Xanadu Thinking Processes.....

What I want. What I really really want is a Curriculum, a Reading List, a Prospectus which will direct my thinking and my reading for the rest of my life. It would obviously allow space for digressions or illogical rampages into alien territory or more esoteric tangents. It would supply direction and justification and would allow me to feel I was moving towards an indefinable purpose that someone or something had designed.

It is not as if my social life intrudes. Partying has never really appealed (even to my baser instincts). I think I was born old and I was born unsociable and my partial deafness has not made that any easier. I am not a joiner of clubs. I am a loner but a contented loner with a partner and a family (as opposed to the serial killer loner with a fridge full of body parts). Therefore when I tinkered with the idea of starting a running club (unofficially), just Colin (my brother) and I, in order to formalise our training I hit upon the name Xanadu. Since this was in essence a pretend club, a fantasy running club, Xanadu struck me as just the right name. This was probably based on a gentle admiration for the poem but also for the weird combination of letters in some bizarre scrabblesque thinking process. It did not inspire me to break into the elite fields of international athletics but I do still like the name. It denoted creativity and imagination and romanticism the upside of sweat and blisters. Now in my slovenly dotage the name has developed farther.
Indeed to the extent that if I ever developed a company (which I wouldn't want to) and they were marketing something or indeed anything then I imagine it would most likely be for a service or an educational use - a teaching process to enable a different style of learning or to empower an individual to comprehend a more varied set of experiences. It would be a kind of Creative Project management - a self help fix-it guide with a zenlike attitude to results and profit margins.
I see it all, life probably too, as a game.

With Xanadu thinking the world is in front of us we simply need to see it differently. To see it, according to Alan Fletcher - sideways.

Xanadu Thinking might be a range of tools, meditation or analytic tools which will help the individual towards the art of seeing Sideways. In 2008 this is the year that the magic number 50 will finally be reached. The half century. Halfway there or halfway gone. Glass half empty Glass half full. You pays your money and you makes your choice. Mortality first rings my doorbell. The first footstep is heard above.

Bookshops are filled with books listing 1001 films, books, gardens, paintings, places, natural wonders, to see before you die. As if living is merely observation or worse; a kind of metaphysical twitching where you tick the birds off in the cosmic birdbook before that great Ornithologist in the sky points his pigeon-shitted digit in your direction.

I am left again with the search for a reason. For a protocol to be governed by - for a posterity in which a memory may survive. For an inheritance that would be deemed worthwhile. For a rebirth, a renaissance of what makes living worthwhile and fulfilling. For Zanadu thinking. Incorporated.

January Blues... begging for it......

It is cold and grey outside and it feels cold and grey inside. The last payday was middle December and the next is the end of January. As expected that glorious feeling of space and time and freedom is replaced by the tightly repressed constriction of the working day. Hopes and dreams are reduced to a flickering candle-powered image like an early silent movie jerkily hopping from frame to frame in a sepia world of doom and gloom.

The unlikely possibilities of a windfall bequest from a wealthy relative or the miraculous jackpot of those six magic lottery numbers seem even farther away than usual (and they have never appeared very near). As my bank account hovers in those margins between black and red like the old Manchester City away kit the image of a fiscal desert dry and barren and dessicated floats through my mind. Insofar as it might help I have decided to grasp the bull market by the horns of a dilemma and whisper goodbye to my pride and my dignity.

Therefore I am making an appeal to anybody out there with a spare (I figured) eighty thousand pounds. An amount that I reckon that takes care of my mortgage, my bank loan and my credit card spending. Please notice that I am not seeking to retire from my current job nor am I wishing to indulge in the pamperings of luxury. I crave no Mediterranean rock upon which to bask nor an automobile to dazzle the roads of South Yorkshire. I desire only a freedom from debt and from worry. Constant worry.

I have decided to consider this as my approach to certain individuals such as Ms Paris Hilton or Ms Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, people who have suffered abuse at the hands of pundits, the press and certain portions of the general populace. Not because I particularly identify with them and have been personally villified but because such attacks offend my sense of fair play and decency. They are, in effect free individuals and can pursue their own dreams irrespective of what anybody else may see, say or think. I thought about Mr Bill Gates or whichever Mr Getty actually holds the purse-strings these days but I decided not to bother with them as their funds (albeit unlimited) may in fact be already allocated. Yes, this would and certainly will constitute an act of Charity but it would not represent a grand gesture or a publicity coup to anybody except myself and my family. The wishes of the donor would be paramount. I can definitely keep either a secret or hold a press conference. The choice is yours. I know this reads like one of those internet scams that seem to come from the needy third world based in the affluence of the free world but this is in essence simply, totally, genuine begging and I must admit I do not really expect any great success. In fact judging by the fact that I seem to be writing to an audience of one (myself) I expect no response at all (unless my schizophrenia worsens drastically).

My fingers are crossed (well, not actually because it makes typing difficult; they are only metaphorically crossed) and I await the flood of donations that might be heading my way. Obviously anybody is free to participate if they so desire - there is no sense of threat or intimidation involved, nor would I accept any personal gifts above the target of eighty thousand pounds (the overspill would be donated to the Northern General Hospital's Renal Unit). Once my mortgage was paid off and essentially my puny wage becomes disposable income (a phrase I have never used before) I feel that many more options would become available for us as a family which can only be for the better. I await the onset of a more relaxed and contemplative future.