Tuesday 20th of February, 2001
I really enjoyed breakfast this morning - I was just about to sit down to my glass of juice, my bowl of muesli and my colossal cup of coffee (my only cup of the day, these days), and I thought "this is good. Breakfast is good". A positive start to the day. I just thought you might like to know. I even had a small visitation of Silence during my Sitting, but I am still too addled at that time to appreciate such things properly.
I did a lot of pootling about during the morning, and in the afternoon set off to do some post-office business and try to pick up some veg on the way back.
I really ought not to even try to walk past second-hand bookshops.
Having giving up cigarettes and alcohol over the years and meat and (apparantly, although I haven't put it to the test) television more recently, and having got my coffee/chocolate addictions under control, second-hand books appear to be the only real vice I have left. After all I lack enough shelves for even the books I have, so adding to them can only lead to tears. Or at least piles of books clogging up the already sclerotic arteries of my Bijou Pad.
That said, I'm interested in finding out what I am buying - it's something I'm only really conscious of when I get them home and take them out of the bag. Last week when I thought I was just going to pop up the Tate Modern for a couple of hours (as you do), in fact I went out and bought Creative Thinking and The Sevenfold Path by J.G. Bennett, The Great Heresy by Arthur Guirdham and Iron John by Robert Bly. The latter two titles because they were on sale, but they are interesting anyway (Guirdam decided he was an authority on the Cathars largely because he believed he was one in a previous life: his books are occasionally fascinating and intermittently bonkers - bonkersness is something I admire in a book. Iron John is much better than is generally made out, although I'm only, at the time of writing, about half way through). Today I went into Tlön Books (a Borgesian reference, which I heartily approve of) in the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre and found Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching; Hofstadter and Dennett's The Mind's I (which is about the self and the soul, although I really should finish Gödel, Escher, Bach); Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces; a rather imposing book called W.B. Yeats: The Poems and Villa Stellar, a book of poetry by George Barker. Apart from the Barker (and the Wilhelm, which I already had, but have lent), I've been looking for these second-hand for a while.
I read Creative Thinking last week, partly on a cycling machine at the gym, probably not the most conducive place for the Great Work, but Bennett's an awful lot more interesting than MTV. That would be a good quote for the back of the book:
J.G. Bennett is an awful lot more interesting than MTV - John Peacock
Furthermore, while I noticed a connection between the Cathars and what Bennett was saying (which I ought perhaps go into another time), and possibly what Bly was saying, lining up these recent acquisitions suggests that I am (not wholly consciously) pursuing some theme.
The only drawback being that I have to read them all to find out what the theme is. Or maybe that's not a drawback.
This evening, I managed to contact someone who was also on Guitar Craft Level I in Italy via the wonders of Instant Messaging. I've never tried this before (except a stint in LambdaMOO) and it was very interesting, if a little disorienting - very much like very long distance phone calls, where you're not sure what the other person is saying (whether they are replying to you or launching out on their own or something else), nor (because of the immense delay) what you are. But it was fun, and I'll try again. And I'm coming to terms with emoticons. I may even have discovered one:
"-) <------- Picasso face.
I mentioned the books, saying I thought I understood all this stuff in the arrogance of my callow youth, but now, coming back to it, I realise that I didn't understand a thing.
Interestingly, there's a reference in each of the Bennett, Bly and Guirdham about the mid-thirties being the time a chap should put away childish things and get spiritual, so we'll see.
I'm very attached to my Childish Things, though...