The Ned Wood Archive

Sail me on a silver sun

where I know I’m free

Show me that I’m everywhere and

get me home for tea

Steve Hillage

Well, Chris turned up on the Tuesday evening.  I was a bit worried at first when I heard the knock on the door cos I was playing some Steve Hillage hippie shit music which I used to enjoy in those days and I didn’t think it should be widely known that I was still listening to that stuff.  But I’d forgotten to expect Chris and it being Chris meant it didn’t matter what I was playing.  In fact he quite liked the stuff.  I reached down to change the record and he said ‘It’s your soul I’m after, not your vinyl’.

It was about half eight and I’d been trying to get down to some work, but without any luck.  The sun had been crashing in through my window all evening like waves crashing onto a beach, however, now it had mellowed and I was soaking the last few rays up before it disappeared behind the trees.  I’d got a west-facing window because I’d done something noble in a previous life.

Anyway I wasn’t really working, so Chris coming was a useful distraction.  He suggested we went for that walk again, so I was game.  Like I said, it had been one of those brilliant clear blue evenings that you only get in novels so I thought it was a good idea.  He’d walked over from Derby Road, he said with the explicit purpose of getting me to join him in some moon gazing.  This is what he’d suggested in the coffee bar, but I hadn’t really taken him seriously.

“What?”  I asked.

“Moon Gazing,” he said, “husking rice, a child squints up to view the moon”.

“Go on.”  I was puzzled.  Chris was cool, but this was a little too wacky for me.

“We’re going to meditate under the full moon, which is tonight.  We’ll find a sequestered place on the common and sit observing the beauty of the moon while our minds are cleansed.  Zen Masters like Basho did it all the time.”

“Basho?”

“Yep, the banana man.  A true star”

No.  I’m cabbaged.  Completely bubbled and squeaked.  Really confused.  So Chris explains all about Mr Basho and his haiku which are just these simple phrases or short poems that capture an idea or a moment, but in reality all the work, all the imagination is on the part of the listener.  The haiku just kicks you off.  Like that one he said about the kid preparing the rice.  You invent the bowl and the stone floor and the cottage he’s sat outside and the bamboo shade that partially obscures his view, causing him to notice the moon suddenly as the breeze blows.

Some other day Chris and Bernie were talking about haiku which Chris was forever inventing, but I never managed.  Chris said something about them being full of spaces that you fill in and Bernie said just like on the Clash album – which as you know is a bit like reggae when it deliberately drops the instruments or the vocals.  Chris laughed, but Bernie was inspired to invent his famous Ramones haiku:

Four brothers, three chords
Two minutes, one song
1-2-3-4

Chris said Bernie should publish it.  He tried.  He sent it in to Wessex News, hoping for a big royalty cheque, but they didn’t print it.  They were only into Camel and Caravan and crap like that.

But, anyway, now it was just me and Chris tripping down the avenue so I asked Chris: “Why just me?  Why no Bernie?”

“You’ve got what it takes, Riff,” he said.  “I can see in your eyes that you’ve an honest mind.  That’s the first thing.  Then you’ve got the desire to see it through.  We’ll make a Buddhist of you yet.  Bernie, bless him, will get there by a different route.”

But Chris, for all his enlightenment, wasn’t psychic.  Or maybe he was and he just didn’t let on.  I certainly hadn’t noticed that there were clouds drifting in from the south.  It was getting dark, but there weren’t going to be too many stars out.  I looked up and realised this was the darkness of impending rain.  I still followed Chris as he found an isolated clearing and sat down, but by then the sky was completely covered.

“Too bad, Riff.  Looks like you’re mind isn’t pure enough yet,” he said, then stood up again and walked off over in the direction of Derby Road, cutting straight through the bushes and vanishing before I could call him back.  I was left to kick my heels, catch the first drips of southern rain, and meditate on climate.