In a strange sort of way the Natural Health Centre called. There was an advert in the West Briton. It said the talk would be about AIDS and how to strengthen your immune system. The macrobiotic approach. I looked at the advert for the meeting but went no further in my mind.
I remember ending the parcels earlier than I expected. I remember ending. So I drove down to see Tim. Tim was having a fish pond dug because he wanted the sound of water. He has a pump to move the water into a fountain and he wants to hear the sound of the fountain moving the water. Among the small houses flows the sound of water above thje rattling wind. He has a plastic framed door that he has been asked to remove because it is a conservation area. These small houses. This small patch of grass bedecked with ponds and flowers. These dreams of gardens growing easily between the houses. Here stand dreams of Rhododendrons and Camellias sway easily in the gentle pond blown breeze. These are the visions to fill this garden. Here will be a pond. There is a man to dig a hole to make a pond. A large hole where the earth is dry. It hasn't rained for a long time so the soil is dry and crumbles easily. A large pile of crumbled soil lies to show where the lawn once was. This earth which sticks to the shoes. Carried into the small house. The small house where the sound of the fountain will barely pierce the double glazing. This small house. The aerth is collected in a vacuum cleaner to be saved for another day. Earth in the wrong place.
Tim is not pleased by the process of digging the pond. By the hole, by the man digging the earth, by any of th3ese things atb all. It is dreams of the sound of water, the forests of Camellias. These are not the dreams. Tim said they were going to Penzance to hear what there was to be heard so I said I would like to go along. That would be nice to spend an evening in that way. So later Tim was to pick me up on the way. He telephoned then to say it would all be later because Andrew was having his ears syringed so that he could hear again. So instead I went down to see them, and when Andrew's ears were cleaner we left for Penzance.
It takes a long time and by the time we arrived we were three quarters of an hour late. Still we went in to try not to disturb them but to say hello. And there were three people in the room. The lecturer is a young man, slightly receding hair-line, a pale face and that thin stringy frame that so often goes with with natural health. Later it turns out that his real interest is Shiatsu, which is acupuncture without needles. He was talking about the macrobiotic diet. This is eating grains and vegetables and pulses. And getting enough exercise and not working too hard and all in all getting to be happy with life. It was really all just the same and more of the same. Less fats and sugars, more beans and fibre. He said this would strengthen the immune system. He didn't say this would fail to weaken it, which is probably what he really meant. He also said that overwork would weaken the immune system. He also said that homosexuals would be more prone to AIDS because of the reaction of their bodies to sperm after sex. The immune system had to fight all of the sperm and that would weaken it. I had pale visions of all these tiny sperm swimming through the bloodstream weakening the white blood cells. At that point I found it a bit difficult to cope with the image. I suppose that means that women have their immune systems also under attack and are more liable to colds, diseases and AIDS.
He said he would trust the macrobiotic system implicitly to protect him from AIDS, because Peter asked him, and he would take no further practical steps to safeguard his body, although he did point out that he could not recommend that to anybody else. He talked a lot about the state of health of the whole body. He said peoples whole health could be read from their faces. I would have liked to ask him which of us were ill with HIV infection but the situation had already been explained.
Peter asked him what a poultice was, because he didn't know how to cook one, and he had misheard pulse, because he didn't know of pulses, we were all able to laugh about that later. The man had a name which in a strange way seemed appropriate. He asked Bob what he thought of what he said and Bob told him. He told him it sounded bizarre. He meant much more than that but he was polite enough not to say. The man really said very little when it was over. He tried to sell copies of his books without success. He tried to sell his detailed consultation time. He was not successful. He read from an American magazine about the effects of the macrobiotic diet on twenty AIDS patients in the United States. Eight of them had died. Twelve of them had shown improvements in their t-cell counts. It wasn't particularly convincing somehow. The audience consisted of the three of us and two others. A middle aged neurotic ex-hippy woman who wanted to know, after the diet and the exercise, still how she was gouing to get her head together. The other was an older man who looked as though he had once been an alcoholic, who wanted to know what form of sugar was best to eat. He was told to try fresh vegetables and barley malt. He was not very convinced either. The lecturer didn't seem to understand very much about the metabolism of sugar. He had decided that it just harmful and used up vitamins and minerals, weakening the immune system. That struck me as strange and unlikely considering the metabolism of sugar and the purity of the available product. He didn't deign to comment on sweeteners. That would have been interesting to hear. And finally we quietly went away again. By the time we got into the car we were all laughing. It was very strange. It was not very convincing.
Bob thought we might visit Andrew, but then thought not. Bob and Andrew have both been letting eachother down and are getting remote to eachother. Andrew did not feel inclined so he moved off to a distance as is his way. So we didn't go to see Andrew. Peter thinks he will be getting drunk anyway although I doubt that myself.
So it looks perhaps as though the macrobiotic approach may not be all that useful to people who know they are dying. Bob heard while in London that the diet had made some people much iller anyway. Hear all, see all, say nothing.
Hear all, see all, say nothing.
Hear all, see all, say nothing, this is the wisdom of the twentieth century, probably as it always was. He said AIDS could not have happened in any other era, conditions were not right. He implied that cancer was a recent phenomenon. I think he failed to see that it was simply not recognised before. Not recognised. He said that conventional medicine would not find a cure or a vaccine. Modern technology had let us down. None of us were particularly convinced by him. There was a air of vegetarian magic about it all. He said he could show it worked from his own experience. That was the wrong thing to say. He has not been infected with HIV yet. He can't know. Hear all, see all, say nothing. There is a wisdom that has become timeless again.
The important standards are the ones you hold for yourself. They are noit the ones that are imposed on you from the outside. If you choose not to smoke, not to be aggressive, not to contend, to smile, to help in which circumstances, to be a vegan, whatever the choice is. ] These are the important standards. The ones you choose yourself. There are no rules of behaviour that force you. There is nothing absolute about behaviour. It is the standards you choose that are important. As Louise Hay points out, she refuses to believe that on this tiny planet, a pinprick in the universe, there is a superior being called God sitting on a cloud somewhere looking at her genitals. There is noi absolute set of divine rules. Behaviour is a personal choice. States of health are very much under consideration. A while ago I was ill for a day and |i blamed it on overwork in the cold the day before. But now I see overwork as symptomatic not causal. My tolerance of a workload had been reduced by something, making my normal day tire me, making me feel overworked, butb that was the symptom not the cause. I had been looking for a cause for a long time without success. I had taken some exztra salt, because I easily get salt deficiency by not eating it. And that certainly helped. Also helpful were Lucozade and grapes as well. I ate a lot of grapes. But yesterday I ate a packet of fruitb pastilles and have felt quite fit ever since. I have always eaten a lot of refined sugar as sweets , and had stopped, but I am not sure at all that was right. I felt much better afterwards. Almost to feeling strong again. Since then I have been eating mints. The threshold of tolerance of work has raised again. Perhaps I had withdrawal symptoms of my addiction. It is how I looked at it.
Separating self from the television world. Overstimulation of the eyes and ears like processed food. One eye on the pot and the other nup the chimney. A mote, a particle of dust. An existence slowly falling down to the end. Particles of dust gather where things are stationary, confirmed, predictible, safe. Birdsong springing from every table. I was not sure i liked the word mendicant once I had read what the dictionary had to add to my understanding. I am still thinking about it. All of this is things to hang on to, things that are solid. Things that are reliable. things. Things there are to form attachments to. Things to hang on to. To shackle the world. Trapped inside your own attachments.
Birdsong springing from every table. The stationary traveller. You who pass by in the world, you who the world passes by. Travellers both. Leaving behind. Not restraining passage. One passes through the world. One allows the world to pass. The stationary traveller salutes you on the path. A greeting or a parting. The wave is the same. Now you are here and I acknowledge you. I do not hold it. I threw a stick into the hedge and missed, so I went to collect it and threw it on and missed again so I threw it into place a third time. I realised I was carrying the pasts actions into the present action. As I mused on this I trod on a stone. I was still carrying the stick and not yet concerned with walking. One way or another one passes through the world. This is travelling. You cannoit carry one time and place through to another. Each moment starts afresh. This is travelling.