As I stood there back in the here and now, in what I now think must have been our kitchen, these thoughts ran through my mind as I watched my mum laugh at me, her eyes twinkling with a little mischief. On guard for some psychological experiment in mother son training I tentatively asked her “what?”

“You look like a hippie!” was her answer.

At first I smiled, I like hippies, I like them allot. But then as I thought about it I realised that I actually like the “hippie look” rather than hippies. I like the “hippie look” when it has been carefully bought from expensive clothes stores, and I have not seen an expensive anything for at least five years. My smile started to wain.

I looked down at what I was wearing.

Crocs, covered in blue paint from a front door painted over three years ago, Cargo pants, with a little bit of mud that for some reason never dissolves in the wash and stays in the corner of each pocket, and which I play with when I am thinking or bored, a pink long sleeved top that I absolutely adore, adorned with the same shade of paint as the Crocs enjoy and a torn in more than one place, cheap gilet, picked up somewhere in a cheap supermarket in Spain, more than five years ago. All very comfortable. My smile passed the through the bottom of wain and pulled my forehead with it into a frown. I was a real hippie, not a cool fake one. My life was over! I had to go shopping! I need to buy lots of clothes, new clothes, un-hippie clothes. Well maybe I could go shopping after I sorted out the horse, looked after that basil, and I cant forget I have bread rising, and we have to teach the kids how to spread love around the world before lunch and… and…  I guess I have become a hippie, cool. Thanks mum xxx

What was that devious master plans ultimate goal? The ultimate evil goal was for me to reach complete happiness. The means of attainment for such a masterful plan being through the largest deception of all time, my time that is, and the deception of my own mind. This morning I have completely attained complete happiness, the problem is, I have attained the complete happiness of what I thought it to be seven years ago. There always seems to be a flaw in the great master plans, a flaw which to all but the evil doer is totally obvious in it’s futility. Bugger.

Note to all evil doing goal planners: insure you look up from your goal along the way and ask if it is still the goal and if you really are interested in a tip at achieving something in your life, anything at all, then the only thing I can offer up is to note that nothing whatsoever is really achievable due to it having changed before you have even allowed it to be seen.

Now wear did i put that cat? I am off to enjoy complete happiness, even if it is a little old and smelly it’s still bloody brilliant.

A horse, a horse, mine kingdom for a horse, I yell in my dream. I am given one by a yucky smelling local whom I throw an apple at, he is privileged to receive from one so wonderful as I and bows down, practically rubbing his nose into the grime of the dreamt up street. With a single leap I am upon this gracious steed, and in perfect unison we charge off to rescue some beautiful people.

Perhaps I was having such a dream as that at 7 am the other day, but alas I was woken with such speed that I have no idea what fantasy I was plucked from, yet I am sure I looked good in it and would have got the girl in the end, metaphorically speaking of course. The waking that morning came from a banging on our wooden red door at the front of the house. A red front door can illustrate the intention of the owners in many different ways around the globe. In China for example they feel a newly painted red door before the new year invites luck and happiness, Ireland believes it scares away the fairies who are up to no good, and although as large as a country but not, Catholicism often painted a church door red to represent, yep, you guessed it the blood of the big man, all ye bow down and repent. Some believe using paint on a door in the colour of red represent a desire or dream they are striving for. For Marianne and I what does it mean? it’s the colour it was when we moved in. What it meant for the person banging on it at a very early hour on this morning in question, I am not sure, but he was banging on it with a mighty fist of only those who had done great physical work in there life and it did the trick of waking us both from whatever dreams we were enjoying.

From the point of waking that moment I did not think, not in my normal way at least, I acted. With the help of my mantra of course.

The story goes that our horse had eaten through the electric fence (not turned on, hello Marianne! (lesson learnt) up in a field half a kilometer away, and, for who knows how long had been gallivanting around North Clare playing with the fairies who where pissed off with red doors, Jesus, lazy new tenants and the Chinese.  Our amazing neighbour, a man I have yet the ability to understand due to the great accent he has and who is even less understandable in my boxer shorts when he is very excited about a loose horse, was telling me all this, including, I think, the bit about the fairies and the Chinese who he said were also standing outside our red painted front door, I think, but I can’t be sure.

He ushered me towards his big 4×4 to go ’round up’ our horse, and I immediately told Marianne to get in instead as I have an extreme aversion to sitting in close proximity with people before coffee. Clothes were thrown on and some how I managed to end up wearing Crocs, shorts, a hawaiian shirt and a motorcycle helmet to small for me. Marianne and our neighbour drove off down the road together and I jumped on my motorbike. My bike has been sitting outside in the cold for a week due to there being a large lamb roasting spit and a pile of ash sitting in our garage since the wedding. My bike also has a really old battery. Those two things mean that for the last week I have been seen trying to push start a really large motorbike in various places around Clare and having everyone know that James is crap with mechanics and spit roasting Lamb.

I sat on my bike, and just new it would turn over and start. I knew with every ounce of being that it would start. Any other day I would be sure as hell it would not start, and would be thinking about it not starting at least an hour before I even tried to start it. That morning It stared first go. I revved the bike, span it around 160 degrees, as if knew what I was doing (I don’t) and rode out of our drive onto the road in chase of my woman, our horse and a man in a 4×4 from Clare.

The scene I saw as I approached was of our horse in the middle of the road, our neighbour in front driving the 4×4 and Marianne with a rope chasing up behind. I rode passed Marianne and found myself coming up behind our horse who by all accounts was having a right laugh and in no mood to have anyone stop her having such fun. Sitting on a motorbike I found myself, a Londoner, throttling up beside a one-ton happy, frisky, charging horse and some how thinking if I just put my hand, one of the hands that makes sure I stay on the bike and not under it, out towards this horse, who I barely know, she would stop charging down the road and stop. She did, and I nearly fell off the bike, but didn’t. Then I let the country folk do all the complicated parts of taking her back to our field. I rode back to our house, walked in the kitchen, picked up a piece of garlic bread I had baked the night before and ate it. It was foul. I then went into the bathroom to brush out the stale garlic taste from my mouth only to see a slug sitting on my toothbrush. At this exact point my mantra told me to “fuck the hell off!” It said something along the lines of “you just rounded up a horse on a motorbike, you just ate garlic bread THAT YOU BAKED, there was a slug on your toothbrush, you have not lived in London for over six bloody years, YOU ARE NOT A BLOODY LONDENER ANY MORE, find another bloody mantra, I quit!” and walked out of my head.

Without my mantra I stopped acting and let my head take over again. My head thinks that chasing a horse on a motorbike is fucking retarded, I have to agree. My head thinks that garlic bread should be bought from Waitrose, I have to agree. My head thinks that slugs should not be allowed to sit on toothbrushes, I have to really agree. I promptly had a mild breakdown at the state of my reality and went to bed, and slept all day.

My new mantra is “I am a Londoner with a penchant for country activities”. I have not tested it out yet, but will let you know what happens when I do.

I am a city boy through and through, I tell myself over and over again. It seems to me I have in one way or another clung to that sentence for so many years. When young it gave me confidence to leave home at 17 and end up riding the trains in Greece hustling backpackers into bars and hostels with the temptations of pink ouzo and a cheap places to sleep on their way to a nicer place.  It gave me the feeling that I was capable of jumping out of a moving trains window to avoid the awaiting Athenian taxi drivers who held crowbars destined for our heads and Tourist police who looked to deport the scuzzy band of us who roamed the rails. “I am a Londoner, a city boy” I would think as I hid sweating under a truck down some smelly alley watching the tail lights of cars slow driving past, their angry drivers searching for one of us to beat up, “I am a city boy, I can handle this”.

Clinging to this sentence of inner power I have put myself in many a place where I have been left gibbering this short and sweet mantra, and until yesterday, it has always seen me through. Until yesterday I had a mantra that was more powerful than any other, more complete, more true, and so ingrained in my psyche that it would take me to the farthest depths of anything I could throw at it.

Mantras are cool. Mantras allow us to function in the physical without our brain taking over and fucking us up. To work at moving forward on a plane that is purely of the animal within us, using only our instinct and allowing our skills of life to function and be used but without the thought needed to gain such skills, having a chance at taking over and reminding us such things as “how do I do this again?” as the baseball is hurtling towards the stick we are holding in our hands. (I have never played baseball, I am a Londoner remember? – cricket is where its at! ((there again I have never played cricket either, I am a Londoner)).

Yesterday morning my mantra collapsed. Exhausted, it told me to fuck off and sing “no myoho renge quo” as it had enough of me and my stupid antics. I had to agree with it. What drove such strong and powerful words to give up the ghost? A horse named Maya. Three weeks ago I gave to my love a gift of a horse for a wedding present, she named it “Maya” and it named me “stupid”

to be continued…

I was left a bit surprised and quite unsure of what happened a few minutes later when I found myself standing at the door of our house waving good by to this gentleman, as he walked hurriedly towards his parked car in the drive.

I looked back in my mind at how the conversation had ended so abruptly and came to the conclusion that I had had one of my “I think differently to you” head banging against a wall moments that sometimes pop into my life as quick as the wind pops up around here in Doolin. These stubborn donkey like moments don’t seem to happen to my wife very much, just when art or horses are mentioned in a specific way, as far as I can tell that is. For me however the menu of topics seems to run a little more towards a gigantic À la carte menu rather than my wife’s more tasteful set menu and my stubborn opinions  have a large choice to choose from. This time I believe 2012 was the torch that lit the fire. I shan’t bore you with the low down on what is supposed to go down in the year 2012 as I am sure you have your thoughts as well as I have mine on the matter, suffice to say, one of us thought it was the beginning of something and the other said, if not necessarily thought, that it was perhaps a big hooey bullooey brought on by media manipulation. You see, when one lives in ones head one must create bullshit to fill that head rather than allowing the beauty that is all around us to fill both head and heart and thus saving allot of wasted energy, which, could be used for example on making love to a beautiful woman or baking croissants, both of which I failed to do on that night.

to be continued…

The last post on peacerider.com was a long long time ago and in a land far far away, or so the story goes around bed time in this house. Yes it has been a long time since the last post, but, not as far as I had perhaps hoped. I would say the distance I have traveled since “meditate, count to ten, then duck” was penned is approximately, let me think… ah yes, two foot. We have moved the kitchen table around two foot to the left of its previous position, and that is as far as I have traveled, not thousands of kilometers as I had thought at this same kitchen table last year.

The problem with mediating is it lets you discover things you had been somewhat reluctant to have a look at within yourself, yourself for example.

I do not believe I got a good look inside myself, but enough to change one or two things about me, the kitchen table for one and my now “ex-girlfriend” for another. The kitchen table has reasons that resonate with many I am sure, I wished for a different view of life. Hard as it seemed to admit at the time it was not necessary to ride a motorbike all the way to Dharamsala for such a change of view, just a few grunts, a disapproving look from said ex and bobs your uncle, a new view, albeit from within the confines of my kitchen.

The “ex-girlfriend”? Well, when you meditate you see things more clearly and in a way that exposes your dislikes of negativity in your life to the point where you have no choice but to except the reality that is your existence and make change accordingly. The “girlfriend” had no choice but to become an “ex-girlfriend” and moved into the role of wife, with her permission of course. We were married on the 14th of August 2009. Many came to celebrate and it was a fine fine day in history.

So what happens when you start to meditate? Well, be warned from me in advance, use it only as a last resort, it can truly change your life forever, even if you just do it once.

peace to all who walk this planet

and give back Tibet to the Tibetans if your reading this China.

thank you for reading,
James

I was left lying in bed, one headphone slowly falling from my ear, the fading words of a tech podcast trailing distantly as if it knew it was soon to be done for, goodbye Molly, Tom and Jason, you were loved, I shall miss you in the spiritual but techless world I head for. I then took comfort in knowing the guided meditation I was to follow was also on my IPod, not goodbye to tech completely then, I smiled. Two headphones re-stuck firmly in my ears and a change of the playlist and I was away on my quest of peace and enlightenment. Twenty minutes later all hell broke loose.

Could they not mention on the cover of the CD that meditation has a small possibility of stirring up some hidden, repressed resentment? You know like they do on cigarette packets “This meditation could cause you to change your life” or something. As much as I love Ireland it’s bloody grey and wet, and there is a small possibility that I have been ignoring the fact that I hate this about Ireland for quite awhile. So, on arriving back from my guided meditation which had taken me to a very peaceful place somewhere near Pluto, I had a very large bump as I landed back in the grayest place in the whole galaxy, and I know it is the grayest place in the whole galaxy because I have just been around it!

After a minute or two with my head out the window trying to remember how wonderful the universe really is (as per instruction of the CD) I went upstairs and dragged my family all the way back down the stairs to the front door which I flung open. “Look, Look” is all I said, is all I could say. As I pointed out towards the grayness. “We cant live like this, how can we live in a place where you cant see the sky”? Then followed a whopping great argument about all the things that get argued about by two peaceful mediators.

At least we are now on the same page, kind of. Meditate, count to ten, then duck! That’s my advice, give it to any one you meditate near and all will be well.

This morning the three of us (my two and three year old and I) sat down and had a very serious chat about the situation our central female role was forcing us to look at. Finn, the youngest, decided marmalade could be replaced, as long as the option of returning to it was still on the table, if not literally for a while. Poppy the one slightly older than Finn started to let out perfect pitch “Ommm” whilst sitting in the full lotus, and I, I realized I was outgunned three to one and began looking up meditation tapes on the internet.

I think in an attempt to keep me on the straight and narrow path of enlightenment, document this caveman’s attempt in at least keeping up with his children’s spiritual peace if not his partners.

So what is my first step? well, learn to meditate.

Top tip number one: If you go to Audible.com you can sign up for a subscription to their audio CD/book collection and get a FREE book in return for doing so, at which point you then of course cancel your account, keeping your free book. Well that was the idea, cant seem to find the cancel button just yet. Anyhow my “caveman tip” is to download Collapse the world by James Arthur Ray. The reason I recommend this audio book for your first trip into bringing yourself out of the dark ages is not it’s quality, it is the fact that it is a whopping £80! and as your first book is free why not get the most expensive one on there? This is how I choose my fate? oh dear.

A little quote from Audible about the book and what it offers its listeners:

“How to move and operate beyond your physical body to literally increase the energy and authority you possess.
How to utilize the four elemental building blocks of your world that allow you to create anything you desire.
How to use the all-important “5th element” in your life: the element of spiritual power.
How to connect with your “Higher Council” – that transcendent part of you that has all answers to all questions at all times.
How to use a process called “etheric imprinting” to profoundly accelerate the results you produce in every area of your life.”

Sounds as far away from anything I feel right now so must be good and worth £80 (NOT!) I will follow his recipe for enlightenment and keep you updated.