Saying from a Master

Here is a quote from Not Always So a book containing talks by Suzuki Roshi and it is is one of the best descriptions of the practice of Buddhism that I have ever read -

To exist in big mind is an act of faith, which is different from the usual faith of believing in a particular idea or being. It is to believe that something is supporting us and supporting all our activities including thinking mind and emotional feelings. All those things are supported by something big that has no form or colour. It is impossible to know what it is, but something exists there, something that is neither material nor spiritual. Something like that always exists, and we exist in that space. This is the feeling of pure being.

- great isn't it? Have it if you wish, now it is yours.

Walkin' in the City

ain't talkin' jus' walkin'...

kinda had to take the day off today, if ya read yesterday you'll know why. No biz at work but mucho stressito so me no go go. Rolled over in bed in the mornin' opened my eys an' saw it was a beautiful blue sky day. Thought "office? nah, fuck dat. jus' gotta chill, take a look at the sun for once an' count my blessings i'm still alive after 47 years of wonderin' round figurin' jus' what it is I'm supposed to do on this planet."

sittin' an' writin' this in a park in the middlke of the city, sittin' on the ground gettin' a sunshine tan... sittin' on the ground till my skin turns brown. Started in the east of the city and with a coupla breaks along the way have been out in the great wide open since 10.40 am an' now it is 1.20pm. Gonna walk a bit more into the distance through the central green spaces of London till I get to the Round Pond out west an' then that will be as far as I go. Then head back the other way for a bit and maybe hit the shops an' spend some cash. Yeah man, jus' maybe...

Water high on the awesome river T today as I took a walk southside from London Bridge down to the Houses of Parly.

gulls flyin'
fast movin' clouds
taste o' the sea
city boats plyin'

me an' me mantras
on my tongue
walkin' along
right by the edge
close as I can

dog at the bottom
of some river steps
letting the waters
caress its paws
turnin' his head
up to his master,
yeah he really wants
to go for a swim
but he also don't wanna
get swept away
by the fast movin' swirl
- dog wisdom
just as good as man

Dreamt last night of a bus station in a town I thought I knew. Went to the toilets an' shit was pourin' out the urinals, while the bogs had curtains covering them. Overwhelming stench. What can it mean, that kinda dream?

Later -

Didn't go west like I said I was gonna. Storm clouds were gatherin' and me no doey stormy weather without da propa kit. Headed north and into the shops insetad. Gotta a pair o' flops, Puma flops from the Puma Shop on Carnaby St. Pum pums nice un' trendy. Then from there to HMV and the Basement Tapes by Bobby D and the B. Freshly remastered an' on special offer. Way too good for a punk like me to ever miss.

Then spent quite a lotta time an' quite a lotta money in sweet Johnny L where they had 20% off da Fat Face clobber. Grabbed me a coupla pairs of shorty sleevios for when da weather turns good in the city an' the streets get nice an' hot. Also had to get a Fat Face xtra large toppy for those evenings by the sea when the weather gets choppy.

Sun now come out again as I sit here writin' this. Just had a Love bar from naughty ole' Pret. Not really necessary if truth be told as I only went in there for a cuppa tea. But there ya go, life in the desire realm. Now jus' got the tea to drink as I write this in the little green square behind sweet Johnny L. Surrounded by fellow humans soakin' up the precious sun; all of us crave the light yeah man we really do. After this is over will head back east before the rush begins and el tubio is little more than a mighty crush punctured with exhausted sweat.

Work Blues

Tough day today. Thurs. Tired of everything. No business for a start which never helps, makes me wonder in fact what is gonna happen this year and whether or not we have the strength to pull through. Supposed to be signing a new lease which would keep us at our current address for another 10 years but if business remains as quiet as it is at the moment it will be a miracle if we last more than another 10 weeks.

Difficult sometimes not to also feel completely and utterly sick of the sight of the guys I work with. Just want it all to fade away and radiate...either me or them. Leaves me wondering what kinda things I have done so that the circumstances are as such that these guys are the people with whom I have ended up spending my working life with. Just makes me feel sometimes like I am a workhorse whose only future is waitin' for the time when it all comes to an end. For the time when I am put out in a field for a few years to chew some fodder before keeling over dead.

Sometimes I appreciate my work colleagues but honestly speaking, more often than not, I can't stand the sight or the sound of them these days. And I'm sure the same goes for how they think of me, would be kinda flabbergasted if they don't think something like that. We have just all been together too long and it feels that we only stay there because we really have no clue what else it is that we are supposed to do. Just keep plodding on, nice an' anonymous but really it's so dull dull dull. Boring, boring , boring. Is this really the best that I am going to do with my life?

What is it that leads me to crave safety and to think that I have found it in a stable form of employment when in actual fact all I am doing is slowly but surely boring myself to death? Letting work suck the life out of me. Just have never got it together to walk away, mainly beacuse I completely lack any kind of other skill, not that what I do is any form of skill, it's just a way of passing time, and no great knowledge is really needed to do what I do. So the need for security has brought me to this. But what is the price I have paid? More or less paid with the freedom of my life, by the fact I have to shut my mouth, grin and bear it when the people around me do or say things that totally and utterly get on my nerves. To the point where I wanna split their heads open with an axe, an' see all that goo.

If I let them have it, well, to be honest I don't think I would be able to articulate what it is I would want to say anyway. Not that I am any different really, how can I be? We are all tarred with the same brush to varying degrees and really a part of me just so much wants us to all put our hands up in the air at the same time and declare that yeah it is time to call it a day. It will never happen though, we're gonna go on till the bitter end, until eventually I will be left crawling through the dust in the elusive search for any kind of happiness or contentment.

ode of infinite regret

work blues
you get them bad
when ya don't break the rules
when ya can't see
what ya have to do
to break free,
but rather you crawl
into ya shell
'coz ya think there
lies security
when really it's just
the coward's way
an' yeah, it has led
you to this point
in ya life
where ya just wanna
crouch down on the ground
an' cry those hot tears

ghostin'

jus' killin' time
waitin' for the rhyme
which i never said i had
an' that don't make me bad
maybe sad
maybe over hung in the
realm of had
but nuthin' more
an' there ain't no store
o' power galore
what's he doin' this for?
jus' the river movin' on
goin' with the floatin'
history of mystical
p-o-s-t-i-n-g

Saved by a Maiden

Thoughts roll through my mind from time to time, well what I mean to say of course is that thoughts roll through my mind all the time, constantly, the ever churning mill, but sometimes they kind of stay...to stick and spike. Thoughts that are more like voices actually. Voices of the mind, voices in my head. We all have them, I ain't that much of an exception. The ones that say...are you doing all that you can do with your life? Is there not more that ya should be doin'? Makes it difficult to feel that my life is being lived to it's full potential when those kinda thoughts come along.

When things get like that it is hard then not to think I deserve some kind of punishment for not pushing things further, for not being a little bit braver with the things in my life I might or might not have done so far. But I guess the fact of the matter is that whatever punishment that I might receive does not lie far off someplace in the distant future but is rather being given to me right now in the form of those thoughts I'm thinking and the painful feelings they can invoke. Those thoughts and feelings can be enough to make things look like shit sometimes. Strong enough to bring on an overpowering sense of desolation and abandonment, a sense that somehow I have let things go to a point where I am left alone on the shoreline of my own discontent, staring at the wild seas of misery.

Yeah, it almost makes me feel paralysed, what can I ever do to break free? Maybe jump head first from the roof of a 10 storey building? Let my head smack unto the hard concrete below, as my skull cracks and soon gets swallowed in a puddle of blood. And that is freedom? Nah. I don't think so...

Well, the happy days of Bob being in town are now well behind me, a good few weeks down the tracks and he has gone for dust man, gone for dust...never to be reclaimed in the same way ever again, never never. Been readin' the Clinton Heylin book Revolution In The Air which provides a chronological description of every song Bob Dylan has ever written, all 600 of them...and counting. This is in fact the 1st volume, 2nd one should appear sometime next year 2010. Anyway, been enjoying it very much, maybe a bit too much who knows? Some nights after readin' it, it has just left my head dominated with thoughts of Bob and what a tremendously great guy he is in some respects and what a goddam weasel he is in others, on and on those thoughts then tend to kinda go. Just gotta concentrate on my own life instead I think, as it is time and effort enough just trying to keep my own house in order, if at all possible.

Trying to break the spell by giving Revolution in the Air a rest for a couple of days. First thing I have done is replaced Bob's Together Through Life on the CD deck in my Toyo and got Iron Maiden's really quite superb A Matter of Life and Death on continuous play instead. Very pagan black and just the answer to all these stupid dumb thoughts of toppin' myself 'coz Maiden love life, they really do. And I'm quite happy, under the circumstances, to let them save me.

Bob Dylan and His Band - Cardiff April 28th 2009

17 Song Set Solid Gold Deliverances...

Seems like a long week. Bob in London on Sun, then down to Cardiff to see him again on Tue. Now it is Fri but it feels like it is much further down the line...don't know why. Tiredness might have something to do with it. Cardiff show was amazing, left me wondering in the car as I drove back to The Smoke with Together Through Life on auto play, just why the hell would anyone not want to see Bob Dylan and His Band these days? After the crowds of the Roundhouse and the physical demands it had induced whilst trying to fight off the flu, it was a relief to once again be down at the CIA in the land of the Dancing Dragon and safely inside a proper arena.

Let's face it, da Bobby Dylan Show has been created for arenas and in the smaller places Bob occasionally plays, such as the Camden Roundhouse, although it can seem like a nice idea at the time, the fact of the matter is that the set up is way too big to be reasonably accommodated; it's like playing with a fuckin' great stereo system in your granny's closet. On the two occasions that I have seen Bob play smaller venues the results have been very similar; both the shows at Portsmouth Guildhall in 2000 and Camden Roundhouse in 2009 suffered from the physical constraints of the surroundings. No such congestion though at the CIA. Everything was crystal clear, fuckin' spot on and right on the money as Bob and the boys delivered one of the most perfectly balanced sets I have so far heard them do. Not only that but there was not a single song from out of the 17 song strong set that Bob did not give his full attention to, and that meant the end result was a mighty show indeed.

Guess it was just a happy combination of circumstances that I found myself in the right place at the right time, totally able to fully appreciate what was going on, the onstage alchemy, the strands of the band as they played at being the Bigtime Cowboys they actually are. At the end of it all I left the CIA with my heart bursting full of love for Bobby, his art, the boys and the sound; I left saying silent prayers that there are gonna be a good few more years where this state of affairs is allowed to continue. But of course you never know, the world is a delicate place at the best of times - we spin around the sun until the day our span is spun; and now with pig bugs flying through the air an' stuff like that, d'ya really know what's gonna be round the corner? Love it while you can, appreciate the moment. Yeah, all of that applies, and more...I guess.

Needless to say there was not a hint of any new songs from Together Through Life but as I stood there taking in the awesome show that was unfolding before my eyes I realised that I was being a complete and utter fool to have had any such expectations in the first place. After all, it was only in 2006 that Bob released Modern Times and since then I had only seen him a couple times, in 2007, and yet there I was, not really interested in hearing him perform songs from that album but already wanting the new stuff instead. That's the wanting mind for ya, desire, always new new new, gimme something I haven't heard before and only then will I be happy. Sad illusions ta have I tell ya. Wanting wanting wanting... the tell tale sign of being well and truly stuck in the desire realm; stuck on a no-win jerky ride ta hell. Samsara not dharma; samsara, samsara, samsara... wanting wanting wanting. More more more. New, new, new, gimme, gimme, gimme.

Luckily for me at the CIA I woke up from this horrible self-induced nincompoop state, and realised what a fool, what a spineless toadstool I was to ignore Bob and the boys right there in front of me delivering quite simply amazing performances of his songs, some of which, like those from Modern Times, I had hardly heard him do before. It made me stand up and rejoice that I did that; that I was able to open to the mystery and hear the full majesty of what Bob was doing. 17 songs and 17 solid gold deliverances. In my mind as I looked upon the glorious stage I was saying like a mantra, thank you Bob for being there, thank you thank you, Bobby Bobby. You are a millionaire probably a 100 x over and I know that you really don't have to go out there and do what you do if it wasn't for the fact that performance is your art and as far as that is concerned you are as serious as the Cemetery Man on Planet Supersonic. I'll love ya for as long as you are around, an' then I'll love ya when ya dead!!