I’ve been away delivering a week-long training course. I wasn’t able to sort my mobile broadband connection partly due to laziness and partly due to the flawed procedures 3 Network has in place. Despite that, the week was successful. I ran into a couple of old friends, one on accident, the other by design.

Here are some excerpts of the week from my offline journal (one of the nights, I went out and took photos of the estate):

7 Apr

Met up with Chantal in the evening at The Mermaid for an open mic jam session night. The house band was Steve K, a decent blues, rock, jazz fusion band. The open mic bands were also good. It was nice to see Chantal, although I never seem to be able to have a sustain conversation with her because she’s like a fluttering butterfly always on the move never stopping for more than a few second before moving on to the next topic or texting or whatever.

Inevitably we end up talking about life and what we want to do with ourselves. I half-joked with Chantal to just tell me what to do with next 40 years of my life. She got me to imagine that I was 80 years old now and asked me what would I look back on and regret not doing? The only answer I could give, the truthful answer is i would regret not having a body of published work that people read and read again. The only other thing would be not to have spent a year or so traveling on around the world in true vagabond style. That’s about it really. I was just remarking how hard it is to sit down and face a blank sheet of paper every day. But that what writers do and have done forever.

8 Apr

A bit of an epiphany this morning lying in a bed at Bricket Wood. I am approaching 40, which if i go by the average expectant lifespan of a modern man, i am at the halfway point, so i am entering the second half of my life. I want to go into this half with a clear purpose, a set determination, and focus on getting what i want. I also want to focus on building wealth for the later years in my life when i won’t want to go out and work in the mill. The fact that i want to be an important writer means in essence that i should be able to write right until the very end, but i would like to be in a position to not have to work if i don’t want to.

Something that interest me at the moment is the life-scripts I run automatically, where do they come from, what purpose do they serve? what triggers them?, what do i need to do to change the scripts i run? Imprints I think anton wilson and denise leary called them. from a Buddhist’s point of view what are the illusions that i govern my life by?

Like right now, on delivering this course, I want these people to like me, to believe that i am credible, to respect me for what i know. this is making feel self-conscious and unsettled because i am worrying about (imagining them doing the opposite) and acting as if it’s happening now. This I can change. I can change it by changing my focus.

I admire people who do what they do for their family. Let me restate that. One of the guys asked the group what their values were or why did they come to work or something like that and this person replied that he wanted to provide security for his wife and child. I admire people who are driven or motivated to do what they do for the good of their family.

10 Apr

Coming to the close of the course. We had a nice bonding night. I’ve had some nice indirect feedback from the group. They want to come on my future courses. They’re using words and phrases from my sessions, a number of them have said this has been the best week of their training so far. I’ve seen the less experienced managers grow in confidence.

A lesson for me: don’t let myself down by not living up to be the noblest person i am capable of being. Be a person of strong character.

It snowed last night.  I woke up and everything outside was covered in a couple of inches of snow.  If it was December or January I would be thrilled; as it is April and Spring, I am not. This time it is true; April is the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot wrote in the Wasteland.

But as fast as the snow came, it was gone by the afternoon, proving once again that in England you are more likely than not to get four seasons in one day.

I found myself getting annoyed this morning, mainly at myself.  It took a few minutes to figure out why.  I think it’s because i feel like DOING something i.e. I want to be out mixing it up with the world doing something really exciting.  Perhaps that’s a long way to say I am bored with sitting around being a domesticated primate.  I’m a couple of keystrokes away from running off and joining the French Foreign Legion.

my problem is i want to do everything at once, i want to run, dance, sing, paint, write, make love, and be a misfit all at the same time.

I need a wealthy patron to fund my vagrant meandering literary mishaps.  We can call it my “Inspiration Fund.�

Photos from my wanderings yesterday:

So this is what it’s like to be dead.  Well not dead exactly, more like I don’t exist anymore.  Yesterday I was thinking of re-inventing myself, but somehow I went a little too far and erased myself right out of existence completely.  That’s the trouble when you think too much, you start asking too many questions and then wham, you ask the million dollar question that invalidates your whole existence.

Look what happened to Job.  He asked so many questions that God had to come down out of Heaven to shut the boy up before he made the whole system collapse. God was furious over that one.  He kept muttering to Job to gird up his loins like a man and justify why he felt qualified to question God’s ways.  Job was lucky; he got off with a warning.

Descartes tried it too.  He locked himself in his room and decided he was going to figure this whole idea of existence out, maybe even prove that God did in fact exists and that the only reason nobody had seen him since Moses was because he was on holiday in some far off corner of the universe.  Descartes nearly erased himself as well.  He asked so many questions that the only thing left in existence was him on a tiny island, no birds, no trees, no ocean, no sky – nothing.  He would have done it too, but at the last minute he suddenly remembered an important meeting he didn’t want to miss.  He rescued himself by uttering, ‘I think; therefore I am.’

For me it started out rather innocently.  It was a nice day.  Unseasonably warm according to the weatherman, so I decided to take a walk down to the little stream in the woods behind my house.  The woods were quiet, peaceful even.  It was the kind of quiet that almost begs you to stop and think.  And that should have been my clue to turn around and go home, but I lingered on.  I saw a rabbit basking in a patch of sun.  With the purest of intentions, I simply wondered out loud, ‘what is it like to be rabbit from the rabbit’s point of view?  If I could talk to it, how would it describe reality?’

Then like poking a hole in a damn, more questions followed.  What is reality? How do I know these woods and that rabbit are real?

I took out some loose change in my pocket; is money real?

I looked up at the sky; what are space and time?

Am I dreaming or am I awake?

And it went on like that for hours.  Question after question I asked, and for every answer I came up with, more questions followed.  I became obsessed with questions.  I walked home and questioned everything on the way back.

It was then that I made the fatal mistake.  I looked in the mirror and asked the one question that has ruined many a good man:  Who am I?

Whoever said that ignorance is bliss was right.  I wish now that I had heeded their wise counsel, because who I thought I was turned out not to be who I am.

(photos taken on my iphone, near Offchurch)

I dusted the cobwebs off of my mountain back yesterday and went for a ride in the countryside. It’s amazing that when you look closer, you can find all sorts in your own back garden. There isn’t a need to travel to far off places to find and experience things you’ve never done before.

Anyway, it was nice to get out and ride. I did 16 miles altogether. (I went out for a short ride today. Boy, my butt bones ache!)

I’ve started reading Leo Tolstoy’s Family and Happiness and it’s got me thinking about literature. More specifically I’ve been brooding over the questions of why literature is important and what purpose does it serve? When I read literary works like Tolstoy’s I directly experience the intellectual gravity of literature. His exploration of the nature of love inspires me. It challenges me to think about what it means to be in love and what it means to be married. Reading Tolstoy reminds me why I want to write. I write not for fame or fortune, but to explore questions and concepts that plague me.

“Happiness is only to be had in living for another.”

Go for it is the mantra that is banging around in my head at the moment.  I can make my own way through this game with a little effort and a no fear attitude to forge my own path and not be hell bent on following the path laid by others or to do what the herd is doing…in short, I can do this thing if I am willing to march to the beat of my own drum.

1. Climb the 7 summits
2. Change the world
3. Have something I’ve written or created in every home
4. Spend a year wandering the planet as a poet and storyteller
5. Build an island sanctuary for wanderers, seekers, nomads, vagrants, misfits, poets, artists, musicians, and philosophers.
6. Invent something.
7. Make emotionally moving and inspiring documentaries.
8. Spend 3 months on a deserted island with access to all the world’s books.
9. Build a huge personal library with thousands and thousands of books.
10. Become an enlightened being.

Every morning in suburbia I wake knowing I better get my ass in gear make some money or loose my house and starve to death.  Every morning in suburbia the advertising man wakes up knowing he better get his ass in gear and convince me to give him my money or loose his house and starve to death. You see it doesn’t matter whether you’re the consumer or the advert man, when the sun comes up you had best get your ass in gear or loose your house and starve to death.

For most of my life, I’ve been a seeker. The trouble was I could never quite figure out what I was seeking.

As is typical with a lot of things in life, we find the answers we are searching for in the most unlikely of places.

I was wandering around Philadelphia, PA looking for nothing in particular when I stumbled upon a very small bookstore. It had funky new-age presence that was attractive.

On the stacks I found a book titled, That Which You Are Seeking is Causing You to Seek, by Cheri Huber.

It has taken me 14 years to figure out what that means. I would like to say that I spend my days in endless bliss now that I have figured out the riddle.

I’m reminded of a poster I saw a few years back. On this poster was a monkey scratching his head and looking very perplexed. The caption underneath read: “Just when I figured out all the answers, they changed the questions.�

That is where I find myself at now in this great adventure called life, standing on the threshold.

And the quest continues…

Here’s the video I put together of our little adventure in the brecon beacons last month. Enjoy.

[youtube]8V2r5zhemqY[/youtube]

He would come for her she knew.  He was a sweet boy, innocent in a naughty kind of way.  But she liked them like that, unspoiled, eager to know a girl in a carnal way for the first time.

Why can’t they wait to meet someone special?

They were born bastards, all of them. Better to use them and hurt them before they hurt you.

Still he was tender.

**

I’m afraid of me. I’m so bitter I’m afraid of what I’ll grow up to be, of how twisted and inhuman I’ll become. I have more than a handful of sins to my name, but nothing twists the knife like the hate I have for my mother.

She’s been working on a screenplay for about a year now, and she was watching TV and they had a commercial for a show debuting next season, which is basically the same plot as her screenplay. This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, this happens to her almost every time. I don’t know why the hell it happens. And a normal person would feel sorry for her. But I guess I’m so goddamned tired of her sadness that I don’t feel anything but hate towards her now. She complains about being overweight, and then opens up a new bag of Doritos. She complains that people are stealing her ideas for screenplays, but won’t listen when I remind her that everything is derivative. She can’t manage to see the beauty in anything she does. I feel like I’ve given up on her. But she’s given up on herself.

My mother remarried when I was fifteen.  It wasn’t until I was sixteen that her new husband started coming on to me.  At first it was the way he looked at me.  Always staring at me.  He never looked me in the eyes.  Always his eyes drifted down to my breasts and they would linger there longer than is decent for a father…even a step-father to be looking at his daughter, even a step-daughter…maybe his daughter’s friends but certainly not his own daughter.

What my mother could see in such a scrawny black bastard I’m not sure.  She seemed to have a thing for black men.  My mother really was a real slut.  My father found out that she was bopping a black guy and he left straight away.  As it turned out later, he was also seeing another woman, so my mom just made it easier for him to leave.  Because she got caught first, my father had the grounds he needed for a divorce.

Shortly after my father left, he moved in and my life began to change.

The first time he physically touched me, I was in my nightshirt standing at the kitchen counter pouring a bowl of cornflakes.  He came into the kitchen.  He was wearing his bathrobe open.  Underneath he had on boxer shorts.  I didn’t think much of it, but then on second glance, I saw his thing was hanging out of the little slit in the front.  He must have known especially when he saw my face go red.  He came up behind me and pressed against me under the pretence of getting a bowl from the cabinet.  I could feel his thing against my back.  I scooted underneath him and took my bowl of cornflakes to my bedroom.  I kept the incident to myself.

It got worse after that.  We started this goddamn bowling league and every time on the way home he would park somewhere dark and start saying things to me like how pretty I was and how he couldn’t help wanting to be near me because I was so pretty.  He would feel me up. I would beg him to stop and try to scrunch myself up into a tight ball.  He would paw me and kiss my neck until I started to cry.  Then he would say he was sorry and begged me not to say anything to anyone and that he wouldn’t ever do it again.  But every week he did.

He started coming into my room late at night.  The first few time he just stood and stared at me.  I pretended I was asleep, but I could see him standing there in his boxer shorts.

Then one night he climbed into my bed underneath my covers.  His kissed my neck and cheek and pressed himself against me…feeling me…rubbing me, touching parts of me that wasn’t proper.  I wanted him to stop; I begged him to stop.  In the end I would just lay there like a cold dead fish unmoving, no moaning, not even a protest.

**

“Jen told me you’d be here,” he said.  She caught his reflection in the mirror.

What a sweet boy.  I like him.  He’s a black kid.  I must be like my mom because I like these black boys, their dark skin.  There’s something primal…something exotic about it all…

She turned to face him.  He tried to look her in the eyes, but her lame eye looked eerie.

He had to avert his gaze.  She was too hard to stare at.  Instead, he let his eyes rest on her breasts.

Look me in the eyes you bastard.  They can’t even look me in the eyes.

If only my breasts had eyes, things might be different.

I doubt it though.  They’re all bastards, no matter how innocent they look.

Earlier this week I was in Snowdonia. As regular readers of my blog will know, I spend a lot of time in the mountains of Snowdonia, as they are, in effect, a spiritual home for me. This time I was there for a different reason. I was being interviewed for my thoughts on leadership. The producer of the film, Tim Clague, thought it would be great to capture my thoughts on leadership, while actually leading a group up the mountain. I was up for the challenge.

While packing for our little adventure, I was rummaging through my bedside table drawer looking for my pen knife. I saw the blue case that holds my West Point class ring. On a whim, I opened it just to take a look at the ring. I don’t really wear it anymore. But on this occasion I felt compelled to put it on.

There is a power in collective talismans.

In our West Point class rings the principles of West Point are embedded as well as the memories of our cadet days.

And those days did indeed flood my consciousness. To deepen the connection, I found my Bugle Notes and flicked through them. And things I should not have forgotten, I felt compelled to remember.

Duty, Honor, Country are words we lived and breathed as cadets. They are small words, but the power packed into them is staggering. I could never do justice in explaining them so I will share with you General Douglas MacArthur’s eloquent words:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poety of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

You can listen to or read the full speech here.

I have started wearing my class ring again and I feel humble. I also feel a sense of renewed strength and idealism. The world suddenly seems much brighter and my footsteps more solid.