Chapter Two

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=82 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0408dfe1esnpes.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Warp Experience</B></FONT><B>     |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Warp Experience"><U><B>home</B></U></A><B>     </B><A HREF="id82.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Inside Out"><U><B>Inside Out</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id85.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter One"><U>Chapter One</U></A>   |   <B>Chapter Two</B>   |   <A HREF="id91.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter Three"><U>Chapter Three</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id93.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 4"><U>Chapter 4</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id94.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 5"><U>Chapter 5</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id95.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter Six"><U>Chapter Six</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id96.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 7"><U>Chapter 7</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id97.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 8"><U>Chapter 8</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id98.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 9"><U>Chapter 9</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id99.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="10"><U>10</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id100.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="11"><U>11</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id101.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="12"><U>12</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id102.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="13"><U>13</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id103.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="14"><U>14</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id104.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="15"><U>15</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id105.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="16"><U>16</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=398 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0408dfc3.jpg"> <div> I told myself that I didn't have to read Tim's writing...but ten minutes later this is what I read:-</div> <div>                        </div> <div>                             <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >  INSIDE OUT BY TIM LAWSON</FONT></div> <bR> <div>                                              ONE</div> <bR> <div> (T.V. Foreign Correspondent speaking). "It is extremely difficult to foresee the direction Theoretical physics will now take after the brutal event in Paris last Sunday when Professor Lance Mathews was assassinated whilst delivering his De Gaulle lecture. The fanatical assailant, a demented, screaming, so-called Christian-Muslim.... immediately bade farewell to our shocked world with a bullet through his own tormented skull.</div> <bR> <div>  I am still shaking with the impact of the event, for yes - I was in that majestic hall at the Sorbonne when Professor Mathews fell. Dead! Dead! It didn't seem possible, 'Why' ricocheted around my skull. Why was it necessary that the world should lose such a great mind? A mind dedicated to the clarification of the real universe. No one else has so vividly elaborated...for the benefit of the ordinary man...the psychological implications of the new scientific cosmology.</div> <bR> <div>  Lance Mathews aimed to liberate the human mind from every conceivable form of guesswork. To him, every belief-system sapped the mind of its creative potential. He aimed for every nine-year-old child to be fully aware of the origin of our existence. To be in no doubt about the awesome truth of the Big Bang. Mathews never referred to our chance beginning as the Big Bang <I>Theory</I>. To him it was <I>fact</I>. An absolute fact which requires enormous courage to digest and live...."</div> <bR> <div>         Molly shuddered ... switched off the tape recorder and removed the earphones. Actually she'd got the point ages ago and this last item .... was the final straw. Years ago she had read one of Lance Mathews' 'educational' books at school in America. A book which illustrated the steps from the Big Bang to total extinction. Not just of this planet, or solar system or even our vast galaxy...but of the whole universe reduced to silent blackness. As a child, she had been taught in science classes that the destiny of life is nothing.... but total extinction. In case any child missed the point, the last two pages of  Mathews' book were <I>completely BLACK!</I>  Anyway she'd got the point.  Both then and now. Not just about Lance Mathews' madness but about the mind-destroying effects of T.V.</div> <bR> <div>               When she'd arrived at the ashram she wasn't entirely surprised that there was no T.V. set, but when she had admitted to Simon - The Master- that she missed it she was told by Shanti to stand in the corner opposite a mirror. She was then given a Sony Walkman and earphones, and told to speak out loud and act out what she was hearing through the phones. It was a tape of the news and soaps, taken off the previous day's T.V. (on all channels).</div> <bR> <div>  People cracked up laughing watching her antics but they all kept their fingers in their ears to avoid being poisoned! After the end of the second tape - three terrible hours- she felt sick. Only a machine could 'stomach' that YUK and put it out NON-STOP. She had previously argued with The Master - who did not watch her performance - that one was always <I>free</I> to turn on the T.V. or NOT. He said if one visited anyone in their home one seldom was given that choice. The T.V. was always <I>kept on</I>! She had then argued that most of what was on the box was fiction anyhow. <I>Fiction</I>! How else would a robot-eye-sing alien force conceal its demonic and domestic aims. Aliens? She got the jitters. Real bad. 'What on earth do you think T.V sets are?' she was challenged.</div> <bR> <bR> <div>      Molly had arrived at the Ashram through hearsay. That's fine. No one objects to the means by which anyone jumps off the juggernaut of illusion. The juggernaut of consensus 'mind'. Conned-senses mind. Probably now driven by the ghostly form of Lance Mathews.  Yes, Molly got the point. Even the hardest of our human stock would crack up after a few days of being a conduit for that dehumanizing T.V. crap. To completely de-humanize the Earth, unfeeling aliens were needed to do the work. So unthinking humans were employed to construct the alien bodies (TV sets) and their external nervous systems, (TV stations, satellites etc.) As was already said, it hadn't taken that long for Molly to be reduced to a weeping heaving wreck. Actually she had kept it up for far longer than Shanti had imagined she would. Simon was touched by the tale of her pluck.   </div> <div>      </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>                                                                                       TWO</div> <bR> <bR> <div> (Molly's Diary)  `The main rules in this Ashram are NO EXPRESSION OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AND NO ARTIFICIAL SOUNDS (like T.V., Radio and Canned music). We live extremely high up in a very inaccessible valley. New arrivals (very few) pull a new name out of a wizard's hat. That's why I am now called Molly. The nearest phone--a call box--a mile away. No newspapers. We don't ask any questions about the whirld or what anyone did before they arrived. We don't ask anyone's age. We live beyond the grip of automatic calculating.</div> <div> NOTE: There is a distinction between The Earth and the world (whirld). The Earth is the unknown. The great gift. The consuming attraction. The real. The non-ego. The Spirit. If one real-eyes-is this ... one becomes integrated into The Earth's song. </div> <bR> <bR> <div>      The whirld is a bag of views. A bag of shadows. Gossip. The whirld is a belief system. To maintain this system The Earth is continuously RAPED and pillaged. Exploited and drained dry. The Earth is used as a gas station to fuel the whirld of illusions. The whirld is the juggernaut I, Molly, have just jumped off.' </div> <bR> <bR> <div>                             Molly re-read what she'd just written in her diary and added : `I fell into the trap of creating a thought-form which re-presented FEELING. A viewpoint which re-presented THE IDEA of 'having NO viewpoint'. Re-presenting is a form of pretence. But why did I fall into that trap? It was an attempt to move my feeling-self into a particular direction. CONTROL. This is the BIG question. A little bug is trying to figure out how the whole thing works? Yes,I'm a little bug trying to figure out a real overview. Why? Because I don't LIKE BEING IN THE DARK. I feel LOST and am trying to climb up the mast to get A CLEAR VIEW. But I sense there's a BIG PROBLEM. Will my BUG VIEW be a REAL VIEW? YES! A real bug view. But are bugs real? Yes! I'm real and I DON'T LIKE WHAT'S GOING ON. I don't accept that I've been DESIGNED TO LIVE IN THE DARK.</div> <div>      NO MORE!</div> <div>      NO MORE!</div> <div> That's right! I'm determined to SEE! See!? That's right! I'm going to see what's actually going on in this universe. We bugs are sick of being fed on YUK from ABOVE. But that's what you are. Shit beetles! No! That's not what we are. That's what you--whoever you are-- project us to be. We are not what you've made us out to be. You've GOT A BIG SHOCK COMING!'</div> <div> Molly slammed her diary shut and started laughing...........hysterically......</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>                                                                            THREE</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Simon was rattled by how rattled he'd felt when he'd read the telegram. Lance his scientist brother....dead! Assasinated  in Paris. Phoning his mother from the callbox, he'd feigned what he hoped sounded like deep concern, though in his heart he felt relief on reading the telegram. Relief  mixed with guilt for feeling relief. Maybe he had never actually <I>hated</I> his brother, but he was <I>sure</I> that Lance had always hated him and his way of life. Simon sucked his pen and decided to re-read for the third time what he'd just written whilst waiting for his delayed flight to arrive from Heathrow. (The rumour was that there'd been yet another gun battle at the West London airport).</div> <bR> <bR> <div> (Simon's notebook). There are only three unique viewpoints represented on The Earth. View one maintains that there is one omnipresent Beingness. Within this Beingness....beings arise. Like words arise in linguistic space. Like lumps of ice form in the sea. The individual beings can <I>develop</I> different combinations of qualities of Beingness. According to this view the universe is dynamic and composed of divine matter which is both psychic <I>and</I> substantial. Energy and form. Hot <I>and</I> cold. In this account man is considered to be a being capable of an infinite development in consciousness.....the absolute Beingness. ( A single word capable of understanding his/her relationship with God:--language).</div> <bR> <div>  The condition of being embodied on Earth is <I>not</I> considered to be inferior or superior to the state of being after death. The ego...or sense of being a distinct thinking/feeling Self.....is regarded as a soul-seed. Like discovering one is in a similar condition to an acorn which is capable of growing into an oak tree.(soul). A hologram of the whole. A seed which can develop an awareness of the One Great Self. This development occurs through the soul-seed's <I>decision</I> to grow in understanding and is definitely not automatic.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> The second account maintains that individuality is an illusion. The ego the very 'embodiment' of this illusion. There is only space, which <I>is</I> consciousness. All the manifest worlds are forms of this consciousness. A human being who doesn't real-eyes this truth is BOUND TO SUFFER. Those who don't real-eyes this truth <I>believe</I> they are some THING. A discrete body/mind.</div> <bR> <div>  Caught in this belief they never experience the bliss of what this belief calls 'impersonal freedom'. They - according to this viewpoint - suffer the fate of all living beings who are bound to the belief of being a separate ego. Endless suffering in endless realms of projected illusion.</div> <div> This concept could be called the steady state view of Being. There is NO development or decay. Only the play of non-individuality. The play of the omnipresent consciousness.(These acorns are committed to passivity and in no way object to being broken down into compost or simply rotting).     </div> <bR> <bR> <div>      The third  view maintains space is empty, lifeless and mostly very, very cold and in the process of getting colder by the tick of the digital hand. Consciousness is considered to be a product of evolution. Human beings are nothing more than D.N.A. vehicles ... just like any other organic form. There is only this material existence. All the rest is fear-fuelled illusions. So thought my brother - the late Professor Lance Mathews - even believing that man is the only self-conscious being in the whole universe. (These acorns enjoy being eaten by pigs, (( ignorant egos )), so they can enter pig-consciousness and thus be able to eat other acorns).</div> <bR> <div>  </div> <div> Within the parameters of the first view, the Big Bang does NOT represent the beginning of this universe. It marked the end of an old universe. A universe lacking individual souls. No spirit. A universe of clones. Mere forms of energy. Like words. </div> <bR> <div> According to the second idea of reality, this is the nature of EVERY universe which comes into being, exists, contracts and finally explodes into fiery dust, which in turn becomes another universe. From this perspective, only the absolute is real. The absolute which neither comes into being nor passes away. Space. </div> <bR> <div> Truth. Truth is space. To realise that one is not a human individual soul but instead nothing less than the unlimited absolute, is the goal of those initiated into the intangible secrets of the second account of reality. </div> <bR> <bR> <div>      Our Ashram is a very secret door opening onto an experience of life untainted by the debris projected from the second and third scenarios. Everyone - like Molly - arrives as a battered victim of one of these two viral diseases. Very few - before they arrive - have ever understood <I>what</I> they are representing. Or - <I>who</I> they are representing? They arrive as agents shamelessly promoting a spiritual disease. What is endemic to agents of scenarios two and three is a deep sense of aimlessness.' </div> <bR> <bR> <div>      If only I could have got this across to lance ... any of it ... he probably would be alive now. Simon looked out of the window onto the de-humanized landscape of Heathrow airport. He dreaded the coming week. Lance had hated Simon all his life...so why was he going to his funeral? There were a lot of armed police about as he walked towards his waiting, weeping mother. Simon was tempted to feel important. </div> <div>                        </div> <bR> <bR> <div>                                                                     FOUR</div> <bR> <bR> <div>                               'There are no short cuts to assimilating insights'. Molly put the book down and began to weep. She felt completely CORNERED. The book 'ONLY THE FRESH</div> <div> WILL FREE YOU TO FEEL FRESH' had been written by Simon - the founder of the Ashram ... 'The Master' ... as Shanti called him.  Molly had read 'almost everyone is caught by the concept of death. To be trapped by this IDEA means that one is already dead.  Life dies when it is denied love.' She was dead. She knew it. Felt it. Felt it deep inside. And she was dead because she had refused to feel LOST ... for a very long time. </div> <bR> <div> She had been lost once on the beach when she was about three. She'd completely freaked out. All she could see was a sea of streaking flesh ..... but no mom. Mom, I'm lost. LOST. LOST! That's the feeling she'd numbed for so long ... and if you refuse to feel what you feel ... how can you be found? Found by whom?  By the Divine, of course. Now she could feel the deep soul-numbness. Her soul felt trapped in the tomb of her false, hard heart. And keeping the lid down was the heavy stone of her cynical, egotistical mind.</div> <bR> <div>  </div> <div>      She was now reaping the fruits of the years of her stupid, contrived behaviour. Years trying to fit into the calculating machine. Simon's writing is powerful, she thought, because it's true ... like when he says 'The Kingdom of Love will only become a reality for those who <I>choose</I> to bring it into being. Those who choose to deny this possibility, do not prove that love does not exist, that it is an illusion, but simply prove that they prefer being dead than being creative,fresh.'</div> <bR> <div>    Molly realised that she'd been in the business of selling psychological deodorants ... for a very long time ... to disguise the stench of her stale soul. She'd studied other adepts of falsity ... her pop star idols and friends ... and more or less had mastered the art. And all the time the stench was getting stronger. The stench of soul rot. The soul buried in virulent lies ... and being forced to feed off them ... and <I>feed them</I>. Feeding the blatant lie that one is alive INSIDE ... when one knows one has already chosen to be dead. Cinderella.</div> <bR> <bR> <div>      The whole Cinderella tale stinks of soul rot. If she was real and wanted to be truly alive she would have banished the so-called fairy godmother - the merchant of lies. She would have already known the set-up and in NO way desired to go to the ball. She would have used the opportunity to be really <I>quiet</I> and in the quietness would have found the strength to escape on her own ... and who knows, she probably would have run into Simple Simon in the woods ... or in the mountains! </div> <bR> <div> `Well, I've at least got this far away from the false glitter ... and now I've actually met Simple Simon ... and I <I>can</I> feel ... even though <I>what</I> I feel is deadness. Which means my ability to feel is not dead. This means the deadness is not in my soul, my feeling self ... it's my mind which is dead. Yes, I've trained myself to <I>not think what I feel</I>. But how else could I have survived? I was born in hell. My poor mother a broken angel, captured by a demon. I <I>had</I> to think things would get better. I <I>had</I> to pretend it was all a bad dream. The things he did to her. To me. She was scared of me. Scared I might blow the whole scene up! So I <I>had</I> to keep quiet. And all the time <I>what I really thought ... drifted further and further away from me</I> ... and I filled the vacuum with fantasy. Like Cinderella.</div> <bR> <div>  Like right now I've got the feeling I'm incapable of  expressing what I <I>really</I> think. What do I mean?' Molly brushed away a fly which had settled on her arm. `Unless you live in the hills you have NO IDEA as to the amount of flies which exist. NO IDEA. And living inside something like a tent ... seems to bring insect life into focus. Alright, I've been in deep freeze. Numbed to almost complete emotional immobility ... but what if all the HURT I've FELT ... was not due to what had been <I>done to me</I> ... but because of what I THOUGHT AT THE TIME AND KEPT ... KEPT ... THINKING?</div> <bR> <div>  I don't mean nothing had been done to me ... physically ... but what if my consciousness NOW is due to the thoughts <I>I</I> formed at the time of the painful happening? I mean what if what people did ... didn't <I>really</I> touch my soul? But I responded AS IF I'D BEEN HURT IN MY SOUL by their behaviour. What am I saying? That it's all been a pretence? No one ever hurt me? I HURT MYSELF!?! My God! What's my <I>resentment</I> all about?'</div> <bR> <bR> <div>  Molly picked up the book and flicked back till she found the end of the first chapter of Simon's writing entitled 'Whoever seeks praise accumulates blame' and read 'Most people are willing to <I>die</I> rather than let go of their self-love. Their idea of being special. Their pride. Their self-importance. </div> <div> And this weird fact holds true even when the person's image of himself or herself has been battered and besmirched with the grime of continuous humiliations. All over the human globe the same viral idea has taken root in the brain ... the image of self is more valuable than the SELF.' </div> <bR> <bR> <div> Molly didn't know whether to sob or scream. She felt STUCK knowing neither action would get her off the hook. She wanted to paint. No, she wanted to attack a vast black canvas. Break holes in it. Paint with her own shit. She grabbed her diary and wrote: `I'm sick of ME. Me me me me me. I'm not ME. As Rimbaud said, " I am another". If I think I'm ME...an object--I've only got death to look forward to. Through speaking English it seems natural to think of I as an object. The language displays this conviction.<I> I</I> do this. <I>I do </I>dadadadadadadadada. So, convinced that <I>I</I> is an object....<I>I </I> finds itself in <I>dead</I> trouble. Why? Well all objects are subject to decay....so I'm going to decay. <I>I</I> don't want to decay. No one loves decay. Except decay merchants. Bacteria. <I>Virus.</I> Fuck this trap. I am <I>not</I> my <I>body</I>. Full stop!</div> <div> O my tribe stirs..............</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Then some smart cunt yells "what are you then?" Baby, I can't tell you. " Well then if you're not <I>the body </I> you must be <I>something else.</I>" You're wrong, smart ass. That's where you're stuck. On being a thing. On being <I>caught</I> in a game of psychic roulette. In this game <I>I</I> is the ball. A silver ball-bearing. Bearing what? Hope? Fear? You land on twenty-seven. You 'see' everything in a twenty-seven mind-set way. The whirld spins. You're on nineteen. You 'see' everything in a nineteen mind-set way.</div> <bR> <bR> <div>  Simon says there's no end to this madness....until something happens <I>inside</I> the silver ball. I feel fucking claustrophobic! It makes no difference which number I'm on. I must be <I>dead</I>. Dead certain? Very funny. Does my cunt feel alive? Very funny. Does it feel dry? Not exactly. There is a .....Slowly the solid silver ball doesn't <I>feel so solid. </I>Impossible to convince another. The inside starts to <I>feel.....soft.....warm. Yes warm and.....there's LIGHT.</I> An underwater light. Greenish. Blueish. Suddenly the inside is a vast illuminated universe. <I>VAST</I>. An inner ocean. Sumptuous life begins.The idea of being an object decays. Thankyou Simon. I'd like to thankyou with my cunt...but Shanti watches you like a hawk. Just my luck! I think there's something fishy</div> <div> about their relationship.'</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Molly closed her diary and sucked on her 2B pencil. She enjoyed the taste of the wood. All her paint brushes were well sucked. She liked wood chairs. Wood handles. Her first dildo--when she was fourteen--was a wooden clothes hanger. She hated the feel of plastic vibrators. She'd discovered her mother's when she was fifteen and tried it out. Once. She'd discovered it under the mattress on which her mother slept. Molly and her mother used to live in a wood house in north Carolina. She started to think about her poor mother and began to feel her sexuality draining away. This was the first time she'd thought about her mother since moving to the ashram. Her mother had no idea she was in the Highlands of Scotland. It was true that all her life Molly felt drained by her Mother. And it didn't matter how much distance she put between them....she couldn't seem to get out of her mother's shadow.</div> <bR> <div>  ( End of fax transmission )                                       </div> <bR> <bR> <div> My first thought as I gazed at the heap of fax paper was to scrawl it up and bung it into the fire. Instead I put on the radio and heard the news about the earthquake in Japan. One thousand seven hundred dead in the ruins of Kobe.Another thousand missing.....thousands more camping out in sub-zero weather.Outside my window the streaking snow is almost horizontal. People trying to dig their relatives and friends out of the rubble. Passing bowls of rice. And Zero, Tim's Master, doesn't even know it's happening. Or does he? (I've called him Zero, because I don't know his name). I've heard these sorts of people have an omnipotent awareness. Can zoom in to any point. If so, why don't they zoom in - like superman - before the earthquake and prevent it? ... or at least <I>warn everybody</I>. This is why people are cynical about so-called spiritual powers. It's like no-one knows how the whole show works ... except Stuart Lawson. Who, of course, is now the <I>late</I>-non-existing Stuart Lawson.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  I've just realized that Tim wrote about the theoretical physicist Lance Mathews being assassinated in Paris <I>before</I> his brother, the theoretical physicist Stuart (Lawson) was killed by Joe. So when Stuart Lawson read his brother's `novel' ... he must have felt a peculiar <I>chill</I>. Tim--in India-- was telling Stuart `your time's up'.  And if Tim hadn't written this `novel'...if that's what you can call it...his friend Joe wouldn't be in Dartmoor prison...and both brothers would still be alive ... like me.  Alive ... but <I>alone</I>.  Alone fearing the next phone call from Mary...who I think is a scheming liar. It makes more sense to me to think that this so called `novel' has been written by Mary. Maybe it hasn't even been written yet. That she's writing the next instalment right <I>now</I>. </div> <bR> <bR> <div>  Molly's attitude seems too like Mary's to be a coincidence. And what about the Ashram being situated in the Highlands of Scotland......where I'm living?  Is Simon supposed to be me?  Well I've not got a scientist brother....but nor has Simon any more. Is Lance supposed to be my rational side which I've murdered? (A variation of Cain and Abel). Is Joe in solitary supposed to be me trying to live the life of a hermit? Who the hell does Mary think she is? How long has she been tracking my life?  One thing's for sure--you can never fortell the outcome of a sexual encounter.  It seems she's out for revenge and aims to upset my peace of mind. But can <I>real</I> peace be disturbed? I have to face it. I'm not living in a state of peace. Which of Simon's three scenarios am I an agent for?</div> <div> ( I don't care about ending a sentence with a preposition ). If I'm an acorn am I growing, rotting or have I already been eaten by a pig? Is Mary a pig--a mad egotist--who is out to eat me? </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> I went to unhook the phone then changed my mind. I was behaving like a wimp. <I>If</I> I'm a <I>growing</I> oak tree...Mary wouldn't frighten me...even if she is a pig. Maybe she intuits that I'm an acorn who's successfully avoided being eaten by the pigs of the whirld. ....but who hasn't grown UP!.  She senses that I'm beginning to rot. But I thought I would really grow in this beautiful wild location. I thought the challenge of being absolutely on my own would stimulate my soul-growth. Yet I haven't written a single poem since I've lived here. I've painted a few water colours. Mary's right. I'm rotting inside my concept of freedom. My freedom to rot. And before Mary contacted me I was content to rot away in this inhospitable wilderness. So she's got me in a corner. So I'm back to thinking she's a pig!</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  I put on some rice and beans and rolled a joint. I lit six candles which made the outside seem blacker. The blizzard was at its peak. Snow piling up on the window ledge. Trying to get in under the old oak door (which I'd salvaged from an abandoned croft).  I couldn't get my mind off the disaster in Kobe. The dope incredibly <I>strong</I>.I felt comforted by the sounds of the pots chattering on the bottle-green stove. Then I realised I was actually worried that Mary had decided to not phone! So what, I told myself....but the un-ease persisted. Then just as I decided to sit down and meditate I found myself putting on my brown leather walking boots and pre-war double-breasted overcoat and going outside into the blasting blizzard.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  I paced....head bent to the whirling snow covered ground....round and round the cabin. Suddenly I stopped on the sheltered side and looked in through the candle-lit window. And why? Because I felt this overwhelming urge to check to see if 'I' was still inside the hut. I knew it was a deranged idea but I'd heard of people encountering their double....and I had a strong fear that it would happen to me one day. My heart was pounding as I scanned the inside of my home. Of course there was no-one there. What would I have felt had I seen my double inside.....maybe talking on the phone....to Mary?</div> <bR> <bR> <div> I started pacing around the hut again...the sleet/snow stinging my face. ( Stinging because I'd shaved my beard off two nights ago ). It was pitch dark apart from the elongated rectangles of light cast across the uneven snow. The nearby spruce, birch and rowan trees were grumbling and whining to each other about the bitter onslaught. I went back in to see if the rice and beans were cooked. I felt miserable as hell. My life was a shattered dream. The only thing left was my aching loneliness. How could I ever have believed that my fantasy of being a hermit would free me of the weight of my inner emptiness? </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> I dished out the rice and beans and added a dollop of tahini. Something was happening to my life and I didn't have a clue....really. Somehow I had thought I would be as happy in my hermit existence as I was mooching around Kynance Cove as a kid. But was I really <I>happy </I>then? I was happy to not be in school....which I loathed. My poor mum and dad got a lot of stick from the authorities because I skipped school so frequently. Eventually everyone gave up and I never went back to school once I reached fourteen. But was I happy, really happy being a loner? No I wasn't. Now, just turned fifty, I've spent my whole life avoiding getting into a close relationship with anyone. Instead, I've tried to retain my essential 'wildness' which to a large degree was actively encouraged by my dad. He was also a loner although he'd got married to my mum when he was forty-odd and she was nineteen. The gap in years must have suited him because she never tried in any way to domesticate him. Our house was more like a workshop than a home....which she never seemed to mind. Bits of outboard motors, oars and tackle were everywhere. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> What must have brought my mum and dad together was their love of music. They both sang and dad was a marvellous fiddle player. In fact I can't remember an evening when there wasn't a sing song. Sea shanties, reels and all mannar of folk songs from all over the British Isles. They never had a T.V. and the old bakelite brown Marconi radio would only be switched-on on Sunday evenings for choral evensong. 'Abide with me' was their favourite but I wouldn't say they were religious. They never tried to get me to go to Sunday School...nor did they ever go to church. In fact they never tried to get me to do anything which they didn't do. Also they never questioned what I would do when I grew up. I had no idea and they were not bothered by my lack of interest in my future. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Then I came across a poem by Jack Clemo and I immediately imagined I had found a direction. I left The Lizard and hung out around the white clay pits near St Austell. Not in the hope of seeing the poet....who was blind by then as well as being stone deaf....but to immerse myself in the <I>white atmosphere</I> of the abandoned clay pits. I became obsessed with <I>WHITENESS</I> and for quite a long time I contemplated living in Greenland. Then I discovered the enigmatic white paintings of Mark Toby  and the supremely elegant 'White on white' by Malavitch. Next came Chinese landscape ink drawings and Han Shan and his Cold Mountain poems. The white Goddess had me in her spell and to celebrate my enthralling captivity I started writing non-sensical 'poems' because I didn't want the deliciousness of my condition to be grasped and bruised by any form of reason. I tried to invoke an impossible beauty by writing lines like:-</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Along the shore the sea wrack sighs.</div> <bR> <div> Your 'light' is paste, your light deceives.  </div> <bR> <div> Dress her in white, the surf that flies</div> <bR> <div> Soft her breasts, the seagulls cry</div> <bR> <div> White is her dress, the wheat of mind</div> <bR> <div> .Pounded to surf, the sperm that flies.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> These lines were brought to the attention of Roger Mitchell whose opening words on first meeting me in </div> <div> .D'Arblay street, Soho was "Spanish white and mandolins, I'll kill myself Madelaine, Madelaine".</div> <bR> <div> Roger, to this day, was the most extraordinary person I've ever met. He had a regal bearing and styled his dark hair in the manner of Charles the Second. He was both kind and fierce. Kind to people who were genuinely in need of human warmth....and very savage to those who unashamedly paraded their phony selves. He was a totally uncompromising painter/poet who seemed to go out of his way to avoid ANY recognition for his unusual work. To this day, years after his death, only a handful of people know anything about his strange creations.      </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>           "Phil, darling, what did you make of the first instalment of Tim's novel?"</div> </td> </tr></table></body>