Haemochromatosis and Inertia

May 18, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The dream this morning suggests that the French train has stopped. There is no more motion and that nothing is moving. Not moving inertia has set in. Even though events were in motion, that juggernaut has been brought to a halt and looks unlikely to get going again.

Inertia is a symptom of the French system. It is bloody difficult to get started, when it is moving it sweeps all before it, it can be difficult to stop if you don’t comply or agree. But once it has stopped it is bloody difficult to get moving again. Generally, once started things here work out fine just so long are there is nothing anomalous or out of the ordinary. Healthcare can lack the human touch and is very hierarchical, one dares not question deity. They are very happy to throw a lot of cash at things. It can be silo thinking with job demarcation. Global overviews are less common deference is made to specialty. By and large it works and works very well.

Into the equation now of house move is the arthroplasty question.

If, when and where to have my hips replaced?

I don’t take it for granted as it being my right, my due. I do not want to impose or inflict myself. The French system has already been very kind to us. The rheumatologist in Jersey suggested that I need my bone density / brittleness checked out. This is good advice before they take my Titanium pin out. It would be a bit of a shitter if my leg broke without the metal pin. My mind says pin out of left leg. Heal. Hip replace right hip. Heal. Hip replace left hip {if possible}. Heal.

Sounds like a fun year.!! Yipee!!

The high haemoglobin results I have could point at a “faulty” gene sometimes referred to as the Celtic curse. Haemochromatosis. My family has genetic heritage in and around Snowdonia where there is genetic clustering.

“We used 2039 samples from rural areas of the British Isles, from people whose four grandparents were all born within 80km (50 miles) of each other. After over a decade of sample collection and data analysis, the findings of the study were published in Nature on the 19^th of March 2015.

We were absolutely astonished to obtain 17 clusters of individuals based solely on similarities in their DNA that matched remarkably well their geographical locations.

The map shown in Figure 1 is a plot of all the individuals at the average position of their grandparents’ place of birth, where different groups are represented by the combination of the type of symbol and its colour.

The most striking observation is the extraordinary correspondence between the genetic clusters and geographical location.”

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Apparently, you need a prescription from the GP to have yourself genetically tested for this gene which can cause iron build up. My serum ferritin is high in addition to haemoglobin. I can’t buy a test of my genes.

I had better steer clear of strong magnetic fields.

When I try to tell people that gogs, North Wales folk, are different. People just nod and humour me. The study above from Oxford university suggests that there is gog-gene clustering. [Green squares].

Sometimes I have researched things way more thoroughly than your average bear.

I have a pet theory that people are like tabloid newspapers. They tend to exaggerate and say things to garner attention and are less keen on thorough detailed fact checking. I find myself often checking whatever it is that “they” have told me in conversation, especially advice. “They” are rarely the best witnesses. Things are bigged up and other things omitted. It is the conversational equivalent of click bait.

Wait times for hip arthroplasty in Wales range from around one year to greater than two, dependent upon location. We might call this the UK hip lottery. So, a move to Wales would mean around at least an 18 months wait for a new hip.

The problem with Dr Google and Prof. DuckDuckGo is that they tend to open up more possibilities. I suspect that unlike many I am able to read and generally comprehend the latest medical research articles…

We are kind of caught in the inertia again…the summer holidays are looming which means nothing much doing here until autumn…

Oh well…

Bumpkins Go to Saint Helier

May 17, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

It is very difficult to get across to most people just how out of touch we are with modern living and specifically people density and noise. Aside from medics, tradesmen and checkout people, I speak with nobody other than the wife. This has been the case for quite a while, over six years. I have spoken in person to/with her brother and friends when they visited. I have had very few zoom type calls in that six year period. Certainly, less than two dozen. I do not speak on the ‘phone. Nor do I chat via email or WhatsApp whatever the hell that is.

In many ways I am a bumpkin, a pikey and a hermit. I am no longer accustomed to “sophistication” nor the high octane pace of somewhere like Saint Helier Jersey. {Population~ 30k}

I am unaccustomed to any social interaction.

Part of the purpose of visiting Jersey was to see how it felt to be surrounded by people and anglophone people at that. It is fair to say that I am still a little shell shocked. We were out of the compound for less than 48 hours and in the Metropolis for 24.

The fist thing I noted was just how frantic and ill at ease people were. The energy they were giving off was edgy and wanting to please, to fit in. The manager at Pizza Express asked us if we wanted the app…Why? I don’t use apps and we have not been to a Pizza Express for more than six years. I did not even have a ‘phone.

The people in Jersey seemed rushed and hassled compared to here. And boy were they loud when bullshitting each other. I noted several chunky “personal trainer” types, keen to exploit the Jersey dollar for fitness and “well-being”. There is money and it attracts.

The only calm experience, outside interaction, I had was when I sat on the bench outside M&S and a well-heeled woman older than me sat next. Neither of us were rushed. We shared silence for a few minutes. She went into Givenchy. The main street was a bit like a cross between high street Guildford and Bond Street London.

Jersey is clean and “posh”. It is also surprisingly multi-national with people there to meet the services sector demand. I used to hang out in posh places, South Kensington and earlier Mayfair / Piccadilly. I lived in Brixton.

The hotel we stayed at was very nice. We ate at the hotel restaurant. They played loud “party” music and people outside on the terrace were necking booze and smoking or vaping. The food was good and the service very, perhaps overly, quick. There was noise and laughter outside. I thought to myself that once I used to do that kind of thing. I would have been content as a Brit on the piss. It all seemed more than a little forced and false. It was hurried. There were ostentatious handshakes and kissy-kissy helloes.

I was the alien from another planet. I was able to order, in English, food from the pygmy African waitress. I was observing, earth.

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The rheumatologist suggested we move to Jersey for the “quality of life”. It did not seem that attractive to me. How do you explain quiet tranquillity with no social interaction and a gentle river running through the garden? That has quality and not a constant needy need for social interaction and social affirmation. There is no need for endless consumption, conspicuous or otherwise.

I am still sighing a little, a whole day later.

What is obvious from that visit is that it is probably not wise to live in a “built-up” area and that I do not miss the people in whose country I once lived. I do not need that English vibe.

It might be possible to live in the countryside and visit an urban “metropolis” when there is a need.

Unfortunately, I am like a sponge and can pick up all that emitted jangly nervous energy. It made “in town” sleeping hard.

Theoretically It would be possible to earn money tutoring wealthy kids in physics and chemistry on Jersey. But I don’t think there is anywhere there far enough away from “civilization”.

If I found Jersey difficult to hack, London would cause a complete meltdown.

Did I really get on the Victoria Line every weekday morning during rush hour? Really? And without any medication?

In terms of incarnation that seems like the most surreal incarnation that I have ever had.

Still more than a little shell shocked after only a very brief jaunt…

None the Wiser

May 16, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Not long back from a visit to Saint Hellier Jersey where I saw a consultant rheumatologist. They suggested that there is no extra immune-stuff active in my skeletal problems and that most of my “random” inflammation events are probably so-called gout.

There is a lot to unpack mentally and in terms of feelings. There is a question, “did I really live like that once upon a time? Really?”

In the space of a few weeks, the consultant was the second to note and comment upon my recently measured elevated haemoglobin levels. Which could be due to my prior smoking, my COPD, genetic causes or living at elevations during early adolescence. Others causes like blood cancer are very unlikely.

In nearly every medical situation the fab three are rolled out as the most likely cause. The trio of obesity, booze and fags are the go to default diagnosis. In the UK there is a bit of fetish about BMI. It is a well-used mantra. This trio may have a confirmation bias effect. I am / have been triply holy.

In the 1994-5 when the people at St Thomas’ London were looking into the haem thing it was put down to smoking. They bled me on a regular basis to try to drop my haemoglobin levels. It was a part of a whole host of “lab-rat” tests that I had done back then. I was a very cooperative rat, happy to be in anyone’s research programme. This probably rules out esoteric causes.

The most surprising thing with the consultant was their surprise that there was no bone density follow up after me falling and breaking the head / neck of my femur. I fell only from standing in the kitchen at the age of 55. The drop was well under one metre. The rationale was that this was a major break from only a small fall. There could have been something wrong with /weakening my bones. I am male and osteoporosis or osteopenia is uncommon at that age. They were surprised that it was not investigated. They may suggest some follow up tests in a letter.

They were also surprised at the severity of my hip osteoarthritis and the near complete lack of motion, sideways.

Here is something that I may have picked up. When people note or examine me, they perhaps transfer some imagining as to how it might feel / affect them if they were in the same condition. They may see a bleak future. I have had a number of people talk about quality of life to me. Given my flexibility and pain, it might inhibit their current life-style in which they “do” stuff. There is a bit of a shudder. “What if that happened to me?” The advice is to have a bilateral operation so as to have “quality of life”. My serene quality of life far from the loud and maddening crowd may not appeal to them. Quality of life is very subjective.

So, does one cling and try to maintain an active quality of life according to the common view, feeling miserable every time life stops you from doing what you once did and feel you ought to do?

Or do you simply adjust to your new reality, to come to terms with your lot?

Philosophically I suspect that modern medicine is bad in a Darwinian sense for human evolution. The weak and the sick can live and breed. They can live to old age. People have children at a later age increasing the prevalence and propagation of birth defects and damaged genes. Humanity will live longer but it will be sicker and less healthy.

Sounds a bit eugenic…but we are seeing the “success” of modern medicine impinge of health services and economies.

If karma has caused me to have badly arthritic hips, is it wise to try to outsmart karma by having a modern operation?

Ok, I was born in a time where such things are possible but is that a temptation of our times, trying to have life on my own terms? Maybe I should simply settle my karmic debt and endure quietly without complaining?

I am speculating that maybe I need to stop taking any medication whatsoever. It is not making me happy this endless merry-go-round.

As I said, I am none the wiser…

Being a Part of a Wider Story

May 13, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

We all have stories about our lives which we tell to others, we have the so-called curriculum vitae which we use to gain {or otherwise} employment. More often than not we may be bigged-up in our own version of our events, our narrative assimilation. Rarely do we cast ourselves villain. In our stories there are other people, other cast members, upon whom we may apportion blame. The “baddies” are not us or ours. There is propaganda and PR about our role in the world. To imagine that we recollect and then retell with 100% accuracy is delusional. Our perception is not omniscient and our bias remains. Our stories contain fiction and are skewed.

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From time to time events can happen which can get us to completely re-evaluate our lives and the events therein. Our erstwhile self-diagnosed angelic roles may be called into question. How we see someone can change dramatically and that can unpick our previous narratives.

I can envisage this story, told piecemeal in the blog, being part of a much wider picture. One that could attract media attention and upend many things. For example, were I to be outed as a tulku then everyone who has ever interacted with me might change their story. There may be a few lines in a newspaper and even a wiki page. People could have an interesting snippet to add to conversation over dinner. Some might view an incarnation as a science academic interesting, if only for a fleeting moment. Before they watch the next TikTok.

“When I knew him, he was a right piss artist…Tsk, Tsk.”

In other contexts, some might imagine tremendous luck and an auspicious meeting.

This is of course hypothetical. In this corner of the internet, I am not a part of a wider story. It is / I am unknown. But you never know when our stories might come crashing down.

Because of what I can envisage I am pretty confident that I could handle it. Not that I am likely to need it.

Unless people are monitoring this blog, only a tiny few people know. If it is being monitored then that too adds to some wider story, which in the fullness of time might emerge. It adds flavour and spice. Secrecy is always a tasty plot line.

We sometimes are a part in a wider story of which we are almost completely unaware.

You the reader may be a part of one, which you may or may not ever become aware of.

One day everything you thought you knew, might change.

Then again it might stay the same.

Seeing Things Differently

May 10, 2025May 10, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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

May 10, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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.

The Prof and The Rinpoche – Dream Follow Up

May 9, 2025May 9, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The probability of me being a leftie has increased in my understanding since being in this marriage. The wife notices when I do things the “wrong” way round. When I have picked up something like a bow and arrow I have started the left handed way. I always wore watches on my right wrist. Being forced to write right handed and having many marks deducted for my messy handwriting and shit drawing may have kept me back. I now have a certain natural “ambidexterity”. I had behavioural problems at school, perhaps the obligatory dexterity had a role.

I found out today that I have been doing my meditation mudras the “wrong” lefthanded way. A mirror image. I look at mudras and think that is odd. My hands don’t do that.

The passive nocturnal dreaming seems to be converging on some kind of recent “Tibetan” life. It is not Tibet-envy. I don’t particularly want to be/have been Tibetan and have no strange craving for Yak’s butter.

The dream this morning has me referred to as Rinpoche. A term often used for reincarnated lamas of some attainment. There are rare cases when incarnations are recognised late in life.

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Rinpoché ou Rinpotché, Rimpoché, Rimpotché (tibétain : རིན་པོ་ཆེ་, Wylie : rin-po-che, THL : rinpoche, dialecte de Lhassa API : rin’potʃe) est une épithète honorifique propre au bouddhisme tibétain. L’adjectif rinpoché signifie littéralement « précieux ». Le titre Rinpoché est généralement réservé à un lama incarné. Il fait référence au fait que le lama est reconnu comme la réincarnation d’un grand maître du bouddhisme tibétain, suivant une tradition spécifique du Tibet.

Également appelé tulkou (tibétain : སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་, Wylie : sprul sku, lit. Sanskrit : nirmāṇakāya, « corps d’émanation »), mais dans la majorité des cas, il s’agit simplement d’un titre de courtoisie.

Wikipédia

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I might yet have a career as a ninja action hero in films and as a buddy of Putin {Steven Seagal}.

There is no real likelihood of some senior Buddhist dude saying, “yes, he is the incarnation of Joe Bloggs Rinpoche.”

It seems to me that the rate of recognition of western tulkus is in decline. I have no association with a sangha nor were my parents Buddhist. There was a spurt in recognition occurrence when the Tibetan diaspora took hold.

My behaviour to date is not one of shining virtue and abstemious living. I am not good PR.

There are less Rinpoches than science professors. I have met way more of the latter and only very briefly, en passant, one of the former. By analogy to the US system, I was once an Associate Professor in Physical Chemistry. If I had stayed in that system they might have made me full professor just before I died / retired.

It has often tickled me, the notion of tipping up at Imperial College dressed in full monk’s robes and going around knocking on the doors of people who once knew me, many of whom are professors. I would have to get a swipe card to be let in. They may not let me past security, especially if I was dressed funny.

They may or may not have spoken well of me in then past. I may have pissed a few of them off. The first look on their faces would be precious even for a Rinpoche. You can’t buy that kind of experience; it would be priceless, unrepeatable.

But probably that is not going to happen.

It is possible {though unlikely} in the fullness of time that there might be a Wikipedia page about me. I certainly might be the only one with two EUV and one Quantum Optics patent. I probably have the most extensive physical sciences publications list.

To follow on from the dream I could have both “titles”.

I’ll speculate that it would make me a rather unusual incarnation, were it true and/or real.

In terms of kudos common or garden professors have a contextual kudos which varies. During COVID professorial status was elevated even if they were seen as killjoys. They saved lives. People like Trump don’t like “liberal” or “commie bastard” academics.

In certain contexts, Rinpoches have an elevated status and many seek their blessings. Some have entourages and security. They mix in different circles from ours.

In their own cultural contexts, they have more kudos than profs.

Not sure where this dreaming is headed…

Last night there was no Buddhist / Tibetan influence. We watched a recording of University Challenge and some UK TV. There was no conscious pondering. The whole dream came “out of nowhere”.

There is a part of me that is hesitant to go to bed…

What next???

Away From the Highfalutin

May 7, 2025 ~ 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…

My Five Buddhist Incarnations – Dreaming

May 6, 2025May 6, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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 20^th 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…”

Last Few Years – End Game

May 3, 2025May 3, 2025 ~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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…