A Girl Called Alice.

I met a lovely little girl this morning, a delightfully prim and shy 3-year-old called Alice. I like that name. My paternal grandmother was called Alice, and so was my favourite aunt.

She reminded me of something I said on this blog a while ago: that if the world were ruled by little girls it would certainly be even more chaotic than it is now, but it would also probably be a much nicer place. For example, welfare would be extended to the provision of ice cream, chocolate and bubble gum to everybody earning less than £100,000 a year, and mistreatment of animals would become a capital offence.

‘Off with his head,’ cried Alice when she saw a man scolding his dog.

‘That’s my line, you little upstart!’ screamed the Red Queen.

‘Not any more it isn’t,’ replied Alice with a confident and triumphant smile.

And the fact of boys being useless would be universally regarded as axiomatic and never thought of as any kind of –ism (apart from a truism, of course, which doesn’t count.)

Oh, the Regiment of Women.

Today’s visit to Ashbourne could largely be described in three words:

God, that hurt!

It was, in fact, another remarkable day for women encounters, but the other four were relatively painless. And can you believe that:

1. The most beautiful woman I ever met continues to grow even lovelier.

2. I got hugged twice and kissed twice. One was welcome, the other wasn’t. I suppose that’s just how life is.

I’m at a loss to understand why women, familiar and unfamiliar, are suddenly dropping into my orbit like falling cherry blossom. I suspect my new companion, the Lady Fu, might be responsible. I wonder whether she would be offended if I asked her to be a little more selective.

Days.

You get days like these, days on which the insights and information flow in freely.

Days on which there are things to be said about the materialistic world stifling the higher mind and blocking human evolution, about the magic to be found in sensing what the sensory faculties miss, about the need to obey new personal truths as we find them along the path, about the meaning of anam cara.

But then a combination of fatigue and the insidious systems devised by those who would be rich and powerful blocked every attempt to say them.

How fortunate that I dislike being earnest.

(I’m too tired to know whether I should post this or not. I expect I will.)

Off the Top of My Late Night Head.

'You’re an absolute star,' I was told today. 'Now I owe you at least a crate of scotch.'

Nobody owes me anything. I don’t do things for rewards, either pecuniary or in kind, even though it sometimes works out that way. I do them because I want to do them or because they need doing.

I didn’t get to where I am today chasing money or crates of scotch. I got here by chasing the Grail which so far has remained elusive. I got here by chasing a reason to be here. I got here by stepping outside the tram lines and looking back in, and then finding there was no way back because the hum of Mother Culture was obliterating the more vital hum of Mother Life. I got here because music and instinct took me close to the veil but there was nothing to show me how to pull it apart. I got here by realising that having things in common with a person isn’t the same as being on a wavelength with them, and that being friendly isn’t the same as being friends.

Am I happy? Occasionally. Do I have regrets? Not exactly, but I do have plenty of guilt swilling around the bag hanging off my shoulder. Would I change anything if I could go back and start over? No, because I am whatever I am, because it’s impossible to second guess the determinist process without a computer a billion times bigger than the biggest we’ve got, and because the road not travelled really doesn’t exist.

So where am I? Feel free to tell me if you know, because I don’t. And I think it reasonable to assume that I probably don’t need to.

A Better Day than Expected.

I had three splendid and unplanned encounters with women today. The first was my daughter, the second was the pretty and personable young Slovakian woman in the coffee shop, and the third was the genuine and compelling young black woman who persuaded me against all the odds and every precedent to make a regular monthly payment to Shelter (that’s a charity which addresses the issue of homelessness.)

But I talk too much about encounters with women, don’t I? Best not say any more, then. (And I still haven’t got over that wedding!)

And I suppose I should add for the benefit of regular readers that I got through today without serious mishap, but the issues are still lurking.

Vaudeville in New Jersey.

Chris Christie: I didn’t get any sun today.

United Voice of America: Oh yes you did. You were sunning yourself on the very beach you had closed to the public.

Christie’s Spokesman: Oh no he didn’t. He was wearing a baseball hat.

 Look, Brian, there's the sun.

How fortunate we're wearing hats.

And isn't it quiet around here?

I wonder where everybody is.

Hello America. Thanks for the laughs.

Today's Capricious Climate.

Much overdue outdoor work was done in the warm July sunshine.

The wife of a friend told me about her bowel cancer procedures. She talked of anuses and vaginal walls, of colostomy bags and potential incontinence – none of which I would count among my favourite topics of conversation. It was difficult to know how to respond, so I kept it attentive, sympathetic and as upbeat as possible. Nevertheless, it seemed no more than honest to admit that remaining positive in such circumstances is easier said than done.

Throughout the work and the discourse – and at all other times beside – there was an acrid and persistent dread of tomorrow much stronger than my accustomed dread of tomorrow. That was because there was a much more concrete reason.

I was reminded of my favourite self-coined philosophical sound bite:

Perception is the whole of the life experience.

A Note on Support.

Doom looms – or so it seems – and my support chooses now to disappear.

It’s maybe fortunate that I’ve always tended to shun support. It’s usually misdirected because nobody can know the mind of another, and it never solves the problem anyway.

Besides, what would a loner do with support except feel embarrassed?

And I’ve more or less come to the conclusion, though it be irrelevant to my own problem, that most human misery is caused by most human cultures being ruled by juvenile souls.

Tonight's Minor Phenomena.

OK, own up. Who is the sudden regular visitor from Illinois? I don’t know anybody in Illinois. The only person I ever spoke to in that state was a security man at Chicago airport. I got off the plane and found myself in a big empty space where there was a guy in a uniform looking almost as lost as me. I asked him: ‘Where do I go through customs?’ to which he replied: ‘You just did, buddy.’ (Fancy that.) Is it you?

*  *  *

And YouTube has developed a new nasty habit – a box which flashes up before you can watch the video, and which says: Tell us your age so that we may direct more appropriate ads at you. The replies included one which said ‘I don’t wish to say’, but it didn’t have the one I wanted which was ‘Fuck off.’ The only acceptable option was the ‘Skip ad’ button, so that’s what I chose. Bloody cheek!

(Actually, it probably didn't come from YouTube at all. I expect it was one of those damnable phishing scams which Google allowed through in return for a modest fee.)

Future Planning.

I think I might as well announce now that the priestess and I are going to be Emperor and Empress of China in our next lives (but not in that order.)

 An earlier version of P and me

By then the world will have descended into chaos and the whole of the planet will have become Mad Max country, which is why the priestess had to be born in Australia this time around so she could learn the lingo, while I had to be born in England so as to become accustomed to sitting upon the ground telling sad stories of the deaths of kings.

And having established ourselves as Emp and Emps of China, we’re going to set about ruling the whole world very nicely. All will be sweetness and light, justice and honour will prevail, kindness will count for something, the Romantic tradition will not only be encouraged but enshrined in law, and even the reborn Donald Trump will be allowed an appropriate role as village idiot somewhere in the remoter reaches of Xinjiang Province (which, fortunately for the rest of humanity, is a very long way from anywhere.)

The one thing the priestess and I haven’t yet agreed on is the matter of concubines and women-about-whom-rumours-are-rife, but I’m working on it. We have, however, agreed on the name of our first daughter. She will be called Avalon, since that was where her mother and I first met. (And I bet nobody has ever been called Avalon in China before.)

Did I say ‘agreed’? I did, didn’t I? In actual fact, all the above came out of my seer mind (which is situated a little to the left of the higher mind, where it skulks and sulks and pops out mischievously to tell us truths and win us with honest trifles, only to betray us in deepest consequence.) I have a sneaking suspicion that the priestess’s concurrence emanated more from a kindly desire to humour me than any remote intent to take me seriously. She does that a lot.

(And do excuse the Shakesperean references. It’s just that I get a free Smartie every time somebody goes direct from my blog to Wiki.)