I had quit my job to rekindle the fire which had smoldered for two years in an absence of free time. Raindrops made a strange face at the window. I was free again.
It was decided. A trip to the stone circles of North East Scotland. I packed for a two-week retreat in Aberdeenshire. I wanted to investigate a style of monument peculiar to the lower lying territories of the Grampian Mountain range. I was sure the
I was glad I had been possessed with the urge to visit “the Grand Momma” Old Keig en route from the airport as it proceeded to snow for two days, making my retreat authentic. As I stood by the recumbent stone at Old Keig, situated on a terrace with
I was certain that the stone circles marked a turning point in mankind’s evolution; the point when the land would become ours; when in the minds of many, the affairs and needs of men were the dominant reality; when the meaning inherent in the univer
A few days later, I saw what appeared to be a wall behind some old oaks, except it was not a wall. There was no mortar, no gaps between the stones. Just one continuous smooth surface, higher than a person but shaped like a pebble, to confuse the se
A jet thundered above the hills as I ate my sandwich, rearing up vertically into the dark blue heavens just as abominable UFOs had done in my dreams, a symbol of our terrifying exploitation of natural energies. At that moment a plot came to me which
In the Neolithic (roughly 5,000 years ago), a spell was cast before the God of the North, that would break the bond between Man and Nature so that Man could develop his civilisation in isolation to the rest of creation, harnessing the planet’s resou
30th February 2017, 18:00. Notes from Kirk Tough's Grampian Revelations. "I sit in front of the Holiest Temple of them all, now swallowed up into the earth, silent and eerie. Waters spring from either side of here, and like a serpent's tongue, join
Kirk can tell when he is on the right track following a vision. The journey skips forward, and another location is revealed. Kirk is visited by a spirit voice known as Loch Kinold. Kirk believes Loch can help him find the place where the spell was c
I figured that the meaning of the stone circles would reveal the next notable turn in the plot, whether it was writing as Kirk Tough or myself. I somehow felt our lives would run in parallel anyway, or even merge.
That night, I dreamt of a stone circle. It sat at the top of a barren, conical hill below a heavy grey sky. There was no language to describe the scene at the time. I could not speak, nor did I know any words, and time ceased to exist. At that momen
The “Panic” was a very brief anomaly in human evolution. While tribalism and groupthink remained the most popular means of surviving almost any threat, it was the Self – the soul, the subject, the person – that finally gave way to panic, collapsing
During the Panic, all identities vanished as if by the removal of a critical piece of operating code. Some people did not panic and some found unexpected relief. Buddhists noticed their awakened state. People who had been asleep or under sedation du
It should also be said that animal and plant life – along with many other forms of sentience which had not become so reliant on their own taxonomies of identity, were unaffected. Interestingly, several significant AIs and even an air traffic control
On my return home from Scotland, flying back into London I could see how the machinery of progress had condensed everything; space, time, energy, even meaning. The city’s purpose and existence were the same thing, form and function expressed. Endles
The city confirmed my fundamental insight from the retreat. That meaning is intrinsic in reality; the same thing. Does meaning need a conscious mind to perceive it, or does it exist in its own right? Does the city exist outside of my mind? Does the
The neural network of man’s externalised mind is imprinted on the modern landscape like a dark, soulless, tarmac covered supercomputer. The mind of nature now exists at the margins or our awareness, labelled, mapped, measured, tapped, drilled, chann
Returning to his mission, Kirk Tough knew that somewhere in the internalised neural network of consciousness is a program that can escape from its operating system and exist in perfect black and white infinity. The program would be found in consciou
8th August 2013, 18:00. Notes from Kirk Tough's diary. “I have discovered that there are two principles governing our connection to the universe and they are entangled. The first principle is attention and the second is identification. Our attenti
31st October 2013, 21:00. Notes from Kirk Tough's Diary. “The fundamental ingredient of magic is belief. The history of our species’ advance and ascendance over all others has been one of belief. Self-belief. Belief in fate, destiny, justice, the Di
Phil Lynott’s familiar face looked at me and I hoped that somewhere he might be happy to have been given the part of Kirk, a Vagabond of the Western World. I suspected that Lynott, a respected songwriter and poet in his time, would also comment on a
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