leaving home

My shelves groan with the weight of books that conjure journeys though strange and antique lands - the maps of pre-sand Egypt to the foothills of René Daumal's elusive Mount Analogue. But finding no sane reason to embark on such a quixotic project, I have for many years merely admired their colourful pages.

Here is the unremarkable account of a middle-aged woman's attempt to map a potentially nonexistent mountain, using only ideas inexpertly and erroneously learned from books about Gurdjieff and western philosophy (begun on the auspicious occasion of Gurdjieff's birthday, Jan 13th)



DAY ONE: A wintery Berlin departure.

Mountaineering Equipment:
Georg Gurdjieff's 'Beezebub's Tales to his Grandson',
Jeane de Salzmann's 'The Reality of Being',
René Daumal's 'Mount Analogue',
transcripts of talks from Gurdjieff's Paris meetings,
the New Testament,
the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations.

Task: create conditions for morning meditation, stop delaying, fight sleep.