The World Is My Representation

The World Is My Representation. Never was a more profound thought brought into existence by the human mind. Never did the tongue speak the truth with such grace. Never did five words, strung together as they are in nine syllables, spell out the human condition with such ease. The world is my representation - and he who understands this understands much. A man achieves a sort of awakening from the deep slumber of life when he suddenly realises that The World is his Representation.

This is a profound truth that many never get a sniff or inkling of - destined, as they are, to live their lives in deep slothful sleep on earth. The heavy footprints of sleep walkers trample the road of history. The vast majority of those that have ever lived, and who do currently live, and will live - are destined to be ignorant of the greatest feat of armchair philosophy. A few though wake up from the turgid sleep of life; the cycle of everyday circadian rhythms; the morose trudge to work; the stupid and pointless chat-chat with brain-numbed folk; the evenings spent in front of a screen watching images run around, and look abouts themselves anew and say: "Wow! Look at the world. What a marvelous thing it is. I think I shall try and gets-a-grips with it!'.

And a lucky few do get a-grips with it. And it is they who then utter the immortal wisdom laced words: the world is my representation. What does it mean to say that the world is my representation? - what is this profundity of which I speak? What is this sentence I continuously jabber about like a demented ape? Well let me explain:

What are you doing right now?

You are reading this.

Through what are you reading it?

Through your skull.

What are you using to view this?

Your eyes.

What do your eyes do?

They absorb electromagnetic radiation of particular limited frequencies and channel the data to the brain.

What does the brain do?

The brain sorts the data so that different frequencies appear different to us.

How do they appear different to us?

In the form of colours.

Do you think colours actually exist out there in the world outside of our bodies? Get real! Leaves are not really green. The sky is not really blue. Those flowers are not really pink. The sun is not really yellow. Summer is not really hot and there is no such thing as winter cold. None of these things in the form of the sensations in which we experience them actually exist out there independently of us. The sensations of colour, heat, cold, time, space, causality, are all formed, nay constructed, within our heads by our brain. In short what we see and experience of life doesn't actually exist out there independently of us.

Take heat for example - what is it? When we say something is hot what do we mean? We mean it feels hot. Yes, but the feeling of hotness is created by the brain. What is heat? When is one thing hotter than another? When its molecules are moving about faster. For example the water molecules in a glass of boiling water are moving about faster then those at room temperature. Our skin detects this change or difference in rate of movement, passes the data to the brain, which then 'creates' the sensation of hotness which we all experience and are familiar with. The only thing that distinguishes summertime from wintertime is that in the former the molecules in the air are moving about faster. They are moving about faster because they have more energy. They have more energy because more infra-red radiation reaches them. More infra-red radiation reaches them because the earth is tilted towards the sun in summer and away from the sun in winter. In short: everything you love about summer doesn't actually exist out there!

So what does exist out there in itself? What is the reality - the thing in itself - independent of our subjective sensation, that exists out there? There is no way to know. To know means to pass it through our senses and our brains - and as I've just said, our senses and brains interpret the data, put a spin on it (like spin doctors). The truth is that independently of our brains and senses there simply is no way of knowing what lies out there as a thing in itself. Hence, why I began this blog entry with: the world is my representation.

The world is my representation. And the world is your representation. Indeed the world is our representation. The world as I (and you see it) is constructed within our heads. The representation is not what's really out there. Nor is everything out there represented. The representation is different for every species. Dogs, for example, have a much more sensitive 'smell' gamut then we do. We can't smell emotions like fear, trepidation, happiness. But dogs can. Bats 'see' through ultrasound. Bees see ultraviolet. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Time, matter, causality, space - all are constructs of the brain. Yes there is something out there. There must be something out there because raw data from this something passes into our eyes, ears, noses, tongues and skin. But what this something is - this thing in itself - we can never know. Because to know, to think, to interpret, is to pass it through our subjective selves. Objectively we can never know the world as it is. Because 'as it is' is a meaningless concept outside of our subjective selves as sensing beings. As sensing - seeing beings we bring the world we experience into existence. It doesn't exist 'ready made' out there waiting for us to just come along and view it.

The world is my representation. Welcome to the real world! Welcome to my world!

[To be continued...in small little doses the brain can swallow]

Coming soon...Adventures in Transcendental Idealism!

The life that really matters is the internal one lived inside your head. This includes, for example, the sort of stuff you think about on the train to work, or the ideas that come your way whenever you have a spare moment. Your inner life is populated by what you think about when practical questions of food, toilet, roof, sex and girlfriend have been dealt with. Your internal world is a much richer, deeper, magical and altogether much more exciting and satisfying place then the external world of people and their banal conversations, their instant-coffee niceties, and their pay-as-you-go pieties (misanthrope? what me? always!).

Do you know how to tell whether the internal life you are living is extraordinary? Let me tell you how: you can tell if your internal life is extraordinary if you continue to assimilate new ideas as you journey through life. If on this journey you are not afraid to jettison old ideas for new one's. If you are constantly surprised by life (by the good and the bad). If the world appears to you as a mystery itching to be understood and solved. If you have a voracious appetite for new experiences. IF YOU ARE NEVER BORED.

If you are never bored then your inner life is indeed extraordinary. If you are never bored and spend a lot of time thinking - then you can count yourself amongst the most fortunate people on the earth. Forget the rich! Forget the famous! Forget the gorgeous and the plastic fantastic! For if you are never bored then; and only then, can you say, that your entire subject of study, nay your entire occupation and raison d'etre, is life itself. There is one final essential item that will guarantee a deep inner and extraordinary life, and that is if you discover the doctrine of 'Transcendental Idealism' - and get it. And by get it I mean understand it truly. For there are many charlatans who think they get it, but they don't really get it. Some of these include university professors at philosophy faculties in prestigious institutions. I'm certainly not a university professor and nor do I hold a chair in philosophy, but nonetheless I certainly do get it, and you should count yourself lucky, for you have a wonderful teacher to teach you; what is perhaps, the hardest thing to wrap your mind around in all philosophy: Transcendental Idealism.

Transcendental Idealism is not some higher state of mind attainable through the consumption of hallucinogenic drugs and magic mushrooms! Oh no! Baby I don't do drugs. Not in the conventional sense anyway (not unless I'm on Freak Street in Kathmandu and wanna go all Eastern and Karma Sutra). Transcendental Idealism (as I shall show you later) is the greatest gift that Philosophy has bestowed upon mankind. It may even be one of the crowning achievements of the human mind. Once you understand it fully (but be warned that it does take time, patience and hard mental graft to fully assimilate the ideas mainly because they are so counter intuitive to the human brain) you will suddenly appear into the world, as if from a dark cave into the light (like Mohammed and his vision of the Arch Angel Gabriel), and once you emerge into the light - your entire life having been spent in darkness before, you will view the world as if for the first time; as if a cataract has been removed from your eyes.

Transcendental Idealism was not developed by one person. Rather it is the combined effort of some of the greatest thinkers that have ever lived from the Greeks to German Enlightenment thinkers (though it is arguable that one man did make the biggest contribution to it). Xenophane, Plato, Berkeley, Hume, Immanuel Kant and Schopenhauer are the luminous drugs you take to get you there. And when you get there? Boy! Will the wool be pulled from your eyes and the world - the reality you think you live in - the world you think you inhabit, will wash away in the sand and what will remain will be a truth that will haunt you and energise you and inspire you and never fail to surprise you, till your last dying breath. I mean it. Watch this space. Unreality or rather Uberreality is about to bite you up the ass.

Francisco de Goya's 'The Dog' (c1820)

It's a haunting picture don't you think? But what is it about? Why did he paint it? And why is it so powerful? These are the questions we will try and answer in our first (of many I hope!) Art Classes. Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to Goya's 'The Dog'.

Its power lies in it's simplicity. There's nothing much there. Minimal. Never was minimal so maximal. This painting is a part of a whole series of paintings he did collectively known as his 'black paintings' and the artist painted it on the walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo, outside Madrid. He painted it (with the other black paintings) on the walls of his home, because they were for him. They were never meant to be seen by the outside world. These black paintings were the equivalent of a personal diary entry. After Goya's death the murals were detached from the wall; his home demolished, and they ended up (luckily for us) in the Prado Museum - where they remain to this day. Of all the black paintings, for me the dog, is of the very worst. The fact that the paint was flaking before they were removed seems to exacerbate the poor animals misfortune.

Where are we? Who knows. Because the scene is so minimal and non-specific. First, there is the shape of the whole picture, an exceptionally tall narrow upright oblong – indeed perversely tall, narrow and upright, considering that the scene is, after all, a kind of landscape. Secondly, there is the ratio of the areas within it: the upper area very deep, the lower area very shallow. These extreme proportions have an inherent drama. Whatever finds itself in the lower area is right down at the bottom of the vertiginous scene, as if it was at the bottom of a well or a cliff, or despair. The conceit works well.

OK, now let's talk about the dog...

But of course we only see the head of the dog, poking into the upper area, its body in some way obscured by the lower one. It raises a snout hopefully. It has a most pathetic, anxious look in its eye. It gazes up, in the direction of the rising edge. And the uncertainties and proportions of the scene all fall upon it. You can see the creature as submerged in the lower area, up to its neck in it, buried in the ground. It raises its head, trying to keep itself "above water". But the great empty gulf that towers above it only emphasises its helplessness. Alternatively, you can see the dog as cowering behind a ridge, trying to hide and protect itself. It raises its head in trepidation, looking up at the impending danger from above. Either way, it is a picture about bare survival in the face of hopeless doom. Whether the danger comes from below or from above, the picture tells us there is no escape. There is no way out of the drowning mire. And the fact that we see only the dog's head, and nothing of its body and limbs, further reduces its chances of escape. It is deprived of any sense of movement or action. It is only a head, a consciousness, lost in a universe of terrors, afraid for its life - nobody cares. The universe is indifferent. Just like us perhaps? Who knows what Goya is saying. It's all a mystery. No it's not. It's clear to me what Goya is saying. I know exactly what Goya is saying cos we're like brothers! I love this painting. It speaks to me in ways words cannot.

Dejeuner avec Schopenhauer

I only had £20 to my name that morning. A crisp purple-blue £20 note. No wallet. No more money. I had deliberately left my wallet at home - to conserve money - so that, when I went out that saturday morning, I'd have just enough for a decent breakfast, a couple of coffee's, and a spot of light lunch - maybe even a glass of wine too (if I didn't go anywhere too expensive). Just £20. It's an effective gambit. If you've only got £20 in your pocket, than you've only got £20 in your pocket, and that means that you can only spend the £20 in your pocket! It's a brilliant idea. It stops me from sleepwalking into bookshops with the intention of browsing...but inevitably walking out with books.

So there I was. On a sunny saturday morning on the London Charing Cross Road with only £20 to my name. I felt good. I felt free. I felt I was in control. I felt not like a pauper but rather like a prince. When money is scarce even the smallest of sums can feel like gold nuggets. I felt the £20 note between my thumb and forefinger and said unto it

"You my £20 note are mine. You belong to me. I don't belong to you!"

So with this warm feeling of control nestling in my breast and a whistling in my soul, I capered jauntily along the Charing Cross road...and then, from the corner of my eye, I saw it. I ignored it. It nagged at me. I ignored it. It nagged at me again. I ignored it. It kept nagging at me. I gave in. What was it? It was the wide-open doors of, yes, Foyle's Bookshop! They were like a pair of outstretched arms. 'Come to papa' they were saying to me. 'Papa will take care of you'. 'Ok. Ok I will see Papa, but I will not buy anything' I said to myself. So I went in through the outstretched arms of the doors. Through the mouth of the monster. And inside it was going very well indeed. I jogged pass the 'Special Offers' section without even a second glance. I walked up the stairs to the second floor and pass the 'Science' section without even deigning to look at the shelves. I knew what was on them - they weren't gonna get me this time! I strolled aloofly with head high and mighty pass the 'Penguin Classics' section and I didn't even stop for a chat, or a peak. I had survived the black 'Penguin Classics'! I was on a roll man! I scrambled to the 3rd floor to the 'Arts' section and there I felt i-n-v-i-n-c-i-b-l-e. You should have seen me. I was walking through the innards of this cavernous leviathan of a bookshop - and there was nothing in it I wanted! I felt no pangs of desire to buy anything. A-mazing. I was a junky cured. A druggy off the mescaline. Off the hook. Now brimming with uber-confidence and cocky as Nietzsche's Ubermensch (Superman) I strolled to the 'Philosophy' section and with utter disdain took a bright red book from off the top shelf, and opening it on page one, I began to read the opening paragraph:

'In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, not at the core and covered over with a hard cold crust; on this crust a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings: this is empirical truth, the real, the world. Yet for a being who thinks, it is a precarious position to stand on one of those numberless spheres freely floating in boundless space, without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable similar beings that throng, press, and toil, restlessly and rapidly arising and passing away in beginningless and endless time...'

Wow!

...Er, actually I was fucked. I knew I was hooked there and then. I have read many opening paragraphs, but this was by far; by a considerable margin, the single best opening sentence in the history of...opening sentences? No, in the history of all writing period! It was pure lucidity. Who needs drugs when you can have potent stuff such as this? The words were just flowing off the page and into my bloodstream. Just read it again! It has everything. The remarkable man who had written it; the man who would spend his final years caring for a succession of poodles named 'Atman', had jumped from off the page and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and was throttling me. Not to kill me but to wake me up.

...I fingered that £20 note. It was still there in my pocket. What shall it be, lunch or book? Lunch or book? Fuck it - it was no contest. Fuck lunch. Who needs food when you can eat paragraphs like this?! I bought the book for £13.99 and spent the rest of the morning gorging myself stupid with words, coffee and sunshine.

And who was the writer? Who indeed. Who but the Ubermensch himself:

Yak butter-tea breakfast for the soul

One morning in Tibet, I awoke well before dawn, jumped out of my body-warmed bed and stepped onto the cold hard wooden floor. I shivered. I tip-toed downstairs and splashed my face with cold water from the wash bucket left filled from last night by the proprietress of the guest house. And then while the world was still dreaming I walked out into the inky black streets and then travelled by bus, far far away, out of town. I passed fleeting shadows in the alleyways that looked like conspiracies. I passed nomadic tents, pass silhouettes of prayer flags flapping above squat mud-bricked adobes. I went far far across the wild plateaus – pass braying animals and mischievous pariah dogs. I travelled miles across the plain and then there, atop the lonely hill-top, lay the monastery. I went up a flight of stone steps and as I got closer, the steady murmuring drizzle of monk talk got louder. At the top, in the dull-blue chill of early morning, they invited me to join them where they sat for breakfast. Our breath condensed in the morning air as we passed around rough bread and tea made of rancid yak butter flavoured with salt. The Tibetans were incorrigibly merry, with a quick animation in their faces, ready at any moment to break into a ruddy smile that felt like a benediction (blessing). Their smiles were cleansing. Like a Bodyshop scrub for the soul.

Then as the sun began to burn off the morning mist – I went into the monastery and explored its honey-comb chambers. Inside it stank of rancid butter lamps. Ancient scrolls greasy with years of butter lamp grease holding eastern secrets were stacked from floor to ceiling in cut-outs dug into the walls. Flickering candles loomed and cast shadows that threatened and gave the place an air of solemnity. Little Buddha statues smiled at you through recesses and above them snapshots of the Dalai Lama; dog-eared, besmirched with greasy finger marks, sat affixed – seemingly floating in the air. In some rooms, through open windows, the white bearded mountains peered in. They reminded you, that at this moment you were on The Roof of The World.

Afterwards, I climbed the winding steps to the roof of the monastery, and there I sat, through the sun-washed morning, writing, thinking and letting my eyes wander out across the barren plain – hemmed in as they were by the mountains. My mind was also filled with mountains. Mountains of the mind. They loomed ever so large above me. But up here no movement was discernible but the fluttering of prayer flags. No sound but the squeaks of revolving prayer drums transmitting their prayers to heaven. And in the background the constant low humming of the monks. My mind and my thoughts are too airy, too light; like helium-baloon gas, to be kept within the small confines of my skull. I can feel my thoughts and ideas like gas pressure pushing against the walls of my skull. I need space to breathe. Freedom to roam. To wander. This I find here. Later I scrambled down the hill and caught a bus heading back into town. By then, morning had finally risen from its slumber from behind its bed the mountains – and the city; a colourless mass of shadows in the morning, had now bloomed into a spring blossom riot of colours. Orange flower boxes, yellow temple walls and white-washed terraces, golden stupas and pagodas pointing to the skies. As I walked through the central square I saw fierce looking 'Khampa' bandits with their red bandannas and black skins. I spied leather skinned women of indeterminate age – years of toil on the fields and in the sun showing in their faces. Traders, monks, mendicants, purple-cheeked little girls with bright open eyes and brilliant smiles. There were itinerant circus freaks from the low areas, spell weaving magicians with pointy green hats whispering incantations in the smoky blue air, and restless travellers from the West seeking the wisdom of the East. And me, a seemingly ordinary guy, caught in the middle of a medieval stage show of freaks and outcasts.

Then as the morning rose further still, I headed back to my guest-house room and went back to sleep with the chants still ringing in my ears and the flags still flapping in the wind. I re-awoke sometime after three in the afternoon and after a little light reading and writing I descended below to a cavernous kitchen, where three Tibetan girls were busy chopping the vegetables – their white dirt caked fingers peeling potatoes, their fingers nails stuffed with filth – they were preparing my dinner. I sat on the kitchen table watching them in a kind of trance reverie and horror. What a strange world I had tumbled into. An Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. They passed me my steaming soup dinner and hard bread - and without further ado I began gobbling it down – dipping the bread in the soup to soften it, pushing it down the chute of my throat, reminding myself that the mind seeks nourishment. The thinking-writing-contemplative life – needs nourishment. Then after finishing off the last dregs at the bottom with a slurp – tummy bloated – I grabbed my jug of milky tea, and went up to the roof of the guest-house and watched the heavens fill with stars. Tummy and firmament both full.

Now repeat after me:-

Thou shalt not plan. Thou shalt not hurry. Thou shalt not travel without back-pack, on anything other than back roads. And thou shalt not, ever, in any circumstance, call thyself a tourist. Amen.

THE ROAD

Feverous despatches from a man alive

Leisure-time is the flower, or rather the fruit of existence, as it puts a man in possession of himself. So those will be happiest in leisure who possess something real in themselves. During the day I don't possess myself - work possesses me - I belong to work. In the evenings it is a different matter altogether. In the evenings I am mine - I belong to me! Hands off!

*****

If you think about it everybody does what is best for himself. The man who pushes to the front of the queue is doing it for himself. The girl who dumps her boyfriend is not acting out of malice - but self interest. The man who robs is doing it for his children. The inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition with Torquemada as their head burnt heretics on the stake to save their souls from further blasphemy. The Nazis incinerated the Jews because they believed the world would be a better place without them. There is no such thing as pure evil in the world. Only terribly misguided, ignorant, ill-conceived, ill-thought-out, actions warped by wrong ideas. Everyman thinks he is doing right. No man thinks himself to be doing wrong. Only in the minds of others, is evil as a tangible thing, brought to conception. The cure for the troubles of the world I know: "look at every person that lives as if they're your very own child - would you throw bombs at your children? Everybody that lives has a mother - and when that person suffers, a mothers grief is born". If only we all remembered this in our daily lives - would we not then be kinder and gentler to our fellow citizens?

*****

Man is the only creature in the world who kills for reasons other than food, land, sex (access to females) and survival. What are these 'other' reasons? No other animal but man kills because of the Ideas you hold in your brain? No other animal kills another because he poses a future threat. No other animal but man kills because it makes him feel good. No other animal but man kills because he wishes to wipe you out completely. No other animal kills for punishment or for revenge for something you have done in the past. No other animal kills because you do not share the same beliefs. The race of men kill consciously and deliberately. It is a part of the same intellectual heritage that enables us contemplate the stars. Without one there would be no other. There is no art without pain. There is no love without heart-ache. There is no good without evil. The blade cuts both ways.

*****

Mol-es-kine, Mouleskeene, Mole-skin...

August trip essential item no. 2 : A good travel companion

It is an essential thing when you are footloose and wandering about a foreign heathen country all by yourself - with all sorts of 'orrible folk about ready to pounce on you and spill your guts, and slit your throat for a couple of rupees - that you find yourself...a good travel companion! Oh yes - a good travel companion is more important to you than a good quality toothbrush. Nay, even more important to you then non-bum-chaffing toilet paper. Toilet paper is not so important - there are plenty of soft things in the bush to rub your bum against if need be. Trust me I have rubbed myself against many things in the jungle and never has my bum complained. But a good travel companion is a must! More important than a robust digestive system - especially in the vindaloo curry belts of India (where rumour has it that the food is as hot as the women - but I wouldn't know such things).

A good travel companion will be a constant and unquenchable source of wit and wisdom - and therefore in times of need, an excellent source of stress-relief, succour and good advice. I am lucky. I have found the perfect travel companion for me. He is wise. Steadfast. Brave. Obdurate when he has to be. Kind and gentle and soft when he need be - but not a coward. He has lived. He has seen. He has been. He has thought (oh, how much he has thought!). He is not wet around the ears nor green. His name is Marcus. Marcus Aurelius. Once in Ethiopia I got angry with a smelly man who sat next to me on the bus - Marcus waived his finger at me and nodded his head disapprovingly. And then he says to me:

[Marcus Aurelius] 'Wasim, are you angry with that man who smells like a goat, or the one with fishy breath? Are you angry with that man with the dirty clothes who sits next to you on the bus? Are you angry with that man over there who has not shaved his armpits? Are you angry with that girl who doesn't even look at you - so beneath her you are in intelligence and looks! Are you? Are you angry with them all, Wasim? Well what would you have them do? Eh? That's the way his mouth is, that's the way his armpits are, and that dirty man has no money to buy new clothes - what would you have him do? Buy new one's! He can't afford them. And the girl who won't even look at you - maybe she has been brought up as a little princess? Tell me, why would a princess even deign to look at you, Wasim? - are you a handsome prince? No! - so why should she look at you? Maybe she is better off looking at a frog? Have you thought of that?, No?'

[Wasim] 'But the man with the smelly armpits and the man with the smelly breath are endowed with reason. And if they put their mind to it surely they can work out why they cause offence? - Surely all they have to do is look around them and see how people shirk away from them on the bus in disgust? Such an evil stink they raise in their walking wake'

[Marcus Aurelius] 'Well good for you, Wasim! Good for you! Congratulations, for your nostrils are most super-sensitive! But you too are no less endowed with reason, no? : bring your rationality, then, to bear on their rationality - show them, sit with them, tell them, explain to them that to brush one's teeth is a good thing, to shave one's armpits is a noble thing. Tell her, that princess, that to look at you is a most civilised thing. And if they listen to you - you will have cured them, And if they don't, let them be - there is no need for anger. You have tried and there is no more to it. Neither hypocrite nor whore. Don't waste your life on microscopic trifles that live on motes of dust'

Ahh, my friends. Do you not see what prudent words Marcus speaks? Pregnant as they are with wisdom. Here is another anecdote of his:

[Marcus Aurelius] 'Whenever you are offended by someone's lack of shame. Whenever you are irritated by someone's lack of manners. Whenever someone's views grate inside your skull. Whenever someone's stupidity annoys you rotten. Whenever any of these things happen, you should ask yourself this: 'So is it possible for there to be no shameless, uncouth, stupid, irritating people in the world?' It is not possible. Do not then ask for the impossible. You are asking for such people not to exist in the world - but how can that be? Who do you think you are to expect such things! If you see a stinging nettle on the path do not ask why it is there, walk around it. If you see a little rock ahead of you do not get annoyed - walk over it. The realisation that such kinds of people must necessarily exist in the world, will make you kinder to them as individuals'

I never tire of repeating Marcus's meditations. His words, like the ballast inside a ships hold - keep me steady in turbulent waters. My time abroad in foreign lands; without his breath of wisdom, would be fretted away on inconsequential quibbles and niggles. Marcus Aurelius is the best travel companion in the world, and he'll be coming with me this August. I have booked a seat for him next to me on all my journeys. And do you know what the best bit is?

Do you?...

- He travels absolutely free!

Why?

Cos he is dead. But his 'meditations' live on...

________

Moleskine Love

I am in love. In love I say!

What with a woman?! You say

Poo-poo I say!

Ha! You no not what love is I say

A woman? What is she? I say: A bait to stir the fidgety groins of men! The bulbous, restless, hot-blooded loins of men.

No, let me tell you what true love is. It is this. This close friend that accompanies me wherever I go. It sits snugly next to my breast on the London Underground. It is in the overhead luggage compartment of my flight to Tibet (safely tucked away in my rucksack). It sits atop the cabinet next to my bed in Kathmandu (what to do - what to do). It rests on my lap on a bumpy raucous bus as we journey through dusty pot-marked jungle terrain. It is sitting here today. Next to the coffee, with a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost for company. I am sitting next to a tall window so the fine gauzy morning sunshine meets my Moleskine paper - they greet each other on the page, smile - the clouds appear, and then they wave goodbye. Under the sunlight my writing looks as if spiders have dipped their feet in a bottle of black ink and trampled all over the page. Yes I am weaving a web. A web of something!

I can share with my Moleskine notebook my darkest secrets! There is no friend in the world quite like it. It is Like.No.Other. I trust it wholeheartedly with my life. It will never betray me. Nor will it judge me harshly through the scope of piety. It even; through some strange mechanism I don't fully understand, imparts me with advice. I come back to it many months yonder to read things I have told it in the past - and - when I read - the voice somehow seems different. It can be a shock to the system to read something you wrote a while back and then exclaim:

'Good heavens! Did I really write that? Was that me?'

'Me', 'I', what is that? Am I a fleeting ghost? Am 'I' a constantly shifting mirage always on the move - like those wide-angle velds of Africa where the sun flits over a patch amidst a partially clouded scene - moving across the fields like ripples in a pond. The 'I' is not fixed. There is a robust core to me sure - but, to this core is lightly attached, like breadcrumbs on a drumstick (poor analogy!), what I am thinking and feeling at a particular moment. My real voice is that which echoes back to me through my Moleskines.

I have a collection of these notebooks: bulging with things glued in, stapled, bits collected, memoranda, photographs, poems, pithy aphorisms - each one of these obese Moleskines is a distilled (I love that word!) shot of my consciousness.

Each one of these bulging notebooks is rich in tasty pickings. Maybe I'll publish them one day? I could call it my 'stream of consciousness oeuvre'. When your car has a blockage the mechanic recommends you to press the throttle and wash out the congestion - right? Well, my 'stream of consciousness' writing provides a medicine for blockages of the mind. When at first you had an unclear, smelly miasma of gunk - after, you will be left with a clear refreshing gently-a-sparkling liquid. The thing to do is to start on a fresh page. Make a mark with your pen, open the floodgates of your mind, and see where it leads! You'll be surprised where the pen will lead you. A stray thought pops into existence out of thin air, like a soap bubble it floats about a little looking to attach itself to something, and then it sees your pen and as soon as it has attached itself...it's like a rocket shooting off into Space! You look back and the earth is a tiny leeeetle thing waaaaay of in the distance, and you are floating a-freely - lost in space. Lost in thought.

But aren't we all really lost in a way? We think we know where we are - but that's only because of friends, family, familiar places that serve to keep us tethered and provide a relative frame of reference. But as a whole - as a unit - humanity as a whole - we are lost. You can feel something of this when you go off to a foreign country on your own. You arrive and you know nothing! No familiar faces - no familiar places. You're lost. But on a grander scale we all live on a blue-green planet that is hurtling at tremendous speeds around a nuclear fireball called the sun, in a galaxy of billions upon billions of such suns - in a universe that could be a part of a multiverse of many. If we are not lost then what are we!

_________

Despatches from Plato's Cave

There are two types of world. There is the familiar world of the outside. And then there is the world we all carry around inside of us - our inner life. The richness or lack thereof of this inner life is imprinted on the faces of most people. Vacuity. This lack of a rich inner life betrays itself in the way they are prey to the wiles of every external stimulii. How every tinkle of a bell, every peal of laughter, every raised voice, every blaring horn, every beautiful girl, every molecule from the Kebab-wallah - causes them to flit and stir hither and thither; dart their eyes left and right; eyes constantly roving, never sitting still - restless, fidgety, timorous. A billion buzzing movements like a bumble-bee hive.

He who has a multi-layered, multi-faceted, inner life can go and hide in the sanctuary it provides - hideth from the uncouth mob that is the world! But, if you have no inner life, no recess, no shade - what do you do? Well, you do nothing. You lie exposed to the furies. You have no leeward sheltering cave. Here's a question though: can you tell, just by looking at someones face, whether their inner life is rich or poor? I don't think you can - not from the face anyway. But, you can tell from careful observation of the rest of the body: assuredness of movement, apathy to the sights and sounds of proximal stimuli, a thoughtful (or meditative) countenance, a book (maybe I am biased here!), the ability to peer into the world; or at least engage with it, from the aperture of one's inner self - these are all signs of a rich inner depth.

The analogy of the aperture is apt and I will explore it further. The aperture is the hole in a camera that can shrink or expand, thus controlling the amount of light that is let in. If one is wise, one can use the inner self like an aperture to control the amount of the world to let in at any given moment. On a trip to say Tibet or Nepal the aperture should be wide open to let in as much of this fresh alien world as possible. But back at home, in the dull suburbs of london under a dull November sky, the aperture should be shrunken to allow one to contemplate & chew & assimilate & think over, that which got in in Tibet.

And then...like the digestion of a meal, what follows is a distillation; a pot-pourri of descriptive, emotional, poetic, rational, polemical, peregrinating, thoughtful, meandering, critical, incisive, pithy, funny, hilarious, sensual, cool - words on a page! That is my art. That is what I do. That is my vocation. I imbibe the world; I swallow it through the lining of my eyes and ears and mouth and skin and nostrils - and after passing it through my guts, and my heart; after washing it in the black billious bile of my gall bladder, after coating it in Saturnine bleakness and studding it with the occasional diamond and finally after processing it in my brain - what emerges, are these very words! Voila!

Mesdames et Messieurs, I give you: My progeny. My reproductions. My darling babies. See how they dance on the page these fiery fancies.

Who was it that said: 'the unexamined life is not worth living'?

Ah yes, Plato.

___________

August trip essential travel item no.1 : Moleskine Journal Notebook

Travelling to the Himalayan Kingdoms of Tibet and Nepal can be a mind jangling experience. Not only does the altitude 'do things' to you, but at these heights the sky is of such a dense chrome-blue that looking up is akin to drowning; as if you're swimming on the surface of an ocean sky. Someone once remarked that those who visit mountain-tops are half in love with themselves and half in love with oblivion. I prefer the words of the unknown poet who said:

'You can feel lonely in a city crowd, but you will find solitude in a mountain-top'

Solitude is a state of mind of deepest contemplation and inner repose - it is the exact opposite, nay the Antipodean, of loneliness. Sublime landscapes (peaks - deserts - steppes - glaciers) encourage heady contemplation by virtue of their inexplicable scale and sheer aloofness. The mind tries to grasp at these mountains of the mind, to scale their dizzy heights, to unfurl their primeval mystery. But the mystery lies not in inert rocks or crags or sun-dappled peaks. It lies within all of us and you must fish for it internally. The Moleskine is my preferred notebook of choice for 'fishing' for things connected with this grand mystery - this La Grand Briteche (as Honore de Balzac once described it). Armed with a Moleskine, and pen at the ready, I can embark upon courageous expeditions to the tops of mountains of the mind, all from the comfort of...a room. A room with a view. Of white bearded mountains and poplar trees. Imagine. Just imagine...

Beautifully constructed. Leather bound. Non-bleed hallowed paper. Fine ruled. Perfect fit-in-your-pocket-sized. With one of these in your pocket and a pen in hand you'll never be lost for words. An essential travel companion. A friend to trust with your innermost darkest most moribund of thoughts.

In Transit

Do you not think we spend much of our time 'in transit'?

Nowhere is this more pronounced then when we go on holiday: you pack your bags a week before departure - you are in transit. Departure day arrives make journey to the airport - in transit. Wait at the passport queue - you're in transit. Wait to board the plane. Wait for take-off. Wait for the food trolley to snake its way to you from the bottom of the aisle. Food finished now what? Now wait for stewardess to remove tray. Wait to land. The entire plane journey is a 'filler' for the main event - the holiday destination itself. So you finally arrive at the airport, but the holiday hasn't started yet - cos you need to get to the hotel/resort. So, more transiting to do in airport taxi. Arrive at hotel, elevator ride to your room - in transit. Unpack, feeling hungry, go to a restaurant - more transiting. Arrive in restaurant. Order, wait for meal, eat, wait for it to finish, wait for desert, wait to pay and leave. Back to hotel and go to sleep. Sleep is transiting to get you ready for another days transiting. Wake up. Wait for breakfast. Nearer the end of the holiday you can't wait to go back home! Holiday no longer a holiday but an 'in transit' place from where you go back home.

Go home. Wake up. Make your way to work. In transit on train staring vacantly out of window. Work itself is one full 'in transit' chunk of waiting to go home at 5:30. Evening time. Waiting for TV programme to start. Waiting for it to finish. Read book, waiting for the next page. Always 'in transit'.

On the move

Between places

Moving but never arriving

Mankind fidgety for the next thing

We're all in transit. Our lives are in transit - but in transit to where? To oblivion...

O b l i v i o n -------------> in transit moment called life --------------> O b l i v i o n