Author: quantumdreamer

.

Quirks of Fate

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

——————————————-

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

———————————————-

The notions of fate and destiny have been around for a while. They are related to prophecy in some respects. They are a logical summation of the cause & effect of karma and/or dependent origination. Once a chain of events has been set in motion the ongoing trajectory is inevitable. It becomes fated. Scientists even use the terminology of fate. They copy much poetic.

Many humans do not like to accept that aspects of their lives are pre-ordained. Some can use it as a chat up line, “hey babe we are soul mates and fate brought us together…”

Yet for many of us there are occasions when fate seems to play a hand. Something entirely unlikely can radically change our lives. We might call this an intervention of intuition, synchronicity or fate. We somehow just so happened to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. The odds against are large.

We could have missed our flight and that plane crashed. We could have swapped tickets with another just to meet the grim reaper on a Boeing 737. Fate it could be discussed is prone to exhibit quirks.

In the strict logic of fate it is impossible to forfeit a fate. Because if it was fated it will happen whether you like it or not. One path apparently open to you may not be taken. You have by fate forfeited that path. You were always fated so to do. So that path was not fated for you. No forfeit of fate, a different path was/is followed, according to fate.

Using the logic of fate. I was perhaps for countless lifetimes always fated to find myself here this afternoon, typing on this keyboard. I had no choice. It was preordained. I was for a while an academic but fate took me away from that path. Retrospect suggests that I was not in any case temperamentally equipped to work in and thrive in such an environment. It was fated that I became a loner-yogi-eccentric-pikey. So here I am.

I don’t know what fate has left for me “on the cards” so to speak. Fate will do the Tarot draw and maybe it has some quirks in store yet. I can’t know before hand, nor am I overly fussed. There is no need to be, because whatever happens it is fated, I cannot get out of it or escape it, it will happen whether I whinge and complain or not. I do not need to tempt fate by walking in the woods wearing camouflage during hunting season. Nor should I lock myself quivering indoors.

Likewise if you are fated to meet me, we will, whether you like it or not. I am probably more likely to be well prepared than you are. If we miss like ships passing in the night, then  no meeting was “on the cards” a feather touch of possibility unmanifest in the web of life is all that is fated and therefore warranted. A passing that may not come again this lifetime or for that mater ever. This butterfly wing interaction may nevertheless be a tiny breath of air to direct you along your fated path.

Trying to run and squirm out of fate is a mug’s game. Sooner of later fate wins, it holds all the cards.

Fate is perhaps more omniscient and omnipresent than humans are willing to accept. It was always fated thus.

And the painted ponies go up and down…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

———————————-

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Joni Mitchell

——————————–

Today started with sorting through my now extensive medical records for the next phase of the upcoming medical-merry-go-round. By the end of the calendar year I will probably hit ~100 appointments. I am already past 60 RDVs. That is shed loads.

I have had more x-rays and MRI scans than your average person. I am due a few more. Next on the dance card are rheumatology, cardio stress test ultrasound and urology prostate specific antigen follow up. This to be followed by a pre-operative meeting with the anaesthesiologist, dietician and physiotherapist. They will probably say {politely} that I am a fat bastard. To which I might reply that I could start to smoke and drink heavily again so that I can get back to my former heroin chic. I could always knock up some crystal meth in the shed, that is an appetite suppressor.

It is difficult to know what difference a new hip might make. According to the hype it might be a game changer. They are not talking about the second one yet, which will be more complicated. It could offer a new lease of life. I doubt I will be down the mosh pit any time soon.

It is a kind of in between feeling. Something is impending, it is a couple of months away and there is a while away of time in the meantime. We have just received our “poll tax” bill for the year which might be the last or it might not. There are a number of jobs undone in the garden which I may be able to turn my hand to in January.

On the dreaming front there have been plenty. Recurring themes recur. None of which I am in a position to really do much about. There is no indication of an ongoing fate. Dreams of putative past lives might be interesting and jig saw puzzle pieces, to help synthesise a whole. But they do not show an ongoing fate, a path or direction left remaining for me to do.

I remain aware that “my” whole world is subject to sudden unexpected pivot. I am not however holding my breath for such a thing.

And the seasons they go round and round. Autumn is now here albeit a little early. It means leaves and fungi, rain and wind. Soon the pond will again fill and the bloody coypu will try to breach our defences to eat the lotuses on the pond.

And the painted ponies go up and down…

Chaotic Mess Dream etc. 05-09-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Last night we watched “The Thursday Murder Club” which was enjoyable. I suspect that if I am in some kind of nanna community setting {soon?} I might well get involved in any protest. Somehow I might end up on some kind of committee.

Last night I had a series of dreaming snippets that went at rollercoaster speed. They were on a recurrent theme of MESS, massive messes made by others which somehow how pertain to me. They are not my messes to solve. Multiple people once acquainted to me are involved, they created these messes because of their behaviour to me. They have not treated me well and done stuff behind my back which cannot be undone. They have showed me a lack of respect. They have bad mouthed me in one way or another.

The snippets were so fast that I did not make significant effort to recall them.

–

–

Somehow I do not the fit the mould of behaviour I am supposed to. I am not as they imagine someone with my background {reincarnations included} to be.  People invariably judge a book by its cover.

The thing is “spiritual” and karmic messes cannot be solved via traditional wheeler-dealer-itchy-back-toady-cash-position-bribery games. Sorry does never unpick karmic debts. But people might imagine that the normal playbook always applies. They are mistaken.

In the Tibetan tradition it is customary to approach a high lama for blessings and to have them place a white silk-like khata scarf over your head. This is considered auspicious and the offering, in both directions, must be made with respect, compassion and purity of motive.

In our what-is-in-it-for-me day and age, purity of motive is as rare as a rare thing on the 29th of February.

The dream was so chaotic and disordered, with people imagining that they could blag it, wing it and generally go through the motions and “get away with it”.

People try to use the same strategies and behaviour that gets them into messes as a way to extract themselves from said mess. This is not a sane or wise approach. But you cannot advise the omniscient in any meaningful way.

They know best after all…

They are insistent on repeating their folly over and over.
 

Not My Circus…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This morning I was up early and without any extensive dream to write up and follow up.  Yesterday I read up a bit on Tsongkhapa and it seems that they think he became a full buddha as opposed to a reincarnating bodhisattva. Not sure why some dude who died six hundred years ago is at the periphery of my consciousness. He was kind of a founder / renewer of Tibetan Buddhism.

I read to today that Nigel the bellend Farage is 62, roughly the same age as me. He is still gadding about in DC. People age at different rates and clearly he and BoJo have a lot more get up and go than me. My mentality is not about going out there and soap-boxing, stirring the shit. I don’t need the oxygen of attention.

Increasingly I am less and less engaged with the news. It is a same shit different day thing. The Spanish dude is the only one to openly lament the European response to Gaza which will be a stain on collective conscience one day and for ever going forward. Hindsight is often more accurate than spin and propaganda.

“And you did what while people were being slaughtered? Fuck all? Really?”

Irrespective of any dreams I may have, I am under no illusion that power and politics are seen as more important. I cannot fit into pretty much any narrative. There is not really a story to be spun or told which could prove socio-politically useful or beneficial. Therefore it is best that I remain “unheard” of. My estimation is that life here, despite any dreams, will carry on much to the same pace and rhythm. I am not planning to inflict myself on anyone else.

The world “out there” is not my circus nor are they my monkeys.

I estimate that I have perhaps a little more than a decade left to live. Which will largely pass away from public gaze, as a person living adjunct to life in as minimally participatory a manner as I can manage.

Emptiness and impermanence can lead to a sense of nihilism. That somehow there is no point or purpose to anything. It is all going to dissolve. So why build those cloud capp’d towers and gorgeous palaces?

I believe to an extent in fate and if fate decrees it, then my end of days might differ. I have had no sign of a change in tack yet.

Life here, despite the lack of events, moves fast. There are not multiple meetings and oh so important chock full diaries. “Where” I am moves day to day, my inclination arrives and vanishes. What I might have been up for one morning is gone the next. The now is quite fast. An aperture opens and closes.

Who knows “where” I will be this time tomorrow?

Luxuriously Lost – Dreaming Colour – Vajra Bell – Huge Serpent – Dream 03-09-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dreaming sequence, which on waking seemed very significant.

The dream starts with me arriving at a brand spanking new London Underground station which I exit onto the street in front. The tube station on a standard tube sign is called “DOCTO BEN”. In the plaza outside are a number of food outlets, a news agents and a Timpson’s key place. The buildings are modern and white, a reproduction of period buildings suitable to the area which I know to be due West of the South Kensington campus. The reproduction has been done very well. Although I know roughly where I am, I am lost. I do not recognise any of the streets nor the street names which are on plaques in keeping with the area. In the dream I rationalise that it must be an Elizabeth line, new tube station.

I decide that I need to get a green district line tube home and venture northwards towards the park to look for one. I estimate I may find one there. I am unhurried and thoroughly enjoying my time being luxuriously lost with no fear therefrom. I head north. I cross a main road onto the outskirts of the park and cross the road which I know heads over the Serpentine. I wait for the little green man on the traffic lights. I start to cross. As I am crossing my mind, its visual eye, is filled with the phrase “OXO BEST”. I know this and the previous word are numerology.

The dream changes and I am upstairs in bed. Somehow the cat has gotten onto the upstairs landing and is playing with marbles. I get up to investigate she is chasing a green cat’s eye marble back and forth along the hall. I imagine the door to the upstairs to be open so that she can go back for food and toilet. I close the bedroom door so that she cannot get in.

I wake up and recall the words. I go to the loo and make a note of the words on a cardboard box in the kitchen. It is a little after six AM.

I get back to bed thinking that my dreaming is perhaps over for the night and will generally calm down now after my birthday. I don’t think that I will go back to sleep.

Slowly my visual field fills with my dreaming colour, forming, swirling and forming in its indigo-blue Rorschach blot like way. The colours form among “clouds”. The dreaming colour fills the dream landscape. I note that this is highly unusual, spontaneous dreaming colour. I allow myself to relax fully into it and let the landscape fill and the colour absorb me.

I am in my old university office and the telephone rings. It is a young woman asking if she can get a train to Memphis Tennessee from where she is. I say that I will come down to see her. I ‘phone through to the trainline and a ticket costs £1540. I meet her outside. She is with a friend. I tell her the price and suggest that she would be better off getting a hire car. She has a small day-sack on her back. She is not best pleased. I say that it is an easy drive. She says “ok, then. I will drive” and flounces off. She is a Ph.D. student due to present at conference.

The scene changes and I am sat on a faded red armchair isolated with no room reference point. I can feel the wind whoosh by my hair and the world is whizzing past as if I am travelling through space. I am reminded of the Maxwell tape adds.

—–

——

I feel absolutely rooted to the chair and the world, the universe even, whizzes past. I cannot see myself but can feel the chair and its arms under my hands. The motion is fierce.

The wind dies down and I can now see myself from the front of the chair. I am sat on the chair wearing a full bright yellow Gelug ceremonial crescent hat. I am in Tibetan style monk’s robes and have a mala on my left wrist. I look like I do now only my hair is freshly buzz-cut. I seem energized. In front of me on a very ceremonial table in its pouch is my Vajra-bell. I know that the chair is in fact a ceremonial throne, my throne. With my mind the pouch around the Vajra-bell disappears. The bell swells in size and takes on a golden radiant hue. The quality of it is vastly enhanced and intricate. The bell starts to radiate light in all directions until it becomes almost blindingly bright. But I know that this light is not normal photons. It is Vajra-tantra. I sit bathed for what seems like a very long time, the light feeling much like the gale-wind from before only vibrant.

The scene changes and I am sat at my old desk from when I lived in Brixton. On the table is an open propped up Microsoft Surface tablet. It is large and expensive. It is not mine. I can’t remember what I did the night before so I press play on the tablet. A video starts to play.

In it I can see a few men, eastern European, query Russian. They are standing in a near circle. One of them has his flies undone and what looks to be a semi-erect penis protruding. On close inspection it is the head of a snake. One of his comrades pulls gently on the snake head and guides it to the floor. Slowly a huge snake reminiscent of a fat Burmese python eases its way out of the trousers. The snake is several metres long and more than  ~30 cm thick. It is massive and powerful. It has a racing-green lush colouration and glistens with a self-moistening sheen. I am now fully in the scene and the snake comes towards me, it welcomes me and I temporarily incorporate it. I become one with it.

The scene changes to the far artic north. I am outside a base with wire mesh fence. I dig a deep square shaped hole deeper that my height. The sides of the hole are perfectly cut squared because I am digging into permafrost. Into the hole I place my Vajra-bell along with several near-spherical objects which have an egg like purpose. They are ancient and sort of sacred. I am the keeper. I then exude the snake into the hole for protection. It nestles down. I go off and cut several chunks of ice slab. These are ~one metre by one metre by thirty centimetres, they are heavy hundreds of kilos. But I manipulate them by hand and mind into the hole as a stopper. I am about to cover with dirt when Max walks by. I ask him if he would like to take a look before I close it. He is unsure but agrees.

The dream ends.

You’re Havin a Larf…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

A lot of people try to take advantage of others and play games. They may have cunning ploys. They may try to snoop and spy on others, to gather information from insiders and do anything they can to get an upper hand. They may ask multiple opinions. They may overestimate the quality of their source material and imagine that ancient data and accounts are still valid. People who imagine themselves smart, in the know and “clever” can get themselves into all sorts of messes. They may enjoy playing “secret squirrels”. They may imagine an idea to be good when it is not. Because they are, of course, infallible.

——————

I have never appointed a spokesperson or a port-parole.

Anyone claiming to speak on my behalf is a fraud, a shyster and a downright lying bastard.

—

–

Self-perception may differ significantly from that held by others. If people are trying to take advantage of, or use others, they might assume a complete hoodwinking success, that they have fooled another and that their ways are opaque to the deceived. Rarely does it occur that their moves are transparent. They do not imagine that they have been read, seen through and their shenanigans noted. Nor do they note the fall in opinion or respect held of them by the gullible mark.

–

–

If someone is taking the piss by their behaviour it may not occur that someone is taking the piss back at them and in spades.

For example if someone asks me a stupid question, I reserve the right to respond in an equally stupid way. I don’t care about being right or winning an argument so I could feed you the opportunity to “win” to see if you take the bait. It is surprising how many do!

Once I have disengaged, I feel free to take the piss back. Depending on where you are coming from you may not notice.

–

–

In my book if you are having a laugh or playing silly buggers then so can I. I generally have less “to prove” than most and don’t care if I look like a fool or a pikey yokel. I have no sophisticated image and I for defo am not a big cheese…

If someone is “havin a larf” there are a number of options open. One of these is to confront, another is to ignore. One can let things play to see how deep a shitter people like to dig for themselves. One can do a runner. One can do something completely and utterly unexpected.

–

–

People don’t really know what is going on in someone else’s head no matter how clever and cunning they deem themselves to be. There is a tendency to overestimate one’s perspicacity.

Some have world views and world assimilations that are markedly different from from ours, from yours. Yes, yours.

Late night we watched a film “Den osynlige”

“ The Invisible (Swedish: Den osynlige) is a 2002 Swedish film directed by Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist, very loosely based on Mats Wahl’s book of the same name. The film follows Niklas, a young and quiet man who falls short of his mother’s expectations and then finds himself attacked by a neglected young girl Annelie (she too, is metaphorically invisible) and left for dead. The next morning, however, he discovers that no one can see, hear or feel him, and anything he does to try and communicate is reversed; he is in a Limbo-like state between life-and-death, and must find out his ‘murderer’ and save his body before it’s too late. The film stars Gustaf Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny and Thomas Hedengran in the leads.”

In that film Niklas whilst in limbo gets to see his “friends” and classmates talking about him behind his back when he lies dying in the woods. People are generally only loyal to those present, the absent are fair game. It is a good film and shows how the inflicted expectations of others can fuck you up. Most “social” beings do not understand how brutal, nasty and petty the wielding of that societal shoehorn is.

They carry on regardless like clowns repeating the same folly, over and over. They can even think it is funny!!

–

–

They can however be badly mistaken… …

Bad and Inapplicable Questions

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have received the preliminary documents for my meeting with the anaesthesiologist in due course.

It asks some questions which make no sense to me. It wants me to scale the best health I can imagine, the worst health I can imagine and rate today’s score on a scale of 0 to 100.

The best health I can currently realistically imagine is how I feel in and around now. It has nothing to do with how I might have been aged 25. I can’t remember that!! That best score is demarcated 100%. In general how I feel depends upon where I am on the pain relief schedule. When pills are due or after I have walked a lot when there is pain so this is the worse I currently feel.

Is this meant to be 0%? I am not sure this is what they mean.

Am I to imagine a session of waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay?

What about after eating some delicious Australian gourmet Beef Wellington?

Or is 0% dead….

On the “realism” scale I would be somewhere around 80-100% all the time. Where 80 % is pills due after a long walk.

If 0% is dead then I would feel fine because I would no longer have a body. So for now I will always feel worse than dead, because pain is residual. When I am dead, I will feel no physical pain.

I feel worse than if I was dead.

I doubt they would like or understand that answer.

It asks if I can accomplish my current activities. Of course I can. I have adjusted these so that I am able to do them so the answer is a big fat yes, I can do all my current activities. I have adjusted my activities to my ability.

It asks if I am anxious or depressed. It does not ask if I am calm and chilled…

The questionnaire does not fit me well, yet the answers are going to go into some spreadsheet or for research!!

I am not trying to be contrary but I do not think like that questionnaire suspects…

I feeling a tad Victor Meldrew…

Retreat Centre (dreaming) – Snake Bite Dream 01-09-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dream had between 3:30 and 7 AM.

The dream starts somewhere in England. I am with a man who is slightly older than me, with grey-white hair. He is dressed in a casual cream-white linen suit and has a “posh” accent. He shows me into a detached building which I understand to be some kind of a retreat centre. He is very “arcane school” in his use of language and manner. He thinks that he is superior and more evolved than I. He ushers me into the building and to a conservatory at the back  of the kitchen. The others will be here soon.

We are joined by a few women of my age and slightly younger. They are all dressed in a vaguely posh-hippy manner with chunky jewellery and expensive died hair. Some are from SES. They are surprised to see me there. The man says that I am there at his invitation. They want to know a little bit about me.

I say that I have read very extensively into things “spiritual” and that in this lifetime I have been doing a dreaming practice since 2000. They say that they like dreams. I say that maybe they should keep a journal of what happens when I am with them because a being like me, from the deep South, can have a dramatic effect on dreaming. We are dreaming.

One of the women asks If I will help her put up the Christmas decorations, she is large and plump and clearly a dreamer by prediction also from the South. We put the decorations up. I start to play with a large great Dane dog on the floor.  I lie down with it face to face and we play. I the  say that we should eat. There is some resistance but soon we all pull the tables together. Lucy walks in and she is known to them. They are surprised that I know her too. I explain that we are exactly twenty years separated in birth having been born on the same day. They ask me if she lied to me. I say that she did not necessarily tell me the full truth.

I ask what time the village shop closes. It should be open until five. I go and return with some wine and cider; some bread and a chocolate log.

I go outside with Lucy and we stand on a hillock in the garden next to an apple tree. From there we can see the sea and perhaps France. I ask her how she is but she is off staring a little into the distance. We share a silence for a long time and then go back into the house.

I comment that when I was in the village, I saw large black bears. “What are you supposed to do?” They say make a lot of noise. I note in the dream that they do not know what will happen in the dreaming  because I am among them. They think they do, but they do not.

The scene changes to India. In a busy courtyard people are playing cricket. It is a makeshift pitch a bit like cricket nets. A young Indian man is batting with pads but no helmet. A tall Englishman in whites is bowling. He is being slogged all over. The bowler changes to a northerner. He picks up a thin black snake holding its head and jaws in his hand which he bowls at the batter. The batter misses. I go to inspect and pick up the snake. As I do this it bites my right hand on the fleshy part between thumb and index finger. I can feel it painlessly inject liquid. I gently ease the snake off my right hand with my left hand and it slithers off.

I start to feel a little unwell and a military type English man takes me up to his room. He wonders if I am allergic to the poison, the venom. If so, I will die. He puts me into his bed and calls for an ambulance. It will take many hours. The room is a shit tip and very tropical. I have the chills. He does not hold out much hope for me. He goes out onto the veranda to smoke. After a while I wake up refreshed and completely naked.  I see a pair of short navy-blue shorts on the internal washing line. They are like a pair I had 40 years ago. I put these shorts on and go out onto the veranda. The man is completely stunned and utterly shocked to see me up walking. The snake bite on my hand is completely healed. I say that I have nothing to worry about with nāgas.

The dream ends.

Borders – a Sign of the Times?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Drivelling and wittering on, some more.

Writing up the previous post I accidentally touched upon something since the Brexit-folly happened and the fortress USA dogma has been soap-boxed. I am much more nervous approaching border control than I once was. When the UK was a part of Schengen it was light, free and easy. Now it is much less pleasant. We are due to cross borders in Autumn. In principle I have a British passport so it should be OK for me to go “home”. Will I be allowed back into France? It is less taken-for-granted than it once was. Should we cancel and bin the trip? Just in case?

Gee thanks guys!!

–

–

Were I, like Harry, to seek entrance into the USA I might be tempted to lie about weed. Unfortunately I did inhale and deeply so and on more than one occasion. Man…

I would be very, very uncomfortable about traveling to the USA given the prevailing rhetoric. In fact there would have to be some truly massive incentive. Even then I would go out of my way to avoid it. I would seek other avenues.

It is no big loss for the USA…I know.

But I wonder how many others are put off and increasingly so. America will be first and with less visitors. It probably is not quaking in its cowboy boots…

Strange times we live in and they are not getting any more pleasant.