DIARY 32 - TAKING A BREAK

David and I have just returned yesterday from a weeks holiday in Torquay. David’s Brother in Law owns a house there, which he kindly allowed us to use for free. The driving down went OK, we stopped overnight 2/3rds of the way, which broke up some of the monotony of motorway driving.

Torquay is styling itself these days as The English Riviera. It certainly possesses some, but not all, of the characteristics of a Mediterranean resort. The impression it leaves is of a re-branding project that is not yet completed. With the accelerating pace of global warming the style of weather might arrive before the architectural ambiance is finished being constructed. Houses, in price and quality, are already escalating in anticipation.

As a town, it still reveals its working class origins through its shopping areas. Even the main streets and malls are bog standard and quite ordinary. Esplanades of 'kiss me quick' shops and award winning chip shops are mixed in with Weatherspoons and Pizza Express. Quite a few converted banks, chapels and merchants offices have become designer wine bars. From which, in the height of summer, the noisy money of men and women will spill out and vomit onto the paving of its rejuvenated streets. Yet there are also quite a large number of quiet retired people living here, with surplus income to spare. We counted at least four Chinese Herbalists/Acupuncture Clinics, which must be something of a record. The divide between the style of the Have’s and the Chav’ Nots is very noticeable.

We largely took a leaf out of Gilbert and Georges book, and ate out for breakfast and lunch whenever possible. The Veggie Breakfasts, these days, are quite a standard mix of fried egg, tomatoes, hash browns, mushrooms and baked beans. They were, like the Cafe Latte’s, variable in quality and execution, depending on the cafe, though we found our favorite, called Fresh, with our first breakfast . Say what you like about the national cafe chains they have raised the quality threshold. So the best coffee in town was still to be found at Cafe Nero or Costa. Torquay, thankfully, has no Starbucks, Hurrah !! There is only so much frothy milk with a vague hint of having once been placed near a coffee bean, that I can stomach.

Abandoning the car, to be parked for the week on one of Torquay’s numerous
severely inclined streets, we took a bus to Brixham. Brixham is still a working port, with one of the largest remaining fishing fleets in the country. Though these days, that can’t amount to much of a claim to fame. It does have its own practical worldly charm, and an appearance of not tolerating any pretentious none sense, its a port and small tourist attraction, OK ! In feel it is very like Whitby, with its high cliffs, tight little bay and steeply rising terraces. House prices to buy or rent are lower, the shopping area is slightly grubby and run down in places. So far, no one is rushing to gentrify or push it up market, its too earthy for that. Though the yachting set park there boats here, they choose to live elsewhere.

We also took a sea cruise to Dartmouth. A very beautiful place, hidden almost secretively in a high sided river estuary. With the Royal Naval College looking down and the Royal Yacht Club moorings at Kingsmear, we were in a different social climate altogether. Expensive shops, cafes and well maintained old properties, some selling for prices in the millions, indicate that the heart and wallet of The English Riviera is really cloistered here. It feels so conservative, safe and protected from Gerry U Boats and the liberal ravages of urban Britain. A place at peace with itself, harmonious, with a degree of homogeneous integrity, based as it is on the triple buttresses of yachting, class and money. We left having really enjoyed our visit, but knowing living there would be an entirely different experience. Still, it felt somehow comforting to know a place like Dartmouth still exists.

REVIEW - The Propeller Theatre Company

This week I went to see the Propeller Theatre Company twice, once with David to see Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, and then with Paco to see Twelfth Night. Both were excellent, but the latter was a quite awesome experience. Very physical in style, blending wit and poignancy with great ease. All the cast play musical instruments and at times become part of the stage set, seemlessly blending action, song and baudy humour into an energetic and life enhancing performance. If they are coming your way, please go and see them. You' d be a hard hearted person if you were not rewarded with two hours of real delight and pleasure.

REPORT FROM THE FRONTIERS OF DEATH

No1 - The ups and downs of working in Cremation Grounds.

We talk sometimes within Buddhism, of ‘going into the cremation ground’. In India this was, and still is, a spiritual practice; to literally go to the cremation area surrounding your town or city, and contemplate the stages of decomposition of a corpse. In 21^st Century Europe, cremation, along with most aspects concomitant with death, are removed from daily view or access. Working in the Crematorium, obviously, brings me into regular contact with the bereaved, with death and the process of cremation. Since December, when I went full-time, I’ve found it has demanded more of me emotionally than I ever anticipated, disturbing the murkier sediments of my dream life, and unsettling my usually buoyant and stable equilibrium.

In India, you would go to the cremation ground only for brief intense periods. It required the development of some degree of mature spiritual practice and warm, positive regard towards ones self. You’d also be able to walk away from it should it become too much to handle, or simply back off in order to gain renewed perspective or reflect on your experience in less intense surroundings. Now, what I do is a job, I’m paid to do this, this is, after all, a slightly different set up. Nonetheless, I do try to make some kind of practice from it. I attempt to remain aware as my moods change, hour-by-hour, minute- by- minute, as they shift from ease - to tenseness, from noticing the nature and form of my distress - to feeling myself emotionally drifting into alienated autopilot. I cannot walk away from a cremation oven and the body burning within, just because the blackening skull and eye sockets of the deceased stare forbiddingly back at me, every time I turn the peephole to check on a cremations progress. I have to stay with it, and with everything that results from it. Lately, there has been some disharmony between the Staff and our Managers, and I have, in addition, been struggling with my own irascible internal conflicts. There have been times when the job has felt like it really was too much, that I was on the very edge of what I could cope with physically, mentally and spiritually.

I know, as a Buddhist, this job creates slightly different difficulties and emotional challenges, than it would have for my fellow Chapel Attendants/Cremation Technicians. This week I’ve been reflecting that working in a ‘cremation ground’ does require some degree of spiritual perspective and resilience, and you have to feel free to step away from it. If I struggle, then how do my fellow workers, who don’t have this perspective cope? Well lets just say each has developed his or her own way of handling it, that in some way deadens or damps down the emotional impact.

It has become clear this week that, as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I am only just keeping ahead in negotiating the turbulence emerging from my psyche. How much longer before I get thrown overboard? I don’t believe physically, mentally or spiritually it would be beneficial to commit to being here in the longer term. My body and mind are already echoing my unconscious rebellion and desire for spiritual sustenance.

DIARY 31 - CAMBRIDGE TALK

David and I were in the centre of Cambridge, walking past Kings Parade, heading in the general direction of Heffers. Hoping, above all, to have a quiet coffee in Cafe Nero, undisturbed by the rabble and squeals of undisciplined babies. On our way we passed a huddle of retired Cambridge types, casually attired, talking loudly and animatedly,in over cultivated vowel sounds. One braying laugh was broken by a sentence ' You know Charles - small man. grey hair, into semiotics'. Only in Cambridge could you hear such talk.

DIARY 30 - PINS & NEEDLED

So, this was the week of my first Acupuncture session. After a series of questions about the qualities of my ailments and frequent measuring of the various pulse points in my wrist, he finally got around to puncturing me with a few pesky little needles, first into the flesh of my back, and then into my feet. Apparently, I have an imbalance in my system, the left hand pulse not being in balance with the right. As most of my complaints occupy the left side of my body, this does have a certain sense of being true. He also said that this, and a tendency in my body to overheat, were symptoms indicative of an internal conflict. I thought 'tell me about it', since teenage I’ve felt internally at war or in a constant turmoil, restless and frustrated with myself and reality. I've been feeling particularly tense recently. It's like not really wanting to hold a hot potato, metaphorically being tossed and passed from hand to hand, hoping it will become cool. So, there is a lot of heated internal debate going on in this area. My Buddhist practice has barely scratched the surface of it. I've learnt how to contain it, remain aware, but still not really grasp what the central issue is. The Acupuncturist asked provocatively ‘did I think I was risk averse’, to which I sheepishly replied ‘perhaps’, which was really a feeble face saving way of saying ‘yes, I am, and I'm not proud of it’.

Afterwards my back felt easier. That night I slept fitfully with restless legs, twitchy unsettling pulses of energy throbbed from my back and tingling in my left foot. The next morning I felt a bit weary, and the day at work was a struggle. By the evening I was so tired I went to bed early at 8.45pm and slept through till 6.30am. My lower back usually feels solid and rigid, it now feels looser, but tender like a fresh bruise. I still have a painful left shoulder and arm. He said for this first session he'd focus on generally re-balancing energies before going into such specific areas of discomfort.

Yesterday, having slept so well that I could launch a boat, my current predicament became all too unbearable tangible. How much I’ve tolerated, if not hated, what I’m doing at the Crematorium. How I’ve downgraded my own desires, and conformed to practical financial necessity, once again. If I am afraid to take a risk, what sort of a risk would that be! Painful life patterns,jagged and deeply etched, were prominently sticking out of a very turbulent ocean. How I move out of this into something that has more a taste of freedom I am, as ever, at a loss to know.


Last weekend, I had a delightful day out with my good friend Eugen. He’s soon to return to Germany to live in Berlin, I’ll miss him greatly, mostly for his sense of fun and the penetrating nature of conversations we invariable have. He is quite delightful and stimulating company. I drove both of us over to the Suffolk Coast,we visited Shingle Street, a beautifully bleak shingle beach, where I’ve previously done solitary retreats. Eugen and I have been there before, amazed, as ever, at such immense amounts of shingle piled in a long heap, it is quite astonishing to see.


I visited Shingle Street quite frequently when I lived in Ipswich, so I know it rarely remains as it was when I last visited. The force of storms and tides constantly adjusts its form and character, the size and shape of its banks and gullies. It's always familar but never the same, a bit like the nature of one's Self.


The day was gloriously sunny and backed by the clearest of blue skies,the wind strong and forceful. We later moved up the coast to Aldeburgh, and sheltered in the lee of a stranded boat and sun bathed for a while. Then we had two attempts at buying chips, joining the huge Sunday queues of tourists. Eventually we did get some and ate them on the beach, whilst gulls circled ravenously overhead. I suggest someone should do a case study on the cholesterol levels of seagulls living on the Suffolk Heritage Coastline. I think they might be quite high!!


Musically, triggered by the Grinderman CD, I’m enjoying re-listening to ‘The Birthday Party’ again. Punchy, with incredible feral energy they were, intriguingly, very tightly arranged, whilt also appearing so anarchic and vicious. Its like being in the same room as a frightened schizoid cat, inhuman screams and the sense of mauled flesh being ripped to shreads, YEH! VIVID!!!

SCREEN SHOT - 300

I went to see the film ‘300’ with my friend Andy, who has recently moved to Cambridge from Bristol. After reading a few reviews, and seeing the trailer, I was eagerly expecting it to be camp, which it was, in all its full gory glory. It was also quite a good heroic romp, with a well-written script and, how can I put this, the best in over the top costume design. Spartans dressed in leather underpants, huge red cloaks resting on broad well oiled shoulders, each with a six pack to die for. I’m sure Xerxes was never, in reality, quite so heavily made up with fake tan and eye liner,or bedecked in so much ‘bling’ that he looked like a deranged curtain rail. But then historical fact and this film parted company a long long time ago. And,yes, its true, some of the Spartans were played by actors hand picked from the- In Your Face Brian Blessed School of Acting, but that did actually suit the style of the movie. Having seen ‘Sin City’ made by the same team, I’d also expected the film to be nauseatingly gory and without any moral compass. The film was, however, so stylised you hardly felt the pain as a spear made a awfully big tear in the pneumatic torso of yet another Spartan, or one more leg was casually lopped off a Persian minion in mid air.

Andy, quite rightly pointed out the moral hypocrisy of the Spartan’s position, supposedly fighting for a decent clean living, slave free, republican democracy. Lets just say they bypassed the United Nations and went to indiscriminate slaughter without saying please. It did not go unnoticed that this film did appear to become a historical justification for the current actions of the US and its cohorts in Iraq. One more manufactured international incident and they’ll actually be in Persia by Christmas.

DIARY 29 - EYE TO EYE

Last weekend I went to the optician, the blood shot and sleep-deprived eyes needed a check up. In their fiftieth year they’re not doing too bad, so the optician said, ‘they’re holding up pretty well- considering your age’. But then that’s me all over ‘holding up pretty well – considering my age’. I’m not blind without my glasses, more slightly fuzzy around the edges, but they do help with reading. Since my teenage years it is my left eye which has been the weaker, ‘lazy eye’. Which is just shorthand for - you’ve got one eye that bloody well can’t keep up in the short race of life. I was quite shocked during the test how poor it actually was. There was one test where the optician alternated from one lens to another, whilst I’m looking at a circle composed of dots. She wanted to know which looked clearer, this one ,or this one. With my right eye the differences were distinct, ‘first one clearer’, ‘the second’. With my left eye it was ‘the same’ ‘hardly any difference’, ‘the same’, ‘the same’, ‘the same’…..

There has been some small incremental improvement in my shoulder pain, but then that hasn’t helped the sleeping. I’m still switching from the left side, to on my back, to the left side and barely staying a minute on my right side before twinging resumes and I’m awake. Lack of good quality sleep is finally made physically manifest in my tired old left eye, which has started weeping and flickering in my peripheral vision. It’s become a trifle annoying. Wearing my glasses helps, but otherwise there are no drops or ointment to ease its weary winking. So it joins the ever-growing ranks of minor irritants that I begrudgingly accommodate. I wont list them all, lest you think me a stereotypical gay man, completely self-obsessed with his own bodily frailty, and the special sensitivity of his physical aches and pains. How much is just the on going bodily deterioration of a human body, and how much I can do something about, is the subject of great internal debate at the moment. Though it seems to me most of these physical discomforts arise out of mental stress, which you would assume I could do something to alleviate. It’s just a question of what?

Work, with the lack of good sleep on top of the back, shoulder, arm pain, has been just about endurable. I’ve noticed that I’m not really springing out of bed, ready to meet the day in quite the way I used to. It feels like I’m dragging myself along behind me like a dead weight. There have been days, when if I heard yet another half hearted eulogy, encompassed within a misguided (though well meant) theology, spilling from the mouth of a Christian minister, I would gladly have screamed out ‘don’t believe a word of it, he doesn’t, he’s just mindlessly reciting it out of a book’, right in the middle of a service. There has got to be some change in the approach to my work soon, or I really must change my work. I can feel it, bit by bit, dragging my spirits down. But that always brings me back to what to do about it. At the moment I’m a bit at a loss what to do about it. Twas ever the same. I’m finding myself wondering whether leaving Buddhist Right Livelihood a year ago, was really the right decision.

CD Review No 2 - Grinderman

The Birthday Party's - The Friend Catcher, began with a despairing wail of a lead guitar( courtesy of Roland Howard) , screaming angst, fear and horrific loathing. Into the musical sphere of the early eighties stepped one of Nick Cave's first lyrical monsters. Now, we have a new configuration Grinderman, a side project, so we are informed, the Bad Seeds still a force to be reckoned with, but resting. Cave's accomplices on this CD are the threesome he toured with last year; Martin P Casey, Jim Sclavunos and Warren Ellis. I mention the track 'The Friend Catcher' because with 'No Pussy Blues' on this CD, we have a lead guitar sound that would strip paintwork, this time coming from Mr Cave himself. This is, however, not just a return to form, he's never really lost it in my book, just grown in musical/lyrical strength and sophistication. So whilst his early work was primal,intense and overflowing with frustrated emotion, his recent work lyrically insinuates its way in, subtly unsettling our expectations. The focus on this CD seems to be sexual frustration - No Pussy Blues, Go tell the women and Depth Charge Ethel being fueled by foxed desires.



The new band flexes some quite substantial muscle here. Drawing on late Sixties R'n'B ( Cream anyone !) with a dose of The Stooges thrown in for added sexual thrust, best exemplified by 'Depth Charge Ethel'. On the opener 'Get it On' Cave improvises an opening intro, with strong echoes of his earlier deranged evangelical persona, the words evoking a strange feeling of being a perverted homage to Marc Bolan. The sound of Grinderman is at times painfully raw and impulsive, whilst poetically Cave provokes and teases. Sometimes, on 'Go tell the women' he treads on very un-PC territory - ' all we wanted was a little consensual rape in the afternoon, and a little more in the evening', but then Cave's lyric content has frequently been taken as being his personal opinion, when it really is just a character's stance, in this case describing the burnt out, redundant empire of contemporary manhood - 'Go tell the women that we're leaving' he says laconically. It's just one example of his dry, if not wry, sense of humour that permeates this album. It also contains classic Cave songs - ' Electric Alice' particularly burns slowly, a melancholic violin loop plays in the background, whilst he sings very simply and with characteristic regretful longing. It could easily join the company of his best work with the Bad Seeds. This album is a vital addition to a catalogue already rich in depth and breadth.

DIARY 28 - THINKING BACK AS A WAY OF MOVING FORWARD

Another rough old week on the bodily discomfort front, though it appears to be gradually diminishing, but not yet gone. The last couple of nights I’ve taken a hot shower before retiring, this appears to ease it sufficiently so I sleep most of the night before my right shoulder and arm resume their muscular whingeing.

I’ve felt too mentally exhausted most of this week to creatively engage with writing. So, much vegetating, reading and feeling sorry for my lot has been indulged in. But seriously, this persistent pain and discomfort over the last two weeks has been the worst I remember, in a long time. The psycho / physical origins of these symptoms of bodily revolt, are pretty clear to me. As ever, what I can do to ease or resolve them continues to perplex me. Somehow my sub conscious has a message to communicate to me via the crudest of body language - ‘I don’t like this, stop doing this, I’m going to become increasingly a pain until you do something about this’ – all without it being in the least bit clear what ‘this’ is. I’ve changed my style of work quite a few times, had Body Therapy/Counselling, seen an Osteopath; I’m soon going to start sessions of Acupuncture. I’ve emptied my life out like the contents of a handbag, thrown out the crumbs, sweet wrappers and detritus, yet here I am with the same symptoms still intact, if not thriving and developing more quirky ways to nag and bear down on me physically, and eventually mentally fatigue me too.

I rented Tarkovsky’s ‘Nostalgia’ from the Mr Stacey’s Video Emporium, Cambridge’s independent DVD rental shop. I’d really wanted to see ‘The Stalker’ again, but that was out. All the same I had fond memories of ‘Nostalgia.’ On this showing it’s a rougher, and slightly less engaging poetic odyssey than I remember. Prolonged absence and the deceitful cheek of memory, painted a richer picture. It is still good none the less. Filmed in Italy, it is consumed by a sense of longing for something lost or abandoned. A Russian poet is exploring Italy with a stunning woman, who looks as though she’s just stepped out of a Renaissance painting. He discovers all around him echoes ( sepia tinged ) of a life he’s left behind. Quite what happened with his family back in Russia and why he has come here, is never explained. His female accomplice, is in love with him, but frustrated by his melancholic self-preoccupation and reluctance to take ‘their relationship’ further. She eventually leaves, unable to take being second fiddle any more. Not before they’ve met the local ‘madman’, who years before locked himself and his family up in a house for years, so they wouldn’t leave him. The poet finds a personal resonance, and, with the woman gone, spends quite some time with him. The madman also leaves, his parting request, is for the poet to complete a bizzare task for him; to walk across a Spa pool, fed by hot underground streams, holding a lit candle without letting it be blown out. The final minutes of the movie document, in real time, the three attempts he makes to do this task. The third succeeding, but the poet’s heart seizures as he reaches the other side and he dies. It is a brilliant visual metaphor for the futility of nostalgia, all that endless going over and over events, trying to regain or complete an unfinished task before one dies. Hmm, some pause for thought required.

DIARY 27 - A ROUGH WEEK IN SAMSARA

After a full week back at work I feel physically and mentally as if I’d never been away. Last weekend my back got worse, my shoulder stiffened and my right arm began to ache. The cold March winds have been blowing across the entrance to the East Chapel. My shoulders and arm have been at times in agony. As the week has progressed I’ve found myself getting less good quality sleep and more ragged and irritable mentally. Friday was a particularly taxing day, short staffed and too much booked in for the day. I have found myself with less equanimity and good humour than usual.

The nightmares returned the other night. It all started in a style of dream I used to have quite frequently; I’m trying to get back to somewhere in order to find or collect something. In this dream I was trying to locate an old great coat, like the one I inherited from my Grandad after he died. In my younger days I used to be fond of that style of coat, complete with trilby, bow tie and sleeveless jumper. But then, just as I’m nearing the place where I know I can find it, a disturbed man in his thirties, with black greasy unkempt hair, appears. I try to escape him by hiding in a small closet room. He dashes through the wall like a ghost would, stands before me and exits madly through another wall and re-enters behind me. At this point I’m screaming, and my lovely boyfriend David wakes me.

Not felt like doing much writing this week. Still reflecting on the ‘why the Self should be such a problem’ issue. I’ve come up with quite a good metaphor to use, but its not turning out on the page in a useful way yet. I’ve decided to read Sangharakshita and see if I can get clearer with a little help from the master. I’m reading ‘What is the Dharma’- always a favourite of mine, accessible, well written and avoids Sangharakshita’s tendency to use the extensive descriptive style of a Victorian Anthropologist. Though I haven’t got to it yet, I’m looking forward to reading about the Three Lakshanas in the next chapter. One does get the sense of his unshakeable faith and confidence in the Dharma, it fair leaps off the page at you. As far as a beginner goes, I am noticing that he takes something’s for granted, primarily that such a thing as Enlightenment exists and that we’d all therefore want a slice of it please.

Two Eno CD’s turned up this week, courtesy of Caimen USA, both are in his ambient style. One called ‘Thursday Afternoon’ from 1984 and ‘Neroli’ from 1993. The latter I think is his most daringly minimal , using very simple tones and chord progressions, yet it still has a very warm almost Arabic feel to it. Taken at a gentle pace, like being softly wafted by a huge feather fan in the sweltering midday heat. Like all of these types of pieces it is simultaneously interesting and undemanding, it depends on your mood. If you’re looking for a gross musical stimulant, well then these pieces will not be for you. They each take about an hour, so they aren’t your average three-minute pop song. Out on the radical fringes Eno is exploring the possibilities of music to create an atmosphere with the sparsest of elements, but also be functional and disposable too. Most popular music is both functional and disposable by accident, but rarely by design. With his ambient work, such as ‘Music for Airports’ and ‘Neroli’ Eno is extending not only how one makes music but also what it’s made for. Positioned as it is somewhere between the ethos of ‘lounge muzack’ and ‘New Age’ meditation music, it isn’t to everyone’s taste. David for one doesn’t like Eno.

DIARY 26 - THAT'S ALL YOU EVER THINK ABOUT SELF SELF SELF!

After a week and a half of being at home writing, I do feel that some progress has been made. The piece that I’m continuing to work on ‘Binding one’s Self without a rope’ has expanded from 3,500 to 10,500 words. I’ve not yet reached the end yet. It is by far the longest piece I’ve written, Dharmic or otherwise. I’ve taken a look at ‘binding’ and have explored some aspects of ‘the Self’ its pros and cons. Having just asked myself two questions – why should ‘the Self’ be considered a problem , particularly in Buddhism? & why binding or going beyond ‘the Self’ should be such a good thing? – I am now a little stumped how to progress in an approach to answering them. I suspect the former needs some form of answer before the latter can be tackled. Christian religions conceive ‘the Self’ as being in need of transcending in a rather oblique way – encouraging selfless altruistic actions or self-denial - surrounded as they are by concepts of sin and redemption. Eastern religions, and Buddhism specifically, appears to have a more highly developed critique and practices for transcending it; studying the causal root by examining the effect of its branches. My guess is that the way Buddhism considers ‘desire’ is the nub of the issue. Well I shall see where that leads me.

I’m enjoying re-engaging with Brian Eno’s music at the moment. As I write this I’m listening to ‘Nerve Net’, which is by turns jazzy, arty and funky. Sophisticated laid back music tracks often interrupted by blistering guitar, scatological explosions of sound, from long-time Eno collaborator Robert Fripp. It would appear to be Eno’s attempt to pick up on and explore in his own idiosyncratic manner, a few early nineties musical trends. Not necessarily an innovative album, but interesting none the less.

I’ve just begun reading Alan Bennett’s – Untold Stories, which I must say I am, so far, very impressed with. Part Autobiography and part Diary extracts, it is often profoundly moving and funny within the space of a sentence. Frank, without being gratuitous or blunt, he writes about himself and his parents honestly, with a touching sense of authenticity to the often difficult, turbulently mixed up responses we have towards both. He writes about his own irritation with his Mother’s behaviour, during her prolonged periods of depression. Doing so with all the emotions present, love, fondness, exasperation, guilt and that uncomfortable feeling of wanting to run away and hide, to put distance between you and your loved ones suffering. I understand he wrote some of it when still suffering from Cancer, not expecting it would be published till after his own demise. This does to some extent account for why it feels such a very real and curiously life enhancing book.

I met up with Nandaketu this week, who I was ordained with in 2000. We haven’t seen each other for a couple of years, during which time both of us have taken a wide orbit regarding our relationship with the Buddhist Order we joined. Though there has been a gap, it didn’t feel like there had been as regards our friendship. Picking up where we left off, and catching up on the details.

Returned to work on Thursday, drove my car for the first time in over a week. I don’t really enjoy or feel comfortable driving. I approach it as a necessity, that I’d much rather not have to accept. Work itself was fine but tiring. After only two days I was eager for the weekend to arrive. Today my back and shoulders are aching badly. I don’t have my first Acupuncture appointment until the 4^th of April, so I’ll have to grin and bear it till then.

EXHIBITION REVIEW - Luminous by Brian Eno

Until this installation, I’d only seen one other installation of Eno’s, in London sometime in the 1980’s. Then, he was exploring the capacity of video to produce colour, texture and a slow shifting sense of form, in conjunction with one of his ambient pieces of music. This current exhibition continues his fondness for creating self–generating systems. Here he’s created a catalogue of images, textures and colours that a computer randomises, changing the combinations, overlapping and slowly transforming. Apparently this system can generate 77 million paintings. The pace is gentle, the mix of colours - rich and startling. So beautiful sometimes, you achingly regret there passing. This is accompanied by an Eno soundscape, which sounds as if it too was generated from a number of set elements. The over all effect was meditative or hypnotic, a restful sense of calm in the midst of a frenetic department store. You watch your mind holding onto one moment and having to let it go, as it gradually evaporates and reconfigures itself.

Eno has rarely been interested in making emotiveness a primary route for his self-expression. His work visually or audible experiments with forms, processes by which things can be made, uses random elements and interventions to subvert any fixedness that might be creeping into the creative evolution of a piece. If anything the less present he is in a work the better. He is a man of ideas, and tackles making music or art in an idiosyncratic but fascinating manner. The end product might be cool in tone, or grating and unnerving, sometimes a bit edgy. Whatever the effect it is rarely preconceived or intended, that’s just the way the ideas led it.

Musically, at least, he’s been hugely influential, though he’s never been trendy or cutting edge enough to gain a place in the higher echelons of the rock hierarchy. He’s always been too quirky and unpredictable to be fashionable. He’s appeared to be happy twiddling in the background behind Bowie, Talking Heads or U2, and letting them take the major credit. Generally music has caught up with his earlier enthusiasms and innovations, so his more recent output has refined his processes and, as a result become more predictable.

His visual installation work has been rarely seen in this country. It extends his preoccupations with form and process into new areas, using up to date technological advances in image making. Don’t expect to be bowled over; it’s too subtle for that. Like his ambient music, you can either notice it or not, engage or disengage, like it or hate it. To give up the centre stage in this way, to a randomised computer process however pre-configured, requires the letting go creative of authority and the demands of an ego to be in total control of the result. I find this approach quite inspiring from a spiritual, as well as a creative point of view.

DIARY 25 - WRITING AS A PROCESS OF CLARIFICATION

I’ve been on holiday for the last week and enjoying a bit of time to myself. Mostly I’ve been writing. David’s feedback on my ‘Binding one’s self without a rope’ article was that it was too short, raising interesting ideas and but not always fully exploring them. So I’ve focused on that, so far I’ve doubled the articles size. I’ve become more aware lately that my writing process has very similar characteristics to my painting process; slow in evolution, methodical, detailed and thorough in its execution. Where it differs for me is that I enjoy the evolving nature of a writing project, though occasionally I do lose confidence out of, an unfounded, fear that I might be rambling incoherently. Painting, however, I sometimes find tedious in the extreme in just getting the level of detail and precision I want. Though I may not always know what I need to do next, I am happy to let the process take as long as it needs. This confidence has grown over years of experience, learning to trust my own working style. My writing process has not yet reached this level of trust and confidence, though it is developing. Writing longer articles, and steering the flow of thoughts and narrative effectively, is still a concern.

Last Saturday I went to London with my friend Paco. He wanted me to introduce him to Modern Art. So we went to the Tate Modern. We covered only a quarter of the collection, in an exhibition called Surrealism and beyond. After visiting the Tate so often when I lived in London, the works on show were very familiar. At Art College I was particular fond of Dada, and by association Surrealism, so I was able to talk reasonable coherently about it. Having to talk about, and to some extent explain the artistic processes at work, renewed my interest in the paintings and sculptures. Modern Art is incoherent if you don’t understand the influences, ideas and processes involved; the social, political and psychological zeitgeist that fed into the artistic trends of the time. For the first time, how it came to be made, became more important than the end result. For the Surrealists letting unconscious, random, chance elements surface, removed the presence of rational logic from the final result. After viewing this we were a bit pooped mentally. The Gilbert & George retrospective, which has just opened, looked tantalising from the foyer, but alas not this time. I did come away with two large postcards of their colourful photomontages called ‘Life’ and ‘Death’, which now adorn my shrine. After this we went to Oxford Street, trying to find somewhere decent to eat - not easy I can tell you. Then went to Selfridges to see an installation by Brian Eno ( review to be posted )

Since my encounter with Ato Rinpoche, I seem generally to be in a more positive frame of mind. I’ve meditated every day since. I’m beginning to believe that my lack of enthusiasm for meditation in recent years, results from lack of inspiration. Ato Rinpoche was just a very inspiring human being. I was quite surprised when my friend Saddharaja said Ato Rinpoche was his first Buddhist Teacher when he first came to Cambridge. He told me quite a bit more about him too. What a small world.

This last week, I’ve been unwinding from a highly stressed physical state, most of my bodily tensions have lessened. I went swimming for the first time in months, which was hard, but benefited my sense of well-being. I know doing this more regularly would help me cope better with the stress at work. I just need to get better organised. I think that is another thing that has changed. I am now up for getting things sorted. I’m going to see an acupuncturist next week, to see if he can help with my back, hip, foot and shoulder pain. I’m not falling apart, honest just creaking a little.

DIARY 24 - EXIT PURSUED BY DOG

In recent weeks I appear to be having nightmares with greater frequency. David has had to avoid being kicked or elbowed. I know that they are dark chase dreams. In the last one I was being pursued by a black rabid dog. Without wanting to over analyse this, it feels as if I'm being menaced by my mortality. It has certainly been on my mind a lot lately. My work obviously feeds into this in a big way. Please don't talk to me about Cremation Grounds, I work in one.

This week there were two services for men in their early fifties who had died suddenly. One was diagnosed with a brain tumour in November and died in January. The other was visiting a friend, complained about not feeling well, drifted off and died before their eyes. As the big 50 is looming ( 4 months away ) this is sort of rubbing it in a bit.

On Friday there was a Buddhist Service, the first one I've been on. It was for an English man, led by a Tibetan called Ato Rinpoche. The moment I saw him I was struck by his demeanour, quiet, gracious and considerate. He was so concerned that any Christian minister present didn't feel left out. He was prepared to give them time in the service. Something ,I can assure you, most Christian ministers would not countenance, or be so generous. At the end of what was a very simple service composed of periods of silence, an address and chanting in Tibetan ( Refuges & Precepts, Amitabha Mantra & Rejoicing in Merits ), I was left feeling grounded and unperturbed. The heavy internal debate and conflict of recent weeks appeared lifted. Before the service he just smiled at me, and said 'what an important service I was giving to people'. This simple statement feels to have more meaning than the words alone convey. Perhaps consciously cultivating an attitude of service is a way forward from the 'wasted life' syndrome, that appears to be cyclical and unresolvable on its own terms.

My favorite music, what I'm listening to and hearing in my head constantly, are tracks from CD's by 'The Gotan Project'. A recent discovery for me, but they've been around for six years or so. The music is an inventive mix of Tango, Dub and Electro, whirling around in brilliant swirls and sweeps of fusion. If you haven't heard of them I heartily recommend the CD's ' La Revancha del Tango' and 'Lunatico'.