Well, here I am again. Why Day One? Because I realised that one reason I had stopped, or was reluctant to re-start this blog, was that I felt I had to trawl through all the notes, emails, scraps of paper, that I have been writing for the last however many months, to fill in the gaps, complete the narrative, pick up where I left off. And that that was completely unnecessary. What matters is what is happening now, which may reflect what has happened, or build on it, and which I can always refer to if it seems important to do so. But that is no reason not to start again, and make this my home (rather than the iPhone Notes app, amongst others, which turns out to be an elaborate trap set by Apple to keep you in their little universe - I'm not sure how portable my blog entries are, but at least they're in the public domain, and if I die, they'll be readily accessible to anyone who's interested. If the world dies, virtually (i.e. electronically) or actually, which seems like a possibility, it will hardly matter, although it wouldn't surprise me if Bezos or Schmidt or whoever is cheerfully beaming all this shit out into space, to be received and recorded by some alien civilisation , by way of an explanation, or an excuse, or something. I think a bracket is required.)
As always, the challenge is to stop this degenerating into a schoolboy diary, or an amusing account of the life here at Bonnevaux. To say nothing, if nothing needs saying. The trouble is, the magnetic appeal of a white screen and a keyboard tempts me to just keep on typing.
I've started. I'm a bit drunk, a bit tired, and have to be up at 6 to ring gongs and bells and lead prayers. I have at least bearded the dragon in his den, before he departs in the early morning for a week in Zurich, and extracted bits of kit from his study, to play with while he is away, and hopefully produce a solution to the complete disintegration of the Bouygtel network - it fell over during the Olympics, but I think that was just coincidence. Perhaps I should call my friend at Credit Mutuel and ask him why my phone reception is so crap - Bouygtel are pretending there's no problem. Orange, which I used to use, is going like a train - in fact I'm using it now, but as a result no one else has any internet.
My reading list (or rather, the books I'd take to my desert island)
- Shunryu Suzuki - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
- Alan Watts - Myth and Ritual in Christianity
- Richard Rohr - The Naked Now, and Adam's Return, (if only for: 1. Life is hard. 2. You are not that important. 3. Your life is not about you. 4. You are not in control. 5. You are going to die.)
- Marguerite Porete - The Mirror of Simple Souls
- Benedict's Rule, translated by Patrick Barry OSB
- The Gospels
- The Psalms (just to remind me I'm not the only loony on the planet)
- Rumi (a decent translation, not some wanker's re-interpretation)
- Peter H. Rhys Evans - The Waterside Ape
- Lionel Bailly - Lacan
- and, just at the moment, Hesse, the Wanderer and his Shadow, by Gunnar Decker
Comments
Post a Comment
Say anything you like. I do.