The Hidden Path

Yes, you have found it. It is the hidden path to transcendence, long used by those wise gardeners in the forgotten days of the Four Emperors.

Okay, that was so much hokum.

This is an uninspired piece done when I was having a coffee with Colin at Oscars at Conrad Hotel on late Saturday night. Evil Wilson didn't show up. Grrr... I can't blame him. Phew. It was so humid and warm throughout all afternoon.

I visited Borders on Friday night and ended up talking to a professor of comparative religions at the history section. He taught history formerly. He was apparently picking up books before heading off to China for a few months. It was an interesting discourse, exhilarating to say the least. He was teaching at an institution at Oslo for twelve years. Previously, he was in Germany. He had mentioned that he had not lived in his native Spain for twenty-six years.

He told me of his extensive travels and that he had visited China with a Spanish delegation in 1975 during the Cultural Revolution. He noted that the bookstores in China were only selling one title at that moment in time. He had been to the Altai Mountains, at least, on the Chinese side of it. The Altai Mountains, of course, is a mountain range that traverses Mongolia, Russia and China. Astounding! He had seen the chaos that is Nepal not too long ago and when I asked of the current Maoist rebellion, he described this as being a strange civil war where both sides, government and Maoist have an agreement not to touch foreigners and he was able to travel throughout a large part of Nepalese countryside when he was there. He had been to Andorra, Monaco, Luxembourg. He had seen San Marino, well, the breath of the entire nation!

We spoke a little on El Cid, then the naming of the Spanish towns, then, the different groups that have resided in Spain over time, from the Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, Celts, North Africans (Muslims), Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and Basques. We spoke of the mysterious isolated Basque linguistic group and also of the Magyars whose lingustic roots are of the Finno-Ugric group.

In the course our discussion, we touched on Franco's reluctance to enter the Second World War and his deliberately impossible conditions that he presented to Hitler for joining the Axis Powers and also how he got rid of the more radical elements of the society via forming the volunteer Spanish blue division and sending them to the Eastern Front!

Topics we discussed included Mehmet the Conqueror, the writing of South East Asian history, Tacitus' 'Annals', the deliberate suppression of the media in certain societies, an accurate history of this region untouched by nationalistic sentiments, Sufism, Zoroastrian faith, the socialist systems of the Nordic and Germanic nations, the strains of life in the Scandinavian countries and the high suicide rates in some of the places, a book on medieval Chinese warfare, city states and small states like Andorra, Lichenstein, Luxembourg, San Marino, Florence and Venice, the free city of Danzig.

When I bumped into him again at Burger King later, he showed that he had an affinity for maps. He could draw the political maps of Europe over a long period of time except the Napoleonic era. He was drawing the Courland, Poland-Luthuania, Danzig and the coast. I was amazed at his ability and I think he was amazed that I could easily recognise it off the ketchup-stained napkin he was drawing on. Hahaha.

He told me that he owns 7000-8000 volumes of books and he had them stored in a warehouse. Buying books had become a consuming habit for him. Likewise, myself.

This has been one of the most interesting discussions I have had this year. The past few weeks was interesting. I have spoken to the very interesting Norman Spinrad who I learned from his website that he had been involved in the mediocre French film, 'Druids'. I wished I had a greater chance to speak to Sterling and Sawyer. One can't ask for everything, can one?