THE CONFESSIONS OF A COMPLEX MONSTER

One day my wife came up to me and she just couldn't find the words to express her anger and frustration.

But before she turned on her heel, she managed to get out, “Oh you, you, complex monster!”

I went and wrote it down of course, determining that if I ever wrote any kind of autobiographical book, she had just given me the perfect title. Just one of so many things that she has given me.

The good thing about being a writer of course is that whatever happens to you, you can turn it to advantage. It's like “sweet are the uses of the adversity” as the Bard of Avon would have it. Or to put it another way, you either get the girl, or you get a story. You win either way.

It is like when you go travelling and afterwards the best stories you have are about your misfortunes and misadventures. The moments when you encountered danger. The moments when your expectations were upset. Risky movements.

But I digress, I digress…

The point is I am a complex monster. I contain many selves. Their name is legion.

How is one to harmonise them all? That is the question. Because they are not such bad fellows, guys and gals, most of them. Of course some of them can cut up rough, and some have their dark side, but taken all in all, not such a bad lot. On could do worse, much worse.

But how to make a beautiful heavenly choir out of them? Rather than the present cats’ scrabble of cacophony? How is each one to be permitted to have a voice but not to try and drown out all the others? When will the piccolos learn that there is no point trying to drown out the brass? But perhaps you can play over them or something like that? Use your high squeaky penetrating range to advantage.

This is the whole secret of life isn't it, knowing your place, and doing your thing, your real thing, and not worrying about anybody else. Not being envious and jealous, or on the other hand, intimidated. Because what you have to offer is just as valuable a part of the whole picture as what any other member of the orchestra has to offer. Where would we be without the piccolos?

So what is this book to be, these confessions of a complex monster? A marvellous stormy yet harmonious, all stops-out symphony by Beethoven? Or something more modern? Something by Stockhausen perhaps.

Prepare yourself. Brace yourself. We'll be taking off any moment now. Please fasten your seatbelts and put out your cigarettes. Please listen to the hostess at all times and follow the instructions. Should we fly too high, an oxygen mask will automatically pull out of the panel above you. Should we find too low, well, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll never know what hit you…

FASTING

Fasting gives you your edge back.

There was a story I read as a child in a book, and for some reason of all the stories I read, this one has stayed with me.

There was a king who was so rich and powerful that he could have anything he wanted at any time. The consequence of this was that he became entirely bored with life. Sated and languid, he just sat around the palace the whole time feeling bored and irritable and overstuffed.

One day he was out hunting in the forest with all his nobles when he became separated from them and his horse threw him. He wandered about the forest for hours all muddy and cold and miserable and very hungry and thirsty.

He found the humble hut of a humble woodcutter. Of course the woodcutter recognised the king and invited him in, apologising for the poor quality of the hospitality which was all we had to offer the king.

But the king, said impatiently (as was his wont), “Do not worry about that, my good fellow. What have you got to eat?

All thewoodcutter could offer was a tankard of beer and a bacon sandwich which had been intended for his own supper.

“My god,” the king said with relish, “this is the best food I have ever eaten. Why don’t my cooks ever serve me up anything so delicious? I get all this jelly and roast pheasant and French champagne and crap, and it's not half as tasty as this.”

Well, of course, eventually, the nobles found the King and he was rescued and taken back to the palace and then he demanded that every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, he be given a tankard of beer and a bacon sandwich. And then he wondered why it was that he still sat around the palace sated, languid, bored and irritable. He had missed the point.

But if the King had learnt his lesson, of course, he would have understood that it was the period of enforced discomfort and abstinence which had made the bacon sandwich so delicious.

And this is what fasting can do - this is one of the things it can do - it can put an edge back on you; it can put zest back into your life and a sparkle in your eyes. Paradoxically, it sharpens and purifies your appetites in a healthy way.

When you are deprived of something, you really appreciate it. “You don't miss your water ‘til your well runs dry,” as the old song has it. Often a moment or period of enforced abstinence is visited upon us. Our horse throws us and we are lost in the forest. Your wife comes to you one day and says she has finally had enough, she cannot go on a moment longer, her suitcases are packed and the taxi is waiting in the drive.

Then you will miss her. Then you will be sorry for all the bad things you did. Then you will regret having been so blind, greedy, selfish, needy etc . Then you will appreciate all her good qualities. Then you will remember how wonderful she was, how sweet. Then you will recollect all those precious moments you shared together. Then you will miss all that you had come to take so very much for granted. Fasting, apart from anything else, is a way of showing your appreciation. Or a way of learning to appreciate what you have, to value it.

And maybe self-chosen moments of discomfort and abstinence – fasting - help ward off very large moments of enforced catastrophe. Perhaps if we are sensitive enough to give ourselves small deprivations at regular intervals, we may be spared the impact of a major deprivation somewhere down the line.

THE LAST TENOR

We used to have individual tenors.

Then we had Three Tenors.

Now we have Ten Tenors.

Soon we will have a Hundred Tenors, then a Thousand, then a Million and so on.

Soon there will be only one unemployed tenor left in the world.

The Last Tenor.

MY CAT BELLA

My cat worships the Sun.

In the morning she seeks out a sunny spot on the patio or a shaft of sunlight on a carpet inside. And there she does her “roly-polies”, lying on her back and rolling from side to side, offering the sun her vulnerable tummy, and stretching up to him with her paws. Her ecstatic rites of worship.

She is wiser to worship the sun than some of the Gods we humans worship.

Because no cat is ever going to come up to any other cat and claim exclusive rights to God the Sun. No, no cat can pretend to own the sun. No cat can claim some special access to the Sun, or that the sun regards her with more favour than any other cat.

every cat knows that
no cat owns the sun
the sun shines equally
on every one

EATING COUCHES

I went over to my friend H’s place.

While I was there his granddaughter F (aged 8 months) came over and started eating the couch I was sitting on.

In this way she demonstrated how the fundamentals of human nature show up quite early in our development.

We are all tragic-comic clowns, our reach vastly exceeding our grasp, our appetites much larger than our capacity. Never satisfied, always trying to cram much more in our mouths than will fit.

Because even if we could eat couches, they would not be good for us. We would just get a stomach ache.

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To hear samples of Harris's songs and you can also purchase the CD precious morning

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TIGER AND PIGLETS

I get many e-mails all the time, the spam that ricochets around in cyberspace. (Please do not send me any of those ones that say I will be blessed if I send it on to 10 people, and cursed if I don't. The only person who is going to get cursed is you - by me).

But this morning I got one I really enjoyed. It was so charming, so funny and so happy-making. And yet it also had something profound about it. A message about life.

A tiger in America gave birth to 4 cubs. They all died. The grief-stricken mother began to languish and decline. Someone had the bright idea of dressing up four piglets in tiger pullovers. Mother and cubs took to each other instantly and are now deeply attached.

It is funny, it is cute, but it is also deep. Because in the Bible, doesn't it say that in the kingdom of heaven the lion and the lamb shall lie down together?

Surely this is a message for us, if we have eyes to see... A message about tolerance, love and the acceptance of difference. Which qualities this tigress seems to possess in more abundance than many of us.

THE ROLLING STONES

I dreamed I was with the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

The time was now, but it was also the 1960s because Mick and Keith were just fresh-faced kids, good-looking, not the grooved and weathered visages they now wear.

One surprising thing was that they were very friendly, not at all surly or contemptuous as you might have expected.

No, on the contrary, perfectly nice and friendly, especially Mick, but Keith was also perfectly amiable.

We chatted about this and that, sitting on a couch in a room in the house where they lived.

That was another surprising thing. You would have thought that with all their money, they could have afforded a better place.

This was like a student house, very scruffy and rough and ready; people wandering about from room to room and so on.

It didn't seem like a very good place for Mick to bring his supermodels. I would’ve thought that they would have turned up their noses at it.

Not that I am any expert on supermodels, of course. Perhaps they like slumming it.

Or they like slumming it if it’s with Mick and Keith…

ANGEL

I dreamed I saw an angel fall from the sky.

I was walking in a field, in a wintry English landscape, and I saw him fall into a mist or cloudbank in a nearby field. I ran over to see if I could find him.

Two things were racing through my mind. One was, “Wait until I tell Emmanuel about this!”

Emmanuel is this friend of mine and we always tell each other about anything exciting that happens to us, particularly anything of an unusual or spiritual nature.

Secondly, I was full of dread that my longing to see the angel might drive him away. Someone I knew who had seen angels told me that they will only come to you when you are free of the desire to see them. If you are full of craving for them, it drives them away. Nothing surer.

I was full of desire but perhaps the angel wouldn’t notice, or would forgive me, or make allowances or something. It was my first angel after all.

I came into the fogbank and there he was. I took a good long look at him, drinking in my fill, full of apprehension he would disappear, but he stayed. I could see him, but it seemed he was unaware of me.

He was a very playful angel. He was very hard to keep up with because he went leaping and whizzing through the air. He had no wings but he had the ability to leap effortlessly high into the air then come down to earth again. He seemed to like leaping and bounding for no other reason than as an expression of his tremendous high spirits. I ran through the mist trying to keep up with him.

He was aged about thirty and he was wearing a brown habit like a Franciscan. The habit was a little shorter than your average Franciscan would wear, coming down to his knees. He was a stocky man with a handsome rugged face and shoulder-length stringy blond hair. He was oblivious to me. I longed that he should see me so that we could communicate, but it was as if he was in another dimension.

At one point he found a battered old brown felt hat on the ground and he put it on his head and strutted about for the fun of it. Then off he whizzed into the sky again.

Then I saw a sign on a fence which said, “Be open and pray!”

I tried to be more open, but how do you do that? I opened myself up as much as I could and prayed, opening my chest, but I was so excited and there was so much wanting to come out at once that my prayer was just an inchoate jumble in my throat.

But that did not matter, that was my prayer, that was me.

The angel stayed a little while longer, leaping and bounding, then one of his great leaps took him far off into the sky and he disappeared.

MY MIND AND ME

Increasingly my mind performs for an audience of one. Me.

What do I mean by this? Well, it used to be that my mind was desperate to play to large audiences. At one time it even dreamed of a worldwide audience for its various products and productions. Over the years that has shrunk until now it is down to an audience of one. Myself.

My mind is a vast labyrinthine enterprise. It is broken up into a number of different departments. There is the Production Department which is of course concerned with turning out my various creations such as books, plays, films, musical recordings, poems, photographs, articles, theme park rides and so on.

Then there is the Marketing Department which is supposed to be busy getting all this stuff out to the world. And of course Marketing breaks down into a number of sub-departments such as Publicity, Distribution and so on. Then each of these employs a vast array of creative talents such as the hordes of writers, photographers, illustrators etc. employed by the Publicity people alone.

A while back a problem seemed to have developed. The Production department was going ahead great guns, but there had been a collapse in Marketing. Stuff was pouring out of Production but choking up in marketing. The product was just not seeing the light of day.

And now we have a new problem. Even within the Production Department itself something is askew. Inspiration, one of the subdivisions within Production, has never been better. Inspiration is just pouring the stuff out.

But down at Finishing-off, something has gone horribly wrong. Inspiration is pumping out raw material but it is just piling up at Finishing-off. The entire Finishing-off section has vanished. My whole enterprise is collapsing in on itself.

Ah well, it is all part of the ageing process, which like everything has its good and bad side. Certainly there is loss - loss of teeth, hair, agility, memory and so on - but there is also gain. My world is shrinking, but this smaller world is in some ways a much richer world.

They call it “second childhood” and that has negative connotations of a return to infantile imbecility and dependence, but there are also positive sides to childhood, inlcuding the intense ability to become involved in the tiniest details of life.

Strangely enough, children are born with this gift called Contemplation, but then lose it. Some may then spend decades of their adult lives in monasteries or meditation endeavouring to recapture it.

Well, the good news is that in old age it is given back to you, free, gratis. It is one of the consolation prizes for all stuff that's been taken away from you. No, seriously, contemplation is not a consolation prize at all; it’s a wonderful gift.

I heard a story about a wise man from the East. One of his followers came to him and complained about how he was losing all his abilities with the onset of old age. The wise man said, “Well it's like this. All your life you've been driving a Chevrolet and now God wants to give you a Cadillac, but you don't want to get out the Chevrolet.”

What is this Cadillac? I think part of it is this gift of contemplation. I am seeing an end to worldly striving in myself. My various appetites have diminished a little. I am not quite so hungry for wealth, power, fame, success as I once was. I have become more patient, more accepting. I am not constantly projecting myself into the future. I am able to live a little in the present, in the moment, in the now.

So, to sum up…

There was a time when what I produced reached an audience. Perhaps not as grand an audience as I would have liked, but some kind of audience (distinguished by its quality if not its quantity).

Then I was still producing, but my audience seemed to be shrinking even from the modest amount it had once been.

And now it looks like even Production is stuffed at the Finishing-off end of the assembly line.

Inspiration is of course fantastic, never better. The stuff just floods up. Brilliant ideas for everything under the sun! They drift across the surface of my mind like clouds across the sky and it only I could capture them and turn them into products and commodities and get them out to the world, I'm sure the world would be amazed and I would make lots of money.

But all the staff from Distribution and Finishing-off have resigned and all I can do is dream these products of my mind. Observe them as they drift by and let them go. Like those Chinese poets of old who would write a verse in beautiful black in on white rice paper and then fold it up and float it down the stream.

So I could be labouring away at a book or a new film idea, but I think I will just go and sit in the sun in my back yard and watch the clouds go by and honour God and rejoice in his creation.

And maybe I am not just playing to an audience of one. They say God is always watching so perhaps there are two of us attending these fantastic displays down at Inspiration.

Oh, and anyway, it looks like we have had a team effort here. A few of the Finishing-ff people got back from tea-break or long vacation or whatever it was. Enough of them to get this little piece finished.

Now let’s see if we can’t do something down in Marketing.