Musing on the Bardo.

I watched a video last night on the Bardo Thodol – a Buddhist text known in the west as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was written by a Tibetan master quite a long time ago and describes the experiences and trials the disembodied mind must expect when entering the bardo – the state between losing one physical body and taking up occupation of another. I didn’t much like the sound of it, but reasoned that it represents one man’s opinion to be accepted as a possibility along with countless others.

But one little random statement was cause for encouragement. The narrator said that those who had never contemplated the matter of death while in their now-defunct bodies were at a disadvantage. Well, that accusation can certainly not be levelled at me, so maybe there’s hope that the angels on the light side of the picture will preserve me from the hideous demonic projections of my imperfect mind after all. And that ray of hope encouraged me to desist from leaving a very long comment asking all manner of questions which were never even referred to in the documentary.

That’s the problem with life, isn’t it? Nobody ever gives us a definitive annual report so we can see how we’re doing and make the necessary adjustments. I suppose that’s why I prefer to follow such finer instincts as I might have rather than slavishly following the babble of any religious tradition.

Knowing November.

I’m probably more familiar with the month of November than I am with any other month because it’s the month in which I was born. (And a year later it was the month in which I first heard the word ‘birthday’ cast in my direction. I suppose that was when learning the value of words began in earnest.) And November, I think, is one of the profoundest in marking the progress of the year.

October is the month of being distracted by the kaleidoscope of coloured leaves adorning the countless trees gracing hill, dale, pasture, and hedgerow, mixing with and decorating the remnants of summer green. The clean leaves fall with a wholesome dryness which makes them crackle underfoot and whisper as we accidentally brush them with our shoes.

But come November and all begins to change. The decorated trees are mostly skeletal and stark, and the fallen leaves are congealing into an oily mass which offers only silent padding to accompany the walk through the woods. The light is noticeably falling now, and the view is frequently misty as the dampness clings to the cooler air. Fogs form erratically, and the longer nights are more noticeable for starting at around the time when folks return from their daily work. And when I was a boy living in the city, the night air on 5^th November – Bonfire Night – grew almost opaque from the smoke of a thousand bonfires, while the cracks and bangs and flashes of fireworks gave the impression of having suddenly entered a war zone.

(Two particular memories of 5^th November stand out for me. The first is of driving home from work and rescuing a panic-stricken dog frantically sprinting along the main road. The second was at around age seven or eight. I was holding a supposedly safe-to-hold firework which exploded unaccountably. Fortunately the blast only bruised my thigh, and I recall punching my mother’s thigh as hard as I could to demonstrate how it felt. I think she sympathised instead of catching me one around the ear which would probably have been more appropriate.)

And so we shuffle through November until the world settles into a state of cold stasis for three months, when little moves or grows and colour becomes almost a memory. And nine months later I get to have another birthday.

Speculative Notions.

I realised this afternoon that it’s Halloween tonight, and I further realised that I forgot to buy some cake for the little people’s midnight treat when I went to Sainsbury’s yesterday. I apologised to them of course, and expressed regret that I will have to leave a digestive biscuit with the scotch instead.

At 6.20 this evening I had a missed call on my mobile phone, and when I called back ten minutes later there was a voicemail message. It was from the GP surgery (doctor’s office to Americans) asking me to give them a call, which I did. I got another voicemail message which said, in effect: ‘The phones are now switched off and there’s nobody here. Go away.’

Now, the thing is, you see, I had a blood test there yesterday so it’s reasonable to assume that they have information to impart in respect of that procedure. But I don’t know what it is and I won’t be able to find out until tomorrow, so now I’m anxious. The past six years have been dominated by an ever increasing cocktail of health issues and now I’m wondering whether they’ve found another one. Is my liver about to stop functioning, for example? Or is my blood deficient in some way that is not conducive to my general welfare? You never know, do you, when you get non-committal calls from the GP surgery. And now I’m tempted to the suspicion that the little people are responsible for the lateness of the call so as to pay me back for forgetting to get their cake. Sounds like a reasonable speculation to me. And there’s something else:

I found a massive sycamore leaf outside Sainsbury’s yesterday. British sycamore leaves are usually between 2” and 5” wide, but this one was 10” wide. I’ve never seen one anything like as big as that, and now I’m wondering whether I was supposed to get the message: ‘This is the little people speaking. Such a leaf is obviously not of natural origin. We left it there for you to find in order that you should realise that there’s something rum going on and be reminded not to forget to get our cake.’ I forgot to get their cake. Whatever next?

(The little people can be a little vindictive at times, you know. Try reading my story The Passenger at the other site if you don’t believe me.)

A Sporting Regret and a Literary Risk.

I watched the women’s footie match between England and Germany a couple of nights ago. I paid special attention to the twenty two women on the field and came to the conclusion that the German ladies outscored our dear Lionesses in the matter of prettiness (only by a small margin, but the margin was there nonetheless.) They also had the more artistic shirts, although it could be argued that ours were graphically stronger. I’d say that made the scoreline 2-0 to Germany. The fact that they ultimately scored more goals than we did was merely incidental.

And here I go making another post which is consciously and carefully designed to wind people up. I seem to be in that sort of mood lately. Maybe it’s because I’m about to start reading Dubliners by James Joyce. I read one paragraph in the shop and decided that it offered no threat to my eyesight, my peace of mind, or my health in general. I gather it’s more than can be said for his infamous Ulysses.

Roots and Language.

I’ve mentioned before that I used to be a photographer and occasionally wrote articles for a photography magazine. One of the articles was translated into Dutch and used in the Netherlands edition, and they sent me a copy. I read it through and was most interested to see the obvious similarities between what I’d written and how it translated into Dutch. Much of both the grammar and vocabulary was oddly familiar, but with sufficient difference to make it amusing.

And only today did I notice something else when I received a return comment from a Dutch YouTuber. Goggle Translate tells me that the Dutch for ‘thank you’ is ‘bedankt.’ This is suspiciously similar to the English phrase ‘be thanked’, which is rarely used but correct nevertheless. Surely an indication of the common roots of both our people and our language.

(And if you should be interested in the INFJ phenomenon – which is true of me because I am one – the YouTuber’s name is Kuro Tadorii. She’s lovely to look at and a delight to listen to. And she probably speaks English better than I do because I don’t recall a single instance of her ending a sentence on a preposition.)

On the Question of Looks.

In the matter of being attracted to members of the opposite sex – or even human beings generally, come to that – we have to consider the question:

Do looks matter?

No of course they don’t, I hear you say. Looks are just the surface impression. Using looks as a basis for attraction is shallow.

OK, I take the point. But look at it this way:

We humans go through life as material beings living in a material world enclosed within a material universe. And the first port of call when assessing the desirability of anything material is what it looks like, be it a flower, a Siamese cat, a spider’s web on a misty morning, or a slim young woman with a perfect arrangement of facial characteristics, dark hair, hazel eyes, and a faint hint of Middle Eastern provenance in her skin tone.

So of course looks matter. They do.

(And I only made this post because I was in the mood for saying something contentious and constructing an argument which might readily be seen by some as fallacious. It isn’t intended to rival the homilies of Khalil Gibran or anything.)

Finding a New Thought Process.

I’m nearly at the end of Kafka on the Shore now, and it still doesn’t make any sense. But herein lies a conundrum because it’s been a fascinating read – utterly enthralling. And so I wonder whether the last few pages will somehow explain it so it does make sense. And then the small voice that sits in my head and prompts my occasional, offbeat thought processes said:

‘Why does a story have to make sense?’

And that sounds to me like a good place to start a new thought process.

Meanwhile, I decided not to finish the book tonight but to leave it at a cliff hanger. Mr Hoshino has just been talking to the neighbourhood cat, and the cat has offered to show him how to close the stone. This pleases him because Nakata – who is now inconveniently deceased and lying in the next room – told him that once you have opened a stone, it’s an absolute duty to close it again. Can I wait until tomorrow…

We're Forever Blowing Bubbles.

Some years ago I wrote a post comprising a fiction about a little boy who liked to blow bubbles. He would blow each bubble or bundle of bubbles, then watch them transfixed as they rose and fell and flew and dipped depending on the wind. He loved to see the shimmering veins of colour in the glossy surface, and was especially pleased when one bubble grew much bigger than the rest and became the star of the show. And when each bubble burst he would blow some more, and carry on blowing more and more bubbles until the pot of soapy liquid was empty. And then he would sink to his knees and weep for the loss of all those bubbles.

Recently it struck me that the story is a metaphor for life. Because it’s what we do, isn’t it? We go through life blowing bubbles.

First there’s the freedom and the play of childhood. Then there are the years of education during which we learn how to function acceptably in our own type of culture. We leave education behind and move into a career, or a series of dead end jobs depending on circumstances. And often we lose one bubble of a job and blow another.

We have our flings during the early years, before settling down with a life partner. And then the children come along. They’re the next bubble or bundle of bubbles. We care for them and feed them and teach them how to blow their own bubbles, until they become independent and another bubble has popped. By then, mid life and retirement have taken a toll on the pot of soapy water, but there’s still some left. And so we blow the bubbles of freedom, travel, and relaxation until fading health, strength, and energy bring us to the bottom of the pot, and all that’s left to do is sink into an armchair or hospital bed and reflect on the loss of all those bubbles.

It’s why I’ve never been able to believe that this life is all there is. I give a high level of credence to the concept of reincarnation, but that’s not enough either. I still fail to see what purpose there is in jumping on and off some wheel of life, death, and rebirth if all I’m going to do is blow bubbles. There must surely be more – or else why are we conscious – but nobody can tell me with an acceptable degree of certainty what it is.

For now, however, I expect I will continue to write posts about blowing one form of bubble or another. I’m struggling to find any other reason to be here.

On Faces, Plums, and the Fate of a Hero.

Every time I look in the mirror these days I’m reminded that human faces emulate plums as life and the ageing process takes its toll. They both start off firm, smooth, finely proportioned, and flawless, and stay like that for a period of time. And then the change begins, almost imperceptibly at first, and gathers pace until the change to something that’s lost its form and taken on a sagging aspect becomes undeniable. It becomes soft and creased and stained with unwholesome little marks, and is then only suitable for casting aside to make its inevitable return to the land.

‘What about prunes?’ I hear you ask. ‘What about mummies?’ is the best I can offer in reply.

And maybe I should offer my apologies to French people of delicate constitution for noting that today is Trafalgar Day in Britain, although nobody mentions it any more and I suspect very few people are even aware of the fact. It was a Monday that year, apparently, and I once read that our hero Horatio was shot at 1315 by a French sniper in the Redoutable. I suppose his death must have been regarded as something of a tragedy at the time, but at least he avoided moving into the overripe plum stage a few years down the line.

(Although heaven knows what he did look like when they brought his body back to Blighty, it having been pickled in spirits – probably rum, I expect – for what was quite a slow journey in those days. It was the first thing I thought about when I first read about the death of Nelson as a boy. ‘I wonder what he looked like when they brought him ashore.’ An early sign of my strangeness, no doubt.)

A Sad Moon and a Hyper Planet.

The sky is clear as crystal tonight, and among the firmament of stars filling the bowl of night the waning gibbous moon is slumped and leaning unsteadily, close to the eastern horizon. I always think the waning moon looks ill and sad – especially when it sits among a firmament of stars – which is probably why I like writers who write lyrical text.

And judging by the number of posts I’ve written tonight, I suspect Mercury’s been at the cocaine again. I still don’t know what magic mushrooms look like, nor where they might be found in the Shire. And I’d probably be too circumspect to eat any even if I did, which is a pretty sad admission.