11 till 6.30. Needed it. Deep in the depths were dreams which of course now I can't remember but I can feel them and the feeling from them is pretty good. Another world.
Try to sit down and meditate this afternoon. Get down to it. Been going OK, slow but kinda steady. Nuthin' too enlightening but sometimes half the trick is just to be able to get to the position where ya can sit down and at least feel easy. Relax into the body and breathe. Watch the breaths, count the breaths. Don't let go but don't hold on too tight at the same time either. Concentrate but don't get wound up. Things will come and go. No point in trying to control them. Once they are seen they can be let go of and they will float away and if they don't then ya just have to be mindful enough to know that they really should be let go of if ya surely can.
Best not to sit though if the thoughts running through ya mind are particularly big ones. Big issues tend not to be solved by meditation, or at least on the level that I find myself they are not. They are just too overwhelming and yeah man it is fair enough to sit and contemplate them in a zone of peace as ya might get to find some kinda solution. But for me at least the big mental issues never go away if I take to the meditation cushion and then try to forget about them. All a question of knowing where the borders are. Of knowing where the lines are drawn. Some things you can do and some things you can't right now. Maybe later if all goes well I can rise to a bigger challenge.
Occasionally I will try to sit and meditate late at night and almost as soon as I have sat down on the cushion I realise I have not made the correct decision. Body too heavy, heavy enough to crush. Mind too tired, tired enough to fall asleep. Those situations you can come back to again and again but more often than not the answer will be pretty clear pretty quickly as whether you are gonna be able to stick with it at that particular time. Aint no shame in surrendering. It was a speculative attempt and it ended in failure. So what? No shame in that.
Best not to hang onto the kinda thoughts that make ya feel bad if things don't go right with meditation or don't quite go the way you think they should do. Reason why is that underneath you just don't know. Bad can be good and equally good can be bad. Processes can be at work that you just might not be aware of and on some deep level they might be making perfect sense even if on the surface all you are left with is disappointment and confusion. Have confidence that you surely are working your way through. Keep going back again and again and yeah man you will hit paydirt at some point down the line there just aint no doubt about that.
Thurs eve now. Think this is gonna be the final bit of this seg before I post it up. Three dull kinda days in the middle of May. Good name for the post I guess. Just nuthin' much happening. Went up to my folks last night where we went out for food at a gastro pub. Pretty good I guess. Great beer and if I hadn't been driving I think it would have been pretty great to have been able to sit back and drink down about six pints of Amstel in those cool tall Amsterdam glasses they served it in. Drove back in heavy rain late at night and I didn't like that. Kinda had the feeling if I didn't pay close attention I could end up in a car smash or something like that. Meant that by the time I got back home I was tired and edgy. It had been an evening with a lot of talking. Kinda mentioned to my old man I might need some cash to invest in Wisdom at some point in the undecided future. He was pretty cool about it I have to say, happy in fact. So there ya go, if I really wanna stick my neck in that particular area I guess have license to. We shall see, we shall see.
My folks had just come back after a couple of weeks up north staying with my sister, her husband and my little nephew. Couldn't help but feel touched when I listened to my dad describe to me how he played with my nephew every day and how he tried to spend as much time as he could with him. Seemed to think there was only a limited amount of time available with kids before their innocence was lost and he wanted to get as much of it as he could whilst it was there and also to cast upon the little boy his own influence. Ole grandad. Wanted to impress himself on my nephew's mind, leave his mark. Then when my nephew was older and maybe when my dad was no longer around at least he could have memories of him. Left me feeling kinda choked.
Fri morn now. Thought I was gonna wrap this whole thing up last night but I never got round to it. Last few evenings I have had to hit the sack 10.30 - 11.00 max and then when I've gone up have slept like a log. No more disturbance. Sleep and dreams in a heavy mix. Cloud and dullness still here as far as the weather is concerned and I guess that means it is gonna be like this for the w/end also. On and off. Tamdin says the weather over in Stockholm has been good. Those golden Swedes have got it sussed. Big country, not many people, Clean livin' and real weather. Completely the other end of the spectrum to good ole' dirty stinkin' London town. No point us in complaining though, it is just the way it is. Only person who can change things is yourself. If ya don't then shut it, simple as that.
Meditated each day this week but nuthin' too spectacular has come out of it and in many respects just sailed close to doing the bare minimum. Inspiration, dedication, motivation whatever the jazz is I aint had it in spades. Hard sitting at times. Nuthin' gentle about them. Powering my way through but all done with a heavy sense of obligation. Not the way it should be. No gentle slides from one state into another. More like an assault on the senses with the demand to be quiet. Too forced. That is why I haven't enjoyed them. Ya wouldn't wanna necessarily go back to that everyday I can tell ya. Need to find some kinda middle ground I reckon, tone things down and don't make them so scary. Otherwise it's just gonna end in some kinda Rambo hullabaloo where no one's the winner.
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