"Saving has customarily been seen as a "good" principle. However, at the moment, with weakened economies we are being asked to spend more and more money to keep the economy afloat."

I found that in one of the topical lessons at learn.co.uk

Now yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd
A man who swears he's not to blame
All day long I hear him shouting so loud
Just crying out that he was framed

I Shall Be Released

Q: why did the chicken double-cross the road?
A: to get back to where he started and see it as if for the very first time.

Don't ask me what that means, I found it on a scrap of paper when clearing out my room and junk....

OK OK, it's over.

In fact I have been so tired recently that it was very little problem to sleep through most of it...I last took some leave in August, and since then it has been adrenaline all the way, so when it stopped on the 23rd I just switched off. Sorry about that, everyone (but particularly Julie).

And here we are in the limbo between Christmas and the New Year. Another strange time - sort of ordinary and unusual at the same moment.

I could have sworn we had all done masses of shopping in December, but the Sales kick in immediately, as if we had been 'fasting' from shopping, rather than over-indulging.

Oh dear. Sorry. I obviously still haven't quite finished the rant. Still I'll go back and delete it once the season has gone.

And I am about to score my 2000th hit since I put the page counter in (oh, when was that?) Over 700 visitors. I have no idea how much of the site anyone visits, or what they all make of it, but I still enjoy writing and editing pages myself - as though I was finally getting around to writing a book ( but a lot less strain, and no fear of rejection by a publisher).

Maybe this year I should tear it down and start again....

My Norton Antivirus has started randomly deleting emails again. It's a bug that kicked in this summer, forcing me to try re-installing twice, and make other changes - and now it has started again.

So, to anyone who emailed me in the last few days - if you didn't get a reply then I may have lost the email. With any luck the email proxy server is only deleting spam anyway, but it would be nice to be sure.

Hey ho.

Happy Solstice to all sentient beings!

GIMME THINGS! I NEED MORE THINGS!

The shopping frenzy continues here - it means I can't even get my coffee easily in a mid-morning 'tea-break' because of the queues. I don't see anyone smiling as they struggle through the shops (the fun comes later, apparently).

I have nothing against a break from work; a time to see (or write/talk to) people we have neglected; a period where we set aside our competitive natures and show 'goodwill to all people' (or all sentient beings (even turkeys), every day - as the Buddhists recommend); a time for small gifts of thoughtfulness.

Personally, I am willing to go through a bit of grief from my questioning the way it is right now - but ONLY because I can imagine it better in the future. 20 years from now, how great it would be if we all had a holiday when we took TIME for each other; gave our disposable income to good causes; genuinely stopped fighting and competing (if only for a few days - armistice/amnesty); spent a little time considering where we came from, and where we are going....

I hope I live to see it (I'd be 77 years old by then).

I will edit this stuff later - just sitting at the desk in the Buzz cafe (internet access in the library) - taking my quiet moments to surf about, here's Shann Turnbull, demystifying some economic terms:

"Faith by economists and the major political parties in the existing monetary system cannot be supported by analysis. Nor can it be defended by the experiences of small businesses, farmers, Third World debtor nations and the once rapidly growing "Tiger" economies that have suffered a financial "meltdown". The system is imposed upon the world by an intellectually inbred elite of monetary priests who ridicule any who question its operations, while admitting that its operations depends upon confidence.

For religious people, the existing banking and monetary system is the biggest confidence trick perpetuated in the history of civilisation. For non-religious people, it is the second biggest confidence trick, as religion becomes the biggest trick.

Modern money is a confidence trick because money cannot be defined in terms of goods or services, yet it is used in market economies to organise the means of their production and consumption. In other words, an unreal artificial totem controls the real world. All national currencies have become "fiat" money as none can exist without being defined to exist by a government."

Still Andrew Oswald was wrong (or is it just his timing which is wrong?)

The average house now costs four-and-a-half times average income, which isn't far off the 1989 peak - of 5.2 times - that precipitated the massive crash of the early nineties.
"
At the same time, consumer spending has risen at an annual rate of 4% over the past two years - twice as fast as the economy as a whole.

In the second quarter of this year alone, we have withdrawn £10 billion of equity from our homes and used the money top buy cars, go on holiday or purchase designer wardrobes. "

"Many institutions are ready to lend up to six times a person's salary with, for the first couple of years, a sizeable rate discount. In addition they will allow you to pay them back over up to fifty years: so a £200,000 loan, for example, can be your's for as little as £648 a month.

The logic, apparently is that in a few years, most people will be better off and therefore, when the discounts end and the payments inevitably go up, the increase won't be too painful to bear.

The reality is that in a low inflation economy, wages don't rise quickly, and in a couple of years, most people will not be earning significantly more than they are now. But they'll be saddled with a huge increase in their outgoings. Many simply won't be able to pay, repossessions will start and the market will disintegrate. "

Michael Eboda on the BBC

Quotes like this just remind me of the madness. I was always in an underclass of my own (starving artist), so I never owned a car or house, and with a low level self-employed lifestyle I had no credit either, as I stumbled from contract to contract.

So, even though I now have a steady little job (paid £14,500 and taking home £11,500 after tax) I can't even CONSIDER the world around me as welcoming:

"To afford a £160,000 house, a buyer would have to earn £41,500 a year and after putting down a 10% deposit the monthly repayments on a £144,000 mortgage are £884.28. The average wage is £25,000 a year."

Or check out the Rockall Times satire.

The Guardian : 'We calculate that even with a 10 per cent deposit, more than 50 per cent of the working population would now be unable to borrow enough to buy a typical first-time buyer property.'

[Sunday] sorry I droppped this bit of free-floating text in here, without giving it a reference - and as I have now forgotten where I saw it I'll just point to housepricecrash.co.uk

and their page "will there be a housing price crash?"

It's just such a bubble, a confidence trick, and (like the stock exchange) it is crucial to talk it up (i.e. kid yourself and others like a gambling addict) - and not even think about the possibility of losing. Even writing this I am slightly undermining confidence - and people get angry and threatened to even think about it.



"But the IMF estimates growth of just 2.5 per cent in 2005 whereas the Chancellor expects it to be between three per cent and 3.5 per cent.

The IMF is also calling for higher interest rates in the near future to cool down the housing market and consumer borrowing.

However it does warn that the Bank of England will have to be careful in case such a move would cause a house price crash.

It said the risk was not great but could not be discounted altogether.

It said that with so many households in the UK up to their neck in debt, the management of any interest rate increases would be a "particular challenge". "

RESOLUTELY UNAMBITIOUS MAN - see earlier posting about Tim Kassar's research on Tuesday 16th

"people who are primarily motivated by ‘materialism’, which in this case means the pursuit of power, status and wealth, are (rather gratifyingly!) much more likely to be unhappy in almost every respect, including being less healthy”, than those who remain resolutely unambitious. "

Searching under Tim Kassar's book title led to this review site: and this

And that one pointed to recordings of Alan Watts here

And these quotes comes from this review:

"He agrees with humanist and existential thinkers such as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Erich Fromm that people’s well being has relatively very little to do with their possessions, beyond sufficient food, shelter and clothing necessary for their continued existence. Kasser debunks the myth that money and possessions will make people happy and argues that beyond the point of ensuring adequate food, shelter and clothing for survival, material possessions do not contribute significantly to the well being of human beings. "

"Kasser argues persuasively that to have high quality life, people must have their needs satisfied. He identifies four needs that are necessary for human survival, growth, and optimal functioning. These are: 1) safety, security and sustenance - the human desire to remain alive and avoidance of early death; 2) competence, efficacy, and self esteem - the human desire to demonstrate inherent positive attributes in oneself that propels one to accomplish one’s missions, goals and objectives; 3) connectedness - the human desire for intimacy and closeness with other humans - the desire for belonging; and 4) autonomy and authenticity - a desire for freedom to act on one’s own and to have a feeling that one is self directed. "

My first attempt to trace Tim Kassar (see previous entry) found a page about self-storage units by Victoria Clayton in The States - about people hoarding, and being unable to let go of their possessions - with some passing references to 'collectors' that may be relevant to my involvement with the 'autograph world'.

"Some say the self-storage boom parallels the widespread erosion of our sense of well-being. “When people are under stress and trauma, at least in our culture, the last thing they want to do is get rid of their stuff,” says Tim Kassar, an associate professor of psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., and author of “The High Price of Materialism (MIT Press, 2002). “their stuff provides that sort of security blanket and also a sense of identity, for better or worse. Mostly for worse, from my viewpoint.”

Kassar and other researchers have found that there are four basic psychological needs we must satisfy in order to be happy, and they have little to do with anything that can be pasted down or warehoused in a 10-by-10 storage unit: security, community, competence and free will. He compares America’s bloated self-storage facilities to the alarming epidemic of obesity.

“The food pyramid says, basically, you need to eat a lot of grains and fruits and vegetables, and that you should use fats and oils sparingly,” Kassar says. “Really, what we most need to value and concentrate on in our lives is growing as people, feeling connected to other people, feeling connected to our community. Those are the grains and fruits and vegetables of life in terms of providing us with health.” Just as the supersized American diet has left many of us chronically overweight, he says, materialism has led us to that moment of clarity when we realize, perhaps too late, that we’re uncomfortably full."

It's always nice to find confirmation of one's own beliefs. I have long thought people were making themselves miserable by adopting the ambitious, competitive, restlessly dissatisfied, extravert American capitalist culture, and this month's Green Futures has articles on just that theme.

“A lot of mental health problems stem from the rise of the individualist, aspirational culture. This means we’re defining ourselves increasingly through external things – what we do, what we own, how much we earn – and through other people. We’re forever comparing ourselves to others and finding ourselves wanting.” Oliver James

"This is just a small part of the picture. On a much wider canvas, argues James, the dominant values of Western society are almost literally programming us to be unhappy. He quotes a fascinating piece of work by American psychologist Tim Kassar. “It showed that people who are primarily motivated by ‘materialism’, which in this case means the pursuit of power, status and wealth, are (rather gratifyingly!) much more likely to be unhappy in almost every respect, including being less healthy”, than those who remain resolutely unambitious. [toby: hooray for our side, I have always been resolutely unambitious]It wasn’t just a one-off experiment, James stresses: Kassar reviewed a whole series of studies. “It’s an extraordinary body of evidence. It’s scientifically solid; well-replicated – and hardly ever talked about.” So living in a way that is bad for the planet is, reassuringly, pretty lousy for us as well? “Exactly.”"

In my recent tidying up I came across the address for the web presence of my nephew Duncan Dacombe - which is (at the moment) mostly party photos, but you can glimpse the rest of the family there - my sister Julia and my nieces.

I have added that link to the bottom of my 'family' page (which I will update and tidy at some point).

As I sort out the mass of paper I surround myself with, I am trying to clear some out. I inherited a whole trunk full of Mick's papers, and although I have made several attempts to finish his book for him (and then throw away the piles of paper), I never quite finished the project.

Anyway - I have put up an Intro I wrote for one of the three fragments I have released to friends in limited editions - and tagged on a couple of pictures.

I have been sorting through the thousands of pieces of paper that fill my room. Some of this stuff I will get into electronic form (and will never have to tumble out of a house clutching a precious box of papers ever again...I hope). Some of this stuff has been with me for a long time. Attempts at writing, cuttings, cut-ups, quotes and poems, pictures and such. Some of it just references to lead me back through the library again one more time. For instance, I wouldn't think to read back through William Burroughs right now, but here was a wonderful quote from The Western Lands (p213 in my edition).

"I saw a picture of a balloon suddenly and unexpectedly soaring and some people still holding onto the ropes connected to the balloon were suddenly jerked into the air and most of them didn't have the survival IQ to let go in time. Seconds later they are sixty, a hundred feet off the ground. Those who didn't let go fell off at five hundred feet or a thousand feet. A basic survival lesson is: Learn to let go.

Put it another way: Never hang on when your Guardian tells you to let go.

RIGHT NOW.

Suppose you were holding one of those ropes? Would you have let go in time, which is, of course, at the first upward yank? I'll tell you something interesting. You would have a much better chance to let go in time now that you have read this paragraph than if you hadn't read it. Writing, if it is anything, is a word of warning..."

I just found this poem by Ernst Jandl

I've got nothing
to make a poem

a whole language

a whole life

a whole mind

a whole memory

I've got nothing
to make a poem

The other night I brought home the film "Henry and June" - about Henry Miller, Anäis Nin and Henry's wife June. I have long been a fan of Miller's (even though that wasn't terribly popular with several friends who had him down as a misogynist and pornographer, etc).

Somewhere in the 70s, some people ran The Village Bookshop in Piccadilly, with the express intent of publishing EVERYTHING by their favourite authors, of which Miller was one. I got to read some of the treasures, and obscurities.

Being a clown, at the time, I love "The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder"; there was "Stand Still Like the Hummingbird"; his amazing piece on Rimbaud; essays like "Money, and how it gets that way" - just so many wonders which he had a hard time publishing in his life, and which have fallen back out of print, since. So that all you find in our library are the Tropics, and bits of porn. At least, out in the stacks, I found his letters to Anäis Nin, and a biography of her, too - although I am ambivalent about her myself (she may have been his Muse, but she is not mine). He introduced me to Knut Hamsun and Blaise Cendrars, too. If you are curious, check out the Memorial Library @ Big Sur

What I have in common with Miller is the opiniated enthusiasm (I can talk forever on any subject which enthuses me, but am totally dismissive or completely silent, about things I do not consider important or interesting). Arrogance and self-absorption?

He was one of the writers who told me I should "go for it" whatever "it" was - so I did. He warned me I might often be hungry and desperate, that I might have to swallow my pride, accept humiliation and disappointment - that there would be times when I was the only one with any faith in myself. (He was right!)

He also reminded me that that was the only way I was going to have real ecstatic highs (he was right about that, too!)

When I stayed in Paris in 1970, I lived near the Villa Seurat (same metro station, Alésia, in the 14th Arrondisement), and occupied a squatted artist's studio for several months, earning money on the street (selling jewellery) and generally feeling daring and romantic. It was Nelly Gareau who got me there, and gave me the courage, and we travelled for a couple of years after, but I haven't heard from her since. In a Google search the only person of that name/age group I can see is in Kentucky. Could that be her? Ah, it's so hard to tell. I don't pursue old friends any more than I dig back through ancestors. If they emerge again from the world, fine, but I always preferred the serendipitious meeting to the appointment.

And I write in this blog, as he wrote letters to all his friends, because people can only take so much babbling conversation. Does it take away the head of steam that would allow one to write a book? Or is it a necessary preparation and priming of the pump? At least it makes me write a minimum of a few hundred words almost every day....