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….
The dream starts with me driving a soft top dark blue {indigo?} Golf GTi type vehicle. It is right hand drive and has had a roll bar driver protection cage welded in. The sound of the engine is throaty and I can feel power under the throttle. The drive is similar to “whitey” my erstwhile Peugeot 208 GTi with 200 bhp. Though the handling is better.
I drive it into an urban French style garage. The type they have in the town centre and in 1960s films. I park and get out. I greet a man in light blue overalls. We know each other very well. He asks what he can do for me. I say that I have recently bought the car and could he look specifically at the breaks and the steering. The car is equipped with new top of the range tyres. I say that the steering felt a little slack on the way there. He looks at the car with interest.
He pops it onto an inspection ramp and hoists it into the air. He goes underneath and notes down the chassis and VIN {vehicle identification number}. Excitedly he ushers me to follow him into his office. He sits at desk and enters the VIN into the computer. He exclaims, “I knew it”. “You have bought a very rare special edition Pantera version.” The emphasis is long on the E and I know it to be Panthēra cat family and Jaguar. I feel corporally the Jaguar at his utterance of the word Pantera. I feel myself a Jaguar in the jungle. He says that these were a limited edition ultra-souped-up version. There were only a very few made and they are very high performance. He says that I have gotten a good deal. He adjusts the brakes and steering. He lowers the car down. He does not want payment. He has not seen one of these before in the flesh.
The scene changes. With the soft top down I am being pursued though a “medieval” town centre with very tight streets and corners. The roads have small squares, piazzas. On occasion I do handbrake turns to make the very tight corners. There are steps and gradients. Although I am being pursued by several vehicles I do not have direct sight of them. The feel is southern Europe, Mediterranean even. The pursuers are not police or official rather bad people who wish me ill, who want to hurt and even kill me. No matter how much they try I can out pace them in my special edition Pantera.
The scene changes and I am in a snowy pine forest with muddy “roads”. It feels Finland-Russia-Estonia. Again I am being pursued. I am now ultra glad of the roll bar as I am rally driving at breakneck speed. I am being pursued by people in slower four wheel drive vehicles. I know that I won’t be able to shake them until I reach the highway. After that they will be dust. The pursuit is relentless.
I wake up and can feel my thighs, lower back and sacroiliac plate. I know that I have been writhing around tensing my muscles during the dream pursuit. I can feel adrenaline. I take a while for my muscles to relax and stop hurting. I go to the bathroom and it is 5:15 AM.
Back now in the dream I am in Mdina, L-Imdina, in Malta. I know it is the Maltese Mdina. I am wandering the modern streets and know beyond question that I lived here and spent time here hundreds of years ago. I find my old residence down the street from a church. There remains a puzzle for me to solve. I am very comfortable with the Arab influence; it is a feeling which I recollect from my time among them as invited guest.
Next I am shown a map of Southern France specifically the protuberance which has Cannes and Marseille. I see both an ancient map and a more modern one. I have the knowing that “ago” I sailed from Marseille. I am now in my blue GTi top down driving West along a coast road heading for Marseille. To my right is a rocky bluff and to my left the azure-blue sea. I have wind in what would have been my hair. I am wearing Ray Bans and heading at speed along the open coast road. It is very early morning a little after dawn in high summer. The road is empty.
Next I am in a well-equipped kitchen in a large mansion like house. In front of me “mise en place” are various ingredients for cooking. One the other side of the cooking island is a young expensive posh woman whom I do not know. The kitchen belongs to her family. I sweat down some finely chopped shallots and a little garlic and more butter. I grind some pepper. I add some flour to make a roux, then some milk. Next I add a large glass of white wine which I can tell from the smell is a dessert wine. I reduce the sauce down. I am making a white wine reduction. I add some chopped fresh Tarragon. I know that I have also lived here near Marseille and that for me Marseille and Mdina are linked.
What I don’t yet know is how the Pantera or Jaguar fits in.
The dream starts in a very urban setting, next to a large river which is brackish and tidal. There is a very large pub on multiple levels which backs onto the river. It has a feel of a Dickensian smugglers’ pub on the banks of a foggy Thames. The wife and I meet Pierro there on the land side off a normal road. We go inside.
The scene changes and I am now entering the lower levels of the pub from the sea side through a rarely used entrance off the “beach”. I work my way up through the pub looking for Pierro and the wife. Some of the rooms are busy some are not. The pub is very big with many rooms and many bars. In one the barman hands me a half-pewter tankard filled with porter a type of dark beer. Carrying this I continue searching through the pub. I walk through an office drinks party in one bar and a pre-wedding piss up in another. I find them in a wooden bar with benched wooden seating.
I again greet Pierro. He says that he has someone he wants me to meet. They are his cousins from America. He introduces four men who are a bit like the “Deliverance” hill-billies. They are roughly dressed and with poor teeth. They are unwashed and smelly. One of them has fingernails like dog claws. Another has a lazy eye and is wearing a lopsided straw hat. They are all tall, well over six feet and on the skinny side. They look out of place in the urban setting.
I start to speak with them in English, but they respond in French with a very strong creole or patois accent, that is very thick and difficult to understand. It could be Canadian American Indian French or from the deep south of the USA. It is very hard to understand. I speak with them in my attempts at French. It is clear to see that we are having massive, huge, trouble communicating. Communication is very poor between us.
The scene changes to a different urban setting. There are tall dark red brick buildings a bit like those near Kensington High Street and a bit reminiscent of Manchester. There are thin several storey tall, terraced houses and office like accommodation. I am there for a rock concert. Perhaps by Oasis. There is on street car parking with old style parking meters. I pick up my key from reception and go to find the house which I have been allocated, which I am renting. I go inside and dump my bags. I then leave and lock up putting the keys in my pocket. I look at the number on the door so that I can find it amidst all the very similar looking buildings. I can see the number 1347 in large white screw-on numbering. In the dream I think it odd that the house has such a high number.
I then set off to look for my car having forgotten exactly where I parked it. I know that I parked it near here because I used intuition to find then ticket office. I am looking for my old navy-blue Ford Fiesta. I look up and down the streets, down back alleys, in car parks above and below ground. I cannot find the car but am not concerned because it is my old car which I sold many years ago.
The dream ends.
As I am coming to, I note that the dream is about 15 both because of the house number and Pierro. It is about light through or from darkness. I note that this dream is a dreaming symbol dream.
15 is the jewel of awareness light thorugh darkness.
Yesterday evening I watched a one liner comedian deny that he was suffering from arthritis. He was aged and claimed that it was actually early onset rigor mortis, which is an amusing and attractive idea. I am due to see an orthopaedic surgeon on Monday with a view to an assessment for hip replacement and perhaps some surgery on my lower spine. There is a fly in the ointment, however.
My Carte Vitale has cracked and I have ordered a new one on line. Yesterday they asked me to surrender my Carte Vitale. This is the magic key which unlocks French healthcare and the payments there fore. If you don’t have one you get billed for any hospital stay. These are at more than a grand a day for high care levels. Which means that until the situation is resolved it would be financially unwise to elect for any surgery. The French system is difficult to start and has very high inertia. Once it gets rolling it is a bit of a juggernaut and difficult to stop. In a few hours I will surrender my card and we will enter the twilight zone of French administrative “efficiency”. The pharmacist suggested that we allow two months for this to get sorted…
So, in the meantime I will have to manage early onset rigor mortis…
Last night we watched a documentary asking if Elon Musk wants to rule the world. Given how present he now is in the collective consciousness I am mildly surprised that he has not cropped up before.
This morning, I had a jumbled and chaotic dream with him in. In that dream he lent me one of his cars {Tesla} and gave me the key. He had however forgotten where he had parked it. So, I had to search the city centre of a German town with the key fob, pressing the button to find it.
I then had an extensive discussion with him concerning possible candidates for molecular qubits based upon hindered internal rotation and quantum superposition states of molecular rotors in the gas phase. I was left with the impression that he was rather lonely and bored.
The first part of the dream was had between 6 and 6:31 AM this morning. I then went back into the dream.
The dream opens with me driving down a bitumen private country road on an estate towards a bridge over a fair sized river, tens of metres across. There has been recent flooding. I drive onto the bridge and see that the far side of it has been eroded. Nevertheless, I can drive off the bridge and continue on. I am less sure about the return journey. I pull up on to a large, gravelled parking area in front of a large house / mansion. It is quintessentially English and similar to that of one of my prior tutees. The sense is that I have come here on a similar purpose of teaching.
I knock and enter and am welcomed by a man of similar age to me dressed in tweeds. He ushers me in and inquires about the journey. I mention the bridge. He says that the lads are working on a lash up. He shows me into a lounge like area and we are joined by his wife a younger woman with dark hair. It is obvious that they are both upper class, she in particular. Their accents are clipped.
We make our way out. At the side of hallway there is a white computer screen upon which are cartoons portraying the weather of the day in some detail. I comment that it is a nice simple touch. They look at each other in a light hearted conspiratorial manner.
We go to inspect the bridge. I can see that it will be difficult to get my car back on the bridge. In the dream I know that it will be easy for me to pick it up by hand and place it onto the bridge, even though it is a normal sized normal car.
The lads are sailing a barge downstream towards the bridge. It has a military style pontoon bridge on it. They anchor and secure the pontoon in place. I get onto the pontoon with them and lift a car which is already on the pontoon off onto dry land. I can and do drive my car over the pontoon and park up the other side.
I am now sat at table with the woman and her two sons We are in the orangery and the youngest son is serving us a curry from a deep sided old style metal mass catering serving tray. It has handles which are lose and held to the tray with rivets. The meal is good. He asks if I need some more spices to thicken the sauce. He offers me a small plate upon which are turmeric, cumin and garam masala. I say that the curry is just fine as it is, lovely. The mother is delighted. She is wearing blue jeans and an expensive pink jumper. I say that I like things simple. They all look at each other. I say, “you lot as a family have got something weird going on about simple.” They all smile.
The older brother is doing very well in school but the younger one is seen as a bit odd. He has some special needs. I say to them that when I was a little older than the younger lad, I used to do a lot of the cooking for the family. The younger teenager says that he does too. There is a peculiar instant sense of bonding between us.
I wake up and go to the loo. The wife says that I have been kicking about.
I try to return to the dream.
I am back at table in the orangery. The woman is sat where she was previously but her jeans are unzipped to reveal light pastel blue underwear. I am not sure what this means. What has transpired, what she wants. It then dawns on me that she is indicating that both the boys came out of her.
The younger boy then takes me by the hand and leads me out of the orangery and into a walled garden. The walls are made of very red bricks and the garden is where chef grows his herbs and vegetables. The younger lad is a friend of the chef.
He takes me behind a small green house and eases a stone out of the wall. It is like a cold war dead drop. In the cavity there is a white piece of paper which at first looks to have nothing on it. The lad puts the brick back and unfolds the paper upon which is a map of sorts sketched by hand.
The lad leads me from the walled garden into the basement kitchen and thence to a basement room. He turns on the fluorescent light overhead. The stark lighting reveals a number of filing cabinets. He shows me one in olive-khaki green. The drawers have handwritten labels which have yellowed with age. The writing has been done with a fountain pen is a sloped script which I know to be that of a female. There is a locking bar down the face of the cabinet. At the bottom the padlock has been removed by the lad. He shows me it. Implicit is that the key is in his trouser pocket. There is a sense that this archive dates back to the second world war and that nobody knows what to do with it nor can they decipher it. It has been in the safe keeping of his family.
Schredl et al. have published a questionnaire to measure lucid dreaming skills, IJODR vol 11, Page 54 in 2018.
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There are some differences in approach.
In every single case when I am having a dream which I am able to recall I am fully aware that I am dreaming. I don’t have to decide, I know. This makes many of the questions superfluous for me. If one logically knows that one is dreaming it follows that the objects in dreams are not real as measured by physical plane notions of reality. You know you are dreaming there is no doubt or confusion.
I also often know that a dreaming symbol is a dreaming symbol while I am dreaming it. I can interpret it live.
I personally am very wary about setting intentions in a dream.
Logically If you have a dream and you recall it, it has already affected your waking life. By writing it down your life has changed. You can’t un-have a dream. Some of them can have profound impact.
For a while I had prescient dreams.
I have made life changing decisions because of dreams including ones with very significant financial impact.
When I first started, I did play with flying and jumping. I no longer do this.
In most dreams I let the dream play out, I am both observer and participant. I do martial arts in some dreams, but I don’t consciously think “I will throw this dude”. I do it. I am not sure where the idea of a dream “body” comes from. I have a BMI of 33, does that count? I experience a sensation of “me” not it/body/meat. The vehicle can do things I can no longer do. I do have sensations, smoking in dreams being an example.
I don’t have to decide to observe. When I have “finished” a dream, I can recall and replay it on many occasions which I do to assist recall. I can go back into dreams which I have noted down. I have been doing this this afternoon. I can recall quite a few past dreams to waking consciousness even without the aide memoire of a journal entry.
I have no sense of how long time is in dreams. You can pack a hell of a lot into 15 planet earth minutes.
I can if needed wake up. Sometimes the dream fades, but I can often re-enter a dream where it left off.
Note of caution – if you go to take a piss in a dream you had better wake up first.
I’ll comment that for something to be bizarre for me it will be off the scale bizarre and weird for “normal” people. If you don’t believe me sit down and read a swath of my dreams.
The principle idea I subscribe to is that my dreams help me to evolve my fate in this life and advise on any karmic steps which need to be taken, this is my dreaming philosophy. Part of the notion of this is to let go of control and to let the dream of life evolve. One gives the steering wheel over to the dreamer.,
I don’t recognise emotions in dreams. Even in very “scary” dream situations I have no fear. The exceptions to this were way back when I had unable to move nightmares. These have passed.
I do magic in dreams.
The problem with intention setting in dreams is that it can get a bit like witchdoctor / voodoo. Best not mess with that stuff, especially when one is not fully compos mentis.
Some dreams are so very intense, others not, I generally dream in technicolour.
Many of the characters in my dreams are real world people who pop up in my dreams.
Although fully lucid and aware whilst dreaming there is no checking or other technical things. There is some overlap but there are technical differences.
I guess the biggest difference is that I sometimes interpret “real” world day-to-day happenstance as dreaming symbols. If you have problems with your physical plane car you have problems with your vehicle your state of awareness!!
Here is this morning’s totally out of the blue dream.
The wife and I are staying in a temporary apartment. It is well finished and on an upper floor. It is in a city in a posh neighbourhood. There is a buzz on the intercom and I go to answer it.
“The car is here for you now, sir!”
I go downstairs and am driven to another posh looking building. It is of a Parisian style. I am ushered into a very elegant hall with highly veneered wooden panelling and elegant curtains. The style is palatial. I am standing there examining the beauty of the room.
In walks Emmanuel Macron. He is suited and booted. He walks over to me, shakes my hand, and puts his left arm on my shoulder. He speaks to me in English and ushers me through a disguised door in the panelling.
We are now in pitch black. I say that we need some light. A switch flicks. A bright white light comes on.
I can see that Macron has a large pair of callipers and is measuring the size of my head.
In front of me is a high technology medical examination room. There are an array of doctors wearing white coats. The head doctor says to the others that they must now assess every aspect of my physical health. They will need to know every detail including things like alcohol consumption and food preference. There is much muttering.
A tall smartly dressed older woman who is not a doctor comes over to me. The callipers have vanished. I can see from the way that she and Macron are interacting that they know each other well and he trusts her.
She asks me why I applied for the job as driver / adviser.
I say that I was not aware that I had.
She asks me if I think I could work with Macron.
I say that from what I have seen of him on the TV I like his character and approach so yes.
This seems to please Macron.
We are now standing by an immaculate piece of cabinet making. On it is a souvenir of Teotihuacán. The photo card has an image of all the temple complex buildings. Attached to each building is a precious or semi-precious stone.
Macron asks me who the best emperor of Teotihuacán was.
I say it has been wiped from my mind. There was a time when I was fascinated by all things South American. I knew them all.
He smiles and says that one of the perks of the job is that people give you interesting and thought provoking presents.
The medics have arranged a series of appointments for me.
A tall young woman with blonde hair in a pastel blue suit comes into the room. She goes over to the human resources woman. Apparently, the younger woman is to be my liaison.
Macron comes with me back to the apartment. Now the car is his limousine.
He comes up in the lift with me and opens the door to the apartment. He ushers me in. There is an understanding that we will meet again soon.
The wife is asleep on the couch under a blanket.
As the door closes, she wakes up.
I say to her that she is unlikely to believe what has just happened.
Here is this morning’s dream. It seems the wind, the dreaming is still in the south. This time it is the place of the dreamtime.
The dream starts with me in the back seat of an open top Cadillac convertible. The car is a pastel shade of pink and has white leather seats. It is left hand drive. Brian is driving and Neil is in the front seat. We are on the Barkly highway in Northern Territory, Australia. We are heading west to east.
I am reading a map and giving directions.
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We are approaching the border with Queensland. We are due to stop when we cross over.
Brian pulls over and we get out of the car. I put the map on the bonnet to show them where we are.
I take their consciousnesses with me and we soar into the sky in a non-corporeal sense. We fly along the length of the highway towards the Eastern coast and into Townsville. Everything is three dimensional.
We can see all the cars and trucks the length of the highway. Just before Townsville we see the signs for how to get into town.
We fly back to the car in Northern Territory.
In the dream I know that we are deep in the unknown and that I am mapping it out as is my wont.
I know that Brian is a Man Behind the Scenes and Neil his courier. They from the West are with me temporarily in the South. We are heading East. The wind is in the South.
Dreamyoga 