Category: Personal

And the painted ponies go up and down…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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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

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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…

Not My Circus…

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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?

Bad and Inapplicable Questions

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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…

Borders – a Sign of the Times?

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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!!

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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.

So what is the Plan?

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No specific dreams overnight. I have started painting the end of the room near the log burner. The winter wood situation is now ready and good to go until February. There are a few items left on the checklist.

It seems to me that as I enter my 62nd  year tonight around midnight there is not a lot of change foreseen.

There are a number of medical things upcoming. The wife may / may not stop the lenalidomide maintenance therapy for her multiple myeloma and will soon get back the post breast cancer genetic screening tests. The treatment of myeloma is evolving and the epidemiology complicated by diverse treatment protocols and disease presentation. It seems that the better the initial depth of success with first line treatment the greater the disease free longevity. Studies on stopping lenalidomide maintenance are sparse and of low number participation. Drawing reliable conclusions is tricky. In France they tend to stick to agreed {collective} protocols so we will soon find out if that has changed since the last visit to the haematologist.

It seems to me that a fair proportion of the tests that I have undergone will be let slip “laisser-tomber”. I have a repeat prostate specific antigen test upcoming. Any increase in  number will trigger another MRI and possible biopsy. I need a dental infection all clear before the scheduled hip operation. In the pipeline is a cardio ECG stress test. Assuming all is OK I should sliced and drilled in autumn with round two pencilled in for spring next year. After that I will complete my job application at the Bolshoi. I may start treatment for osteoporosis. The French budget deficit is big maybe they need to spend less on some aspects of healthcare. I will have to do physiotherapy.

We could get a nationalist anti-immigration government which will cast a cloud over our right to stay in Brittany. We could be booted out if they raise the financial threshold for residency.

Being positive we might hope for no recurrence of myeloma symptoms and some enhanced mobility for me for summer ’26. We do need to downsize house. The window of opportunity is before the second hip operation or after it. We have a short visit to blighty booked during which we wish to find out how the UK now feels. From the news here and on UK TV it looks to have gone somewhat down the shitter since we left. We need to see for ourselves. The expectation is that it will be cramped and expensive. The wife managed to grow cavolo nero so we sourced one of the things we missed.  At £4 a coffee for an Americano it could be painful.

Irrespective of the dream content which tends towards the highfalutin, life here will probably carry on much as normal. The lack of mobility will increase over the next few months. The circles I move in are very unlikely to change. I will not be at the fromagerie meeting with big cheeses any time soon. Some people my age are still pursuing high-octane careers and being all stressed out and busy. I have been “retired” for five years and am miles from the greasy pole hamster wheel. It was another world.

Unless anyone is reading the blog in a surreptitious manner, what I type here is read by only a small handful of individuals. If people are snooping and want to get in contact, how might they broach the subject? People do not often think things through.

Of late we have watched a number of Netflix series and in all of these smartphones and social media play a significant part in the plot, the so-called story line. It is another alien world to me. Weird to see text messages as part of a film plot!! We look at a ‘phone on a bigger screen. Seems a bit desperate. And they say Fentanyl is bad.

I guess I have reached the part of life when I have turned into my father, at odds with the current version of modern life. Maybe I’ll start harping after Bing Crosby next. I already think people need to shave and get a haircut…pull their trousers up.

The plan then is to increasingly turn to DIY as the autumn rains arrive. Our pampas grass has just grown fluffy bits, as usual in time for the Atlantic winds to blow in from the wet West. There are some more jobs in the garden but soon the bulk growing will slow.

We have to navigate the medical merry-go-round and that is about all on the dance card so to speak. Aside from the blighty trip it is unlikely we will leave our prefecture.

The plan is not overly complicated…

The Toad Diaspora

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The annual toad diaspora has begun. It is a part of the cycle of life here on the compound. Each January and February both toads and frogs gather in the pond for reproduction. They turn up, shag like loonies, and are gone in less than a fortnight.

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The top count walking around the pond has been something in excess of 100 individuals. There are more toads than frogs. There are more amphibians which I cannot see from the bank. At a conversion rate of 10 legged new born individuals per toad that means ~1000 micro-toads to migrate away in search of their own territory. It could be ten or a hundred times more. I assume they have a migratory diaspora which radiates outwards from the pond centre.

They are small enough to get through the ventilation gaps in the double glazed window-doors. Whenever it rains the little blighters are on the move. The total of toad humane removal events so far is around ten. We have to beat the cat. If you don’t save them, they desiccate. Generally the migration tails off towards the end of September. It depends upon the rain.

Now we are on toad watch….

Does This Matter?

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As a part of my personal end of year review, I like to review. One of the questions is, “does this matter?” “Is what I am doing here of any significance whatsoever?”

The only objective criteria I have for readership is supplied by WordPress stats. It tells me that there are around 400,000 words here spread among 575 posts over the last year or so. There have been a total of ~900 visitors. These come from France {Normandy and Paris region}, UK, USA. Spain. Germany, Canada and India. {In decreasing order of number of visitors.} The views are from diverse towns which might be real or arise from a floating IP used by many ISPs. That works out at about 450 words per visitor. The average post gets a few {literally} views.

Clearly my significance as a global influencer knows no bounds!!

On the basis of this it does not matter what I write because “nobody” is listening. Whatever idea or notion I come up with will sink without a trace in the petabyte torrents of this raging internet thingy. There is no point in me developing any of my ideas, just get them out of my head and move swiftly on. I can sit here dreaming away and the world at large goes about its business unperturbed.

We live in a surveillance society. There is an outside chance that some of my key words might pop up in an intelligence search. But I am not connected to any group. I am pacifist and hermit like. I am not a civil disorder problem. I don’t agree with Trump or Netanyahu. They are powerful men and face disagreement from others way more important than me. I doubt the NSA and MI6 are quaking in their bunkers.

To an extent I have drawn what meaning I can from the dream catalogue herein. I know how I interpret them and in what context. I have a number of theories about what they mean individually and collectively. I have clarity of sorts. One that does not need to be verbalised. I understand the wider potential implications. My understanding points at large tracts of unresolved karma burdening others. I cannot foresee them addressing this.

If I want to change things, then one do-able is to wipe the blog. I will still catalogue incoming dreams (privately) but I will create a space which might be filled with something, else. Sometimes a tiny change can be causative.

The growing trend is that each blog I write gets fewer and fewer views. Which says something.

I reckon that a hip replacement blog with what passes for my sense of humour would have a much larger readership…This could propel me into internet stardom. I could become a legend on my disability enabled throne hand crafted by Armitage Shanks.

Maybe I’ll sleep on it…

Tempest Ciaran – Towards Carbon Neutral

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In autumn 2023 tempest Ciaran laid waste to a great number of trees in Brittany. This one was weakened and then fell in a subsequent storm a week or so later.

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At first glance it does not look much. The shed in the background is however 4-5 metres long!

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That is a lot of wood and debris..There were many trips to the green waste tip.

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Sized and stacked…and now two years later ready for use in autumn 2025.

This morning I split a bunch of these and the wife stacked them in the garage….

Many talk a good climate game, few put their backs into to it with a 2.5 kg splitting axe…some can be a bit cerebral and precious.

It is a nice feeling to know we will use the carbon from the tree felled by a perhaps climate change fueled tempest to heat our home.

At over 100 trees we are by rough calculation aproximately carbon neutral.

We are making ready for when I can’t use the axe late autumn. One more session and we are good to go.

Martin Luther King Quotes

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“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

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“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

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“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

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“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

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“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

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“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

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“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

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“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

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“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

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“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

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“We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”

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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

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“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

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“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”

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Waking Dream – Mystical Vision

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If one was to imagine someone having a waking dream or a mystical vision it is unlikely that you would picture an unshaven white man in his sixties dressed in a white t-shirt and army surplus combat trousers who had been around the block a few time. That person would not be technically obese nor skilled in the art of high resolution laser spectroscopy. He would not be a grey. There may be a tint of eroticism to your imagination of a visionary. The person having the vision would either be young and “attractive” like Joan of Arc or Joseph with his groovy coat. There would be some kind of glow or aura perhaps. There could be some CGI graphics and perhaps some pointy elven ears. They could be a Russian mystic blinded at birth. They could be misshapen. They would have some cool sounding foreign name. They would not be called John Smith.

Either that or they could be in a secure psychiatric ward having avoided taking their medication by hoodwinking the staff.

People are likely to have prejudice about how they might imagine a visionary / whacko.

Last night whilst watching a fly on the wall crime drama about crystal meth in Norfolk I had a tremendously strong vision of the Dalai Lama and one other senior figure in Tibetan / Bhutanese Buddhism. That subjective observation has persisted on and off since then. It interfered with one of my normal nocturnal, pre-sleep meditations. This morning I have that subjective experience conflated with people at Stanford university. {They may be inquiring about Phowa practice – my guess.}

There is no logical reason why out of the blue I get a strong visual image of the Dalai Lama to mind and in mind. There is no effort for/by me to have it there. In fact it would be more convenient for it to fade. I can type, do the shopping and in a few moments, I will make a sandwich with these “visions” at the periphery of consciousness.

In the context of my normal CV and life experience it does not make sense. It is illogical and irrational. I have not exactly hung around with Tibetan Buddhists on a regular basis. Nor have I been brooding on either Tibetan or Buddhist themes of late.

After lunch I will start to sugar soap wash the wall by the log burner, then begin the chore of sizing the wood in the garage so that it is ready for use post operation in autumn-winter. We have about ¼ of the mass needed in the garage.  Once tided up, we will order a couple more cubic metres this month before the price goes up.

It is a bit odd but for me not unusual as Mr Jones might sing.