Another day, another death

It was the same time last year, maybe even to the day. 7^th December that A W took his life by jumping from an 8^th floor window in Bondi , days after we fired him from our three piece music act. It was the first time I watched a plain wooden coffin get put into the ground. Dust blew about the hot earth and the roughly painted, and sadly cheap nature of the container told me it wasn’t wholly unexpected. I didn’t know him all that well, it devastated my last surviving partner in musical crime though, they had been friends since childhood. I knew the good days couldn’t last , and they had only just bloody arrived too. I took it as a warning. I was sinking into the bad things associated with my love of music again; Drink, drugs, trying to fuck everything. It was time to stop. I finished off gigs for Christmas and then left Bondi. It had been 3 years and I have to admit, I thought I could have stayed there for life quite happily. That is the nature of death when we look beyond the pain, get over the horizon of its texture on our hearts. Leave the day behind. Suicide is the most cruel of deaths, for the living. But death, when all is said and done, is emotionless , inevitable, and just a transformation from one form to another.

My mum seemed overly eager to get the news to me. I am not sure why. I found myself wondering if she is taking medication over there in the city of Lost Angels. I hoped not. She had thus far avoided making herself into a duck faced plastic caricature, as is the way in Hell A, so maybe there was hope.

Honey, F has had a death in the family, S's older sister committed suicide, thought I should let you know

It stopped my morning rush. I was bound for work, the one day a week I work in the city , a 2.5 hour train ride, mad dash for 5 hours without stopping, followed by the same train ride in reverse. Its worth it for the free time I get most of the rest of the week. I don't quite know how the hell I got my life into this great position, but long may it last. So I stared at the message. It had positively ruined my breakfast. I didn't care much for suicides. There had been too many, in fact it was the most common form of death in my life by far. It irked me. When so many things were out to get us, that we should get ourselves.

S was the guy who ended up with the girl I should have ended up with, but blew it. I blew it consciously and decidedly, but was always quite baffled by the speed with which she picked up someone new, the fact that it was the bass player in my recently defunct band, and a work colleague of hers, just added to the sensation that maybe it hadn't been totally my doing. This was a common one, I noticed, where ending of relationships had been concerned. I had pretty much always ended them, or rather, I thought I had. But women clearly have ways.

The discovery to me was also one that was a little disconcerting more because it didnt seem to bother me all that much. After 7 years of what was, in the main part, a pretty good relationship. I left her. Less than 2 weeks later, while letting myself into the house we owned still, to collect the last of my things, I discovered a used condom draped over the bin in the bedroom. This was the woman who had had sex with less people than you could count on one hand.

It was an echo of a similar feeling I felt this morning, staring out of the window as I was now, feeling a gnawing discomfort in the belly thanks to death, to change, to the end of something, and yet recognizing that really I should be thankful for the things I do have right here, right now. And I was, I truly was, but death sucked, most especially suicide. I clicked on Facebook and saw a ton of messages and condolences, I wasn't sure quite how my mum thought I would miss such an event. She wasnt turning into one of those feeders on dark news, was she? I shuddered and let the thought go. I wrote a short, plain, not very interesting message privately to F, and then left the house for the train.

F had spent the larger part of last year harassing me for the failed relationship that ended over 6 years ago now, as well as any other shortcomings she could think of at the time. I had 'wasted the best years of her life'. Etc..etc.. I felt like the subject of a Pogues Christmas song. I also, at first, felt a hint of guilt but it was for a short period of time and then I just started to feel pissed off with the harassment. So I ignored further emails. She had a point, sure, but it was 6 fucking years ago. In fairness to her, when her next baby popped out she seemed to calm down. Hormones. Who'd a thought it. It was born the day before my birthday, the 3^rd in my family, or close to family, to do so. Was life trying to make a memorial of me, or was I being slowly pushed out? Either way, she calmed down a bit and the emails trailed off as motherhood took hold for the second time. And then this.

So they changed the new-borns name to N in memory of S's older sister and I had a quick peek on the facebook site under her name because I just couldnt help it. I was a rubbernecker like the rest of them, but I wanted to know. Suicide mystified me. The whys and wherefores. And A's terminal exit last year had been messy, flopping around on the ledge of a balcony for a good couple of minutes before passing as I got to hear all about at the funeral, from the landlady who had found him 'Like a fish gasping' were the words that really stuck in my mind. He had taken a running dive at a landing window on a Friday evening hours after spending quality time at his young niece's birthday party. It must have turned him inwards far enough to explode outwards in a random moment as he climbed the stairs, no doubt drunk and/or having a severe polar moment. Enough to make you run at a closed window? Why not just run at the closed window of life, it seems easier somehow.

N had a picture of herself smiling, possibly a little on the zany side, with a large black teddy bear. It didnt seem particularly odd except that this woman had just committed suicide. Her facebook was private, so there was nothing more to see here. But on her wall was a status message saying she had just befriended three people recently and was married. Shit. That sucked. Mr N was going to be having a breakdown for sure. I wondered if the word 'married' was something to do with the whole saga. I also noted she lived in Sydney. S was from Oz. He had a few issues himself lurking in there, you don't play bass in my band without me figuring out your dark side at least a little bit. The boy was...haunted, might be a word. I guess it was in part why I felt more happy for him than angry the day I found his man spit in my waste bin. He seemed like he needed a good woman. And I realized, that weird morning, that rather than annoyed, I actually felt like I was off the hook. It was a sense of relief, like I had permission to get on with my life and stop beating myself up over it. As a result, of course, she seemed to think I was a cold-hearted bastard who couldn't care less about anyone or anything. She had no idea that it had taken me years to achieve such a state of grace. And a lot of pain it had taken too. But not enough to make me jump out an 8^th floor window, get married, or hang myself, nor find God. Not yet anyway.

Though Remember, Jesus is the reason for the season.

Right on.

See you in hell, then.

happy fucking christmas

Over and out

The Grotesque (Part II)

' Are you really considering getting on that insane merri-go-round one more time?'

So I started downloading and watching music documentaries. I was feeding something inside me. I needed to understand something about the path I had chosen through life so long ago, the one that led to The Crossroads, yea, that crossroad. I had been there. I'd met him, seriously I did, in a field one night in about '87 in Oxfordshire someplace, and I had refused him at the time, or so I thought, but I wasnt so sure now.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was clear to me that I had , since that date, lived the rock and roll lifestyle without doing too much of the rock and roll. I'd had the power gifted to me, and instead of using it to actually 'make it', I had just got lots of sex, and high all the time, with the occasional bit of music thrown in if I had to do it. I mean, if you are getting laid and getting high already, why bother doing the gigs?

But there was, I also realised, a certain freedom in coming out the end of that. Without the cash, success, or full-time gigging lifestyle, I'd survived, for one thing. And I hadn't yet been stuck into a pigeon-hole musically. Only by the few people who knew me, at least, but in that regards, I was still kind of a blank canvas publicly. The down side was that now I wanted to be a musician again, I was actually just an ex-druggie , too old to be interested in notching up one-night stands, and musically; a never-has-been. And when you are coming back to music as an unknown in your 40's, who the hell is going to buy your music, let alone be around to start a band with? Everyone has retired to working and family life. In fact the very idea of it suggests the need for some serious therapy.

There was another thing, the teachers at AIM music college, where I had enlisted as much to learn production skills as to find a way to give up music, had pointed it out to me,

'You are better off than us, we have to work in music to make a living and we never have time to focus on our own stuff, we have families and work all day. You on the other hand work in I.T., so you have some spare change, you have no family, so you have more time and energy, and you dont use up all your musical energy on other peoples music. You really are in a good position.'

They had a point.

So here I was with some free time, and with it I was hungrily lapping up documentaries about bands and artists I loved or was interested in, and while I did it, I tried to observe what it was inside me that was seeking to be fed. Then while watching The Doors – Classic Albums documentary, Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction said something about musicians having this strangeness inside themselves, and they pull it out, and offer it up, and it is strange but they kind of like it too. And it was in that explanation that I somehow grasped, for the first time, the elusive thing in me that wanted feeding, that hungered to be recognised, that longed for the stage, and the lights, and the drugs, and the women, the fame, and the glory, and to write the best song in the world, and of course, to be adored. And it was 'strange', it was almost hiding in there. It wasn't sensitive so much, because it was bloody stubborn and defined already by its own nature as much as being driven by it. But it existed uncomfortably within me, it wouldn't just die and go away, but it couldnt seem to find a way to happily come out and express itself either. And a word popped up in my head, and it described it quite perfectly, and that name was 'The Grotesque'

I give some wiki definitions here:

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow....

...grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks.

In art, performance, and literature, grotesque, however, may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as empathic pity

It was a perfect description to me. There is something painful and piteous about the expression of music, it seeks approval for itself to exist out in the world happily, it needs it, and that need is what makes it something that hides, almost lurks, in the soul like a timid child, an innocent, yet somehow an oddity. For me at least. It carries with it a sense of the predicted future, of change, and that creates reaction, and that reaction isnt always good, but it is a reaction. A reaction by the listener to the Grotesque. It's a freak show.

Making music for me is, and I hate to admit this, slightly Gollum-ish. It brings the feeling of being a freak to the fore, and I then find myself needing to seek approval for my existence, if someone knocks it, I scurry back into my cave and stroke 'my precious', as it were, until I feel better. I love the power it gives me, and I hate it's power over me.

So, as I observed myself watching these documentaries, I noticed I was doing a couple of things. I was seeking inspiration, or more precisely, trying to find support and confidence from others who appeared to have 'made it' , that had 'the grotesque' within in them, it troubled them, and yet they seemed confident enough in their music to have gone for it anyway.

Listening to Bono, in 'From the Sky Down', describe how he took on pieces of past musicians or elements in the world, and with them he built a mask to wear in order to protect himself. I understood that. And they all came out in his performance, or his clothing, or his show, or his mannerisms on stage. It was a shield. To protect that thing, as much as to protect himself from that thing . To enable it to come out into the light, and do its thing, and not change him, or damage him.

I had also to consider that there had been an element of self-sabotage along the way for me, something Anthony Robbins had put me onto was that if we have conflicting needs then we are unable to progress, as one need pulls us one way, and the other goes in the opposite direction. We have to resolve these inner conflicts, but first we have to recognise them. It wasnt until 2007 that I recognised one of those; much as I longed for fame, the stage, the recognition. I feared giving myself away or getting it wrong, or being labelled, or losing my privacy, or dying in a champagne supernova. The conflict was that, as much as I wanted to make it, I really didnt want to either. The reasons made up a long list; I feared not being strong enough to handle fame. I didnt really actually like the look of fame. I didnt want to lose my freedom. I was a bit lazy too. I didnt like the idea of touring. I didnt want to rise up to have to fall down, and I was well aware that if you didnt fall down, the press sure liked to shoot you down. I didnt much like the industry, nor the game. But at the same time, just sitting at home making music wasnt enough, learning the art of music was not enough, nor was playing gigs to a small loyal crowd going to be enough. I was in a state of permanent conflict and inner turmoil with music. Hungering to make it, yet struggling to avoid it too, fearful of it.

In fact when I considered it , I wasnt really sure what I wanted. And that was probably why I hadnt really gone for it properly either. That, and then there was the obvious lack of self-confidence in my own singing ability which drove me forward and then backwards in equally erratic force, so that essentially I went nowhere, but thought about doing stuff a lot, planned a lot, but ultimately, didnt do a lot.

Watching the Jim Morrison doco called 'When you are Strange' surprised me to hear that he doubted his singing ability too, even at his peak. I would kill for his voice. And as the story unfolded it was clear that the rest of the band were much more skilled musicians in their own right than he was, he didnt know an A major from a B Minor, which probably pushed him further into a sense of low self-worth, which he made up for by becoming more and more of a spectacle, and a drunk. To some extent their abilities held them up through the insanity.

Something else I could relate to when I considered the last few gigs I did in England, Cornbury festival acoustic tent where I was so drunk I couldnt tune my guitar, and asked the audience to help me out. No one did. They wanted someone sober who could play to come on instead. 4 hours earlier I had played one of the best renditions of Sympathy for the Devil I had ever done with a band. I'd been drunk then too and the response had been uplifting enough to make me play the acoustic tent later. I couldnt even see the strings. I found solace in more drugs, and sex with some random.

The footage of Jim Morrison working on the last album shows him with twitches and ticks and drunk all the time, so much of a mess that Paul Rothchild, the producer, walks out and does not return. Though in the end it probably helped make the album, it didnt help Jim avoid his ultimate fate, which was clearly sealed by then regardless. His girlfriend-inspired attempt to pull up involved him giving up music, and moving to Paris to try to be the 'poet' , which is where he had come to music from, and where he felt more at home. As the poet, the shaman. That is more what he was, he ended up a musician by accident really, and then as a result, in the '27 club'; dead famous. But then didnt Jesus get it at 32 and he did everything right, allegedly.

The poet and shaman

I wondered about this. I related to Mr Mojo more on these terms, even though I could play a few instruments with confidence, though I couldnt sing with confidence, much to my chagrin I wanted to, I needed to for some reason. I needed a voice. But now, I wasnt sure it was really the music that was the essence of what it was all about for me. I loved making music, but at the risk of being sacrilegious, I couldnt give a rats ass for the music itself. I didnt collect music or learn all about every musician. I just had particular things I liked, or related to, and that was it. The poetry, and the shamanism of it, I liked more. In particular, the shamanism of it. That is more where I felt my 'Grotesque' became defined.

So, I was trying to define my Grotesque. I was also trying to learn from my mistakes, learn from those who walked before me, and also, it is fair to say, figure out a way to do it one last time and do it right, maybe even big. I felt I deserved big. It was the ego maniac in me, or was it the truth, I didnt know yet. My Grotesque was a freak amongst the world of the grotesque, I felt it deserved recognition as such ...or rather, it had been in its day.

I was in now my 40's ! Wtf was I thinking. Once again I had to ask myself, is this really how I want to be spending my time?

I watched a doco on Lemmy. That made me laugh. I used to see him in the St Moritz propping up the bar, a part of the furniture always there. It was a good doco. He is a good example of how to survive the industry and still be yourself. Handled it better than Jim, but then was he really a shaman type? Silently, I felt yes, maybe in his own way he was. He came from Anglesey after all, the last bastion of defense in pagan Albion by the druids before the Romans slaughtered them. Besides, only a looney shaman could wear shorts like that and get away with it. Heavy Metal was never my kind of music but I liked the documentary, and then all the shots of him on his own on the tour bus watching crap TV traveling alone to shows. How did he live like that? God knows. I wasnt sure I could do it. I needed more input to my life. Maybe he was an accidental superstar.

I watched more documentaries, ones that I would not normally be drawn to, yet interestingly I found a commonality in each that related to me somewhere, to my path, my dreams and ambitions as a musician.

Metallica – Some kind of Monster. Music I really did not like, and yet how much had my bands been just like that, albeit without very many fans at all, and certainly no record deals. But the story was the same; the struggle, the dream, the longing to feel worthy, feel recognised as what you feel you are, a musician, if that it be. I found it interesting that the people we would look at and consider as having made it, they were also still looking to their heroes trying to feel like they had made it. Weird. Did anyone ever really make it?

Anvil – the real, live Spinal Tap. A classic story. A pair of 50 year olds playing metal that only a bunch of people have ever heard of, and even less really liked, unable to give up, finally 'making it' as a result of the documentation of their inability to do anything other than fail dismally at 'making it.' The exquisite irony.

It all lead to the same basic questions – What qualifies as 'making it?' , what is it really, what would satisfy that, if satisfying it was really what was needed, and why am I still hungering for it at all.

Answering these questions would , I hoped, lead me to know what to do about it.

The Grotesque (Part I)

This isnt exactly a blog post, so much as a journal, or an observation, or an attempt to try to dig out my soul. I havent written for a while, I have been in a place of peace: inner peace, I guess. After all what is there to write about when you are happy?

I now live in a beautiful, spacious, flat overlooking the ocean in Kiama, Australia. I work only two days a week in my own business, and it is enough to survive and pay the rent. I have a beautiful girlfriend who I am in love with, and will marry. She gives me just enough space to feel comfortable, just enough love to feel I don't own her. She has two kids, a boy 8 and a girl 4, who I seem to have adopted with ease thus quelling any fears I was passing the age of having a family and going to die alone. And she is independent enough to be non-plussed by my controlling side when it tries to come out.

You could say life is perfect, and it has been this way since earlier this year. And best of all, BEST OF ALL...I am making music again, and it is prolific. I have a back room converted into the beginnings of a healthy home studio. This is great news to me, as just having passed my 45th birthday, I have spent the last, nearly, decade thinking music was pretty much over for me, and trying to figure out how to replace it.

So, I guess this post is about music, about what music is for me. And though at 45 years old you would imagine that I should understand that very well, I have discovered that the truth is, I really actually don't know what it means to me at all, nor what it is really for, nor how to approach it to feel a sense of true satisfaction in it's execution. It's changed, I've changed, the world has changed, the industry has changed, the availability of music has changed, the money in music has changed, the style has changed, the reason for making it has changed, the future has changed. Everything has changed. And with an awareness that I was clearly preparing to dive back into it, with possibly even more gusto than I had felt in my youth, I realized it was important that I knew what the fuck I was diving into it for this time.

I needed a reason, a purpose, a strategy. She'd hurt me before, or maybe I should say that I had hurt myself along the way; singing to her from beneath the light of the streetlamp under her window, I had gotten in spots of trouble here and there. But I couldn't afford to make the same mistakes again, and I didn't want to feel that sense of weakness, anxiety, frustration, directionlessness, or meaninglessness, again. I didnt want to feel lost when trying to woo her. If I didnt stop to consider my actions, you could be sure that I would get lost again. But despite the sense of fear, of insanity too; insanity at the idea of being 45 years old and trying to make music. And that sense of uncommon un-certainty of direction, which would descend so often that I never quite understood, and which would make me tail off from any idea , and ultimately give it up. But there was an undeniable certainty of purpose and fatefulness about it all this time, something inside me was calling me to duty, and that excited me. I always KNEW I was born to make music even if it was just for a while, even if ultimately I might very well give it all up, and try my hand at writing, or something else instead.

I have spent the last 5 years seeking a way to give up something I had invested most all of my life into. It took a lot of work but I had almost achieved an acquiescence to the sense of failure that came to me whenever I thought about music. That was the hardest thing, the cruelest thing; I felt she had lured me, all along, to be suckling from her bosom only to end up shoving a dried-up teat into my mouth and laughing at me. I couldn't understand why, all my life, I had held onto the steadfast belief, and internal drive, the certainty that I was going to 'make it' despite everything everyone said to me, only to discover in the end they were right; it had been a dream, a delusion, nay, a lie. I had not only to accept that music was over for me, and that I had failed, but worse that my intuition and self-confidence could not be trusted either.

That was a confusing and hard thing, the hardest part was to accept it all without falling apart.

So I turned the corner, and finally started to let go, accept that music was over for me, but that my life had to carry on.

Then what happens?

A collaboration from a few years ago with some random friend in Sydney gets signed up by a label in the UK and cut to vinyl. It ends up reaching over 50,000 hits on Youtube and getting airplay in the very clubs I used to frequent. It's like fucking making it without trying, and in a genre I wasn't even really working in !
The irony of it all wasn’t lost on me, but it did something else for me. Two things in fact. Firstly, it gave me the feeling that, at last, after nearly 30 years going nowhere in the music business, I had finally made it, I had put my name on the god damn wall, somewhere down the bottom, but that wasn't the point, I was up there. I didn't make any money out of it at all, I made probably about 100 english pounds in total, but that is the ridiculous state of the music industry today, and a whole other story which is a part of why I write this now. But what else it did for me, and probably most importantly, is it gave me back my confidence. Enough to consider whether really, honestly, truthfully, had I given music up ?

She'd got me. Like a true woman, played me to the very limits and then when I finally stopped chasing her, she flipped the script. My god, in a funny way I actually thought it was beautiful. I fell in love with her all over again. And at the same time my life changed for the better, as I said in the first part of this post.

And that brings me to the here and now.

Right now it feels to me as if all you could ever give me was nothing

Excerpt from 'Sperm Wars' by Robin Baker

It is late on a Saturday night and a man and woman in their late twenties are getting ready for bed. As they drift around their rooms, attending to the minutiae of life, they are naked. For them, this is usual and of no sexual importance. They are no longer excited by simply being naked in each other's presence. In fact, they now scarcely notice each other's bodies. As it is Saturday night, they know they will have sex before they go to sleep. Yet, as they vacantly pursue their separate routines, there is no hint of foreplay, even when on occasion their paths cause their bodies to brush past each other.
It is a week since they had sex — last Saturday, in fact. Four years ago, when they first met, they had sex at least once a day (except during her menstrual periods, when neither of them was particularly keen). In those early days they would have ridiculed the possibility of intercourse only once in a whole Week. Now, once a week had become more and more common, even though their usual routine was still to have sex twice a week. Until, that is, two months ago when they had given up using contraception.
Not that they were in any rush to have children. They hadn't yet contemplated the earnest nightly conception campaigns that some of their thirty-something friends had delighted in describing to them. Rather, they preferred to leave it to fate (and so far fate had decreed 'no conception'). They had both found mild sexual excitement in the possibility of conception and for a while their rate had returned to three or four times a week. This week, however, had been different. A couple of separate nights out and, if they were honest, an unexplained coolness between them had conspired against their ever quite getting round to sex. The usual warmth of their relationship had not fully returned until this Saturday morning as they drove on a pre-arranged visit to her sister. Even now, as they eventually got into bed, they could both still feel the legacy of the week's coolness. It was with some tentativeness that the man made his first faltering contacts with his partner's bare body. Once started, however, they quickly slipped into their usual routine.
He begins by gently kissing her face and stroking her breasts. Then they kiss deeply. He strokes her legs to her knees. After a while, he moves down and sucks her nipples. All this time, she cursorily strokes his back and buttocks. Tonight, as is often the case, she cannot concentrate and her mind keeps slipping back to conversations with her sister earlier in the day. She is jolted back to the present when he places his hand between her legs, moves her longest pubic hairs, opens her lips and inserts a finger to check if she is wet. He thinks she is ready. She knows she is not and winces at the prospect of unlubricated penetration. She moves her hand, finds his penis and gently squeezes, in part to see how ready he is but primarily to delay his moving into position. Briefly, her ploy works. He pauses to savour the sensation and responds with half-hearted massage of her genitals. Even though his massage misses her clitoris by a centimetre, he detects (or imagines) an increase in wetness on his finger inside her vagina. He moves his hand and begins to shift his body into the missionary position. She keeps her hand on his penis, and when the moment comes helps to guide its swollen tip into position. She leaves her hand between them for a few seconds to stop him pushing too hard, too soon (she is still nowhere near moist enough). Then, she has no alternative But to abandon the act to him. It takes a while before his gentle working backwards and forwards makes her lubricants really start to flow and his penis is able to enter fully.
Until she was lubricated, the woman had focused her mind on his and her genitals and the mechanics of penetration. But once she is lubricated and he begins the routine of thrusting, her mind drifts back to her sister. Her attention returns to the present only when he makes an uncomfortable movement. Despite her abstractedness, years of practice allow her to time the quiet noises in her throat to the man's thrusts. Then, suddenly, her mind jumps back to Wednesday night and the man who had flirted with her when she was out with a group of her female friends. Now, in her mind, it is him on top of her. Her heart speeds up, her breathing quickens, and her noises get louder. But just as her fantasy begins to take shape and she feels she might even come, her partner makes a particularly awkward thrust. Her fantasy disappears. The moment has gone, and the next second she realises he is ejaculating. She makes a sound for each of his contractions, then relaxes with him as his penis shrinks inside her. Impatient for him to remove his now dead weight, she coughs, gently. His limp appendage is ejected, he moves off her and they slip into their usual post-coital embrace. Both feel guilty at not having made more effort for their partner's sake and both feel depressed. Briefly, they exchange untruths over how pleasurable everything had been before eventually drifting into post-coital sleep.

So what of 2011 and the coming days?

Well apart from us being 4 months into it already, I just have a feeling we are on the edge of an era of big things

You could say this is inspired by the 2012 phenomena, and before you start, no I dont buy into the doom story, it's just another year as far as I can tell, but, maybe it is an opportunity for people with a consciousness, to raise it a bit.

What does that mean?

Basically, tune out of the shit stuff and into the good

If life is just a perception

then let's choose what we perceive

.

My meditation work, which has been a 4 year journey so far, bumped up a gear this last year. Right now I am working on Osho's 112 meditations based on the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

wtf? you may ask

and well you may ask it

The first meditation is the one Buddha, and he was quite possibly a real chap, found enlightenment through. Just the one. Called Anapana, focusing on his breathe going in and out the nostrils and he thereby achieved enlightenment, stopped the world, stopped the monkey brain from reacting

I was having a dig around with these funky meditation techniques and then happened upon 48 to 50, and was pleasantly surprised to find them relating to sex and how to go about it

Meditation was, after all, supposedly invented as a way to achieve a state of bliss otherwise only achieved during sex

not the humpy bumpy scratchy shimmy bang bang bang uh uh sex, the other sort, involving being quite still and highly aware of everything until the body starts shaking, and it does, I can attest to this phenomena

Though personally I actually quite like it feral, but that's just me

So meditation is what I am working hard at, whenever I can, which is quite a lot, and it is doing me good, I would never say it is a cure, like I am still punchy as fuck and prone to sleeping with the wrong kinds of women....but then I dont actually see these as problems anyway, but I digress

So what of 2011 and the coming days?

Well my suggestion to us would be this,

Get ourselves a nice place in the sun it doesnt have to be expensive,
Make our lives about lifestyle choices, fuck trying to get rich, we'll never get there
Make it about the moment, bugger later, later we are all dead and that's a fact
Learn tantra and meditation - trust me you need them both in your life
the secret to both is simple, stop trying to do something.
Manifestation is the way forward - dont work your ass off for it, intend it towards you
Do a vision board - 3 days it took me and blew my mind it worked so well

and that's enough from me for today, now I need.... to stop trying to do something

Actually I may knock out a quick jizz-free wank first , and then that

coz that's the kind of guy I am


Here is a piccie of the place I love to be, things seem all ok when I am there....

Gods Bless you all, Goddesses too, here's to a bright fuckin future coz we all deserve it

: )

2010 was the year that...

I got fired

I sold everything I owned, again

I gave up smoking

I meditated every day, most of the day, for 3 months and went wherever the road took me

I completed my circuit of Australia, started on a bicycle in Katherine in 2007 and finished on foot in Cooktown 2010

I sat in front of a tree in Cooktown for 3 days, until I experienced what Buddhists mean by 'the true nature of existence is emptiness'

I returned to Sydney broke but in exactly the right head space

I started a business in I.T.

I had free time and money

I let go of some bad things that had followed me for too long, and defined me for too long

I had to let go of a relationship with a girl I thought could be 'the one'

I started drumming congas, and getting paid for it

I said goodbye to a suicide friend and watched him go into the earth in a black wooden box

I rented two places at once, one in Sydney, one on a cliff-top ocean view setting in Kiama

I finally let go of the dream of being a musician, then within months, I was released on a CD published by a record label in the UK. In 30 years of trying to make it in the music industry, this had never happened before

I made my first vision board

I said goodbye to Bondi

I am back

Wordpress didnt really work out for me. I feel in need of some skull-bloggery again and I may have some time here and there to do a bit, so , dusting good ol blogspot dot off....

And may I suggest following my other blog too, Daily Blog, if only because it has a photo of one of my favourite nipples on it -

http://thesmilingbean.blogspot.com/