The Brain Tumour User’s Guide.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=J59S5PvSWhk&feature=related


Well if you can’t have fun with a brain tumour, what’s the point in getting one in the first place?

Right, this is intended as a record of my experiences of the brain tumour game. The eventual intention is that however I conclude this episode of my life (be it in the pull out larder in the hospital or in partial or even full recovery), I would like to be able to pass on useful information and advice to people who follow in my shoes, and perhaps more importantly their friends and families, who it seems from my current perspective, have a harder time of it.

My initial status is this: I am a bit confused, though I think this is more to do with the medication I’m on than to do with the lesion itself. This is because the thing looked like it was in my occipital lobe, and I have no noticeable interference with my vision, which I would expect. That said, my balance, coordination and equilibrium are all a bit wonky, so there is bound to be some direct effect as well.

I am not experiencing much, if any, fear. This is due I suspect to several factors.

1: I have nearly died three times before, (aged two with a bike rack in the neck, aged ten with a boat crushing my skull and aged 22 with a mugger stamping on my head). I think this just means I am quite comfortable with, and prepared for my own mortality. I want to live to a hundred and eighty, but if I die today, so be it.

2. I have spent time considering the tenets of Buddhism. Amongst these is the notion that suffering is reduced by being rehearsed in advance. I have consequently spent some hours in the past, contemplating what it will be like to be incompetent, incoherent, incontinent and impotent… and to know that I will inevitably die one day. I think this rehearsal has left me in good stead.

3. It’s entirely possible that I have a tumour which is interfering with the my cognitive functions. This could have deprived me of some fear response, which could account for my lack of concern at my current circumstances. Or perhaps I really just am not that scared… after all, since circumstances are now out of my control, there is nothing to be gained by panicking, I may as well just relax.

4. Another Buddhist thing: I have tested my IQ in the past, and it ain‘t bad. I have tried not to consider this a matter of pride, as the neurological architecture which I inherited, and the education I received, were not of my instigation. I have however had a problem with stupid people. Daily Mail readers and other bigoted scum have always pissed me off. I have had a fairly reasonable level of compassion for those with learning difficulties and unfortunate upbringings, but not for those who I suspected “ought to know better”… ESTJs in particular (google Myers Briggs). Controlling types. I see this episode as being potentially valuable for the learning of greater compassion.

For now, I am expecting the worst, namely brain death and, or, end of life type death… so that whatever does happen shouldn’t be a nasty surprise! I think I would rather die than be left in a coma, but I shall be interested to see how my perspective on this changes as time goes by.

If I am on the way out, it could provide me with a fantastic opportunity! Eco terrorism, graffiti, activism… smoking cigars, eating cholesterol, engaging in behaviours which are normally considered reckless… they could all become perfectly acceptable. Or perhaps the opposite. Who knows… finding out is all part of the ride. I will however be putting plenty of salt on my food. Salt is as necessary for human life as air. Salts, those funny little charged ions, crossing synaptic bridges… that’s all that human existence is. Every thought, every emotion, every joy and sorrow there’s ever been, was a function of salt. When he came out of a three day coma, one of the survivors of that plane crash in the Andes which resulted in canibalism and extraordinary survival stories, was told that his mother, sister and friends had all died. He said later that he knew immediately that he could not afford to cry because he would need every molecule of salt he could get in his body to survive, and he didn't cry a drop till months later they were rescued. About the most amazing and moving thing I’ve ever heard. My blood pressure is impeccable and I like salt. Anyone who tells me I should cut down on it, can fuck off!

Initial experiences: I can remember about zero of the initial seizure. I’d been feeling odd, on and off all day. Weird, empty, disturbed and generally hollow. Sadness? I had thought that this was a combination of the cruel and howling row I had with my mum the night before breaking through- I had been less than kind and thought I was experiencing guilt, transformed into kinaesthetic experiences… and some strange results of the end of Alexander Technique term. I had spent the last two or three weeks of term desperately needing a break, and thought this was because some profound emotional changes were due and I was finally getting the chance to assimilate them. Wrong, I was getting set up for a seizure! In a way it was a relief to discover that I was only up against a brain tumour, as I think that’s easier to deal with than mental health issues… from my perspective at least… and that Sunday certainly felt like some weird, weird stuff was going on in my head!

THREE THINGS. Seem to have come up since I woke up in hospital the next day… Compassion, Mindfulness and Patience.

Patience is the first and most obvious. I wanted to leave hospital immediately. I couldn’t wait to get out and get home and get on with life… this was made worse by the suspicion that if I only had a few days left, I would rather spend them in my own surroundings than in a bleak and tawdry hospital with inferior company and nothing to do. I wanted to plant some plants, read some books, see some friends and drink some expensive whisky. In the seven days since then, I have gradually learnt a bit more patience, and have realised that I am going to need a LOT more, before I’m done! Patience is a balance of reconciling desires for things I wish to do, with the acceptance that I might not get to do them, and that’s just the way it is. I can’t give up and say “fine, it’s all over, I’ll never achieve anything ever again unless I make a full recovery” because that would be to squander the remarkable opportunity that this tumour is affording me. Similarly, it would be daft to go rampantly pursuing all the “things to do before you die” options such as swimming with dolphins, climbing the pyramids, shagging every girl on the block etc.. because that would be simply to let the ego win out wholesale… and achieve nothing of real value. So I have to get a balance. I intend to spend my remaining days leaving this world a bit better than I found it, if I can, and not beat myself up if I can’t. I intend to try to make my peace with it, in whatever ways make sense.

Compassion. I have spent a little time wondering what to call my tumour. “Melanie” after Melanie Philips? “David” after David Blunkett? How about “Alastair” after Alastair Campbell? All people I have really and truly detested. I am not going christen the little one after any such monsters for reasons of spite, that’d reflect badly on me as a man, and do me no good what so ever in terms of my sense of well being… so if I do, it’s for comedic value only. Which means I must be clear in my own mind about forgiving the aforementioned arseholes, and letting them off the hook. Am I ready for this? No. No, between the war crimes, the hatred, the fascistic public policy, I cannot and will not give up my resistance to them. But I think I can release my antipathy to them… Blunkett is a bad man, but he means well. Campbell has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and tried to kill the BBC, but he has mental health problems. Phillips is a racist, homophobic bigot, riddled with spite and is about as destructive as they come… but she’s clearly wrapped up in such a fuddle of hatred that it can’t be much fun to be her… and what went so wrong with her upbringing that she ended up as she did? Compassion. The longer I get to spend hanging out with the alien, the more clear it becomes that when thinking about humanity, there is no “us” and “them”… there’s only “us”. Even the most enemyish people out there, are just humans in need of help, same as me, same as us all.

Mindfulness: It’s said (in the zen world) of the Samurai that they made excellent meditators because of the proximity of death to their lives. I can understand this. When you make your peace with not being here, then being here becomes easier and more natural. I have found mindfulness very tricky over the last year, mind wandering all over the shop in Alexander… and finding it VERY difficult not to get frustrated by this. As Anthony says, it’s human to mind wander, it’s godly to catch yourself doing it. I think that the alien in my head may be a very useful tool for keeping me in the present… what’s the use of tomorrow if it may never happen… and what’s the use of planning tomorrow when I could be focussing on what I’m doing now! I am really, REALLY looking forward to yoga on Wednesday, with the wonderful Abi… it’s fantastically grounding and she’s got a great ability to bring me back to the present and let go of other concerns… think I may want to take yoga further than I thus far have had a chance to… also I want Rachel to get into some yoga. Seems like good stuff, as does Aikido.

Essentially, I think that the great lesson from my little visitor is going to be the seeking out of the middle way, in all things!

OK it’s now the 7th April 2010 and I’m now… ten days post seizure! I think.

I’ve just caught myself wondering whether one of the collection of pills they’ve got me munching might be some sort of anti anxiety drug… What a remarkably cool place to be at! It’s not, I’m absolutely sure, but if I’d had any idea I’d ever be sitting here with a brain tumour the size of an apple on the go, I’d have guessed it’d be in a fair state of panic… instead, I feel calmer and more at peace with the world than I can remember ever being in before, more or less. (It’d be even better if my brain wasn’t in a slight fug due to the steroids and pressure caused by Al the alien, but no complaints).

This cancer thing has caused some major shift patterns in my thinking already. For the better.

Today I got a packet of tea in the post from Juliet, Jamie, Marie, Sophie and Dez. With a funny card. It was written so lovingly, and so genuinely, it made me feel like humanity had just opened up like a bean bag, ready for me to fall back into it and just let go of everything I had. Wow. And it’s so relaxed. There’s no messy outpouring of emotion to this, I just feel in a giggly mood the whole time.

And I’m so far into the present! It’s quite beautiful in the present… I feel I’ve got one up on that Eckhart Tolle book I haven’t read, but nonetheless found annoying… Yes we all KNOW that it’s best in the present, Tolle, but what you didn't seem to be doing was telling anyone, anyone at all with an imagination, HOW TO GET THERE!!! (Well, I assume, from only having dipped in)… That’s why I decided to train as an Alexander Technique teacher, and THAT’S what this remarkable little alien’s afforded me!

It’s a complete cliché that a spell of illness can really make you take the time to smell the roses… so I’ll just say this: if you’re going to get a brain alien, my advice is to do it at the beginning of April. Magnolia trees, Cherry blossom, daffodils, Apple blossom… Oh boy!

Brushing my teeth.. Thanks for that one little alien! I might not be needing my nashers as it happens. There’s a very real possibility that I could be lying on a metal tray in a hospital fridge, this time tomorrow. So why is it that I’ve just brushed my teeth with more care and attention than I can remember summoning to the task in years? There’s your “now” Tolle, it decided to show its face in the toothbrush. I remember Brian Appleyard of the zen class in Ecklestone Square talking about hoovering. He had a woman come to the class who could keep mindful and present and generally engaged, with most tasks. But not hoovering. She hated hoovering. Hated it. She just couldn’t get herself doing it with anything more than a grudging, rushing, bodging sense of resentment. Brian suggest that she imagine she were in a soviet block country and the secret police had just arrived to take her away and throw her in a gulag or show trial. She had one last thing she could do before she was to be taken down the stairs and away… and that was the hoovering. When her husband got back, that hovering was the last evidence of her he’d ever see. After that (according of course to Brian), she undertook the hoovering with the dedication and joy and engagement of a Saint. She loved it.

PEOPLE ARE GONNA BE WEIRD. Something that’s already proving VERY interesting, is how people are reacting to me. There’s such a range of levels of engagement. Charles has been the best… joking that it’s my “good twin” trying to break out and take over… that the tumour may be a better and more productive member of society than me… well you need pretty INCREDIBLE mates for them to be able to joke like that! If there was any, and I mean ANY doubt in a relationship, you just couldn’t come out with that shit, and boy do I love that idiotic bastard. Then there’s the ones who don’t quite now how to deal with it, and who are clearly a bit unnerved. It comes out as inappropriateness sometimes… Facebook’s been fascinating… I put up a couple of status updates whilst I was in hospital, not letting on to the whole situation, but just to let people know that I was in and therefore not well… Most people have been fantastic, even people I haven’t seen in years and years, though others have been a bit odd. Still, it doesn’t bother me, it’s just interesting to see how other people handle other people’s stuff. I think I’m more careful than a lot of people. Don’t know that that’s good or bad, just interesting.

And that’s just the people who’ve been in touch! There’s going to be a FASCINATING world of people who won’t chose to bump into me! It’s perfectly human to be sickness averse… as evolutionary advantages go, being phobic of illness is a pretty trump strategy. It’s consequently only natural that a fair number of people will want to keep the hell away from me over the coming weeks, months, possibly forever… doesn’t bother me at all. Well it does in a way, but only as a challenge, not as a sadness. How will Alexander be? I mean we put our hands on each others chins and heads’ backs. That’s asking everyone at school to put their hands about 3mm away from where there’s been a blooming great alien living. I’ll be interested to see who is how… I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one or two of the class spend a fair bit of time looking at their nails and texting, rather than ask if I’d like to work. It’s my duty (and opportunity) in all this, to take the lead. I HAVE to take the initiative in helping people to deal with the alien, because it’s only fair and kind and human to do so… I can’t leave it for ANYONE to have to make the leap themselves, I have to be everyone’s guide. But that’s what I want to be an Alexander Technique teacher for anyway. As I see it, it may be a good opportunity for others at school to deal with someone who's got something seriously wrong with them, and that could be good practice because when we're qualified, I'm pretty sure that's something we're all going to be handling... but if anyone wants to keep the hell away from my head and its abnormal contents, that's fine by me!

Is it wrong that I’m feeling gratitude to a parasitic invader which is threatening my life?

The little fucker really has just tapped me on the shoulder and said “um Ben? Think it might be time you grew up a bit, hmm?”

So, what to do with life? If I can brush my teeth like that, I can do anything. Zen has to feature. I’ve made contact with a zen teaching Alexander Technique bloke called Mike Cross and am going to see him as soon as I can, he’s back in the UK in two weeks. Yoga, Aikido, Fitness??? Oh yes, these were the inventions of the last few months for me, and I have been enjoying this course in life. Gonna get a heart rate monitor tomorrow, so I can try to keep myself in the optimum shape possible to prepare for surgery. What else? I crave creative outlets… This of course is one, and I’m writing, or have been sketching to write, something fictional about Al. Something comic… I don’t think you can write a comedy about cancer unless you’ve actually got the thing, I think it would be considered to be in poor taste or something. So I’m in a position of advantage! Wanna get some mosaics up as well. Things I’m not allowed to put up, in places I’ve got no right to put them. Things that’ll make people smile or think. Sorry officer, I really don’t give a shit… I could be dead next week, and mosaicing this wall seems like a good idea right now.


SO IT’S MONDAY THE 12th of april, and I’ve just seen the doctor. I’ve got a fuck off great big brain tumour, and it’s in a part of the brain that’s pretty damn important, and PRETTY DAMN IMPOSSIBLE TO FUCKING GET TO. WHICH MEANS I’M PRETTY MUCH FUCKED, COZ THEY WON’T BE TAKING IT OUT.

Oh well. Shit happens.

Turns out the scans they showed me before were someone else's... almost funny, though when the actual ones came up on the screen, I know just about enough neurology to think "ok, now I am in trouble!"

I mean what? Because I’ve got the thing, anything might change? Would I stop flossing my teeth? Would I give up on one single, SINGLE element of normal life? Course the fuck not. Alien ain’t gonna win that easy! I just want to get on with tending the veg patch.

There’s a sense in which this all feels like it’s meant to be. That’s not in a fatalistic way, and certainly not in an “I deserve it” way… I remember some sagacious twit having a phrase (irritating as can be) “start your mission today”… well I’ve had my mission of sorts on the go for ages… yoga, Alexander, educating myself, learning skills, gardening… all these are the little, day to day processes of learning to be the best Ben I can, and getting on with life. But none of them really constituted a mission. Alexander, perhaps, but it was still something which was outside me in that it’s a course pursued by other people too. The alien is mine and mine alone… so it’s a mission of an entirely personal nature. I'm going to get drilled on St. George's Day. Without that dragon, St. George would just have been a twit on a horse... The dragon was his enemy, but he needed it too, it also made him. I'm thinking my dragon's in my head. Right, if I keep chatting this bollocks, I'm going to get sectioned, time to move on.

I said to Mr. Ashkahn, the neurosurgeon, as we were leaving, “I’m sort of excited, this is going to be fun”. He laughed it off, probably realising that it was a sort of nervous reaction to scary news… but that’s only partly what it was.

I like being flippant. There was a radio four play about this a while back which was briliant. I’m flippant, but I’m not facetious. I hope. Facetiousness is avoidance. It involves coming out with a cheap response in order to keep the hell away from having to deal with what ever it’s about. Flippancy involves dealing with that thing, actually going into it and looking it RIGHT in the face… and laughing at it anyway. Feeling the hurt and telling it to fuck off with a joke.

Where did the alien come from? I suspect I’ve got this tumour from having watched an episode of a TV show called X Factor last year. There were a pair of presenters called Ant and Dec, and every time they came on the screen, I had this terrible sense that something was wrong… I now realise that their cheeky chirpy delivery was giving me a brain tumour. Either that or I’ve been multitasking, that’d do it.


13th april 2010. Lots more messages from lots more lovely people. Ones I wouldn’t expect, people I haven’t seen since school, hardly know… it’s amazing!

My mum’s done something dumb but well intentioned. It seems there was some discussion of me at yoga in Worth Matravers. I guess that Karla, who has seen and commented on my face book post about the tumour, must have mentioned it… so someone phoned my mum. Who didn’t say what was up… AGAIN… she asked Rosie not to mention it to Charlie…

I NEED PEOPLE TO KNOW.

I am completely ready for people to want to avoid me. Of all the things one can be phobic about, illness is about the most logical, it’s possibly THE phobia with the strongest evolutionary advantage to it, above spiders and snakes! So if people get freaked out and don’t want to have any contact with me, I’ll completely understand. I won’t judge them for it, I won’t get upset or cross. It’s ok. But for that, they need to know! And similarly, there are lots of people who’ll actively WANT to be in touch and send good wishes, and it’s only fair to let them know too.

I found myself thinking that the brain tumour was a game earlier. It’s something to compete with, to learn to play… staying upbeat and positive, keeping the fun I'm having with it going is hugely important… at the moment I feel like I’m in an incredibly precious and beautiful stage in life… and I need to capitalise and drag the most out of this for as long as possible. I’m engaged in a battle with the alien at various levels. There’s the obvious physical, control of who gets my head. But there’s also a psychological war on the go. It wants to drag me down. I want to float up like a bubble. I am winning. I am going to win no matter what. Even if I die, the alien won’t sap my spirits, it won’t get me down, IT WILL NOT WIN! I think that letting people know what’s up with me is part of the game… it doesn’t want me to, because it’d rather the battle was fought behind closed doors, but I’m in charge, and I’m taking the fight outside, to the open air, where everyone WHO WANTS TO, can see…

I’ve had loads of people offering to meet up, and I think I am going to start doing this as a regular program… it’s so easy to see friends, especially ones you don’t know well or haven’t seen in ages, and say “we should meet up for lunch” and then just feel a bit embarrassed about actually doing it, but right now, I’ve got the perfect excuse! It’s kinda funny, using the alien as an “excuse”… but why not? It’s cool, it’s good all round for everyone except the alien.

15th April 2010. Just had amazing ice cream from Gelato Mio, a new place on Holland Park Avenue, gorgeous. If I’m gonna get chemo and radio, I might well lose a lot of weight, so it might be an idea to try and put some on before hand… worth finding out about.

I’ve had an idea about what’s going on with my brain. It goes like this: ketamine and ECT are about the only two things known to work for depression. Sure SSRIs help, as does prozac, in a limited number of cases, but they’re an indirect route. A small dose of Ketamine works straight away, as does ECT. SSRIs have a huge time delay and LOADS of side effects. So what do they do? It’s been hypothesised that Ketamine works on depression by briefly knocking out the frontal lobes, effectively acting as a reset button. In depressed patients, the frontal lobes are hyperactive… ketamine and ECT both reset this to normal. WELL. I didn’t have any anxiety or depression before the 28th, when I had my seizure, but I sure as shit would have since, if I was prone to such… and I haven’t. In fact, by contrast, I’ve been sublimely happy and relaxed and able to laugh and joke about the whole thing in a very easy, natural way. I had two seizures, both caused by a frontal lobe tumour. Is this a coincidence, or did I get a quick whack of natural antidepressant medicine, courtesy of my alien and my brain’s response to the alien? Need to look up tumours, frontal lobe, ketamine and ECT methinks… I wonder if there’s anything to be learnt here? (OK, I’m now reviewing this on the 21st April and don’t think there’s anything in it… reckon I’m just in a good mood and that’s all there is to it).

19th April 2010. I should be getting trepanned today, but it isn’t going to happen. Someone with a bigger alien turned up at the hospital, so they got my slot… I hope they’re ok, it sounds like a serious case. I also hope that the hospital let me know what’s going to happen with me… I don’t mind having a brain tumour, and I don’t mind the fact that the treatment’s likely to be pretty unpleasant, but I am finding it a little bit difficult to handle not knowing when it’s going to happen. The NHS is a bit like a mad old aunt… you love it because it’s your aunty, but it repeats everything seven times, is permanently confused, won’t accept any advice or instruction and is generally as frustrating as can be! Make with the head drill aunty! I’ve been listening to tracks by Head Drillaz, a 90s trip hop act from Brixton online… good bit of gallows humour! Great track called “Trepanning” (link at the top)… ha haaaa…

Watched a program about the Tibetan Book of the Dead yesterday. Sky gets some fantastic programs, but they tend, almost always, to be fantastic 20 minute programs, dragged out to an hour with repetition. I’ve been finding myself revisiting some VERY strange old territory recently: the Dissociative Spiral. This is a phenomenon described by Ann Shulgin in PIHKAL, which it seems a lot of people experience when they are young. A sort of visit to a plane of existence quite separate from the dimensions which we usually inhabit. Look it up if you can. Some people experience the same, or similar things under the influence of Dissociatives such as Ketamine. I’ve been getting it lying in bed. It’s a world inhabited by strange beings, benign and forbidding, and an eventual, blissful peace… it sounds a lot like the Book of the Dead’s description of the hereafter. I have absolutely ZERO belief in an afterlife, but I am interested in what happens to consciousness when it terminates. I may be about to find out, and I find this prospect strangely exciting. More exciting than scary at least. I used to visit the Spiral in my dreams, very frequently, when I was a child… and got to thinking it was some sort of memory of being born… I doubt that now very much! I’m interested in the possibility that it relates somehow to NDE reports, moving towards a bright light and all that jazz. Who knows? I may, soon enough, though I very much hope it’ll be a long time before I find out. Timothy Leary retranslated the Book of the Dead, as he thought it was a good manual/ guide for tripping. There’s clear confusion here between rebirth and reincarnation. The former is an easy concept to accept, the latter easy to dismiss, for me at least.

I’m not your average bloke, I like solitude the way that some people like sunbathing. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, but I NEED time alone, time spent in silence with only my own thoughts for company, and them as little as possible! I can face this thing alone if I need to, and in a way it would be easier to do so. There is much to learn here, right thinking essentially, and I don’t want distractions. No baggage, just me and the alien in the ring. And I won’t need to beat it to win… I must beat myself to win. The pig, the snake and the chicken are within reach and I must use this opportunity to calm and contain and control them for all I am worth!I love how much support I've been getting from everyone, but I do feel that I'm worrying about the people around me more than about myself, and I am not sure I need the distraction.

I have lost some cognitive ability, that’s for sure. I am a bit forgetful, and a bit confused at times. I don’t know if this is to do with the seizure, the tumour or the medication… but it’s there. And it’s annoying. Not hugely annoying, but I’m aware of it, and I’d rather it wasn’t so. It seems to be helping with pride a bit, the chicken element of the Buddhist inner circle seems to have taken a bit of a hit, so there’s good news here… but I’d still like to be able to remember what’s what a bit better and not to be repeating myself, which I seem to be doing… I suppose that intelligence and the analytical aspects of the mind are irrelevant to Buddhist practice, and I’ve been rethinking my priorities here recently, so perhaps there is a another silver lining here. With stunning helpfulness, my dad responded to my saying that I’ve been forgetting things and repeating things a bit, by saying “well you are getting older you know”. Cheers!

21st April 2010.

Due into hospital tomorrow, drilling scheduled for Friday morning. Believe it when I come round from it! Looking forward to my first general anaesthetic, want to see if I can stay awake… I like a challenge.

Tesco bagging up lady. Usually, someone starts being dumb in Tesco, and I get a bit useless. I feel hopelessly sorry for anyone who’s bagging my groceries up for me, despite being over fifty, and as a result, feel guilty. I instinctively feel that I should be bagging up their stuff and helping them carry it home, they shouldn’t be having to help me. So when they start putting bread in a bag and then dumping tins on top of it, I feel I simply can’t tell them that they’re getting it wrong… apart from anything else, they’ve got at least twenty years of life experience over me, so who the hell am I to reprimand them. Not now. Last time it happened, a couple of days ago, I didn’t bat an eyelid. I simply stopped the bag lady and asked if we could do it differently, she couldn’t have minded less and actively seemed to like having someone guide her through the mine field of tin-bag insertion… And the best bit was that I managed it with absolutely zero stress. That might be the last loaf of bread I ever get to eat, so why on earth would I not do my level best to ensure it’s un-squashed? But equally, that might have been the last conversation I ever had with another human being, so why on earth would I be anything other than bubbling over with friendliness, coaching bag lady through what she was up to with as much kindness as I could muster? In the past, I have really struggled with exerting authority over plumbers, electricians and other building site layabouts, because the fact that they’re nearly double my age has given rise to a sort of suspicion, either in them or me or both, that they shouldn’t be taking orders from me. It’s easy! And the best bit of all, is that there’s absolutely no need to tell bag lady that I’ve got a brain tumour, because she doesn’t need to know. Hey presto, the managerial skills I’ve always wanted and always struggled with, neatly packaged in the form of a hostile alien parasite. Thanks parasite, that was fun! By contrast, I nearly got in a fight outside the cinema two days ago when some prick queue barged a long line… I was all up for strolling up to him and dragging him to the back of it by his ears, after all my time feels pretty precious at the moment, and there’s not much that you can do or say to a boy with a brain tumour that really means that much. Then my dad reminded me that the doctors have said that I’m not to do anything which might result in blows to the head, and I let it pass. More out of courtesy to the doctors than because I was bothered about hair gel man and his nasty little troll of a girlfriend getting punchy… it’s strange how the same cause can trigger such diametrically opposite effects. A tramp got the same recently, came up and started hassling me for 30p. Normally I’d have just given him the cash and wished him well, but he was really being intrusive and invasive and getting right into my face, pushing for a result. I felt sorry for him because he was a tramp, but I just thought, “you know what? I’m giving you nothing, not because I don’t have cash, I do. Not because I need it for anything, I don’t. I’m not going to give you 30p because I don’t want to, and that is reason enough in and of itself. I don’t see any reason why I should help someone who’s gone out of their way to be unpleasant to me, so I won’t. Again, I didn’t need to mention the alien, he didn’t need to know. His face was a picture. I doubt he’d found anyone who reacted so directly to his confrontational, aggressive style all day… he just said “fair enough” and wandered off, looking dazed. Kinda fun.

I’ve heard it said, more than once, that there’s no such thing as an atheist in a jam. Well here I am! I don’t believe in God, don’t believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, heaven, hell, morality. I’M ABOUT AS FAR INTO A JAM AS YOU CAN GET, before you start losing your faculties, which is pretty likely to start the day after tomorrow, and I’m absolutely uninterested in ANY dogmatic religion whatsoever. People are welcome to practice whatever they want, with my blessing, Aghori Hindus and all, it just by and large makes me think they’re avoidant twits. Not for me.

BUT. Another little benefit that the alien’s brought, is that I don’t feel like I’m being either pretentious, or precious, discussing Buddhism. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a very bad Buddhist… I don’t “get” a lot of concepts in Buddhism, from the thing about life being suffering (absolutely central, and as far as I’m concerned, largely wrong), karma (what utter bollocks) dharma (unimportant to me) and I meditate rarely and badly... but I do still consider myself a buddhist and do try to live by the principles of Zen.

MULTITASKING IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.

Two things. "He who loves not women, wine and song, he lives a fool his whole life long" Can you guess who said that? Martin Luther. Yep, the founder of the Protestant church. And I couldn't agree more. Yes it's good to try to transcend and master the more primitive urges of the mind, but that does NOT mean that it's a good idea to deny them and to punish the mind that entertains them! Human to mind wander, godly to catch yourself. He also said "I more fear what is within me than what comes from without" bhaaahahahah....

The second is that I have more and more come to think that the valuable, worthwhile things in life are the ones which can't be done... because they don't have a completion box to tick. You sow seed. You grow your seedlings. Transplant. Water. Weed. Pick and cook your veg. Compost the trimmings and feed them to livestock. Fertilise the soil. Plant more seed. It's rewarding not because you get to eat the best veg in the world (although at the risk of sounding a leetle bit immodest, I do), but because it's a process. One you practice, rather than complete. Similarly yoga. I started, I'm sure like everyone, wanting to get somewhere... but rapidly realised that wasn't going to get me anywhere! So instead I turn up twice a week, one morning in Oxford Street, one evening in Hammersmith, and try not to try, but instead just to be. I hope you weren't waiting for a point, I may have a brain tumour, but this is still me we're dealing with and I ain't gonna stop gibbering any time soon, you can wait till the alien's in control before you get a point! Anyhow, more when I've got time and something else not worth saying...

Much love people, Ben.