31/03/13

It's not what you earn that matters; it's what you do. And if what you do follows from and reflects what you are, so much the better!

In the inner sanctum of my bathroom, mein badezimmer, I receive absolution for the day's shortcomings and misgivings, through the ablutions that rain down upon me, as from Heaven.

I am too much of a leader to follow anybody, not least on the internet, where I have always been reluctant to follow a so-called 'leader'.

As a leading philosopher, or thinker/writer, I would be most reluctant to follow the teachings of another, since it would suggest a want of knowledge or understanding or direction in myself.

Today, the last day of March, is also the start of British Summer Time, but it still feels like winter, so much so that I was, as usual, reluctant to get up this morning. Nevertheless, it is Easter Sunday, and, looking back on it this evening, I am pleased to say that I have not spent so much as a penny. This is, indeed, a rare occurrence!

The workmen next-door have, mercifully, stayed away for Easter, leaving me in relative peace. For that, at least, I am moderately grateful.

April will come with its fools and showers … of bills and other undesirable impositions with which one will be expected, as usual, to comply.

Hermann Hesse was always my favourite twentieth-century German author, just as Henry Miller was my favourite American one, Jean-Paul Sartre my favourite French one, and Aldous Huxley my favourite British author of the twentieth century. Four favourite authors who, for me, stand apart from everyone else.

I was always disposed to think in fours, thereby transcending the tripartite limitations of those who only think in threes, like Arthur Koestler (with his tripartite theories) and the majority of Christian thinkers (with their trinitarian limitations), with the notable exception of John Bunyan who, together with the somewhat unchristian Oswald Spengler, also thought in fours.

Most authors don't think at all; they just write. And, for that reason, they are hardly authorities on anything, but simple bugbears revelling in spontaneous or instinctual filth.

The only way one can get beyond the negative metaphysics of idealism to the positive metaphysics of transcendentalism is by abjuring both the positive metachemistry of materialism and the negative metachemistry of fundamentalism, thereby abandoning Creator-ism for the prospect – and indeed actuality – of an Ultimate Creation, which is the supreme beingfulness of Heaven, as far removed from anything cosmically characterized by primal doing as it were possible to be.

Thinking (never mind writing) is a luxury in this part of town (north London) which you are lucky to get away with, without some prying bimbo – usually female – objecting to it via a censorious thud or thump from some room next-door or perhaps even on another floor of the same house, an experience, I have to confess, which I thought, erroneously as it turns out, I had got away from when I moved from the hell house in Hermiston Avenue that I was effectively kicked out of. But there you are, wherever you go in this accursed city there are people who are only too ready to put the anti-intellectual boot in with the intention of stopping or, at any rate, inhibiting one from thinking, presumably in consequence of too objective and outgoing a disposition – certainly for my liking!

Oh to be free of neighbours altogether! They are always such an infernal bore.

The only solution, short of moving yet again (optimist!), is to give them periodic doses of hard rock and/or heavy metal, which they are guaranteed, whether as unthinking philistines or commonplace idiots, not to like. Something of a vicious circle, what? But then life is a kind of battleground, not least of the genders, whether you like the fact or not. On second thoughts, I could always opt to put wax earplugs in, yet again!