The freedom that is gained through realising that life is not a stage. There is no audience, there are no parts. Life is a one-man show played to an empty room.

The freedom that is gained when we no longer wait for the applause. Life is not a performance, it is a self-indulgent dream.

The freedom that comes with the knowing that life is no more, or less precious that death. What is only exists, because of what isn’t.

The freedom that awakens when we no longer care about what others think or say, or feel. When we understand that no one can hurt us more that we can hurt ourselves.

The freedom that is found through the abandonment of being, and the dissolution of self.

The freedom that comes from knowing that we no longer wish to be what we were, or what we aren’t.

The freedom that appears once we disappear.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Frank was dead. Frank still is dead. Kind of.

It’s appropriate that all this started with the death of a little old man.  A grumpy dispirited stranger to everybody who knew him, and Frank being Frank all he could see, when he looked around, was his own meanness being reflected back at him. It was there in every face, in every little thing someone did. It isn’t that he wasn’t polite, he often said ‘thank you’ when I brought him a cup of tea, or made him a sandwich. It was just that he took all these little things for granted, as if it was his right to receive. ‘Thank you’ was just a polite response neither signifying nor engendering any sense of gratitude.

I’d known Frank for a long time, long enough to be close friends, and I guess as far as he was concerned, we were that . Me, I felt sorry for him. Sorry that he chose to be so miserable, chose to see peoples’ shadows rather than their smiles. Sorry that he had trouble breathing. He was living a laboured life.

I didn’t like him. I didn’t liked who he was. I didn’t like how he saw the world. For Frank it was small. There was little change, little movement in his world. Its foundations were his memories around him, as if he could not step outside its boundaries. He saw a small world and because of this he knew it as limiting, as constraining him from what he wanted to be.

Being around Frank when he was alive was difficult for me. Difficult for everyone. I just kept coming back though, everyday, often twice a day, to see him, to listen to him. To feel his self-righteous indignation, his spite and his simmering anger. It never seemed to change, and because I was his friend I would sit with him in his tiny room as if in a bunker as he fired salvos at all those that dared approach.

It was hard work, and when he died, it was all worth it.  Being around Frank when he was dead was liberating.  I felt an amazing sense of freedom that made all the constant negativity I had chosen to endure a minor irritation. What happened after Frank died changed my life forever, and perhaps changed his as well. Definitely changed his. Frank’s story only really started after he was dead. His life was just the skeleton, with his death he started to grow flesh, to come alive, frankenstein-like.  As he grew, as his story came to light, so did I.

When Frank stopped being Frank, I knew it was up to me. It is my turn to be frank. It is my turn to tell you bluntly, as Frank told me, what the secret is. I’m hoping that coming to know the secret will change your life. It is getting close to my time to die, and before that happens I want to share with someone, I want to share with you, all about being Frank.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I didn’t write anything yesterday (a Monday). It went the way of those that went before it – all gone in a bit of a blur. I walked through the day once again on a tightrope, balancing a inner urgency with a sense of calm abiding.  I seem to be perched on that edge quite often.

This morning I feel the most relaxed I have since starting the course. I’m not sure why that is? Perhaps as the days pass and the end nears I am becoming more aware of what happens next. Not that I know what that is, just that I trust it will be there, and the closer I get to it the more certain I become. Doesn’t make much sense I know – ha!

I am increasingly shifting towards just getting myself a ticket and heading back across the world when I finish here – and interestingly I have already started off on a path towards a full-time job here. I have an interview on Thursday, so I will walk along that path aways and see where it leads. I am interested to see how I feel as I walk this way.

In the last 24 hours I have remembered my previous departure from this same place. I have revisited how in that moment these same fears did not haunt me. Life is an adventure after all and I know now it matters not where one is or what one is doing. What matters is trust, courage, and a willingness to accept it as it is.

And I know in my soul, I am happy when with Caroline. More than that, for I am happy whereever I am. It is more than happiness, it is a sense of FREEDOM.

A freedom of being that comes from …. being anchored. Don’t fence me in and don’t let me run away. To wander freely requires somewhere to wander from. A home. A place to return to? A location? A three-dimensional reality? All I know is that freedom is a gift, a HUGE gift. I do not yet know what to do with it. It is too much, too overwhelming. I need Caroline to trust in me. I need Caroline to anchor me.

I need a mirror -  one that reflects me as clearly and as completely as possible. Caroline is my mirror. Without her I lose sight of myself. Before her I stand in near nakedness. Away from her I look for something in which to cover myself. I seek to hide away, to clothe myself in a job, an addiction, a relationship. I grab hold of anything that will hide me away – any mask will do.

I think about leaving here, this cafe (I am once again enjoying a long black at Divan) and walking the few steps to school. I would rather stay here, in this place of self reflection. I would rather stay in this moment getting to know myself. There is a part of me that wants to stay here forever.

This is the depth of existence.

In all that we are  not, we may find what we will be.

How did I not see myself all those years ago sitting on the park bench? Even when I was looking it was difficult for me to see what I was not.

And at school they are helping me learn how to express this away from this page, away from this moment. That is why I study. That is why I have enrolled. I know there is a way.

A Way.

To collapse this and that.

To be here,

and in being here in this very moment,

to let you know that you can be here too.

To know, and let you know,

there is nothing to be afraid of.

To know, and let you know,

it is all wonderful!

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

So I didn’t know what the time was this morning, it could have been officially 4.15, 3.15 or 5.15 when I rose. It didn’t seem to matter. I had left my time untouched. The only connection I had with time outside of my own schedule was with Caroline, and as it was I knew we were 12 hours apart. I thought it best to leave it that way, it was easy to remember.

There is a new sound this morning, I cocked my head and listened. Rain. By the time I had rolled a smoke and stepped outside it had gone. Not enough to break the drought. Not enough to heal the cracks in the earth.

Around 6.00 I start up my laptop and after about 20 minutes realize that the time on the screen is now an hour earlier than the time on my cell phone. One of them has changed automatically and I have no idea which – this is just getting more confusing by the minute (or should that be hour), and less meaningful.

Caroline texted me and wanted to know where the charger for the drill was. I was a bit gutted that I couldn’t remember. Then she asked whether I was still enjoying my own company. Good question darling. The answer I guess is yes. However it made me think about how long that could last, and what the point would be. How long would I stay here, or somewhere like here? I realize that I am fulfilling a dream I now remember. The dream of being a hermit. It has been 5 days now with only the occasional unsolicited contact with humanity and I feel no real sense of isolation. I feel no longing to communicate, to connect, to have human contact. How long would this last?

I think perhaps until I had caught up with myself, until I had expelled all of this and much more from inside me. Until I had spewed out all that seems trapped inside. It has been this way for such a long time. As a teenage I fantasized about a machine that I could plug into my head and let it all out and free me from the madness inside. That machine has never been made, instead I found meditation as a type of release valve. I learnt to let go of so many of my thoughts and in doing so I added less to the cluttered mess already inside. Still it builds up, I can’t let go of everything, particularly when there is so much going on around me. Here there is less happening, here the output is greater than the input and over time this would increase. Over time I would eventually clear out the attic, get into the corners on my hands and knees and sweep it clean. Over time I would come to be completely empty. Now that would be something.

The rain returns. The tricking of water from the guttering into a bucket near the front door sounds gentle and sweet. The tapping and sliding of the rain on the windows is an undertone to the rustling trees as another squall sweeps through. Again it does not last and soon I am left with just the trickling and a dampness waiting for me outside the door.

Late this morning I let go of my schedule, of my routines. I veered and lost my way and it was 11.30 (or was it 10.30?) at night before I realized just how far off the beaten track I’d become. I am out in the wild, lost but safe with only an amateur detective with Tourette’s syndrome as my companion. He is a big friendly bear of a man, but his compulsions scare me. My fear is not of him, but of myself. I wish I had his outlet, his open valve (although he claims it releases nothing) rather than this impenetrable layer of skin within which I live a cluttered and confused existence.

Isn’t it interesting how it can all turn so quickly, in the space of 24 hours or less, our lives can be changed forever. How it seems that one minute we are on the straight and wide and the next we are through the narrow gate and on the crooked path. Through the narrow gate that hides itself from view beside the busy highway down which we all rush. Never noticed, never even known about as we slip along in a frenzied stream of cold, bold and beautiful motorized bodies that we try to ensure never collide. To find the gate we need to stop and leave our bodies, something we seldom do as we travel along life’s motorway. We need to stop, for relief perhaps, or repair and even then we need to choose to stop in exactly the right spot. In this exact spot, and as we unzip or squat or go about opening the hood, maybe just maybe we will catch a glimpse of it. Then should our curiosity be perked, should our sense of adventure be strong enough, should our attachment to our existing journey and the beautiful body we travel in be weak enough, we may pass through the gate.

Me I wasn’t in need of repair or relief, I wasn’t even in a car or on a bike. I was simply walking along on the edge of the road. I was that lone out-of-place figure that you whisk past as you speed along, the one the evokes questions, such as what is he doing there, how did he get there, where is he going, questions that last only as long as the next beat of the window wipers.

I found the hidden gate leading down the narrow path late this morning. It is now nearly midnight and Lionel and I are done with walking in circles, we’ve had enough of browsing the ‘Mad’ and ‘Heavy Metal’ magazines he keeps in his rucksack and we are off to sleep, the campfire smoking away between us.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

We are born, with two people as our parents, well usually anyway. There is a randomness to this selection of parents as there is a randomness to everything that happens to us after we are born. These two people that came together to create us could have been any two people.

And these two people who are my parents, the two that are yours, are mine and yours for a reason. It is the fact that they could have been anybody, and it is a fact that they are not. They are specifically and uniquely who they are, that is what makes their presence in our lives so meaningful.

So I was thinking as I walked towards Morden this morning, why me? Why am I (this specific, unique and utterly complex bundle of discourses that make me ‘me’) in my sons’ lives. I don’t know. God knows / Nobody knows.  What I did discover this morning was that I hope that through knowing me (and I guess knowing me as their father) my sons have come to know that they are never ever trapped. That life is not a cage. It is the opposite. Life is a release.

Birth is a release. A setting free into a wild, safe, limitless and infinitely expansive playground. What we encounter, all that we encounter is simply part of our adventure. We are never trapped, always free, potentially re-creating ourselves every day. Today we choose who we are, and tomorrow we can be someone completely different if we so wish.

My life, through my childrens’ eyes, through my eyes, has been one of incontinuity, of change, of transformation. For whatever reason, whether we understand this lack of continuity as good or bad, it is as it is. So in this moment, Toby and Max, I just want you to know, you are always free.

Free to explore who you are. Free to walk away. Free to settle down. Free to start something new. Free to let it go. Free to follow your heart and listen to your head.

Anything that appears to stand in your way is simply a reflection. Step through the mirror and you will once again be on your way.

Free. Like the fox.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x