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Perfect Days was showing at the Towner a few months back. People who'd seen it were going on about how wonderful it was. Oddly enough none of them mentioned that it was directed by Wim Wenders.

Back in the day we cineastes used to talk in terms of directors. Stars and screenwriters were secondary. The director was the man (he generally was a man)- and as much in control of the work as a novelist is of their novel. We went to see a movie because it was a Bergman movie or an Antonioni movie or- even- a Wim Wenders movie. These guys were auteurs- you knew when you went to see one of their films that you were entering a certain kind of world, that a certain kind of imagination was at play. You loved 'em, you felt an affinity- or you felt a distaste. I gave up going to Polanski's stuff because it radiated negativity. I became a Bergman completist even though, objectively speaking, some of his films were crap.

Wenders is one of the last of the old style European auteurs. And Perfect Days is one of the last of the old style auteur movies. You can see, feel, intuit that it comes from the mind that gave us Alice in the Cities way back in 1974. It was made under auteur conditions too- for very little money, with a shooting schedule (which it stuck to) of a mere 16 days, and without studio interference.

Contemporary cinema interests me very little. Maybe I'm just old. Or maybe the golden age is over and what we're being fed is silver at best. Still, if Wenders (who is 80) manages to make another movie I'll be wanting to track it down......

Splendid public toilets they have in Tokyo!

And reading up about the movie afterwards I find that the Nippon Foundation- which commissioned the toilets from a bunch of top architects- originally brought Wenders in to make what they thought would be a short documentary about them. However the project developed....

....And turned into a minimalist story film about a guy who cleans the toilets. While I watched it I was thinking "Ozu!" and it seems the makers were thinking "Ozu!" too. Lead actor Koji Yakusho is wonderful in what is almost a silent performance. His character Hirayama has a backstory that is hinted at but never disclosed. And why should we care about it anyway? Once he was something else. Now he's a saint.

"Is it a little sentimental?" I found myself wondering.

But that's my 20th century conditioning showing through.

I have two spray bottles sitting on my desk. One dispenses Vitamin B12 the other is for cleaning my glasses.

Guess which one I spritzed into my mouth this morning.....

If I were a Catholic Christian and not a Quaker (so not necessarily a Christian at all) I would currently be observing the season of Advent.

Advent is all about waiting, anticipating, looking forward- not to Christmas but to something called The Second Coming- which you can interpret as you will.

Buddhists also wait, but for them the waiting is a thing in itself, its own consummation, whereas Christian wait for something....

Huge generalisation coming up: The spirituality of the East is passive, the spirituality of the West active. Both are appropriate to the situation we find ourselves in.

I always loved Advent. For one thing it has the best hymns.

I was in the Meeting House on Thursday and a text came into my head and kept on pestering me until I gave in, picked a Bible off the table, looked it up and then read it aloud to the Friends.

Luke is talking about John the Baptist. The text that was pestering me is "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" and passage in which it is embedded goes like this:

Now in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar.....the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins- as it is written in the the book of the words of Esias the prophet, saying, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

"What's this?" asks Ailz- and half-sings a lyric that goes. "Honeymoon, honeymoon....' She's got it going through her head and she doesn't know what it is.

"No idea," I say. "Never heard it before."

Only I have. We look it up and it turns out to me a misreembered line from "By the Light of the Silvery Moon"- a song published in 1909 but fixed in the collective memory by a version sung by Doris Day nearly 50 years later. It's the epitome of the June, moon, spoon" school of song-writing- twee and sugary- but what a pretty tune!

Half a century goes by, two world wars- and all sorts of other awfulness- and it was still cutting the mustard. "How odd", I think.

But then again no odder than people still finding the Beatles cool- indeed obsessing about them- in 2025.

Last word to Noel Coward- himself no mean purveyor of charming little ditties- "Strange how potent cheap music is...."

Picture Diary 111

. Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne

2. In a hurry

3. Lizbeth

4. Wanna come up and see my etchings?

5. Welcome Stranger

6. Iced

The tamest of our pigeons has only one leg. He is the first to the food and the last to fly away when I get too close. This morning when I scattered bird seed he was the only one to show up. We call him Hoppy.

I know he's male because I've seen him perform a slightly jerky version of the pigeon courting dance.

Look away now if you're squeamish but I know how he lost his leg because I found it about a year ago in a joint of our complicated metal bird feeder. I suppose he made to fly away and it snapped. I hope it didn't hurt too much.....

In a dream last night a woman- who was both myself and someone I was observing- stood up on a chair and speechified to a table of people eating breakfast. They weren't best pleased with her because she'd mistaken the time and had got them out of bed hours too early. The speech was inspired and inspiring but all I remember of it is the line "God can come after me if he wants but I doubt that he has the guts". Later she made the same speech again but it was far less effective because she was repeating some of what she'd said before instead of delivering it in the moment.

In another dream I was wandering through a building in Oldham that was mainly a hospital. I was under the impression I'd worked there but when I couldn't remember anything about it I concluded I can't have done. I had a dog with me but the dog went missing and the gay guy who was also a dog owner said it must have gone to the kitchen. In a green space among the buildings was a huge black monument with a sculpture embedded in it of an old saint on his death bed. The monument spoke and said "Pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death" and I crossed myself because my companion was a catholic and I wanted to show respect.

Fans are always asking for more of the same, but then complain when what the so-called creatives come up with- which is imitative rather than inspired- just isn't as good as the original.

He has met everyone who was anyone in the Arts in the late 20th century but can tell you nothing of interest about them.

He drops names but they are only names.

"I met Derek Jarman..."

"And?"

"I lived in Dean Street and he was always around in Soho...."

I'd never shown my watercolours before.

One of my friends called them "terrifying"

Another said, "I see the inside of your head is even stranger than I thought."

No-one else said anything.

1. Sabbat

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2. Transformation

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3. If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him

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4. In Hiding

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A bunch of creatives got together in 2008 to celebrate the opening of the Towner Gallery by forming an organisation called Eastbourne Artists. It's still going strong- and promotes (among other things) a twice yearly Open House event- with artists throwing open their houses, galleries, workshops etc to visitors. Earlier this year we discovered in informal conversation that a whole lot of us Quakers were practising arts and crafts on the sly and decided to join in and fill the Meeting House with our stuff and open it on the day.

And the day has come. We were down at the Meeting House yesterday afternoon, making it look as much like an art gallery as we could- and today I- and several others- will be curating the result.

One thing we really want to show off is the wall hanging we commissioned from the women's art collective- Studio 11 +. We gave them the room to work in for free and they gave us the completed work- a sweet deal. I love it when there's mutual gifting and no money changes hands. The work- called Into the Light: The Quaker Way- was completed and installed a week or two back.

I'm showing five of my watercolours. I'd like to have shown some of my AI work- if only because it's more recent- but I'd rather not get into the debate about whether it's art or not.....

Picture Diary 110

1. Fishermen

2. Come, join the dance

3. Come, join the dance

4. Dorian Gray

5. If the sun fell to Earth

6. Red and Blue

"Poetry," said somebody clever, "is what gets lost in translation."

This morning I've got Verlaine rapping at the window, like the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, asking to be let in.

"Come in, come in to where it's warm" I say.

But he's a miserable cove.

"Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l' 'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'un langeur
Monotone...."

"What's that in English?" I ask.

But it can't be done. It's not just about the meaning of the words it's about the vowel sounds. The deep, resonant bass of all those "o"s. Render "sanglots" as "sobs" or "sighs" and you've already lost the essence of what he's telling us. The thing he has to say is trite, the sound of it in French- but only in French- is profound.

So off he goes again into the chill and the damp, hands in pockets. slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, weaving about in his wild and melancholic French way.

The man who makes self-pity beautiful......

I'm using an oral spray that pumps me full of Vitamin B12- which is something one apparently needs to keep healthy. It tastes of orange but not quite- and takes me straight back to childhood and tthe house I grew up in and the perky little pills my mother used to give me. They contained fish oil, with the flavour masked by fake orange. I liked them. They were called "Haliborange"- and I find to my surprise that in spite of the off-putting name- the brand still flourishes....

What else did I get to consume for the benefit of my health? Well, there was some gloptious, sticky brown stuff- also containing fish oil- that one was fed on a spoon. I believe it maiinly consisted of brewer's yeast. I didn't hate it. If I worked at it I could probably remember the name- but why bother?

And then when one was ill in bed one got an energy drink called lucozade. It was sweet and sparkling and tasted of chemicals- but in a good way. This still exists- and I ordered some in a cafe the other day- only they brought me a version that tasted of lemons instead of the peculiar but delicious original.....

Every so often Quora sends me a debate about the historicity of Jesus and I go upstairs to have a shower and find I'm thinking about it.

Albert Schweitzer wrote a brilliant book on the Search for the Historical Jesus which is both scholarly and funny. He concluded every one who has written about Jesus creates an image of him in accord with their age and culture and individual predilections and the actual Jesus- if he even existed- is unknowable and, being so far away in time- quite alien to us.

Did he even exist? That's an open question. As with Lao Tzu, Buddha and Mohammed, all the early scriptures and chronicles date from a good while after his supposed lifetime. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that you don't create figures like this out of whole cloth- and that there was almost certainly a real person- however poorly attested and badly reported- on whom the legend was built. For the record I think the same to be true of King Arthur and Robin Hood.

But the bigger point is that it doesn't matter. The legend and the teachings are what they are. Take from them what you can use.

Something one of the people at the Zoom Meeting said last night.

"The first Quakers were rule breakers"

I think we should put that in the present tense and think about it.

"Quakers are rule breakers"

The first Quakers were awkward buggers with a shared vision who met in one another's houses and the open air. Since their time we've burdened ourselves with traditions and rule books and structures of governance.

And it's these secondary things that are threatened by the unpleasantness that occured at the Area meeting the Sunday before last.

Traditions and rule books and structures of governance are breaking down across the world. It's the distinguishing mark of our times. Did we think we'd be exempt?

And if traditions and rule books and structures of governance are all we have left we will be beaten into dust and serve us right.....

I have received an invitation to a Zoom Meeting which includes the words "strong feelings" and "complex issues"- and I think "O, bugger!"

Strong feelings and complex issues usually proceed from ego. Ego is a game we get to play while we're slumming it on planet Earth. It consists of putting on a mask and making like the mask is who we really are. The game consists of people exchanging sallies like, "My mask is prettier than yours" and "how come your mask has gold leaf on it and mine hasn't?" and "How dare you laugh at my mask!" After a while (many incarnations perhaps) it gets to be tiresome.

I've been thinking about Oscar Wilde recently. He's worth listening to on the subject of masks....

Windy, rainy morning. I haven't been outside yet but I think the rain may be edging towards sleet. One has to make a special effort to be cheerful in weather like this.

And that's what Christmas is about. At least in essence. Under the crust of money-making and schmaltz it's about making a special effort to be cheerful. Sometimes it comes across as fake- but at least we're trying.

Glossy green holly leaves, bright red holly berries, candles, mince pies, carols, the magi in their stiff, bejewelled copes bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh......