A Pilgrim's Progress

20) Last Post

2026-05-09T08:28:00.002+01:00

Since the death of my wife, the Zen Garden which she inspired has by and large been left to look after itself. Only occasionally has it been necessary to pull out a plant which had managed to seed itself beneath the gravel or in the space between the flagstones. The Garden thus remains intact, and can be viewed – in all weather – from the window of my study.

While I had never sought to earn my living as a writer, it was nevertheless an occupation which I had at various stages of my life pursued. My book describing a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, moreover, was still in print, and had for years been awaiting a sequel.

[Photo by C. Kaplangi]

“After Santiago” would describe the aftermath. How I had spent the five succeeding winters running a pilgrim refuge in rural Galicia. Writing had for me required solitude – the turning down of invitations and the keeping of unsociable hours, which was of course also consonant with bereavement.

So much, then, for the story so far, but one must move with the times. An author these days – I have been advised – requires a presence on social media. Short, fully-illustrated notes on the progress of this particular pilgrim will therefore be posted on each of the following sites:

Robert Mullen: https://www.facebook.com/share/1C6hYr4KSu/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Call of the Camino: https://www.facebook.com/share/1FsFxiX9BM/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Robertmullencamino: https://www.instagram.com/robertmullencamino?igsh=OWNqbm1kZGFzMnZh

And so, in closing this last blog posting, a final observation: that it isn’t after all – as was once widely believed – impossible to teach an old dog new tricks.

19) The Zen Garden (Concluded)

2024-10-31T08:29:00.001+00:00

No two ways about it, Alzheimer’s was a bitch. The course of the disease, we had been warned at the time when my wife was diagnosed, would be unpredictable, and we could expect some days to be better than others. And, therefore, some days worse.

Four years after her diagnosis my wife was still able to get about by herself, still making lists, still getting herself dressed and undressed, still operating the washing machine, but no more to be trusted behind the wheel of a car. Her good days were those on which she held her own.

It was difficult not to think about what lay ahead. We had begun sorting through her files to see what ought and what ought not to be kept. Her old work diaries? Those old Visa bills? Years of Christmas letters from people whom we had long since ceased to see?

We began preparing as if for a siege, getting ready for when the advance of the disease would make coming and going problematic for us both. Hence our “stores”. Hence the hand-labelled containers in the freezer containing home-cooked meals for two.

Why go out in any case? Why, my wife began to worry, take the risk? Why bother to go anywhere – not even to long-familiar destinations – when there was no certainty of her being able to get her bearings once she got there?

The medication which she had been prescribed showed no signs of being effective. In some cases, she had been told, it might slow the progress of the disease, and hence she had continued to take it faithfully. Which was to say, hopefully to begin with and afterwards stubbornly.

It was not a drug which eased her way. She awoke one morning feeling “awful”, and by that very evening she was gone. Carried off but not by a mind-threatening disease. It was her heart, perhaps mercifully, which had pulled the plug.

[Photo by C. Kaplangi]

She would be missed, of course she would be missed, but would she not also have wished to be remembered as someone still recognizably herself? Perhaps as someone who had ploughed on, but never as someone to be seen simply sitting staring out a window. How much better then, under the circumstances, to be able to recall her enjoying a cappuccino in a coffeehouse, or a pot of tea in a Zen Garden?

2023-08-01T09:31:00.000+01:00

18) The Zen Garden

The garden was not large, and gardening had at first been more of a pleasure than a chore. My wife had inherited some feeding troughs from the farm on which she grew up, and each autumn she planted these afresh with bulbs. I myself favoured alpines, which once planted could be left more or less to their own devices.

We were both, however, busy people and we remained so even when it was no longer necessary in order to earn our livings. Some of the alpines, as a result, had done better than others, and a good number of the newly-planted bulbs were dug up each autumn by squirrels.

Time eventually took its toll on the gardeners as well. Things were being left to slide. The troughs were only occasionally being watered or weeded, and only a few tired alpines were any longer to be found growing among the rocks in the rock garden.

My wife’s declining health is what focused our minds. Remedial measures, we agreed, were still possible, the first target being an over-sized conifer whose inexorable spread over the years had shaded the other plants and made any movement through the garden difficult.

I began at the bottom of the tree, using a saw to lop off layer after layer of growth until all that remained were two slender trunks and a pleasing green canopy:

[Photo by J. Clark]

The erstwhile rock garden was simply dismantled. The most eye-catching of the stones were then given coats of brick paint and reinstated, replanted, albeit not in the soil or in compost, but in gravel. The new garden, until such time as the paint started to fade, was to be nothing if not colourful.

The sundial was not essential, but why waste it? We purchased it some years ago from a garden centre without considering that we had, surely, sufficient time-keeping devices to hand already.

The chair is the garden’s single moving part. It can be placed in the sun or in the shade, and thanks to its having been sanded down and resurfaced with yacht varnish, it should stand up to summer showers.

There is a more comfortable chair (not pictured) for my wife, whose world has of late been steadily shrinking. She still reads, still works crossword puzzles, but beyond that things are becoming more challenging. Hence the need for a garden which will require no further tending.

Even a modest replica of a Zen garden is a good place for zazen, for just sitting. As one sits, one ought also to be focusing on one of the hard questions with which Zen equips its novices. Timeless questions, questions as old as the hills. Questions such as: “Where in the water are the waves?”

Of equal relevance in my case is an insight credited to Dogen, a Zen master of the 13^th century. A scarecrow – the sage had managed to notice – even though not consciously guarding the rice field from intruders, was nonetheless not standing there to no purpose.

2023-01-01T09:01:00.002+00:00

17) Year End Review

More than a year has now passed since the publication of Mustard Seed Itinerary, my first and likely to be my last full-length work of fiction. It has been a success so far only by virtue of the fact that it made it into print at all and remains available online or by order through a bookstore.

Whatever the merits of the book, its modest sales so far are down largely to my failure to promote it. The decision not to do so was made when my wife – after nearly forty years of faithful service in that capacity – was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Taking full charge of our household here in Edinburgh has not so far been all that difficult, not after the many winters that I spent running a pilgrim refuge in Spain on my own. Here, however, no two days are any longer the same. How, for instance, to get across to my wife that carefully stowing things away where neither of us would ever think of looking for them, while doubtless well-intentioned, is nevertheless counter-productive.

Fortunately I am still able to find time to write and to go for walks. Walking is for me a panacea, and luckily I can still climb hills, even if not so fast and not such steep ones. And I must try to remember, when sitting down for a rest, that I’ll need to be able to get back up again:

And that, at present, is the state of play here. And were I to have a resolution for the year just commencing, it would be to carry on doing today only what there’s time to do, and as for the rest – as I’ve learned from my sojourns in Spain – that’s what tomorrow’s for.

2021-12-18T14:00:00.000+00:00

16) The Story So Far

Getting Mustard Seed Itinerary to market just when lorries and lorry drivers seemed to be in short supply was somewhat problematic. There were initial delays, but the supply now appears to be catching up with the demand –such as it is – and a copy fortunately succeeded in finding its way to The Scottish Review:

                           https://www.scottishreview.net/MorelleSmith593a.html

Another Scottish writer, Duncan McLaren, after reading the review, then tweeted the following:

                “I concur. Have breezed through the first six chapters. Walks line between
                philosophy and story, playful surface and underlying seriousness…”

So far then, I think, so good.

***

A writer seldom discards anything. What hasn’t been used for one work may well come in handy for the next one. Still in my notes, for instance, is the following:

                                                              “Ho Conquers All!”

Some are born to good fortune, whilst others must chase after it. Consider the case of Street Orphan Ho, who following the death of both of his parents found himself with no roof over his head and no hearth at which to warm his feet. All the same he was certain that a resourceful person – if he were patient and kept his wits about him – would somehow manage to prosper.
      At night he took shelter in one or another rooftop chicken coop, slipping away in the early morning with a pocketful of eggs. During the daylight hours he was to be seen on the Street of the Carpenters, making his way from one end to the other and back again picking up wood shavings which he bundled and sold in the evenings from door to door as kindling.
    He was reliable. He soon had regular customers to whom he gave discounts. Before long he even had his own slogan:
                                                                    Here comes Ho!
                                                                    Hooray for Ho!
                                                                    It’s time to light
                                                                    the evening fire!

  Such tenacity. Ho was unwavering. Such was his single-minded determination that he soon rose from the humblest of beginnings to become a wealthy timber merchant, with innumerable woodsmen, lumberjacks, sawyers, and muleteers in his employ. And who any longer recalled that this was the very individual who had once helped himself to eggs from their chicken coops?
  As Millionaire Ho, he was much feted for what he had accomplished, and when asked as he often was to reveal the secret of his success, he always gave the same response.
  “How to succeed? It’s quite simple. One must never bend down without picking up something useful.”

I find a story such as this good to conjure with. Would it, for instance, have been regarded in early China as an exemplary tale, or as a cautionary one? And when the tale is told today? Is Ho presented as someone to be emulated, or as someone needing to be reined in? Or in today’s China, as elsewhere, is the verdict on this as yet to be delivered?

NOTE: If I am to get on with my work, Mustard Seed Itinerary will now need to be left to its own devices. It’s fate will hereafter depend on word-of-mouth. Therefore, should you read the book and be any wiser or happier for having done so, then please don’t make a secret of it.

Mustard Seed Itinerary

2021-10-14T11:08:00.004+01:00

15) Years in the Making

Does it not stand to reason that anyone who has been paying proper attention over the course of his or her lifetime will end up with a tale to tell? Surely it would be most odd if he or she did not. And is it not understandable for someone with a tale to tell to seek out others to whom it might be told? In fact, dear readers, what else would you expect?

The novel is now available from most bookstores in the United Kingdom, and it should be possible to order a copy online from almost anywhere. Further news of the book's fate - should there be any worth recounting - will be posted on this blogsite once the dust settles.

2021-09-30T09:29:00.001+01:00

14) About the Author (3)

Mullen was well well aware, even if he at that time kept it to himself, that he still had much to learn. His next stop was thus the University of Alberta, where he received a further degree, in record time, for research carried out in the field of computer-assisted instruction.
“I had only two gears back then,” he recollects. “Full speed ahead, or parked.”
It was not just his own insatiable curiosity that was driving him, but the severity of winters on the Canadian prairies. Nothing he had previously experienced was any preparation for whiteouts, which to him were just what they sounded like, small deaths.

(Photo by Jeremy Bishop)

What sort of way was that to live? He nevertheless remained under indictment in the United States for draft evasion, the penalty for which in the state of Virginia, should he be apprehended, would have been from three to five years of incarceration. Worse still, as a fugitive from justice, he had no passport.
“Fortunately it turned out to be possible to enter Mexico with only a driver’s license. I just had to make sure that I was on a direct flight.”
Mexico was a revelation. It was as if he had entered a time warp: implements were still being used in the countryside which were elsewhere to be seen only in museums, and shopkeepers were still keeping their accounts with knotted cords.
Those months under a warm Mexican sun were for Mullen just what the doctor ordered, and what he had seen there would inform his life, and his work, from that point onwards. First of all, however, he would need to earn a living, and this brought him back to Canada, to Montreal, that most cosmopolitan of Canadian cities, and so an ideal location in which to lead a double life.
Having obtained a position at McGill University, he set to work instructing undergraduates in its faculty of management in the use of computers, in the gathering and processing of information, and in the mathematical models available for extracting predictions from it.
“It was my expectation,” he adds somewhat ruefully, “that those techniques would always be used wisely.”
His own studies proceeded in another direction altogether. No longer guided by any curriculum, he was now at liberty to pursue a less certain course. Anthropology, mythology, the world’s great religions, each text which he encountered raised questions for which he could but hope that some further text might provide an answer.
His progress after this was fitful, and therefore difficult to gauge. There would be no more degrees, no more theses, no more learned papers. While he didn’t return to Mexico, nor did he remain for long in Montreal.
“It’s the curse of the exile. Having been obliged to flee the land of my birth, I found it difficult afterwards to feel at home anywhere else, however warm the welcome.”
A collection of Mullen’s short stories was published in Canada in 1994. An account of his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela appeared in the United Kingdom in 2010. Articles by him, some in Spanish, still turn up from time to time in Spain.
“I wrote sparingly out of respect for writing,” he reflects. “But this might also, I suppose, be put down to mere indolence.”
Scrupulous or indolent? And what to say of his persistence? Has he not, after far more years than he himself would care to contemplate, finally managed to piece together a first novel?

[To be continued.]

Note: Mustard Seed Itinerary remains on course, as of this writing, to be released on October 14^th.

2021-08-31T06:03:00.002+01:00

13) About the Author (2)

Nothing could have been easier. The intense young man who would one day have the temerity to write a novel set (sight unseen) in China had only to cross a bridge – one spanning the Potomac River – in order to put Virginia behind him.
  “Quite frankly,” remarks Mullen, “there was nothing in my childhood that I would miss. On the contrary, by crossing that river I was covering my tracks.”
  Washington was a city not only of monuments but of prestigious universities, and his way with numbers stood him in good stead in the newly-constituted field of computer science, which he took to like the proverbial duck to water. It was immediately clear, when seated at a computer, whether or not one knew what one was about.
  When the university’s computer shut down for the night, he walked the city streets. He listened to jazz, to soul music, to folk singers. The streets were his campus. He stumbled upon a cinema screening foreign films. No less remarkable, in his eyes, was a teeming hippie encampment which had sprung up in a park not far from the White House. The times they were indeed “a-changing”.
  Five years in engineering school taught him a good deal of what was known at that time about computation. For the rest he was on his own, and his plan was to put aside any further studies until he had seen something more of the world. But there was a catch: the only foreign travel permitted to individuals of draft age was a stint in Vietnam.
  Vietnam? What a ridiculous prospect! What had he lost there? What dog did he have in that fight? What quarrel with the people of that country, whatever their politics? His own politics, insofar as he had any, went no further than to live and let live.
  A decision had to be taken, one for which no calculations could usefully be made beforehand.
  “Nothing was clear. Whichever way I decided, it could only be a shot in the dark. If I did not decide on the other hand, or took too long over it, others would decide for me.”
     So he decided. Late one night he loaded a car with what he imagined might be needed: namely some warm clothes, some LPs, some books, and a portable typewriter. The only certainty was that, no matter how things panned out, he would have only himself to blame.

Within days of reaching Ottawa he had permission to work, and could set about searching for a job. That was no time to be particular, which explains how he soon found himself standing in front of a class of high school students solving algebra problems on a blackboard.
He didn’t stint. He agreed to coach one of the school’s sports teams, to help with the school drama club, and to turn out for the staff basketball team. In addition, on many a freezing winter’s evening, he sat wrapped in a blanket watching some of his hardier students playing ice hockey on an outdoor rink.
“I don’t know when I slept, although I suppose that I must have done.”
That was only Canada after all, not Siberia, and any resemblance was only in his head. But by the end of a year, he admitted, he was utterly exhausted.
“Obviously, when taking a job like that, one ought to know how to pace oneself.”

[To be continued.]

Note: As well as in the major bookstores, Mustard Seed Itinerary is now available for pre-ordering on Amazon.

2021-07-31T07:45:00.003+01:00

12) About the Author (1)

There is a certain temperament which predisposes an individual to prefer what is transparent to what is opaque, what is forthcoming to what is mealy-mouthed, what is self-evident as opposed to convoluted, what bears scrutiny and need not be taken on trust. Hence his reason, claims Robert Mullen, the author of Mustard Seed Itinerary, for setting the novel in early China, at a time when what one saw was what one got.
  As a boy, Mullen recalls, he was attracted to watermills, finding them not just beautiful but also inherently comprehensible. One had only to look to see the potential energy of the millpond – once a sluice gate had been opened – becoming the kinetic energy of the millrace, so setting in motion an immense wooden wheel, the creaking of which was like music to the young Mullen’s ears.
  “And afterwards,” the future author points out, “the water is returned to the stream or river from which it came. Shouldn’t this be a lesson for us all?”
  The principle could hardly have been more straightforward. The energy of water, through the agency of the wheel, was transformed into power, which in turn, thanks to an ingenious system of gears, produced useful work. So grain could be ground into flour, rags pressed into paper, and wool shorn from sheep woven into warm woollen clothing and winter blankets.

      Not that winters were particularly harsh in Virginia, which was where, to begin with, Mullen called home. Nor were there many watermills to be found still operating, not in a state sharing a border with the Nation’s Capital, and housing the Pentagon.
Mullen, however, was not to be deterred.
“Desperate measures were called for,” he admits. “I cut pictures out of library books.”
      No one noticed. People had other things on their minds. Russia, for one thing, kept people on edge. What if an ICBM – a ballistic missile fired at the White House from the Kremlin – should miss and land on Virginia instead?
“We had drills in school. We were made to practice, whenever an alarm sounded, cowering under our desks.”
Apart from that, elementary school was a dawdle, and he was glad to see the back of it. High school, he had been warned, would be a different story, as each student would have to find his or her own way from one class to another, and woe betide anyone who made a wrong turn. This, too, Mullen took in his stride.
Of all the subjects on offer, it was only algebra which he found relevant. For at least one period of the school day he could be sure of his ground, of what was what, and of how things stood. As for the rest of what he was obliged to sit through, it was to his restless mind a mere ceaseless litany of speculation, opinion, and hearsay. Even biology as it was then taught, according to Mullen, was of but limited usefulness, as it didn’t include sex education.
“We were left in the dark. We had to carry out our own experiments. It may have been the Sixties in Washington, but in Virginia it was still the Fifties.”
      He had no choice but to bide his time. High school, he told himself, wouldn’t last forever, and what was the alternative? Digging ditches? Pumping gas? An ability to solve equations, he fully realized, was his ticket, his credential, the passport which would admit him – when the time came – to the promised land of higher education.
      He himself, as it happened, would one day take employment teaching mathematics in a high school. In Canada to be precise, in Ontario, on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, which was a far better workplace than a ditch would have been, or the forecourt of a filling station.

[To be continued.]

Note: As well as in the major bookstores, Mustard Seed Itinerary is now available for pre-ordering on Amazon. So what’s holding you back?

2021-06-25T04:00:00.002+01:00

11) Dreamwork (2)

I know very well that it’s a mistake, when sitting comfortably in my study, to speak of any literary undertaking as being risky. Constructing a work of fiction which will need at the same time to be believable as a dream may indeed be problematic, but this ought to be kept in perspective. Hence the following observation by the Spanish novelist Luis Magrinya:

                                                       Los artistas no corren riesgos.
                                                       Eso es mentira. Corren riesgos
                                                       los limpiaventanas.

It’s not artists – admonishes Magrinya – who run risks. It’s window cleaners.
In fact is it not reasonable to suppose that our dreams, along with all of our other fictions, are of the same lineage? Might humankind’s earliest tales not have sprung from the dreamer’s desire, upon waking, to recount his or her dream to others?
“The thing was huge, and hungry, and gaining on me. Its breath on the back of my neck curdled my blood…”
A dream has no need of language in order to be comprehensible. It shows rather than tells, its success depending simply on its having got the attention of the dreamer. The tale, the blah-blah-blah, comes only afterwards, when the dreamer sits up.
      Nowadays, it might be argued, only tedious people any longer trouble others with accounts of their dreams. Many dream narratives have nevertheless come down to us and are today to be found embedded in our own tales, immortalized in our myths, reworked in our entertainments, and forever enshrined in our great religions.
We have not ceased to dream, only to recognize that what a dream reveals is for the most part only what the dreamer already knows:

Every dream is thus unique, and uniquely our own; the practice of dreaming, however, continues to be universal. We dream because we must, so why not try to imagine, in Edinburgh, what might be the dream, for instance, of a fictional Chinese schoolmaster?
Finally, in defence of dreams, is there not good reason to believe that we know much more than that which we can at any time call to mind? How then can we be certain of what it is that sets our course, that choreographs our comings and our goings? And might it not therefore be a function of dreams to alert us, in the still of the night, to what may have escaped our notice amid the hullabaloo of what is widely believed to be broad daylight?

[To be continued.]

NOTE: Google will soon be discontinuing its email subscription service. This blog, along with
its archive, will continue to be available through its initial link: http://mullenrf.blogspot.co.uk/

2021-06-01T02:00:00.019+01:00

10) Dreamwork (1)

Before setting out to compose a work of fiction which would take the shape of a dream, I had to make a few assumptions as to the function of dreams, their structure, and their universality. So, to begin at the beginning:

Q: Why do we dream?
A: Because we can’t help it.

We are what we are. We dream because we’re human. The difference between us and dogs or cats, or any other creatures which may have dreams, is that they can’t recount their dreams afterwards.
My second assumption has to do with authorship. Is it not reasonable to consider – for want of any hard evidence to the contrary – that dreams are all our own work? And must these night-time flights of fancy not be in some way essential for our well-being? Would they not otherwise have long since disappeared, as did, for instance, our tails?
Life and dreams, according to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, are pages of the same book. There is something more to us than what we are aware of while we’re awake. Is it not then conceivable that a dream, by catching the dreamer off-guard, may be providing him or her with an opportunity to think twice?
Dreams are bespoke. No one model fits all. Any dream book organized in the manner of a dictionary is therefore of only limited usefulness. Dreams are typically, by turns, playful and threatening, and what is most puzzling or obscure in a dream may, in fact, conceal something shameful:

Ought dreams to be seen as a mere inconvenience? Do they not, after all, disturb our restful sleep? On the other hand, might they not be a safeguard against complacency? And is our fashioning of dreams not akin to the process which produces insights, visions, intuitions, brainstorms, jokes, poetry, and guesswork? All of these being things which are produced, as it were, behind our backs?
Various techniques have for long been available for inducing dreams. More recently, it has become possible to observe in a laboratory just when a sleeping subject had begun to dream, even if the contents of the dream remain opaque to any outside observer. The intellectual rights to a dream, so to speak, remain at the discretion of the dreamer.

Q: Who is best equipped to interpret the meaning of a dream?
A: The meaning of a dream is what it means to the dreamer.

One further reflection. Might today’s dreamer not be experiencing the state of consciousness by means of which our most distant ancestors were first able to perceive the world about them in a knowing way? In a way that would lead on to speech, and to the first tales being told around the first campfires?
We are what we are, that much is obvious, but beyond this we’re still feeling our way. Still in the dark. Still speculating as to how the creatures that we once were became human, or how their brains became our minds.

[To be continued.]

Note: Mustard Seed Itinerary is now to be published on October 14^th, and it will be available in all of the UK’s leading bookstores. Pre-orders, meanwhile, can be placed at sites such as:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/mustard-seed-itinerary/robert-mullen/9781838172046

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Mustard-Seed-Itinerary-by-Robert-Mullen-author/9781838172046?a_aid=booklaunch

https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/mustard-seed-itinerary,robert-mullen-9781838172046

https://wordery.com/search?term=mustard+seed+itinerary

The more pre-orders the better, as these will prime the pump, and the book may as a result be more prominently displayed when it reaches the shops in October. Need I say more?

(Foreign rights have yet to be negotiated, but watch this space.)

2021-04-30T08:34:00.003+01:00

9) China: A Sampler (4)

Is it not the case that a timely dream may prove to be instructive? Certainly the Chinese have long believed so, and it would be thought a poor market indeed, in ancient China, if it did not set aside an aisle for the interpreters of dreams. Then, just as today, the canny shopper was believed to be the one who shopped around.
  Some dreams could be dismissed as obviously trivial. Others, however, were only apparently so. Deceptively so. Only by looking more closely could it be determined whether or not a given dream, beneath its deceptive nonsense, concealed a usable truth, which was to say, something upon which one might act.
  In both the Daoist and Buddhist traditions, a portentous dream was looked upon as an essential stage in the process of enlightenment. A period of preparation, if successful, would bring about a dream of being on a journey, a journey of discovery, one from which only a blockhead would return none the wiser.
  It was not necessary, on such a journey, to wear out one’s shoes. There was no need to take to the road, nor, as in our times, to queue at an airport. Hence the definition of true enlightenment to be found in the Tao Te Ching:

Without going out the door,
one knows the Earth.
Without peering from the window,
one perceives the ways of Heaven.

China was hardly unique in its attention to dreams. It was a Greek physician and diviner called Artemidorus – writing in the second century AD – who warned that it was necessary when interpreting a dream to take into account not just the dream itself, but also the birth sign, health, occupation, and finances of the dreamer.

Artemidorus of Daldis

   Is there to date any evidence of a civilization which failed to be intrigued by dreams, or curious as to their meaning? An uninterpreted dream for instance, in the Hebrew Talmud, is described as being like an unread letter.
  Even philosophers dream. Dreams, in the Chinese scheme of things, are placed in the category of “things which are difficult to grasp, but impossible to ignore.” Dreams, at the very least, are food for thought.
  Po Cheng’s dream, as recounted in Mustard Seed Itinerary, takes him on a journey of discovery in which he will encounter the absurd to be closely intertwined with the familiar. Scarcely has the dream commenced before he finds himself – although already the schoolmaster of Nettle Village – once more sitting an examination for which he knows himself to be signally ill-prepared.
  Is this not just what dreams are like? And has it not been observed of dreamers that, despite their being sound asleep, their eyes may still be moving beneath their eyelids? How is it possible in that case to judge a journey taken in a dream to be necessarily less noteworthy than one for which one has purchased a ticket?

[To be continued.]

NOTE: Having been convinced by the publisher (EnvelopeBooks) that Mustard Seed Itinerary would fare better in the marketplace if sufficient time were allowed for marketing it properly, I have agreed to a publication date of October 21^st, 2021.

2021-03-31T15:46:00.003+01:00

8) China: A Sampler (3)

The best known dream to have come out of China until now must surely be the one recounted by Zhuang Zhou, a philosopher living in the fourth century B.C., during the notorious Warring States Period of Chinese history. Nothing of his youth is known to us, only that he was born into difficult times and – true to his calling as a philosopher – must have been able to take them in his stride.

Difficult times indeed. Conflict abroad was matched by contention at home. This was also the era of the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought, when philosophers of every hue clashed in the streets, in the examination halls, and in the teahouses. What the soldier hoped to achieve with swordplay, the scholar sought to accomplish with sarcasm.

Zhuang Zhou, in that rowdy company, must have stood out. Somehow, it was later said of him, he had been able to free himself from his beliefs, as rare an accomplishment at the time apparently as it is today.

The dream which he related at first appeared perfectly straightforward. Having fallen asleep on his mat, he soon realized that he had ceased to be the philosopher Zhuang Zhou, and was instead a butterfly in a meadow, flitting effortlessly from flower to flower without a care in the world:

He was weightless. His mind was clear. It was the mind of an insect. Freed from any memory of the past or concern for the future, Zhuang Zhou was having the time of his life.

It was when he awoke that the complications set in, and he was at once beset by doubts. Had that indeed been a dream? How could he be sure? On what evidence? Had he not but a moment before firmly believed that he was a butterfly? What then now justified his supposing that he was his old self again, and not a butterfly dreaming that it was the philosopher Zhuang Zhou?

What a dream has to say to the dreamer is unlikely to be said in so many words. So it is that, since time immemorial, there have been individuals claiming to be able to decipher the dreams of others. Oneiromancy, dream interpretation, in its many forms, may therefore with good reason be regarded as the world’s second oldest profession.

Zhuang Zhou, after his account, gives us his own interpretation. The subject of the dream, he states, is the inherent unity of all things, and the transitions which may come about as a result. This, in turn, has led commentators to question whether Zhuang Zhou’s purported “dream” was in fact no such thing, being instead a parable, a thought experiment dreamt up by the philosopher in order to demonstrate the utter futility of states warring, or of bad-tempered philosophers being constantly at one another’s throats.

The last word on this has yet to be spoken, but in the meantime there will shortly be a further dream, coming out of China by way of Edinburgh, with which to conjure:

The author of the above work, I should make it clear, claims no special expertise in interpreting dreams, apart from what he may have learned over the years from attempting to interpret his own. As regards Zhuang Zhou’s dream, however, it seems obvious that the philosopher and the butterfly are but two sides of the same coin. The carefree butterfly imagined by Zhuang Zhou represents just the sort of personage that the preoccupied philosopher might have been had he not been so firmly himself.

An apology to those who consider such speculations to be frivolous, given how little we as yet know about dreams. Why do we have them? What, if anything, can they tell us? Our dreams may be unique, and uniquely ours, but they are also universal, and so, legitimately, of universal interest.

There’s no holding back the tide, that much we do know. What we imagine when we dream, in that part of our minds which never shuts down, is by turns teasing, mystifying, ridiculous, troubling, incoherent, pleasurable, and shameful.

“A dream is true,” pointed out the English physician Havelock Ellis, “for as long as it lasts.”

These are, admittedly, deep waters, and murky, but yet ought not to be totally unfamiliar. Each and every one of us is after all immersed in them – like it or not – every night.

[To be continued.]

2021-03-01T05:00:00.003+00:00

7) China: A Sampler(2)

The China through which Po Cheng ventures in Mustard Seed Itinerary is at once strange and yet at the same time strangely familiar. In such a dream, which is by no means rare, the dreamer is able to discern the present, as it were, reflected in the past, and vice versa. Any fears are soon assuaged by this symmetry, so allowing even a generally cautious traveller to proceed with full confidence.

In the China imagined by Schoolmaster Po, good order would have depended on decorum, on each person knowing his or her place, being in it, and being duly engaged in his or her task. So women with homemade brooms swept the streets, the markets remained stocked, tea houses served tea at all hours, fishermen fished for catfish in the canals which, after dark, would become a highway for the night-soil barges.

Was this the Way of Heaven? Ginger soup for the asking in winter, and cold tea in the summer? Some who were less than convinced took to the hills, where mountaintop monasteries awaited them, each with its prayer hall, its carp pond, and a well-provisioned refectory. And how very pleasant to while away one’s time as a monk, meditating on the sound of snow falling on snow.

Others simply melted away, vanishing into one of the illicit lanes or nameless alleyways which so disfigured – with their stinking latrines, clapboard shacks, and rooftop chicken coops – even the best designed of cities.

Dissent was discouraged, as being unnecessary. Lasting order was not achievable, but a degree of decorum could nevertheless be enforced. The police were well-drilled in the use of whips and lassoes; doormen were issued with whistles, and fitted out with uniforms.

“A great square,” proclaimed the slogan of the day, “has no corners.”

Despite not possessing high definition telescopes, space probes, or particle accelerators, thinkers in ancient China were by no means adverse to thinking deep thoughts. Simply by attending to what surrounded them and then giving free rein to their imaginations, they were able to come up with an unbridled and far-reaching theory as to the abiding nature of the Cosmos, a theory bolstered by the following compelling image:

Was this physics, or was it mysticism? Not one but two forces, yin and yang, the one female and the other male, it was posited, powered the Cosmos. They were inseparable, eternally paired, and forever at odds. At the heart of everything was a division of labour, thereby explaining the seasons, the play of the tides, and the special quality – so often remarked upon by poets and rhapsodists – of daybreak and nightfall, when yin and yang, female and male, were momentarily in perfect balance.

Very little would have escaped the notice of the authorities. Each official was expected to be vigilant, resourceful, and practical, so that whatever was found that was useful might indeed be put to some use. Hence the measures employed for dealing with the extremes of water:

For drought, open the yin and close the yang.
For flooding, close the yin and open the yang.

To end a drought, men were ordered into seclusion, and women permitted to eat in public; to tame a flood, conversely, women were confined, and men put to sweeping the streets.

More adequate measures for flood control and drought relief were later implemented. All the same, and despite no yinyang particles having so far been found, or any such wave form been identified, yinyang theory has nonetheless lived on in China and elsewhere as a concept, as being something, that is to say, which is good to think with.

There’s nothing new, it is commonly said, under the sun. People, wherever in the world they are to be found, are unceasingly and incorrigibly hopeful. In early China, eating songbird tongues was practiced regularly by singsong girls in the hope that it would improve their voices, and men of sufficient means ingested the powdered horn of a wild beast in order to enhance their own performances in the bedroom.

No country enjoys a monopoly on strange beliefs or curious customs. Ancient China – for all of its officialdom, its offices, its departments, its bureaus, and its ministries – was lacking in one thing, and in this it was far from unique. It lacked a Ministry of Matters of Fact.

[To be continued.]

NOTE: Permission has been received from Taipei for the cover illustration to appear on Mustard Seed Itinerary. The design, however, is still in progress, and so the message remains the same: “Watch this space.”

2021-02-01T05:00:00.002+00:00

6) China: A Sampler (1)

What could I have been thinking of? Was the writing of a novel not difficult enough without setting it in a country of which I had no first-hand knowledge, neither of its landscape nor of its language? Why go so far out on a limb, and by so doing risk ending up merely looking foolish?

What planted the seed for the project was the encyclopaedic work by Joseph Needham on the science, technology and medicines of China during its middle ages. Even the abridged version has to date run to half a dozen volumes:

No single people or peoples, Needham’s work clearly demonstrates, can claim a monopoly on the development of science, nor has all of science’s work as yet been done. For all of its equations, its devices, and its medications, humankind continues to stumble over the same stones. Consider, for instance, the wide-spread and all-too-human propensity to mistake going around in circles for progress.

My more modest work, Mustard Seed Itinerary, takes off from this. As described in its day, the China experienced in his dream by the novel’s protagonist, Po Cheng, was both highly stratified and tendentious. The conviction of the privileged few that people of little worth were dishonestly rising through the ranks was counterbalanced by the equally strong conviction – held by those not so comfortably placed – that baseness began at the top.

Order was essential. So city streets were made to run east/west, and avenues north/south, thus ordering space by means of the Four Cardinal Directions. Time, too, fell into line, being ordered by the Four Seasons: buoyant springtime, brilliant summer, thoughtful autumn, and anxious winter. Hence the people knew when to sow, when to water the fields, when to reap, and when to redeem their cold-weather clothing from the pawn shops.

The Chinese Empire, in Po Cheng’s dream, was governed by an Emperor, a Son of Heaven, aided by his Imperial Army and a veritable army of bureaucrats. Against his greatest enemy – an enemy which could neither be defeated on the battlefield nor bribed with generous gifts to keep its distance – the Emperor also required a corps of engineers.

Water was not easily cowed. Water set a bad example. Water marshals were posted to monitor its movements, and engineers, once having become familiar with the ways of water, were able to construct dykes, millponds, canals, and irrigation ditches, hence putting water to useful toil. And they were no slouches either, those engineers, when it came to constructing walls:

Equally impressive were China’s bridges, which were duly celebrated by its poets and artists. The task of a poet or an artist in awe of a bridge was after all not far different from that which had faced the engineer when building it, namely to bring heart and hand into accord. What a thousand words or brushstrokes may have failed to achieve could then be accomplished with only a few.

The art of governance worked similarly. Time, space, and Heaven’s gaze together made up the Cosmos, and when the leader was in accord with the Cosmos, his actions became effortless, and the people had no knowledge of having been led. Hence the spring manoeuvres of the Palace Guard, the summer promenades of the Court Ladies, the autumn symposium of the College of Sages. And thus the nightly vigil carried out by the Royal Astrologer, whose task it was to scan Heaven for any anomalies, and to notify the Emperor of just what measures were called for:

“The signs point to an early winter, Excellency. It’s time that you were seen in furs.”

[To be continued.]

NOTE: The March posting on this site, if permission has been received from Taiwan, will reveal the image which is to appear on the front cover of Mustard Seed Itinerary.

2021-01-02T08:00:00.006+00:00

5) Mustard Seed Itinerary

Not for nothing was Edinburgh selected by UNESCO as its first City of Literature. At its heart stands the Scott Memorial, from which visitors – whether or not they are familiar with the works of Sir Walter Scott – can obtain a panoramic view of a city associated with literary creations as various as Ivanhoe, Long John Silver, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Jean Brodie, Harry Potter, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and Greyfriars Bobby:

This, today, is Edinburgh’s most photographed statue. All the more marvellous then that the faithful Bobby was first made famous by Eleanor Stockhouse Atkinson, an American from Indiana who is said never to have visited the city, a city also known – by turns – as the Athens of the North and Auld Reekie.

On my own arrival, the city smelled noticeably of beer. Breweries in those days lined its canal, and the warmest place to be on blustery winter evenings was before an open fire in one of the city’s numerous pubs. The breweries are gone now, having made way for housing projects, and swans have colonized the canal, but pubs are still not far to seek, and among them is the preferred watering hole of Inspector Rebus, Ian Rankin’s now-retired Edinburgh detective:

As of this writing, the pubs in mainland Scotland are all shut tight, but what follows was always intended to be a virtual interview, a self-conducted interview, a monologue for two voices. The reader is thus invited to picture the author seated with his notebook and a pint of Belhaven Best at a table in the Oxford Bar, across from an empty chair.

Q: Shall we begin in the usual way? Would you describe, in as few words as possible, what your novel, Mustard Seed Itinerary, is about?

A: It’s about a dream. Po Cheng, a schoolmaster in rural China, falls asleep after a drinking bout and imagines himself in a much earlier China, one hitherto known to him only in books.

Q: So your hero might be described as something of a time traveller?

A: Who isn’t, in his or her dreams? Po Cheng’s dream brings alive what were until then just so many words on a page.

Q: And where do you – as an author domiciled in Edinburgh – come into this?

A: I came by the same path. I have no first-hand knowledge of medieval China, but neither does Po Cheng, and whatever he may have read on the subject, I’ll most likely have read as well. The past of any country, that’s to say, is the patrimony of us all.

Q: Indeed? To do with as we wish? To use it to create, for instance, a work of fiction?

A: To me it seems perfectly legitimate, and even logical. What Po Cheng set about doing in his dream, I’ve done sitting up.

Q: You’ve taken bits from here, and pieces from there, and stacked them up, and called it Mustard Seed Itinerary?

A: Roughly speaking, yes. But that’s to ignore the countless revisions, the nagging doubts, the sleepless nights…

Q: All the same, you obviously persisted, and are you able to say just what it is that you hope to have accomplished?

A: What any writer hopes for, I suppose. A job well done. A work which his or her readers will be unable to put down.

On that note, the curtain can be lowered on what has been, after all, just a dress rehearsal. It is unlikely, in a real interview, that I will have things all my own way, but the objective will be the same. Namely to ensure that the title of my work – Mustard Seed Itinerary – gets mentioned as often as possible.

Note: Marketing decisions dictate that the book is not to be available until late spring. Anyone wishing to track its progress by means of this monthly blog can do so using the “Receive By Email” link at the top.

2020-10-29T11:24:00.002+00:00

4) A Holy Year

How to write about anything, in times like this, which is not to some extent a reflection on current affairs? Luckily I am in possession of a bit of breaking news which – however insignificant it may turn out to be on the grander stage of the Here and Now – may in the meantime be of some interest to others, even if only as a momentary diversion.

But first, the matter about which I was intending to write after receiving another communication from Correos, the Spanish postal service. My initial title for this blog, which was to deal only with the precautions being taken to protect next year’s pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, would thus have been: “The Camino in a Time of Covid-19”.

Next year, 2021, will be a Holy Year for Saint James, a year in which the feast day of the Apostle (July 25^th) falls on a Sunday, something which has not occurred, this time around, for eleven years. Pilgrims arriving at the Cathedral in Santiago in the course of next year will be granted a plenary indulgence, an absolution of their sins. The slate, so to say, of the truly repentant sinner is wiped clean, and he or she will be able to enter Heaven – when the time comes – without having first passed through Purgatory.

This promise is made visible in the very edifice of the Cathedral. One entrance, designated as the Holy Door, is kept sealed, apart from during Holy Years:

On the last day of 2020 the door will be opened. A false wall will be fitted across the opening, only to be shattered afterwards with three blows of a silver hammer:

A cathedral, in addition to whatever other treasures it may house, scholars have long since noted, is also rich in meaning.

The rite, if all goes to plan, will be performed again this year more or less as it has been performed for some 500 years. So far so good, but this is where even the Church must think again. This is where the procedures of the past will perforce need to make way for the new reality of the present.

Here's how it will work. Pilgrims will be provided with a digital credential which registers their progress through the “capture” of QR Codes. A mobile app has been designed in order to provide a safe Camino for all, as there will no longer be any contact between the peregrinos who walk the route and the hospitaleros, those volunteers whose responsibility it is to look after the pilgrims.

O brave new world! In addition to the nuisances of the past – including bedbugs, snorers, and nowhere to dry one’s socks – pilgrims will now be faced, each evening, with the need to find a way to charge their phones.

The necessary app can be downloaded in one of eight different languages. Twice a day, rather than receive stamps in an old-fashioned, folding credential, the savvy pilgrim will need only to scan a QR Code, thus obtaining a digital stamp, and at the same time verifying his or her progress in the real-time Pilgrim Registry being kept in Santiago. While paper credentials will still be permitted, anyone without a smartphone will be the proverbial fish out of water.

What next year’s pilgrims experience will be all but unrecognizable to most former pilgrims. My own experience of the Camino, in 2005, will most likely be unrepeatable. All the same, there will still be pilgrims taking the road to Compostela, other pilgrims with other experiences, of which it will be up to them to tell.

And now the above-mentioned breaking news. From where I’m sitting as I write this I can see wall-to-wall books, books shelved idiosyncratically according to which of half-a-dozen or so works-in-progress they pertain. Taking into consideration how long it has taken me to get this far, the majority of those works – works of both fiction and non-fiction – are little likely ever to find their way into print. But it ain’t dark yet, to quote a recent Nobel Laureate, and at least one new work of mine, one completed at the tail end of last year, is on course to see the light next spring, when it will be marketed as a modestly-priced paperback.

Mustard Seed Itinerary, to which regular readers of this blog will already have been introduced, chronicles a journey of discovery which takes place entirely within a dream, a dream such as both Daoist and Buddhist masters in early China considered essential for anyone hoping to progress on the road to enlightenment…

But why jump the gun? There will be time enough in the months to come to pitch the book, so watch this space. The next blog on this site will be something in the way of a year-end-report, and it will include an in-depth interview with the author of the book, conducted by the author himself.

Needs must. The writer’s job isn’t done when the book is, far from it. If one’s work is to be noticed, that’s to say, and one’s voice to be heard above the unceasing din of the marketplace, one must not shrink from blowing one’s own horn.

2020-06-15T13:45:00.002+01:00

3) The Waiting Game

My timing could hardly have been worse. A novel shaped like a dream and set for the most part in medieval China was always going to be a hard sell, and it hence comes as little surprise – given the current prevailing uncertainties – that the work has so far failed to convince a literary agent, either in London or New York, to take on a new client. Fortunately, over time, you win some and you lose some.
A previous work of mine, I have lately been informed, has been selected as one of the ten best works written about the Spanish pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. I thus find myself – through no further effort on my own part – to be in the illustrious company of such luminaries as the American actress Shirley MacLaine, the Brazilian novelist Paolo Coelho, and the German comedian Hape Kerkeling.
On another front, this blog continues to attract new readers in a wide variety of countries, and I have on various occasions been asked for permission for certain of the entries to be reproduced for use in English classes. In addition, and for reasons at which I can but guess, the blog also has a small but regular readership in Russia.
So it goes. In a just world, as the Arab proverb has it, one day will be for you, and the next day against you.

All things considered, being locked-down in Edinburgh could scarcely be described as a hardship, not least because my life at the moment is not that far different from the one which I was already living, and of my own free will. There’s still a river to walk beside, and a canal, and the city’s many parks are for the most part open for exercise, although not for picnics, games, assignations, sun-bathing, or merely sitting down. One can do that, after all, at home.
The same set of rules, I notice, applies in the local cemetery.
“Sit down,” – the idea is thus planted – “and you may never get up again!”
Both culture and commerce in the city have been severely curtailed. Museums and libraries are shut, as are most of the shops. The pubs have been boarded up, and their beer gardens are deserted. A portion of the work force is meant to be working from home, while much of the rest of it has been furloughed, the result of which being that the expected morning hum of rush-hour traffic has been silenced, and replaced by a riot of birdsong.
Distancing, for those on foot, must be scrupulously observed. One must allow space both for other walkers, and for dogs on long leads. Dogs have remained dogs, one notes, and still insist on pausing at every tree or lamppost when on a walk in order to smell, as it were, the flowers.
These are, without a doubt, strange times. The frequent wail of an ambulance on some nearby street is a reminder that all is not well. The disease is real, and not far to seek. All the same, a walk through the city can be uplifting, as even the most stand-offish of its residents are now obliged to take close notice of those around them. And how difficult is it after all – when there are two metres of separation – to exchange smiles with a stranger?

From time to time, as a known pilgrim, I receive an email from Correos, the Spanish Post Office, keeping me informed of developments to do with the Camino. The latest news is that the Spanish pilgrim routes, which have been closed for the last three months, are to reopen on the 1^st of July. As is only to be expected, however, conditions will apply.
The Camino, in a word, is to be sanitized. Whether in the bars and restaurants which line the routes, or in the albergues in which bona fide pilgrims are permitted to spend the night, capacities will have been reduced, and distancing will need to be maintained. Pilgrims will be expected to reserve their accommodation in advance by means of a dedicated app, to bring their own bedding, and to pay their way with cards rather than cash. Hospitaleros, those whose responsibility it has always been to look after the pilgrim refuges, have been given new guidelines, in line with the “new normal”, and are to be instructed to have no unnecessary contact with the pilgrims themselves, for the good of all.
Is the glass half full, or half empty? What seems certain is that the Camino is unlikely ever to be again what it was in the not so distant past. Never again , I fear, so spontaneous, so inclusive, or so liberating:

Grañon, 2005

*

And in the world as a whole? What awaits us on the other side of all this? Will we inhabit a kinder world, a more peaceful world? Or is the situation likely to be as described in the last century by the Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath: that of a ship at sea upon which, when difficulties arise, repairs are made piecemeal, and fixes hastily contrived, there being no shore, no stopping place in which the ship might be rebuilt from scratch.

Does this not strike a chord? A metaphor can do no more than suggest a similarity, but are our nations, our “imagined communities”, our ships of state, not also ships at sea?
A ver. Wait and see, as the Spanish say. All will no doubt be revealed in due course. My own strategy in the meantime will be much as it has always been: to remain cheerful, to be watchful, to pay attention, and in this manner, perhaps, to keep my own small skiff afloat.

2019-11-13T13:04:00.002+00:00

2) The Tortoise Has Landed

Perhaps "landed" is not the right word for it, as I have most certainly not touched down on the moon, nor am I in any position to relax, to put my feet up, or to rest on my laurels. All the same, I have come as far as I can on my own: a manuscript bearing the title of “Mustard Seed Itinerary” is now complete, and it becomes a matter of getting it to just the right person, in just the right place, at just the right time.

So how to begin? In the same way as I began when first setting out several decades ago to sell short stories. One couldn’t then, and one can’t now, tell the players without a program:

The book this year is some 800 pages in length, thus creating the impression that one is sure to find within it just what one was seeking.

      Most publishers, I learn, will no longer accept submissions directly from the author, and hence the ever-increasing number of listings for literary agents. These, however, must not be approached in the month of October, or during the first few days of November, as any agents worth their salt will be away at that time, at the Frankfort Book Fair, negotiating on behalf of their existing clients.

      Agents are busy people, and for the writer in search of an agent, a convincing pitch is essential. The cover letter, the synopsis, the sample chapters, these must all be “pitch perfect”. It’s a buyer’s market, and if after eight to ten weeks no response has been received, one is at liberty to assume that the submission has been rejected.

      Who would be a writer, who could be anything else? Once upon a time I imagined that I might be able to earn my living writing short stories, but experience soon enough taught me the folly of this. Not the folly of writing stories of interest only to literary journals, but the notion that it would be possible to feed myself by doing so.

      Since then, I’ve written just for the hell of it. I’ve fed the habit with other forms of work. And of course, the more often that one spins the wheel, the more chance that one’s number might come up, as envisaged by the Serbian writer Danilo Kiš:

Chance, fate, and time, meeting in a favourable constellation, may fall on
a book like a sunbeam, illuminating it, and so saving it from oblivion.

   A writer, when at work on a book, can be a misery to live with, and when not so occupied may be worse still. When “resting”, the writer is therefore well-advised to seek out other business to tend to, such as, for instance, rearranging his or her bookshelves.

      In addition to rearranging my own bookshelves, I have done some gardening, filed my income tax for last year, attended the AGM of the walking club to which I belong, water-proofed my boots for the coming winter, and bought myself some thermal socks.

      It’s far too soon yet to be checking my Inbox in the hope of receiving a swift and encouraging reply with regard to my manuscript. Nonetheless, when checking my Inbox anyway, just in case, I come upon an email bearing the curious title of “Separated at Birth”. Seeing that it’s from a trusted friend, I open it, and find the following:

This puts a different slant on things. Of what significance is it, in these perilous times, if one more novel makes it into print? After so much human endeavour, and so much strife, where do we find ourselves? With what are we faced? Just when we least need to be carrying on under a banner of “Every Man for Himself”, they’ve sent in the clowns!

2018-12-29T10:45:00.003+00:00

1) The Tortoise

If given sufficient time, according to the Chinese proverb, even a tortoise could walk a hundred miles. What this fails to explain, however, is why the creature would undertake such a long and exhausting journey in the first place, and it is with that question this blog will be concerned.

The tortoise, in fact, is myself, and the journey is one which commenced several decades ago, when my readings in Chinese and Arabic mysticism sparked the notion that it might be a fine idea to write a modern-day work of fiction which would consist, for the most part, of an account of a dream. The dreamer, a present-day Chinese schoolmaster, would bring to the dream what he knew of the China of the past, but with the sensibility of a man of the twenty-first century. Hence a narration chronicling difficulties encountered in the past might also speak to those of the present.

I set about the work in good heart. I was not writing for a living, only from the conviction that writing was good for me, that it would channel my energies, direct my reading, and organize my thinking. Several drafts produced a first manuscript version of “Mustard Seed Itinerary”, but this fell far short of what I had set out to achieve, and thus it ended up on a shelf in what is called here in Scotland a “box bedroom”, a room often used for storing away things which are of no further use at the moment, but which might prove to be useful at some time in the future.

Years passed. I turned sixty. I went to Spain to walk the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, and returned each year after that, for some ten years, to work in one or another of the refuges along the route, putting some of what I learned in the process into a book on the Camino. Then I began to wonder if it might not be time to have another look at some of those manuscripts which were still gathering dust in the box room.

The great hopes which I had once held for the China book came flooding back. Time travel, after all, was as much in vogue as ever, and what other vehicle did we as yet possess for travelling back and forth in time than our dreams?

“With all that I’ve learned over the years,” I predicted, “one more draft should do the trick.”

Agatha Christie, it seems, never began writing a novel until she had the whole thing completely structured in her mind, which meant that when she did begin the writing a single pass was likely to be sufficient. During the years that I worked as a computer scientist, this was my approach as well, as I could hardly have programmed a computer, designed a system, written learned articles, or stood before a class without knowing in advance just what steps would be necessary in order to achieve the desired result. But that was a good while ago, and I’m no longer wed to the same methodology, with the result that “one more draft” has so far led to three more.

Being unsure of the water, says another Chinese expression, he keeps one foot on the bank. What isn’t clear is whether this refers to an overly timid individual, or to a commendably cautious one. Is it essential to be a champion swimmer before one lets go of the bank, that’s to say, or is it enough to have learned how to tread water?

As for me, I continue to get up each morning and enter the water, although not without some degree of trepidation. Telling a story as if it were a dream is fraught with risks. A dream, even if it may make a sort of sense to the dreamer, may well make no sense at all to anyone else. What’s more, any retelling of a dream is bound to distort it, imposing upon it a language with which it’s own “language” is incommensurate.

The mornings here, at this time of year, are likely to be cold. I often begin work nowadays with a blanket wrapped around my legs. The events of a dream, it will need to be demonstrated, may be strange, but they will at the same time be strangely familiar. The logic of a dream, similarly, while it must bear some relationship to what we would call good reasoning or common sense, is distinct from – and possibly even the precursor of – those qualities.

“Mustard Seed Itinerary”, as it now stands, is to consist of thirty-six short chapters, thirty-four of which contain the account of a dream: the retelling in English of a fictional Chinaman’s retelling of a dream. In order to reflect the fitful progress of a dream, the plotting is piecemeal, requiring that each chapter should conclude by giving the reader some reason to read at least one chapter more.

And when, in the final chapter, the schoolmaster wakes up? What effect will the dream have had on him? Has some useful task been performed? Might it not be, moreover, in the very places in which the dream seemed most mysterious that the most essential work was being done?

My own work doesn’t end when I get up out of my chair. I take it along with me:

The path is familiar. My mind can now wander, flitting between what has been accomplished over the course of the day, and what still remains to be done. Being able to take one’s time does not by any means imply, after all, that one has all the time in the world.

Which brings us back to the proverbial tortoise and to what could have possessed it to set off on a journey of a hundred miles. What would be on its mind during all of those miles? Or might it just be that the poor creature – being so slow, so ponderous, so set in it’s ways – simply finds it easier to carry on, rather than attempt to turn itself around?

[More when there is more to tell.]