Ghost Eternal 2

Been a bit of playin' around on the blog behind the scenes but have finally decided to do a 2nd blog. GE2 will just be a dumping gound for all my poems that i have ever written. Will post a bunch up as and when i feel like it, postings won't be chronological, no set order, nuthin' like that. Will take a few months I guess but at the end of the day what I will have is an archive of all my stuff, all the poems I have ever written, all fit to view at the click of the button and i guess that will be good enough. For me, for a punk like me.

Under the weather last week, caught a chill, must have been from one of those Arctic blasts that have been whipping London this month. Had a fever, hit the sack...that kinda stuff, that kind of physical deal. Recovered now, physically recovered. Mind took a dip as well, had a bout of jus' seein' things all negative. Too easy for me still when feeling rough to see things from a dark perspective, you know the deal, everything looks rotten, nothing seems worth fighting for and the only real option seems to be to take that trip down to the hanging tree. Wow, how many times have I made that journey in my mind? Anyway, shrugged it off...

Cold weather, kinda forgot that it could get cold I guess, so many years have gone by where we have just had mild winters and not much else. Been led to believe global warming is just one way traffic, obviously there can be blips. If you ask me what it actually is might be a last hurrah...some serious shit is around the corner as far as world heat in concerned and all this shiver stuff might be just a big red herring, it will pass and then boom - no more cold anymore. We shall see.

Guess I have been thinking with regard to GE2 whether it is worth the effort and at the end of the day I guess that I think it is. What I write about in my poems is mainly just about me, what my sight is of the world, that kinda stuff, the thoughtscapes I inhabit and the feelings they can generate along the way. The poems. Nuthin' special that's for sure and certainly nuthin' great in terms of technique or anything like that, the cold hard eye of a critic would probably be able to destroy them in about 2 seconds flat. Clever critic. Enuff to make me brick it. Guess that ain't the point though. GE2 is not being done for glory, if anything it is being done to prevent death - so, no death, no glory, but just to give me something to hang on to in terms of there being things to keep me interested in life and keeping the whole show on the road. We'll see, just see how it goes.

Since last week and the bout of the shivers sleep has generally been OK, but with no dreams that I can recall in any kinda shape or form. Not much feeling attached to the sleeps I have been having also, you know, the glow of unconsciousness that it is sometimes possible to sense. More just a case of feeling pretty knocked out, hitting the sack and then not knowing a thing till the dark sounds of the following morning wake me up. Winter. This year more than ever seems to feel like a kind of hibernation. Turnin' in, gettin' older, forgetting the world, or at least wanting to. Horizons narrow, and our boundaries get smaller and smaller. Always strikes me as funny how we spend so much of our lives in a particular physical space and don't much move out of that. Back and forth, same objects, same spaces, continually running around in circles within that flat, room, office, house, whatever you call it. Doing all this and hardly ever stepping out, never expanding into something new. Guess that is how it has become for me, and I guess I have just got used to it. We are creatures of habit after all; we can get used to anything.

Dalai Lama Dream

Sleep the sleep of the dead these days. For years and years used to sleep with the windows open but now have them closed. Combination of being tired of waking up in the early hours half freezing, and also the belated realization that having the windows open can lead to a disturbed sleep due to the noises of the night; foxes, distant traffic, prowlers, predators, the usual kind of city movement. So now it is window closed unless the weather is particularly mild which at the moment it aint. Sleep the sleep of the dead... and last dreamt about the Dalai Lama. Crazy kind of dream and dunno if it was nice or not, good or bad, just was what it was. In the dream the Dalai Lama was giving a large teaching somewhere in London, I had managed to get a vip ticket so was right at the front. Trouble was things were not quite as they should be. For one thing the Dalai Lama was dressed in lay clothes, white shirt and trousers, looking much younger in the dream than he actually is, and he had grown his hair. Disconcerting. Before the teaching began there were weired questions being asked to him. I was sitting in a leather chair like the ones you get in Singapore Airlines Business Class and I complained to the organisers that all this was not right, something was wrong. They kind of knew it as well but things carrried on all the same. The details of the dream were bright, colourful and vivid; there was an underlying magic to it all because after all it was the Dalai Lama I was dreaming about, but like I said, in the context it was strange and I woke up in the land of confusion.

On The Ropes

Like wading through mud...day to day livin' at the moment, maybe something like that or maybe something not quite so bad. Done little in the way of meditatin' these last few days, morning mantras morning prayers and that kinda stuff in a half-assed sort of way and that is just about all. Weather has warmed up a little, not much but a bit, and I am surprised how happy I am that it has. The cold snap was not enjoyable, that dose of Arctic blasts, and I think in years gone by I would have found it a lot more fun that I did this time. Must be getting old, must be losing something.

Sometimes look at myself, the blood runnin' through me and get to wonderin' how much longer it will flow. How many times can you keep the looking at the world from a particular point of view? Do I even know what point of view I have? Pessimistic, glass half empty, for sure, for sure...what are these questions I am asking myself? Can I for example really explain all that happens in life through karma? Is the reasoning sound? Or is it just some half baked idea that will never be strong enough to get me through those times when things get really sticky? All unknown. Just don't know what the answers to those questions are.

Find myself talking to people and almost runnin' out of steam. Guess a part of me craves to be an expert, craves to be someone who others talk of as if he really knows what he talking about. Bullshit fantasies, it is all just shots in the dark. Gun splattering. Random shots that might or might not hit the target. Find myself in conversations where I don't really know the answers but try, like a blindman, to find some kind of solution. Guess I know deep down, although I can't draw it out, that I am drifting a bit too far from the shore...flapping in the waters and doing my best not to sink. What is it that I have to do? Are there warnings out there and do they come in dreams? Or maybe just they are right there in the fuckin' obvious. Is the whole of life based on the maintenance of good feelings towards others?

Why is that anger, rage and all those other dark emotions can seem almost inexhaustible? It dismays me how easy it is to find myself in the deep pit of negative feelings towards others. The deep dark where pictures of me smashing heavy objects over others heads are visualized in vivid colours. It might very well be the case that my outlook on life needs some improvement. Almost always thinking of the negative, wanting to bring myself and others down to the level where you look out upon things and don't seem to see that much hope. No one wants that. Don't know where all this is going to go, but the currents underneath don't seem to be flowing in the direction which points to any kind of happy ending. Too miserable, too timid to break out of my shell and express myself in any kinda clear way with regard to what the fundamental questions of life might or might not be. So the result is feeling fucked up. Always ask myself - do I know what a clear expression of what it is I am and feel actually is? I think the answer is no. No way Jose. Too many things I do it is just as if I am dipping my toe in the water and little else. Got to wake up to this fact and take a grip but with me already 48 years down the pipe it gets harder and harder. What gets gets in the way is ego...and despair. Ego pure and simple when younger, then something else. Just can't seem to handle the fact that all that I really am is an ignorant fool who just knows a little bit of this and little bit of that but not much more. I'm on the ropes, hanging on by my fingernails.

Friday Fried

Feelin' tired. Friday pm. Been cold as hell for the last few days and bundles of snow has come with the cold as well. Arctic blasts, could be the beginning of the end this time. The first truly unmistakable sign that the world really is warming up. Contradiction? Don't think so, the real picture ain't always that apparent. People worth saving? Maybe some. Meditation last couple of nights pretty hard going. Late at night body tired, same old story. Makes ya wanna weep sometimes it really do. Limitations of the body, certainty of mortality, the end of this sad allocation of what ya got in life is out there at some point in space an' time. Just sat did the rise belly fall belly but by the end of it I think i felt more tired than what I was before. Gruelling, just ain't no guarantee it is always gonna be a picnic. Anyway, to sit and hope for something special to happen is fatal, not at all what the game is about, not that there is a game to play in the first place, just the doin' and then hopefully keeping yer mouth shut about it. Concentration was there but kept slipping from the object, that is if I even knew what the object actually was. People need clarity, that is why so many meditation teachers give clear instruction as to what it is you are supposed to be meditating on. That is half the trick I guess, as it can go a long way to subduing the wandering mind. Certainty. If you know what it is you are supposed to do then it can become more apparent when you have fallen away from the path, off the tree so to speak, and instead you find yourself entertaining your mind with the usual gobble de gook and junk thought. So, not much to write about in this piece in terms of my sitting meditation. Just struggle this time, hard struggle, the kinda thing which goes with being 48 years down the pipe and feelin' a bit ragged round the edges but still on this road of life. Body heavy, mind heavier, that kinda thing. Cold outside, cold as hell.

What I Do

Lay in bed till 8 this morning. Dark outside and cold, so I just did not want to get up. Under the covers nice and warm, dreamin', drifting in and out of sleep. Series of dreams which I now don't remember, never did remember in fact come to think of it. Up at 8 then and after a stretch ready to live another day. Down the stairs to fill the jug with water for the offering bowls. Before that though, wash my face, rinse my hair in water, clean my teeth those slowly yellowing gnashers, gel my hair. Water jug then a little bit of tidying things up here and there. Spray the lounge table and give it a quick wipe to take away the stains from the day before. Squat down and brush the kitchen tiles, all those little bits of food that have fallen on the floor, all the dust that so quickly accumulates from London livin'. Brush them up and put them in the bin, the swing bin. Those things done it is back upstairs with the jug full of water and into the shrine room. Take the upturned offering bowls and put them in my hand, seven silver bowls, give them a wipe with a duster from the drawer. Pour water into one of the bowls and then from that bowl just filled tip a little water into each of the other bowls as I place them on the shrine all the time saying prayers, saying mantras trying to think holy thoughts, feeling bad when I catch myself thinking something most definitely not holy. When all seven bowls are lined up on the shrine with a little water in them and each bowl separated from another by no more than a couple of millimeters I take the jug and pour the rest of the water from the jug into each of the bowls. More prayers, more mantras said as I do so, filling those bowls up to the brim. Then, when done, set the empty jug down on the floor at the side of the shrine. Stand back and take a card from my card holders that hold all my Buddha cards. Take the card of Vajrasattva - purification Buddha. Place the card in front of the nite light holder so that it is facing me as I step back from the shrine and sit on my chair in front of it, rosary mala in my hands. Close my eyes, take some breaths, observe the flow. Begin the mantra recitation for Vajrasattva, 21 recitations of the 100 syllable Vajrasattva mantra, trying to fix in my mind some sense of all negative thoughts being flushed out of me. Trying to fix some sense of owning up to my sins, confession, coming clean in my mind acknowledging I have done wrong generating a sense of repentance. Something like that. Try to visualize the Vajrasattva Buddha sending out white beams of purifying energy into me, white beams of energy from his Buddha heart. This is what I do just about every morning of my life, and it is only occasionally that I don't do this. What is my state of mind then? Well to be honest, many times when I do it, it is little more than an empty ritual as I might very well be only half awake, still shaking the sleep, the 48 year old heaviness, from outta me and hardly on the button to really generate any strong feelings over the matter of really trying my best, my hardest to make myself good. Anyway. Get up from my chair after that is done, replace the Vajrasattva card on the shrine with another card, this time of the Medicine Buddha. Sit back down on my chair, say a prayer to Guru Padmasambhava, maybe more than one if I feel so inclined, an invocation prayer for him to be with me, in my life in my practice (and hey baby, guess what? It works!) Then after that it is on to the recitation of 108 Medicine Buddha mantras, again attempting to generate appropriate thoughts in my mind, healing thoughts, blue Buddha thinkin' if you like. Difficult not to let my mind wander whilst I'm doing all this, of course this should not be the case, more often than not it is. Mornings are the times when you often begin to think about the day ahead, what it is you have to do, how you are going to handle certain situations, stuff like that, the usual shit in other words. Time of hopes and fears, hoping that all those things I gotta do will turn out right and fears that they may not turn out right at all but blow up my face. Those kinda things often in my mind, every day, on and on. Guess the secret with regard to all this might be to get up earlier when it is still more like night and not like daytime. Be like the Dalai Lama who gets up at 4 am each morning. Problem with that is that you have to have a disciplined and well trained mind in order to keep up that kinda schedule and you also have to go to bed quite early. After Medicine Buddha mantras I get up from my chair again and replace the Medicine Buddha card with a card of Manjushri the youthful bodhisttava of wisdom. When I sit back down on my chair again I say a quick prayer to the wrathful protectors - Vajrapani, Hayagriva, Garuda - and then begin my Manjushri mantra recitation. Fast recitations to accumulate wisdom. When the Manjushri mantras are completed I have done all my daily spiritual practices outside of any sitting meditation. Sitting on the rise belly, fall belly. All these mantra recitation practices were committed to by myself after I had taken the initiations for each of them from the Dalai Lama. Even though on many occasions I do these with at best only half an eye on the ball I hope that I can continue doing them for as long as possible as there are times when I feel so happy that I have these practices in my life, and when certain circumstances occur they really do make a difference to my state of mind - in a positive way. Yeah baby many people might think it's just powder puff stuff and not worth the time to fill ya head with such mumbo jumbo but I for one love all this abracadabra. Guess it is a funny thing, this 48 year old guy huffin' an' puffin' in the morning an' doin' these things in a half assed ritualised way. Don't get me wrong, it ain't anything special and compared to the many spiritual professionals out there what I do is hopelessly amateurish for sure, but there ya go, we are where we are and as long as that don't involve going around making other peoples lives a misery there not too much in the way of harm attached to it.