Author: quantumdreamer

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Is It Me Being Self Important?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

At the moment the wife is checking though the forest of paperwork for tomorrow’s putative appointment. I asked her opinion, “do you really think it is worth getting it all together and going down to the hospital tomorrow?” It has taken me well over half an hour. There are a lot of test results.

This is the kind of doubt sown by unilateral cancellation without communication. There is in my mind a significant chance we will be back here soon. We will not be having a full fun hospital themed day out. It is just over an hour round trip.

Viewed from one angle I can see that things must conform to how they are supposed to be. In my view it would have been decent to have saved me the trip on Monday. I am not yet fully telepathic.

There is a saying about buses that you wait for a bus for ages and then three come along all at once. I have had two appointments cancelled already this week…am I jinxing it again?

Is it me being self-important or do some people need to brush up on their interpersonal skills, their consideration for others?

The jury is out. It is probably me… it usually is…it is always all my fault.

The bottom line is that it does not really matter to anyone but me if I tip up or not. Nobody has rung to confirm. Is that my job? Someone else could easily take my slot…I am sure there are many people in need.

It is a weird feeling…there is a planning blight now hanging over…this need not have happened…

We shall see what transpires…

Psilocybin Zwitterion or Breaking Bad – the T-shirt problem…

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————

I was so upset that I cried

All the way to the chip shop

When I came out there was Gordon

Standing at the bus stop

And guess who was with him?

Yeah, Julie

And they were both laughing at me

—

Oh, she is cruel and heartless

To pack me for Gordon

Just cos he’s better looking than me

Just cos he’s cool and trendy

–

But I know he’s a moron

Gordon is a moron

Gordon is a moron

Gordon is a moron

–

Jilted John

———

This morning I am wearing a black t-shirt with a rainbow coloured molecular structure of the psilocybin zwitterion. This is what it is mostly like at blood pH. In the past I was partial to a few shrooms. When you go to a pharmacy or hospital it attracts attention. I have had a prostate specific antigen {PSA} test done this morning which will advise as to yet another MRI and/or prostate biopsy. There was a black woman in the queue who looked at the molecule, caught my eye and smiled.

I have a series of t-shirts which can catch eyes in hospitals “trust me I am a doctor” , “Schrödinger’s cat is dead / alive” superposition, psilocybin zwitterion and a Breaking Bad Heisenberg t-shirt. In general I don’t wear the Schrödinger t-shirt to hospitals because people see the “dead” word. There is a bit of a sense of humour failure here in France. In the UK these t-shirts usually spark some kind of comment, a bit of banter.

Since I have been here I have been systematically treated as if I am a bit of an “anglais-moron” according to my interpretation of events. I have yet to find a solution to the problem of forewarning people about my background and what I am capable of. It was rarely a problem in the UK because medics ask your profession there. The Imperial word can have effect.

Problem:

“Is there a way to stop being treated a priori as a moron?”

As I was waiting in the phlebotomy vampire queue I heard the dulcet tones of Jilted John in my mind. It occurred to me that I need to get a white t-shirt  printed in large black {WHAM style} letters. On the front it would say, “My name is not Gordon” on the back it would say “I am not a fucking moron”.

In short I don’t think that there is a way especially since I am now a quasi-crippled semi-obese grey of a certain age.

I did think briefly that I should learn sign language. So that I could start signing instead of talking.

Hey ho…

I am pretty sure that it is unwise to wear a psilocybin zwitterion or Breaking Bad t-shirt when going through customs. Though a part of me wants to do the experiment…the results could be uncertain.

South Kensington Bank – KGB – Dream 08-10-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream. Where this came from I do not know.

The dream opens in a small plush bank very near South Kensington tube station. It is a private bank and the sense is it is for the well and ultra-well heeled. It has a distinctly Russian flavour and a faint whiff of oligarch. I am talking with a cash teller about some different kinds of account. She is slick and very professional. Her English is crisp-perfect and she is immaculate. I feel at home and safe. As usual the posh circumstance does not faze me. She gives me some literature to look at. As I go to leave a man in his thirties who works at the bank starts to engage me in conversation. He looks physically fit and his stance is “fighting” balanced. He continues to probe about me and my business.

I ask him , “KGB?”

He pauses to think and then says, “Yes, well not quite, something similar, more modern.” As he says this he allows a faint Russian accent to show. We smile in good spirits and I leave the bank.

I know that I will recognise him if I ever see him again.

I return some time later with a tall woman with dark hair. She is expensively dressed and partially eastern European. We go into the bank and I help arrange various financial currency instruments to be cashed, if needed, in global locations when she is on her travels. There is a sense that sanctions against Russia have made this more tricky. We leave the bank and are followed by thick set big man well over six feet. He has a very expensive lather jacket and close cropped blond hair. He has a ruddy face and I know that he is fond of a good piss up.

We head off down towards the tube station. He is behind us. As we are going down the stairs we are met by another Russian coming up the stairs. He stands in front of the woman and sort of ushers her back upstairs like a sheep. I draw a telescopic police baton and open it. The man on the stairs pauses. She looks at me and by gesture says for me to desist. These men are known to her. They work for her “father”. We all go upstairs to a large car / limousine waiting on the road. She is ushered in to the back seat. I go to join her but the leather jacket man says no. I am not to worry they and she will be in contact with me soon. All sense of tension has evaporated.

I head off to the tube station collapsing the telescopic baton as I do. As I go down the steps into the station I make a note in the dream to avoid London like the plague and to stay well away from South Kensington in particular.

The dream ends.

As I come to I am reminded of when I walked into a commercial posh bank in Kensington ~25 years ago. I was dressed as per usual in black Levis’ and a polo shirt. I said that I wanted to open an account. They were pretty sceptical. I said that we had just raised  £5 million start-up funds. They ushered me into a posh office for a coffee and metaphorical BJ. In an instant their tone had changed.

On waking I have an intuition that should anyone intervene personally with me it is most likely to be the Russians.

Another Spam SMS?

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I guess in modern parlance one could say that I was gaslit about having an appointment yesterday. I was certainly discombobulated when I got there as was the wife when I texted her about it. Perhaps we were having a shared hallucination.

Maybe it was just a spam text purporting to come from the medical centre. Maybe they never sent it. Perhaps it was Putin or Lukashenko.

–

–

We have recently received another SMS purporting to be from the same outfit. A reminder for an “appointment”.

I do not know how to take this…nor what to do…

Alms Bowl Mentality – pārasaṃgate – nagal Woman dream 07-10-2025

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It is full moon.

Yesterday I was very upset close to the point of outrage that someone could cancel an appointment I made, without asking me. And that the imaging centre would accept someone else cancelling an appointment I made without checking first with me. The fact that I received an electronic confirmation of appointment on Friday afternoon and then to arrive on Monday morning to be told there is no appointment is beyond the pale. It is piss poor and shoddy. Outrageous even. Very un-impeccable. I struggled to park it before trying to sleep.

Last night I had an intuition about how to phrase my orientation to life and it was “alms bowl mentality”. In that I am generally happy with what life and the universe offers me. I am not acquisitional or greedy. I am not about self-advancement nor gaining apparent kudos from others in a socio-political sense. This means that I lack the social ambition for “success” in academia and the common world. I am not hard wired nor bought in to the metrics. I do not seek power or position.

I have a look to see what is in my alms bowl and that usually suffices. In a way it makes sense with my prior putative reincarnations.

I nodded off.

I awoke at around 3:15 AM and struggled to go back to sleep because my mind was filled with the ridiculousness of what happened during the day. I struggled to believe that it could actually happen. I realised that I am somehow having to try to transmute this before the next alleged appointment if indeed it is to take place. I know myself well enough to suspect that I might manifest at my most monosyllabic and ultra logical picky if I do not transmute. People will know something is off. I could easily turn into viva-prof questioning mode.

Because I was having trouble parking the notion I decide to practice a full “phowa” consciousness withdrawing and death meditation. To keep my hand in should it be needed if things continue to go wrong. This is a rehearsal for withdrawing the life thread from the physical vehicle. So I began with silent chanting:

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

This is the going beyond mantram. Pretty soon I was deep in meditation. I was able to construct the thought forms relatively easy and built the consciousness and images I associate with inter alia Amitabha and Ganesh. I know the Ganesh is the destination for me.

The meditation energised me.

After a while I noted the visual field beginning to fill with my dreaming colour. I relaxed into the dreaming colour to see what it might have to offer.

The dream starts in a mansion / training facility conference centre nearby a single track railway. It is in the country but proximal to civilisation. The course is winding up. I have been the key facilitator. The course has been held such that each break out room corresponded to one of the four directions in the rule of the four pronged nagal. Needless to say the personnel in each room are flavoured by the direction and dressed accordingly. I take a young man down to the station in a motor cycle with side car. He and I have known each other long and he must go off ahead.

Back in the centre the course is winding up. The East room is tidy. In the plenary are gathered several of the participants. I do not understand why I am seeing the rule of the four, it is a quirk. The general feel is upbeat.

In the corner of the plenary on a wooden easel is a framed portrait of a woman. The frame is wide and ornate and the picture is at an angle. The woman in the picture is slightly younger than me, corpulent and is painted as an ~18th century portrait. Her name is written on a plaque. I recall and remember the name.

Sat quietly in the corner of the room is a woman who matches the portrait. She is in an unremarkable pastel yellow dress with light brown hair and untanned complexion. I walk over to her and say that I suppose that we should talk. I hold out my right hand to take her left hand in mine. We are both a bit apprehensive. I can see that she has a wedding and engagement ring on her hand. She is married. Her hand is tiny and older than her face. The moment I take her hand in mine I can feel her heart and am aware that she can feel mine. She says that the feeling is nearly too much. I agree.

I can feel my heart opening very wide and ultra-vulnerable. It still feels like that now as I type. I know that she is nagal woman. In that instant I can no longer recall the features of the other attendees. All I can see is her. I know that were we to meet in real life the recognition would be strong.

I am a little blown away at the unexpected nature of this. In the dream I am reminded of something I said to the wife following her incurable Myeloma diagnosis, “It is the warrior’s path anything can happen!!”

It seems in the dream that there might now be an “after” following an operation.

I wake up and it is around 6 AM.

Real-Life Problems and Decisions

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Until around 10:20 this morning I felt that most of “my” real world things were in hand. The preparation had been going smoothly though I did wonder about using the word “awry” the other day.

As I lay in bed before the alarm was due to go off, I thought that the only real problem I had was to put my underpants on the right way round when getting dressed in darkness. Later in the day some young person would ask me to strip to my pants and take X-rays of my spastic hip. We did not want to have a “professor pants” moment. I did not want unknowingly to advertise M&S.

As it turned out I could have put them on inside out with full impunity. It is a missed pants opportunity.

Now because of the unilateral and unnotified cancellation of an appointment a few more decisions arise. There is another early appointment for a full day of hospital based fun later in the week.

Do we need to telephone to confirm if it is still going ahead?

Do we do this the night before or call a little after 8AM before we leave the house the morning of the alleged appointment?

An ancillary line of thought is do I need to start exploring other contingencies for a hip operation in case this one falls through?.

I understand only too well that the universe does not owe me anything, that I have no “right” to surgery. It is at the kindness of the French exchequer. I do not believe in “deserving”. When I tried to get this sorted earlier in the year I met with many problems. Perhaps some more are starting now.

Is this the universe saying that I simply need to suck it up? That it is my karma to suffer from arthritis?

Or is this about patience and forbearance?

It looks like the whole of France is going into a another self-induced psychiatric meltdown. So who knows what is going to happen…They can lose the plot and badly so…They have volatility…

To me it is important to remain grounded especially with all these fancy highfalutin dreams…

Life here is pretty mundane; some would find it boring. Ideas notions and dreams are not the same thing as getting measured for some anti-thrombosis stockings like I just did.

I have learned by experiment that as a whole French timekeeping is loose and that an appointment is often written in the lightest of 4H pencil. I tend to take appointments as possibilities and not reliable fact.

I have another data point, milord.

All in all not a very satisfactory start to the day or the week…

It is all going a bit Pete Tong…

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–

–

I mentioned earlier that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I really don’t like having to make contingency for other people’s poor organisation. Experience has suggested that it is often wise so to do.

On Friday we received an automated SMS reminder of my appointment for a pre-operative X-ray this morning. This is something I organised well in advance to limit the possibility of last minute dot com fuck ups. When I got there at 10:30 on a Monday morning they told me that I did not have an appointment and that it had been set for later in the week. Nobody had the decency to advise me before I got up early and did a 40 minute drive to the hospital.

The Aspie part of my nature says that I may as well go ahead and cancel the hip operation because if they can’t organise this it does not bode well. What else is going Pete Tong and otherwise off-piste?

I have not cancelled the op.

My confidence as to if the scheduled operation will go ahead on time has fallen to 50:50. It is no longer mentally a firm date in the diary. I am already planning and scoping how I might cope with months more hip pain and deteriorating functionality.

I don’t know…

It is all going a bit Pete Tong…

Gorillas – Plane Concept – Davos –  Cairo – Freedom Dream 05-10-2025

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Here is last night’s dream sequence mostly had before 5:15 AM. I almost did not want to go back to sleep in case there was more incoming to remember.

The dream starts with me crossing a wooden style over a fence into a green meadow come fallow field. The field slopes gently up to the left and gives way into a wooded copse. I have no shirt on my top. I start to run along the length of the field. I can feel the impact in my pelvis but cannot see my legs. I am unaware if I am clothed or not below the waist. I have not run for a very long time and am unaccustomed. I am enjoying it. The sun is out. The air is crisp. I am moving fairly well. I get to the style at the other end of the field about 400 metres away. I stop and turn back.

I start to run back. To my surprise both my legs seem to be working well. As I get near the corner of the field with the style I can see two groups of gorillas. Nearest me are three adolescent juveniles who are playing with each other. Nearer the style there is a huge silverback, his mate and two infant gorillas. I note that there are seven gorillas in total. I wonder if I will disturb them and cause the silverback to attack. As I get closer I decide not to try for the style but to head up the hill. I look to my chest and joke to myself that perhaps they will think me one of them. I start to head on a different trajectory uphill and without staring directly at the silverback. From time to time we catch eyes. He is content and chilled chewing on a piece of grass.

As I head up the hill I notice some human houses with fences to the field. I can see in the wooden slat fence a gate with a padlock able bolt lock in grey metal. I slow down and slide the bolt back which opens the wooden gate onto a path / unmade road. I step through onto the path and close the gate behind me. I am met by a middle aged Germanic house frau with blonde hair fixed in pleated curls to her head. She gestures me to follow her into her house and thence into a garage come hangar. I now have  a white long sleeve shirt on. I know that I am in an alpine village and that the elevation is around 1500m or more. I can tell this from the flowers in the meadow. She is very insistent on showing me into the hangar.

On the concrete there is a large model wooden plane with a brilliant red paint job {think red arrows}. It has a wingspan of over one metre. The propellor on the front is damaged. She asks me to fix it. I look up the model number on a lap top and download a technical drawing of the spare parts. I order these. The parts cannot be delivered on time. We agree that there needs to be a faux or ersatz propellor for the show. She calls a relative, a male, who fashions a propeller out of hide leather. This will be good enough for the first show. However the village is buzzing because an offshoot for the Davos World Economic Forum is due to visit the village. It will be good for the local economy ongoing.

She says that I should fit my own novel prototype propellers in time for this visit. I have developed a new kind of prop-drive unit which they would like to see. I agree and start fashioning the propeller design out of some metal lying to one side of the workshop / hangar. I check that the design will fit and can be driven by the onboard motor of the model plane. This will be ready for the Davos offshoot and they are particularly interested to see what it is that I, specifically, have designed.

The scene changes and it is just after dusk. The air is warm and scented and I am in the back seat of a taxi come limousine. I am arriving at the drop off “roundabout” in front of the Hilton Intercontinental in Cairo. I am a specially invited speaker at some kind of conference there. The driver gets out and opens the door for me. I go in and head to reception.

The scene now changes to some kind of communal market / fête. People are milling about it is in a town centre. Some kind of market town like Marlborough. I have been interviewing people with a microphone and a small production crew. I have been giving them the verbal prompt “freedom” and asking them to make a short response as to what springs first to mind. We have edited the first batch of clips and are projecting them onto what looks like a cricket white side sight screen. There is sound.

The first clip is of me saying “freedom”. The people / audience pause and watch.

The subsequent clips are of people responding to camera and microphone.

“Freedom from war.”

“Freedom from oppression.”

“Freedom from hate.”

“Freedom to love.”

“Freedom to think.”

“Freedom to breathe.”

“Freedom simply to be.”

Once the clips have been shown the people carry on about their business.

I am with three generations of a family they are a Somali / Eritrean grandmother skinny in a headscarf, she has that distinctive look, her anglicised more corpulent daughter dressed smartly and Western and a young girl. The daughter ushers me into the back of a limousine / van where we will edit more of the responses. I initially sit in the front left hand passenger seat. I cannot easily help the edit. It tanks it down with rain. I get out of the car into a deep puddle wetting my legs near up to the knee. This causes hilarity particularly for the young girl. I climb into the back and am handed the lap top. We are very happy that we have gotten enough “freedom” clips for now.

I awake for a loo break. I am in two minds whether or not to get up because if there are more dreams I may not be able to remember and recollect them all. That is already a lot to recall.

I drift back off and am in some kind of a social club / bar. I am in the entrance vestibule taking off my jacket when deeper in the bar I see Anita. She sees me and come running over to give me a hug. She is small. She says that she is very glad to see me because she wanted to tell me that she is leaving for Geneva. She has a job there. I say that this is fantastic. I have a series of commitments starting first in Fribourg and working my way south towards Geneva. Ending with a gig there. I have an “appointment” or job at a school near Geneva if I want one.

The dreaming gets more bitty but has me returning later to the bar to pick up my keys and things. I am completely naked and vulnerable but the barman has kept my things to one side and is very happy to return them to me.

The dream ends and I am determined not to go back to sleep.