Sexuality and Spirituality – OK this is the deal

 

The situation seems to be like this. Imagine that we are on a road and are starving hungry and tired. We know that the road leads to a paradise where we can eat and rest for ever in peace. As a child I remember having visited a part of this paradise, but the memory is vague and it was a long time ago. I wonder even whether this memory is just a dream, but I know that many speak of this paradise in all tongues and in all ways, although like hearing the many versions of an urban myth this itself can cause doubt. As we walk we come to a road side burger bar and motel. The issue for our road weary self is do we stop and rest here or do we continue over the mountains toward what is incomparably better.

An obvious answer is that we stop and rest. This is a good idea but it turns out that we have stopped and rested so many times that we haven’t made much progress. Each time we stop and rest we risk forgetting the goal all together.

This is what I have realised about my friends. They speak of sexuality and marriage as they do because they really don’t know of anything else. The burger bar and motel really is the best lot in Life. Maybe there is a squabble for the best rooms in the Motel, or to get the money to buy the biggest burger – but beyond this they have forgotten that there is anything else in Life.

Heaven we say in scorn. This is the dream of those who have lost in Life and turn their attention instead to hopes of what comes after life. God we say in scorn, what proof is there – we have science now which can provide the answers for everything. Tomorrow we say in scorn, who cares about tomorrow we have today. And, so we feast on burgers and sleep at the Motel and put off ideas that there could be anything better.

Well I know for sure that this doesn’t add up. I don’t know about God or Heaven (save that one experience a quarter century ago) but I have always known that “this” whatever that is that we are supposed to be satisfied with doesn’t add up.

So the choice is maybe more realistically between so I setting for rest time in the world of senses and finite things, or do I have the strength and desire to keep pushing along the road? One must realise that maybe I can’t complete the journey this life and it would actually be counter productive to exhaust myself on the road. A rest and continue next life (as a friend has done) is actually the wiser route. At the same time however how can we be happy with the minute confines of a worldly life, and be satisfied with its miniscule pleasures when we know that the infinite awaits all of us just over the mountains?

My favourite creatures out of hibernation 2010

Went for a walk this morning looking for recently emerged snakes like I did last year and almost trod on these two splendid specimens out basking in the gentle heat of the early spring sunshine. I can’t tell if they are male or female or even whether they are recently emerged from hibernation and have mated yet. I am guessing the coiled one is female and one lying stretched out is male owing to the broadness of the female head and the length of the male tail. Neither have cloudy eyes suggesting the will slough their skins, but the female has mud on her face which I’m guessing means she hasn’t sloughed yet so is newly emerged. The male looks a bit thin so maybe hasn’t eaten yet. So i guess they are newly emerged after 6 months underground and are yet to eat, slough and mate. Wonderful to see them again :-)

Also amazing to see these extraordinary fungus fruiting bodies – small baskets holding what look like eggs or bread buns. I tweezered one out and it is a flat disk with a pimple on the bottom. Rain drops or wind have dislodged some which have become fixed to the wood around the parent bodies. Wood from a discarded palette so don’t know if the parent hyphae are indigenous to the area.

Self-Reference & The Occult

Don't aske me how I get this quote (following up something for a friend about J-Zay and the occult)

“There are no “standards of Right”. Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with “moral principle”; there is no such thing”
-Crowley, Aleister. The Old and New Commentaries to Liber AL, II,28.

The principal here is that the Self has its own orbit, or its own nature and we need to remove external restrictions in order to allow ourselves to become what we are.

Needless to say that this itself is balderdash - but I can't prove it yet. The obvious error in it is the belief that something can be itself.

If Aleister Crowley removed all external restrictions so that he could become what he was then he is no longer a slave to the ethics of the outside wold and instead a slave to whatever is inside! Either way he is a slave and has not discovered freedom. But actually he is more a slave of the inside than he ever was of the outside because by his own words he doesn't know what he "is" or "will become". While for the ethical person they know what is ethical and what they will become - that is the notion of the Good. Turning to the light we can see. Crowley turning to the darkness is facing into void into which he cannot see.

No this is not what selfhood is about it is based upon the classic error that everyone is subject to and which we must learn to free ourselves from. Crowley simply gave up the will to learn and instead abandoned himself to his reflection and become totally enslaved.

SRH to be proven one day!

Cars - the most absurd things ever

A Reading street at 4pm on a Friday.

There are in excess of 20 cars sitting idle. I gave it some thought. The reason for this is “convenience”. The owners of these cars know where the car is and can use it any time they like. I got to thinking would it be more difficult to hire a taxi? The loss is that you need to think 15minutes ahead and it will cost you a lot of money. The gain is that you have a chauffeur (which I assume is a good thing since people with money chose one), you don’t have to worry about the upkeep of the car or the petrol and probably best you can order the car to anywhere that you are so that parking isn’t a problem and returning to the car park after an excursion isn’t a problem. So the only real cost is the money against what are considerable gains.

Combine this with the concept of public transport. People don’t like public transport because of the cost, the crowding and again the inconvenience. You need to get to a bus station or a railway station and then wait for a vehicle. These modes are not ideal for carrying items, say returning from a shopping trip, and they are not really kid friendly. The most common citation for having a car I have noticed is children. One wonders how we ever survived before the advent of the motor vehicle! Basically kids walked and cycled – wonder if cars correlate at all with obesity? Another problem is that it is dangerous for a child to be out – not because of paedophiles but ironically much more likely because of cars accidents! The very cause has become the solution! In fact car accidents are such a major killer (3000/year in UK) that they rank higher than some of the diseases that get millions of pounds of research. Of course this is offset by the perceived benefit of cars; evidently we think the risk is worth it.

The worst part though is the picture above. Look at the inefficiency of this mode of transport. All these vehicles everyday being left idle and no one is allowed to use them. The same with houses and gardens, TVs, Videos, bathrooms, beds; everything that is privately owned. In my mind the real problem lies in the concept of private ownership.

Obviously private ownership is a solution to a very real problem which is “neglect”. People tend to neglect and abuse things. If we opened our garden to the public we can be sure that soon it would be a rubbish dump, with dog faeces everywhere, graffiti, any plants uprooted trodden on and potentially undesirable people making the place a hell on earth. What was a place where we could relax and feel safe and enjoy some peace becomes a place where we are marginalised and unhappy with the behaviour of others.

Now are we sure that we don’t do the same when we leave our place of sanctuary? Say when we send our army to Iraq? I wonder how we would feel if a war was waged on English soil (the last one was the French in 1066) – the French, Spanish and Germans never actually landed (except for that bizarre French invasion in Cornwall where the town’s women captured them). What of our sanctuary then? This I imagine is why we wage wars on other soils to protect our own soil from being invaded and fought over. But, the point is that we don’t care about another land as much as we do our own… and that reinforces the logic that we should protect our own. Like a dog chasing its tail and not recognising our own reflection, the reason for protecting our own land is actually Our (societal) disrespect for the land of others. Now I believe and they are the same thing: private property isn’t a concept that arose from protecting ourselves from injury but is the concept that causes us to injure others and so experience injury ourselves. It is a paradigm in which man is set against man, outside which man lives alongside man. If the Jehovah’s witnesses want a land where everything lives side by side the solution lies in the concept of property.

To be honest we are not going to escape the paradigm that easily. Jesus and Buddha both accept property as a normative condition of worldly living. Only the monks and those preparing for Heaven need abandon ties to worldly possessions. To ask a whole society so deeply steeped in this idea is ridiculous. But that doesn’t make it right, and proper political decisions should be made realising that it is only a custom rather than a truth – like for example drinking the UK. All the evidence points to alcohol being only a force for bad in the country, but because there would be civil war if it was banned the country has to leave it legal. Likewise property which is an even more deeply engrained culture effecting everything.

So recognising that car ownership is the problem what can we do? Well I cannot believe that providing a government subsidy for taxi services is impossible. Then linking this with an improved public transport system would provide the country’s entire needs. Remove the car industry and the saving in resources would be magnificent.

This way we would get a better transport system with the only habit to learn, the thinking ahead by 15 minutes on a journey, and the gain being able to get transport everywhere without the overhead of parking and maintenance. All this for less manpower and less expense…but in our misfiring economic model that is somehow a bad thing! The problem there is the allocation of resources… and that boils down to private property also.

On the PPP thing which is the most beloved of modern political economics in the UK: the principal that the private sector and public sectors can somehow share their good qualities. Of course what really happens is that the public sector’s efficiency is reduced by competition and private sector helps itself to government money. As was noted in the FT, the free market seems to find 3 prices in the PPP scheme of things. First price is the lowest which is what the analysts decide the industry is worth. The government and tax payer gets cheated. The second price is the price that the shares shoot up to in the free market – the highest price. The third price is the price the government buys shares back again after the venture has failed. The only gainers are the city and the tax payer loses. This pattern has been enacted in a grand scale in the recent highway robbery of government treasuries around the world. Cars seem to me to simply fit neatly into the mould of private versus public (which itself fits into the paradigm of private ownership). Industry makes the big money through cars. A huge car lobby make it impossible for politicians to freely administer a public transport system – if they ever did it would end the car industry. The public faced with a failed public transport system then flee into the mouth of the lion and have to sort out their own transport… each and everyone one of them.

Think of it this way. In a private car system we each have to drive for say and hour a day, find parking spots, spend time looking for insurance, getting the car moted, passing our test, getting it off to the garage for repairs, find petrol stations. All this that we do is unpaid – we are effectively wasting time that we could be either making money or enjoying ourselves. In a public health system someone is paid to do all this, and yet the total output for £ is more under the public system than the private. I’ll work it out one day but the effort required to make millions of cars and transport them all over the country and then have millions of people drive them all far exceeds the effort required to just make 1 central transport system that works. So more of the work is paid, but less people are employed. It is a genius solution. But instead we chose the hard way where we individually do most of the work unpaid and have to manage own private transport. The more I live in this society the more Alice In Wonderland it seems. What is up is really down and vice versa. Maybe the failings are just endemic of worldly living.

I notice that Reading Borough Council has been running a "Your Reading" scheme. This is genius but shows up the insanity of our society. They have used the concept of private ownership to refer to public property :-) It works too because you begin to take pride in the public spaces. But why does this pride need to be encouraged by the government? It is because the government owns the public space and we own the private space and so naturally we are conditioned to not care about those things which are nothing to do with us ... i.e. the public space. How utterly insane. The planet will burn and we will be sitting within the tiny boundaries of our private home saying it's not our problem. The litter, dog faeces, grafitti, pollution, cars, noise, ugly industry, wars, violent behaviour all safely outside our private space - doesn't interest us. Multiply this attitude by 7 billion and you have a recipee for mass unhappiness in the world as everyone disregards everyone and the efforts of mankind are fragmented into 7 billion plots of identical tiny space. I make this point again and again in the blog and everytime I look at it is becomes more absurd.

I don’t drive after failing my driving test back in 1994. I decided no point putting good money after bad (why should I pay money to be told whether I can spend more money!). In any case I didn’t need a car as the public transport in London is so good and I was normalised to using it. I have also cycled since a child and that is normalised. Now aged 38 I never have the occasion where I think I need to drive as I have never done so before and I always think in terms of legs, bike, a lift from a friend who drives, or the train. This seems to prove to me that it is paradigmatic. Change the way we think and suddenly cars don’t feature anymore.

Riswey visits Dublin

I cannot believe how cryptic this is! By good fortune 1999 it turned out that both “My Muse” and I were planning independently to go to Dublin for St Patricks day. It seemed the perfect place to meet up, give her her birthday present and complete what had remained unsaid for a whole year (she was still with her boyfriend but may be just desperation or a sense that it was ending made me change my approach). The issue of being in love without a word of it ever having been said remained and I believed that true love would never need to be spoken because a true flower is what it is whether you name it or not (to paraphrase less poetically Shakespere ;-). Thinking about this and having re-read the text it seems to remain true that, while impractical, a love which has been declared and officialised in words cannot be “true”… “I Love You“ is the greatest lie we ever speak because while we may be motivated to say such a thing by love such an utterance is not love and speaks of no such thing. Isn’t silence the true voice of love? Looking into a girl’s eyes, every time I know it is. Anyway I decided to break my silence but in silence so I wrote this as a follow up to the “Book of Seven Stories” the month before.

Even had she gone to Dublin I doubt in reflection she would have gone to the Ha’penny bridge at midnight as I remember being the meeting message – at least in this version of the play it is not obvious. On the plane over I read a letter that had arrived that morning explaining a change of plan – that was the end for me destiny had abandoned me and the heart ache was complete.

Also, I cannot believe how bad my dialogues are – this is a weakness I have to strengthen before I ever write for real. The rhyming couplets are quite juvenile as well; can’t remember what I was thinking. I knew nothing of iambic meters or anything and this is just a brute force attempt at copying Shakespere. Not too bad but misses the technical details. I only know this because I’ve come to tutor GCSE English this year (for which I got a U at o-level!!!) and have had to learn it ALL!

Kind of obvious but maybe cryptic names of Irish writers here: James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Yeats

Walk J.J., and read the streets, which boast
Names none more wilde and swift
Than when they ask whY he eats:

p.s. bridges = passage over water. Water = emotions, time, mortality, difficulty, separation. Meeting on a bridge is meeting between worlds and times… this is the kind of constellation of ideas I think I meant.

================================================================================

That we mortals do become poised on the bridge of indecision,
Reflecting on the waters of our dreams and memories below,
Should carry no odds with the reading eye; for this is the bridge of Stories,
And o’er mighty Time it flow.

ACT 1
SCENE 1 – Unlit room in early morning.

Ris. Oh my dear Imia.
If only it were that my words were as lucid as the starlight in yonder frame,
Which o'er remoteness so great as to quake mere mortal mind,
Still she hath impressed mine eyes so certainly
With the impassioned song of that fervent heavenly creature.
If only it were that shadow's mischief I could tame:
Find these words that quell, naturally as spring-water on my lips
A channel in which to run, a dew upon morning gossamer come,
A freedom for the dove of a heart's intricate construction.
But alas, poor fortune! I strain against the hidden canvas
As the seas lapping waves do roll upon silence shores:

For I am before the meter of the world, and in that I am every man.
Damn these words which do taint me most horribly:
What foreign food can there be in my mouth, which
With such nourishment, poisons so sweetly?
Silence I hesitate not! You are a friend I have not recognised:
Yet now come the twist; today you ally with mine enemy!
Sorry-day it is when I am supposed at odds with brethren
Now that our country Atlar is torn by war.
Imia, there was no midnight toll in the land between Miou and Amindor -
Fickle time he serves only History -
And our ancestral quarrel is now our own
Come from the waters on which this world stands
To turn back the clocks and cast silence between lands
Now that words between friends means death.
Speak Silence! Why so forsake me?
Why leave me alone in this terrible night?

SCENE II – On wooden steps of a house.

Imia.    Solis, Your cheerful gaiety this morning sweetens my sorrow
Each day, you rise and fall to be just as bold in the morrow
But your light today alas, has cast a fearful new shadow,

There are not one to pass through, but two skies for you now.
And it is as though your face is doubled
And your hidden light falls on memories troubled.
You remember once childhood days found Riswey's seat by my side:
We are still friends, and I know he still watches your mornings rise
And I am so happy that to another soon I am to be married;
But now I have a pained thought: A separation for life?
No sign in earthly form is there now between us
But we are free still to think of each:
And as friends? that they cannot deprive us:
Are yesterday's ways still within our reach?
Oh Riswey! No! Look! where have you gone?
Life! Life, blood and bone! They are one!
Land without war or bloodshed? There is none!
Love without flesh! It is words without breath - alone.
Now there is war between these lands
Silence fallen, no pen, command only your hands!
Animal! strain your sinews and muscular limbs
Life has always lived in the light of our sins.
How can you be gone my fool, if you were never here?
How do you think the separation of war, if you were never near?

ACT II
SCENE I – Meeting in suburban street.

Will.    How now Riswey, why your wistful countenance?
Be cheery today for I did certainly spy spring dancing
Through the cherry blossoms and doves courting,
And my path along the daffodils of the green
Was checked by a hare -
Who had the most distinct air of madness,
And if pushed I would say the fair mademoiselle Roche
Had designs for your family name.
Ris.    William why speak of marriage and public display,
Privately my heart is bleeding in such taught disarray.
And I would give the world, for me, this not to say
But I fear most horrid fate, that I have lost a friend today!
    Will.    Pray you do not bear ill news of Pierre or his battalions
Who have fought to see this very day.
And, you to be called to join the fight?
What greater honour could they pay.
Ris.    William, Tell me: what is there in knowing?
When 'now' leaves? Knowing is king,
How pointless! such words befriend a thing.
As friend I know you, your name, your face
Know that we have shared both time and place.
Roll the die! see what changes
Before the words come the pages
Of a city of ten thousand stories.
We turn the corner, we turn the page.
I ask you, immediately, what colour the sky?
'Tis blue and no mistake. Now look with thy eye!
I would have the sky no other way
'Tis truly perfect as she looks today.
She is as a friend I know.
    Will.    Riswey thou art in love?
    Ris.    Beneath summer trees moss and grasses grow
To make tender cushion and soft pillow,
And on the meadow breeze sweet scents come
- O'er a brook absorbed in song, never sung -
To play kiss-chase with the leaves
Translucent, and glowing with summer sun;
As these, her face is radiant.
And where she stands the ground bows down   
On golden sunbeams she walks without a sound
And as the night entwines the moon so curles her raven hair
Around a smile borne only by the spirits of the air,
And around her teeth silent snow-falls, even whiter
Each sound the first exquisite from beauties writer
And was the evening dew ever so soft as her lips,
Or her skin: rich partner to gold; complexion of petal;
And her nose of softest proportion most gentle:
Oh her eyes, in whose sparkle shines the cosmos
No less! she is a child of the stars
For she surely hath been blessed by the moon,
And where Amrit mere mortals rejoice even to touch
She has been bathed and upon it excess been drunk.
Like armies she has stormed the plains of my heart
But ne'er in grace would she and water nymphs be apart.
I remember, as always has its way, when days were young,
Upon desert beaches naked in the freedom of this sun
Caressed and chased by sea-forest scents and laughter tears
As we played under skies that burned out our years.
In words, never she speaks: and hear? I simply understand,
For I am happy to be by her side, for a moment her man.
Oh how I wish it to be yes: Do I speak of a friend?
But if no then apart we must stay, forever 'till the end.
Oh what cruel devices play with our hearts?
I once thought man were the wolf and love the child
Oh no! It is I who is scared and runs in the wild.
Love is a book we can't put down:
Freedom submit chained, whipped till you can utter no sound
Or hide as Love shakes the earth to which our mortal root is bound
And although Heaven be so close and in our grasp
What tragedy when it is death to which we clasp.
Now that there is war and death has finally come
Reason sees clearly my choice of Heaven or Freedom:
But choice is freedom! And Wo! Death you have already won.
    Will.    Riswey we are but actors in the Almighty’s design
We have no sway in our hearts fortune or rhyme
But I know what's best for you as for any man!
I am travelling with friends to an Island off Atlar's coast,
Where celebrate my people a great festival of good host.
For a week we can forget all that is here at home
Join us in an ancient land, my guest, you are welcome.

SCENE II – In a Park

    Imia.    Katrin, I am at a loss as to where she escapes winter,
But as though nature was only sleeping
She is out merrily busying herself today.
Like the morning that follows the virgin night
I swear she is with renewed vitality,
And so joyfully unashamed is she in her one intent.
Either Eros has spilled his store of arrows
Or whichever God breeds sobriety he is terribly drunk,
But from the trees around the croaking lakes
To the birds gathering twigs in the skies
Without ceremony, ever creature I would say
Was in love: nothing more simple or ordinary.
I am envious. If only it were so plain.
That nature chooses silence: that is her key!
But one wonders how any creature does know
That the amorous eye is upon them.
Katrin? Has Love ever declared himself to you?
    Kat.    By my own mouth Imia, I am not sure,
But through other's lips! More often than the Fall.
    Imia.    Then you believe in Love.
    Kat.    How empty a temple when the altar is gone
Or lifeless night-seas without moon above.
What is life without a heart?
And what be a heart without Love?
But to rashly answer so old a riddle I would be a fool.
Only the bravest may call themselves fools
And Love is certainly game for only the very bravest.
So send me folly 'till I make only sense and then I say:
I know not my love, but yes I believe in him.
    Imia.    And if I were to say your words had the ring of truth
Then the flutter of Apollo, for Eros I might mistake.
Let us rejoice that the greatest folly will never be sane
And in madness speak of things words do not forsake.
    Kat.    It has come to my ears that if we are careful
We can steal away from this war and join friends
In freedom on a misty island where it is said
The people pray for nothing but beer and love.
But we should be quick, for soon I hear there is a festival
And there I fancy Baccus, to be sure at his most majestical.

ACT III
SCENE I – On large ship

    Kat.    Imia! Come quick! Come brace the bow wind.
Is there nothing more ecstatic, more absorbing
Than in feeling the sea's course hands through ones hair
Feeling! I think fighting through one's clothes.
Liberty! I should become naked and give myself away,
My dolphin-body enter the foaming wake
Swim with love, a merman into the depths to make.

    Imia.    Katrin! Look! Is that the city to where we head,
That flock of twinkling stars descended to bed?
Oh how peaceful the land in that great valley
And the mountains watching around: serenity.
Already I smell the fires burning in the woodlands
And hear the drunken laughter in the streets
And the stories of strangers surrounding me
As the city breathes long to speak.

Stra-    And no better place to hear stories.
-nger.    Find a street whose secrets,
Do not die into the night -
But on the breath of a thousand tales:
Feel the Celtic spirit; its strength is here;
Tread well, and know ones foot print
Falls into those of five millennia or more.
In these ancient mountains the Gods have fought,
Here, upon these plains, kingdoms wrought;
Do you smell insurrections gunpowder?
See! a dark lonely gaol: Kilmainham 1916.
Into a candles light a man is thrown
To be married. At dawn a widow is sown –
He was fighting his last stand
In the post office of wide O’Connells Street.
See a 1000 years rise in Christ Church towers
And see the fallen castle, and Royal Crown Jewels
Gone to make a mystery still complete.
Walk J.J., and read the streets, which boast
Names none more wilde and swift
Than when they ask whY he eats:
But this be just the stage
So I bid thee ladies farewell,
To come write on this islands page.

SCENE II – Both dialogues concurrently in various separate streets.

Dialogue 1 
  Adam. The evening is running out!
What say we make haste to Temple Bar
Meet the others and there forget tomorrow!

  Ris: Forget tomorrow?
I have forgotten today!
‘Tis the thirteenth, nay? The day we arrived
And already I feel in the cities sway.

  Will: That’ll be the ale Riswey!
  Ris:  Speak for yourself!
If you think that’s us done for tonight
I proclaim to this city, I’m only begun!
Let me at it! Let me sacrifice myself in Temple Bar!

  Adam:  I can second that Hurrah!
I spy the lights of the Liffey Bridge
Watch out beer and women
In my pants I feel a twitch!
  Will.  Adam ! Have no fear, somewhere
There’s bound to be a toilet up here!
  Adam.  Amusant! Give this a try:
Your round quadruple whisky.

  Ris: Go on ahead, mine’s a Stout:
Leave me here silent a moment
To stand upon this iron bridge
And watch the crescent moon
Sail her face upon the river.
That I might hear time, free
In this quite different land
To sing her midnight song.

Dialogue 2
Anna. I fear that Davey Byrne’s will come
To claim me tonight less we move on.
Let us find new sites,
New music, drink and men to merry ourselves!

Imia. I am drunk! and wish to dizzy myself
More! to the tireless jigs that
Flit and dance these city street;
Grafton Street we’ll take a gambolling stroll,
See what delights come and excite our soul!

Kat. Anytime! anywhere!
That is where we are!
Before that splendid custom house
Whose reflection admires it so;
I am a queen and this my Queendom.
My ladies, usher me along my river
That I may explore my freedom.

  Anna. With what majesty my mind and that
bridge do greet
It looks as a place where strangers might meet,
Its crescent lights…
A necklace upon the night!
Till another day my Ha’penny bridge
Come girls to these streets, I care not which.

  Kat:  Where now Anna is Imia?

Imia: Riswey?

End of the Empire

I watched the 1940 version of “Pride and Prejudice” yesterday. I’ve not watched any version before, but as a period drama I found it infinitely superior to modern adaptations simply because the characters were believable. The failing of any modern piece of work set in the Past, in my experience, is the total inability of actors to rethink that Past. In UK we had a BBC soap opera called Rome a few years ago; it was interesting to think what living was really like at that exciting time; they would have to weave an entirely different cosmos together one populated by a pantheon of man-like gods who demanded probably quite different virtue from today; I thought it would have been an been at least interesting. A total failure. It was essentially “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (which is a great movie :-); simply modern people in fancy dress pretending to have gone back in time. Totally unbelievable and the adoption of ancient practice just the meaningless going through the motions. Acting is not just woodenly performing some actions: a robot can do this. “Troy”, on last night, is virtually unwatchable – apart from it being a terribly scripted film anyway, there is absolutely no consciousness of the Past. That said I do like Brad Pitts portrayal of arrogant invincibility; a good interpretation of Achilles.

Now “Pride and Prejudice” on the other hand is different. All the characters actually believe what they are doing and saying. The days of Jane Austin are not so far behind them that they are just myth. They can remember a time when their world actually was like the one they are acting. My own father behaved in a way that was informed by this time now gone, although the cultural memory was fading – he was born 1933. My mother remembers another side being the grandchild of Hollands - who share a mother with King Henry II – aristocratic consciousness alive and well in her youth. It was evidently a time of great elegance, respect and dignity. It has now totally gone. That world was the world of the Aryan, the noble-man. Today (in UK at least) it is fair to say that the Asian goal (I include Europe in the Asian continent) that has driven the cultures since at least the last ice age has finally died. We now no longer look to any Saviour defined by quality of superiority or perfection because we are cynical enough to not believe such a thing exists. Our eyes are so dirtied by the mud from the gutter that we can no longer see the stars.

I am reassured by “Pride and Prejudice” that nobility does exist. This is not about “class” or “wealth” (which are used only to obscure the issue of nobility): we are all nobles when we act with accuracy, wit and wisdom. It is a wake up call to myself how far I have fallen in search for some base on which to stand. Time to take up flying again I realise. The film acts as a brilliant record of our proper behaviours and attitudes, and a sad reflection upon my own existence.

This morning I was brought once again to revisit the question of “my muse”. I believe this has finally run its course. The failings are on both sides – that is difficult to accept because my first premise was that she was perfect. I am almost ready to accept that she was not. But for my own part I realise this morning that I have been hindered by “greed” and “lack of self-esteem”. Essentially I have been unable to ask directly for what I want from girls – this because I am afraid of rejection, afraid of hurting their feelings and afraid that, actually, demands on others are morally wrong. The last two are noble fears but through my instinctive search for nobility I have ironically done a lot of harm because I am not straight-forward. I will have desire for a girl and she for me, but I will not act for fear that I will be bound by the emotions of another rather than my own. It is true that we have to be clear with our communications to enable both parties to prosper. I have been a coward and not expressed my true feelings (positive or negative) for fear of doing harm. This is not noble behaviour. I, and others, have suffered.

But “My Muse” for her part was not noble either and this morning I am prepared to admit that she was “not the right sort of girl to fall in love with”. She was from Essex and of lower class and it is sad to say that this does seem to map on to expectations of nobility. The lower class actually behave with less nobility – they don’t have to, but I think society (and they themselves) expect themselves to. Worth adding that the upper class don’t behave with much more these days – which is a far greater crime since it is their duty to do so and they have only themselves to blame. After all this analysis I can say I did the right thing and that the fault was that she was not the right girl. Odd that I should have been convinced all these years of the opposite.

If we wish to speak to someone of an urgent matter we seek their attention. We do not hold a conversation with someone else and we wait until they have finished speaking with whoever they are conversant with. This is noble and polite. “My Muse” on the other hand was not polite and didn’t know politeness. She was in a relationship with someone who was in turn in a relationship with someone else. Her boyfriend was not polite or respectful to be holding two conversations at the same time (at 33 he certainly should have known). “My Muse” it seems wanted to hold a conversation with me and I waited for her to finish speaking. No end ever came to that other conversations so I was right to have never spoken. This is correct behaviour. Dionysian thinking would say that I should have abandoned myself to my passions and acted impulsively and with conviction, worked my charm, seduced her and stolen her from the other man’s bed in the dead of night, stolen her away through the velvety shadows and satin moonlight. This itself is seductive and I was thinking “irreason” (previous posts) in those days. But this is actually not correct behaviour; it is not noble. This is the sword of perfection that anoints the noble and cuts away the ignoble. Maybe it is hard for modern thought to comprehend: I refer above.

Hers was in reflection a series of steps towards imperfection. She always used to say to me that she wanted to be “corrupted”. I have no idea what demon tainted her with that poison but in reflection that is all it was. She had had 6 months of relationship when I met her. Maybe he had succeeded in corrupting already what was probably an impressionable teenager. I always thought she had more strength; was her own person already. Maybe here I was wrong again. From the imperfections of that relationship from which she was eventually ousted to one night stands and seeking sexual thrills drawn by some taint toward something which I am discovering within myself does not exist. Eventually she met what by all accounts was a charming fellow and got engaged, but her sister says even this was imperfect for her. She called this “realism” but it is all still imperfection, sullied and ignoble. So it was a mistake to seek perfection with her who herself did not know perfection.

This must be the end of the issue of “My Muse”. That is a term I will no longer use for her. My musing now source from myself and the world. On April 17th it will be the 10year anniversary of the last time we ever embraced and I ever heard her voice and ever looked into her eyes. I still remember her hands seeking me through my shirt and the tears in her eyes; things which I assumed were just fake because I had ceased to make sense of her loyalties. I know now (after speaking with her sister) that she actually had a high regard for me and that these were genuine and I made a mistake to walk away without talking things out and saying what I really had to say: but it was too late by then and my own ignoble actions and cowardice had gone on long enough: that day of December 4th 1997 when, as we parted, we caught each other’s glance looking back, which has been on freeze frame ever since I had to stitch off and walk away… and walk away… and walk away…

It is odd writing this: I can’t do it. I still can’t walk away. Somehow my life is still there. What lies out here is still wilderness; a wilderness I have walked in for almost 10 years. Is their life after love? Not really. (For that matter was their life before love? I have wondered this also). Yet I have faith: that will never go, that is the air that fills my lungs, but it is thin up here in the mountains and I must have walked a long way down now because all the familiar things are back; the scrubland has become trees and there are rivers and butterflies. Yet when I speak of Her sincerely and remember I see that actually it was better then. Somehow being alive right now is not as good as what I remember. This is a truly ignoble thing to say but it is just how I feel. My head asks: How can “this” which is Real compare with what is only a vague memory of something that never really happened? but my heart tells me otherwise. But my head gets the last word because stupid heart what you seek is nowhere in all this universe or beyond to find. And, yet it still seeks it. Is this how I was born? With this insatiable yearning for something which doesn’t anywhere exist – or when you find it dies? How many lifetimes does it take to learn that this is an endless road? So still I cannot walk away…but returning to the issue…”Pride and Prejudice” and especially Greer Garson actually, has reminded me what I also instinctively know in that stupid heart that nobility is the only true way and that gains approval from my head as well… and of the end of empire? How many speak like this these days, when in times gone by it was our only code of living?

The choice...continuing

I was reading the section in http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ on the Vinaya Rules for monks. If i am serious about this path then I need to start preparing myself. I was suddenly filled with a cold freeze when I read that abortion is considered murder (strictly it seems after the consciousness has joined with the foetus). On November 2nd 1995 at around 11am my first girlfriend had a termination - my child also. I had given her no choice since he was unplanned and I had not banked on continuing with this relationship or this style of life. It was my fault, I take the blame.

I made a mark in the mental sand to remind myself in the future that I had spent three sleepless nights thinking hard about it and only then decided to reverse my initial support and seek termination. I was not to regret this I said at the time, the decision was well made. I was very aware that every day made the decision more morally complex and urged my girlfriend to decide quickly - it was hard for her, she wanted to keep the child. I had read something that made 8 weeks a limit in mind. Our child was known about at 6weeks and was 10 weeks old at the termination date I believe. I was relieved that this responsibility had passed so much so that I never thought about my girlfriends difficulties after the operation - it was a tough time for her, I didn't understand.

With more mature wisdom I see that the decision was based on greed. I was not satisfied in that relationship. It would have taken me down a road that would not have satisfied me and I wanted satisfaction. It would have done no real harm to me to say yes to marriage and having a child. It is not as though I have done anything else that would have contradicted that choice since.

So I was chilled to think I may not be able to be a monk having essentially committed murder. Parallel to this I have renewed interest from that girl I mentioned before. The problem in this society after fielding endless questions from friends and their partners last weekend on the issue of whether I am gay is that not everything boils down to sex and reproduction. I criticise gays for this, but maybe sexuals (in that gays are not really "sexual" being only 1 sex) are equally at fault for identifying themselves with their sexual behaviour. Certainly society in the mind of politicians is founded on sexuality, marriage, reproduction and family. But actually it isn't; it's a stereotype and to be free from the prison of sexuality doesn't turn someone into another type of sexuality... It is just called resisting one's urges - is that so alien? Maybe I'm seeing that it is, and at the same time seeing why instinctively I am an alien and why I don't think how I'm "supposed" to. I'm a little shocked how hard it is for people in my "society" to think like that - how self-imprisioned we are. I've entertained and explored the foundations of society and why things are the way they are but I'm losing patience - why understand that which is when you look hard at it is actually irrelevant?

I notice an odd irony here. Being gay is not about reproduction in that sexual reproduction requires sex. Humans are too specialised in biological terms to undergo asexual reproduction without cloning assisted by the laboratory – maybe the future of human gay reproduction is beginning but oddly such reproduction doesn’t require a relationship! It is auto-reproduction. Quite how a “gay-sexual-relationship” is to be understood as anything other than a friendship is a mystery from this perspective (I’m not excluding such things just challenging the conceptual apparatus that we use to understand them). So the irony is in the assumption that because I am not married and reproducing I must be gay. The implication to me is that sexual partnerships must be only about sex?? Why? It is still within the mental framework of sexual-partnership to consider someone who is not reproducing – such a person is gay. This they can understand. But what sexual partnerships cannot comprehend is someone who rejects sexuality itself. That somehow is outside the box. Ergo the box is simply sexuality itself. I’m not saying sexuality is easy to understand I am still struggling with it – but to not even be able to thinj outside the box! Wow!

Another question: Why does everything happen at once taking me in opposite directions? I have to resolve this choice and anyway if I can't be a "monk" it's just a name: it does stop me seeking wisdom and freedom.