Cagliostro – Erasing Personal History

In a world obsessed with the curriculum vitae it makes “sense” to be able to account for our life, our training and our affiliations. We might even get a job on the basis of our CV. Historians may want to pin down where we were born, to whom and with whom we associated. That makes a story, a narrative of our lives, a his-story or a her-story. Human folly suggests that these stories are important when they are in fact impermanent and mutable. If someone knows our story we can be held to it.

“You said you are vegan and that meat is murder. How come you are eating a steak you lying bastard?”

Our stories make an expectation which people expect us to life up or down to. If we don’t behave as a good priest we could be chucked out of church for shagging a prostitute.

There is a Toltec technique called “Erasing Personal History”. In which one is encouraged to unpick, change and ultimately remove any legend or story we might have about ourselves. We become free of the bullshit we tell ourselves about who and what we are. We are liberated by rubbing out the story, erasing it. As an interim measure we might make a working story to use until such time as we have no story at all.

The CIA and MI6 allegedly prepare extensive cover stories for agents complete with passports and driver licences. The back story might be fleshed out in, inter alia, social media.

So why not invent a cover as Comte de Cagliostro?

It might infuriate those who want to try to pin you down to some identity or other. You are not playing fair if you do not stick to “normal” societal rules. Who is this charlatan?

Well maybe he was someone who was erasing his personal history forever reinventing how he behaved and how he presented himself. As he evolved as a spiritual being his story, his legend evolved with him. He was not a fixed and rigid being. He was not constrained by the stories others sought to tell and be adamant about.

Right now there is nobody who can give a good account of me. I have claimed that I used to teach chemistry to the nurses. Nobody has tested my knowledge. I could be a lying charlatan. Weirdly I might be able to talk about high resolution laser spectroscopy and how to use a two-stroke strimmer.

If your bloodline was dangerous to you. It might be wise to hide your pedigree. Having noble parents could mean your end. There are many motivations why someone might be vague about their birth.

They did not have DNA screening and biometrics back then!!

It is funny to watch people getting into a tizzy about who Comte de Cagliostro might have been. Then watch them present their theories, which have made it onto Wikipedia.

So obvs they must be gospel true.

The whole notion of wanting and trying to erase any and all personal history goes against what makes “sense” in the normal socio-political view of the world. A personal history can shackle.

Peoples lives are ruined now because once they made an ill conceived remark. Their careers can be trashed, cancelled, because of the recorded history of what they are alleged to have said.

Now like so many others I am writing off any trip to the USA because what I have written on blogs may be held against me and prohibit my entrance. There is no point doing the paperwork.

Having your history held against you is not very liberating…

I have not been to Malta for quite a number of years 😉

You’re Havin a Larf…

A lot of people try to take advantage of others and play games. They may have cunning ploys. They may try to snoop and spy on others, to gather information from insiders and do anything they can to get an upper hand. They may ask multiple opinions. They may overestimate the quality of their source material and imagine that ancient data and accounts are still valid. People who imagine themselves smart, in the know and “clever” can get themselves into all sorts of messes. They may enjoy playing “secret squirrels”. They may imagine an idea to be good when it is not. Because they are, of course, infallible.

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I have never appointed a spokesperson or a port-parole.

Anyone claiming to speak on my behalf is a fraud, a shyster and a downright lying bastard.

Self-perception may differ significantly from that held by others. If people are trying to take advantage of, or use others, they might assume a complete hoodwinking success, that they have fooled another and that their ways are opaque to the deceived. Rarely does it occur that their moves are transparent. They do not imagine that they have been read, seen through and their shenanigans noted. Nor do they note the fall in opinion or respect held of them by the gullible mark.

If someone is taking the piss by their behaviour it may not occur that someone is taking the piss back at them and in spades.

For example if someone asks me a stupid question, I reserve the right to respond in an equally stupid way. I don’t care about being right or winning an argument so I could feed you the opportunity to “win” to see if you take the bait. It is surprising how many do!

Once I have disengaged, I feel free to take the piss back. Depending on where you are coming from you may not notice.

In my book if you are having a laugh or playing silly buggers then so can I. I generally have less “to prove” than most and don’t care if I look like a fool or a pikey yokel. I have no sophisticated image and I for defo am not a big cheese…

If someone is “havin a larf” there are a number of options open. One of these is to confront, another is to ignore. One can let things play to see how deep a shitter people like to dig for themselves. One can do a runner. One can do something completely and utterly unexpected.

People don’t really know what is going on in someone else’s head no matter how clever and cunning they deem themselves to be. There is a tendency to overestimate one’s perspicacity.

Some have world views and world assimilations that are markedly different from from ours, from yours. Yes, yours.

Late night we watched a film “Den osynlige”

The Invisible (Swedish: Den osynlige) is a 2002 Swedish film directed by Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist, very loosely based on Mats Wahl’s book of the same name. The film follows Niklas, a young and quiet man who falls short of his mother’s expectations and then finds himself attacked by a neglected young girl Annelie (she too, is metaphorically invisible) and left for dead. The next morning, however, he discovers that no one can see, hear or feel him, and anything he does to try and communicate is reversed; he is in a Limbo-like state between life-and-death, and must find out his ‘murderer’ and save his body before it’s too late. The film stars Gustaf Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny and Thomas Hedengran in the leads.”

In that film Niklas whilst in limbo gets to see his “friends” and classmates talking about him behind his back when he lies dying in the woods. People are generally only loyal to those present, the absent are fair game. It is a good film and shows how the inflicted expectations of others can fuck you up. Most “social” beings do not understand how brutal, nasty and petty the wielding of that societal shoehorn is.

They carry on regardless like clowns repeating the same folly, over and over. They can even think it is funny!!

They can however be badly mistaken… …

Can Reality Be Difficult to Accept?

I’ll speculate that many people have expectations about how things should be and how they ought to turn out. They may have difficulty when observable realities differ from those expectations. The facts, so to speak, can be difficult to accept.

We live here on a small pension, in a quasi-hermit like manner. There is very little social interaction. The wife speaks to some friends by Zoom. This morning, I unblocked the sewage system for around the tenth time. Tomorrow I am going to have some X-ray images of pelvis and hips taken to see how far they have deteriorated since last time. I doubt they will operate yet because French logic says that my life expectancy is something like another 20 years. Personally, I can’t see myself living that long, I could be wrong.

Yup I have some pretty far-out dreams and occasionally read some science and muse on it. That is the sum total of measurable objective reality. We will probably not leave our department any-time soon. We have mooted a short trip to Jersey to go to Pizza Express and Waitrose. We have not left Brittany for six years now, aside from a short week house hunting in Loire. I have not been on a plane since Autumn 2018.

The likelihood of me being in New Zealand as per this morning’s dream is vanishingly small, we could not afford it. There is no way that I would get an invite to a conference.

I have not spoken to anyone from my last employer for 17 years, yet from time to time they / it pop up in my dreams. I can speculate why. But in honesty I have no real reliable idea. Maybe this trajectory should not have happened, it ought to be different, only it isn’t. It is irreversible.

I get Buddhist themes in dreams but I am not in contact with any Buddhists nor do I pertain to a Sangha.

Unless something totally untoward happens, we shall pootle on here, doing a bit of gardening weather and health permitting. The visit to Jersey will advise on how we cope being surrounded by English. The game plan to down size is a chronic not acute one.

My dreams point at people finding this observable reality difficulty to accept.

It is not complicated. Perhaps that is the problem, it is just too simple for people to get their head around.

In 2023 and 2024 I had 70 typed up dreams making 140 in total

So far in January 2025 I have had 15 dreams which is a steep increase in rate. I have zero idea about where if anywhere it is going.

We shall see if the rate continues…

Is my dreaming a way of me escaping from my observable reality?

I don’t think so…

Hmnn…