#99 | For the sake of it

"Those who cling to perceptions and views wander the world offending people." — The Buddha

“Trust your beauty to shine from your eyes and into the souls of that deserve you.”
― Melody Carstairs

---

I took a bus to Dublin this afternoon, and the man sitting next to me had had a frightful morning. Everything he had tried to do today, he told me, had gone totally wrong. Life had happened to him like a storm. He was drenched in disquiet. First, he'd missed his first bus and nearly missed this one, too; then he'd left his phone in the taxi. Finally spilt his Tayto chips all over the bus floor. Before we spoke, he's spent a full hour in a fury with his mother. Why-in-gods-name could she not pick him up from the city centre god-damn-her-bleedin’-soul! I didn't know what was happening in their world entirely, but I happily helped him with the chips, and mumbled along ahh-I-see-umm-yeah when he unloaded his torrential day.

Nevertheless, hidden in plain sight, there was tremendous good fortune! The sun was out, which is rare. He'd nabbed the final seat as someone had not turned up. His Tayto chips were salvageable, not strewn beyond isle C and E. And in the end, his mother was kind enough to pick him up from a different stop, slightly sooner. Sadly, the gentleman was so busy painting the world in shades of grey fury that he'd corrupted every golden thread of possibility that remained. So far as he could see, there was no hope at all. 

Each of us has a paintbrush in our hands, and we give colour to the world around us. It's like, unknowingly, we're busy throwing gloomy colours between us and the beauty of reality. 

For example, from time to time, I wake up early and start painting before I open my eyes. Without much self-control, I smudge thick oils over the window of my Eyes. It darkens my day. I don't know why I do this, but I do. I blame lack of coffee or think I need to exercise at dawn, but the truth is until my mind is engaged in a distraction, it's busy clouding the early morning beauty. I miss the warm sun creeping across my bedroom ceiling and the tea's smoke dancing free. 

The poet and visionary William Blake speaks to our subject: 

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

Hell, aren't we so busy painting over the doors of our perception?

We can glimpse beyond 'the narrow chinks of our cavern' by visiting places that awe us and shake us awake (and rattle our brush & paint tin). Mountains do this like nowhere else. When we're beside them, Mountains remind us of our cosmic insignificance. And we're stunned by possibilities when on top of them — we have an endless universe to explore! 

These days, it's normal to visit mountains and to bask, although this wasn't always the case. For most of history, going for a walk in nature was quite bizarre. Back when we were embedded as part of nature, we didn't see her beauty; to tour Mother Earth was a busman's holiday, and human creation was the truly splendid achievement, not the creek or piddling brook. Nature was fearful. Do fish enjoy the other end of the tank? Does a sheep, as vacation, mow the furthest grassy hillock? And once our society had developed beyond nature, we'd escaped it, and didn't want to go back to forests. 

But then, at the dawn of the Renaissance, everything changed.

Petrarch was an early Renaissance Italian poet, and on 26 April 1336, he (claims to have) made history. Petrarch climbed a mountain for the view, for the pleasure of climbing it, not from necessity. The summit was Mount Ventoux, which I incidentally summited some 674 years later; it is beautiful and peaks over the south of France. For the longest time, we failed to recognise the splendour of nature. 1336 was therefore significant — for the first time since antiquity, we enjoyed a mountain for the sake of it. 

At the top of Mount Ventoux, Petrarch sat down and opened his Augustine bible and immediately came upon the following: 

"People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks, by vast waves of the sea, by broad waterfalls on rivers, by the all-embracing extent of the ocean, by the revolutions of the stars. But in themselves they are uninterested."

So eloquent. There are some doubts about Petrarch's claims; however, what does it matter? At some point, an ancestor of ours decided to go for a stroll. They looked at the horizon without looking for anything. They wondered for wondering's sake. For a moment, they stopped painting, and started seeing. It's challenging to do what Petrarch did, to climb the mountain of life for the view, and nothing more.

*

What I've Been Reading

William Blake vs The World by John Higgs. In 2019 I wandered past the Tate Britain and was drawn past the queues into the leading exhibition of William Blake, the printer, poet and artist. I understood nothing of the exhibition and decided that I was too stupid or Blake was too mad. Or both? Blake was a visionary. He didn't see the future, but he saw the world as it really was. He saw the hollowness of reality, that our thoughts and the world we see 'out there' is made of the same thing, our Imagination. For Blake, Imagination was divine and got was within all of us. Blake saw like you and I see, but he also lived as if on LSD, with what we'd call psychedelic visions. This biography was a fantastic way to understand this unusual man and his quite impenetrable work.

I Have America Surrounded: The Biography of Timothy Leary by John Higgs. Timothy Leary has done perhaps more than anyone else to mainstream psychedelic culture. In doing so, he scared the American establishment that they banned the miracle substances outright and imprisoned Leary. Leary came from the establishment and was one of the first westerners to try at first psilocybin and, soon after, LSD. Being a psychologist, he said he learned more about the mind in a four-hour trip than in his fifteen-year career. An inspiring personality who was seen by some as sent from God to awaken us all. Extraordinarily readable, and thank's to Ernest & Henry for the recommendation about five years ago.

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. I did not know that Huxley was a vital member of the British psychedelic establishment that campaigned for use but against widespread proliferation (as they feared it would lead to bans… they were proved right). The Doors of Perception is a writeup of Huxley's experience of mescaline, in which he first sees the world for what it is, with her Devine beauty. Huxley was heavily inspired by Blake and was friends with Leary (although Huxley found Leary a fool. Brilliantly written.

On War by Clausewitz. Often quoted, rarely read. Clauswitz has pages that scream insight about keeping things simple and pursuing a plan with vigour and energy. There are pages which lost me; twenty pages on fortresses is cumbersome! But ultimately worth it. If you plan on going to war, it's worth picking up a copy.

*

Live well, 

Hector