Category: Musings

Something Changing…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days I have had the sensation of things stacking up, coming towards some kind of nexus. After which the future might be clearer. There is a sense of tension and of missed opportunity exterior to our world. I feel an avoided crossing which may not get close to manifesting for a large number of years or ever again. The sense is of an aperture closing, of time running out.

Life can take trajectories other than we might imagine.

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It does not turn out the way we might anticipate or expect.

The upcoming rheumatology appointment may shed some light on what is going on with my skeleton. It is wise not to get too optimistic. Life has shown me that I have to endure on a number of occasions, there can be no solution or let up.

I feel one pathway one trajectory  may be closing off.

I do not see a way forward.

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It is all a little up in the air.

This little foray upcoming may come to something or send us back to where we started.

What may be happening external, according to the banging jungle drums, I have no control over. But my gut feeling is that if anything is incoming it will be a foxtrot unicorn. An overly complex “cunning plan”. If such a thing is in the pipeline I would advise, desist. But since when did anyone listen to me.

It is weird. It feels as if something is afoot exterior to the compound here…

What may come in dreams tonight remains to be seen…large pink-bunny steroids don’t sound all that attractive.

I will be all Timmy Mallet – wide awake.

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Importance and Priority

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“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

People can deem all sorts of things as important; these can be personal or of a wider more general import. I think it fair to speculate that the majority have a me-centric sense of importance. The things which matter to them concern themselves, their lives and those of family and friends. Things on their agenda are more important than those not.

I am important in the lives of one human being and three cats and maybe some birds which we feed. That is the extent. My priorities are in and around this sphere of influence. My significance to the wider world is very small. In terms of social kudos I have none. My passing is unlikely to impact beyond my circle, my sphere.

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I have just gone and lost a piece of tooth filling. Which is actually both important to me and ever so slightly urgent. I am due to have a titanium implant fitted soon. It is due next to the broken tooth. Unless the tooth is repaired, they may not go ahead with the implant. In my me-centric world this is horizon stuff. We need to know so that we can free up a dental slot by prompt cancellation if that is the case.

The concatenation of various health problems is getting to be boring.

What happens here, in principle, has a wider impact elsewhere. But I doubt anyone in San Francisco needs to fear the butterfly effect from our compound.

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Self-perception has implications. We watched a film last night “The Substance” and surprisingly it had a big affect on me. This is unusual. It was about human folly and the desire to be young / look young and operate in an appearance obsessed society. People go to extraordinary lengths to keep up appearances. I can’t remember being much concerned about how I looked. All I wanted as a teenager / early twenty was for my fairly severe acne to pass. Being called “pizza face” is not a great deal of fun, named after a Margherita.

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In an earlier post I postulated that “face” was one of the most expensive of all human notions, human folly. It appears to be very important to some and they will kill and maim in an attempt to preserve face. Face is behind conflict, face is behind war, face {loss} is causal of revenge. The weird thing is that face is a completely man made illusion. No leopard or tiger would acknowledge your sense of face or kudos in the jungle at dusk. Yum, yum…

As I was making coffee this morning, I noted that although I imagine that I have some knowledge to share. This notion is not widely held. It is not held important on a wider scale. It does not matter what I imagine.

Out there somewhere important people are busy doing things they deem important. They have their priorities whether considered or otherwise. I have never been so disinterested in all the hot air, hype and show which fills the news.

The world has lost its sense of direction. It is heading deeper into petty squabbles over who sells what for what price in the sandpit or behind the bike sheds. The world is arguing the toss about who is or isn’t a fair trading partner.

Thousands of people are dying and the world is focussed on “deals” and “bargains”.

The great car boot sale is on!!

Thousands no longer get antivirals; ordnance efficacy can be tested in vivo in Gaza and Yemen. Let’s boost arms spending hype so we can sell more weapons…

I think the priorities of humanity have been badly skewed and it is not getting better…

Seeing Things Differently

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Recently I was talking with someone who suggested that an in-patient group oriented intensive physiotherapy regime postoperative for hip arthroplasty was a good idea / French practice. He was, to understate, more extroverted than I. The idea of being around loads of people “helping” me to recuperate via conviviality just does not work for me. It would be close to torture, feeling unwell and having to interact in a foreign language on a regular basis, with others. No thanks.

This sounds like a showstopper to me. In my mentality I would delay or not proceed at all.

Maybe I am ungrateful or maybe I know myself well.

It is clear in this simple example how we see things differently.

“Jack Sprat he ate no fat; his wife she ate no lean.”

What works for one person does not work for others. According to all the common metrics I am socially isolated. Some might imagine that I need help. Poor Alan.

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They may even imagine that they know what is best for me. Because as every newspaper vendor knows it is always the antisocial loner, who is not well liked, that becomes the heinous murderer. Helping the socially excluded is an anti-murder prophylactic measure, which makes sound societal sense.

Unlike most people I don’t care what the ‘phone companies do with my data, because I don’t generate any. I am not in any target marketing demographic. Daytime TV however is full of adverts aimed at the likes of me. I’ll get my SAGA loyalty card soon, to use until my pre-paid cremation plan kicks in.

The problem with seeing things differently is that it is nigh on impossible to explain or otherwise convey that difference to others, specifically the scale thereof.

I look relatively normal. I can speak “normal” for a short while. But I know from experience that the way I assimilate the world differs radically from others. I am not prone to influencers, whatever they are. I do not swallow hook line and sinker what I might read in the news of whichever flavour / prejudice. As an outsider, I need help to rejoin the fold, the group lunacy. Bless…

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Most people suffer from worry and catastrophising. I can have brutal clarity without dramatic catastrophic thinking. I can envision futures and remain calm.

It is impossible to communicate the lack of ambition / goal to anyone who is beholden to theirs. I am happy to make unilateral decisions based on available information even when I know that information is incomplete.

Once you have attained impermanence, you change as does your orientation towards life.

“This too, shall pass”, is more than just a saying.

People in general have a need to “do” something. There is a need of immediacy. A desire, an urge, to get things “sorted”. I have learned that some things simply cannot be sorted. Some have to be endured. Some need let go of. Some need to calm in emotional temperature and thence to fade away.

It is economical not to intrude, to inflict oneself upon or otherwise interfere in the lives of others. This is a form of harmlessness.

A passive approach of response when needed tends to calm. Though it can also infuriate, humans being as they are.

It is impossible to please everyone.

I see apertures in the web of life, during which things may be possible. When I see them closing, I know that the possibility and probability of things happening drops. Until finally what once might have been possible, no longer is.

One of the aspects of impermanence is the notion of timeliness. Timeliness has a time limit. If things do not occur when they may or might, they do not and cannot. The moment has passed. The “permanent” possibility or opportunity is gone.

Impermanence teaches that complacency is unwise. It is a non-nihilistic implication which many fail to see. There is only a discrete aperture in spacetime for things to occur…

You have only my word for it, that I imagine that I see things differently from others…

I could be talking BS…

You decide…..

The Three Threads

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Out there in the wider world, people are busy with their business. Maybe focussed on whatever it is that may be “important” to them or so they deem. There is very little genuinely spare time, largely because that internal dialogue is rampant. Many have some kind of agenda which they seek to enact, be that as simple as going to the football and having a skin full, or not.

I have been coming around to the idea that fate has little left in store for me in terms of my interactions in a wider world for the end-game of this lifetime. I am pretty much done.

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The {my} world turns inwards and is governed largely by biological health and physical pain. I have managed to get a French rheumatology appointment for September which is contemporary with my next scheduled GP doctor appointment. I have a UK rheumatology appointment next week but they cannot prescribe for French pharmacies. I will probably self-medicate unless things get genuinely unbearable. Any hip operation looks at least a year off.

We have started looking at houses suitable for handicapped living and this is the so-called nanna-thread. The one that looks the most real, the most likely. If we end up in some nanna-accommodation with shared communal facilities, there is a chance that even if I don’t want to, I will end up in some way as spokesperson / organiser for the grey hordes. The nanna thread has UK options in Llanelli with the Scarlets or near Gloucester with the Cherry and Whites.

That is about as far as thinking has gone.

In the background my unpublished dreams provide detail of just how disingenuous and unpleasant various people, allegedly “close” to me in the past, have been towards me. Those dreams have gone beyond what I already knew to be true. I am not surprised, rather thematically bored. I could not be arsed, to recall them, to write them down. Boring.

The Buddhist-thread with Tibetan spices, seems likely to have no physical plane future. I can’t see any trajectory which might make it more substantial or solid. It seems to me “just one of those things”. A possibility in the web of life, unable to manifest, due to the reality of life circumstances. Practicality aborts dream, if you want to be dramatic.

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It may be simply a ghost, an echo, that I need to let fade, to work through my system and to let go of. There is no vicinal or proximal context.

My little dream-world does not impinge exterior. There is no data.

Of late there has been a tiny hint of something I might do were we to have a UK small-garden property. It is the merest hint of a thread. The conceptual difficulty I have is that it pertains to the “leadership” red herring. Someone gaslighted me into this notion, when in reality I have always been more about teaching, possibility and not manifestation. I cannot lead in a socio-political sense because I cannot be bothered with fake niceties and bartering politics.

For some bizarre reason some expect me to do, when I would much rather research, think and speculate. I enjoy planning and envisioning; I don’t fuss if these get binned or forgotten.

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The only thread that I can start to picture is the first. I could see the bathroom of the house we saw yesterday adapted for grip bars in the shower. I questioned whether the tiled stud-wall could support a fraction of my ~100kg. I would need a second look.

For now, these are the three threads in order or increasing tenuousness.

Messaging Assumption and Miscommunication

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Postulate.

The human ability to get entirely the wrong of the stick is close to infinite.

Herein lies the mystery of perception, bias and multiple failures in communication both as a purveyor and acceptor. People may not be aware that they are, whether consciously or not, sending messages which others are receiving and perceiving and assimilating.

I suspect that because I am largely silent and can be not expressive, people tend to imagine that I am judging and being critical. They may expect some verbal response / discussion / mutual bullshitting when talking and when none is forthcoming, they can get unnerved. The feedback mechanism is missing. They expect chit-chat. In the absence they can confer multiple meanings which simply are not there.

People can read all sorts of shit into things. They may imagine I am sending a message when I am not. People might read this blog and imagine that I am messaging them directly.

The likelihood of miscommunication in the context of different cultures and frames of refence is enhanced. People may imagine that their customs are transferable. The French attitude of laissez-faire can be interpreted as complete indifference, fence sitting and not giving a shit, disinterest. It can be read, “that person can’t be arsed, sod ’em, they are not serious. Let’s move on to someone who has a point of view or opinion.”

In trying not to impinge a different message can be received. “Waste of time.”

I’ll assume with a high confidence integral that many people have made hugely erroneous assumptions over the years as to my motivations, what I am thinking and where I am coming from. This {my} assumption is based upon my interpretations of their behaviours and could be invalid. There may be transference of their ways of thinking and prejudices onto me.

There are certain types of people who like to argue the toss and “win” arguments / debates. They like to “score” points.

If someone like this expresses a point of view and one does not counter it, remaining silent even. They can assume agreement and/or victory. The lucky recipient of opinion may disagree totally but cannot be arsed to verbalise. Agreement can be assumed and the illusion of being right /accurate taken from the non-intervention.

Many introverts cannot be bothered to do the thinking for gobby extroverts. It is not important to them nor is share of air time or limelight kudos. The introverts can be disinterested in interaction.

I am reasonably confident that I have by accident, thrown a spanner into the works, with my interactions with the French medical profession. I have not behaved in the manner to which they are accustomed and they have not had the skill or experience to handle it. There has a result been extensive miscommunication and they have made assumptions about what might transpire, what I understand and how I perceive them. It can be very hierarchical. Most medics have not interacted as I have. My need to chat and discuss is vanishingly small when viewed from the angle of French customs. If I want to find out my first port of call is research which I will do thoroughly.

Once miscommunication has gone beyond a certain point the situation becomes very difficult if not impossible to salvage. This is because face and pride have now come into play and dominate, often unilaterally, subsequent interpersonal dynamics.

Postulate

The human notion of face and implicit loss of face is one of the most expensive bits of human folly in terms of relationships and loss of human life.

Face in this context is illusion, a socio-political construct which sells gossip magazines, tabloid newspapers and underpins the scripts of television soap operas.

“Face” lies aback assumption and miscommunication. People get offended, an emotional overaction, if things do not comply with assumption and social expectation. People can assume that the {their} worldview is common and that everyone holds similar prejudices to them.

Once people have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick the tendency is to grasp this ever more tightly. Mis-perceptions and mis-assimilations of reality are more concrete and fixed than one might imagine.

There is no better demonstration of miscommunication than the game of “Chinese whispers”. Yet surprisingly, given this knowledge, the faceless and ubiquitous “they” are somehow the font of all truth and knowledge….

There is not a lot you can do or say which is contrary to the omniscience of “they”. No matter how well you communicate it, it cannot be perceived accurately because “they” dogmatically forbid it.

The wrong end of the stick beckons with the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole…

Away From the Highfalutin

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Irrespective of anything fancy, life goes on much as normal here. Yesterday I went to see the arse doctor and today we went to see the boob doctor. I was being followed up for post operative colon cancer and the wife for post-op breast cancer. In July I have an appointment for a colonoscopy and in August one for the higher PSA level and a prostate follow up.

I was thinking of a tune but I could not quite put a finger on it so to speak

“Bum-titty-bum-bum…”

Once I have seen the chimney sweep, and after my joyous interaction with industrial grade laxative, if all is well and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, there is no more programmed chimney sweeping for five years.

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My next GP appointment is, barring any health change, due in October. I have a rheumatology appointment next week, which should provide some clarity. The issue of two {three} major operations on my hips will be on hold over the summer.

We view a house for sale later this week which will make the downsizing real. A brief visit to Jersey will advise if we can hack being surrounded by anglophones.

At the moment aside from the wife, I speak briefly with the guy who cuts the grass every few weeks, 4-6 times per year with the GP and with the physiotherapist every three weeks or so. That is the full extent of my external “social” interaction. I speak with nobody on the ‘phone or internet and am not in any email dialogue. People might find that extent of social interaction difficult to believe. But it is true.

It is possible that we may downsize this year. The tax return has been sent off.

Shortly I have 75kg of dry bentonite in the garage. The pond has a slow leak and I am going to attempt to plug that a little with clay. Then before we have any drought warning I will refill the pond from the river.

The contrast between the day to day life and what happens in the dreaming is marked.

My “diabetic” socks from China have just arrived without any tariff notice or to pay.

There are two decisions pending patent and blog…what to do…

Life goes on pretty much as normal…nothing fancy…

Context and Scale

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People can be more than a little blinkered when it comes to looking outside of their own context, their own world. At the moment we have an American president viewing everything through the idealised spectacles of what America once was and not giving a shit how the rest of the world views them. If he is trying to sell us the American dream he is failing, all that once was good about Americana is getting tarnished. That old man is doing harm to the image of US of A, he is bad marketing PR for USA plc. He is teaching everyone else to avoid relying on them and depending on them, to make relationships elsewhere. He is reducing their importance.

Maybe he is a visionary. I think he is stuck in some faux-sepia image of a Great America. Times have changed. He is trying to raise it from the dead. Without tariffs “capitalist” America is no longer competitive commercially.

Let’s remake “The Bird Man of Alcatraz”.

Hindsight is often 20:20 but people can be {willingly} blinded if there is something in it for them. With a modern context this image differs from when it was taken.

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People seeking kudos and fame associate with those who might purvey that for them. The single minded can neglect hazard warning lights.

People can get very caught up in their own world unaware that there is a much wider context and a scale which they are completely oblivious of. Their own little world, the relationships and socio-political pecking order are tantamount; the border and boundaries of universe are defined. Like a particle in a box only certain behaviour wavefunctions are allowed. They are confined. It rarely occurs that to an outside eye they might look a bit odd.

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They can be surprised if you even suggest that there is something outside of their “world”.

For quite a while I was closeted in UK science academia and unaware of how the outside world thought and did. Aside from the jibes of my father, “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach!”, I had a fairly naïve view of business.

I’ll suggest that my worlds now extend way beyond that microclimate and that I am appreciative of a much wider set of contexts than I once was. I have a sense of scale which surpasses my mundane existence as a “poor” arthritic retired person.

I know that the previous post in this blog if taken seriously, by those whose world to which it pertains, is a very big deal if true. If I am just a nut job and a dreamer then it is of no import. In one context big, in another irrelevant. Context matters.

There is no way you can advise, warn or help an “omniscient” being to learn, to see a wider perspective. By definition those who think they know a lot are the least willing to accept any new stuff outside of their world, their assimilation of reality. Caught in mundane socio-political advancement games they do not know what harm they are doing to themselves. What karma they are making.

And nobody can help them see. This is because they do not want to see, they already know best.

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If for example you were to find yourself interacting with a Bodhisattva of a certain degree. You could have no idea of the context in which you are interacting nor of the scale of implication of your actions. Chances are you would try to shoe-horn your interaction into your customary context or set of contexts.

I might be able to still have a conversation for a while within the confines of an academic context world-view. I can borrow a trailer from the farm store and bring my sit on tractor-mower to them for repair, highlighting the problem areas on an engineering diagram. I have learned {partially} a new context. The scale of a two acre garden was way bigger than I had first anticipated. I know now.

We all of us learn {hopefully}. A good starting point is to imagine that there are very many things outside of our preferred and well used, dog-eared contexts.

Someone not so long ago told me that the Guardians of the Race did not exist, that there was no such thing as the spiritual hierarchy. He was adamant and insistent.

Clearly it was I, as is so often the case, who is/was in need of education…

My Five Buddhist Incarnations – Dreaming

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In around 2003 whilst living in London and working as a lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Imperial College in London I started having waking visions of myself dressed as a Buddhist monk / priest. These visions overlaid normal day to day reality and I was able to lecture to a theatre full of ~one hundred students on chemical reaction kinetics or in smaller groups, chemical applications of group theory, whilst these visions were resident. They persisted on the crowded Victoria Line tube trains. I had repeat visions of om mane padme hum tattooed in Sanskrit on my inner forearms. Accompanying these images was/is the sensation of tattoo. These visions lasted on and on for over a year.

I did not mention this to anyone because I thought it would not go down well in the Chemistry department. I thought human resources might not appreciate this and occupational health might be consulted.

I however was pretty sure that this was past life recall.

Obviously, it is impossible to prove scientifically, that any past life recall is real. At best there can be what the courts call, circumstantial evidence. Dreaming comprises some of this kind of evidence.

In 2009 I had a series of visionary telepathic conversations, early in the morning, walking in the woods near Tring with the master Djwhal Kuhl. He told me of five of my previous lives, two of which were Buddhist. He said that I had been a very close disciple of Siddartha.

The dream yesterday has added Nāgārjuna to the list of possible life-candidates.

Irrespective of accuracy or otherwise the theme of scholasticism and scholar runs through all the/my putative incarnations as does the theme of entrepreneurship. I am “on” the second ray, of the Elephant dreaming class and conditioned by love-wisdom, the teaching ray.

One dream suggests that I was Bakula a close disciple of Siddartha who came late to the path after a scholarly life.

Yesterday’s dream suggests some six hundred years later Nāgārjuna. Who was a “founder” of Mahayana and may have taught at Nalanda university.

Another dream has pointed at a saffron trousered Muay Thai trained Burmese / Thai incarnation, a monk/priest/protector.

Then there is dreaming evidence of a Japanese Vajrayana monk incarnation, with poetry.

{The feeling for me is that I also had a Japanese Zen life but no dreams as yet}.

The next two lives were not substantially Buddhist.

Of late there has been increasing “evidence” for a 20th century incarnation as a Tibetan Buddhist. So far there is no evidence of a named individual. If it was a sequential birth then they need to have died before or in early 1964. If it is a shared emanation then there is no strict constraint of time frame.

It is not for me beyond the realms of possibility that I have had five {six} incarnations with a dominant Buddhist flavour and of a non lay orientation.

It is not going to detrimentally affect my career prospects to write about this here and now.

I can just be some crazy eccentric old git living like a quasi-hermit.

“Look at the twp boy over by there…”

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Last Few Years – End Game

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Since we have been in France several people have commented that I am still young. I have not and do not believe them. I do not see myself as young. I don’t feel that I have two decades left. I feel increasingly decrepit.

The average UK male life expectancy in the UK might be 84 but I have smoked a lot, drunk a lot and have early stage COPD. The government web site “thinks” on average that I will make the state pension age of age of 67. I am less sure. Various anti-tobacco web sites suggest that I have taken around ten years off my life expectancy. Someone like Boris Johnson is the same age as me. There is no way I could countenance his reported familial circumstance. I simply could not hack it. Some of my erstwhile peers are still having useful and successful careers. My overt socio-political career effectively stopped nearly two decades ago. I am done in that context.

The end-game trajectory looks pretty simple.

Many of the things which are advertised as activities for the aged are of no interest to me. The sanguine advertisers’ pictures of garden centre visits, SAGA river cruises, stairlifts, cremation plans and incontinence pants don’t really light my candle. Weirdly old farts like me are pictured using smart phones like a teenager! I will not be a grey-fox male model nor a complicit cripple smiling to camera and simpering in a wheel chair, thanking my lucky stars.

There is a disconnect in perception. People see sixty-year olds differently from how I experience it.

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There is nothing on my bucket list and no residual ambition. I am not keen on bingo nor lawn bowls. I do not want to play bridge nor socialise with my fellow gummy-bear toothless.

I don’t really have much of anything to offer which people might want and/or pay for. I know some things but the things I know are not that which people desire or want. These will go up the crematorium chimney with me.

I know that on the warrior’s path anything might and can happen. So, if something hugely life-changing happened I would not be overly surprised. It looks mightily unlikely now.

I could treat myself to a new camera and renew my photography. I am 90% sure that I could write a truly terrifying occult based psycho-terror novel. Exorcism might feature. Cancer epidemiology and life expectancy / month graphs could be included. I could add some chem-bio-gene terror to the plot, maybe throw in a few mutations.

It remains a hypothesis that other people have karma to work out in respect of me and that I can in no way facilitate this process. Either they will do it in time or I will pop my clogs first. I am powerless to help, incommunicado and our circles are unlikely to cross again this life.

If we down-size the garden a lot. I will need something to do.

I don’t really have a vision of where to from here…the current horizons however are not large…