FEATURE 42 - The XX's

Their name kept coming up in all the 'Best of's' for 2009. So I searched them out on Spotify, and since then they've become a permanent fixture on my play list, my first musical addiction and resplendent joy of 2010. They wear their influences proudly on their sleeves, but make something uniquely all their own of them. Vocally reminiscent of early Tracy Thorn, their music evokes the spirit of that short lived band from the mid-eighties Young Marble Giants (look out their one and only album Colossal Youth). Unlike the YMG whose music had a fragility that was forever on the edge of shattering, the XX's seem more confidently grounded in their melancholy muse. Something fresh and innovative emerges from their use of instrumental sparseness, that is more than just imitative. Their sound has a simple unpretentious clarity to it that is gentle on the ears, without becoming depressive or sentimental. This doesn't mean its unadventurous either, they push the possibilities of their soundscape all the time. Here they're well served by the production, which features the best use of echo on a guitar in years.

Like the YMG, it may be they've emerged too perfectly formed, There could becomes no way of moving the sound forward without the band splitting due to 'musical differences'. One of the band has already parted company, so lets see. I can't see them ever becoming mega-big, their sound is too low key,and intimate. It lacks the huge ego, and showy brashness often required to be hugely popular. But they do already have a substantial cult following, and some effusive critical acclaim as a result. Enjoy them whilst their star is still small polished and shiny. The critical knives will no doubt be out soon enough.

Their videos are quite minimal and cool too.

FEATURE 41 - The Last of Last Years Best

I can't help but post a few highlights of the last year. so here they are.

LADY GAGA

She's not particularly original either as a singer or as a song writer, but what she does is good for what it is. Yet to focus solely on this profoundly misses the point and appeal of La Gaga. If you watch her early videos you can see lower budgets highlight her musical weaknesses. She comes across as a rather low rent Madonna. From the 'mini opera' video for'Paparazzi' onwards, with larger amounts of revenue behind her, her visual imagination seems to have just gone berserk. This reached new heights with the video for 'Bad Romance' which is simply the most gloriously barking video yet made. There are also real moments of jaw dropping beauty in it, particularly when she's encircled with floating jewels, or the intersecting circles of metal. If she can top this in future remains to be seen. I personally have not tired of seeing this one yet. The 'Bath Haus of Gaga' like the high fashion houses she's aping and obviously loves, is all about style as content. Lady Gaga's visual richness bellows loudly who she is, much more than her musical production, tunes or song lyrics ever will. She dresses to kill.

RU PAUL'S DRAG RACE

In the same sort of territory as La Gaga, i.e. dress outrageously over the top, and have a huge gay following. This Channel 4 import from America became addictive viewing for Jnanasalin and myself. Sometimes these drag queens behave just simply appallingly towards each other, and at other times there is something very touching about how supportive they are towards their fellow contestants. For me Nina Flowers was always the winner, even though it was Bebe who actually won. So here is her original audition video for the show.

NORAH VINCENT - Self Made Man

I bought this cheap (£3) in Fopp, and what a peach it is. Simply the best analysis of the masculine predicament I've read, by a man or a woman. Any stereotypically 'feminist' responses are largely absent here,or come under renewed scrutiny in the face of her experience being male. Norah Vincent possess a high degree of empathic observation and real sympathy for her fellow human kind. So she attempts to really see,hear and bear witness to how men cope with being the so called 'dominant gender'. Dressing as a man allows her to go places and experience things no woman would normally hear or know about in close detail. There were a number of real 'Yes!!!' moments when she really nails something very clearly.

FLORENCE & THE MACHINE

Much hyped, but she did live up to it, Florence Welch's album 'Lungs' dominated my CD player for several weeks. Bold, brash and broad in its emotional range and the styles it takes on and conquers, it is such a confident debut it seems hard to envisage how she can better it. She is currently in great danger of overexposure, and in some of her recent appearances on TV her singing has sounded sloppy and careless, which she does not on this early BBC session.

OUTNUMBERED

By far the best new comedy on the BBC for quite a while. The little girl Ramona Marquez won the best comedy newcomer in the Comedy Awards for 2009, which was well earned. Her semi -improvised responses are often very witty, yet unknowing, and hence frequently spot on.

KARL LAGERFELD

Yet another bonkers fashionista, who occasionally says something which cuts right to the nub and makes you think. Early on in 2009 he became a new found heroe of mine, if only because this man is in his seventies, and there's not a knitted cardigan in sight. This photo also proves he's not without a self-deprecating sense of humour either.

TIME TEAM

Has become a bit addictive for me this year, there's hardly a week goes by without a visit to a back episode of this long running archeological investigation programme. I just love Phil, Tony, Mick, Helen and the small but perfectly formed,but forever in the background Henry (the Hunk).

CORMAC MCCARTHY - The Road

This week the film version of this book has just been released. The reviewers have remarked on how bleak it is, but that the film softens some of the books real grim power. From what I've read of his other writing, which isn't admittedly much, 'The Road' is different in style, with a much stronger narrative, evenness of authorial tone, and no gross out blood strewn grotesques. But my god it is unremittingly desolate none the less. Powerful stuff.

THE KNIFE & FEVER RAY

Late entries into my years favorites, The Knife - Olof Dreijer & Karin Dreijer Andresson, and Fever Ray - Karin Dreijer Andresson on her own. Both these electro outfits have a distinct air of bleak beauty, arty, but not without a slightly off kilter sense of humour. None of the people singing in these videos is either The Knife or Fever Ray, for instance. I find them both sometimes deeply impressive and moving.

BRIGHTON

Before Jnanasalin became Jnanasalin, before he left for the Ordination Course, we had a long weekend together in Brighton. These were five really delightful days, where we hung out together, shopped, went to cafes, relaxed, viewed the Brighton Pavilion which was amazing, ate out in superb vegetarian restaurants, saw the film 'The Watchman' which slightly freaked me out, and saw a National Theatre touring production of 'Gethsemane' by David Hare, which both

of us were deeply impressed with. We stayed in a great B&B, the weather for early April was bright and clear. Definitely a major highlight.

AND IN CONCLUSION.......

THE ESSENTIAL SANGHARAKSHITA

An excellent introduction to this deeply complex but impressive man's writing about the Dharma. He's not always easy to find acessible, but this compendium is.

KAORU NONOMURA - Eat, Sleep,Sit.

I always wondered what it would be like living in a Soto Zen Monastery, let alone the one that Dogen founded. But Nonomura does so for a year, and what an eye opener it is.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND - COUSINS

It was available in 2009 on YouTube almost two months before its actual release. The new album is due out on Monday 11th January. So strictly speaking its a favorite from 2010, but I'll put it in here because I so love this track.

DIARY 120 - Back to Basics ( Part Two )

Bodies eh! who'd chose to have one? Perhaps, if you could be a being composed of ether, or of the empty space between trees, we'd feel less tortured or dissatisfied by our experience. Though maybe its somewhat inevitable for any form of sentience. Human suffering is, it seems, so predominantly tied up with being embodied in this physical bodily form. Though its not just about our body falling ill of ailing, but also our minds falling ill or ailing, or our sense of self, our identity, falling ill and ailing, that will cause us to suffer. All of these different aspects struggle with each other, like cats inside this bag of perishable flesh. All of them so tightly bound up with each other that they appear inseparable from this complete physical entity we call our body. Everything about how we inhabit this body is incestuous.

So, what's brought this line of thought on? Well, after all the careful preparation and maintaining over the last ten months of those core back exercises, so I could do warehouse work, something on a psycho-physical level kicked back, and kicked my back hard this week. I began the week physically OK-ish, though in retrospect I've realised my body has been issuing severe weather warnings for a

bout a month, that things were not entirely hunky dory. It was after doing those core back exercises on Monday evening that something felt not quite right. The next morning it was about the same, only mildly uncomfortable, but I know this sort of thing can quickly come and go, so I went to work as usual.

It was a day when I was working in the Warehouse Kitchen, preparing food in the morning, washing and cleaning up in the afternoon. As the work progressed I found I needed to sit down with greater frequency than usual. By the end of day both my left hip and back felt raw, inflamed and I could feel the roughness of my bones as they moved. It was painful whether I was standing, sitting, or cycling. When I went to bed every move I made induced a sharp intake of breath. By Wednesday morning my entire back muscles had spasmed and clenched. I took a day off work,then two, then three, though things were slowly improving I went to see a doctor anyway, and he signed me off for a further 7 days.

On the mental and spiritual plain I'm OK, its just the body I'm carting around with me that's become troublesome. This disparity in experience between my body, my mind and my sense of myself is what has struck me the most. It really feels like there are two Me's, my awareness of my body, and my awareness of self-consciousness - of this body and of this other me watching and observing it. The back pain, has also highlighted the gap between this bodily discomfort and my lack of control over it. How little mastery I have, I feel like a king who has been usurped by his serfs. No longer am I the ruler of my own body, my body is now ruling me. Any willpower I exert is easily undermined by my bodies rebellion, as we live and grow old, simultaneously together and yet apart. We're uneasy bedfellows, like passionate lovers who've fallen out of love with each other, but continue living in the same house and sharing the same bed. There is no trial separation, no divorce is possible, other than by death, so they just have to learn to live with each other. Though its my body that has the upper hand, not I, whoever that I is.

I can feel at times a bit of a fraud, because I do feel fine in myself. I don't feel ill, yet physically I've been walking around like a decrepit old man. It's as though a salutary spell has been cast upon me as a punishment, in order that I experience what my body will be like as I move inexorable towards old age, sickness and death. That spell will not be broken merely by my determination or wishing for it to do so. I'm no longer the Manager of my body, but the deputy Supervisor, who can only monitor my activities, or contain them so they don't make matters worse. As long as I stay within limited parameters of movement i.e sit down a lot, move carefully when I walk, and don't make abrupt changes in posture, it can seem as if all is mended, healed and ultimately vanished. Stepping outside these restrictions is the only way to test how illusory, or not, that feeling is.

On one day, carrying a tray of crockery down stairs nearly kills my back, a few days later it is almost fine. Standing up whilst making dinner for the Community on Friday, needed to be peppered with rest spots, to sit down when preparing vegetables, and I still felt physically jiggered by the end of it. Walking out in the snow for the first time on the way to the Doctors Surgery, I slipped ever so slightly, and my whole back went into an alarmed, red alert spasm. I have so much more sympathy for the fears of the elderly,particularly in treacherous wintry conditions. Loss of independence is so intimately linked with the decay and resulting fragility of our bodies. When control over our own body grows more limited, the potential for suffering as a result of that, is ever present.

So, much as I'm eager for my back to return to business as usual, I know I'm going to have play it - gently does it. Resist mentally thinking I'm over it ( it ain't over till its over ) at least not before my body says so - 'yes you are now over it, you may now proceed, but remember whose really in charge!'

FEATURE 40 - Fever Ray

After the success of their third album 'Silent Shout', The Knife have taken time out, presumably to take a creative break from each other. Though they've recently been commissioned to write an opera. What Olof Dreijer has been individually doing we know not, but his sister Karin Dreijer Andersson, newly married, gave birth, and has followed that major life event with this solo project - Fever Ray. This impressive debut album bears some of the hallmarks of what Karin Dreijer Andersson brought to 'The Knife', an introspective, and distinctly North European electronic ambiance. Though there is something altogether more earthly and pagan going on here, as if you're hearing a shaman's incantations carried to you by an arctic wind, barely visible in the bleak Swedish half light. Quite what the subjects of the songs are, is not always lyrically clear, it works more on the level of a sequence of moods, these collectively explore a musical landscape that is isolated, with an all pervading sense of an individual alone with her personal demons, internal and external.

Dreijer distorts her voice to create a mood of underlying menace, her altered vocal tone bringing an edginess to it. You can rarely sit easily with a song, never mindlessly hum along. She appears to be using the sense of gender ambiguity this creates ( is this voice masculine or feminine? ) in a similar manner to the performance artist Laurie Anderson. In fact Anderson is one of Fever Ray's nearest musical antecedents, particularly on tracks like, Concrete Walls and Coconut. Search out Anderson's 'United States' mega performance piece from the eighties (its available on Spotify) and hear for yourself. The Knife, have often crossed over into what is performance art territory, with some distinctly Lynchian aspects appearing in the videos to their songs. Fever Ray,however, have an even more accentuated sombre tone, the humour is darker, it moves from the mundane to the sublime within the space of a sentence. As on the track 'Seven', where Dreijer sings:-

'I leave home at seven. Under a heavy sky, I ride my bike up, I ride my bike down.' - 'Accompany me by the kitchen sink. We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets, illness, and we dream about heaven.'

Anderson and Dreijer are somewhat kindred, both exploring the different ways we experience alienation within modern urban life. For all our improved means of communication and hi-tec gadgetry, our closeness becoming more attenuated, our remoteness from each other to only grow worse. On 'Concrete Walls', even becoming a mother seems to have isolated Dreijer, abandoned to the demands of her child, with whom she cannot yet converse, her own young child is not always the sort of stimulation she seeks or needs:-

'I live between concrete walls. when I took her up she was so warm. I live between concrete walls. In my arms she was so warm. Eyes are open and mouth cries. Haven't slept since summer. Oh how I try. I leave the TV on, and the radio.'

But then we are contrary beings, we want individual autonomy, yet wonder why we feel lonely. The more we spend our lives on our own, the harder it becomes to accommodate other people into it. The crowds in the streets, become a nightmare, a threat, we wish everyone would just go away, so we can remain untroubled by the presence of others. Dreijer's lyrics hint at an underlying fear lurking in the existential core of this:-

'Whispering. morning keep the streets empty for me. Uncover our heads and reveal our souls. We were hungry before we were born.'

We are starving, we crave food, yet refuse to eat what's offered to us. It's as though a subtle fever, slowly overtaking us, has suppressed our appetite for everything that provides human sustenance. Fever Ray explores this alienated split in human nature, it can be quite a moving experience to listen to. It displays a maturity and breadth very few artists are able, or would dare, to attempt on their first outing.

'This will never end cause I want more. More give me more give me more.'

FEATURE 38 - The Knife

You know when Amazon 'recommends for you,' well, just occasionally they prove to be correct and highlight something which is right up your street. Hence how I stumble across The Knife, a Swedish electro combo. Not your common or garden Swedish electro combo, but a decidedly quirky and unique one. Part Bjork, part Native Hipsters, part something altogether more dark or brooding, more Munch than Munchausen. If John Peel were alive today, I feel sure he'd be a fan. Of all my great 'enthusiasms' distinctive popular music remains an enduring one. This duo are terrific.

These three videos go with tracks from their most recent album from 2006 - Silent Shout - they show that their colourful, unnerving streak extends into their visual world too - the tracks are - Like a Pen - Marble House - We Share our Mother's Health.

DIARY 119 - The path through the wood

This week I've felt overwhelmed, as if dense undergrowth and knotted branch spirits of an old folk wood have sprung up around me. My hip and back have been acting up more than usual, I guess largely psycho-physical in origin. A combination of physical, mental and spiritual dukkha, has, not unsurprisingly, dragged my spirits down into the leaf mold of my psyche. It made more acute a general dullness that's been hanging around my experience since Jnanasalins's return from Ghuyaloka, and I began working in the Warehouse at the end of July. There have been moments when a clearing has opened up in the wood, or peaks have thrust themselves out like mountain cordillera to bask in the high altitude sunlight. But these were brief periods and unsustained.

Whilst Jnanasalin was away getting ordained I was doing a less physically taxing job, it was clear to me what I wanted to achieve in those four months; to focus on meditation practice; painting my ordination gifts; and getting physically fitter in preparation for working in the warehouse. I planned ahead, and used my time well. I had some sense of renewed purpose as an Order Member too, to get myself back up to speed. I didn't want to feel myself as a spiritually laggard anymore.

Since July, I've not found it easy maintaining that momentum, its been hard work. I began experiencing periods of exhaustion, and persistent low level weariness early on through working in the warehouse. This was accompanied by lethargy blocking any creative work at home. This reluctance has been frustrating, but five months down the line its still been hanging around. My practice has consisted in letting go of any expectations I have of myself, being more humble, and cliche though it is, staying more in the moment and going with the day to day flow. This has created a moderate level of contentment, though it feels flimsy and incomplete, its just the letter, not quite the living spirit of it. Something has been shifting around ever since, like a theater set being rearranged for the next act, moved invisibly by black clad stage hands.

Previously the discontent I've experienced, arose out of desires for creative fulfillment being in some way thwarted. As my future work pattern looks like being largely unchanged in 2010, so this shift in my attitude has not only to continue, but go deeper. To further relax the tight grasp of this underlying aspirational archetype - to be creatively fulfilled. But if I'm not to be this type of person then who exactly was I to be - was being a simple warehouse worker ever going to be enough?

My osteopath, of all people, once said of me, that he imagined me as being like a specialist shop filled with highly precious objects carefully arranged in it, where only one thing had to be out of place for the whole presentation to be ruined. I'm afraid this seems very true of me. If only one thing appears flawed in my life, I'm unable to feel grateful or appreciative for anything else that's going well, or is good. I am beginning to see that the problem is not what I'm holding onto, but how I'm holding onto it - the preciousness. Too much depends on that long sought for fulfillment for it to be healthy.

Keturaja reminded me on Tuesday, that I'm a person of great enthusiasms. This has been so since I was a child. What has been worthy of remark about the last few months has been the lack of these enthusiasms. It's slowly becoming clearer that I can't motivate myself purely by doing things that are solely for my own benefit. I can't paint and write just for me, I just don't see the point of that anymore. The dilemma for me this week has centred around how I engage with my enthusiasms without them becoming precious self-intoxicating obsessions, ones I must do to the exclusion of everything else, that inevitable become embroiled in unrealistic and thwarted desires to achieve an ultimate fulfillment through them. I don't want to get caught up in that self-orientated tangle anymore.

The way forward, at present, seems encapsulated in the Tibetan aphorism 'if you can't do something for yourself, then do something for others'. To shift my focus away from egregious self-fulfillment, to what will benefit others. If I paint, to do so as a gift to an individual, Windhorse or Buddhist Centre. I had no problem painting seed syllable designs for Maitrigosha and Jnanasalin, it only foundered once I was doing one for myself. Quite how I move my writing in this direction, I need to give further thought too - perhaps preparing talks to actually give? I mentioned previously, after the National Order Weekend in early November, that I wanted to focus my dharma practice more in this 'other regarding' direction, I just need to settle on how I want to do this. This would appear to be where the path through the wood is currently leading me.

RANT - N.O.M - Anti-Gay Marriage.

I often feel as though I've nothing particularly against Christianity, and I'm reluctant to rub excrement in its face. But seeing adverts like this make it difficult to restrain ones bile.



The whole gay threat to marriage,has never made much sense. This advert, however, substantially shifts the territory of the argument to a 'your lifestyle is impinging on mine' territory. In a curious way this marks a victory for the 'gay community.' The balance has shifted, away from a conventional marriage lifestyle being openly used to oppress gay lifestyles, to one that is more a level playing field. That's what they're complaining about in this advert - we're not getting our own way anymore - we feel the oppression of you. I doubt whether it really is oppression, but more that they're being asked to be tolerant, which they might find a tad difficult. But having to share this field is obviously too close for comfort for some. As a gay man this advert makes uneasy viewing, it seems all too sane,reasonable and normal. Ordinary 'decent' folks will be alarmed! Anyway, comic help is at hand. Theres' a whole raft of parodies on You Tube, taking the Michael(its easy to do)to various degrees of success. This is one of the best.



A giant gay repellent umbrella sounds....colourful?

DIARY 118 - Life's Flummery

Another week without being overcome by extinction - we lead charmed lives it would seem. Sleeping much better, simply by making sure I stick to an approximate bedtime. Though I am aware of a fuzz of tiredness still loitering in the background. I'm taking multi-vitamins as insurance against any gaps, plus a protein powder drink in the morning, to see what difference, if any, these make. Still won't stop me having nightmares though. I had a bad one midweek, in which ghosts raised up my bedsheets, flapped them in my face, and tickled the souls of my feet. It felt so real I had to check with Jnanasalin whether he'd been tickling my feet to wake me up - and no he hadn't! Spooky!!

I've started doing dumbbell squats in an attempt to strengthen the muscles around my hips. Hip discomfort is another thing that has arisen into my consciousness of how my ageing bodily form is responding to the warehouse work I do. So far the 'squats' seem only to aggravate, making the discomfort mildly worse. Well, lets give my body a bit of time to settle and adjust, only a wee bit mind! All the extra time and effort I put into just keeping fit enough to do this job, makes me question how sustainable it'll be in the long term. The job has a mundane simplicity to it, that I can see has potential to be a personally insightful spiritual practice. However, when the physical dukkha becomes too prominent, its hard to feel it doing anything but wearing me out. Any insightful potential then seems a fanciful palliative only.

Broke the back of the Christmas shopping Saturday. Jnanasalin and I nipped into town early, to hit Boots for their 3 for 2 offers, and I came away duly satisfied. They're all wrapped up, cards written, just a couple of small things to buy from work and the mission is accomplished. Next comes the second wave - buying the ingredients for the communities Christmas fare,making puddings, cakes, mince pies and nut loaf. The two of us are also going to make a little hamper of goodies for our respective parents, like we did last year. Plus buying Twinkle 5 (a real Christmas tree).

For decades I eschewed engaging with X's commercialism, sometimes due to the misguided fervour of Buddhist idealism - 'its not my festive season, mum'. But also working in retail for twenty odd years, made the craven, mad, unseemliness of it all,unbearable, it just rubbed road salt into my tits. I found ways to avoid X ; I made sure I went on retreat over the X season; refused to call it X (I think I called it Yuletide); gave money to charity instead of presents. It was all very high minded, worthy, but mean in spirit, and on occasions sanctimonious as hell. You either put in a lot of anger energy trying to avoid X, or a lot of anxious energy engaging with it. Energy will be expended regardless, its either tightly self-regarding, as in the former, or coercive but other regarding,as in the latter. At least 'other regarding' is moving you in a moderately positive direction. As a Buddhist, my view of X has shifted over the years, and I've come to a relationship with it as something I need to have a creative engagement with, however limited.

These days my participation in X is quietly moderate. Some of my earlier unwillingness to engage still lingers on, in that I visit my parents, either before or just after, but never at X. In previous X's I've spent X with Jnanasalin,with friends, or whoever was left in whatever community I was in. I buy modest presents for my close relatives, though I never know quite what to get them, often resorting to the impersonal gift card. I send few X cards, if I only contact people at this time and no other it doesn't feel like a meaningful communication, not improved by sending a Xeroxed letter to them either. I stuff myself to busting with food, and treat X as an opportunity for some generosity and appreciation. The Christian stuff? well, that's still mildly irritating, in the way someone else's music heard muffled through a floorboard is. Though really its flummery of little consequence to me. Christ these days, has a tinsel crown of thorns, a Christmas Tree bauble in the shape of a bleeding heart, and Wizzard playing non-stop from inside his head. Even his virtue has become vacuous and vulgarised.

FEATURE 37 - Muppet - Bohemian Rhapsody

I don't need to say anything about this, just watch it and enjoy.

FEATURE 36 - Lego Matrix

Very cleverly done Lego version of a famous scene from the first Matrix film. Theres more like this if you look it up on You Tube.

FEATURE 35 - Cousins - Vampire Weekend

'Cousins' is a fabulous new song from Vampire Weekend. If you haven't come across them by now, where have you been? I'll give endless hours of ear time to their successful mix of a whole barrel full of musical forms. But for all their many influences and borrowings it remains an unfussy clean, bright sound, backed up with accomplished musicianship. This makes this chirpy combo from the US simply unbeatable. I'm a sucker for simple embellished flourishes on a descending scale, played on chime toned guitars. So positive and upbeat, you can't resist a smile.

They should be made available on the National Health.

DIARY 117 - And the ego's getting fat....

I've generally slept better this week, though I woke up on Thursday morning feeling like I had slept very soundly, but spent the rest of the day with my body completely drained of energy. I can see so many conditioning factors at play here, though its hard to pin down what the decisive one was - storms, wind and rain - literal or subconscious. Practically speaking, deviating from my usual sleep regime (asleep before 10, up before 6) appears never to do me any favours. A series of late nights watching DVD's, going to the cinema, or spent glued to I-Player, can have an accumulative effect that I rarely make a speedy recovery from. Though I don't wish to seem like an inflexible old foggy who can't abide changes to his routines, I need to bare in mind what the practical limitations are. Otherwise I end up like I did this week, leaving work after lunch because I'm so tired I could hardly think straight, let alone pick orders.

Christmas feels like its descending upon me with undue haste and voraciousness. Like the 'exterminating angels' in the Grand Arcade in Cambridge (shown in the picture) its returned to suck out the remaining life blood of all souls and purses. I'm personally as unprepared as ever, and a trifle disinterested when faced with the amount of shopping involved. I can often feel myself mentally bailing out before I've even begun. However, yesterday Jnanasalin's Mum , Sister, Niece & Nephew came down to Cambridge for the day. We had a great time shopping together. I bought Jnanasalin's Christmas present; some Ben Sherman jeans and jumper in Debenham's half price sale. Regular input of fresh textile into Js's wardrobe is always appreciated, or he's not a contented bunny. Bought myself a grey cardigan too for £11, though I've not yet decided what needs to be thrown out in order to make room for it.

I'm rarely around young children much these days. So, spending most of the day in the company of a lively girl, nearly three years old and a ten month old boy, who seemed to do nothing but eat, smile and eat, was enjoyable, fascinating, and had moments of insightfulness. At their age children do demand so much attention, no one else can get a look in. I can't quite believe how there ever could be time for a meditation practice, let alone attaining Enlightenment, within a family context. I think this idea can only be categorised as 'theoretically possible', as even the Buddha had to walk away from family life and child rearing!!!

So, the day was swept along on a bubbly tide of child management, containing, directing, nurturing and instructing. This is not to say this wasn't also delightful and fun, because it was. I certainly enjoyed the day. But, it was a glimpse into a way of life I'm not liable ever to personally encounter on a daily basis, other than vicariously. I can see how child rearing successfully plugs the gap in the meaning and direction to ones life for a couple of decades or so. Women, in particular, I understand, can feel their lives as being empty or over once their children have flown the nest, having put so much of themselves into them. They then spend the next few years of their new found liberation, discovering or rediscovering who they are - sans kids.

Meanwhile, I'm still exploring, somewhat trepidaciously, who I am sans a permanent role or defining responsibility. This 'gap year' in the meaning and direction of my life, might have the flattering external appearance of sunyata with a strong light behind it, but I continue experiencing it as an anxiety filled void I'm perpetually on the verge of filling with any old rhubarb I can get hold of. My ego constantly grasps onto things to make into yet another vehicle for self-inflation. Even spreading the Dharma, or my status in the Order, can become poisoned by it - with what a wonderful speaker, teacher and Kalyana Mitra I might be, given the recognition, opportunity and space, for people to see how truly wonderful I am - etc, etc, ad infinitum. It can get thoroughly exhausting just trying to off set, wrong step or restrain it. But, when stepped down from the over inflated heights of these fantasies, there are ongoing issues concealed beneath them - what direction is my life going in at the moment? - what are my talents (humble as they may be), and how can they best be used? So I can't just ignore these as the pumped up folly of my ego. One needs to feel positively useful, however humbly.

Its an tantalising word 'humble', it definitely has a strong appeal conceptually, but the practicalities of it don't keep an 'egos' boat afloat. Humility is thankfully not easily corrupted by an ego. Though there is false humility done for the sake of good appearance and the spiritual kudos it brings. I'm not interested in such false humility here, but in a humility born from a genuine sense of who I am and my small place in the world. Humility in this case would be an expression of contentment with things just as they are, let alone a 'vision of things as they really are', though these two sources for humility 'relative' and 'absolute' are probably only a nudge apart. Most of the time I put enormous amounts of mental effort into expanding my small place in the world, to make it a bigger island, one more noticeable from space, a unique or significant place in the human archipelago. Dogen constantly uses the phrase of his Master Ru-jing, about the 'dropping away of your body and mind, and the body and mind of the external world' It gives you a sense that its a humble, equanimous space that one should fall into, once you drop your own, and the worlds, ego driven compulsions. Though I am no where near knowing what that is for real, as yet.

FEATURE 34 - Shiny Suds Advert

A campaigning advert that turns out to be a superb parody, makes its point with humour, and also is a tad creepy. Loofah ! Loofah !! Loofah !!!

FILM REVIEW - 2012

Well, what can I say? Some films are well worth the wait, and some are not. Though 2012 is bound to be in the Top 10 grossing movies of 2009, it hardly justifies it. The films premise is based on a Mayan astronomical apocalyptic prophesy, to be triggered by a once in 6,500 year alignment of the planets in 2012. Around this the director Roland Emmerich spins a high octane, but essentially dodgy storyline, so full of holes it would be easy to make more by taking pot shots at it. Emmerich seems to like 'end of the world as we know it' story lines, using them in both his previous movies. 2012, like its predecessor - The day after tomorrow - is built around a Father trying to do the best to save/rescue his family, from the ensuing deluge of special effects. The early car chase through the collapsing airports, roads, buildings and boulevards, propelled you along with a level of CGI that is, undoubtedly, jaw dropping. At times these effects were reminiscent of the huge apocalyptic paintings of the nineteenth century painter John Martin, and indeed there was the inevitable biblical undertow to this movie too. As large chunks of the landscape cleaved off and sank into a volcanic abyss, and the mother of all waves deluges the Himalayas, one couldn't help feeling that Emmerich was a tad overstating the case, just so he could show off, big time.

John Cusack, plays the lead in his usual affable bloke manner, but he's no Dennis Quaid, he isn't a born action man. He's playing a loser, an unsuccessful writer who works as a chauffeur for a Russian billionaire. Separated from his wife and children, they treat him as the waste of space he is. But from this no-hoper, something truly small, but heroic grows. Even the wife's impressed. Her current husband, who has barely passed his pilots license, ends up flying escalating sizes of airplane, until he's lost in the final reel, minced and mangled between some rather large cogs. The wife recovers from this ghastly loss with quite unseemly haste. He was a nerd anyway, it seems to say. But then there was another rather super special effect building up off screen, that you wouldn't want to miss. This is only one of a number of quite tastelessly executed moments. The other honker being when the director of the Louvre is assassinated by a car crash, in the self same tunnel as was Lady Diana!

The film is way way too long at two and a half hours. I lost interest about two thirds of the way through, as I was compelled to watch the umpteenth nail biting cliffhanger. One did become exhausted with the heavy handed nature of Emmerich's never ending series of emotional upheavals. Also, as the apocalypse progressed the storyline began to take on an increasingly ludicrous tone. I remember precisely when I emotionally checked out, and surrendered to my disbelief. It was when the helicopters towing giraffes and elephants under them, heaved themselves into view across the snow swept Tibetan Himalayas. I mean come on, those animals would be either frozen to death, or traumatised for life, if you did that to them. But there were things still more improbable yet to come. 2012 was a bit like being forced to have all night sex,with a person you no longer love, after a while you just can't get it up any more.