About Me

Started as the great hippie novel in response to bad press regarding the 1960's. As it grew, it evolved into something else entirely. Writers tell me at a certain point a manuscript simply takes form and begins to move by itself. This seemed to be the case with The Telling Stones. Originally a collection of old hippie stories was planned as retold over cups of tea by those who were there. But it caught up with the present and rapidly evolved into a questing story and discussion of consciousness, beliefs and the methods involved, what was happening in my life and the thoughts round it all. Australia, India, America, marriage, and seeking all round, finally culminated in an unexpected awakening with Isaac Shapiro in Santa Fe. Things stopped. The second part of the book, "The Mad Bastards Guide to Enlightenment", is more a commentary on the sudden newness of all things, difficult and simple all at the same time, and comments on questions I get asked often.. Extracts from both sections will be posted regularly, please share and comment at will. RELEASED ALL OVER (AMAZON TOO) AT THE END OF MARCH! THANX NONDUALITY PRESS LONDON.


From Part One,            "The Telling Stones"

MAX GOES TO WOODSTOCK....
I’m always a bit sad to have missed the moments that have become the centres of hippie memory, but although the wave broke a little later in Australia we didn’t really miss anything relevant.The entire impetus for the rejection of the straight world’s bathwater and babies was the same media input in the whole of the western world.


       I love to visit Max. His house is perfect. A stone cottage with small windows, not too tidy outside with its random wood-heap and falling tin shed, but stepping inside is like getting out of a time machine set for the mid-sixties. There are pretty little found objects catching the light on the windowsill, sari curtains, wooden surfaces everywhere, all the colour of honey. The chairs are square wooden affairs, each painted a different pastel colour. Sometimes a plain tablecloth, but mostly, like today, a clean wooden table top.
       There is always a pot of tea to be had. So we have one.
       There is an unstated conversational convention here that keeps a stream of consciousness going forever. Max simply starts talking wherever he left off last time.
       “I nearly went to Woodstock,” he says, in a slow, mellow voice, a considering-things-in-the-background sort of sound to it.
       Last time I visited him, there was a friend with us who was living near Woodstock at the time but didn’t bother going. He had told stories of his neighbour who had arrived there several days early and camped for the duration in her Kombi-van. She had been hassled from day two by people begging for water, and robbed of most of the van’s removable contents when she stayed away overnight – nearer the stage.
       The whole thing sounded awful, but according to him she just loved it. “Wouldn’t have missed so much positive one-purpose collective consciousness for anything.”
       The young of the Sixties were cursed with the huge contradiction between the world events of the day as depicted on their brand new graphic television, and the values insisted on by their parents. It was all a bit much for some, and from the rejection of straight world, its madness and constraints grew the field of vast possibility. I never feel confident that Max is telling the truth, but it’s always a good story so I don’t insult him by wondering this aloud.
       “I was in Afghanistan about three months before, camped near the mountains, waiting for a bloke to meet me for a little business.”
“Ah, business Max,” I reply in that special affirmative, get-on-with-it voice.
“I wasn’t buying dope mate; I had a few rifles to sell, early Kalishnikovs. This American bloke I was with had bought them at a market, with my money mind you, that sort of committed me to helping him sell them.
” Jesus, Max is a gunrunner! He just looks like an old hippie.
“We had a lot of faith then man. What we did was wander into the mountains looking for some bugger to buy these guns. We ran out of food in a couple of days. The Yank said he was going to a music festival after the money came. Woodstock in New York State, via Kabul and London. I was a bit interested so I decided to go with him. He left sometime that night, must have walked. I still had both the camels in the morning. The guns too.”
       Max is telling this story in a monotone, slow and careful. No dramatic intonation, no emotion, only a little grin and nod between sentences. This is why I can believe him. He fits my idea of an old Australian storyteller. No campfire, no bush; it all happens in little kitchens with tea and a smoke.
`      The cat comes in, sits on my lap and starts to purr. I pat. We have more tea.
       “When I woke up, there was another camp about two hundred yards away, a lot of people, noise and camels, even a fire. I was a bit worried; I thought they might have killed the Yank when he went for a piss. I sat there wondering what to do with these rifles and no food when this fantastic smell of fresh coffee hit. I was going to introduce myself to next door when someone came up, no English, pointing at me and at the empty cup he was carrying. I reckon they took pity on me huddled in a blanket. So I went over.
       "I have to take a leak."  Tea. Everywhere you go in this time warp there is tea. I reckon the strongest bladders in the world must belong to hippies. Max for instance, never goes. Maybe he’s got a bag. I’ll ask. I’m not having another smoke, that’s for sure. The toilet is perfect too. White paint on walls of stone, textured with dust. The cistern is attached high on the wall with a chain. On the end of the chain, the large knob from a brass bed. I flush.
Arriving back in the kitchen I am overwhelmed by the need to explain to Max how I am seeing his house and where it fits in my personal anthropology. I sit down.

“Always good to see you, man.” I say. Max looks up from rolling another joint.
“Yeah, you too.” ..........


From Part Two.  "The Mad Bastards Guide to Enlightenment"



                                    WHAT'S IT LIKE?....      
        It’s not like anything. Sadly, sounding like everyone else that speaks on this, I go on. I will say some stuff.
        It’s quiet. No more dialogue chatters in the mind, all vanished. It seems like bullshit if I focus on "before", but it stopped. In a microsecond. Less.
       It doesn’t inform behaviour. Yes, that’s right, it does not inform behaviour. More a sort of non-influence really, a noticing that certain doings, based on stories, are pointless, so they don’t happen, this not happening is noticed in retrospect, mostly by other people.
      Everything is the visually the same, seeing the same things everywhere as always, and there it is, just is. This gives a sort of non-motivation status really. Not that I don’t do things, more that they get done, by nobody. Ambition, ha! I see typing now for instance, it happens and that’s all. Nobody in here in the terms that I vaguely remember defining self.
       Memory is shot. Buggered beyond belief, going shopping requires a list or supermarket-ness is happening. No idea what for, even the what for is not there... linear simply doesn’t function in a regular way. Everything gets done it seems, but just done, by nobody.
      There is the centre of it really. Nobody is in here. That is the reality. Mind, physiology and language used to collude, and throw an illusory story of self on the screen of consciousness, but not now. Consciousness couldn’t give a fuck of course, it is there for anything, .......