Author: albarclay

Lou is off in India and I found myself missing the regular evening phone call. She’s gonna be covered in sun and oil, improving her skills and taking in heat. It’s a lovely thing for her. I’m a bit jealous but I’ve got my haphazard trip to Osaka to look forward to.

Tonight we threw ideas at a our lovely script for Scene and Heard. It’s always a joyful thing, even if the learning is hard. Late rehearsal though meant I got home at the end of the day and behaved as if it is was 6pm. I just clocked the time and it is almost 1 in the morning. I had no idea.

Nobody at home so the luxury of wandering around deshabillé. I had chicken curry pie and booted up this retro emulator I’ve managed to build on Linux with my Steam Deck. Proper nerd stuff here. I spent over an hour playing games I used to play in the nineties when I was a teenager, before messaging one of my only consistent friends from back then in mild astonishment that the two of us spent so much time on simple software systems with obtuse and repetitive gameplay. I’m sure my mother’s disapproval fanned the habit for me. I haven’t got the patience for it anymore, and had just put it down to pick up a book when I noticed how late it has got.

In my dreams I’ll be sending positive vibes to Lou over in sunny India. Covering ground is powerful. I’m glad we both get up see some world…

So I joined a Facebook group about Kumano Kodo, the route I’ll be walking in Japan. I told them I’ll be showing up and seeing what’s possible, and asked what the wild camping options are plus food etc. I got jumped immediately by loads of voices that say “planning is essential” “rebook your flight” “book a year in advance” etc. One guy told me it was perfectly possible to sneak off the path with a bivvy at dusk and his post was almost immediately taken down by admins. I happened to be there to catch it. The major voice I have received is “Don’t do this without planning”. And I’m not interested in being disrespectful in a culture I don’t understand. I’m sure that bivvy camping would fit that mould. I’ll do it if I must but it would feel wrong. I really really distrust all these voices telling me it’s impossible to go last minute. It smells like a kneejerk discouragement to cut back numbers.

A lot of the people giving me advice are really saying  “Don’t do this walk without understanding the spiritual side of it.” I’m looking at their pedestrian American Facebooks and wondering how they feel qualified. I’m not going to respond by linking them to the “I’m more spiritual than you” video.

https://youtu.be/yb8PVRgi-74?si=dOoyeoMjk7SeCaf9

But many of the messages seem to be empty but for the intention of telling me not to suddenly do the thing they did after freaking out about it for six years first. The other half is Americans telling me I don’t know Buddhism / Shinto where I could write a much better book then they could on either subject. And I understand that left brain writing a book is not at all how such matters should be quantified or approached. Competitive religion? Go swivel.

My socials are rarely involved with my woowoo. But I’m a practicing Japanese Buddhist with a huge amount of animism in my structures that aligns deeply with shintoism. I didn’t just stick a pin in a map here.

Yeah ok, I’ll allude to it. One human knows EXACTLY why this is the right walk for me now. He’s the only one that knows it apart from me, but I’ve got heavy things to deal with in Japan from past lives, and this journey doesn’t need to be easy – maybe even it needs to be hard.

The other people in this restrictive Facebook group are largely helping me see the difference between Europe and Japan. They plan stuff in Japan. The vast neurosis I perceive on Camino groups from Americans is probably because there are only about twelve beds on the whole Kumano, and ten of them were bought a decade ago by travel agents hoping to resell at astronomical markups to lazy tourists. This is not a very well walked route in the UK. But I get the sense it’ll be full of Americans. Which again makes sense of why the internet things I can find are about discouraging numbers. Can anyone be bothered being social on a pilgrimage? It’s about the reason you’re walking, always, surely. Not the people.

I thought I knew why I was walking. But all the Facebook neurosis and planning bullshit makes me realise something fundamental and important. That’s what I need to learn. The planning bullshit. The neurosis. I need to shift into a place where it isn’t a violation of my standards to know where I’ll eat dinner next week. I hate it, the forward thinking. I can happily look at the past because it informs the now. “This-one’ is all about the now. But thoughtful projection into the future can inform how it all works out in the now. As soon as you take expectation out, most outcomes are tolerable. That’s how I’ve existed for years.  But curating the outcome doesn’t always mean wasted now time for the same or less future happiness. Sure, a lot of the time planning people live in the future for hours and hours of present time, and it doesn’t actually pay back when their present shifts to the future they planned. But there are times when you get a return on your investment – a bit more future happiness than the deadtime planning.

I think Japan energy needs a plan. And I need to learn about thinking ahead. So. Alignments. I’m gonna murder a half day or more with spreadsheets and internet. I’m hoping it’ll buy more time than it sinks. And maybe I’ll learn something. Sorry. Thoughts all got dense there and I’m too tired to edit it. Thank you for sinking your now into that then. I’m not gonna.

I’ve ended up feeling smashed out again. Time to get fit. Summer is coming. Am I beach body ready? No. I feel slow. And now I’ve got a date in the diary in late summer by which time I need to be back up to my best state of health. I’m gonna need to be fighting fit, ready to rumble.

I’m still slightly dizzy about all the yesterday things, vague though I’m being about it. I haven’t booked any accommodation in Japan, nor have I thought practically about anything related to my half arsed trip there. That’s for future Al. But time only seems to move in one direction at the moment so I’m gonna have to make some plans soon or I’ll end up sleeping with the rats.

Darkness is still upon the world. I’m gonna try not to let it affect my mood. At least, for one more night, I have the company of this unusual and talkative cat.

He will be heading home tomorrow morning. This morning he was disgusted with how his food had been prepared, and he came and batted me with his claws over the course of a few hours and with the persistence of a five year old child, until I worked out he wanted me to smash it with a fork and only then would I be allowed to sleep again.

But it is early evening and I’m done with the day already. All I want is a warm bed and mad dreams. I’m working towards it. Tom is on the sofa so we had curry. Boy will probably object to his food situation in the small hours, but I’m hoping I’ll get past 5 this time without a paw in my mouth. Bath. Maybe a spot of reading. Sleeeeep.

Today was one of those days we wait for.

Lou has a very well thumbed i-ching that comes out from time to time, and with the Pisces new moon yesterday, it was a good time for settling intentions, if you’re into all that stuff. I like to take the opportunity for buying into woowoo when it presents itself. It was reasonably vague, as these things are. “Trust in the processes you have already put into place.” Oh and “Be more sexy”. (These are my refinements, the book is much denser and more obtuse.) I had asked about work.

I got up this morning early and missioned back to London in time to invigilate two exams in The Great Hall at Imperial. My emergency day job. Long hours in a concentrated room. If you have half learned lines like I do for Scene and Heard, it’s a great chance to embed them while making sure nobody is panicking or cheating. Not much time for lunch, so at noon I grabbed a curry from the student union and then went back into the hall. A decision moment. I went online to book a flight to Osaka for two weeks leaving in April. I’ll work the rest of it out later. Fuck it. A short pilgrimage, fitness, heat and newness. And the flight was super cheap. Jack’s Flight Club.

As I was waiting for my card to go through with the payment my phone rang and it was my agent with NEWS. It’s a call I’ve quietly allowed myself to hope for over the years. Blind optimism has kept me rolling the acting dice for decades now. There are plenty of lovely mad people still running alongside me. We all SIN-WAVE up and down this impossible and cruel career path. Mostly we are sustained by joy when we get to do the thing we set out to do, and fellowship whether or not it is a good time. We all enjoy each others ups and commiserate with each other in the downs.

I hit an unexpected up today, out of the blue. A working relationship built years ago out of pure joy and geekiness has led to something really wonderful that I’m not gonna talk about just in case. But yay! I’ve said here that I could feel it shifting. “Trust the processes you’ve already put in place.” Man it can be hard to trust when the blows are coming in. But great news at last. “It’s not the universe, it’s cos you’re bloody good at your job,” says Brian. I’ll settle for a bit of both. It came in as I was booking the Japan pilgrimage. Seems like that was the right idea for sure. Anyone got anyone in Osaka? I’m going off half cocked as usual and a first night stay with somewhere to leave my luggage would save on lockers and hotels. Worth asking I guess. Oh frabjous day.

Dammit I thought I had dismissed the whole Japan idea as needing more planning and more time. This is because I fancied walking around Shikoku and tuning in with the Buddhism.

UNESCO only has two world heritage pilgrimages. One is the Camino. The other is only about 6 days long, is near Shikoku, and is much older than the temples. The Shikoku Henro looks colonial when you compare it to Kumano Kodo, much much older and, crucially for my needs, shorter. It’s a shinto walk. Used to be walked by emperors and samurai, largely abandoned as shintoism hit a decline. Capitalism and animism don’t blend well, because if everything has a powerful spirit you can’t burn things willy nilly in order to have instant gratification.

I’m already sold. If I can find one of those cheap flights I’m out of here. Only a week of walking through mountains. I’ll have to pack smart. It can be a stamina tester and I can make a call as to whether or not I can face coming back for the longer Buddhist one. Nice time of year to bobble around in rural Japan talking to the spirits.

Can I take the time off work and spend the money? LOOK OVER THERE, A THREE HEADED MONKEY!

…

We shall see.

I’m headed back to London tomorrow to invigilate exams and learn lines. I’m keeping busy but certainly not raking it in at the moment. Can’t be too irresponsible. But an adventure is due. It might be this one…

Back to the seaside. After this weekend I won’t get to see Lou until she’s back from India in late April. I fought my way out of the London traffic nexus and spun down to Brighton, and then we bounced back out to Lewes where there’s a little cinema. The Depot. It used to be where they stored all the beer kegs for Harvey’s Brewery, and now it’s a well appointed little cinema, and it is far from expensive. Dune 2 again. There’s plenty there for a rewatch. I was happy to sink into the world and the performances again while Lou dug through for the first time. A 1965 tale about the power of psychedelics, mixed in with feudalism, jihad and giant worms. Spice makes interstellar travel possible, take enough acid and you are in all worlds simultaneously. And this book was written at the height of it. I imagine Frank Herbert was under the influence when he wrote it.

I had always believed Herbert was a woman with a man’s name like George Eliot. It is one of those things: I was told with certainty when I was twelve by someone else at school that Frank Herbert was a woman. I never chose to question it. Thinking about it I was being wound up. “James Herbert is a woman too.” That’s what they said. I internalised that too. I’ve looked him up just now. Damn.

Neither of those literary Herberts were women. I wonder how many people I’ve told. Who was that little blighter at school with me, sending their wind-up so far into the future? I’ve carried that little glitch, unadressed and unnoticed, for decades. They deserve a medal.

I’m disappointed that these Herberts aren’t women. The most important books in my early reading were Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea books, so perhaps I was happy to absorb the lie so completely as I had experienced women’s fantasy fiction asking more interesting questions than men’s. Also le Guin had many more heroic people with my complexion than the likes of Tolkein.

Frank wrote six Dune books, and there’s plenty of distance to cover yet. His progeny banged out sequels to the extent that there’s loads of material to cover now. Things are gonna get messier and less familiar. I’m hoping that they’ll keep being able to make them though, and they don’t stray too far from the books which get thorny. Good quality widescreen epic movies, some unusual thinking, much opportunity for incredible design. British accents go down well too. Gotta believe there’s a job there somewhere for this one. And if not there’s enjoyable escapism on comfy sofas in Sussex cinemas. I’m happy to be back in the big-screen habit.

My new second hand Champion masturbating juicer has had an effect on my eating habits. Typo, you say? No. I’ve been wanking on about the thing since I bought it. Theres a bit that sticks out and spins. You push things into it. Tasty juice comes out.

Since I bought it I’ve been feeding things through it with no particular programme. Following no recipe. All I had was grapefruits oranges apples carrots ginger root and turmeric root. Different quantities of each, always a good result, although the carrots I bought were on the turn and very quickly went out of the equation.

Last night I was getting home knackered and I was gonna just get a Deliveroo. They are doing £7 off if you spend over £20 and if I put it on my Amex I get a fiver back. But still I would have ended up spending £20. I never used to buy delivery food. I don’t need to, I’m a good cook with whatever the hell is there, so long as I can be bothered. Last night I remembered to be bothered, thankfully. I got cheap ingredients, thanks to the Reduced Gods – ALL HAIL. I mostly learned to cook through the random beneficence of those reduced Gods. There was a period where my local Tesco would probably be selling punnets of mushrooms for 6p if you came after 7pm. My stroganoff, refined over months, is still referenced by various people in my friendship group who thought they didn’t like mushrooms. If life gives you mushrooms…

I just made a glorious dinner for Brian and I and it cost very little. And so we have to exist – even me, your idiot profligate voice, behaving as if there’s no future. Maybe soon the idiots will leave power, but right now I have a feeling the idiots will somehow cede to the fascists. The internet has been encouraging it for so long now, with the Russian troll factories pushing extremist ideologies into the corners of the internet that think they are independent from the hated “mainstream media”. We are fucked in the West. We have been complacent for too long. We are fat piggies ready for nomnoms. It’ll be fifty years before the tanks roll in, but they are coming.

I almost forgot rehearsal but thankfully was there in plenty of time for 8pm tonight. It’s Scene and Heard, so we have to squeeze in the work when it is convenient for everyone. David our director is an old hand at this but he does a proper job now, so we are confined to evenings. And we’ve drawn the short straw and got the late ones. We tend to finish at 10pm.

I got home hungry shortly before eleven and now I was just about to turn in and after winding out the day it is almost 2am. Sleep sleep sleep and quickly. Brian bought a Calvin Klein fitted sheet and rejected it as being too small for his bed, so I’ve put it on my mattress. It is like sleeping on a gigantic 1990’s pair of pants.

I will lie in it and dream of Marty McFly, of Friends and living parents.

This time of year always gets me the worst. The first daffs and then all the maybes and the comparisons and the things I didn’t say or do or understand, and the memories and the idiocy of grief. I always hope it’ll get better some time but pretty much as soon as we are into March I’m a wreck until the 23rd is done and done and done. I’m trying to take care of myself with juice and square meals, but then I’m up late and the flat is full of ghosts. We all have to put up with grief sooner or later. Time takes the screaming. Just leaves the throbbing and the occasional surge.

But it’s still a fortnight to DDay. I think it’s just because I’m up late. Sleepy drink and down into the elastic embrace of Calvin Klein. I’m enjoying this particular Scene and Heard. Milo is great fun to work with. David is an old friend. All is well.

I spent a good amount of time this morning trying to determine if I have the time and money to go to Japan for six weeks and walk around the island of Shikoku. I don’t. I just found a cheap flight to Osaka, but there will be another time that is better. I kinda need to get out of the old groove, but I will be served much better in that regard if I work on the flat rather than sod off to a cherry blossom pilgrimage.

Instead I tried to go through some boxes and make a bit more sense of things here, I played with Boy for a bit, and probably spent too much time reading in bed in the morning before I decided to get up. I didn’t eat until evening when Brian made pasta, and despite a very quiet day I’m feeling absolutely shattered. So I’m running a bath. Old patterns. Frank popped in to get his skateboard, and I fear that his new living situation is not helping him feel good about himself. It was great to see him but I could sense that he didn’t want to go back home away from Boy and the peace of this place. Boy bonded to him when he was here for his long stay.

I do very much want to do the 88 temple trail on Shikoku. Another pilgrim route with infrastructure, this one being Buddhism. It’s not the exact Buddhism I officially practice, but faith is a choice thing and I’ve never been one for schisms. It’s an excuse to be in body with a simple physical task every day for a while, and to do so in a place of contemplation and spirituality. I thought it made more sense than another Camino. I’m looking for a shift right now. I might need to just sit under a tree for eternity.

I’m whacked out in London. Even the few days I spend in Brighton etc I find myself feeling more vital, more alive. Still, all will be well. Gonna get in the bath. I feel a bit tired and a bit sad at the moment. The tendrils of winter.

A lovely message the other day from an old friend led to lunch and a walk just over the road in Battersea. Dan and Rachel would often ring me up while hatching wonderful mad plans. A great deal of joy was found, and a sense of fellowship and belonging. Misfits match other misfits. We made some odd and glorious things. They moved up to Newcastle, moved back back Newcastle, spent COVID over the river from me and now they’ve gone and bred. I met their little daughter. She’s the same age as Josie, the baby I got to know over Christmas in Jersey. Will at the time told me that babies born in the Chinese year of the rabbit are generally less hassle than any of the other animal year babies. I’m sure there are plenty of little fuckers out there, but his one and today’s one bear the theory out well.

We went for a walk in the park, Dan and I, while Rachel worked. It was just calming and pleasant to be with people I’ve been with under many curious creative circumstances. They fed me their usual tasty vegetarian scran. Oh boy I used to fart buckets the first few days I was on a residency with them, while my gut thanked me for the entirely healthy diet. I did have to ask Dan to remind me on the morning, just as I often inadvertently jettison social engagements from my noggin in the quest to make damn certain I keep functioning career-wise.

That said another part fell away from me this morning, but I’m still very sanguine that things are rising. The industry is back up and running, even if we recently saw the final episode of long running TV proving ground Doctors. There’ll be something soon. Unless I go to Japan which might happen if I’m irresponsible.

The evening brought another trip to the cinema and Dune 2, as strange and lavish as the first. There are a lot of books and it seems that there will be a franchise now, which is excellent considering we need to get people back into the cinemas.