by Bull, Rod;
One night I was woken up. Could I go to the shrine room to see what was going on? There was a lot of noise coming from there. Why they asked me, I did not know. Expendable, maybe. Arriving at the shrine room, there was a local bloke, totally pissed, on his way home from the pub. He had decided to stop in and say hi to the Buddha.
“What’s up, Mate?” I asked.
“Just having a smoke and a drink with the Buddha. Looks like he needs a drink.”
Even my limited experience told me this was not the thing to be doing in a sacred place. Somehow I didn’t think the Buddha needed beer or fags.
“I’m sure he has what he needs,” I said. “Nobody can have enough beer,” he was saying.
I was not getting through. My comments were like water off a duck’s back. Running out of reasons, I gave up and sat down next to him, thinking a beer would be nice. He was very pleased when I asked him for one. This eased the situation, and soon the beer was finished. He staggered off with a smile on his face. Amazing what a drink can do.
One of the people I wanted to talk to (for all the wrong reasons, I’m sure) was a very good-looking Dutch lady. She was telling me she came to retreats every summer for two to three months.
“How can you afford to do that?” I asked. Actually, the retreats were not expensive, but it meant taking time off from work. “What do you do that you can take all that time off?”
“Please men,” she said. I was flabbergasted. “What do you mean?”
“Dance for them, and more,” she said.
My mouth must have dropped open because she said, “I have talked to Rinpoche about it, thinking maybe I should get another kind of job.”
He had told her, as long as you are not hurting anybody, it’s okay. It was amazing how compassionate, open-minded and joyful these Tibetan lamas were. At this point I thought I’d better hotfoot it back to London before I fell in love with the Dutch lady or something.
Around this time I was trying to learn T’ai Chi, as the Gurdjieff movements seemed a bit over my head. Jean-Paul, who was teaching us T’ai Chi, was half French, half Vietnamese. It turned out he had no time for chumps. Jesus, what’s up with these people: not everybody can be a fucking Einstein. Luckily for me, my very good friend Chal was taking the class and was an Einstein. So at 6 a.m. every morning in the park, we practiced. When I got stuck, which was a lot, I would look over at Chal, and he would show me the next move. After many, many fuck-ups, I got the Short Form. It amazed me how hard it was for me to master these simple moves. It was quite worrying. Was it all because of drugs or just my nature?
We were not the only ones in the park at six. There were others, mainly dog-walkers. Their dogs were big, small, hairy, shaved. It was odd how similar people were to their dogs: fat bodies with poodles, muscle men with mastiffs. One lady would walk, wobbling as fast as she could in a large circle, crying, “Come on boy, come on.” The old fat lab would just wait for her to go full circle, then cut in behind. Of course she never looked back to see if the dog was following. Then she would say, “Good boy, good boy!” She would waddle off with the dog waddling behind her. Every morning this happened.
The muscle man was trying to train his mastiff to retrieve balls. The dog would do this, rush back, and knock his owner down. This also happened every morning. I was not the only person who didn’t learn—what a relief. We would look at these people and think how funny they looked. They, in turn, would look at us, thinking “funny people.”
A macho karate gang from the other side of the park once challenged us to a fight. These blokes looked kind of nasty, so I was glad when Chal said we only did forms. For me, T’ai Chi was excellent. Trying to sense the body, feeling the energy move around the body. This was something the Gurdjieff groups did as a morning exercise: sensing the body, moving aware-ness around the body, seeing where it was blocked. Actually, I did try to use T’ai Chi in a fight once, due to my drunken state. It was not successful. However when five men jumped our teacher, Jean-Paul, he put them all in hospital and nearly got arrested.
Meanwhile, I was still trying to get a handle on Mr. Gurdjieff’s ideas and meeting people from different groups. The main group was based in Addison Crescent. Some of the people had connections with a Dervish group who were doing their whirling dances at the Albert Hall. These are amazing dances during which some of the dancers rise from the floor. The leader walks blindfolded through the group without touching anyone.
After the show there was a party. A strange, mesmerizing sound was coming from one of the rooms. The room was packed; women were swooning, some fainting into trances. The music or sounds completely filled the room. It was like swimming in sounds that resonated through your whole body. There was something sexual about it—the women were definitely being affected. Suddenly the music stopped, and the musicians quickly put their instruments away. Looking down the corridor, I saw turbaned men approaching. Guards at the door had seen the Boss coming and signaled to the musicians. Apparently it was strictly forbidden to play that music in public.
The esoteric statement that “people only act from what they think is good” sent me into a tailspin, but after much thinking, pondering, or whatever, the realization came that maybe someone like Hitler was only acting out of what HE thought was good for Germany. Somehow, we all do this to an extent, without having full awareness of the outcome.
I’ve got to say that I got myself in quite a pickle with all of this stuff. I thought I’d better seek some advice and decided to contact a certain Sam Copley, who actually owned his own bank. He agreed to see me. I wanted to take him something, but what? Since he was very rich, what would he like? One of my harebrained schemes was making beer. You never knew how it would turn out—often the bottles would explode from too much yeast.
Anyway, I thought I would take him some of this beer, and arrived at his old cottage-style house just off Hampstead Heath. It was a hot day, and the bottles had been rolling around in my old van.
Sam Copley was delighted, and said, “Let’s have one right now.” Sitting on antique chairs over Persian carpets, I opened one. It exploded, spraying beer everywhere, on carpets, chairs, couches—nothing was spared. Some actually went into a glass and Sam got up, took a sip, and said “What a waste of great beer,” and took the other bottle to the refrigerator to let it cool down, saying, “It will be fine.” I just sat there dumbfounded, speechless.
Meanwhile, Sam was mopping up the beer with no sign of annoyance. This amazed me. “What did you want to talk about?” he was saying.
“Well, er, um, the work—Gurdjieff’s work—seems to be getting too theoretical, intellectual, egotistical.” I was stammering. “It’s too difficult to practice.”
He just looked at me.
“I wonder what you are seeing,” he said. “Let’s have another beer. It must have cooled down enough by now.” This time it poured beautifully, leaving an excellent head.
“This is fantastic beer. Can you always make it like this?” I had to confess it was a bit hit or miss.
“Maybe you should try to be more consistent. This would be very good practice for you.”
I thanked him for his advice, and with my heart still in my mouth, I left. Driving away, I tried to make some sense of what he had said. Maybe it was just to try to do something well, carrying it through to the end, something I had never really done. Somehow it is all very simple—we really know what to do, we just don’t do it.
The Dream
I had to get back to the States. Chris had refused to help me further with hypnosis. The last time had freaked him out because he thought I would never come out of the trance. The meaning of my dreams was still unclear. There seemed to be a connection between the dragon and bird fighting in my dream, and the tiny insects in the laboratory of my astral travels. There was also still the puzzle of the two Karmapas and that of my illusory double. What were they trying to tell me?
I hoped that returning to America would help me forget some of these questions, as the
y had become obsessive. Things went smoothly for a while, then out of the blue I started getting strong pains again. They would come and go in different parts of my body.
The dreams returned. Strange insects fighting, but this time a more sinister dream kept recurring. It was connected to what I had seen under hypnosis, to the laboratory with the people in protective suits experimenting with tiny insects. But this time I was looking down on what appeared to be a military base, on an island not far from land on both sides.
The island was small, and appeared to be in the Long Island Sound. It was as if I was looking at a map, trying to focus in on some of the names: New Haven…This must be Connecticut. Then, following the coast there, right opposite the island was a small town called Lyme. The shock woke me up, desperately trying to remember the dream, the island, water, and the coastline. I jumped out of bed to find a road atlas of the States, opening it up at the New England section. There was the Long Island Sound, New Haven, and then Lyme just across the water from a small island. Plum Island?
It started to dawn on me: Lyme, Lyme disease! The tiny insects I had seen in the laboratories were ticks, and the technicians in protective suits were somehow infecting these ticks with a virus. The ticks were then put onto animals to see how it would affect them. The tick would be a very good carrier for the virus. But if this was the tick that carried Lyme dis-ease, how did it get out of the island, as everything was tightly sealed? The compounds were surrounded by high walls. What had this got to do with me anyway?
Then the penny dropped. I had Lyme disease! But what was the connection between me and the laboratories? Had I somehow been party to the ticks getting out of the laboratories? What was the government up to? Germ warfare, using ticks to spread disease? Whatever it was had got out of control, as Lyme disease was quickly spreading all over New England. Think!
Many summers ago, I had been windsurfing in that area, and it had become very windy. My sail was too big to handle the wind. A storm was brewing and it started to rain. There was thunder, lightning, and the board was out of control. I couldn’t see anything; rain horizontal to the water, there was a big swell. Suddenly the board stopped, and I was thrown through the air, landing bum first in shallow water. Luckily, I was thrown clear of my rig. The waves just washed me ashore, as the rain eased a little.
I seemed to be on a small island, with high fences surrounding barrack-like buildings. Eventually, the storm blew over, and the sun started to peep through the clouds. Looking around, I saw my rig was just a few feet away. The May sun was starting to burn the clouds away, simultaneously bringing out the mayflies. They started to bite, and something was telling me to get the hell out of there. The whole place seemed sinister. I made a dash for my rig, and luckily nothing was damaged, just a small rip in the sail. I was able to sail quickly away. Getting to the mainland, I discovered many mayfly bites. At the time, I thought nothing of this, packing up my gear and driving home, thinking it was all in a windsurfer’s day’s work.
Steiner
Wendy and I and our son Joel were living in Primrose Hill, a brilliant area of North London close to the center. Joel had started going to the local school. It was old, in need of repair, with tarmac playgrounds, not very welcoming. One morning I was taking Joel to school and noticed a Rolls and a couple of Jags outside the school. Odd. Usually bikes and prams were the rule. Back at the flat I asked Wendy what was going on at the school. She told me there was a new headmistress who was making big changes. We decided to go take a gander. Arriving at the school, we were amazed at the activity. The main hall, usually drab and dingy, was alive with students constructing a huge dinosaur out of egg boxes. The kids were laughing, smiling and having fun. Amazing. Usually it was the opposite. Walking towards the headmistress’s office, we could not help noticing many colorful paintings on the walls. We got to her office, and there were kids everywhere, on her lap, on the floor, some crying, others laughing. She seemed totally relaxed.
We asked if it was okay to talk to her, and she told us to go ahead. “How have you managed to turn this dump around so fast?” She said she was trained in Rudolf Steiner education and had taught in Steiner schools, but felt that this education needed to be put to work in the inner cities, much as Steiner had started his school for factory workers’ kids in Germany. Wendy had already read some of Steiner’s books, as she had friends fifty miles south of London, in East Grinstead, interested in Steiner’s farming methods. We even had moved down there so Wendy could study farming at Emerson College, and Joel could go to Michael Hall, both Steiner establishments.
It always amazed me how well these ideas worked. Wendy’s friends, the Andersons, were brilliant farmers. The whole family was amazing. They not only farmed but played music, acted in plays, painted—nothing seemed impossible. This really pissed me off, as I was still trying to deal with my chump-ness. Somehow I just couldn’t get into anthroposophy, as Steiner’s work is called, although the application of his ideas certainly worked. Wendy was getting something out of it and would later try to put these ideas into practice at a farm in upstate New York left to her by her father. Farming was definitely not for me—just more dirty work.
More Shit
Meanwhile, in England, I was able to pick up a different kind of dirty work, in construction. I was puzzled as to why I couldn’t get more photographic work. I would get a job, and then nothing. The more I tried to push for the photographic work, the more elusive it became. Back to building work.
One particularly nasty job was working for a certain Mick McIntry, digging out footings at the back of a Notting Hill house. This was extremely shitty dirty work, digging in heavy wet clay, filling up dust bins and carrying them on our backs along planks through the basement, up steps, hopefully dumping it into the skip, all without slipping or breaking your leg or neck—and hoping the wet clay would not stick to the bottom of the dust bin. The weird thing was that Mick McIntry always came to work in a suit, white shirt, and tie. I never had the heart to ask him why he did this, plus the fact that I did not want to piss him off as the Irish spoil for a fight at the drop of a hat. This usually happened after many pints of Guinness, but it could happen any time.
One day Mick asked me to take over loading the skip. He was obviously trying to hide from some people, but they had already caught sight of him shouting out, “Mick, what are you doing here? We thought you were going to the office.” Things started to become clear to me. One of the people shouting was Mick’s girlfriend. Apparently he had been telling her he had an important office job, fearing that if she knew about his shoveling shit into skips she would leave him. Somehow, he convinced her he was just down visiting clients, the Irish gift of gab. Something that I always wondered about was why he did not bring a change of clothes.
Going to the pub after work was the law. Particularly with the Irish. One day while having a drink with my boss, an old Irish acquaintance of his showed up. He was there to meet some bird, hoping to get a bunker. When she showed, he had a few bevies with her and left. A few weeks later we met him again.
“How did you get on with that bird?” we asked. “Did you take her back to your flat?” “No, no, no,” he said. “We did it in the back of my van.”
“In your van?” we said, “That’s not very romantic. Why did you do that?”
“I was very, very worried,” he said, “About God seeing me in my bed. Doing it in my van makes it much more difficult for God to see me.”
I did not know whether to laugh or cry. This got me thinking. Time to move on.
Stucco King
I decided to try my luck again in the fabulous U.S. of A. Arriving in America, I stayed with some friends in Manhattan, and as I needed work, they told me about an agency called “Everything for Everybody.” You paid twenty dollars to join and then you could look through the book. I paid my twenty bucks, looked through the book of jobs and found someone who wanted some halls patched. I had done this in London.
I got the job, bought the plaster, mi
xed it up, and by the time I got up to the top of the ladder, the plaster had set. “Shit!” I looked at the bag—plaster of Paris. I tried mixing it very runny but it would just set too quickly to trowel it. What to do? The Irish plasterers in London used to talk about plaster of Paris and how to retard it. Cream of tartar, used for icing cakes, was one way. I could not find it, could not find anyone who sold it anywhere.
Something else the Irish talked about was pissing in the water. That would slow it down. So beer was the answer. After drinking a few beers, feeling kind of high, I started to piss into the bucket. Not knowing how much piss was needed, I figured maybe half and half. When I started to mix the plaster in, there was a very bad smell as it heated up. Also, it went from a white to a sickly green-yellow. By this time, I was pretty drunk. Not caring, I just started to slap it on. The piss certainly held it back. I finished and was just about to leave when the owners came back. Looking at the patching, they said, “That’s great. But what’s that horrible smell and why is it that sickly color?” I told them a lot of old bollocks about chemical reactions, took my money and ran.
Working on one of these jobs, I met another Limey who was a bit of a cock hound. He seemed to be fucking all the women he worked for. Anyway, we joined forces for a time. Stucco was his thing. He found that there were not many people doing it. He was very good at getting work so he kept very busy. For one job, we had to go to Macy’s to see the stucco work and then copy it.
When we finished the job, the lady looked at it. “Are you sure this is like the stucco at Macy’s?” she asked. So we all went to look again. Of course, by the time we got there we had forgotten how it looked. The curves did not look the same, she was saying. After several trips, we were all going crazy. My partner was just saying, “Listen here, lady, stucco is like hand-writing. It’s going to be slightly different.” Eventually she gave in and paid up. It was a crazy situation, going back and forth from her apartment to Macy’s trying to figure out whether it looked the same, making adjustments on adjustments. Was it the same? We did not think of taking a photo.