This week, week 9, we’re completely on track again, solid sleeping, solid eating, all smiles.

Next week is looking good too, a ski trip to Morzine (French Alps) together with my sister (his godmother), my sister’s husband, and her kid (my godchild). Last year there was almost no snow, this year there’s supposed to be plentiful – you don’t even have to bother looking up snow reports.

Ps. The idea was for me to start looking into a few other options as of week 7 (with him in nursury) but all that has been temporarily suspended, or will be second fiddle to the kid.

Peter Heigl: Mystiek en Drugs (126p.)

Peter Heigl’s Mystiek en Drugs (originally Mystik und Drogenmystik – has not been translated in English) reminded me of how much I like to read non-fiction, which was my staple between 2000 and 2004, later to be replaced by fiction.

In this pleasant little book (which fell into my hands in a derelict bookstore downtown Ghent while waiting for the windshield of my car to be replaced) and after examining the evidence, Peter Heigl concludes that to the question whether psychedelics can induce genuine mystical experiences (similar to those described within the world’s major wisdom traditions) the answer is an affirmative yes, and proceeds with investigating the ethical, religious, and philosophical consequences. Naturally, such genuine mystical experiences are the exception rather than the rule (in one experiment only the experiences of 6 out of 206 participants classified), and require not only a proper dosage and setting, but most importantly a proper ‘set’ as well, i.e. for the recipient to be in the possession of a well-integrated personality structure, and an open and creative mindset already pre-disposed to religion and spirituality.

According to some sources, psychedelics are even what boosted man’s outlook from animistic to mystic/religious to begin with; otherwise said, in the psychedelic experience lies the kernel of all religious feeling and thought. The Aryans who conquered India carried Soma with them which they had gotten acquainted with in their native Central-Asian highlands, and which became a key element in Vedantic religion. As the Aryans further penetrated the Indian lowlands (where Soma didn’t grow), they developed yoga to foster the same psychological conditions (conducive to spirituality) as Soma had done before. (In a remarkable reversal, Timothy Leary much later dubbed LSD the ‘yoga of the West.’)

John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath (476p.)

I used to score books here on the Mountaintop, as in Alberto Moravia The Conformist 9 Mountaintops, until one night I woke and sat, beads of sweat lining my forehead, in panic at the thought of so much foolishness, the talentless a posteriori bookkeeping of someone else’s a priori talent. I got myself a hand pick (Steinbeck: a han’ pick) and tore apart the cabinet, only retaining the top drawer, 10 Mountaintops, in which I had previously stored away (out of the last four years of reading only) Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, Don DeLillo’s Underworld, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and to which I’m now adding John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck busies a colloquial version of American English which might intimidate fair-weather readers not used to reading in English (‘something’ as ‘somepin’’), but it fits the Joad family wonderfully well, a hardened family of sharecroppers forced to flee native Oklahoma (Dust Bowl) during the Great Depression, migrant Okies on the way to California, a tale of unspeakable suffering in times of a changing economy.

Steinbeck himself quoted that “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” but maybe even more so The Grapes of Wrath is as powerful an anti-globalization statement (50 years before globalization became mainstream in the mid 80s), as Animal Farm is against communism or 1984 against totalitarianism.

Nobel Prize Literature 1962.

For those who have nine minutes to spare (I think you should): Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello (RATM) in a brilliant live rendition of Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, named after the main character in The Grapes of Wrath.

(Hard times on Wall Street, hard times on Main Street.)

A beautiful spring day it was, full bloom daffodils in the lawn in front of the village church like so many stars in a milky way, and when Bodhi woke, I took him for a short walk, merely for fun – let it be clear I walked him many a times because I had to. We walked, getting ready for his daily mash, cauliflower, potato, a dollop of olive oil, which went down well, a sigh of relief, a mash gone down well usually means smooth sailing for the rest of the day.

I met up again with the lady at noon, the three of us, hidden somewhere at the back of a small mom and pop restaurant close to where she works, I won’t divulge the address here. Rarely do I savor the warmth of a small close-knit family unit more than when we sneak off for lunch, at least once a week, and sidestep society’s business for a wasted hour, splendid isolation, le plus beau temps c’est le temps perdu.

He slept long when my boy and me got home, and woke up ablaze with anger, the unexpected tantrum, which I only succeeded in dispelling by manning up for yet another walk and delaying his next bottle with half an hour. In the meantime word had come from the post office, confirming the arrival of his (second-hand) first ski suit (we’re off to Morzine in February), which I subsequently collected and brought home unopened, as I happily defer this small pleasure to someone who cherishes it more than I do.

I then showered, shaved, cut a pineapple, watched some television (all while keeping him cool), eagerly listening for a sound, the sound of a car driving up our lot, the sound of a key turning, the sound that signifies changing of the guards for me, treats for the cats, the arrival of primary care giver-1 for Bodhi (and another bottle), the sound of the lady getting home. All is well.

There are of course the 10 million songs (but no Beatles), there’s the automatic recognition of local libraries (bye bye iTunes), and I just wonder whether Spotify to some extent does not signify the end of radio either, due to the ease with which music can be shared and tuned into, from a variety of sources. As a tool for getting to know new music, Spotify is the peerless prom queen. In addition and last but not least, Spotify is legal. (The erosion of the album concept (as opposed to individual songs) probably started with the advent of MP3s already.)

All in all, I’m greatly impressed (but find myself listening a big chunk of my music time to Neil, Bobby, and Jimi regardless).

Bless Spotify.