Ra Good Boy!

Monday 7:45 p.m.
A children's writer, Cathy Cassidy, replied to an email today, which was nice. She said she thought it was possible to get published without an agent, but much better to get one if you could. She works through Julia Churchill at Darley Anderson's, so I sent her a package. Much the same as the ones I sent last week to the publishers i.e. with no first chapters or anything from the actual novels. I want someone to ask for the book, or to go to the webpage. It's hard to see how anyone could see passed the questionnaires from the kids, but they will. Let's hope somebody bites a bit.

I woke up feeling really good again at quarter past five this morning and was meditating by quarter to six. Very good meditations as well. I went for a twenty minute jog at lunchtime. I worked on my book for an hour and a half when I got home from work. I'm not supposed to be drinking beer tonight. Good boy!

Ra Bliss Alert!

Sunday Afternoon 2 p.m.
A hour ago I sat down here to do some work on my book, but decided to do a wee meditate to begin with. I got lost in ra bliss! Soon the person who also lives here will be wanting me to rush about and visit the flatheids, and I thought I'd just take a wee space here to blog about ra bliss!

Setting the scene: the sun is now shining, but the weather has been horrible with rain, rain, rain. But the sun is out now.

I'm in the usual half lotus. As I type, I can feel feel the thing that holds you up holding me up. Bit of expansion somehow on the lower face and upper chest. There is a tendency to grin. I'll take a breath and get back to you in a minute. .. just by closing your eyes, you can feel a great globule of bliss arising into the envelope, or sheath thing that you don't experience if you're a flatheid. ... after shooting the breath... It's white light. It's bliss. It arises like air into the top of a balloon, then it kind of ripples a little, seemingly going upwards. It's not hot just now. Very white, very blissy. ... I'm in the zone here when you just have to lean forward slowly and then straighten up and a huge rise of bliss goes up your body. I don't always get this due to beer, flatheids, and being a stupid basturn, but at least I know it's there. It's accessible if you do the right things otherwise. This is the difficulty of course. .. the Domestic Bliss has just come to take me away to visit some dafties, or ETs or Them Prehensiles who will never get ra bliss because they're too dumb to meditate. C'est la vie!

Sunday 8:45 p.m.
Went to visit some of the truly heroic people today, instead of sitting in investigating ra bliss. Much better joes than me. But no bliss. No access to ra bliss at all.Why? It must be not meditating.

Here we go to the formless realms. That's what I get. I don't know why, but at the end of the day it's dog eat dog in this juju game. You might get eaten up by all the hamburgers you've eaten, but we hope not. Anyway, I'm off to the formless realms for a spot or two.

Your legs don't hurt. You can sit in a lotus forever. And then not be there. Well, it's formless. So, say you got so dissolved that you were in the formless realms ... I think that must be just the same as being between thoughts. Like a gap. If the background was sensuous and blissy that would be alright. Timeless, or out of time, of course. ZZZZZZ. Yeah! Let's got for that one! Can we catch a spaceship.

I'm crabbit because I'm losing the plot. I shouldn't be drinking the beers, etc. So this is the final skelping. The end of the Erdinger! Truly the Prince of Beers after a long, long investigation lasting at least three months. Well, bye, bye! Waving or drowning? Beer is good for us, but I've drank the last bottle now. On these feelings the pipers started making those horrible noises out there in my ancestry when they'd ran out of alcohol. Well, it will just have to be bye, bye to all that!

Still, because thou art saved, shall there be no more cakes and ale?

Ra Blogpatrol?

Saturday 12:50 p.m.
This is RaBlissBlog and I should say something about ra bliss!

I used to be crabbit in the morning. This morning I wakened and should have been crabbit today. Last night I drank 6 bottles of Weissbier and should have been a bit rough this morning, but no way.

The eyes are closed and the body shape is basically gone. You're not really feeling your body too much at all. There's just a lot of white space stretching away on either side. Feels quite nice this. You feel something nice going on in your head, throat and a bit in your chest as well. I started meditating as soon as I got up and showered. Really, really into serene blissful situations right away. Dense bliss with little thought and no anxiety. Hard to see how the day could improve really. But it probably will.

There's something funny going on with Blogpatrol which counts the hits and visitors to this blog. According to it, last Saturday there were 54 visitors. On Tuesday, 40. It's only dipped below twenty twice this week. A lot of 30s, 33s, etc.

Blogpatrol might be in cahoots with blogger.com. They inflate the visitors to keep you blogging. It's a conspiracy. There might not be all the commentators on the blog either. These might be generated by Big Bloggy to keep you blogging.

Well, hello to Jack the Spam Robot, the Masai Warriors and all you Martians (I know you're out there!). You could go to my webpage and try to imagine how you could sell one of my books to someone and take a handsome cut!!

7:30 p.m.
People come to this blog looking for stuff about agents. Well, I know bugger all about agents except I can't get one. I'm not really sure what they're for, but they maybe get folk to read stuff. The most of what I know about not making friends, influencing people or getting an agent is in this post.

One of the phrases googled to get here was Pet Bereavement Counselling! I knew I was on a winner there. Anybody willing to invest in this rock solid business proposition need look not further than here.

If you came here looking for something about ra bliss, you could go here to find out how to get your head stuck into some.

I was supposed to be using this blog to keep records of what I'm up to. Otherwise, I just forget. The four publishers I sent stuff to on Thursday were. Cally Poplak at Egmont Books, Caroline Royds at Walker Books, Philippa Dickinson at Random House Children's Books, and Barry Cunningham at The Chicken House. The Chicken House sounds like a brothel. Maybe I just sent them one to confuse them.

I worked for a whole hour on my book today. Did some Iyengar Yoga, Tai Chi, jumps, skipping and meditated for about three hours. A whole hour on my book! I deserve a beer!

Ra Buddha Job!

Thursday 5:30 p.m.
The Times today had an article about this jobbie which was out on an island. You had to stay on your own from November till March and you can find it on Google under Island Caretaker, Sanda. They've got 300 applicants and some of them quite smart. I immediately applied. Unfortunately, a buddhist monk has also applied. I think I'm second. I asked them to put me on file for when the buddhisty boy disappears. Then my turn! Yes! Don't give it to Julia this time!

That might be a reference to 1984

That boy stayed on Jura. He had a bad cough. There are 350 sheep and 65 chickens to look after. What a brilliant jobbie! Somebody should give me a jobbie like that. I'm ready for it!
]
Here on the Unheard of and McDonald Island we are still totally cool. We can go to Sanda or maybe not. The joe who owns it doesn't know what he's missing by not giving me the jobbie. Bloggy skills. I could get him tourists. Come and see Hotboy do headstands. As long as I stayed away from everyone, I could be famous there all winter on my own. When the springtime will come, Oh, won't we have fun! We'll get out of jail and we'll go on the bum.

I could do the island all winter then be a homeless and hungry person in Edinburgh from March till November.

Adolf could do all this. Instead of wasting his life trying to be happy, he should get onto this island boy. He must be a capitalist basturn and will understand a good pitch from a computery expert like Adolf. This is it, Adolf! Are we all going to heaven on this earth or not? Do we have sufficient aspiration to do what is necessary? Ra bliss, ra ecstasy, ra Dorje Sempa arising in the mandala. Well, next time!! Next time, it has to be me!!!

Or this time! I've applied. The buddhist monk doesn't need it. You should tell this boy to give it to me. Then you could read hotboy missives from ra wonderful wilderness out there in the storm tossed islands!

No change there then.

Today was the hottest day in October in Britain since 1888. What a day! Since I was not working, I went and sat in the hut around one. Then I dug. No one around. The old people who steal the earth couldn't adjust swiftly enough to the summer at the end of autumn. So I sat outside the hut on a magazine. Terrifically green from the edge of the allotment where I sat with the sun at my back. So you're fixed on a sweet pea flower and it's red. This passes an hour and it's hard to drag yourself away really because you know that's bound to be better. Better than anything else. Still, we are in Edinburgh and not as agitated as usual due to the meditations on emptiness and ra bliss arising unexpectedly sometimes. But this is heaven on earth. The women in white teeshirts were all totally gorgeous. What a day!

I did not write any of my book today. I did not want to try and think. But it has been a wonderful day. I think I should be producing something. I cannot produce much tomorrow except kindness and helpfulness, but on Saturday I could produce some words, if I wanted to. I don't think anyone would mind.

Ra Free Time Again!

Wednesday 2 p.m.
I was about to start harassing agents again about my kidbooks, but I somehow got waylaid and I will soon start harassing publishers instead. When I first wrote these books, I sent stuff to practically every kidbook publisher in Britain and couldn't get any of them to read the damn things. Then I got all these questionnaires from kids and sent the publishers the questionnaires. Usually, you send them three chapters and they send them back with the usual rejection slip. But I managed to get the rejection slips when all I sent them were the questionnaires saying how fantastic the books were!

I get paid tomorrow. I'll send out four A4 envelopes with the nice letter and a lot of good reviews from previous stuff. And the questionnaires. But no three chapters. I'll let you know how many of them send back slips saying they're not able to publish (the questionnaires?), but wish me all the best in finding a suitable publisher.

Don't worry. I'm alright. They're all going to hell!

What a great few days I'm going to have! I feel the wind at my back. I've started waking up at five in the morning (instead of six) and feeling really, really good. Doing lots of yoga nidra before getting out of my kip. The meditations after this have been fabulous. Yesterday, they were going so well I thought I should phone in sick, so I could investigate ra bliss all day. But tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow! It's all mine! Mine, I tell you! Just me and ra bliss all tomorrow morning. Ra bliss, ra bliss. What a fortunate creature I am!

Ra Sevens

Tuesday 6:15 p.m.
Lee Ann tagged me to do these seven things.
7 things to do before I die.

1. Emanate as a deity
2. Revisit the Himalayas
3. Give up gainful employment
4. Become happy in solitary confinement
5) Be one of the people in the Sugar Ray/Tommy Hearns fight
6) Write a good book about becoming a living saint
7) Write about becoming a living saint with lots of girlfriends

7 things I can do

1. Stand on my head
2. Sit in a lotus
3. Go into a lotus while standing on my head
4. Roll my eyeballs up till only the whites show.
5. Go a bike.
6. Threat stare the mirror.
7. Skip

7 things I cannot do.

1. Also, speak a foreign language, except Gaelic (You hod 'im an Ah'll heider 'im)
2. Get books published.
3. Network.
4. Emanate as a deity.
5. (millions of other things)

7 things I say a lot.

1. Om Mani Padme Hung
2. Om Ah Hung Vajra Guru Padme Siddhi Hung
3. Susquehanna
4. Basturns!
5. This is not a lap dancing club (at school!)
6. Hope you like that.
7. Did you like that?

7 things I find attractive in a woman.

1) The usual bumpy bits.
2) Humour
3) Money
4) Intelligence

7 celebrity crushes

1) Marlyn Monroe
2) Jane Russell
3) Jane Mansfield
4) Mae West
5) Haley Berry
6) Pamela Anderson
7) Jean Simmons

Doesn't look good, does it? Thank god there so many ways of not writing your book!

Ra New Strategy!

Monday 5:20p.m.
The sensei and reverend is having an identity crisis over on his blog. You could go and guess which planet he might be from. My guess is that it's in a galaxy far, far away!!!

Since this blog is partly (or was supposed to be mainly) tracking my (lack of) success in attracting a literary agent, I've had to come up with a new strategy. Or go back to an old strategy. Or, even better, combine strategies.

The Masai Warriors and Jock the Spam Robot, the regular readers of this blog, will know that since my web page was set up in February, I've sent about 350 emails to British literary agents trying to get someone interested in my current blockbuster. Or in any of my previous blockbusters. Or even just in anything. All a complete waste of time.

Now, I'm going to write them a letter!! How's that for revolutionary? I've got tons of wonderfully supportive questionnaires from kids about my two kidbooks and I'll send them those, plus some reviews and stuff. Since you cannot, it seems, get a kidsbook published without an agent, I don't think there's anything else for it. Of course, I've done this before. But I didn't have the web page then. This won't work, of course, but you never know. You just never know.

Despite not getting to the Samye Ling last week, the meditations are still developing and progressing. It seems to have a momentum of its own. I'm supposed to start writing my book now. Hmmm. Maybe leave it till Wednesday. Meditate instead. All that other stuff is just a waste of time really!

I forgot to mention .... sent a birthday card today to the famous Scottish playwright, Tom McGrath, who got me three grand once. I had to send it via the Traverse since I've lost his address, so he'll probably never get it. Still, it's the thought ...

Ra Noise Blockers!

Sunday 11:25 a.m.
It's my wonderful daughter's 18th birthday today. I got her a pair of noise blockers, similar to the ones I'm wearing at the moment. This is so that when the fire alarms go off in her student digs, she can put on the noise blockers and make a leisurely exit. She's been out of the house a month now.

Just before she was born, I went to see a writer called Tom McGrath. He got me three grand from the Scottish Arts Council as a writer's bursary and that was a great help at the time. I've never thanked him properly. I had a chance yesterday at the Traverse Theatre where there was a wee event for his 65th birthday. Of course, I never spoke to him. I never speak to anyone. I did speak to Stephen Greenhorn for a moment. He was in the panel saying how much effect Tom McGrath had on his life. He mentioned the sensei and reverend. Tom McGrath mentioned the importance of literary scenes. Knowing other writers. That's why I never speak to writers or anyone if I can help it. If I'd had been even a little bit successful, I might not have had time to chase ra bliss!

I've been trying to ease off on the meditations for the last few days. Or, I haven't been getting up early to do any. This doesn't seem to matter. I was at the theatre on Friday night as well. Sitting there, just sitting there watching the play and here comes ra bliss. Same with yesterday afternoon in the theatre. Great globules of ra bliss arising while I'm just sitting there. Same thing happened on the train last night to Glasgow. Just leave me alone with a straight back and I'm away with the fairies. How odd! This morning I could feel the chakras (f0r want of a better word!) opening up in my neck and head while I was lying in bed. This gives you sensations of space and bliss.

Filthy, horrible day here in Edinburgh. Overcast, drizzly. I'll meditate on and off till three then go and see my lovely daughter.

Ra Expanding Earth!

Thursday 4:10p.m.
Adolf has put me off writing my new novel. I think it would be better if I tried to find some young women to impress, and then impressed them with my tricks. After I have impressed them with my tricks, I could then try to rent them THE MIRACLE EARTH.

For only a few thousand a year, or a growing season, you can now rent a plant pot full of earth from the Holy Allotment. You provide your own turnip seed and water. You watch the turnip grow and then take it out of the earth. Proceed to eat the turnip. Put the turnip leaves back onto the earth. Weigh the earth and the turnip leaves separately. Yes! The earth weighs the same as before! The turnip leaves have added to the total weight. Where did the weight of the turnip leaves come from? It came from water and nutrients in the soil. Ha, ha, ha! It seems the turnip appeared due to invisible sources. Something you couldn't really see was going on, but you still got to eat the turnip.

So the allotment must be expanding. If I wipe the earth off the vegetables and throw the leaves from the turnip on the ground, the earth as a whole should be expanding. Something is adding, or you wouldn't get the added weight from the turnip leaves, which you do not eat. Did the allotment grow the turnip, or not? Did the earth grow me?

The basturns who are stealing my allotment had better watch out. Even if they are old and cannot run too fast due to the earthbags on their legs, I will hunt them down. Since you are not allowed to have a gun in Scotland, I will insult them instead. As a deity! They won't like that!

Ra First Go!

Wednesday 11 a.m.
I realised I was on holiday yesterday. I knew I was on holiday, but I kept thinking I'd go into work, then I felt as if I was on holiday. Weird. I happened when I started trying to re-write this book. I wrote a note. Does this have an underlying theme? I never ask myself questions like. Then I wrote: Does it need one? I thought I'd better have a wee think about this and lay on the floor. Then I fell asleep for two hours. That's a good indication about being on holiday. You can sleep when you want and get up when you want.

Funnily enough, I had no interest in beer last night at all. It's better if you think your steps are guided even if they aren't. My steps were guided over to the beer because I wasn't ready for that much bliss. Now, something has occurred and the beer monster has suddenly gone away. Rather strange really.

The underlying theme, I think, is about not going back. Forward, forward! All my plans are simple!
1:00 p.m.
Here's the new start of the novel. I think you can tell that ra bliss will figure prominently!

The bliss is the hit God would give himself if he dealt drugs. The bliss is the best of feelings. If you can think of a better feeling than bliss, you can call that feeling bliss.
Unfortunately, you will probably have had no experience of bliss because you are a flathead. Flatheads don’t get bliss. Since I am a Scottish person from the west, I could put that a different way. Flatheids don’t get ra bliss. Ra bliss, ra bliss.

So this is a novel about how to move towards ra bliss. Being a novel, you aren’t expected to believe the story, just follow it. But though there will be some disembowelling and murders almost right from the beginning, remember if you want to keep reading that the stuff about ra bliss is the true stuff. The rest is just a way to tell flatheids about ra bliss and maybe let you in on some of the awfulness and gruesome events taking place in a bog standard secondary school near you.

We'll I've got a new beginning. I think I can go to sleep for a bit now!!

Rat Booky Thing!

Tuesday 2:15 p.m.
Say bye bye to the Beer Monster! Today I start re-writing my book, which is going to be all about ra bliss!! As of today, I don't have time for drinking beers and having fun. I should, of course, be writing the book just now, but I thought I'd blog about writing it instead, which is far easier.

I'm out of the way of writing books. Yesterday, I sat in the lobbby all day, more or less, with the noise blockers on. From about half nine till five o clock. I miss not being at the Samye Ling, but it's not the same. So since I'm on holiday this week, I'll start re-writing the book.

Why bother when the book shops are full of books and nobody will want to publish it anyway? Well, I'll put stuff about ra bliss on record. Sometimes, I've written books with true bits in them. Alma Mater, which I started as soon as I'd left university, has a true account of my academic career. The stuff in that about coursework and all that is true. The parts of Are You Boys Cyclists about boxing and writing were true. I've been telling myself to lay off the re-write until I can collect the Four Blisses, but that might never happen unless I can get into a cave somewhere sometime.

This novel will be written in the first person. It'll have to be amusing enough to make people want to read it since it won't really be plot driven. Maybe I should be writing plot driven third person narratives like Bomber, but since I haven't got an agent or a publisher, I'll write whatever I like!

It's the discipline! The only time I had perfect conditions for writing was when I was on the dole and in my mid twenties. Are You Boys Cyclists is set in this time. I used to write from midnight till four in the morning, and from two in the afternoon till six. Apart from then, this time right now has the best conditions for writing. I can write from two till six on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. And no one will stop me doing that. Starting something when you've been a total slob for months isn't easy, but once you get going it shouldn't feel like work. I didn't want to go around with a book in my head all the time when I was chasing ra bliss, but I'll just have to get on with it.

So I'm getting my motivation together here. Folk should know about ra bliss. I'm the only person I know who can tell them about it, so I should try to write this book. If I can sell it, I might get enough money to give my daughter some money and give the Samye Ling some. If I was dead lucky, I might be able to give up my job and spend some time in the Himalayas visiting caves where great saints sat to get ra bliss.

What day is it? 18th October, 2005.

Ra Beer Monster Hangs On!

Sunday 1p.m.
Dramatic developments with ra bliss recently! I think it must be something to do with going around dressed in The Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle - You Supply the Power, which got its first public promotion in this post. Adolf has posted a picture of The Vehicle in motion here, and suggested I add ankle weights, but this has given me another idea for making a million while I'm about trying to become an enlightened Hotboy and all that.

I've decided to rent out pieces of earth from my allotment. Like maybe a hundred pounds of earth to people who want to lose weight. Let them imagine what it's like to be a truly fat basturn. Carry around an extra hundred pounds for a while. When they've lost whatever weight they want, they could return the earth to me. You could rent it for a month, say. Well, you wouldn't expect to get it to keep. It's valuable stuff. They're not making any more of it. We could clean up!!

While road testing the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle, I've been forced to keep drinking beer, to help power it, and to stop me becoming completely unnormal!!

Ra bliss, ra bliss. Before I came here to type, I was in the lobby with the noise blockers, lotus position, etc. Straight into the profound whiteness, not much thinking at all, fabulous, wonderment of ra bliss. Though I haven't been doing all that much meditating since the Domestic Bliss returned from the Americas on Thursday, I suspect I must have been doing a lot previously. Ra bliss has moved onwards and upwards. All afternoon the house will be empty and I can just sit in the lobby investigating ra bliss. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!!
2 p.m.
On another little break! Ra bliss seems more profound when there's a kind of steady state in ra bliss and not much thinking. You can kind of put in a thought if you want, but they're pretty slow to arise. Your mind is not agitated. Just white light and bliss.

Yesterday, I went to see my chum Poisonous. For a while, I was on my own out in his garden. This space is like the forgotten corner of a graveyard, the place where the sun never shines except when straight overhead. But what bliss! Close your eyes and that's about all you have to do. Right into the profound bliss. We watched a movie. I tried to watch it with my eyes rolled up and took a breath. How fantastic it is to be able to do that in public and get such an uprising of ra bliss! Getting out of your face on air! This was even better than when I tried this stunt round at Shiva's a week or two ago. You're getting the hit that God gave himself sitting there not watching a movie. It's hardly believable even to me. I tried to tell Poisonous about this. He's started to squint at me as well.

I could go to the mental hospital now and I think they'd let me in, especially if I was wearing The Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle. However, I do not think they'd allow me to drink beer there.

I think the "winds", as they are known in the juju, are supposed to enter the central channel, then they are supposed to stabilise.... that might be the profound, not a lot of thought, blissy bit with the liquid light attachements. After it stabilises, it's supposed to dissolve at some point. That's when you should be able to collect the Four Blisses.... ra bliss hasn't even begun yet!

7 p.m.
Not long out of the bath after going on the longer, flatter run, the one that takes about fifty minutes. I had on the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle minus the plastic bin liner. I was jogging along there, thinking: This has got to be a winner. .. THE BEER MONSTER REDUCTION DIET! EAT LIKE A PIG JUST AS LONG AS LONG AS YOU DRINK A GALLON OF BEER A DAY!!

I think mixing dieting with religion must be the way to the big bucks. YOU CAN HIRE THE BEER MONSTER VEHICLE HERE! Authentic Hotboy running gear. $100 a week rent for the genuine article. Also, another $100 for the GENUINE ALLOTMENT MAGIC EARTH.

All you have to do is wear the vehicle and the earth for a couple of hours a day. During this time go for a run and run until you fall down with exhaustion. Crawl home and start drinking beer until you feel like dancing and singing.

That's all there is to it! You might not think there's much religion in this diet, but that comes in when you read the instructions that come with the MAGIC EARTH. I mean, it's got to be winner. Available soon at my website!!!

Ra Still No Samye!

Friday 12:30 p.m.
41 Masai Warriors, Martians and Robots from Spam seemed to have visited this page yesterday. By far the biggest spike ever! It must be blogging about beer. Nobody, including me, understands ra bliss, but a lot of people like beer. Cue Rod Stewart: What made Milwaukee famous made a loser out of me!

It's a beautiful, clear October afternoon here. Sunny and chilly. I should be down at the Samye Ling, but events have conspired ... Even although the kid has been out the house for only a couple of weeks and the domestic bliss was just back from the Americas, I would still have gone. I try to go every time the school gets a holiday. Last year at this time was the first time I'd gone with my wee tent, due to the descending into the lonely financial zone from going part time at the work. But what a wonderful week I had! You really need a week. Three days to settle in and the rest of contented sitting, and the oodles of ra bliss!

The Gatekeeper to Nirvana said the closed Mahamudra retreat would be in the temple, and since there were about two hundred folk showing up for it, this would probably include the bit at the back of the temple, normally secluded and cut off by moveable room dividers. I couldn't really join this retreat since it was in it's third year. I could have sat in the temple, but I would have to have left during the two hours of teachings, I think. Of course, I could have just went into the temple and sat there. No one's going to tell you to leave, but you don't want to be awkward and, sort of, in the wrong place.

I could have gone down there and just sat in the tent, but it's not really tall enough and you certainly couldn't do that if it was raining. Hmmm. It rained all week last October. I was thinking about how to go with the flow on this one when I checked my bank statement. You can't post-date cheques anymore. Last Monday I signed a cheque for my daughter's Equity membership. The bank just cashed it there and then. I could still have gone, but .... I'm really missing it just now, but I'll go for shorter breaks come November. Thursday to Saturday.

The main thing is to meditate. And they will be fabulous today!!

10:55 p.m.
I think I'm supposed to take to the hut. It's not too cold. The hut is cluttered, a mess, cob webby and mice ridden, but nothing to bite you to death. You have to close things down at some point. You can't stand on your head at the allotment. You could do Tai Chi sets in the big Inverleith Park adjoining the allotments. The bogs in the Botanic Gardens right beside the park are open till about six at night.

This is heaven. The only thing not perfect is me. So you get calm by sitting still. That's what I am not by drinking ra beer. If I was going to be the kind of joe I'd like to become, I should just take to the hut. I made a loaf of bread tonight. Weighs a couple of pounds. Maybe some cheese. There be turnips. Just take a diary, a cosmic book, and try to sit. That would be best for everybody. Once I thought if you could improve you happiness by maybe five percent a year, what a great deal that was for everybody you met. Who wants to know miserable basturns? Just hit me with your bliss. |

It would sometimes be hard up there at the hut, but ... Poisonous just phoned. Should I transgress with ra Poisonous, or go to ra hut? What do you think?

Ra No Samye!

Thursday 7 p.m.
Brian Wilson came to see me on Saturday and took some photies which I sent to Adolf round the other side of the Unheard of Island. If you see one of these photies on Adolf's blog, I always go about dressed like that. Five layers of clothes with a bin bag sandwiched in there for insulation. Complete with the hat, you walk into the street and everybody keeps out your road. This may be something to do with the sweat pouring down your face. It's a portable sauna. I think it will catch on and should soon be purchasable from my webpage once Adolf has set it up with the webcam, etc. Anyone who would like to invest in this business should maybe go to this previous post.

The portable suana may be marketed as a Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle - You Supply the Power! This is because it mostly sweats out beer. I must confess, dear reader, that over the twelve days the domestic bliss has been off in the Americas more than a smidgin of the wonderful beer has passed down my throat. Last night, for example, I drank a bucketful of Grolsch (5% but only 89p a can, unlike the Erdinger at £1:75) while watching Scotland murder Slovenia 3-0 at football. What a great time I had! Scotland have not been very good at football recently, but I had heard of Slovenia. It's featured in a Marx Brothers film, called Duck Soup, I think. I'm not sure where it is though. Anyway, we murdered them!

I really like drinking beer while I'm drinking it. Afterwards, sometimes you do not feel so hot and that's all you know about the beer. That it makes you feel not so hot. But last night when Scotland put in the third goal, I felt great and promised myself that I'd remember what I felt like the next time I think of beer. I just felt wonderful sitting there half pissed.

I'd like to carry that with me as I go into a period of no beer. For there's nothing so lonesome, lonely and queer, what a terrible place is a pub with no beer! The domestic bliss came back today. I went onto the scales. Just under twelve stone. That about 168 lbs. Jack Dempsey was only about seven pounds heavier than that, I think. You wouldn't want to have to fight Jack Dempsey when he was good. Toppled a giant to win the title. An awful, prolonged, total slaughter. I don't even want to fight Marvin Hagler. I want to be down there with the wee people. I've put on a stone since August. That's seven kilo bags of sugar.

People call off-stage. The DVD is waiting. Where are the noise blockers?

Ra Earth Eating Cabbages!

Tuesday 9:15p.m.
You're supposed to keep the paths through the allotments even with the ground, so that old dears do not stumble, fall and break their necks. This is a rule. The domestic bliss got the allotment about ten years ago because she didn't think I had enough to do with all the physical jerks, writing, meditating, taking drugs and drink, and going to work as well. A good idea as it turned out.

But the earth has been visibly disappearing. You can see the level of the plot sinking in relation to the surrounding paths. This is a mystery. Where can the earth be going to? It can't be subsiding just in the bit that's being dug.

From a logical point of view, it seems that the plants must be eating the earth. Or consuming or tranforming it into vegetation. This makes sense as you look at the earth disappearing and the plants expanding till you pluck them from the earth, and then eat them up. So that's okay. Apparently, you are eating the earth which is very satisfying.

It seems this is not true. When I told my friends (or friend, or acquaintance ... I don't want to make Adolf feel any more lonely on his side of the island), they said the earth wasn't getting sucked into the plants at all. They said the plants just grew from the air and water and the light, and nutrients in the water maybe washing through the earth. No earth goes into the plants, it seems.

They're trying to say that some minerals and water can turn a wee cabbage seed into a big cabbage which you can put in the soup and make it completely delicious.

This is plainly ridiculous. There must be something else going on. What's making the plant do that? Or the seed do that? Of course, it's the Holy Ghostie Men, the force which we Jedi Warriors wish to be with us.

And may the force be with you too!!

It's very difficult to see the force though I was fortunate to see it once. Cue the plug for The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, downloading free from this site. But when I come out of the hut and see the cabbages and think that folk don't believe in the force, it makes me laugh. Thank God, I don't even believe in God!

I try not to believe in anything. If you start believing in things, you might end up believing that we all came out of the dirt. Even before we were monkeys, we were just bits of dirt. Before that, we were just bits of gas. Before that we were light. Before that we were a point without circumference!

How partial is our knowledge! How stupid we are to think we know anything! But at the end of the day, what could be the explanation for the disappearing earth? Is it disappearing all over. Is the earth shrinking or what?

Ra Incoming and Ra bliss

Sunday 4 p.m.
One of these days every cell in my body will be bursting with ra bliss. It said it in this book I read about ra bliss some time ago. I've just sat down and the thing that creepeth upith is crawling all over my upper body. Close my eyes and I sink into ra bliss! I really don't deserve this. All I did was switch from ale to Grolsch, a beer from Spliffland, I think.

An unexpected visitor appeared in the kitchen last night. The daughter. She's got keys. First thing you know she's standing there. Such was the meditations during the day that I was looking forward to raising heat last night, but I cancelled that till this evening. We got a DVD and I bought some Grolsch instead.

The movie is called Evil and is a foreign language film by a guy called Hafstorm. Reminded me of Adolf because it was about a lad at the private school run by nazis. Usually, I watch movies with my noiseblockers on and my eyes rollled up, especially ones with names like Evil, but it was very engaging. Most enjoyable evening.

Earlier on Brian Wilson showed up was a wee phallic cactus called Trichocereus Peruvianus. He'd found out that it was a hallucogenic variety and wanted it out of his castle in case he gobbled it up after a few swigs of the pink, sticky stuff. He gets enough bother with the pink elephants as it is. Being a cactus, it doesn't grow very fast. But fast forward ten years and the big black bird will fly out of the three suns and swoop into my heart for a wee look around. Can't wait!

After watching a movie about a private school, I checked out Adolf's blog this morning and .... there's a photie of a private school, the one Tony Blair went to. If your parents have got an extra £23,000 a year, you can go there too.

Then I sat in the lobby and couldn't believe ra bliss. The exceptional, extraordinary bliss. Sometimes I can't believe my luck. You get pissed and you still get blissed! I'm away to the allotment just now for some cabbage leaves for the soup. I might blog later on to tell you some more about ra bliss!!

Ranother Money Making Scheme!

Thursday 3:30p.m.
What a fabulous day I'm having today! Since leaving work yesterday, I think I've said hullo and goodbye once or twice with maybe a thank you thrown in. That's it. Here on the Unheard of Island, it's good to be King!

I caught a really good disease from Adolf's site this morning. You should try it. Narcissistic Personality Disorder. There are five things you have to have to be included, but I've got at least seven. One of the two that I need is about exploiting personal relationships. I don't exploit folk I know enough, but I'm hoping to sort that out with this post.

To set the scene: What a good day for ra bliss!! Contentment. Peace of mind. Can't remember when I've ever enjoyed a Thursday more. It must be not going to work on Monday and Tuesday. Now that the bug has gone I feel fantastic. All the thoughts in the meditations were affirmative and pleasant. I think the further you get away from flatheids, the better it gets. So this is how to give up work.

It's good to be King because a lot of stories are told about kings. Once there was a Conqueror called William. Being a conqueror involves a lot of killing and ten commandments says you shouldn't do that (that's why all the animals you eat come back and eat you when you're dead!). So William went to confession and the priest told him his penance was to say ten trillion Hail Mary's. William felt pretty funged by that till he realised he owned practically everything, being the king. So William set up tons of monasteries and had them filled with monks who prayed for him night and day. Smart basturn was William.

Then there was an emperor who was speaking to this big juju buddhisty boy. He asked the buddhisty boy if he'll gain merit for the future by building all these monasteries, temples and whatnot. The buddhisty boy says no. After a few more replies like this, the emperor asks the buddhisty boy who he is. The buddhisty boy says I don't know.

We're doing a bit of non-self and emptiness here maybe.

Here's how we make the money. Adolf has to do everything of course, but he will also be collecting the money. I only need about fifteen grand a year to fulfill all projects, so I'll settle for that. What I need to avoid going to work is a webcam with an interactive site, such as, I've heard some young women have for gentlemen callers.

So I'll meditate for folk who are too dumb to do it themselves. You dedicate the merit. A variation on the William the Conqueror thing. It probably won't do any good, but people need to be comforted. It could be for dead pets. It could be for ill folk, or dead folk. It doesn't matter who it's for. You sit in front of the webcam and have a sign saying: This hour is for Joe Bloggs. May he rest in peace.

Charge twenty pounds an hour. I'd like to meditate for ten hours a day. I'm for sale. £15,000 year off the top and the rest is for whoever does the technical stuff, and puts up the start up money.

That's you, Adolf! Since you fixed the links on my webpage the traffic has doubled. You've got nothing better to do anyway. If you do this, you'll increase your lifespan by ten years. Guaranteed by King Hotboy.

Adolf might need a bit of persuading on this, I fear. There's a guy from the National Rifle Association just showed up on the beach. He's shooting anything that lives and breathes. If Adolf doesn't do this, I'll have to tell this joe that Adolf is a communist, the last one left. Yes, I will. Then it's off to the bardo for you, pal. Remember what happened to Brian Wilson!

I think that's eight out of nine. Narcissistic? Surely not gorgeous old moi!

The one left that I can't get my head round is being envious. Fancy being envious of a flatheid! Flatheids can't envy me either because they have no conception of ra bliss.

Enough of this! Time to try and get the emptiness stuck onto ra bliss!! Ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! This KingHotboyMadyamikaSurfingTheOceansOfBliss!!

Rese Interesting People!

Wednesday 2:25p.m.
Blogging away here and tapped the ctrl button by mistake and the post disappeared. Rubbish anyway!

300 robots and Martians and Masai Warriors have hit my webpage since it was set up in February. Unfortunately, until Adolf fixed it, you couldn't download half the stuff. I have no idea if Martians can read or not, or whether anyone has bothered to download anything. Don't think it matters. I think the only agent who's looked at it is Anjali Pratap. Never heard from her again, of course, but at least she looked. I'm going to have to start aggravating folk again about Light in the Dark and maybe Bomber. I've done nothing much since Rosemary Canter spat out the dummy. The kids in the reading group I was trying to form all ran away at the sight of the first book, and I only get one class of first years just now. Hmmm.

I don't have to see anyone till Monday, apart from the folk in Bellshill. I'm trying to work hard at the meditations in preparation for going to the Samye Ling half way through this month. Got an email yesterday telling me that someone called Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche will be down there teaching while I'm there. He did the three year retreat at 13! Some cats got it .... You can see his biography here. Also, there's a closed Mahamudra retreat from Monday 17th till Friday 21st. I wish I knew what that was. Even though I don't, I've a feeling that's what I should be doing.

I'm going to the allotment!

Almost midnight.

Here's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to meditate. And get straight. The CannyBliss Yogurt factory has ceased functioning, but I miss it ... with the CannyBliss Yogurts you can forget the end of the day when you have to speak to people in the living room, and watch the telly. Otherwise, of course, you're engaged in busy stuff.

So there's nobody here but me. I should become calm and content, and not want stuff like beers. I should stay away from flatheids. Except Brian Wilson. Then, the wonderful Domestic Bliss will come back for a few days, and then I go to the Samye. I don't want the Samye to get me ready. I want to be ready for the Samye. The Samye is ready for me. It is the scene of miraculous coincidence.

Just when I get a holiday, there's something called the closed Mahamudra retreat. Hmmm? I haven't got the karma for it if it costs much. But I have got my wee tent. I think that like almost everything else has been provided by the Domestic Bliss. With your little tent, nothing is beyond you. You can get isolated in your little tent. That's the problem here. You can't get isolated from the desirable things like beers, and other desirable things.

I lived on my own for six months when I was twenty six. I wrote about it in Are You Boys Cyclists? Then, I was on the dole. I had the whole day. To be me. Work on the project. Me. I'm more of a Seneca joe in this. He might have been more interested in the shape of your life: the project. More zen maybe to do the moment by moment of consciousness. Good to do both. Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis. What's the matter of syncretism? Dichotomies can't be good. Believing in stuff can't be good. Why stick with old ideas? They're old combinations. That's all anything is. Combinations.

What a wonderful day I'm going to have tomorrow. I'll try to write some of my book ... because of the starving, homeless basturns ... other than that, just doing the project and investigating ra bliss! That is the first mention of ra bliss for ages. Do you get any? No, you don't. That's because you're a flatheid. Really, that's not necessary anymore. Fancy wanting to be stuck in the flatheid world in this day and age? Dearie, dearie me! This is RaBlissBlog, telling you all about ra bliss!

If you meditate, ra bliss is unavoidable!!!!!!!!!!

Ra Recovering!

Tuesday. Noon.
I feel much better today and should be able to go back to work tomorrow. Great!

Dr Barry Marshall is to be given the Noble Prize for curing stomache ulcers and I cannot think of anyone I'd rather see getting a few hundred thousand pounds, and his photie in the paper. I had an ulcer for twenty years. At least nine members of my family have suffered from ulcers; three of them falling down in the street with burst ones.

Apparently, you feel the pulsing going up your neck as your vision closes in from the periphery, and then you pass out.

Falling down in the street with a burst ulcer is not good for you.

I got antibiotics about ten years ago and the ulcer was gone. Bye, bye, helicopacter pylori! Just like that. Magic.

One good thing about having an ulcer was that I didn't drink whisky or wine, and stuck to Guinness and home brew. And I couldn't drink more than three nights in a row. This has lengthened the life of my liver, I'm sure. Thank God because it needs to be up for it these days!

I saw Shiva at the weekend. Shiva is very good at hatha yoga, but I don't think he has much time for the Tibetans. Being a Hindu God, maybe that's not surprising. Shiva and I started going to Iyengar Yoga classes when my kid was born, so I've been doing hatha yoga of some sort or other for seventeen years. When I went through the door of the centre up by Holy Corner in Bruntsfield, I told Shiva I wanted these people to teach me how to sit. I wanted to be able to sit in a lotus position to improve my meditations. Shiva wasn't really interested in meditating though I did advertise it as much as possible.

So I was round visiting Shiva. During a lull, I started putting in a couple of vase breaths. Could feel ra bliss arising with some heat straight away. Hard to describe where your head might go, but there's a little bit of transcendence going on here. You can't stop grinning with your eyes becoming a little prominent. Wide open.

This is getting out of your face on air! Soon I should be able to do that anywhere, I hope. Sitting on the bus; during lulls in conversations with flatheids.

I could tell by the way Shiva was looking at me that I am not normal anymore. Who wants to be normal? This is much better. I've been a flatheid. I've got the teeshirt for it.
I DON'T WANT TO BE A FLATHEID. GIVE ME RA BLISS ANY DAY!

Just in case anyone is interested in the way into ra bliss, there's some stuff in this post. If you want to find out how not to get an agent, you could go to this post. If you want to read one of my unpublished books, you could go here. There's tons of stuff about buddhism in The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf.


Though somewhat diseased, still a very fortunate creature!

Ra Eric Post!

Monday. Late.
I got a disease from speaking to my deep dear friends yesterday which has caused me to cancel the next couple of days. But ... blogaddicts... you can always go and try to type or express. I do like this bloggy typing, time and space, and what else are you doing?

You could be in Alberta, in the wilderness. You could have all the naked little bits sticking out into the cold and feeling sore. You could have hooked this shit up and got me. The HotboyMadyamikaSurfingTheOceansOfBliss. Hello, Eric! I can do ra bliss, Eric, but I cannot do anything that you can do. Once there was potential, but I think I was always destined to be a useless basturn. You must have to do this teamwork stuff, and to be effective, and being a positive doing kind of thing. I wish I could do that. There's the Telford Bridge which I walk over a lot, Eric, and it is a beautiful thing. It is a wonderment. It is definitely the work of men working together. It's dead Scottish even if Mr Telford might not be. Construction.

So there's a snake. This is a tv programme regurgitation, so not authoritive.

The snake is made up of different systems. Say, on a very small timescale, the niff went in before the biff. Then the biff.

Everyone should think of the snake when we have guru juju stuff. You could maybe be able to get ra bliss, but still be a complete basturn. Why not? It's the Lewinsky test. Everybody is bound to fall down on that one.

Anyway, ra bliss is on a different system from the normal sensations. I know that. You might be able to think the wrong thoughts and still get ra bliss. It's not about being good. It's about being attentive. Or fucosing.

Eric, you are cordially invited to come and live on the Flat Island. It is small, and flat, but those big boys with their big mountains better watch out. Hope you're well and warm, and at least would like to get ra bliss.

Ra Home Alone!

Saturday 1:15p.m.
The Domestic Bliss flew off to America for twelve days this morning and the kid left home last week, so there's only me here.

Purification has to go on apace. My only excuse for drinking so much wonderful beer over the last couple of months has been the fact that I've been trying to stop consuming something else. It's called CannyBliss Yogurts, and I'd provide the recipe if this wasn't a public forum. You can't do these yogurts and expect to get anything like the fabulous experience of non-self and emptiness I had when I was about forty four, or ten years ago. It's described in about chapter four or five of this book here.

The webpage was hit four times yesterday and four times the day before. That's four times what it normally gets. This shows what a good move it was putting Adolf in charge of all technical matters as well as getting an advert from Samsaramom.

Motivation for cleaning up my act was to recreate the conditions which led to the first direct perception of non-self and emptiness. This is the closest I've been (i.e. half pissed nearly every night!) in ten years. The boy, I think he was called Happold, who wrote the book Mysticism where I discovered what had happened to me when I'd the direct perception of non-self and emptiness, says these states occur frequently in certain lifestyles, if I remember right.

Everybody sing: 'I want to be straight. I want to be straight. I'm fed up taking drugs and staying out late.' Maybe Reckless Eric. Not sure who I'm plagiarising here!

If I don't get too much incoming from flatheids, I've only myself to blame for not making the next twelve days exceptional for ra bliss. The only problem is that I've arranged to go to something with my daughter tonight and it starts ..... in a pub!

The sensei and reverend has posted a nice bit of writing here. He also blogged about a Times story from the UN, saying Scotland is the country where you're most likely to get assaulted. It seems you're three times more likely to get assaulted in Scotland than in the U.S.A. Brilliant!
In feudal times in England, you were given land if you could improve it. In Scotland, you got land if you could hold onto it. So psychos were breeding psychos here. Nutters with big swords. Maybe that accounts for so many nice English people. There's nothing in nice people. They're bottomless.

Dead bright folk among the jews were given wives from rich merchant families so they could get on with studying the Torah, and that. Maybe that's one of the reasons why there were so many bright jews, like Trotsky and Bob Dylan.

Anyway, this story about murderous Scottish basturns really cheered me up. I thought the invasive thoughts I've been prone to ... such as, technicolour visions of disembowelling folk who might have looked twice at me ... were just me. Thank god, they've considerably abated of late. But here's tae us. Wha's like us. Gie few an' they're aw deid!

11:00 p.m.
I'm not long back from the Trainspotting Tour of Leith, hosted by Tim Bell. I think I've blogged before about how the sensei and reverend was quite friendly with Irvine Welsh just around the time Trainspotting was getting published, or maybe just before that.

You spectate. It's like the Traverse when I hustled Alan Cummings in the toilet. Tilda Swinton was cutting her teeth on the stage around that time. I spoke to her for a minute (well, I was speeding out of my head at the time so it was maybe a minute to me!) at one of the parties there I blogged about a couple of days ago.

The sensei came to see me one night. I went to the bog and he picked something off from the fridge, under a magnet. It was the back end of a drawing by the daughter. I used to give her old bits of typescript to draw on. Anyway, the sensei says, 'I'll get that published in Rebel Inc.', a magazine that Kevin Williamson has just set up. Irvine Welsh also appeared in that issue. It might have been the second or first issue of a magazine that came and went. Anyway, I think the wonderful Trainspotting book came as a result of an editor reading Irvine Welsh's contribution to the magazine. The rest, as they say, is pots of money!

At this city of literature thing I was drinking free wine at on Tuesday, I met Tim Bell, and a nicer guy you couldn't possibly meet. He says he's the man who does the Trainspotting Tour of the places mentioned in the book. We're doing a bit of irony here maybe!

I told Tim I'd take my daughter on his tour ... well, she's left home (boohoo!) and her mother has just gone abroad for a while, so it might be a good thing for her and me to go to, etc. I arranged to meet the daughter outside the Filmhouse on Lothian Road.

On the cover of the original edition of Trainspotting is a quote saying : 'The best book since the bible!'. And he might be right. That's a quote from Kevin Williamson, who set up Rebel Inc., etc.

So I've arranged to meet the daughter outside the Filmhouse and who is standing outside it as well, but Kevin Williamson. This is a take two moment. I've waved my hand at Kevin Williamson every odd year since around 1992 or 1993, but haven't really spoken to him. So I goes over and says hullo and shows him the flyer. Someone handed me a funny smelling cigarette, but I said old guys like me only do ra bliss. Of course, I didn't really say that.

But what a weird moment! Kevin looks as skint as me. Some cats got it, some cats aint!

By the way, the tour is totally recommended. Irvine Welsh should take it. Maybe he could wear a wig. Or a false beard. Anyway, guys like Tim Bell are just great.

Idef (?) Piaf's dad was a street acrobat. Je ne regrettez fung all. I'd love to be a guy like that!

I'm a bit embarrassed about doing this instead of writing books nobody wants to publish, but there is more emotional feedback on blogging, isn't there? If you pass this way, leave a remark, like Hi Hi! Otherwise, it's a fish thing. HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.