Diary of an unborn writer #20

I've been trying to get away from it but there's no denying: I'm not much good at this...exisiting.

It makes sense to me. And I have for it the highest hopes you could wish for a thing but in its engagement I'm rather worn down. Conversations and positions I'm required to take, each day wearing down. I enjoy the experiences and pass through many of them with a happy smile and care for those that pass before me but there's an overhanging play that gets too much sometimes.

I've spent the day in bed. A few months ago I was in bed a little more morose. More peaceful now but tired just the same. I've earned this rest and listening to Bon Iver, emailing friends and meditating has made this close to the perfect day.

I have not stepped outside the door once.

Diary of an unborn writer #19

Penguin steps.

The activity meter our company uses to help get people fitter is calibrated to a certain gait. You need to walk a certain way in our society and it appears the pengui steps of the obese are too much for the activity meter to calculate.

It overestimates their energy usage by 23%.

~o~

A dream last night where Nick Cave had my fingers trapped in a window and was screaming throught the glass: "Politcian! Politician!" before hauling down the window and raking my bruised and battered fingers through his ever-widening mouth.

I never did understand Australians

~o~

Women are the joy and downfall of an otherwise spotless sobriety. It's got to the stage where I cannot walk through the underground tunnels of Amsterdam central station - flanked by avalanches of flower shops and food sellers - without falling in love three or four times.

I love them in their highest Goddess-bloomed unfathomability that drives us men crazy. I say this sincerely though not to disgiuse the fact that I am a lusty mortal. If I could fuck seven times a day I would, with several different women, social graces and emotional capacity notwithstanding.

But th bruises creep in somehow and this small male brain finds it difficult to be wise and though it repeats on him incessantly, it is a blindspot in his compassion.

I like to believe that the most elegant way for a man to live for man is to have a lover and several mistresses.

It's a Dionysan dream though I've yet to meet a man that could sustain this pattern and remain sincere toeach treasured damsel.

I speak from the heights of respect and the depths of awarenes that man has failed his lady. I m of the persuasion that this incapacity is what keeps us from living in harmony with Mother Earth.

The more to be blessed, the better to learn, I'll serve my ladies one by one.

Diary of an unborn writer #18

"La Scarpetta", Herenstraat.

Heady, rich, red wine fumes cloaking and dispersing thoughts of the week. I've ordered generous hunks of Gran Padano cheese, rustling on a bed of rocket and with the wine, consumed with bread and olive oil.

I'm alone and it's filling up for Thursday.

We continue. Somehow we continue when the pointlessness of an unrejoindered cup sinks heavy on the belly on the walk home. But now the atmosphere is lifting and heady sweet.

There's a half-black President over the sea and the world falls kneeward at his pristinely stated morals, suits and answers to questions nobody thought to ask.

The brain, when so bombarded with positivity, reduces in critical capacity. The man's said nothing and yet won over the free world on vacuity.

Though it's not vacuous - he's drawn around him the stinkiest heavyweights of Washington and above. Campaigns financed by bankers whose loans, otherwise faltering, require political interest. The people will find him lost but stay amused enough to remember him as a Kennedy (and not the Bobby kind). Obama's connections are just as vile and his reign will be one of ever tightening control in the name of expedience and necessity.

His chief of staff has written books espousing the near doubling of specal forces troops worldwide.

His Chief Economic advisor advocated carbon trading on the basis that Africa could dirty its air at our expense because life expectancy there makes it unlikely lung cancer would develop in time to choke dark lungs. (And therein the narrowness and failure of economic thinking - the catastrophe of mechanical mind).

So we're mightily uplifted in La Scarpetta as banks and job losses go the way of Vesuvius and we realise we never cared about money anyway - just been pretending, see?

As ever it's the little man that eats the dirt and Aficans coughing from their factories are told that even they won't pay their wages any more.

"Yes WE CAN!" keep up this pretense and smile that it's getting better, global warming hearts and extended balances raining misery on poor too defenceless against bribes they've heretofore been offered and now cruelly snatched away.

The Tao proclaims its out of balance when speculators and bankers hold sway. But OK everything's fine, go back to your laundry and back of cereal packets - the Operation will tell you what to do should anything untoward happen. You can trust them on that.

We're mightily happy as lies and narrowness keep us in the dark about which way to go. Good news is the future's become so dusky we're getting kicks while we can.

"La Scarpetta" refuses me a fifth glass of wine. They need the table for a demure couple in to settle for a happy time.

Amsterdam is again cold as steps ring on flagstones and lamps hover moth-like in mist. This is a museum on week nights. The west of town when the centre, debauched and far away, is hardly heard. Out west we keep sedantry society - engaged with pleasantries - and the wine swirls.

20 minutes and I'm home.

Diary of an unborn writer #17

High hopes and bight prospects characterise the start of this weekend.

I'm beginning to learn calligraphy - carving Sanskrit letters with impossible meanings in ink with a brush.

Take, for example, DHIH, positioned on the right (with kind thanks to Jayarava http://visiblemantra.org/).

• Dhih is the seed syllable of Prajnaparamita - believed to hold all the wisdomto which that teaching points within its three line and two dot form.
• Prajnaparamita means 'Perfection of Wisdom' - Buddha's most perfect lesson
• It also means 'Mother of the Buddhas' - the Wisdom that gives rise to each and every Buddha.
• The teachings of Prajnaparamita were so precious that Buddha waited 400 years before revealing them. On his death he gave them to the Nagas - mythical snakes that kept the teachings deep within the Earth.
• In order to delver them Gautama Buddha climbed to the top of Vulture Peak and shone forth from the soles of his diamond feet sixty four billion trillion rays that permeated every being in the billion world universe - East and North, South and West, Zenith and Nadir - instantly enlightening the soul of every being in every dimension at all times.
• It was only then that he began to speak
• The wisdom of Prajnapramita is described in terms such as: Ungraspable, unknowable, unfathomable, sheer presence, pure suchness.
• It's an infinite swirl of transcendental consciousness in 100, 000 verses
• It has also been condensed into 24 verses and the shortest version simply consisting of the letter 'A'.
• The sutras are a torrent unpicking every thought; indeed showing each and every thought to be glaring transparency. The reader is left in awe and disabled - thrilled at the cosmos and its insubstantiality, even Love stripped bare of its fascinating pedestal.

And we a re permitted to conceive of all this condensed into a single monosyllabic sound:

'Dhih'

Prajnaparamita is the wisdom about which nothing can be acurately expressed. So here I'll close.

Diary of an unborn writer #16

I think I might have made my first proposal of marriage.

Not to Evergreen - we broke things off three weeks ago. My heart started crying for the old flame and it wasn't cool to carry on. She was a little upset.

Jewel - the old flame got a call:

"Sky?"

"Yes"

"I'm working out how to react"

It had been seven months and she was cold. The break had torn something in her, still to be fixed.

"I'd rather we didn't speak"

But the details slip. We're both "good" both tough but on an even slide just now. Regular. All conversatorial and convenient and then on saying goodbye she let's slip an old nickname - a chink of light to drive a train through.

The bext day I email and describe a precious future including children and happy times.

A week later we speak (I've sent her poems throughout, she called to find out what I meant).

Amazing - it's like old times. Honest and open and alking practically about a way back. She needs time though - needs to know I won't a runner this time.

I won't. I know.

She'll be in Amsterdam by Spring.

~o~

The work train's stopped for the week and I'm on my way home. I do not like to work but I've found it makes the days off worthwhile.

Two woman began at the office this week: a doll and an angel.

Angel is quiet, beautiful and engaging. In an office otherwise devoid of women, she is a flower attended by a cluster of young male bees. Including me.

Doll reflects her surrounds and lets nothing inside. She talks to herself as she works - an enforced cognitive display in case we think she's seized up and forgotten her. She's an operator, a social machine, shiny smooth without a chink. She is not sweet, though all her moves would tell you so. She is incapable of respecting space and infuriates me with probing: "You don't look too good" in a loud midwest accent - the language of church queues and suppressed anxiety.

Angel is also inconvenient. Infuriatingly attractive and engaged. Kind of takes it off the table though, beng otherwise attached. But us bees, we're suckers for honey and this one strolls around streaming innocence and attention to the most entertaining. I've kicked the humor valve into overdrive since she arrived. She's just here for herself - it's so futile.

Thankfully the Greek with all the best lines and most effortless charm is off next week, away to serve his country's National Service. The floor is left to the techies and me.

~o~

Jewel, meanwhile is experiencing a full frontal assault. I've told her we'll meet, which if it happens will be like the Dam busters busting their Dams. Still waiting for her to move. Which she will. In her heart she knows I'm loving and committed and changing in ways that will further seduce and astinish her.

She views me as untameable - too high a prize for a dignified princess, which she is. Completely ravishing and elegant. I'll know no other like her.

There's something else on my side - I'm unafraid to lose. My lack of fear is so complete she doesn't stand a chance. This is beyond arrogance - it's the determination of a man who sees no other way.

~0~

Who is this hypocrite?

Flirting with angels in coffee breaks and wooing a woman he left ten months ago with the epitaph: "We're done."

Fitting life into a fine equation has never come to easy to this one and I'd suggest you loosen up too. If you knew the symphony Jewel and I had concocted you'd want it back again and again.