Category: Quotations

It’s not quite a Jaguar

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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I’ve been driving in my car

It’s not quite a Jaguar

I bought it in Primrose Hill

From a bloke from Brazil

It was made in fifty-nine

In a factory by the Tyne

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It’s a bit old but it’s mine

I mend it in my spare time

Just last week I changed the oil

The rocker valves and the coil

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Last week it went ’round the clock

I also had a little knock

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Madness

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I have had my ultrasound and ECG “stress” test and I am now crock for the rest of the day. I managed to get my heart rate up to 86% of the theoretical maximum for my age pushing a bike load of 130 Watts. I could not sustain it for long.

The ST segment did not show further depression below the isoelectric line suggesting that the blood supply to my left ventricle is not yet compromised. The doctor had no explanation for why the ST segment was depressed. He did not seem worried and so there is no show stopper for the fitting of a bionic hip.

I have not had my heart rate up like that during exercise for a long time. I am probably unfit but I will guess that I am not as unfit as other 100kg men made in ‘64 of my height. Especially those from Newcastle.

They still think I am a fat bastard though.

I have an exercise burn in my quadriceps which is a bit of a novelty. They have shaved my chest a bit for the electrodes…

The Peugeot 207 also clocked earlier this week it now has ~100,040 miles….

Not quite ready for the scrap heap yet…its seems.

Being Off the Map

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

In general people have a fairly fixed idea about how the world is, how people behave and what is expected. Which is a nice way of saying that people are prejudiced. The fact that I resigned my job at a decent university without any other, better job to go to, was for many a non sequitur. They could not get their head around it. It did not compute. Some invented some imaginary scandal to explain it, scandal ever being bread and butter in perfidious Albion.

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People do not associate words on perception and meditation with a smoking skinhead bovver-boy. Nor do they image that a piss artist front row rugby player can chant in deep voice. People are set in their ways and their minds are a tad concrete.

I quite like having more than one working explanation for any given situation. I do not have to settle in any absolute way for which one is “right”. Modern education insists on getting the socially accepted “right” answer to exam questions. Students want to learn how to produce and parrot the “right” answer so as to get “A” levels and degrees. People are trained to think in an absolute binary right-wrong way.

The most logical explanation from a socio-political point of view is that I am simply a burn-out who could not hack it with the big boys, the big cheeses.

Another explanation is that I am off the map. I differ significantly in orientation from most. I just don’t fit. I am a square peg which cannot be hammered into a round hole. No drama. People have long been wary of things which have not been mapped out.

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This means that only the foolhardy might seek to touch me with a barge pole. I could be infectious. Association with me could be career threatening.

I have been told by others that people do not want to be seen associating with me in public.

There is no incentive in a “what-is-in-it-for-me” sense to interact with me in any way, whether meaningful or otherwise.

I will likely remain off the map, uncharted.

People can choose to choose whatever it is they want to choose. Their choice is their choice. I have no wish to influence. If they make poor choices that is not my problem. I never advised them and they never sought my advice. People need to learn in whichever way helps them to learn.

This notion of standing back, non-interference, is neutral. It is nether life enhancing nor life destructive. It is an approach which does not make sense to others who wish to interact, to impinge, to affect and to influence. Some cannot resist trying to guide the lives of others and bend them to their will.

Non-interference is a direct consequence of emptiness, lack of will or ambition, is not on the map of modern ways of living. It is not there in “opportunity” land. After all “opportunities” should and must be seized!!

Why?

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Quirks of Fate

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the painted ponies go up and down…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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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…

So what is the Plan?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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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…

Power and the Intimate Privacy of Death

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

It is warm and sunny outside, so perhaps it is safer to write on these things. Although physical plane death may be public there is a private intimate part not shared by the consciousness of the living and those not in the transition. Ostensibly death may be quick brought on by an IDF bullet or a heart attack. It could be a slow drawn out process mediated by an ailing brain or a bleed. One could have a physically easy or a physically painful death. I have had both. These days death under morphine is not uncommon. Many full of bravado are nevertheless fear-full of that tap on the shoulder. It re-presents the time when the croupier of life spins the roulette wheel after shouting,

 « Mesdames et messieurs, faites vos jeux ! »

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For logically we all know we are placing our bets on what may or may not happen when we die. The ball rolls and stops and we find out if we have won or lost.

History tells of many a shit-scared monarch buying papal indulgences on his death bed in an attempt to bribe God.

I’ll state here that I am not the kind of being who tries to use or take advantage of others. It is not my basic orientation. I am more likely to facilitate, to try help. We all have faults and mine is less nasty. I have to the detriment of others allowed myself to be used. I have robbed them in a sense of the battles which they may have faced. Because I have faced things for them. This in a way, although perhaps altruistic, is disempowering.

I have met a number of people losing their battle with power over the years. Caught up in the process they were and would be unable to see or accept that this is the case. Weirdly the power-flame attracts many a moth on the make, only for a singeing of wings. The lust for a share in apparent power is perhaps the most blinding thing which can happen to a being. They see only with blinkered eye the power, and not the consequence both on others and on them. Most people guess they can handle power. Most people are wrong, for it is power which handles them and changes them. Many in the throes of their battle with power present themselves as some beacon of light when they are anything but. Power deludes those hungry for it and their supporters. Power likes to justify.

I’ll make a little aside here. If there is significant influx of first ray “will-to-power” energy the number of people losing their battle with power will rise and a dark, dark, cloud will result. The first ray is very difficult to handle and cope with. Any crack, any latent cruelty, any lust for power over, will be activated.

The individual mentioned in my dream taught me a lot, for which I am thankful. Primarily he showed behaviours which I did not like and did not want to adopt for myself. It was an exemplar of what I did not want to become. At the same time I was interacting with others a tad obsessed with power and in some cases position.  I have never wanted to be lord and master with minions, slaves and serfs. Others like to lord it over; some like to be lorded over. I was not infected by his mood and intent.

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Power in its knowledge aspect is inconspicuous and not ostentatious. It is gathered and stored, rarely is it exercised. Depending on predilection one may gather like a squirrel. Personally I have always been interested in learning.

That time in the very first part of this century I was engaged in what hindsight suggests was my battle with power. Clearly the scale was rather local, but I was presented with many temptations, the trappings of power. Luckily, I was largely able to resist those temptations, those traps and did not become an “A” grade arse. Other people I knew may have been less resilient and perhaps fell to the traps, the whims of power.

The thing is that power and evil have a kind of symbiotic relationship. Power is the lure; the bait of evil who can tie an appropriate fly for whatever fish it seeks. Evil ever the strategist and craftsman can, when and if needed, be subtle.

In modern days the notion of evil has become quasi-taboo which is testament to the guile and skill of evil.

I do not pretend to know the mind of the dark adepts and those drawn to them. The more evolved of them, aware of much, must make a calculation pertaining to death. That calculation at one level must offset the difficulty of transition with the perceived reward of a life of power. Only they would be able to comment if they have struck a good deal, made a good bargain.

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I personally, this afternoon, in the middle of the day, am ready. In a sense I have already embraced my death.

There is a chance that you and I will meet gain at the hour of your death. You can decide for yourself if that is some morbid shit I made up, or not…

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“Don’t know where
Don’t know when
But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day”

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Names so deep and names so true…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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The war was lost
The treaty signed
I was not caught
I crossed the line
I was not caught
Though many tried
I live among you, well-disguised

I had to leave my life behind
I dug some graves
You’ll never find the story’s told
With facts and lies
I had a name but never mind

Never mind
Never mind
The war was lost
The treaty signed
There’s truth that lives
And truth that dies
I don’t know which
So never mind

Your victory was so complete
Some among you
Thought to keep a record of our little lives
The clothes we wore our spoons our knives

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I could not kill
The way you kill
I could not hate
I tried, I failed

—

Leonard Cohen / Patrick Raymond Leonard

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One of the things that I have learned is that all I have to do is make an offering. That offering may be so simple, so innocuous and so easy to be ignored. So, often it is. But I have done all that is required of me to do. Whatever door I have ever so briefly opened is missed in the hurly burly, haste and ambition. I have offered a chance for a different route, an alternate path. 99% of the time these offerings are not seen, nor appreciated and thus discarded. By and large many see themselves as THE expert and perhaps imagine that I am to learn from them, to join their followers. For some they just want my shilling to add to their business.

People can be so het up with the notion of winning and victory that they have in fact lost and very badly so. They may imagine that their victory is so complete but they have been fighting an entirely different “battle” to me. I am not obsessed with winning, scoring points or getting one over on another. I am not insecure and do not need to show off.

Often, I am not fighting at all, merely offering. Strangely this is something many fail to see, especially if they are paranoid

I do not wish to inflict myself. If people do not appreciate then perhaps that is the way it is/was meant to be. Perhaps now is not the time. Perhaps this is not yet the lifetime.

People obsessed in mind and with face value can nevertheless miss the bleeding obvious and are totally blind to subtlety and nuance. They can fail to see what is directly under their nose and in front of them.

All I have to do is make an offering…

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Never mind
Never mind
I had to leave my life behind
The story’s told
With facts and lies
You own the world so never mind

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The ancient adepts of the Tao….

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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The ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle and flexible, profound and comprehensive.

Their minds were too deep to be fathomed.

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Because they are unfathomable,

One can only describe them vaguely by their appearance.

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Hesitant like one wading a stream in winter;

Timid like one afraid of his neighbours on all sides;

Cautious and courteous like a guest;

Yielding like ice on the point of melting;

Simple like an uncarved block;

Hollow like a cave;

Confused like a muddy pool;

And yet who could quietly and gradually evolve from the muddy to the clear?

Who else could slowly but steadily move from the inert to the living?

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He who keeps the Tao does not want to be full.

But precisely because he is never full,

He can always remain like a hidden sprout,

And does not rush to early ripening.

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Excerpted from “Tao Teh Ching” by Lao Tzu

Shambhhala Dragin Editions Trans. John C .H. Wu

ISBN 0-87773-388-0