An Undeserved Reputation
It's a horrible thing to get a reputation. As soon as I have one I want to lose it. Reputations are millstones of expectation, hung around my neck, mostly by people who have given up on their own talents.
I seethe against and resent accolades especially. The laurels may as well be poison ivy leaving scars on my scalp - I do not want to wear them. Supposed glory means nothing to me, moments of other people's bliss which have no bearing on my own state of mind. I have several times looked about me as a delighted throng cavorts for some reason connected to an action of mine I consider insignificant.
I have sometimes even been mistaken for a kind of hero, or worse, genius. I work particularly hard against those last two insidious lies, trotted out by the complacent, and deserved by scant few in this life and certainly not by me.
It's a sign of self-esteem to refuse flattery, although it's often confused with self-hatred. No, mate, self-hatred would have me pissed in the gutter, with a cocaine nosebleed, and I gave up drugs and alcohol years ago. It's a tougher and less gratifying path to travel most of the time, this sceptical philosophy, but one I find fulfilling.
Now, dance!

Labels: dance
I love this sketch of Keats; it gives him a romantic intensity and reminds me of his awful tubercular death.
Supermarket staff refused to sell alcohol to a white-boned 1.8 million-year-old man - because he would not confirm he was over 21.
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather-of-3,786,456,798,010,234,576,891 said he had refused to confirm he was over 21 as it was a "stupid question."
In this morning's meditation, I was suddenly filled with an awareness of love, more accurately, of the immediate presence of love. It was as if I were inside a white, sunlit canvas tent. I had a sense of the thin layer between myself and the outside world of light, and I had the simultaneous realisation that this was love.




















