What is perfect, anyway? – 1995

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Pretty messed up today. Smoked loads of hash last night and too many beers. Felt like shit, mentally and physically.

I have been trying to reach a kind of perfect mental state and it has been driving me crazy. That isn’t the way. What is ‘perfect’ anyway? So this ideal I have, part of me wants, and so everything I lay eyes on or think about, this part criticizes. I want it to stop but wanting it to stop won’t help either. Fucked up. No. This week was real good.

Have I ever been happy? What is it? I feel so detached from this world and even when people (rarely) talk about ‘important’ things things, I’m still not interested. I want to put all words I write in quotes. I think I’m something I’m not. It’s all right, man! Please. Stop.

I am not in common with anyone – 1996

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I feel so differently to those around me. Went to Chris’s band’s 4th gig [Virgin Soldiers], at Docs. I filmed it for them. Didn’t want to go. People getting drunk, loud rock music, etc, etc. Came back when it had finished and after Chris had been headbutted. They are all downstairs now making a hell of a lot of noise.

Wrote a letter to J along the lines of ‘I am not in common with anyone and didn’t want to socialize’. Not with anyone, really. Is there something wrong with me? It usually makes me uncomfortable. Why is this? Should I attempt to overcome this or ‘run away’? Maybe it is just the type of socializing. I am not interested in what most people consider fun, but it can make me feel so alone. Will that go? Should I go away? Thought of getting a loan to buy a camper van. I could live in that. Would I be lonely? How can I find people of like mind? Is there anyone of like mind?

But generally I have been very happy. I am much more with it, physically. Eating better. No drink for one month or more. Still smoke when others are smoking. Loud shouts outside. I must just do what feels right. Try to ignore the others. In the long term, perhaps it won’t seperate me. Perhaps that is the way. Yes it is. Can I sleep now, with all this? Peaceful states of mind when lying alone. Only tonight has this stress manifested, a result of feeling an outsider, and the general noise and indeed chaos. Have no part in it. Feel better now. Interest in Buddhism but more so, Krishnamurti, standing alone but not isolated. I’ll put my headphones on now until the noise has gone. Ringing in my ears from Docs. There is nothing wrong in being alone, and in any case I am not, really.

Disillusioned By Society – 1996

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The season is changing to autumn, although today was most warm. I am on holiday from Zurich [Insurance] for the first time. I am hoping that last night I took tobacco for the last time. I don’t intend to drink often now. I am disillusioned by most things society gets up to. Maybe I haven’t experienced the right things but I feel it is more than that, and an alternative is needed. So I am staying in lots and reading Krishnamurti. I am working out what the ‘nagging’ is. That is my aim.

Once upon a time in 1995

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Plaice, computer game, Loz, Piers, Smoky Bear’s Picnic, Jenty, pub, Brandons, smoking, theories, full yet hungry, Chris, bad moods, depression, white lines, mana, flying carpets, energy, sleep, work, quit smoking (both) immediately. A weekend of extreme highs and near extreme lows. Must even it out. Happy, but no illusions, bright, mind occupied, money, ambition, career, conversation, pizza delivery, Amanda, Russell, Ross, Matt, Helen, George, India Arms, beer, music, Craig and Craig, reconilliation, Ida, Steve, Laura, Jo, Richard, switched game off, Toy Story, cinema. I judge subjects on purity, leads to frustration. Accounts, OK, thoughts, headphones.

Diary Two – Big Black Notebook

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After the diary of the trip round Europe in 1990, the next one is more of a notebook, a big black notebook. There are no dates, but it covers the period where I began to experiment with a change of diet, yoga, came across Krishnamurti, but while living in a house of hedonists: drinking, drugs, mucking about – around 1995-1997, age 24-26. The end of Road Runner Dispatch and working for Zurich Insurance. There are no dates for each entry, nor an order to the book. Full of struggle and attempt at change, to give up and to find direction.

Favourite Albums of 2008

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This is my top five for 2008. All from the second half of the year. In order of release:

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes.

Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes

Sigur Rós – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst

conor-oberst

The Streets – Everything Is Borrowed

streets-everything-is-borrowed

Q-Tip – The Renaissance

q-tip

Diaries

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I have a box of old diaries, 20 or more of them, which I’ve wanted to share in some way for a long time. But what to do – scan them? read them out? type them? I am settling on typing them, and doing them as posts on the blog. The first is from the non-stop tour of Europe in 1990. There were many more from this era but were destroyed in a jealous wife incident in the early nineties.

Rodney Yee home course – Week 7

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Week 7 is taking two weeks. It’s a little too much, with around 25 asanas per day. This week is headstands and inversions, so it is incorporating more complete practices, course additions pretty much finished. So I am practising every other day, or every three days, with a few days off last week. I think after this I will settle down to a 5 day per week, 1 hour per day of yoga.

Moving Toward Balance – Week 6

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Restorative backbends supported by a bolster and blankets. Gentle forward bends performed at four in the morning. This week is totally different again. The course is full of welcome surprises, feeling that very little typical yoga was done this week, and yet it being way more ‘yogic’. This gentle yoga coinciding with a more stressful week at work and sudden wakings in the night hence the three, four o’clock practices. Moving into the last quarter of the course, the essential thing is to breathe and relax with the poses, not just strike ’em.

Netley, Hamble, Bursledon Walk

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Yesterday’s walk from Netley, through the haunted grounds of Royal Victoria Park, along the coast and across the common to Hamble, across to the east bank and up to Lower Swanwick and Bursledon.

I wanted to see the old asylum which still remains in the park but is surrounded by a long high wall and is now used for police training. Later I found myself trying to work out where the boatyard was from Howard’s Way from the 80s. The series was made in the Hamble valley.

My first video with my Canon FS11!

Old body

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Oh, an old body moving in strange ways early in the morning. Sometimes it seems easier not to bother at all, especially a couple of mornings after ice skating, my legs all heavy and needing to be clunked into position or lifted. Today I feel like an old creaky man. Week five is shoulder stands and handstands. I guess because it’s a home practice book he is replacing headstand with handstand so people don’t do wrong things with their necks. It’s a good week; I enjoy being upside down, and it’s also hard work, in as gentle a way as possible.

Russell's Revolution

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I like Russell Brand. I think the fuss over the answerphone messages is exaggerated and manipulated. Here’s a nice quite from him in the Guardian:

‘The thing is, Miranda [Sawyer], that through circumstance or design, I have aligned my success with some quite powerful feelings. And that is now the focus of my life. The material world is a transitory illusion, and if it is, why organise your life around the systems that it imposes? Particularly if those systems have negative consequences for huge numbers of people, and the planet itself. I wonder if there are ways that that can change; I wonder if there are elements in the way that the world is organised that are arbitrary and not absolute and could be altered? And I don’t mean normal things like, let’s wear a ribbon – I mean the entire economic structure of the planet or the way we look at religion.

‘And I’m more than aware that the chap off of Big Brother’s Big Mouth is unlikely to single-handedly augment an entirely new global culture. I am quite aware that this is not something I can legislate while I am appearing in the wonderful comedies of Judd Apatow. But when you say: “What do you want?”, that is what I want.’

Week 4 – Moving Toward Balance

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After week 3’s backbends with accompanying energy raising, week 4 was altogether more calming, steadying and relaxing. The focus was on twists, learning reclined twists, kneeling, crossed-legged, open body and cross-body. I like twists. You stop, you breath, subtle changes happen, relaxing muscles not sensed in daily life or in other poses. Called Allowing Receptivity, I am not sure how much receptivity was allowed but I very much enjoyed the week. The hour in the early morning is fast becoming my favourite time of the day. Next week is upside downers: Facing the Unknown. So, half way through, and then I move on to the Kripalu book so I can make an informed application to their teacher training course next year.

A bright autumn day; so many leaves fell in two days. Blankets of warm colours, ready to become soil. Seeing both my two brothers this afternoon (with girlfriends), which will be the first time in three years for us all to be together.

Night

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I’m wide awake, it’s (very early) morning. Woke at a time before it seemed, dreams over and mind clear. Hours and hours of the night, with music, clarity coming, lost, let go and returning; a strange rhythm not of my doing, its own cycle. Thoughts not formulated, generated, sparked in a mystery. Nothing to think about and no place for doing so. The night is a terrible and wonderful time, perspective shot.

iPod: Bukowski comes on, a boil on his ass. He, too, awake, some other time, place. And The Streets ‘everything else is just borrowed’ looping its way toward dawn and yoga and work. The hollow feeling grows and grows and grows and you want to call your mother but you can’t because you seem to have left an important part of your brain in a field in Hampshire. All right. Any important parts of my brain are being returned, coming home, and feeling good in a world that’s looking decidedly not.

Outside, a pheasant is started startled in the still, black, still black, trees.

End of Week Three

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Week three is a bit uneven, both the schedule in the book and my own participation. I was so tired Wednesday morning that I skipped a day, meaning Saturday’s rest day becomes Friday’s relaxation session. Also, day two is packed – 28 postures- so it takes well over an hour whereas the rest of the week is under an hour per day. Not sure why Rodney made of so uneven. Makes it hard when you have to go to work; you tend to rush to be on time. Overall though it’s a great book so far.

So much energy this week, all the backbends opening up. Quite a few nights with just a few hours sleep.

Spine and chest

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I can almost trace the entire length of the spine now, when sitting quietly. There have been gaps previously, areas I cannot feel, like mid lower back and the very middle of the back. When standing, the sway of the low back is much lessened and I fell taller. Also my chest feels open, broad, free; easier breathing, fuller, but less breathing from my nose and head, more from the belly or diaphram. Changes changes.

My new (to me) FS11 camcorder arrives today; a barely used half price bargain. Expect strange videos soon.

A bright frosty autumn gold morning.