Date: Friday 14th March 2008 Location: Somewhere Above Russia, Flying from Hong Kong to London (ugh)
I bought the Asus. I'm inboard now flying out. Very, Very nice flight; I'm really impressed with this airline.
I can't recall when I last wrote, so I think if I just write from leaving Guilin, that'll give me something to do until my battery runs out.
OK, it's always hard leaving Guilin, but I got on the train. Hard to remember now, but I remember that I didn't meet anyone. Arriving at Guangzhou, I already know the city, but directions to riverside yha were poor.
But I got there. It was a very nice location. I got into a lovely routine of working on the plan and thinking about my new name. God, I've given it some thought, and still it's difficult.
The hostel was over the Pearl River from Shamian Island. In the evenings I could take the boat over. I was really upset to find out that Blenz Coffeehouse was closed down; it's just a private residence now. I was planning to spend my days there thinking about the plan, and when the usual cyberspace over the city overcharged me I stopped going to the city centre.
Shamian's very atmospheric, I think. At night time the lighting is yellowish and usually it's slightly misty, it can be a bit depressing actually, sitting near the park by Starbucks. But it ended up that my habit was taking an evening meal at Lucy's, something that I came to love.
The area around the Youth Hostel is lovely for strolling. One morning I got chatting to a guy; he was a security guard posted in a little hut. He was only early twenties, and I think called Peony. He lived in the poorer area and used to be a tour guide, mainly for Nigerian people. He was also self-employed in garments or something. We actually met rug Saturday, er, that's tomorrow actually, I have a day shopping and paying for other accommodation. Then Sunday I come up to Northampton where I have two days in a guest house or something, in Abington. That's fifty pounds but pretty close to A's house, plus it's summer of course, so dormitories in London are expensive at fifteen to twenty.
It's all flooding back to me now. Wandering around Finchley with nothing to do, nowhere to go. But as I've stated on millions or occasions, I do have these set reasons. In and out.
Anyway, Tuesday I leave Northampton, objectives are to have applied a passport with a witnessed name change deed, to have applied for OU funding, and then a ticket back to Hong Kong.
I have a night in Jamyang Courtyard Accommodation, a Tibetan Buddhist Place in Elephant and Castle, which should be interesting. Then next morning, a ticket to Newcastle. One night in Albatross dormitory, then the precepts for seven days at Throssel. Leaving there 'after brunch', It will be about midday, so I'll have about twelve hours until my midnight bus, back to London at six am, then another six hours in London until midday when I leave back to Northampton, then I have a week in the Grand Hotel for 110 sterling. And, this is what I planned and arranged, as well as new name possibilities, lying on my back by the pavilion park riverside promenade.
I checked out from there; it was another place I didn't want to leave in a way. I'd already arranged the bus, so it was pretty easy getting down and over.
I had somehow double bookings in Hong Kong, but kind of worked it out. I ended up with a really friendly kid, but miserable female. He have me bad advice about using phonecards, but was helpful otherwise. The room was a standard Hong Kong shoebox, but clean.
I bought this Asus at Fortress. Oh God, I don't even want to write it down. Briefly, I asked in the Mongkok branch and they only had white, checked on the computer for other stores and showed me there are zeros, a long list, and I just had the very strong intuition that he was lying. So, with credit card in hand I just kept going. I went back up and phoned customer service, there are SEVEN black ones in the ocean terminal. So I went and got that. I was looking at it and when I turned around, the guy had walked off with the credit card and was standing there waiting for the PIN.
I sat and typed in a cafe, all is good. Then realised speech marks don't work. Then by nighttime it was crashing and I got worked up and decided it would have to go back. So customer service said I could leave it there if there's a fault and pick it up when I get back.
I went to HKTA, and they were helpful, as they always have been. Then I went back to the shop, they did an F9 reset and it was just fine. Ugh, they come across as.... I don't know. Perhaps retailers are the same anywhere?
Well, I went over to a cafe in Central, and realised that the right click doesn't work. All the way back, he did something and it was OK.
I went back to this cyberspace I found in Wanchai, very nice, I tried to change my name, or at least by a name deed, but clicked the wrong thing and ended up with the statutory declaration. 7.50 for a document template! I looked at three places that sell them. They look like law firms, but when I did a whois search, they were private individuals living in flats rainy seaside places.
But I did manage to get the last of my bus tickets, and print my flight ticket.
I spent a lot of time, in Guangzhou and the in HK working out my name. It was strange in HK as I go to the harbour, and there is 'star' everywhere, star ferry, avenue of the stars. I looked out over the harbour and declared that I have taken this name now (as I couldn't formalise it at the time).
Then I went back and got my bags. I'd checked where to get the airport bus, but then couldn't find it. I got a bit flustered, but running around I did get on. Smooth and lovely, man, I LOVE this airline.
So here I sit heading back. I think we're over Finland or something.
I phoned Bri, mother's ex-partner. A won't be at her place. It sounds like she'll never be there. I phoned the hospital to speak to her, and she refused to come to the phone. The nurse told me not to come without speaking to Carly. I asked the nurse if that was ominous, and she said nothing.
I phoned my father too. We had a long chat and it was genuinely nice to speak to him.
They're bringing breakfast now, I'll pack this up. I forgot where 'me nicotine is but I'm kind of OK without it.
LOVE OASIS HK!
---
Later: About 7.30am
On the National Express Coach Heading to Victoria
Made it through. All the time I spent worrying about going through customs, over the previous months, and as it turned out, the guy just smiled at me.
There certainly is some novelty in typing the diary on the coach... as long as the power lasts. This little machine is certainly growing on me. I'm really averse to spending money, always have been, Monastic leanings. I recall I was the same when I first got the Nikon camera. I emailed them asking where I could get service and there was no reply, and I felt really ripped off. I was just about to leave London and only had a short window to make sure that it all worked OK. After a few days, I accidentally turned the flash off, I didn't understand the settings, and wished so much that I hadn't bought it.
But over time, I ended up loving it. I mean really loving it. Sometimes I just sit and look at it in restaurants and think how beautiful it is.
I hope it will be the same for this, now I'm used to not panicking every time something happens I don't understand.
I just got a power-warning. So I'll turn off and just get used to being in London,
So much to write!
Happy! Happy!
Date: Sunday 16th March 2008
Guest House, 127 Abington Avenue, Northampton
7.34pm
I'm lying on the bed watching TV. I'm not planning to go anywhere, because it's warm inside and freezing outside and I just snapped my flippie, and so have no way to even get to a shop for some glue. This really is madness.
But the novelty of this little machine isn't wearing off. I really am starting to goddamn love it.
So... what's happened since I was on the coach.
It went on for a couple of hours, then arrived at Victoria. I was going to walk straight onto the road, but there was a line of policemen blocking my way. We had to all pass through a kind of sniffing device, then a drug-sniffing dog called Penny. The dog didn't bother with me, but picked out a guy in front of me. He was taken aside for a stop and search. Perhaps it's better to have animals picking people out because they're more objective.
I walked out and had a drink at Starbucks, then walked onto the buses. My Oystercard still worked, so I was able to get straight on the bus. It only went as far as Baker Street for some unknown reason, then we were all thrown off. We continued the journey on another one, and eventually I got off at Finchley Road.
I went up to Palmer's. They checked me in and the system picked me up, with a list of about twenty previous reservations. But there was no one there who remembered me. I went down shopping at Sainsburys, then went to the only smoking place left there, a pub that I didn't realise was called North Star until I was leaving.
I went up to the room; I'd stayed there before. There was a guy there already getting ready for bed. I thought perhaps he snores too? I took two Valium and passed out.
I think I woke up for the toilet about midnight. There was the guy who was below me at the door and someone else and I think he was complaining. Perhaps I'm paranoid? I was still fairly groggy.
I finally woke up proper about two am. I made myself some coffee and sat out in the cold and wet and wished I was in Hong Kong. I went to the 24 hour shop and had another coffee. Of course, I'm in England with no ticket out, so I'm back on the 1200 calories a day diet.
When it was daylight, I put my bags in storage as I was changing rooms, then went down to the tube. I phoned Jamyang Buddhist Centre to check it was OK for me to come over and pay, and it was, so I got on the tube and went.
I got there, to Elephant and Castle, and realised I was lost. The tube attendant was incredibly helpful and gave me a map. I set off walking, and realised that I was passing, by pure coincidence, the place where I went to the Christmas before last when I was helping the homelessness charity (the time it didn't work out but I never hated myself (honestly) because I'd at least made the effort).
Inside, Barbara, whom I'd arranged accomodation for the 18th turned out to be an ordained nun. She was friendly enough and I paid cash and was all done.
I got a bus back up to Charing Cross and planned to eat at the actor's church, but it was closed, so I walked all the way back to St. James in Piccadilly and ate there. I had my empty cup and some winos convinced themselves it was alcohol, but it was still good, but cold. I'd walked too far, far, far, too far. I went into the church and lit a candle and left a written prayer, of my gratitude for the trip having gone well and to be able to get away again OK.
I got the bus back was in the old routine, slimfast bars in the cold, tins of food, shaving over tiny sinks with people waiting outside. In a way it wasn't nice, but then again, I think I'm always going to feel at home around transients now.
Another two Valium and again I passed out. I think I woke up about two am. again. Now the staff were the same as before, but no one recognised me; of course the last time I stayed there I was starting to starve to death.
Then day came. At the shop the Polish woman is pregnant, she looked so much older. I started getting into the Asus a bit more, though I wasn't able to open the dvd or manual.
I got on the bus to Victoria. This is nasty today. I'm wearing flip-flops and it's raining. I look insane. The bus only went as far as, somewhere north of Oxford street, because of a demonstration. So I went down to the Underground, where a rude, stupid person told me the ride wouldn't be free; though I managed to maintain right speech vow.
I got to Victoria. The bus wasn't displayed on the board. Then it was delayed by half an hour. I phoned the guest house and the lady was going out. Then I phoned Brian. He's going to be at A's tomorrow at a quarter to nine. I got on the bus and went through every picture on my camera memory card, and deleted all but the best. Sunny tropical happy pictures reviewed on a cold, gray bus. I did this fully concentrated, and when I did the last one, I looked up straight to the North Star pub Finchley, which we happened to be passing.
On the bus I sat working on my Change of Name Deed, then we arrived and I got more slimfast bars. I got the bus over to Abington Park. This eccentric mad black guy got on whom I remember from the launderette on the Kettring Road. Also, a woman of about fifty who always used to be in bhs and although wouldn't know me, I do recall she chatted to M. once there.
The bus missed a stop as the driver saw a friend in another vehicle and he held a conversation with him as they drove along parallel. I had to walk back here with freezing feet. I came to number 127. The door was open, but no one came when I knocked. The key was under the mat. I came up to room 5 and as I sat down, by flip-flop snapped. Now I'll perhaps have to go barefoot to Durhams shop, if it's still there, and still run by the gormless kid that I went to school with.
But, so far, it's roughly going to plan. It's ... well, strange I suppose, I'm checking in places and traveling with tickets and receipts all booked in Fresh Cyberspace, Wanchai, Hong Kong.
Now... get the passport application in and make plans to get back!
Date: Monday 18th March 2008
Abington Guest House, 127 Abington Avenue, Northampton 04.16am
I woke up about forty minutes ago.
Isn't it strange, how I just wrote forty and a very brief and subtle memory came into my mind, of being in a stale smelling 'special' classroom at school, with 'special' teachers for 'special (read: dysfunctional) children and I wrote 'forty' as 'fourty', and these two people standing there immediately saying how it was a very easy mistake to make and they make the same mistake all the time and making such a big deal about it, how everyone always makes this mistake. The purpose was based on the assumption I felt bad about it and needed to be protected, but I actually felt patronised.
It was such extremes. I was in a hellish mainstream full of broken adolescents and sadistic adults, broke down and was moved into a special room with retarded children and no work away from the main school and people who are used to dealing with people on the emotional edge.
Yes, now I'm here, all this rubbish starts coming back to me.
Oh God, I'm loving this machine now.
Anyway, after I finished writing yesterday, I went to bed, then I heard someone come in and come to the door. It was a woman of about forty-five (or fourty five if you'd prefer; it's not particularly important), short, 'portly' and 'English domineering' type. I have to bear in mind that I'm an ultrasensitive, But she seemed a bit, stand-offish and curt. She asked for the fifty and I gave it to her, I said I'd go at about eleven thirty on Tuesday, but she said check-out was at ten; which is fair enough, but I suppose this is when I decided that she was curt.
Anyway, I went back to bed and watched American Wife-Swap and slept. I always hated realty programs (though somehow manage to compulsively watch them to the end before being indignant), but I realised that there is a lot of point, or reason, to this program. In this episode, like many others, it was an 'anything goes' type family against a strict one, and I suppose the proof is in the pudding (the children), and so people can just watch and compare two different ways of doing things, and there's some benefit to this.
Back to my story. I woke up at three thirty am. My body's adjusting after all the Valium. I didn't take any today, and I doubt I'll need it today.
I wanted to smoke, of course, so went down. The house is desserted and creaky and I went down with a coffee. Standing out in the dark street, I had a feeling someone was watching me from behind.
Then I came up and am basically trapped until the daylight. I have no shoes or anything. Barefoot to town; it's madness.
Then again, it might be better for me to have this time to concentrate on the main thing now which is getting my passport application sorted out, and I suppose deciding how long I'm going to stay, i.e. am I going to do the second week.
So... what is my schedule for today. I think:
Decide my new name once and for all.
Go to town and print my name change document.
Come back, meet Brian, get him to sign my name change document.
Put my shoes on.
Bring all my stuff here to the guest house.
Shave and get my apperance sorted out.
Get all of the documents I'll need for the application.
Go to town and pay for my accomodation in The Grand Hotel, and ask about the extra week.
Get passport photos from Jessops.
Phone ebay.
Go to Nationwide.
Get a check for 180 for Throssel.
Close ISA and put it in esavings.
Surrender all cards.
Ask for certified copies.
Ask for help with my funding application.
Get enough cash to live on.
20.00 Newcastle.
80 Living costs until I go back.
20 Nicotine aids.
60 for today, tomorrow in London and living costs.
Can't think of anything else but I think 200 pounds should do it.
Do the I Ching concerning when I should fly back.
Check if Barclaycard have replied to my email. Phone them regardless to check it's going to be OK, send them the card back and check how I'll buy online while I'm waiting.
Send the OU application with a cover letter.
Relax for five minutes.
Phone Par.
Go and see A.
Check the Internet at some point.
Home, TV and sleep.
Wake.
Put all stuff at Pars.
Bus to London.
Bayswater to meditate in Kennsington Gardens.
Check in Jamyang.
Picadilly. Go online and buy Amazon things.
St. James?
Sleep.
Go Newcastle.
Take precepts.
Return to London, then Northampton.
I think looking at this, it's going to be much better to keep my Barclaycard until Newcastle.
Date: Wednesday 18th March 2008
127 Abington Avenue, Northampton. 8.50am.
I've only got five minutes.
I went to the house. A's house. It was over-run. Brian came and let me in. I got my stuff out. I'd already been down town, barefoot at my flippies broke, and got the name change document sorted. Bri witnessed it and I took my stuff to the guest house. Successfully applied for a passport, but Nationwide wouldn't witness my documents. Went to see A. and she's better than I expected. Phoned par and he refused to take my bags, panicked when I asked and his partner said no. Bri's taking me back to A's, I put it all there, then off to the monastery.
Must get my stuff downstairs; I'll write when I'm back.
Wish me luck... with everything.
Date: Saturday 5th March 2008
The Grand Hotel, Gold Street, Northampton.
Back.
Well, at least I have my lovely little machine to laze back on the bed and continue the story.
So, I was in Abington Lodge...
Bri arrived on time, and was really friendly and helpful. It was genuinely nice to see him. I never really felt so comfortable around him, and he must have felt the same way about me because that's how everyone feels around me.
I'd say, 'Except J.' at this point.... the old me would have I say.
Well we were only driving around the corner of course, but he told me that there was a meeting at the hospital later that day, so I could phone him to find out what was going on.
We arrived at A's and got all my stuff back up there. He drove me into town and we talked a bit more. He was saying how no one wanted anything to do with G. I wanted to know if Carly had got the rings after all the palarvar, and Bri said they were still in M's place, as everything was in her bedroom just the way she left it. I said nothing but he said that he was too upset to deal with it now. It felt like it wasn't very long ago that she went... but I think it will be two years next month. Perhaps that's why we get on a bit now, B and I, that we shared that grief for the same person? I don't know.
Oh, he's another one who's stopped smoking.
I had to use the internet before going to London. There was a new Vietnamese place but it wasn't open yet. I went on to the usual 'click' internet. It was still called the same but the owners were new and the computers were using Vista. I needed to do quite a few complicated things, and it all went really smoothly there.
I had to get the bus back to A's as I'd left a bag I was taking to London.
Date: Sunday 6th April 2008
Beatties Restaurant, Northampton.
A long time since I came here. I recall being here with M obviously. I remember the time A was taken to hospital or something, and we sat at this table texting back and forth to Carly to sort out what was going to happen.
So many flashes of J in my mind, that we did this and that, in the background, it's a never-ending cycle. I was thinking on the stroll over here, perhaps I got a special deal from the Karma Police before coming to earth. I have this really weird lesson to go through, but I'll get the resources I need to solve it all, as long as I think the right way and end up making the right choices.
But to carry on the story... I went back to A's to get a bag I had cleared out. Basically, it was all personal correspondence. I mean everything I had from Nemia, i.e. the woman I was engaged to, all from Mian, the cards I got when I passed my driving test, 21st birthday etc. Plus, the Hong Kong diary from 1993/4 before I met J. The first diary abroad, actually started on J's birthday, before I knew her! Also, all the sketchbooks I ever kept. It was just a big bag of memories.
I got back on the bus and made it to London but was later than I thought it would be. I got over to Jamyang Buddhist Centre as quickly as I could. Did I mention the odd thing? To get there, just around the corner from it and I have to pass it to get there, is the warehouse where I volunteered that Christmas to help with the homeless.
I got in Jamyang and there was a woman who showed me around. The room was a converted cell and had a metal door with peep hole and a slot where food trays would have been passed through. The woman was quite disapproving when she realised that I was going to be leaving straight away, but whatever, I arranged this with Barbara, who knows what I'm doing. I raced back out and got straight on the tube and made it to Bayswater.
It was dark by the time I got there and I wasn't sure if it would be open, but it was. It was very atmospheric in the dark. I walked over to M's bush. I told her what was going on, that I'm Jaydin now, that I'm taking the precepts etc. I think she was pleased.
I walked down back onto the main path. I was holding the bag with all the past that wasn't to do with J, I lifted it out, and put it all in the bin. I took a deep breath and walked away. I kept walking until I got to the Black Lion Gate, or nearish there. I looked in the bag and realised that there were two bits left. One, a silver ring that Joanne had given me, and an I Ching coin that J and I had used. I took them out and threw them on the grass. I turned back and took a photo, it came out red and eerie looking.
I turned around and walked across the road and down to Bayswater station.
I went to Covent Garden. I had planned to use the porn dvd cybercafe, but it was closed down and gone. I tried a new place nearby but it was too expensive. I ended up at the one in Charing Cross, which was now more expensive. I coudn't actuallly get anything done. I came out and had a cold pizza, then went back to Jamyang.
For a moment I couldn't open the door and started to panic, but managed to in the end. There was actually a member of staff there. I went straight up to my little cell, and was kind of happy in my own way. I'd just taken all my non-J possessions, things I'd invested so much time and effort protecting from A and time and copying, thinking that it all explains my past and what I've done, and it's just... gone, gone, gone. And now I sat there in my cell, travelling so much lighter in a room built to imprison people used now by the spiritual surrounded by pictures of the Dalai Lama, and the whole thing planned and booked in Wanchai, Hong Kong Island.
Date: Tuesday 8th April 2008
Grand Hotel, Gold Street, Northampton. 10.40pm
Uuugh. I want to go home (to Asia).
Anyway, to carry on.
I woke up in good time. I had found out the bus times, but ended up getting on the tube instead. As it turned out, I was actually early and had time to hang around the station.
I ended up at Starbucks and was dealing with the university application. It was sharply cold around me as I sat there, but kind of crisp also, with the sun out and a light turquoise sky. As I sat there I became aware of.... well, not really irony, I just recalled the last time I sat out doing all my OU papers, outside the cybercafe in Vientiane, Laos, though I was a bit happier then. I, at the same time, was also flashing back to the time I was searched by the police. Perhaps I'll never feel fully relaxed in London again.
I phoned the university from the station. They said that there was no point submiting my application until I had all my ID's back, so I needn't have even sat there with the application at all.
I got on the bus.
The arrival time at Newcastle was early evening. I needed to get to bed pretty quickly so I would be up at night and the snoring not bother anyone. I went out and spent far too long looking for fast food. I ended up with a really strange 'felafel', which actually had chips inside it and I imagine it's a northern thing.
I went home. I took valium. I was worried that I'd had too many since I'd been back, but I had no choice; I had to fall asleep. I think I lay there for about half an hour and then a group came in the room.
I woke at five am, much longer than eight hours so I don't know if my room mates got any sleep. Rather than take Valium because of the snoring, maybe I should give them to the people around me?
I went out to Macdonalds for a coffee, then I vaciliated for a few hours, outside and inside, until it was light, when I got my bag out and showered. There was plumbing work going on so I ended up walking around in shorts looking for one that worked.
I went to the computer and printed out all the name change letters I needed, to inform officcial places of my name change. I checked the prices to Hong Kong. I ordered the negative scanner I'd planned on getting way over six months ago.
Around Newcastle, I was a bit harried and ended up not finding any clothes which I'd hoped for, meaning I'd be going onto the monastery.
I went to the Post Office and sent off all the letters, got my bag out of Albatross, then got the train to Hexham.
On arriving, I went to double-check the bus times, then walked down to the church. I wrote a prayer and lit a candle and had a quiet think, as I had done once previously.
Outside the church over the road, I had some English chips. They came in a box and were real cut ones. Not that I'm particularly partial to them, but for sometimes. Soon I would be on monastery food.
I went up to north of the town and got the bus to Allendale.
There, I went to The Golden Lion pub. It was very cold by then so it was nice to be in by the fire. Tea was the cheapest I ever remember paying for it. A little dog took a liking to me and jumped up, and then refused to move, despite the owner chastising it.
I just relaxed, for about an hour. I would have been happy there all night, but the sun was going down so I walked off to the little farmhouse which is actually the local taxi firm.
But I took a wrong turn of course, and ended up lost. It's not good to be lost in rural places like that. It's not like being lost in the cities where you can ask someone or just pick up local transport or go inside somewhere and sit and think. No. It was dark and cold and windy and I was on a road with only empty scenery around me.
Date: Wednesday 9th April 2008
Grand Hotel, Gold Street, Northampton. 11:56pm.
Ugh (again)... about everything.
Anyway, to continue:
I walked back up to the main road. To my right was the road I thought that I should have taken, but it was too dark and too late to risk it. I walked back up to the little square and went to the small shop. The lady said that Nigel Baynes 'had never come back with his number', and so she didn't have it, but then remembered that he sometimes advertised in the paper, so she looked it out and gave it to me.
I went back to the main road where there was a phone box. His number was on answerphone but it also gave a mobile. I phoned it and it was also on answerphone. I phoned the monastery to let them know I'd be late, but it was also on answerphone.
I went back to the Golden Lion pub to ask them what to do, there was a man and lady there. They said that taxis weren't available at night anymore and were all over in Hexham. They asked where I was going, and when I said, 'The Buddhist Abbey', the guy rolled his eyes, picked up his coat and walked off. The woman laughed, and said, 'Another one', then stood there enjoying my confusion. I asked her again what I could do, and she said that he would take me, 'he', being the guy who had just walked off. I asked how much that would be but she only smiled. I asked about the 'another one' comment, if this happens all the time, but she said no, just sometimes. Again, I asked how much it would be (though let's face it, I wouldn't have argued), and she smiled again, and whispered 'I don't think he wants anything'.
We got in the car and he drove. We chatted, of course. He was a new owner, only there since Christmas. I think it had only happened once, i.e. someone turning up with no transport, a Dutch guy three weeks previously.
He had known where the place was because he used to deliver goods there when he worked for Tesco. I noted that I had been served by the same guy who was there way over a year ago, but it turns out he was just working there.
We arrived and he really did refuse any money, telling me to put whatever I would have paid into the collection box.
I had been driven straight to the door, so it dawned on me that the last cigerette I'd be able to smoke was the one while lost in Allendale.
I walked in and the place was dark and wholly desserted. I walked up into the common room and there was just one woman there, about twenty-five, upper-class accent, and I explained my situation and asked what to do. She was non-plussed, but after a moment, asked, 'Are you Jaydin?'. I said that I was and was informed there was a note for me on the guesthouse door.
I went down and there was a note that I was in a room. I went back up and asked her where it was, it was upstairs. She offered me some chocolate but I had three slimfasts, so I declined. I asked her name and she told me it was Mia.
I went up and there was a room with two beds but no one in it. There was another door that looked like it was a cupboard, but was actually going into another room. I recalled actually working in the room on a previous visit, where Rev. Galen had me there sanding and varnishing the table that I was now to use.
There was a radiator that was on, tea and coffee making facilities.
I lay down and looked at the Dharmapada I had brought with me. It was the one I had bought on November 5th 1997, when I'd recieved the card from J saying that she looks at the stars on my birthday and I'd been in the church and had my siteseeing day. I recall going to the lake there in Dharmasala and picking up a feather on that day. It is the anniversary of the day I got together with J. Anyway, that feather had been the dharmapada's bookmark for over a decade, and I'd decided that this was a fitting thing to bring with me to symbolise exactly what I was trying to achieve.
I also had with me my red 'practice book', i.e. the self written verses which I recite each day. I had wanted to put in some dhamapada verses for some time, and now, alone in the room, was the perfect time. I wrote down the verse, 'Flowers', because it's the title that J told me was her favourite Rolling Stones album, but I also like it's description of the 'flower arrows of desire'. I also wrote down the verse 'Joy', as it ends with the word 'stars'.
I fell asleep.
...
Next morning I awoke, for the first time hearing the alarm I had set, which by pure coincidence was 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. I had set it early so there was time to do down for a drink. I looked at the days shedule. Mia had told me it was respite, and so I had an easy introduction
7.00am Rise
7.15 Meditation
8.00 Short morning service
8.30 Temple clean up
9.45 Brunch
Renewal
1.00 Snack
6.00 Medicine meal (novices common room)
Kitchen clean up
7.30 Optional Meditation
8.00 Meditation
9.00 - 9.45 Quiet time
9.45 Lights out.
Date: Friday 11th April 2008
Beatties Restaurant, Grovsener Centre, Northampton. 4.42pm
I really don't like having to catch up like this because it means I can't purge what's happened today out of my system.
Anyway...
I went to the ceremony hall. They were still rising the curtain that seperates the genders and I realised how many more women there were than males. There was a new carpet that was a much nicer colour.
There was a meditation, which was a relativly short period and went quite well with me on my kneeling stool. I forgot how the morning service went and at the end everyone dropped to their knees to chant the ancestral line and I, being a secret cripple, stood there stooped for ten minutes, with the sun behind me and my long shadow going right accross the hall; later Rev. Leoma told me off for it.
We had to do temple clean up, then I was put in the kitchen, cleaning mushrooms and then grating cheese. The cook told me a story about Nigel Baynes, the taxi guy, who'd answered a call for a taxi while on stage in a panto. He also said that Allendale had won an award as the best village in England.
As it was respite, food was in the novice's common room Mia talked about London, that her degree was in journalism, but she hates it and doesn't know what she wants to do.
We were joined by a Dutch woman called Kosha who was a minister in robes. She was some kind of special educator for old people, who are actually quite spritely and referred to as 'older young people'. An Italian-type woman who later turned out to be Turkish, quipped, 'That means they don't get it'. There were two other women to my left. A spritely little scott called Elizabeth, and someone else I don't reccall. actually,it might have been Freya, an ex-quaker of about sixty-five. There was a big guy I initially judged as Dutch but he turned out to be Scottish with a confused accent.
I went up to my room later. Rev. Leoma came up to tell me that there had been a cancellation and that it would be my room alone now for the duration of the retreat. So, I was lucky and bleessed because whatever happened, I had that space at least now.
I went down to the common room and the Turkish woman was there. She was from near Goreme. though had lived in Engand for twenty years. She and her husband were converted fwbo's but her partner didn't like metta practices, and so they had switched. She came across as a motherly person, though that might have been because Rev. Leoma, now head of the guest departmeent, had told her to keep an eye on me.
I broke down the group; there were five women and two men.
I went downstairs to make some calls. One to extend my reservation at the Grand Hotel, though I could only get through to an answering machine.
I did manage to get through to Brian. He said A had been moved from the hospital to a nursing home just outside Northampton. I asked if that would be permanent and he hesitated, then said 'yes' tentatively. We arranged to go there together the Monday after I returned.
I wanted to go outside for the shrine but it was too cold.
On the way in I passed Rev. Finnon, who had been head of the guest department on my previous visit and he seemed genuinely pleased to see me. He commented on my new name, then gave me the gossip. Reverend Muriel had left and gone back to Germany.
Robert, in the end, hadn't ordaned, but still comes. He had got professionally involved with music and still played the organ for them sometimes.
Deborah had left a few weeks afterme. She had been thinking of Jukai but decided, in the end, that it wasn't for her. She had dropped by the Reading priory some time later and had been off to India to do some Ayurveda thing.
Later. Grand Hotel. 11.14pm.
To contunue:
Then, in the novices common room, there was a very awkward medicine meal. Perhaps it's because I was the outsider, and these closed little groups started, but perhaps it's something to do with food as well? I remember previous meals there that went the same way. Come to think of it, I remember doing it at Brendan's brother's place in Australia, that is, going mute at the dinner table.
It was hard as it wasn't really a considerate table. Food wasn't really passed around and I had to reach right out over the table. On my previous visit, Fussing Robert had been in charge of making sure everyone got everything.
Later in the blue common room they, Mia and the Turkish woman, were talking about the ancestral line, which they both knew by heart. I recalled that they both, all actually, knew all the reciting scriptures by heart and I felt out of place, even more out of place than I had previously.
Then it was on for meditation. Again this went quite well. I asked someone about the next days schedule and again it was respite. So I felt a bit better as at least it was an easy introduction. The fact is -- I clam up in groups -- and that's perhaps, considering a life devoted to human potential, is just who I am.
I realised later that I hadn't bought a shell to do the magic with - so would have to double up next time - but, the magic is working though. i.e.:
I have the perfect Internet machine
The scanner is on the way
My name is changed
I'm looking into foreign nationalily
These are all things I've consciously created.
I decided, at some point, that I would actually read the whole of the dhamapada while I was there. I realised that the feather, which I'd used as a marker, was at the section mentioned 'The Seeker', so I would be adding this to the personal practice book.
I went to the common room and had some chocolate, and went to the room to get ready for bed. I realised that, in my consciousness there was a deep sense of unworthiness, i.e. not being worthy of the room. there were over fifty people coming, and few get a room. OK, it's because of the snoring, perhaps, but life had worked out, but yes, I, shall I say I felt humbled, which is more acceptable.
I looked at my records and worked out that, on my first day as a non-smoker, I'd taken 36mg of nicotine.
Sleep.
...
I woke up early. Meditation went very well. My morning job was cleaning the paintwork in the Hall of Pure Offerings.
Breakfast again was in novice's common room. A new visitor, Ingrid, from Austria, arrived. She was doing her like, fifth or sixth precept retreat, which is common, as people kind of renew their vows type of thing. Also, Fer (or something) from Holland arrived. He was a kind of innocent, friendly, clumsy, lovable dick kind of person. It was mostly Kosha talking, about the walking classes she gives to 'older young' people (who don't get it). So, I could pay attention and was more comfortable.
I meditated alone until lunch. A new woman called Heather arrived. About fifty, almost always silent, but talked with the expressions on her face. I noticed Fer was covered in hair and feathers, which he explained was from a cat and sleeping bag.
It was snowing now so I went out and took pictures.
Three more people arrived.
Mia came in and said she's just looked at the Jukai placing plan in the ceremony hall and that I was behind her and would have to stare at her ass for two weeks, and it's creepy.
She tried to think of something funny to say but couldn't. It was kind of a forced irony, so she perhaps was only half joking.
I went up to the room and had a tea by myself. I reflected how, in my astrology chart, saturn in sqaure jupiter, exactly for the retreat period, the interpretation of which is one's faith being tested, and I wondered how this would manifest.
Saturday night, the last night before Jukai (and the full moon), I had taken 34mg of nicotine.
...
Date: Saturday 12th April
Click Cybercafe, Kettring Road. 12.46pm
To continue, here in a cybercafe because I'm doing a final archive from cd to sd so I can get rid of the last of my stuff.
People started arriving about then. There was one woman who looked familiar in the hall of pure offerings. I'd noticed eariler but wanted to make sure. Yes indeed, it was LINDA, the woman who had given me a lift away the first time! It was so good she was there. I'd remembered, she had two teenage daughters, converted from Catholosism.
Also there, and probably the only person I had missed, GEORGE! Yes, the guy who had lived in Allendale and used to come in the daytime for training. He had been planning to go to Sri Lanka where he'd been accepted in a monastery, and he had indeed been there, though he'd ended up getting malaria and being ill. Then he went up to Rishikesh and joined an ashram, and was happy enough there. So good to see him!
Later. Yates Bar. Ridings Arcade, Northampton. 6.52pm.
I just asked if there was wifi here and they said no, but I found it anyway and then had to use an old whetherspoon card to log on.
So...
It was lunchtime and I was seated next to Linda by chance. The retreat officially started with this meal, so we were all in silence. Heather was opposite me and she gave very long eye contact while we had to keep bowing to each other during the eating rituals.
As usual at the start of a retreat, there were far too many volunteers in the kitchen, and I was the worst one they let in. It all went well, but it was pointed out to make sure that the aprons weren't inside out when putting them on.
We had to meet upstairs for a brief talk. We were told to stay on the ground. Only read Dogen's writings about the precepts.
Then it was meditation. I forgot to bow to my chair, and the whole thing went on far, far too long.
We went to the common room, the blue one, there was a really old guy who asked me where the cups were and I mistakenly told him downstairs. I considered how he was sleeping the in the ceremony room and I had a room and I hated me. I realised that, out of all the people on the retreat it was just me and me alone who had a room all to myself... and Ihatedd me, and now this old guy didn't have a drink becuase of me. Earlier I had showered and looked up while doing so, and realised that the vent above my head said AXIA on it. I chose this as my middle name as it made the numerology of my name lucky, thinking it was a collection of lettrers, but found out retrospectively, that it means 'worthy'. Perhaps this transpired subconsciously in me. I realise that, deep, deep down inside of me, there's a deep sense of worthlessness. Sometimes when we're praying collectively in the ceremony hall I feel like an impostor and emotion rises up in me and I have to hold on to myself to not break down and cry.
I relaxed for a while, then went upstairs. I did magic at the shrine, as it was the full moon, then I went to bed.
...
I was quite sleepless that night, I had to keep going to the toilet. I realised that I was drinking tea just before sleeping and resolved to go straight to bed from then on.
I woke half an hour early, so there was time to go to the common room for tea. Morning service was fairly routine. For temple cleaning work I was assigned the area outside the guest department as 'my area', including the toilet there, and shoe shelves, and so could get on each morning with that. Over the course of the week she seemed to worry that it was too much for me and kept telling me to take it easy and finish early if I wanted to, and a couple of times came to thank me for the work I was doing; she needn't have worried as I was always happy doing it.
At breakfast the monk said we were all making too much noise with our cutlery and looking around too much. Kosha showed me how to be more quite, and said that Zen masters eat silently. That sounds horrible, but it wasn't a telling off; she was a very friendly, genuine person.
I was then assigned upstairs to the material department to be working with Rev. Chandra. She remembered me, though couldn't pronounce my name. She picked up on my bad leg within moments and I was given the seated job of ironing.
After this I rushed up to shave and was last in for the tofu lunch, which was embarrasing but not too bad.
There was a talk while meditating. From the Rev. Master, he said that we have a wish and a calling and we have to realise that they are the same thing. Then, in each situation, we have to think, 'what is it that I *really* want?'. Lastly, you have to *surrender* into the moment and have investigation, of what it is you want.
**DIAGRAM**
Tips to get Ahead at Throssel Hole
1. Dress all in black
2. If not black, at least dark clothes.
3. Don't make noise with cutlery
4. Don't look around a lot at people.
5. Don't put more food on your plate than you can eat, including the liquid.
6. Rest the spoon in your bowl facing away from you.
7. Bow when crossing a Buddha.
8. Put the wagasa on the precept band on the hook outside the toilet when going in.
Later, I had a chat in the toilet (to not get caught breaking the silence rule), and caught up on the news.
Working meditation was sitting down sewing things.
Meditation was in the ceremony hall. We had to have our posture checked. Leoma gently ran her fingers up and down my back to show me how stooped I was. I tried, but later an American nun was a bit more direct by pushing her knee in. I was on a bit of a downer after that.
Tea and questions was in the common room. George asked if all desire springs from ultimate desire, which was something that Reverend Master had said. The answer was yes, so all desire is OK, it's acting on it which is the problem.
At night time in the ceremony hall, there was a ritual where we promised to live the precepts for one week. I hadn't understood that the first part was supposed to be a meditation. Monks came down and stood by the side of us and I was self-conscious. Posture, just like on my last visit, was a problem. The precepts were read out, and when asked, I said,
'I will'.
I had a sudden insight. The first time I was here, people had probably complained during spiritual counselling, about the snoring... and perhaps she'd linked that to me, having linked it to me by checking the records. Though I had actually mentioned it in my recent communications.
Bedtime. I'd taken 24mg of nicotine that day.
Later. Grand Hotel Northampton. 10.05.
Dream
I was in Abington Street, Northampton, with my father. He was being given some kind of responsibility and seemed really uneasy about it.
Then I was with Mother and Brian. Mother was dying and unable to really take part in anything and Brian and myself were kind of sorting things out.
Then I was watching kind of demonstration. It was called Six Seconds to Handover, where the territory was to be handed from Britain to Hong Kong and they were going to shut down all the electrical systems completely for six seconds, and then let the Chinese restart everything up again once they'd taken the territory back.
I looked at my teeth in the mirror and was pleasently surprised that they were in good condition.
Interpretation
The part about my father is when I asked him to look after a couple of bags and he overreacted; it's basically to let me know that I can't count on him.
Brian and I 'sorting things out' lets me know that it's better to rely on him rather than my natural father, despite everything.
Six seconds to handover, is six days until I formally take the precepts, finally being embraced by Oreintal freedom which I've sought since I was a child... or the freedom of Oriental spirituality I should say.
Monday Diary
I woke up early again.
Working meditation was sewing again; specifically, sewing decorations onto large prayer mats. Matthew, a novice, was in charge of allocating this and he told me to check each day as I might not always be there doing that.
I shaved.
At the notice board I checked the schedule. There was an older woman who was really down to earth and had character. She was to my right in the seating arrangement in the ceremony hall. She opened up a little once during tea and questions, saying about the way her family judge her past, and it made me wonder what her past was. She noticed I was having a hard time with my posture and was in pain (despite the fact that, as usual, I hadn't complained), and she expressed sympathy, which was nice. Perrhaps I shouldn't mention or think it, but she had the kind of kindly, liking and sympathetic to males attitude of madames.
I hung around the hall of pure offerings, and then noticed I was alone. I rushed to the ceremony hall and the meditation come lecture of the reverend master had started. I sat dejected on the stairs. Rev. Leoma came to the door to see who it was and bowed to me. She never mentioned it again. The next time I saw her she was turning up the radiator for me that I might be too cold in the common room.
I did, sitting alone shivering on the stairs get to listen to the talk though. I was quite enjoying them as it was like the meditative way I listen to Dharma podcasts. The talk was to focus and see the mess in your mind moment-to-moment.
It was strange to sit and listen to that. For so many years, the majority of my life, practicing alone, it often felt like it was just me who thinks and feels and pursues this and this way -- but here is a community.
In the common room Rev. Leoma gave a talk about the precepts. We had three verses to memorise. I met this guy, Maxwell, again in the toilet. George was there also. He (Maxwell) had been to the preparaton retreat in November and said that there was no preperation or anything like that. George had been in India in November.
Then it was tea and questions. George asked bout intuition and it's role/importance. Linda asked quite a few questions, all from the perspective of a converted catholic.
We ate shortly after. I know we weren't supposed to look around, but I couldn't help noticing (for which reason I can't say) that almost everyone there had very thin lips, compared to me say. There were only a few people with fuller lips, and these were the ones that I got on with.
I went to the common room and sat with George. He told me about the miracles he had seen in India. He said he was being ordaned here as a gift to all the people in India.
I went to the basket on the table and there were chocolate eggs there. I realised it was easter. There were some Lindt ones, with normal real chocolate on the outside, and soft, slightly cool tasting chocolate on the inside. I'd had them just once as a kid and they were so nice, that each year I had looked for them but they never came again, until this year in Jukai 2008. I sat there eating too many, and thought back to the Easter in Cochin, with Binnie and Simon and tried to remember how many years ago that was.
I'd taken 30 miligrams of nicotine.
Tuesday -- Precept Day
Up early again.
I had a coffee in the common room. There were only a few people there. Maxwell was by the window and suddenly called me over. He pointed out the window and when I looked, there was a deer wandering around the garden. It was really considerate that he'd wanted to silently share that. It made me think of Sarnath and I decided it was auspicious.
We went down that day for breakfast, and Heather was the server at out table. She forgot the hungry ghost water (cleaning water provided at the end of the food) and user her expressive face to roll her eyes silently saying, 'Oh my Goooodddddd'.
I went up and shaved but had run out of foam so was using this awful Nivea stuff. I cut myself really badly, there was blood dripping off my head but couldn't be sure where from (having a phobia of mirrors). Then Maxwell and George came and there way a manly, guy's conversation. I opened up that I was worried as I had no spare or clean clothes and they told me not to worry.
We were split into smaller groups and had a rehersal. Rev. Leoma asked if there was anyone who couldn't kneel, so I had to own up. We did a run through with Max at the front, and when I had to push myself up on his knees with him grinning at me, she said that it was out the question, so we did it again with her on one side of me and Heather on the other lifting me up and down. I felt awful about it. Looking back, I think it was the first time ever I've properly admited to another person that I'm limited in some way. I hated me there, as even the really old man could do it... just not me.
The ceremony itself was at the Reverent's house, a place I'd never been. It took two monks to help just me. And that was it. I just had to say, 'It is', and I had received lay ordination, a blessed certificate and the wagasa, i.e. ceremonial band representing robes.
Everyone was feeling a little bit high. We had to go and sign the register, then went up to the common room and Matthew ironed on name tags for us.
The was a tea and questions. George asked if it was appropriate to wear it in India when he was seeing his guru and the American monk said yes.
It was explained to us that it was a form of robes like the monks have, but for lay use, it had the same meaning because we had taken the same vows as the monks had taken.
I got a bit chatty with Elizabeth for a while. We went downstairs and were looking at the shower rosta, i.e. a plan where everyone was guarenteed 20 minutes in the shower. I saw that two people had been written down for the same spot and people laughed when I asked if they would be showering together to save water.
Upstairs, Fran had been the person who didn't take them, and she was speaking to the woman from Jersey. I suddenly became compassionate and told her that it took a lot of courage to do that. She had just decided that she wasn't ready for it. She said that she would stay for breakfast the next day, but then left. I did talk a little longer to the Jersey woman, who told me about the retreat place in France.
Wednesday
It was a very long service and the meditations were really starting to drag. Rev. Galen stayed behind and refered to the Dhamapada, where the precepts were mentioned, but I don't recall the reference now.
It was working meditation then and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. I walked around like a lost puppy, eventually Matthew put my in the cloister cleaning chairs with Maxwell. He (Max) asked questions about my name and India, but he was very different to me, but trying hard for us to get on.
At lunch, the chairs had been moved around. Linda was one person away from me now, though we keep passing and have pleasentries.
Meditation was up in the novices library. I had a chair right in front of the window, with a view of the hills and rabbits running about everywhere. This session went surprisingly well.
Over to tea and questions, and a lindt egg that went down very well. Linda chose to sit by me, then insisted on throwing away my egg wrappers. Looking back, that was so that it wouldn 't be apparent that I had accidentally broken the rule of eating before the monk arrived.
The Q&A was good; about the Sange ceremony, which kind of means contrition. We were all going to be given pieces of paper, during the ceremony, which represents our lives. We take it from Kanzeon and give it back to the Buddha.
In Japanese, it was explained, most words have many meanings, but the character for Sanghe has one sound but has two characters. One means 'flowers', specifically, to scatter flowers.
Also covered in the talk, the need to note the difference between pain and suffering, i.e. the latter is a thought/feeling. When we go deep into it in Zazen, the point is that there's no I that actually suffers.
Interlude: Some notes on the people attending the course
Two of them are males so indistinct as to not be worth commenting on. Grey people?
There's Linda, of course, who looks like a cross between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, or so I thought, though she had the same name as Paul McCartney's first wife.
Heather, very well spoken, a new-agey kind of person. She asked during Q&A about meditation, and imagining thoughts going past as though on a train of falling into a lake, which of course isn't Zazen, so she obviously had misunderstood the instruction... unless there's something that I'm not getting.
There was a young, black woman who seemed to be wholly alone; it's hard to say as we were generally living silently. She did ask some very intelligent questions.
The Jersey woman, was very deep-voiced and a kind of earthly person.
There were various non-descript women with thin lips who know all the scriptures perfectly.
A very old guy, wearing a hearing aid who accidentally takes people's tea, though once I noticed he was accidentally given someone elses and then blamed for having taken it.
There was a younger couple; the male was called Andrew, he was a quiet, slightly gothic type. His partner was kind a sad looking, stooped woman who occasionally became giggly. She mentioned her children once and they they had all been in the Asian tsunami. I was sewing next to her each morning... and she was good at it.
There was another minister who seemed quite highly strung. Like once when we were all carrying chairs up to the ceremony hall and he paniced thinking that possibly no one was counting them. But he did come over to me once to check that I was comfortable during dining.
Fer, the good-natured dumbo, slightly effeminate, but his generalised incompetance hid my own lackings, so I liked him.
Mia... who was coming accross as snooty and superior.
Kosha, open, warm and easy to love.
Dinner arrived. We were to eat in the common room as the ceremony hall was being made up. We waited for a monk but no one came. Tough Scots guy and Fer went down, Fer returned and said, 'Who wants soup?', meaning no one was coming. Rachel, young, sweet and good practice, said the five thoughts and George congratulated her.
We had to go down for a rehersal. I was next to Gwynth. I was relieved that she was there as her down-to-earth nature reassured me. Again, she noted the pain I was in, even though I NEVER complain.
Next it was over to the library for just a 35 minute meditation, and that went much better.
We were back in the common room. It was crowded. It was explained what to do. We started chanting Namo Shakya Mooni Buddha. First we got the contrition verse from Finnon. At the last minute, a monk had slotted himself before me. I have the vague intuition that it was incase I stumbled and couldn't get myself up. I was a little confused becuase finnon didn't hold the bowl, but did and the monk before me did and put the verse into my gassho'd hands.
The chant continued and we had to go through dark tunnels; the place was unrecognisable. I looked back and could make out Linda. Ahead we approached the next shrine. It was the bursar who did our introduction. I could see Gwynth and she didn't drop in any paper so I wasn't sure what to do. I'd scruched mine up thinking perhaps I wasn't supposed to have taken it, but I put it in anyhow.
We twisted round and went up some stairs. I took out my Dhamapada, and the feather. I concentrated on the mantra, and dropped it.
We emerged into the last shrine. There was a woman and the master. He said the contrition verse and she burnt incense for me.
We went into the hall before the Buddha and sat chanting for ages.
The monks came in and sat around a brass bowl. They started burning all the pieces of paper. The master dropped one, probably mine as it was scrunched up, and fumbled to pick it up. It was burning too long, near his robes, and some nuns rushed forwards to assist, but then he got it.
They pokered it until it was high in flames, then burnt itself out.
Then all three shouted as loud as they could.
Then the master said that our karma was purified.
We went back downstairs and in the novices common room where we had started, there was a loud conversation. It was Andrew and Gwynth. Because Rev. Finnon hadn't held the bowl with the papers out, they hadn't understood and hadn't taken papers, then hadn't been allowed to go back and get them, so were really upset. Matthew was there saying it was only symbolic, but they were insisting on seeing someone.
We had to go up the the library to get meditation equiptment. I asked Elizabeth if she'd got paper but she hadn't. Max said he had the paper, but didn't know something was supposed to be spoken at the last shrine and had just walked off while the Master was saying the verse.
I suddenly felt honoured. The monk had been before me, so I had known what to do. If I wasn't crippled then it wouldn't have been OK. But it would have bothered me. I felt gratitude. Being crippled had saved me.
We went up to the first common room, I heard heated voices and sent metta energy, then Rev. Leoma came up to say that the first celebrant had forgotten to give them out and some people were upset. But, please don't let it create unessesary suffering; we all make mistakes.
I updated my notes.
Hommage to the Buddha.
I retired. I had only had 10mg of nicotine that day.
Lying in bed, there was like a skylight window and I could look up, as I did most nights, and look at the stars.
Thursday
After the morning meditation, Rev. Leoma apologiced again.
At breakfast, we had all been moved around again. I was on the other side of the room, with Ingrid to my right, a non-descript grey-guy to my left and little Rachel and Dumbo Fer facing me. They had to switch over because of Ingrid's bad leg.
Work was vacumming chairs in the blue room with the grey guy. I thought back to when it was still the orange room and lammented.
There was to be a ritual but we didn't know anything about it or when it would happen. The only instruction was to join a procession should you see it. We went up for meditation, and heard a drum going, and so everyone raced out. The whole monastery was following the master and so we snaked all around the property for about forty minutes. Then we went up to the ceremony hall where the master explained about the lineage of the temple going right back to the Buddha, and we received a chart, showing the lineage, and my name was last as the new ancestor.
We went down and I shaved. People kept coming in. Max was being all chummy and I could smell he'd been smoking, and he was kind of getting on my nerves in a way.
There was a talk. No one was really arranging how things were supposed to be. I put the bench out and Linda put the tea out. Rachel said the chair was in front of the Buddha, so I had to move it, then asked if there were any more complaints, and people laughed. Actually, it was the first time I had ever seen Andrew laugh. There was by now, I noticed, quite a strong bond in the silence.
The talk was from the Master himself. He explained about his personal seal. Rachel asked a question about how to know if she was sincear, and the answer was, she was on the basis that she was asking.
He mentioned the near fire the previous night and we laughed. After he left we broke silence and all talked, and had a bit of a laugh actually, about the previous night.
The meditation was again very long. Elizabeth and Gwynth both complained. Jersey said her stomach was bad and was indefinitely excused. .
By now I was sure that Mia was wholly creeped out and seemed to be completely avoiding me.
A few days previously, Leoma had sent the message to change form for people who find the meditation postures too hard, and that was probably for my benefit. I was still recalling (often) being kicked in the back.
The black lady, her name was like. aphennias (no no no), I don't know. But she often asked intelligent questions, but the American noticed she was coming late to dinner sometimes and meditations too and made a point of asking if it was too hard for her. I felt a bit of affinity for her, because her, George and Max... and myself, were the lower-class non-white outsider. It sounds awful, but that's how it is. The only not negative, but not wholly positive, thing that sunny Kosha every said was that, 'In England, everything has class'.
The master had said something. He had refered back to a time before he was the master and he had had to ask his master questions, and sometimes he would get toungue tied and ask stupid things, and would feel stupid, but realised an important lesson, and that was DON'T LOOK BACK, and I think he refered to the near fire-accident in the light of this also.
Friday
I've written down, 'Eye over me in a character cup overflowing with sawdust', in my notebook, as a memory technique to remind me what had happened and what I wanted to write about.
Up, meditation and eat. Rachel had volunteered to be the server, and so Laura was opposite me.
Work was sewing up with Tsumani. People were getting giggly generally by now (ugh, too much aliteration).
Sitting watching Mia's back while meditating, for forty minutes without my eyes moving, I realised that this is as close as you can ever get to a person, really. With J, there was compassion showed to myself and my heart responded, but doing Zazan, Mia's in foront of me. I don't know her; she had a Buddha nature, and the capacity for compassion, like all creation, if I had been sitting there staring at a tree it would be the same. Being close to potential compassion is as good as it gets.
Walking from work, I realised that a lot of daydreaming fantaies are about people watching me -- or at least having an interest in me somehow, and when I feel this is the case, somehow my energy is perked up somehow.
In the bathroom, there was this guy who had a public schoolboyish idea, for a practical joke to frighten Rev. Galen. It was corny and boring, but this was just how the atmosphere was turning now.
There was a talk with Finnon in the Q&A, and quite a bit of joking about before he came up -- I really felt part of the group. I was starting to get on well with Elizabeth, and she would be coming in the car with Linda and I.
Date: Monday at Anne's house, while she's packing up
The talk that day was with Finnon. I was wondering if he was going to mention the mix-up at the ritual but it was never mentioned.
The black woman didn't specifically ask a question about meditation, but thanked them for all of their time and effort, and Finnon said that they also get a lot from it themselves.
He had decided that he wanted to talk about emptiness and form, from the Heart Sutra, well, that was his reference to it. He said it's hard, but you can think of waves and water. It made me think of a chair, and the pieces of wood it's made from and I imagine in all going through a crusher and tried to imagine at what point it would cease to be a chair and when it would be a pile of sawdust. When does the chair end and the sawdust begin?
I imagined the whole universe as dust rather than the forms it has. I could really sense the inherent emptiness behind creation, sitting in my sawdust as a chair (though it might have been metal actually.
He was drinking from a white cup that was covered in Chinese characters, all small and neatly laid out in horizontal rows. I realised that somehow they are magical for me, they represent somehow a sense of 'not englishness' that I always wanted to embrace.
But sitting there, I considered how I could, theoretically, learn to draw them myself and their individual meanings, and then they would just be this thing that I've drawn and wouldn't have the magic either.
They _are_ just lines.
Moving on. After lunch, I had to volunteer (how can one be obliged to volunteer?) to move tables with Kosha. I made a joke with her afterwards that it was my good karmic deed for the day. She laughed and said, 'Don't trade karma'.
Then there was a rehersal for the recognition ritual. A seat had been reserved for me on the edge. Leoma kept saying, 'It's for Jaydin' and people laughed, indicating that she'd had to say it a few times and it had become a cliche. The reason was that we were required to go up on the altar and kneel. There would be three batches of us, and one person per batch who can't kneel. Behind me was tough Scots guy, and I wondered if he was put there because he had the same body-type as me and so that I would't feel so stupid.
The ritual came. I did indeed feel stupid though. Everyone else was kneeling and behind me the whole audience looked on. I sat down and looked forward. A red light came on and there was a little shrine with the master in the middle and a monk either side of him. They were in full ceremonial dress and I felt like I should have a christmas wish-list or something.
They started chanting, 'Buddha recognises Buddha and bows to Buddha. They did this for about a minute, and then circles the altar chanting it.
We returned to our seats. There was one more group after us and I wanted to laugh because they looked so stupid. Especially tough Scots guy; that's how I must have looked.
The last group returned and we sat there chanting before the empty altar. Then there was silence. A large stitched picture of the Buddha was raised and sat in contemplation for about fifteen minutes.
I felt really happy to have got this far; I mean with my life.
We all went back to the hall of pure offerings. George congratulated me by shaking my hands and wished me all the best in case he didn't see me again. I think he said, 'Welcome to being a Buddha', or something.
There was to be a group photo arranged, and we were to sign up should we want one, so I did that.
Back in the common room Rev. Leoma came in and gave some free magazines out, like back issues, and Buddha pictures, and old lectures on cassette. Fer showed me a picture of the Buddha and said it looks like me.
I picked up a magazine and read it, and was shocked to read that Rev. Wilber had comitted suicide. It actually went into gory detail. He had been asked to leave because of personal differences with the other monks, though it didn't state what they were. So, he had been asked to leave. He went home and suffered from, 'depression and personal problems', which, the article had stressed, he had been plagued with before joining the monastery. Then one day he just went out and lay down under a train.
I was shocked. I remember the day he had a go at me in the kitchen and Muriel had defended me. I recall the time he spoke to me in the novices common room and the joke he had made about Galen, to his face.
Linda was standing besides me and I mentioned it. She had heard about it from the Middlesborough group. The article had said that they had received a lot of letters and cards about it. Of course, he worked permanently in the kitchen, and so many people had got to know him.
This was the last full day. So I lit a candle at the little Kanzeon shrine on my room, and felt gratitude. It was good and overall had gone well, despite the less than perfect astrology.
Last Day
We had a 'lie in', meaning rising was officially at seven, but as always, I was up a bit before.
I went down and Linda described her car so I would be able to fin
Meditation and the last ceremony went well. The master came, said goodbye and wished us all well.
The silence was over at breakfast. I spoke to Laura opposite me, who was indeed there with her sister as I had guessed. Also I got to speak to Ingrid. It was just small talk basically. Laura was from Nottingham. She asked what was wrong with my leg and I said I don't know. I asked her if I looked funny being helped up and down and she hesitated and said no, but was smiling while she said it. While we were talking, I noticed that there were really long looks at me from Heather. Ingrid talked a bit, she had joined twenty years ago in Austria and was really impressed that I was Indian, though I don't know why.
Washing up, I chatted with Jersey and I wanted to know about the retreat centre in France. Later the owner, Mo, came and told me about it and refered me to the website: www.lavilledavy.org.
I sat feeling awkward when they all left. Everyone was talking in little groups. I wanted to apologise to Mia as she had purposely not looked at me since the retreat started, and I wasn't sure if she was uncomfortable. I apporached her little group. There was her, Matthew and someone else. They completely ignored me for about a minute, then I started talking saying that I had been uncomfortable and hoped she wasn't creeped out. She said, 'Why, were you _trying_ to creep me out?'. They laughed and I pointed out that I hadn't chosen the seating arrangement, and she just shook her head.
It made me feel horrible actually. I don't know why as I'd done nothing wrong. She was kind of a snooty person perhaps. I noticed that she almost never gives anyone any eye contact. So, I just let it go, repeating to myself that I hadn't done anything other than what I had been told to do.
That feeling, of being unliked, did linger.
George came and shook my hand again.
I got in the car with Linda and Elizabeth. I needed reassurance about the feeling that Mia had left me with. They said it's not so creepy.
We drove for about ten minutes and then I realised that I had left my wagasa (the black precept band I'd received when taking the precepts) on the toilet door by the guest house. We slowed, like Linda wanted to go back for it, but I know that she wanted to go home and see her children, but it did intensify this feeling I was experiencing.
We arrived at the station. Outside the car Linda asked me where I was going, and I said Hong Kong and then somewhere. She said, 'Well good luck and be careful where ever you go... come here and hug me.' So we hugged each other, I was about to release after a couple of seconds, but she held on and I relaxed, and we actually held each other for quite some time in that car park. I was quite touched. She, I think, may have worked out that I'd adrift, I don't know. Perhaps it's just, a slightly shared history.
Elizabeth and I went in to get tickets. Then we went over the bridge. There was two of the grey guys and the black woman. I got chatting to the woman. She was Nigerian but living... Scarborough I think. She recommended me to wait in Thistle hotel as I had so much time to kill. We stood there and chatted for quite some time.
We all got on the train. I ended up with a grey guy. He was from Warwick. He was generally... boring to talk to but didn't know it (do boring people ever know they're boring (so perhaps he was bored by me and everyone else is)). He talked a bit about the chaplaincy work he does. Various grey stuff.
We got there. The black woman was missing, and we never did see her again. We ended up going to Thistle, and it was very nice, though the service was poor. This grey guy seemed a bit full of himself. He said he had been an architect who had helped build some of the abbey. They talked about gardening, I talked about Hong Kong. It was a nice little chat. I took a couple of pictures of them and they didn't even notice.
They left.
I went up, quite tempted to smoke, so I bought a nicotine inhalor. I went to a place in the shopping centre but was asked to leave because I was just one person and had sat down at a table for four.
So I went somewhere else and had a coffee with my nicotine fix.
I walked all around Newcastle, I was on a real downer by now. I played some
_Note: interrupted when the courier arrived with my passport_
Later: 7.42pm. MacDonalds, The Drapery, Northampton.
I was going to say: I played some music to try and change my mood. It was mainly the bad feeling about Mia. I passed an information booth where I could send email, so I tried to ask Throssel for my wagasi, but later found out I'd got their address wrong.
I ended up in a MacDonald (as I am now). It was full of lively kids but quite friendly. I was sitting next to an old bag lady. She gave me what I thought was a bag of fruit, but turned out to be a happy toy. I wrote in my book:
Perhaps it's always going to be like this. A feeling of closeness to people can never last -- and it's always painful to leave.
But Linda's compassion hurt earlier also. One can desire compassion (which throws a spanner in the scriptures), which was perhaps my problem all along? To be happy, wanting nothing means even not wanting compassion.
I need to be very aware of my tendency to want and to cling to compassion.
I also wrote: A lot of the sadness of this [particular] moment, as I sit in Macdonalds, is not having anywhere to go [fundementally].
I must stop wanting what doesn't exist, compassion in an unchanging form.
'What do I really want?'
Date: Tuesday 15th April 2008
Grand Hotel, Gold Street, Northampton. 11.14pm
I just heard that Oasis went into liquidation... actually while I was trying to buy a ticket. But I'll have to get to that; I am actually catching up.
... Anyway. I was in Macdonalds. It was anarchy with the teenagers in there but they didn't bother me. My mood was down, so I perked myself up by listening to some Gill, and it worked.
That is the end of the brief notes that I took at the time all this was happening. Now I must try and recall what happened from memory. I would add as a brief chastisment, to never let the diary fall as behind as this again... but it wasn't my fault, I wasn't allowed a computer in the monastery.
I hung around Macdonalds, then walked down to the station. It was about half ten then, on a Saturday. It was awful, anarchy. The whole centre was full of unconnected drunk people. First, a drunk guy came up and asked for money, but with enough intimidation that I was semi-mugged.
On the next block, someone semi-running and screaming ran in to me so hard that I was almost knocked flying.
Next corner, a drunk woman of about fifty grabbed hold of me and started shouting that it was raining and she was getting wet and would I give her an umbrella, but acting loud and crass and thinking she was being really funny.
I managed to get insdie the station. I went over to the toilet and a guy warned me not to go in there, but another guy said it wasn't too bad. I went over to Burgerking until it closed. It was raining quite heavily and I was in two pound slippers, open, with socks.
I walked onto the coach station. I had to stand in the rain for about half an hour. There were a surprising amount of people there. It was raining quite heavily. it was dark (of course), and the only light was harsh neon. It was cold on my exposed skin and my tea was stone-cold and curdled. The thought occoured to me, how this must be the low point of my trip. In the same way as in Jinghong, when I realised I was on the outer-side of the loop I'd traveled from, and from here, it was 'going back to Europe', this rubbish, cold and harsh coach stop was the northern most point, the coldest and grimmest and wettest point, and from there, it was going back to Asia.
Eventually the coach came. There was a guy before me. He handed over his ticket, but the driver told him that it was an open-return, and the bus was full and so he wouldn't be able to get on it. Remember, it was 11.45pm at night and this was the last until morning. He looked devestated.
I sat down near the back and had a man join me. He was huge. It was so uncomfortable. He slept with his legs wide open and half his ass on my seat. It wasn't his fault. each time he woke up he shifted up, but it was unconscious when he slept.
Behing me was a large northern woman who muttered most of the time. Next to her was a young Asian man who ate Indian food loudly and kept taking a phone call, arranging a five thousand pound payment to some guy.
We got to London. I kind of woke up, even though it was six am. I wasn't sure what to do, so I went over to Hammersmith, thinking I could at least get some St. John's Wort for when the nicotine withdrawel causes my seretonin to plummet.
I went to William Morris and had breakfast. There was a new manager, but the Eastern European woman who used to serve me was still there and said how hard it had been in the morning because the clocks had gone back, or forwards, or whatever it was.
I went up King's Road. I needed to use the Internet for some important reason that I can't recall now; but the place was gone. The shops weren't opening until later, so that was it. I went back to Victoria and got on the coach.
We arrived on time. The Grand was closed, so I phoned the number I had been given and some guy checked me in. The room was big size and cost the higher price, but the next day it was explained that there wasn't a small one but I'd only be billed the lower amount of 110 sterling.
It's not so bad. There's a kettle and a microwave. It's warm and there's hot water. Fine for now.
So I phoned Bri. He said he wanted hiimself and Carly to meet 'in the cafe near the Grand', but we couldn't agree if it was called Fontanas or not. So we said the Sole and Eel.
Next day they arrived. Carly is wholly freaked out by me and never looks at me, or barely a glance; she does'nt refer to me. Yesterday A wanted to give me somethng and she hesitated and A said, 'I'll give it to him'. That's how creepy I am to even my own family.
Anyway, they expained the situation. She was OK, but has bad 'turns' sometimes.
Sometimes, these turns border on psychotic. Like the time Carly turned up and she was trying to cook food on the radiator.
She is in this nursing home, it's nice and they look after her. She thinks that she's coming home, but they both think that it's better that she stays there, and so I have to be on the team, convincing her that it's in her best interests to stay there.
We drove over there. It was in Milton Malsor, a little village. It's 450 a week, she gets her own attached room and three meals, nursing and always someone there. The staff are friendly enough. B&C didn't stay so long, so then A & I had a chat and I got the bus back.
Date: Friday ?18th April 2008
Grand Hotel, Gold Street, Northampton. 10.22pm
Not sure of the date. I recall mentioning about six years ago, if I ever put a question mark in the date, then I'm more likely to get the day spot on and the date close... and that's still true now.
This updating is hard now. Not just because my notes have ran out, but because things are happening as fast as I can write them.
Until I catch up, much of the following won't be in chronological order.
I've been to see A. a few times. It's difficult sometimes, to keep up friendliness. Mainly because I am so averse to people. I've met Carly a few times. Poor girl, my whole persona has freaked her out; we've never spoken directly to each other. Also a couple of times, I've met her husband Richard. He works for the Carlsberg brewery. They are called Messrs. Faulkener. They have a mortgage and a house in a little village somewhere.
It was about a week ago now, I was sitting with A. I had my feet up on the bed. That's something I've kind of noticed about myself, although it's quite obvious to common sense, and that's how I feel wholly at home where ever I am.
Anyway, I was sitting there. I had the secret mission assigned to me to convince her to stay at the home for good. I had sensitively broached the subject. She had told me it was nice but she'd rather be at home, and that her income didn't cover the cost, which is contrary to how Carly had explained it (the finances).
She just announced that she was going to stay and make it her home.
I was waiting for my passport until the Monday which just passed. I had to phone up about it about four times. It turns out that, because the passport I had surrendered was issued in India, they wanted confirmation from the High Commission there that they had issued it. Of course, there was no reply, and so it dragged on for three weeks.
When it came, all of us i.e. me, A, C and R were in the house. Oh, I forgot to say, that to pay for the home, the house had to be let. Ugh. I don't want to write this next part; I'm so tired. I'm going to put it off and watch TV for a bit.
I LOVE THIS COMPUTER.
Date: Sunday 20th April 2008 FULL MOON
Beatties Restaurant, Grovsner Centre, Northampton. 1.01pm.
Yes, I was sitting in 'her' chair while she at the table. I say her chair, but of course, everything is hers. Everything was getting packed up and wrapped up. She was all matter-of-fact, saying that she had thought that the task would be depressing but as it was she didn't care. Of course, watching it all get emptied, I was only thinking of one thing, the missing photo of J. I couldn't ask for it as it's painful. I mean, it's painful. I'll ask and then I'll hear the magic words, probably one last time, you didn't want that did you?'
So... that will be it. She lost it or shredded it. I can just feel it. I mentioned that I would have a check when they were gone to make sure that nothing of mine was left. As soon as they were gone, I went straght to the black cabinet and through it with a fine toothcomb, but couldn't find it. My stomach sinks when I think about it.
Perhaps it's just this last thing. If I can send the box to J, put the last documents in the solicitors, and then I own nothing; there's nothing ever again that can hurt.
Perhaps I'll deal with it tomorrow. I'll put my wagasa on for support; it arrived from the monastery, though I haven't opened it yet. A is at her house, so I'll go and see if my passport arrived back from the embassy and then if there's a lot of saddness, i.e. 'What photo? What did you want that for?", then that will be the imputus I need to buy the ticket to Asia.
OOoooohhhhhh God.
...
I've seen some people I know around. Outside Sainsburys, I was Jason Marston. He was this kid I knew when I was about ten. He hated school, had the repeating fantasy of killing our school tormentor adult with a shotgun, and he used to organise games of 'army', in breaktimes. He was really enthusiastic about the games and made them a lot of fun.
Now, he was alone and looked kind of serious.
Then I saw Julie. I don't recall her other name. The only specific memory I have of her was 1979 outside Mrs Frost's class. We all had football trading cards as kids, the boys, but she had them too, and was the only girl who did. We all just accepted that and all enjoyed trading together.
She was also alone. Funnily enough I also saw her near Sainsbury but on a different day. She looked OK. The only real sign of age was the long lines down from her nose to her lip edges.
Another one was Garath Turner. He was loitering outside Beatties, watching paramedics trying to revive a man who had suffered a heart attack. He was the outdoorsy type who's father took her mountaineering. He came up the Mill (one of M's pubs) once. I never really, really liked him but he was OK I guess. The main memory I have of him is once, we were about eleven. We were doing a long-distance race and he just disappearred. He turned up about half an hour later and told the masters that a man had attacked him and sexually assulted him. No one believed him and he was ignored. Oh, that school.
Of course, I bumped into Darren. I was walking through Ridings Arcade and saw a figure running up towards me with a fist outstretched about to hit me, and saw it was him and he burst out laughing. He look a heck of a lot older; we finally had the drink we had been talking about. We walked onto the Goose.
He had just been to the doctor. He's taking methadone and diazapam and various things to help with his various mental issues, a result of the drug problem he picked up in prison. He said that it all started after his father died. He showed me his arms and on both of them there are huge tatoos both dedicated to his father.
We just talked generally. I gave him my news. His brother had a child had been taken away due to the constant arguing with his wife, and now the mother has custody and looks after him.
Darren still lives alone in the same place in St. James. He says he's become a loner and stays in most days.
He wanted to smoke so we went on. He looked through the cd's for about an hour on the market, then we went to The Auctioneer. We were there for an hour, then I needed to go to the Internet cafe to log onto the bank. We walked up and he took me to his doctors in Hazlewood Road to see if I could get registered there. They put me through the system and it turns out I'm still registered at the Mounts Medical Centre. I went there a few days later and updated my name change, then they sent me a medical card. It says 'JAG Rapheal' as 'my' 'doctor'. This is a man who refered to me as a 'monster', said I had to go to psychiatry or I'd be dragged out the house 'kicking and screaming', even though I hadn't even indicated I would refuse at any point. I must go there and get myself off his books.
Darren and I walked up, swapped contact details and then said we'd meet again before I left.
Another person I got to see was my father, well both of them. I went over there last Sunday for about an hour I think. I got my Olympus camera out. He said I'm 'not like his son', which might have been a bit of a Fruedian slip, but he was referring to how different I am to him.
They have absoutely no news whatsoever, of course. There's a lot of distance between us and I've kind of let go of them in my heart.
While I'm updating like this, I'll just mention a few other notes I made. Well. a note. Back in Hong Kong, I found out, after I'd mentally announced my new Star name, surrounded by Star this and Star that, that the Star ferry was started by an Indian, who named it after Tenyson's 'Crossing the ?????' poem, from the line; 'Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me'.
Later: Morelli's Cappuccino, Grovsener. 2.59pm
I finally made it up to the Open University also. I had phoned then earlier in the week and explained that I was waiting for my passport and so had missed the deadline for financial support. I was told I'd have to go there and pay a third of the course, apply for credit on the rest of the course, and then cancel the course if I wasn't afforded the award.
Well it was just a local bus up; actually, it was t he same busI used to take to the hospital there when mother way dying. But this time I had to get off at the station. Another bus took me right into the campus. It drove off and I was desserted; it wasn't like a 'normal' university campus, it was mostly desserted.
I had a reflective moment. I thought right back to being a little kid, and these relly, really boring OU programs that used to come on and wondering what they were. More recently, standing there was the end result of decisions and actions in Vietnam, then Laos and Hong Kong. It was something I thought about the other day, while I was going through my plan I realised that much of it needs to be deleted because I have achieved much of it.
Anyway, I had to walk to the 'East Wing', and introduced myself at reception. I sat in the waiting area; it really was a quiet place generally. Eventually, a woman called Barbara Waters arrived. I explained it all to her and she seemed to think I had some special arrangement with the funding people; that they had told me it would all be rushed through for me. She looked straight at me and asked me if that was the case. I had to be honest and say no, that isn't what they said; I was expecting to have to pay. She took all my documents and pointed out that I'd forgotten to fill in the declaration that I'd lived in the UK for three years prior to the course starting.
Then she went off to copy the documents. But for the puropse of the form; I filled it in honestly. When I first signed on for benefit in Hammersmith, I had to go through a habitual residency test and I easily passed on the basis I never left for a fixed and settled purpose. I never lived anywhere on anything more than a tourist visa. Then I checked on the Inland Revenue web site. I was considered resident as I had no fixed purpose to leave. I lived here. The form said, the OU form I'm talking about, that I must have 'lived' here, which I did, and to have been resident.
Anyway, she came back and said it was all fine, she should be able to put it straight through the system. I asked if I was supposed to pay, as I had been expecting, and she said not if she can get it all on the computer. She said to phone back in about an hour and a half. Then she and the security guard gave me directions back to the bus and I returned to central Milton Keynes.
I wandered round the shops for a minute; I couldn't find a pair of trousers that fitted. I went to the phone and called back. I wasn't on the system at Lipton, which caused some confustion; now I was on as Starr. She said that it's all fine, I'm on the course and registered and I got funding and it's all paid for. Then she laughed, said that I must be happy that I phoned back, she completed the registration online, which meant reading out the terms and conditions, and then said that my study stuff would be sent out at the start of next week.
And We're On Our Way.
OK; that's that.
I recceived my passport, finally, Monday. Tuesday I went to buy my ticket. Mercury was conjunct... I don't recll., but something auspicious. I logged on but the site was down for amintenence. So Iwent back to town and got shopping, had a coffee. Then I logged on again. The home page, which had mentioned the maintenence, said that the company had gone into liquidation as of this minute, that all planes were grounded and there was a claim form for people who already had tickets, as they were now cancelled.
I was, my dear, in absolute shock. I went to the message boards, thinking I would be the first to break the news, but actually there were fourteen pages of comments. People in the UK were to get their money back to their credit cards. Oz customers no, because it was a purchase outside their own country. There were stories of people and Oasis staff stranded all around the world, even some in Nambia where the guess was that they were on a charter.
The books at Oasis were a shambles. It turns out that they were losing a million Hong Kong dollars per flight.
Oh man, did I feel down. Not just for my own selfish reasons. That was a genuinely nice airline. It changed my plans for the better. The staff were great; you know how much I liked it. Later that night I sat sadly looking at the free Oasis cutlery that I still use. I looked online. Other tickets are about 800-1200, as opposed to the 150 that I paid to get here. Now the airlines are free to choose whatever they want.
With Oasis, it was just so effortless. I could even pick my seat for free.
I mourned them.
Considering what I'm doing now, I realised that I'd probably have to cut Hong Kong out. The plan was to go back there as it was the cheapest entry to Asia, then fly to Bangkok and Chiang Mai and do all my copying, start my studies, write two books and travel back overland.
Now that just doesn't make sense. I shall just go to Bangkok, North to settle and copy. There's no break, just straight to it. Tickets there might be around 400. I'm not sure.
I'm still on for it generally.
I looked into the best way to get a Thai visa, which I'd be needing whatever happened. It was, it turns out according to the message boards, easier to post the passport to the embassy in Hull and so I phoned and it turned out to be the case. I managed that on Friday, so it might even be ready now. It must be there tomorrow, or I'll have to go and get it from the sorting office because I need the ID to sell the gold; I have a ticket to London on Tuesday.
Oh, I ordered the negative scanner and that came, so I'll be able to copy and then destroy most negs (if I can bring myself to). That's another thing.
Tomorrow I have to go up and ask about that damned photo. (My stomach turned over just now, thinking about it stop this!).
Uh ooooohhhh aaaaahhhh ow old dear Oasis Diary. Didn't we write so much since arriving, and didn't we do well to mostly catch up.
I'll add snippets of anything else that occoured but I forgot, if they occour.
Date: Wednesday 30th April 2008
Terminal Five, Heathrow Airport, London.
LEAVING, BABY, **YEAH**!!
Wow, a lot happened. I've got to go and find food and the flight gate. I'll update when I have a minute.
Date: Saturday 3rd May 2008 (University Course Officially starts)
King Wah Hostel, 10th Floor, Sincear House, Argyle Street, Mongkok, Hong Kong.
HOME!!!
Asia's World City!
Happy! Happy!
4.42am. though. Not sure what's happened, Perhaps I'm tired, perhaps I'm jet-lagged. Whatever it is, I'm sitting on the bed wide-awake, and I've done almost all the work I can.
Obviously, the 'straight to Bangkok and cut my losses' plan changed. I was a whisker away from doing that. I was in the process of buying the ticket, and the cheapest one was 'multiple carriers', via Hong Kong. British Airways for 200 to HK and Lanka Air to Bangkok for another hundred. I was about to click 'buy', then I thought... hang on. I can perhaps buy that seperately. So I did. Sitting there, I did the I Ching quickly online, which is about as 'on the fly' as it gets with me. HAPPY. HAPPY. HAPPY!!! Oh God, I love it here.
Anyway, I Ching said go for it. So I did. 190 including taxes, and I could specify a vegetarian meal.
Once I had that, then a few days later I booked an Air Aisa flight for the 10th to Bangkok. I don't recall the price, I think perhaps about 50. Today, I paid 30 to go to Chaing Mai on the 13th. I saw the perfect flight and was booking it, but the I Ching said no, so I booked a later one, of which it says that there will still be problems but the end result is hexagram one, creative.
So to go over what happened before I was leaving. Once more, this might be a bit of a non-chronological mish-mash.
I got a letter from the OU tutor inviting me to a first tutorial at Northampton college. It came the day before it was scheduled. Before, I went up to see par and said that yes, I would come the following Sunday for lunch, kind of to celebrate my birthday.
I arrived at the college about half an hour early. The receptionist knew nothing about it, it wasn't on any list. Someone came and we wandered about looking for it. Eventually someone else turned up, then a tutor.
In the end we were in a room, there were four women and a guy and me... a kind of half-guy.
Well the lady, Ms. Burton, seemed throughly disorganised, which I thought might bode well as she won't work out that I'm never there again. She went through the course and I kind of convinced myself that it wouldn't work out and that I shouldn't do it.
At the end we all were invited to say a little bit about ourselves. The guy was really into it and reading some advanced book that impressed everyone. The next two women were standard non-distinct limey nothings whining about their kids, who kept phoning them while they were talking about them.
Then the woman to my left, who came accross as a standard English, 'arrogant, I'm right and you're wrong and I'm going to rub your nose in the fact' person, started talking about her wife, and how they were the first lesbian couple in Northampton to get married when England 'came out of the dark ages' ... (when was that?).
Then, as I'd sat there sqwirming, it came to me, and I just said, 'I don't like speaking'. They said fine and it was all over and we left. Considering that's the last they'll see of me, I don't know what they're going to think.
As I said, I'd convinced myself I would't be able to do it. Not that the material is too hard, quite the contrary. There's a lot about note taking and summerising and stuff, and this is basiacally all I've done since leaving school.
It was mainly being able to receive the course books and submit assignments.
Since then, I've convinced myself that it has a fair chance of working out. Half the stuff came, the other half didn't, but the books I didn't get are available online as pdf's, which was what I was expecting, having looked into this for some time now.
I wrote the tutor a letter explaining I was a bit transient, and left it at that. Now, I've cast my bread. All I can do is get into it and do my best. I'm an audio cd down, apart from that, I think I have everything I need.
I just made the bus back.
Another time on the same bus, I saw Steven Collis. This kid was so cool at school, carried a knife, had an adult girlfriend. Now, twenty years later, he's just some fat ginger bloke on the bus. Oh, why did I have to go to school? My life would be so much better if I'd never had to have gone.
Then again, it's not that bad.
I was on the Star Ferry today and realised how I do kind of have this emotional link to Hong Kong. It was going to the exotic and not Englsih Cantonese take-away as a little kid that implanted this fascination which grew into my J. obsession... but I came here before I knew her, and now it's here that I'm letting go of her. But I'll get onto that later.
Oh, I love, love, love this computer!
I realised that I had written to the wrong house when I tried to tell Yasmine I was in the UK. I wrote to 3 but she lives at 2. I only realised that when I was packing and an old loose page of my address book fell out.
Geoff messed up big time. A. was hating him long before I arrived back; I got that from Brian while still in Yangshou. I didn't know what it was really about though. It turns out that, when she got sick, he basially acted like himself and started trying to take everythiing over.
I got the full feeling from A while sitting with her in that room once. G. had turned up at the hospital once, and he'd woken her up while she was sleeping. She mimicked his voice while she told me about it, 'Hello Auuuunnnttttiiieeee', and she snapped, 'And God, he's so false'.
Then she moved to this nursing home and didn't give this address, but he found out somehow (the solicitor got the blame for that, so he's another one out the loop now). She said that she nearly had a heart attack and shouted for him to leave. The staff are under strit instructions that he's not allowed in ever again; there was even talk of getting a court order against him.
Anyway, this time I was sitting with her for a long time. She sat there with a distant look on her face, and suddenly started on about how Mother was dying and wanted to refuse treatment and he (G) pushed her into it so he could look really cool infront of the doctors, and then all her hair fell out over a few days. And she went on about how much it affected her. He got all the blame, which is fair enough as no one else pushed her into it.
So, he can never go there again.
And yet again, a will change. I didn't ask, or want to know as I've wholly surrendered to my light, hell or high water, but she insisted on summig it up as 'two in, two out'. Geoff and Yasmine out, me and Carly in. Not only that, I got 500 in gifts, and an increase in direct debit.
It really is very strange how the mighty crumble. Who would have thought it? It's hard for me to convey the irony of it by writing. I just think back to this self-assured know-it-all always trying to be in charge and be the one who knows everything and give me advice and tell me what to do. I've said it before and I'll say it again and that is my biggesst regret in life is leaving J to go and see him.
Right, to get on with it (the story).
I received my little negative scanner. I've been trying to put my whole life onlie sinnce the first time I went back, but of course I have a lot of negatives that were too expensive to have scanned.
Months ago (years?) I kept my eye out for an affordable scanner. I found one and it became part of the Dharma Willing Plan. Yes, I ordered it. My order fell through while I was at the monastery, but eventually I got one sent from Jersey.
I left it in the little bedroom, and of course, it went missing. A was going there most days, doing her favourite task of throwing things away. But I think perhaps there was saddness too; there must be. It's thirty or so years, and I think she was happier there, that's what she told me. It just dawned on her that she wouldn't be able to cope, so there was acceptence... but perhaps relief that the struggle was over.
So, the scanner was gone. This came to a head as I had risen enough energy to ask where the photo was, the one of j. I'm talking about. I'd put it off because the reaction is going to be the same and link into all this childhood pain of all the things I lost to her.
I finally asked, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I said everything I could to jog her memory. When she found it, in the middle of all the shredding, I'd asked about it every time, and eventually was dumbstruck when she said, out-the-blue, 'Even though it means nothing to me I know it means something to you.'
Looking back, I bet that wasn't even from her. The time I fell apart and cried for all my missing stuff, in bhs when I told mother it was gone, even she cried, it must have been mentioned. A said something about M. coming back from bhs and asking for stuff, so this was something Mother had said to her and had managed to stick in her head.
Until I asked for it, then she had no idea about it.
Can you imagine that? She just threw away one of my most treasured possessions, found it in the middle of a mass shredding, then promises for the third time to look after it, and then just denies all knowledge of it.
Days later, she just suddenly remembered it. It was in the strongbox at her house.
On the last day I saw her, we were in the car and she said it's at Carly's house. Carly immeadiatley went to get it, just offered straight away; thanking her was the first and last time I've ever spoken to her.
I got it, in a white envelope marked on the cover, 'DO NOT DESTROY', so she had at least some understanding, and she did indeed go through some worry about the scanner. I felt bad in a way; all the stress I caused her... but GOD I don't know sometimes.
Uuuurrrgghhhh. It's a quarter to six in the morning and I'm just starting to get tired.
I did go on a bit of a downer after last seeing her. I redid my will. I was actually sitting by her bed while I retyped it. The day before she'd found the scanner, and went straight back to the nursing home in case I turned up, which I did. So the last day I'd decided to go up and be cheerful no matter what.
And it was a nice last morning I suppose. Carly and Brian signed my will. When I left she came to the door and said, 'Look after yourself'. I got a bit emotional. Then left.
No one got around to sorting out the things I needed. I was supposed to leave a box with Scott, the solicitor, in his strongroom, but I ended up bringing it with me. I mean, I had to buy a bigger bag, and currently I'm carrying everything I own in the whole wide world.
That sounds insane, but not really. I want to send back everything about J to J. Look, none of this causes me happiness; that's something I've learned. I have my little scanner, so I can save all my negs digitally, then dump them. I can scan the last of my photographs. It's just going to work out. Eventually, I'll just have a folder with essential documents in, Scott and the Red Cross can have it. Then I'm free, as free as a bird. There's sadness, but also excitement. Nothing behind me.
Of course, I'll be sorting much of it out while I study, over the coming months. But it's the last time I ever have to do it. Dharma Willing, I can go and see where J. lives I LOVE THIS COMPUTER! and let go once and for all.
My name is now Starr, and my life is about following your star, surrendering all you have and all you are to the knowing that something is trying to place you where you're supposed to be.
Maybe I should stop typing now. My mind wants to go on but my ass is hurting.
6am!
Well, this, in 20,000 words, is what happened in my five weeks in England.
Later
Pacific Coffee Company, Wanchai, Hong Kong Island
I decided I'm not going to sleep, so I might as well come out.
I was just going through my camera earlier and realised, or rather remembered that I got a picture of Robert Cadd on my card, actually the morning I was leaving. He was the school nerd. Darren went to prison for attacking him, and we saw him when we were sitting in The Auctioneer the day we met up.
He's another one of the Lost Boys, like me I suppose. Always wandering around town by himself. Anyway, the point is sitting here in such a relaxing place with Jazz playing, I felt a wave of gratitude that I'm me, whatever my issues might be.
There's another lost boy, actually, he's older than me. He was always in Morellis alone, but well ddressed. When I started going to MacDonalds at night, then I realised that he's always alone, just looking for places to go. He was like this the first time I went back to England.
What's wrong with these people? Is it the same as what's wrong with me?
Actually.... what is wrong with me? I'm pretty happy sitting here.
This is all a long way away as I sit here.
I was, again, looking through the course materials before I came out. I actually spent most of the night studying. I realised that the last tutor marked assignmet has to be written in an OU answer booklet. That is a major pain because I don't have it. I don't know if it's coming in the next mailing. I can't think what to do, except get on with what I'm supposed to be doing right now and worry about it later. It's not until October that it even has to be in.
With the diary, I think I was essentially up until I left. I had been really dreading the actual trip, I bought a massive bag on the market; 13 starling with ssome haggling. It won't last for long, but it should get me to Chiang Mai where I settle down for a while.
I was, and still am remember, carrying everything I own in th world (own is an annagram of won, I just found that out by making a typo). I had to make it step by step, but got myself to Beatties. I had a last tea and onto the bus. I was paranoid sitting on it thinkig that the silver case with all the J stuff in it would be stolen, even though my plan is to send it back to her; it's important to do that somehow.
In London it was raining, of course. I went to Victoria library. I'd been paranoid that it was closed, but it wasn't. I put my transsiberian guidebook back (yep, thinking of it), and went on the computer where I printed out my boarding pass. I'd already checked in exactly 24 hours before in the pub!
I walked to the underground and the guy was a bit of an ass about a refund I was entitled to. I got on the train to Heathrow anyway.
I remember when I was a teenager and used to come down to London, it fascinated me that there was an airport on the underground, and I tried to get there, but was intimidated off it. But now here I was going on to fly out to childhood mystery Hong Kong.
We arrived and I struggled up. The check in staff were really nice. I was worried I would be over the 24kg weight, but only came up to 16kg in the event. I went through security, then realised that I'd accidentally carried a knife through.
I found a paper and sat about for a bit. The fllight was delayed by three hours. I went and asked a guy what to do and he directed me to another builddig, and I had a funny feeling, so I came back and asked another woaan at aanother desk. She idirected me to part B, down a lift and on a train. I went and there were signs saying not to board until your flight is shown on the board.
I had been directed there though. Suddeenly I had a strong intuition from no where not to go, so I went back up and spoke to the woman, who apologised and said that had been a mmistake. Lucky intuition, as it takes 40 minntes to get back, according to the warning signs.
Eventually we all got on. It was a bit cramped but the seat next to me was one o the rew free ones on the whole plane, so I was greatful for that. The limey guy next to me was friendly buy clueless. For example, he turned my tv off when it was working, because from his angle it looked like it was off. The entertinment was really good, but turned off each time there was an announcement, whiich is typical pohm. Little prat in a peak cap is the most important thing in the world.
Top marks, I'd booked vegetarian food through the consolidator, and they served me two meat free meals. The film was fun too, plus saw the simpsons.
But there was something wrong with the aircon. It was freezing cold and my throat bunged up. I just took an alprazolam and lost consciousness under a blanket.
We arrived. The clueless man hung around me for a bit but then took a connection. Straight through customs no problem. A21 to Mongkok and a first, didn't get lost in Hong Kong. Jackie was there and didn't realise I had a new name. I took bus two to the water and a coffee in Avenue of the Stars and WAS BACK BABY OOOOOHHHHHH.
Reflection: Mission Accomplished. I stayed three weeks longer than intended, but did do all the things I'd planned:
â— Changed my name to Starr
â— Took the precepts
â— Got a new passport
â— Changed my ID's
â— Gave up smoking
â— Took the precepts
â— Received a Wagasa
â— Got the photo
â— Protected my possessions
â— Gave up smoking
â— Started university
â— Registered with a 'doctor'
Good work!
Next day I went down for coffee after moving to thee 10th floor. The place was packed. I ended up trapped in Freshness Burger as the Olympic torch was going through. Anarchy. Afterwards I came to the Island and the place was packed full of mainlanders waing flags 'One China, One family', all specially shipped in in case there were any pro-Tibetan demonstrators.
Went home last night and stayed up all night studying, both worried and excited my the course... and when I finally gave up the sleeping ghost, I came here. So here I sit typing this.
Date: Tuesday 6th May 2008 MY BIRTHDAY
Pacific Coffee Company, Santung?, Wanchai, Hong Kong. 10.28am.
Another year older. I'd had a vague plan to go to Lantau but my leg isn't holding up in the moist atmosphere, and so I'm taking it easy, which is absoluely fine, as there's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be 'celebrating' my birthday.
Shall I do the usual, 'I've never celebrated my birthday nor a New Year with anyone'?OK.
'I've never celebrted my birthday or a new year with anyone. Then again, I've never been in the same place for a birthday and new year since I was 20, so I guess there's a lot of compensaation in it for me.
It's very hard getting things done. I don't know why. I suppose I was jetlagged, then my leg went, then I just didn't have the evergy. It's so easy to spend time sitting around these expensive coffee places with lovely decors. Thank God they don't have free wifi or I'd probably move into the damn places. Of course, some things I'm trying to do aren't really a lot of fun, like getting the box full of J's stuff shipped off to J, seeig the debtist, or at least trying to. Yes, it's complicated; I don't have so much time though, only three full days after today.
I did get stuck in with the study though. Did I mention that I'm missing an answer booklet? I'll have to deal with it nearer the time. As it is, I've taken notes from all the supplementary booklets they sent me, so I just have to dowload one more. I did the whole workbook and am doing the introductory text today. It's all about England, which of course I couldn't care less about, but I keep reminding myself than I need this qualification to have any chance of leaving, leaving with a new nationality; objective number one.
Anyway, I'd better get on with the study.
Date: Saturday 10th May 2008
Location: In the sky, on an Air Asia flight to Bangkok.
I'm in the air again. Again I accidentally took my knife through security, and so owned up just as I was going through, and then had to surrender it. I almost got the feeling that they wanted to let me take it... but no, so there you go.
Anyway, it's only been four or five days since I wrote. One thing I was going to mention, that I noticed. Every year I kind of note J's birthday as a precursor to my own. This year, I hd my birthday and was shocked that J's seemed so far away. On the 6th I went through the pictures on my camera and relised that I was actuallly in Yangshou on J's birthday. I wrote her a letter in Yangshou park, then went to the 'night-club', in the evening, where someone else was also celebrating their birthday.
I sent J's box to her. It was five kilos and cost me forty US, but it's gone. I have film and negs, as I need them for the work I'm doing, but everything else is on it's way, even the rings. Oh, and A. gave me a keepsake, the family crest from the wall, and I even put that in.
The plan had been to go to Kowwloon Park, make a lisst of everything that was in there, re-photograph it onto my higher resolution camera, write a sad letter, and then let it go.
But once I got to Kowloon Park, it was just too much work. I walked onto the post office and just sent it. I felt bad in a way. Then again, I'm carrying everything I own in the world, and so each thing I can let go of is something I can let go of forever and not have to carry.
I did, on my birthday, get a hello from Mian. Oh, it was so sweet. I didn't relise until a few days later, but it really made me happy. I do feel very alone sometimes, and it's nicee to have that constancy.
I love Hong Kong. I really enjoyed just going around the coffeehouses, and just being there. I did get a bit down sometimes. I think it's because I always have to be in aa windowless shoebox of a room, but there really is a lot of compensation. I was even strting to vaguely think of ways I could legally settle there. By chance I passed the headqurters of the Open University of Hong Kong, and that got me thinking. There's a lot of OU stuff on TV there also. Possibly, I don't know... if I was a graduate. And even now, technically, I'm a full-time student, and I have a bona-fide union card to prove it.
The plane just started descending; there's a lot of turbulance. I'm a bit tired. Still, I'm happy enough.
I checked out today, five kilos lighter, which made things a little easier. I got the boat to Macau from Kowloon, and had already worked out a vague plan of how to get to the airport. When I arrive later, I have a hotel reserved, and a map printed in both English and Thai, so all tht's worked out.
I must get to work on my OU essay. I only have a week in real-time. I must also phone Bri. I want to check that carly got the necklace and also to see if A got the phone put in yet.
There are some amazing clouds out the window; I'm always awed looking down on clouds from a plane.
Anyway (Ugh. 'me ears are popping).
