Author: quantumdreamer

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ma ’das sprul sku and Taking Dreams Literally

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I have found that if you start looking into things Tibetan that complexity soon arrives.

Today I came upon ma ’das sprul sku for the first time.

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Abstract: A ma ’das sprul sku is a non-hereditary reincarnate lama (sprul sku) who assumes his or her predecessor’s status, but who takes birth before his or her predecessor’s death. This paper presents ten oral histories of ma ’das sprul skus and examines what they and their narrators reveal about the logic of transference in establishing the personhood of a ma ’das sprul sku, how ma ’das sprul sku personhood may challenge conventional understandings of sprul sku personhood and temporality, ma ’das sprul sku and their creators as reflective agents, and what the dearth of ma ’das sprul sku hagiographies may imply.

Marcia Calkowski in The Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies.

https://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#!jiats=/07/calkowski/b1/

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The notion that a being can have a second incarnation whilst still alive, kind of messes with the idea that one needs to leave the meat before getting some more. She mentions the idea of mandé trülku.

Taken to the limit that could mean that an emanation, similar to that which gave rise to the Dalai Lama, could already be incarnate whilst he lives.

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Literary Sources for Tulku Lines

Successive systems of reincarnation or tulku (sprul sku) are fascinating sources for the study of the social history of Tibet. The tulku, predicated on Buddhist metaphysics of rebirth, is a phenomena in which a person is recognized as embodying a previous person, in their own current body. This is technically referred to in Tibetan as one who is “recognized as having returned to existence” (yang srid ngos ‘dzin or sprul sku ngos ‘dzin).

There are hundreds of multigenerational tulku lines in Tibet. By looking at when such tulku lines were declared, within which contexts, patterns of interpersonal relations, institutional alliances, and regional practices emerge. We are given new visions of these trans-generational social networks and the weblike worlds in which tulkus function.

From The Buddhist Digital Resource Center.

Tibetan Tulku Lines and Networks

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This suggests that there are so many tulkus that some could be considered common or garden as opposed to the big three.

The naming and interweave is not easily tractable. If I was to start with my recent Tibetan dream, trying to find out who I might have been, there are many pitfalls.

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Tibetan Food Tibetan Caravan Aberfan – Reincarnation – Dream 24-04-2025

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This dream, if taken literally, suggests that I was being escorted out of Tibet in and around the early sixties / late fifties. Clearly that is a big if. It suggests an importance sufficient to warrant an escort and a rank above common or garden

I could search for a person, lama or tulku, who died in and around that time but the list of tulku lines is not easily searchable by date. The dream suggests that I was not going to make it.

https://legacy.tbrc.org/?locale=en#!persons/tulkus

But I may have made it. Which might make me a co-incarnation of a living person. We share an emanatory source. That co-incarnation could have passed on since and could in principle have been born biologically before me, say ~1940s in order to be old enough to march to freedom.

The feeling from the dream was that I was a youth / young man. Which puts a window ~1935 – 1945. My hands in the dream were soft inconsistent with extended heavy manual labour.

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My eight Tibetan Houses Dream

Eight Tibetan Houses (seats) Dream 19-02-2025

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Points at Southeastern Tibet / Shigatse/ Shigatze which might geo-locate an incarnation but does not take me much closer to a named individual in the twentieth century.

My Tibetan Buddhist Search Committee Dream suggests that I might recognise a magically inscribed cabinet. It suggests that I might recognise Tibetan martial arts weapons.

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Tibetan Buddhist Search Committee Dream 29-04-23.

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“The carpet on the floor of the hall has been rolled back to reveal a parquet dance floor of some considerable sheen. Amongst the entourage I can hear gossiping. “It cannot be him; he is too coarse thickset and muscular.”

I hear this and whip off my shirt to reveal my muscular bare chest. I say that I will cooperate with whatever it is they must do. Take a look if you must. I am now wearing saffron yellow trousers, training pants, that are “elasticated” at the ankles. I start to do a forward splits on the floor to warm up. I say that given I am nearly sixty I am surprised that being that old I can still do that.

One of the woman in the entourage says to me that I am much older than that both in this lifetime and stretching way back. I am nearly 73 she says. I do the mental calculation that I must have been “born” in the early 1950s. She says, “we tried to wake you five years ago”. You have been “asleep” and we have been waiting.”

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So, the dreams suggest an inconsistency of age or timing.

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The monastery airport dream points at Leh in Ladakh.

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Buddhist Monastery – Dual Airport – Flight Lieutenant – Dream 27-01-2025

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There are a number of dreams with Kālacakra or wheel of time mandala.

In another dream “Tibetan soil dream” I am given my piece of Tibet.

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Tibetan Monk – Soil – Dragon Lore Dream 31-3-23

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There are other dreams with H.H. Karmapa and H.H. Dalai lama in.

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If dreams are “evidence” then there is quite a bit suggesting some Tibetan connection. If I were a Tibetan having these dreams then the Tibetans would take them more seriously. A hairy arsed sixty-year old Welsh ex-academic spendthrift is not as attractive as perhaps a younger person linked to the sangha.

It is difficult to explain these dreams cropping up from a Freudian or Jungian perspective.

There is circumstantial evidence. It is pretty unlikely that any conscious imaginations / research makes its way fully into dreams. I did not make any of them up. They were recorded as is the morning after.

I have not tried to visualise this putative life as that is more likely to be prone to prejudice / confirmation bias.

It is possible that having looked at this theme there may be more passive dreams on the way….

Is It Me? – Introversion

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Over the last few weeks, I have been interacting with the medical profession. It has raised a not uncommon question for me. One which had me investigating an Autism diagnosis a decade ago. The question is:

Is it me? Am I too unfiltered, direct and accurate or are people insecure, precious, pompous and defensive? Am I not full enough with bullshit and braggadocio? Do I fail to play the itchy back dog sniffing arses game well enough? Must I always wear a mask in order not to freak people out?

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It seems to me that I unnerve people. I dial back several orders of magnitude already when I interact. It seems the only answer to not causing angst and a feeling of being unsettled is not to interact at all.  To keep my gob shut and wherever possible keep out of public circulation. In general, I have a worse reaction from “men” than from women.

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Am I simply not socially viable in the common socio-political illusion / context. Am I just too weird and feral.

Is it me? Am I the problem?

Maybe I Was an Alpaca?

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This morning’s dream points {again} to some kind of Tibetan incarnation, perhaps some lama-dude. I have long held this possibility at arm’s length because I have had no waking memory of such a thing. The dream indicates a time stamp roughly of 1960 when things were bad in Tibet and a number of lamas left. We hear about the ones who made it. We don’t hear about the ones who did not.

They may have been vulture food.

I did once go to a dzong in London and had an “empowerment” by Tulku Akong Rinpoche. A lama who along with Chögyam Trungpa escaped from Tibet during the Chinese excess.

I have often wondered why no waking recall. The only answer I came up with is that life as a monk is so very boring that there is little to remember, no outstanding dramatic events. Tedium, day after day routine.

If the dream points at a very recent incarnation, then that hints at something like a tulku incarnation, where one life follows quickly.

That does not really impinge on the current health problems and search for a nanna-flat. In a sense it is little more than a phenomenological possibility when viewed from life circumstance. I do not see nor feel that there is much / anything left for me to do.

I have hypothesised that there have been many failures, way more than “successes”. We only hear of the latter because it is they who have ongoing wider significance. In a way quiet failure fertilizes the ground for success.

I am at something of an impasse on the health front and cannot currently see any further steps. There is nothing urgent and I can tolerate the pain and lack of sleep. We need to move house before even thinking about any operation. It is not a complicated equation, for now.

I am currently where I am not seeing medical intervention as something positive and healing. It seems like a necessary thing and to be endured even. It does not fill me with hope for an easier existence.

Do I have to? Well maybe it is sensible.

Who knows what if any dreams will follow tonight…

Tibetan Plateau, Gold, Lama Dream 1-11-2011

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Prompted by this morning’s dream I found this one in the vaults, so to speak.

Dream Diary 1-11

I am outside with Charlie. He and I are loading bricks into the trunk / boot of a car. The bricks have curly writing on them, it is not Sanskrit or Tibetan. They are golden and more like large ingots of gold.

He and I are now on a long journey across the mountains on a plateau which is in Tibet. With us is a smiling lama who is our guide, guard and escort. He is showing us the way. The landscape is very sparse and rocky with scree falls. I look at the lama’s physique and it is very similar to mine only that he is shorter and obviously Tibetan. I say that I didn’t know that they built Tibetans like that…

As we continue on our journey. Charlie and I are now wearing saffron and magenta monk’s robes. This journey is to be extensive. As we move forward Charlie is often out in front exploring the different routes. At one stage we need to pick up speed. The Tibetan monk picks up his companion, also a monk, and carries him piggy-back. I do the same with Charlie. I am not sure that I can walk and climb at this altitude like this. After a few steps I realise that I can and easily so.

A little later the trail becomes tortuous and Charlie is way ahead up the hill. He comes down back to me via a slippery and windy route. I find a more direct route. This is a part of a long journey together.  

Back now in London, we are at a Tibetan Dzong as guests of honour. Sat waiting are Charlie , the wife and I. We are offered some western food. I turn to her and say that she had better tuck in before they come out with the yak’s butter….

Dream ends

Tibetan Food Tibetan Caravan Aberfan – Reincarnation – Dream 24-04-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

Here is this morning’s dream

The dream starts in an airy metropolitan indoor market. The roofs are high and glass. There is a hubbub and the mood is light. There are many trendy food pop-ups. The area is opulent. I am outside a Tibetan food pop-up stall with some upper middle class English people. They are going on about how wonderful the stall is and that it is good to support the exiles, the diaspora. We order some food and sit at a “pub” table. It comprises a semi-leavened bread a bit smaller than a naan, some sausages tied with string and a spicey vegetable side relish with dark green overtones. The sausage is served on a wooden board with a very sharp wooden handled knife to share amongst us. They, in their safe luxury, do not understand hardship.

The scene changes to a harsh barren mountainous landscape. It is cold and we are navigating the sides of a valley. From time to time scree has fallen which makes the path difficult to navigate. We are fleeing, escaping. I am wearing a heavy fleece lined animal skin jacket and pointy hat with ear flaps. My skin is darker and dry. I am Tibetan. I feel windblown and hungry. There are around twenty of us in the caravan which is mostly on foot with some donkey like animals carrying supplies. We have been traveling for days. We cannot light a fire until night fall, because the smoke will be seen. I am armed with a pistol in a holster on my waist. Others in the party are more heavily armed with old-style rifles.

A couple of men who have gone ahead join us. They have found a spot to camp for the night. We round a bend into a flattish area in the valley wall next to a small stream. The men start to make camp, it is heavy work. As has become the custom they set me down on a rock and give me a bag of flour and some bowls. There are some other powders. Before it gets dark, I start making several batches of dough. They joke my soft hands make the best bread. I set the dough aside covered with cloths.

I prepare some wood for a fire and as soon as it is dark, set it alight. When it is hot enough, I get out a wok-like pan and start to cook the breads having greased the pan first. The smell is great and I make batch after batch. The other men are similarly dressed but have a military bearing. They are protecting me. We all gather round and someone gets out some relish which he adds to a bowl. He then gives each of us a length of string-tied sausage which we cut with our own knives, kept in a hip scabbard. There is water to drink from the steam. All of us a weary. There is a sense in the dream that I will die soon and not make it.

The scene changes to black and white. It is a newsreel of early 1960s London. With buses at Picadilly circus and people in suits. It talks of fashion and life in the city.

Next, I am sat with my sister. We are very young less than three years old. We are in my nan’s house in the Rhondda valley. I can hear a vast rumbling from the mountainside. Instinctively I know that it is the coal tip sliding down the mountain. I grab my sister and we go to sit crouched outside close against the wall by the back door. The landslide continues and the house is knocked down but by the door frame remains intact. Coal waste pours past us and we get covered in dust. The slide stops and the coal starts to burn glowing red in the heat. I know that we must sit tight and that it will be fine. I can lift us both up out of the area to fly to a nearby grassy part. In the dream I hear the words Aberfan and sense that it has not yet happened.

I know beyond doubt that this dream is about reincarnation.

The dream ends

Notes

I was born in Cardiff in 1964. My sister was born March 1966.

The Aberfan disaster (Welsh: Trychineb Aberfan) was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. Heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and a row of houses.

DISH What Next – Prognosis Not Good

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As Toyah might say, “It’s a mystery”. If you read a review article from 2023 claiming that something is unclear in journalistic language understatement, it is clear that they do not know why Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis occurs nor how come. There are correlated but not proven causative factors.

They could call it “strange bony growth disease we don’t understand” but that would impinge on the sacred deity of jargon.

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idiopathic

adjective

1: arising spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause

2: peculiar to the individual

An idiopathic disease is any disease with an unknown cause or mechanism of apparent spontaneous origin.

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Eshed, I.

Imaging Characteristics of Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis: More Than Just Spinal Bony Bridges.

Diagnostics 2023, 13, 563.

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https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13030563

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“The body of knowledge regarding imaging characteristics has grown over the last decade. The current Resnick and Niwayama criteria for DISH correspond to an endstage diagnosis of the disease, in which the spine is already ankylosed. A newer set of classification criteria is warranted for diagnosis in an earlier, pre-ankylotic stage of the disease.

The pathogenesis underlying this disease is still unclear, and although it is thought to be a degenerative disease, it has been suggested that similarities to SpA may imply an inflammatory basis. Imaging studies further characterizing the disease may potentially aid in deciphering the currently obscure pathogenesis of DISH.”

SpA is spondylarthritis or ankylosing spondylitis

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I would have to place myself in the advanced stages given what I have read.

The physiotherapist today said that the prognosis for me is not good. The bony growths will probably grow and I will get more and more rigid and unable to bend. Because of the rigid spine I will increasingly be at risk of spinal fracture. The rigid part is long.

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The “rigid” part of the lever may snap.

If the DISH spreads to my cervical spine there are risks associated with oral intubation causing cervical spine fracture. It makes general anaesthesia slightly riskier.

Hip replacements are more likely to suffer prompt bony over growth. This means that they would probably last less long before failure.

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“Heterotopic ossification is a common complication following total hip arthroplasty in patients with DISH, occurring in 30% to 56% of cases. In contrast, patients without DISH in the cited studies had a much lower rate of heterotopic ossification, ranging from 10% to 22%.”

Prognosis

The prognosis of DISH varies based on the severity of the condition and the symptoms experienced by the individual. While DISH is a progressive disorder, it typically advances slowly. Most individuals can manage their symptoms with conservative treatments, such as physical therapy, pain management, and maintaining an active lifestyle to preserve range of motion. However, in some cases, DISH can lead to significant complications, including severe spinal stiffness, nerve compression, and difficulties with swallowing or breathing if calcification extends to the cervical or thoracic regions.

Rarely, surgical intervention may be necessary to relieve compression or correct severe deformities. Overall, while DISH can affect quality of life, especially in advanced stages, it is not typically life-threatening. With proper management, many patients are able to maintain a functional level of mobility.

Luo TD, Varacallo MA. Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis. [Updated 2025 Jan 10]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2025 Jan-.

Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538204/

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There are other knock on effects, bony growths in weird places including aorta and heels.

I may get have to get used to the terms ossification and calcification. A brief inspection of the internet struggles to find much on severe DISH. It seems taboo or just not click worthy. My CT images look top end advanced.

I have not yet had a formal diagnosis. I have learned that this might make me a DISHie and that there are support groups on line. They say that it can take ages, years, to get diagnosed and that most have co-morbidities, one of which is often ankylosing spondylitis.

I might, in due course, become a lab rat and a participant in the on line groups.

My days dancing at the Bolshoi had to end sooner or later…

Riser Recliner Chairs and Mobility Scooters

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This morning, we have been looking into “nanna-flats” in the West of the UK. Two simple criteria of proximity to Waitrose and a Café Nero seem possible to satisfy within our tight budget. If we had a quarter of a million spare life would be easier but we don’t. “They” say don’t buy a “retirement” flat because they do not keep value. The idea of a concierge, some assistance and shared gardens is not unattractive. There are plenty of nanna type facilities for people who can prove they are 60+. Purposed retirement flats for the disabled seem a good solution. Accommodation without stairs and disabled friendly seems to future proof. It does not matter what happens to the property after we die.

The simple equation is that any house move needs to happen before I have any kind of operation on hips etc. I can still lift. After operation that will not be possible. This puts a time frame of a couple of years tops.

A brief look suggests that the French health service will fund something like 50% of the cost for a mobility scooter and that is not guaranteed. (Il faut discuter.) The rest may or may not come out of top up insurance.

Top of the range GTI model scooters with a top speed of 8 mph come in at over £5000. Dependent on battery the range can be 30 miles. These would exceed the French mobility scooter speed limit. In the UK you can drive on road, in France it is supposed to be pavement. Most scooters in the UK can handle 20 stone. I have a 33% leeway in weight gain.

Riser recliner chairs, dependent on functionality, are £500 plus. I can’t say I am a fan of the décor of most. Sooner or later, I am going to need one. The recliner bit is already attractive. I will be just like my father.

The cost of living back in blighty is likely to be higher. I reckon that in the Jan-June exam build up season, irrespective of UK location, I could get at least £100 a week tutorial work for A2, AS or Baccalaureate science. Previous experience suggests that pre-exam panic creates demand. I could probably handle doing a maximum of 4-6 tutorials a week. If I did not give a shit and winged it, I could do more. But I like to thoroughly prepare which limits the number which are comfortable.

There are no obvious possibilities for income in France.

The NHS is probably better at funding disability support than the French system.

It is going to be much trickier to sell here and buy there. I doubt we could get a same day completion. This suggests an interim rental period in the UK. When the cash arrives in the bank here, we would be good to go and quickly so.

No obvious showstoppers but choice is limited.

This looks like a possibility which has physical plane reality and feasibility.

Hmnn….

Dream Within a Dream, Dream 21-2-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream.

The dream starts in a central European city with a long and elegant history. It has a feel like old-town central Vienna. I am in an ornate and semi-antique laden room. I am sat at a low “coffee” table in a small leather bound armchair. I can smell the leather.

A man walks into the room. His is nearly as tall as the doorway and well over six feet tall. He moves with grace, poise and elegance. He has long, not quite shoulder length, luxuriant blonde hair which falls partially across his face. He looks and feels like Michael York. {Closest match}

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He is expensively dressed though the clothes are not new. He has expensive English shoes on. His air is European of indeterminate nature, though slightly Scandi-Germanic. He is of noble and aristocratic stock. Although I have never met him in person I know him from my Toltec meditations fifteen years ago. He is Toltec nagal of high degree.

He sits in a large dark green leather chair alongside me. I can see a ring on his finger, a gold stud in his left ear and an expensive looking Swiss gold watch.

We are very pleased to see each other and amused at the circumstance.

He tells me that he has had a dream which he would like to discuss with me. I say that I like doing this. He knows.

He says that in the dream he goes to a tailors in St James’s London. There he is ushered into a back room for a fitting. They ask him to partially undress and then offer him a pristine dark, near jet black suit to try on. It is near a dinner jacket but not quite. The material he says was exquisite and the fit near perfect.

He says that the tailor says that they have been saving this suit for him for a long time. They have been waiting. The sleeves are ever so slightly too long. The tailor takes the jacket and scuttles off to the back room. In the meantime, an assistant removes his shirt and fits him with a crisp new white shirt without a collar. He places small ornate cufflinks to the wrists. They have an initial on which he knows is his.

The tailor returns and puts the jacket on. It now fits perfectly. He is encouraged to walk up and down the room and inspect in a mirror. As he does this, he notes in the left lower outer jacket pocket a lump. He reaches in a pulls out a fluorescent green-yellow tennis ball cut exactly in half. He puts one half in each hand and looks carefully at it. The dream ends on that note.

I say to him that a long while ago I used to frequent St James’s, implicit is not just in this lifetime.

He asks me what I make of it.

I say to him that the feeling of the tennis ball is that of all the cleavages in the world which is rife now with separation and division. That the new suit represents for him a new role which he must step into. He is ready, fit for it. He has been waiting for a long time and it now nears.

He says that this was pretty much what he thought.

He reaches into his left jacket pocket and hands to me a fluorescent green-yellow tennis ball cut exactly in half.

He jokes that wherever he goes he now keeps finding them…

The dream ends.

Soul Retrieval – Soul Disconnect

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I can make a statement here which will put me at odds with modern “scientific” thinking. It has no material impact on my life because it can no longer impinge on my academic credibility nor university career advancement. There is no way that I can prove this statement. The flip-side is that it cannot be disproved either, it can be designated anecdotal or opinion.

Since the early nineties I can recall instances where I have met “residues” of people who are no longer technically alive and incarnate. They have “visited” me most often nocturnally, sometimes in dreams but more in waking. I have had visitations in quiet places and times during the day. In most cases these individuals have/had some kind of bond with me and in others a strong sense of debt {karma}. They did me wrong.  These instances, whether real or imagined, have coincided with me teaching physics and chemistry at universities or high school privately. Some have been a once only short duration. Some of these have lasted days on and off. Other visits have had a duration of months with irregular and increasingly short visitations, until the visits stop. Some have seemed curiosity driven others by way of penance. Unfortunately, it is not possible to assist “people” to overcome problems which they caused. I cannot help them in their troubles. It is too late.

In some cases, where appropriate, I have done full blown Phowa practice, over several sessions, of visualizing a white Amitabha Buddha field for them and over them. A kind of spiritual WD40.

I had one visit last night. The sense of searching for me by this individual has increased over the last week or so. I do not know for sure if that person is dying, already dead or just having regrets. The feeling is that they are currently still alive in the mundane medical sense.

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In some cases, these visitations are soular, of the soul. In others they are more some kind of emotional / physical residue. At the consciousness level of souls there is a group consciousness. If you like, the white light diffracted into a rainbow, re-members that it was once a part of white light. Contact is soular and although wholly abstract the “brain” constructs a facial facsimile of the meaty body in order to “put a name and face” to the instance. After death these are nearly always more youthful than earth time / age would suggest.

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I have had shamanic training in so-called soul retrieval and have done a number of such rituals myself. The person on the receiving end always reported a pleasant experience and a feeling of being more “together” afterwards. There was an elastic snap of sorts. They seemed beneficial.

Technically speaking the soul cannot be lost from the form except in extremely rare circumstances.

The soul cannot be retrieved because it is the “real” you. It is never lost, it knows what it seeks to do. A reconnection with the wayward personality/meat vehicle might be achieved and enhanced, ritually, by magic. If the soul is fully disconnected that means death of the physical vehicle. A tenuous link can get stretched and the wayward personality vehicle disobey the soul or inner being. A weakening or very weak linkage might allow the soul to wander far from the vehicle on the soular or buddhic plane / level of consciousness. Space in a Cartesian sense does not have meaning thereupon. Geographic, earth bound distances, are no barrier.

The fact of a wandering soul suggests that its control or infusion of the physical personality vehicle is failing. The in toto being is not listening to its soul, its inner-tuition and is governed by materialistic personality whim and desire. The soul is losing the fight and may cut short the life, to wipe the slate clean and start again. The will, the stubbornness, of the lower carnal vehicle is simply stymieing the soul’s learning journey.

It is dark to prevent the soul from imbuing matter. The materialistically oriented personality vehicle thereby lacks a connection to higher purpose and hungrily consumes as an ersatz. This never satisfies for more than an instant. Dissatisfaction pervades.

Often the soul demands things which are inconvenient for the socio-political consuming materialistic vehicle. The small inner voice of calm is ignored and drowned out. The connection to the con-science, that which understands the higher soul group weakens. Behaviour deteriorates and becomes ever more self-centred. The illusion of ME grows more concrete.

The soul is disconnected. The soul is not lost but the vehicle is. Soul retrieval is a misnomer, a reconnection with personality vehicle is better terminology. The stronger the connection, the more profound the infusion by soul, the clearer sense of purpose the in toto being has.

If you, in honesty, are going through the motions of life, then you are not allowing or following the guidance of your true self. The soul.

Blundering About – Backstory and Context

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In the academic year 2014-15 I did some science tutorials in Chemistry and Physics. Most of these were 1:1 AS and A2 tutorials. Given that I had a colectomy for a T3N0M0 tumour on 2nd July 2015 I was going through the two week referral processes together with sigmoidoscopies, biopsy and two colonoscopies during the exam run-in and exam period. The biopsy came back negative but on the basis of imagery they went for the knife.

In order to manage this, I was mega-organised and prepared for each tutorial. I had to cut some work pieces out and be more selective in choice. Hopefully nobody noticed I was ill / stressed and my efforts were of their usual impeccable standard. I had a backstory and a context which no one knew. I did not want to have hand wringing, victim minded, people around me and was perhaps terse with them. I may have been short with others. My main focus was to ensure that the operation happened as fast as possible. I applied some pressure.

In academic year 2015-16 I once again did tutorials. In two family houses the atmosphere was palpably tense. The mother in one said that she was being treated for breast cancer. I said snap, me too. The ice was broken, everyone relaxed. In the other it was kept secret until the chemo made it more obvious. The lad was tense and when he finally spilled the beans, I was able to assist him on other levels than science.

 In some cases, bringing the backstory to the fore makes things a whole lot easier.

Human beings tend to blunder about like bulls on amphetamines in china shops. Even the so-called intelligent can be very blinkered and myopic. The self-diagnosed omniscient have perhaps the greatest lack of sensitivity and situational awareness.

I have for example been having a “discussion” with someone. They have been professing and proclaiming from their soap box, letting fall their precious pearls of wisdom for my benefit. Whilst I have been looking at the bridge of their nose and debating quietly to my self if I should headbutt them to make them shut up. My assessment is/was that they were unaware of how close they were to peril. Enamoured by the sound of their own voice they were blundering about.

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People can assume shared context when none exists. Without participating in self-percussion, it is likely that my background context and experience here differs markedly from the locals. There is no way that I can make them aware of the implications of that context. Yet from time to time is does manifest, often to their surprise. I doubt anyone I have met here has been offered a job at the European Space Agency or negotiated at ASML headquarters. That kind of thing changes you a bit.

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Context is important it changes how we perceive things markedly.

I now have a working hypothesis. Everyone who is a British expatriate here has a backstory of some kind which differs from the UK white picket fence and 2.2 children norm. How it differs I don’t know. There is a need for resourcefulness in a place where the willingness to speak English is low. People find ways.

There is no easy way to make people aware of some aspects of backstory or context. Contact can be too fleeting to warrant it. But this lack of awareness that such a thing might exist can cause problems. Being self-centred like a medieval pope, people imagine that the world revolves around them, to say otherwise if heresy and heresy has high often flammable stakes.

The problem with blundering about on a mission, lacking sensitivity is that you can make some truly whoppers of faux pas. It can be very difficult to extract from the socio-political embarrassment. Losing face is not an option so the awkwardness must pervade and maybe fade. People find it really hard to admit that they fucked up. This lack of social adroitness is another form of blundering about.

“I don’t have to apologise for the BYOB parties at Downing Street…”

Is an example of someone unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions.

If you have a backstory then it stands to reason others do too. Perhaps we need to be a little more sensitive about context and implications.

On the other hand, you could slash overseas aid to appease a domestic audience and allow hundreds of thousands {foreigners} to die because you have pulled the carpet out from under their feet. They do not matter after all.

People blundering about can have marked long terms impacts on and in the lives of others…