Part One

One summer in the late 1980s, I'm not sure which, I had time on my hands. I had finally managed to wriggle out of most of my official responsibilities at the Buddhist Centre, and I had nothing lined up as replacement. It was a cool, damp summer in London, and I took the opportunity to type up the text I had written in pen concerning the visits I had made to Italy over the previous decade.

These were the days before word processors - or at least before I knew of and had access to word processing machines! -, so typing was a very different skill to that of today. Far greater care and attention to accuracy was the priority, since correcting errors was a cumbersome and time-consuming process. I worked on an electric typewriter, and the familiar clack-clack-clacking could be heard issuing from my room, where I had taken up temporary residence in a spacious and comfortable Buddhist community in north-west London. Thus passed many-a damp summer's afternoon.

It's here now, in front of me, in a lime-green wallet folder that is in danger of disintegrating before my very eyes. 152 immaculately-typed pages. 'Journey to the Sun', written a few years before I fell into some psycho-spiritual hole, an episode from which I've probably never fully recovered. But the upshot of the whole horror story was realising the one-sidedness and limitations of the purely solar quest. 

It's written in the format common to stories, novels, and so on, the snapshot kind of approach, where you fast forward, then return to the present , before reliving something from the past. If you're really good at it, you can completely lose the reader, who is existentially bamboozled as to where, when, and why he is. In 'Journey to the Sun', you will find me sitting beside the Ligurian Sea close to the Italian/French border, from where the ping-pong through time and space unfolds.

It's not the only document of mine that's done the rounds of a few publishers, to be returned with the note: "Well-written, but not the type of material we are publishing at the moment." With the passing of time, you get to see what they are talking about....

Part Two

I thought I would cheat. For my next blog piece, I would just lift a few choice passages from this ancient text and present it as a post. Easy; job done. There were two themes in particular that I recalled from last looking at it, and which I deemed suitable: a visit to a room full of crucifixions (paintings, that is), and a few days in a cold cold cold Venice. As things turned out, it wasn't that straightforward. 

I opened up the wallet and hoped to speedily find a few choice and snappy paragraphs to enliven proceedings. I hadn't looked at 'Journey' for quite a while but, despite harbouring prior suspicions, I was rather taken aback at what I encountered. Slow-paced, langourous, ponderous; I fancied I had come across one of those sloths that inhabit the forests somewhere or other, and which move about the world slow, slow, slow.

In fairness, it's not all like that. And it's not that the writing is generally bad. It's just that it takes a long, long time to arrive at the punchline, if indeed such a punchline exists. 

It's easy to be a critic of ones own work thirty five years on, partly since it hardly feels like 'yours' any more. The person who wrote it was in many ways vastly different to the one now perusing the words. But two features turn up sporadically which feed the sense of literary lethargy. One is the inclusion of many details and observations that, though plausibly interesting in themselves, are not relevant to the direction of the piece. The other is to make a point, then to make the same point again in a slightly different way. This repetitive quality could be argued as adding weight to the point being made, but actually serves more as a suggestion of lack of confidence in your own powers of expression. If you are truly on top of the game, once, well put, is enough. All is clear, all is understood.   

Sad to say, my writing from the late 1980s bears all the hallmarks of my former Buddhist teacher. His books, but especially his public lectures, often given as a series, were delivered in a style that was unmistakable. And ponderous, slow-moving, step-by-tiny step moving towards our destination, was how it could frequently be.

A few of his followers adopted this style as a conscious affectation; but for most of us it was simply something that we took on without  sufficiently realising it. This is how a public talk is given; this is how a book is written, full stop. The flavour was taken as a mark of sincerity, of understanding, of inspiration well communicated. Why would you wish to do things any other way?

So direct quoting of entire passages from 'Journey to the Sun' is out of the question. Instead, I present the meat of the chapter on the crucifix in a different style....

Part Three

Man walks into museum. It's Pisa, coastal Tuscany. The woman behind the desk jumps in surprise, but quickly assumes an air of friendly officialdom as she realises this is a genuine visitor.

It's Friday afternoon, but I feel as if I'm the first visitor of the day. The Museo Nazionale di San Matteo doesn't have the same pulling power as the Leaning Tower on the other side of town. 

I amble through a courtyard, where a pair of museum attendants similarly pull themselves together. The top of a Corinthian column here, a bit of old sarcophagus there; no, I'm really not in the mood. Maybe the paintings will help things along.

Through some heavy wooden doors and up a flight of dark, stone steps. The museum's interior opens up.

A dark and spacious room. One wall is dedicated to paintings of the Madonna and Child, par for the course. But running right down the centre of the room, a long straight line of crucifixes. One after the other, neat and tidy, disappearing into the gloomy middle distance. I try to be Mr Analyst: "Hmmm. Look at the arms. Pre-Giotto, must be late thirteenth century." But the horror, the horror. The revulsion, the revulsion. It keeps on coming. I cannot keep it down. I need to get out as quickly as possible. And I do. 

Such is the focal incident of the chapter called 'The Crucifix'. Yet somehow the chapter extends to no less than fourteen full pages. How did I manage that?

Amidst the antipathy towards the image of the man on the cross, I harboured a lurking fascination, and one that I was unable to resist indulging.

Then, as now, my bag was consciousness. Everything boils down to and emanates from consciousness. A good deal of my passion for (some) art stemmed from realising how changes in art could communicate changes in consciousness. 

Regarding the crucifixion in art, my main preoccupation related to the marginal, not to say rather esoteric, distinction between the typical crucifix of the Italian Romanesque period (around the 12th century) and that of the Trecento (the 1300s). 

Specifically, I was intent on examining how changes in the depiction of the crucifix reflect changes in consciousness: the sense of what is meant by 'spiritual' and 'God', and the changing perception of nature and the natural world all around us. 

The earlier crucifixes show a man seemingly unaffected by the pain and torture inflicted upon him. He is 'above' and 'out of' it all. A floating figure with wide, staring eyes, not of this world.

The more recent Trecento man on the cross is very different. He is tortured, and we see and feel his pain. Onlookers are invited to share in the suffering, and to identify with this as 'the real world'. The otherworldliness of the earlier Christ has gone. Now we are dealing with a bloke who lives in the same world as we do, with wounds spurting blood, and the pain evident for all to see. 

'God', 'the spiritual', is coming down to Earth; and I explore the theme ad nauseam.

Part Four 

As for Venice, the story is nothing so extraordinary. It was early March, but the city was like an ice box. A keen east wind blew in across the Lagoon and straight from the Eurasian interior. Those days I spent in Venice passed in brisk walking or running, simply to prevent myself from dying of cold.  

I stayed in a small hotel in Mestre, the industrial settlement just across the water from Venice proper, the place where people sleep who can't afford the City of Dreams. I slavishly followed the recommendations of my guidebook 'Let's Go: Italy' despite it having come up with accommodation bummers big-time in the past.

True to form, it deposited me in a remarkably unsuitable hostelry. It was almost empty of visitors, and the one heater in my room was completely inadequate for the weather conditions. Some merciful soul added a second blanket to the one that was there for my bed on the first night, but the evenings were spent fighting off hypothermia. I wound my jacket tight around my body and hoped I would wake up in the morning.

The city of Venice was strange: empty, melancholic, eerily silent in the Arctic sunshine. 'An enchanted cemetery' I wrote. It formed a total contrast with the Venice of life and colour that most people are familiar with.

After a few days I caught a train and headed out of town. Florence. To begin with, the Tuscan sunshine was tepid, pleasantly lukewarm. And then it snowed. The Florentines were mightily surprised.

Images: Ligurian Coast; Romanesque crucifix; Trecento crucifix by Cimabue; Venice in snow