This was originally the home page. It might go back to the front. Probably won’t. I moved so as not to scare foreigners and numpties. Scaring foreigners and numpties is an MO that has its uses so it might go back to the front. It went like this:

Hello. I Love You Madly.

This is where you’ll find the ideasmusicwerdsmoviesphotos, ekksetchra, of the bloke on the other side of the words wobbling in front of you. He’s typing them into the website builder, probably not at the same moment you’re in (or he’s in any longer), although it might be, in light of the fact that Strange Things Happen These Days AND Now Is Everywhen, ekksetchra.

(Don’t bother with this first page if you don’t want to. Go straight to the first chapters of The Grey Horse via the hamburger up the top…)

Understatement is the key. Amended fifthwith: Understatement is A Key. There are others. (Ab? Tits.) I’m not willfully obscure, I’m just trying to allow whatever my trains of thought need in the way of heads of steam.. and other jaded metaphors. What you’re looking at is me imposing a measure of discipline on myself (“Could have fooled me,” you might cry.) and spilling my guts. Courage. Publish and be, if not apotheosised, at least blessed. I’ve always been prone to let words fall out of me. Mum and the teachers at school and the editors of a number of newspapers and magazines and friends have told me I can be quite good at it. Evolution. I’ll fiddle with things until I publish them. I’ll publish them as I fiddle with them. But I will publish them (I must build up my bust!, etc.) and allow others to read things I’m writing and things I’ve written. (People other than the phantoms who nosey about in the clouds, that is. Hi to the phantoms.) It’s taken a lot of years but I finally trust YOU enough to let you read what I’m writing. More importantly I trust myself enough to let you read me. Things might unfold, change, take shape over the course of a day or two, updating each time I press save. Real time is a dumb-arse threat. As opposed to unreal time, I suppose. I expect I’ll edit things in a word processor (does anyone call them word processors any more?) before uploading them here. BUT sometimes I’ll write and edit things here, publishing drafts every half an hour (or there-a-fucking-bouts), going away to read the updated webpage on my phone, coming back to fiddle some more. How’s that for valorous and radical. Or is it twee? Sometimes rhetorical questions warrant a question mark, most of the time they don’t. This is a blog and a vlog and a shop, a place for you and I to explore the inner workings of my mind as I dissolve it. Mind? Ego? What am I referring to? It depends who’s reference point you’re pointing from. It’s all concepts and categories and thus basically false. BUT, generally speaking, for the sake of clarity, my mind, which is your mind, is everything you see/touch “out there” Hang on… I’m going to have put a Nisargadatta quote here. (If you’re going to spend time here get used to Nisargadatta quotes.)

“There is only one mistake that you are making: you take the inner for the outer, and the outer for the inner. What is in you you take to be outside, and what is outside you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, but it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right. You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.”

So, I guess what I’m referring to is what is more commonly referred to in the West as ego. (cough) My ego, like yours, is a fallacy. It was intended, designed, to be a servant but has taken over the show. Like most fallacies it’s unnecessary. Move into your heart and stop thinking. Or stop thinking the way you do now. It’s all thinking. Though none of it goes on in your head. Don’t be a slave to words and ideas. Being as big as it is on self preservation the ego has to be coaxed into sacrificing itself. Well, okay, maybe you don’t have to kill it, to sacrifice it, though it’s highly recommended. Maybe you can’t. Fuck knows. Maybe this is the last pathetic plaintive flailing wail of my ego. My ego, your ego, the ego ought to be shown that it doesn’t exist. It’s a phantom, nothing but a string of memories of reactions to things that didn’t really happen. It’s all illusion. Something the ego finds hard to swallow unless/until certain proofs are forthcoming and certain assurances given. Until then (and often afterwards too), like as not it’ll fight tooth and nail, railing and wailing and causing you pain. Kid gloves are best worn and a stern mien adopted until the ego’s resistance is worn gently away. Softly softly. No jack boots. Your ego is like the old lady who lives in the spooky house on the corner: Biscuit sweet when she gets her way but a demon when not given the inches she believes she’s entitled to. She looks flaccid but she CAN and, given half a chance, WILL cause you pain. The ego has to be convinced that death is a good idea, which it is, and painless, which it can be, and peaceful and fun, which it can be, and ultimately, obviously, inevitable—so why not have a bit of a say in the matter, a bit of control. Oh! How the ego loves control. (It’s all about control. The ego doesn’t actually have any. Which is really the root of the problem. The ego knows (in the heart it doesn’t have) that it has NO FUCKING CONTROL OVER ANYTHING WHATSOEVER but won’t/can’t acknowledge the fact. This is the game, which tends to be painful.) Once the ego is consigned to the invigorating, cosy warmth of the flames, the Self, which has always been running the show anyway—but being polite and considerate and not at all bolshie and finding the machinations of the ego to be tiring but mildly amusing—can take the wheel and show you what a real and proper good time looks like. Motherfucker. Etcetera. Ahem. Cough. The ego, once dead, becomes the ghost it always was. With any luck it learns to trust the Self, takes a back seat and enjoys the ride, no longer having to be “the boss”, and Gee, what a relief that is…

This website is going to work backwards, like everything else on the Internet, like everything else in creation. It has been said, by me and others, that Wizards Work Backwards in Time. That’s the difference between a book—a device favoured by old-timers, the cornerstone of an age when the world vibrated more slowly, when things were more sludgy, thicker, when the fact that time isn’t linear and is more prone to working backwards than forwards or sideways was less obvious—and a website. All the work in a book happens before you get it in your hands. All the ideas in it are plucked from the future, organised, the words put in order, sent off to the lady with the diamond teeth who chops down the trees and slices them thinly and glues them together. You get the book (after a few others have tuppenced it). You take it to the cafe and read it, apricating gaily in your cherished spot, from first page to last. Usually. You read the “finished” “formalised” book in what has traditionally been considered the “proper” way for time to function. Thus far. (See what I did there? Tits.) Ahem. Cough. Etc. A website is more suited (not surprisingly) to the modern age wherein the true nature of time is becoming apparent. Time always ran “backwards” but operating in a sludgy third dimensional fashion we needed to get to the future one step at a time. In The Age of The Book boffins sometimes speculated that the only function of the mind was to stop everything happening at once. They were sort of right. It’s always NOW and NOW always has most of the future and most of the past in it. Everything really does happen at once. Sort of. Time is an illusion too. Time is contained IN you. Faith and belief are important (A ludicrously hilarious understatement if ever there was one.). How you believe the universe operates IS how the universe operates. How you believe time functions IS (functions time how ends of the sentence). Sort of. There are laws and absolutes. YOU create the universe moment to moment, although there aren’t really any moments, just a succession of eternal nows, all pregnant, all vacillating. Anyway. A website. So: Here I am, in the future, projecting, imagining, believing myself back through time typing these words into this computer, sitting in a cafe (Not in my favourite spot. The pinched fella with the black hat got it. Again. The rotter. I like his hat. He looks mysterious. I projected him back from the future with more vigour than I afforded the me at the computer. The me at the computer had less urgent need of a top spot and needed to be that little bit less comfortable, he needed to have cooler ankles so the words would fall just so. Comfort is a curse. Pleasure is pain, etc.)… It’s all gotten a little convoluted. Sorry. The long and the short of it all, the “linearity” of it, is that a website, or at least this website, will have a more natural approach to time. The most recent entries will be at the top (hardly revolutionary), at the start, closer to now, closer to the perfection we are all projecting ourselves back from. Sorry, the plurality in the last couple of sentences (in fact in all sentences ever) were mistakes. No, no, not mistakes, just another diversion. There’s the origin of the royal We. And I’m not talking about the queen having a widdle. If I was, obviously it would be wee… D-fucking-er Ralph!

The 21st of April, 2023