Alan Watts

Watts stack.

With this, I am perhaps turning the last page on my research of the counterculture. When I finished “Retreat” I took a road which led me into the unusual terrain of self-help literature and the applications of psychoanalysis to business. That resulted in the comic book “TPM” which I remember as being incredibly satisfying to make. In due course, I’m going to do another print run of that.

In 2022, I was also busy with the “The ‘S’ Word,” another counterculture book, but about music and spirituality. Simultaneously, starting in August 2021, I was reading the books that informed “The Garden.”

Coming out of “The Garden”, headed back-to-reality as it were, I’m not inclined just yet to go on another research trip. I need to sort things out here on the material plane otherwise, as Stephen Gaskin put it, I’ll be “flappin’ in the breeze.” Therefore, currently, I only have a small pile of books to work through. Top of that list, sayonara to the mystic counterculture if you like, was Alan Watts’ autobiography “In My Own Way” (1973) which came out the year of his death.

I’ve read a number of Watts’ books, and they are uniformly enjoyable. Reading Alan is quite like reading a blog by someone very erudite. His writing is characterised by his freewheeling and informal authorial tone, which, because you’ve heard recordings of it, you can hear in your head. And he confesses many times in “In My Own Way” that he enjoys the sound of his own voice. His meeting with Carl Jung in 1958 is somehow emblematic of this, he reflects upon it that Jung “spent almost the whole time asking questions.” That’s another way of saying that although Alan was greatly impressed by Jung’s warmth, intelligence, and sense of fun, he didn’t really seize the opportunity to shut up and listen to him.

To be fair to Watts, this enjoyment of his own voice forms a part of his very healthy self-love. As he elegantly puts it, “since it is written that you must love your neighbour as yourself.” There’s not enough of that around. What we see on social media is the opposite, people showing off in a misguided attempt to curry each other’s respect and affection.

He’s certainly read all the important texts, and spoken to all the relevant people, but he lays it down in a very relaxed and non-judgemental way. But if the arguments in the books are always cogent, they are, even if he intended it so, a little thin on substance.

Mount Fuji across Paddy Fields.

There was a great deal I liked. I loved the numerous references to gardens, gardening, and gardeners (the last always satisfyingly grouped together with other denizens of the alternative underground: “…wizards, yogis, artists, poets, musicians, gardeners and madmen…”). Watts’ account of the potency of matcha confirmed what I suspected from my experience of it, “Mac-ha or koi-cha, the powdered green teas used for the ceremony, would doubtless be banned in this country if they were widely known, for, taken in strength, they are highly conducive to the states of consciousness characteristic of Zen meditation…”. And I jotted down notes of further places to visit from his luminous descriptions of Japan, should I ever get the chance to return…

However, what has really lingered with me is his, not exactly comfort, but acceptance of himself as a “weird” fellow, following his own “weird”. That’s something that I too am beset with. Indeed, close friends have advised me to dial it up a little more! Watts quotes at length this story from the Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu:

The area of Ching-shih in the state of Sung grows fine catalpas, cypresses, and mulberries. But those of more than one or two spans in girth are cut down for monkey-perches; those of three or four for ridgepoles, and those of seven or eight for the solid sides of coffins for the wealthy. Thus they do not attain the normal term of their lives, and fall in mid-career to the axe. This is the danger of being useful.

In sacrifices of purgation one does not use bulls with white foreheads, pigs with large snouts, nor men with piles as offerings to the river. This has been revealed to the soothsayers, and such creatures are therefore held inauspicious [for sacrifice]. The sage, however, would regard them as highly auspicious.

Then there was a hunchback named Su. His chin touched his navel. His shoulders were above his head. His pigtail pointed to the sky. His innards were upside-down, and his thighs were against his ribs. By tailoring and laundering he made enough to live, and by winnowing grain he produced enough to feed ten. But when the authorities conscripted soldiers he stood in the crowd waving them off, and when a work-party was pressed into service he was passed up as an invalid. Yet when they doled out grain for the needy, he got three full measures as well as ten bundles of firewood. If a weird body helps a man live out his full term, how much greater would be the use of a weird character!

Brown Rice and Aduki Beans

 Craig Sams, who I have had the good fortune to interview for both my books published by Repeater, “Retreat” and “The Garden”, has used AI to make a song about Macrobiotic food. It came out rather well.

Sams makes the point that there’s almost nothing about Macrobiotics mentioned in the body of popular music. This is indeed strange given how massive the diet was in the hippie era.

In my research for Retreat I only came across two musical references, Don Cherry’s “Brown Rice”, and Bob Dylan in “On the Road Again” (“So I get brown rice, seaweed and a dirty hot dog.”) Sams had another good one, a novelty hit by Larry Groce, “Junk Food Junkie.”

Sams says the diet, “kept me in good health after I was unwell with hepatitis from my travels in Afghanistan and India.” At SEED, the restaurant favoured by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, he and his brother Gregory served Macrobiotic food.

From my library: Craig Sams’ book on Macrobiotics from 1972.

Macrobiotics wasn’t a diet per se – my own take on it was that it was a method of balancing your food to establish some particular cosmic accord. If you wanted the etheric high of a cave-dwelling saint, you should eat only brown rice: “Yin”. If you were prepared to slum it with the rest of us in samsara, you could have some whiskey: “Yang.”

However, it tended to be understood by the hippies as an injunction to only eat brown rice. In fact, if Macrobiotics is understood correctly, any grain would suffice! Researching for “The Garden” I came across self-sufficiency guru John Seymour quite correctly decrying this:

It is ridiculous for a whole generation of freaks in Britain to grow up thinking that the only good food to eat is “brown rice”, for example. We don’t grow rice in Britain. We grow wheat, and we should eat that – it’s a much better food than rice anyway.

John Seymour “I’m a Stranger Here Myself” (1978)

Macrobiotics books in my library.

I really went deep into researching Macrobiotics because, frankly, the depth is there. George Ohsawa’s early philosophical tract “The Unique Principle” (1931), published by the extremely highbrow and respected Vrin imprint, is one of the best books one can read about Eastern philosophy. In 2018, I visited sites in Kyoto frequented by Ohsawa and most notably the Macrobiotic HQ in Tokyo. I wonder if it is still there?

 

Findhorn and the Hippies

 

Article at Celebrating One Incredible Family

RHS Level 2 Principles

My stack of course notes.

Between August 2021 and December 2024 I was researching and writing this forthcoming book about gardening, growing, and farming. Yes, I did learn a lot about those topics in my reading, watching, and interviewing (and can confirm, looking back with what I know now, that I didn’t make any mistakes!) – but I wanted to double down on that research for three reasons. Firstly, I wanted to make sure I really knew from a scientific and practical point of view what I was talking about. Secondly, I wished to learn more about plants purely out of personal interest. And thirdly, I had a view that this might be a qualification useful to me to get work. What shape that work would take, still not being totally clear to me yet.

Something that came up whenever I was looking into this area, as I was as early as October 2020, was the Royal Horticultural Society’s Level 2 qualifications. I’m glad I waited, because in September 2022 the course was updated, and it’s more appropriate to my interests now. There’s now a strong emphasis on biodiversity and sustainability. And with the introduction of conceptual tools like the Garden Health Plan (which combines abiotic and other factors with previous techniques like Integrated Pest Management to create a panoptic view of health), the whole course is by definition holistic in its perspective.

The RHS: Not just about ornamental horticulture.

Before making the leap, I reached out to legendary gardener Jack Wallington, author of the classic “Wild about Weeds” and he kindly reassured me that the course was also very applicable to vegetable growing. Indeed, the RHS isn’t just about ornamental horticulture. Many of the figures in its hall of fame have an interest in what’s termed “productive growing” and “edible landscapes” – like, for instance, Rosemary Verey and William Robinson. Any residual snootiness towards growing food seems to be, if not entirely absent, then gradually eroding away. Certainly the high rigour and impeccable standards of the RHS are exceptionally useful in that sphere.

 

At the end of July last year I made a start revising for the RHS Level 2 Principles exam (on the right in the image above). The Practical half of the course is more weighted towards ornamental horticulture which, at the moment at least, I am less interested in. For instance, I’ll wager that 95% of the plants one is expected to identify in the Practical course are jazzy shrubs, roses, and ornamental grasses. However, to the contrary, I’m happiest identifying: flowers that pollinators like, herbs, fruit, wild flowers, weeds, crops, and trees. And I was able to bend the Principles’ syllabus to accommodate that preference. Indeed, I leave the course with a huge “My Plants” spreadsheet which I compiled of plants that I love which illustrate various horticultural points. For giggles check out this large entry, only one of 238, which I compiled:

Like other of the Rosaceae family can be affected by fireblight. A lack of calcium causes malformed dead cells scattered through the fruit called “bitter pit”. Apples suffer from apple scab, powdery mildew, orchard fireblight etc. Seed designed to be eaten and then pass through the digestive system of birds or mammals far from the parent plant. Fleshy portion removed if planting horticulturally. An important early-flowering resource for bumblebees and mining bees and a key nectar resource for early hoverflies and bee-flies. Orchard trees decay more quickly than say Oak and cavities which open out in them can be homes for Great tits and Spotted woodpeckers. Orchards also home for Bracket fungi. Different cultivars of apples require different cumulative hours of cold in the winter to produce flower buds. Chemical inhibitors prevent germination. Self-incompatible – has to be pollinated by a different plant.

My Malus domestica (apples innit) spreadsheet entry

Another advantage of the Principles course is that it can be done remotely – but that’s changing with the advent of at least one provider offering blended learning for the Practical course.

 

One of the most highly recommended texts. My edition already out of date.

The RHS Level 2 material is typically described as being equivalent in difficulty to a GCSE. It’s been 37 years since I sat one of those! However, and here’s the clincher, the volume of information is enormous. One of my fellow course mates had this to say, “I came into Horticulture after 27 years of teaching GCSE at secondary level. Compared to what I have taught, the level of detail and volume of work in the syllabus seems massive.”

Add to this the ornate and convoluted way that the RHS asks questions, (from the same observer), “It felt as though the questions were deliberately trying to trip you up or focusing in on one minute detail rather than being a test of your breadth of knowledge.” That tricky way of asking questions (where it’s also not entirely clear what you’re supposed to be replying with in your answer), tripped me up on multiple occasions in my revision. It led, depressingly, to numerous failed pilot tests and dismal marks, even when I was reasonably confident of the material.

 

Peter Dawson’s swan-song. A handy resource for both Principles and Practical courses.

I do hope that none of this discourages people from doing the RHS Level 2 Principles course. If you get a decent provider with solid learning material, then it’s totally great. Bloody marvellous. I LOVED IT. I learned so much, and was genuinely fascinated by 99% of the material. Only garden design, of which there is only a little, left me cold – and to be fair, I am coming at all this from what is to most people today a very weird angle.

I sat the two unit exams this Monday and Tuesday after cramming the material very hard through December and January. I won’t get the results for a few months – and I’m really hoping I pass. However, if I fail I will pick myself up again and have another crack at it. It will be another opportunity to learn some more wonderful information

Fosco Mariani on Life

 

An edition of Fosco Mariani “Secret Tibet” with debossed Mani mantras.

I stumbled across this passage a few years ago in Fosco Mariani’s “Secret Tibet” (1951) – one of the great accounts of travel in Tibet before the Chinese occupation. Very beautifully and without recall to superstition, it encapsulates the vedic idea of the individual human’s spirit as a fragment of the larger universal consciousness; I think it would make an excellent reading for a funeral.

Running water reminds one strangely of human life. It first emerges so thin and small and devoid of strength. In its infancy it runs sparkling through meadows, among flowers and shining stones. Then the waters gain in weight and vigour and rush downhill; their youth is bold and happy, a time of singing and dancing in the sun, celebrating noisy marriages with tributaries, forming crazy little waterfalls and exultant little lakes. All is joy and high spirits. But gradually the slope diminishes, and the stream grows and becomes a river; youth turns into manhood. Its course is now more regular; it no longer runs crazily, but has become sensible and strong. It is less beautiful, but has become useful to agriculture and industry. What makes it attractive now is its calm, serene maturity. Enthusiasm, love, passion, beauty, have given way to quiet, useful purposefulness. At last it imperceptibly approaches the estuary; the lagoon-like expanses, the sadness and sweetness of old age. Then it once more mixes with the original waters.

Fosco Mariani: “Secret Tibet” p287-288