Tag: Jaguar

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.

Blue GTi – Pantera – Pursuit – Places – Mdina – Dream – 11-09-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream.

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 ends.

Can a Jaguar Changes Its Spots?

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People can have very fixated images and perceptions of others. They may shoe-horn others into well out of date perceptions. How they remember them can be stuck in a time warp.

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We are watching a TV programme with Eddy Redmayne acting as The Jackal. Even though he is not the same actor, I keep wondering where Wellard or Well Hard the dog is. At the moment in the series  highly armed MI6 agents have just been engaged in a  massive shoot out near Budapest. The sort of thing that is likely to be an international incident but which serves for dramatic purpose.

Not everything makes sense.

It is very easy to get typecast in the eyes of others. There could be a wildly inaccurate narrative circulating which sticks like glue. Once a visiting Japanese postdoc. famous for his drinking prowess back home decided that he wanted to out-drink me competitively because he had heard my legend. We started drinking after I had already had six pints of Stella unbeknownst and unrevealed to him. I stopped drinking a bit before him and he claimed victory. So there may be a story back in Japan of how he beat a champion drinker in the UK. Not all stories are true but it does not stop their circulation.

People can have their perception locked, very locked.

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Many are not a lot like they once were. Some people change. It is said that the warrior’s path is one of transmutation,  transformation and transfiguration. This suggests that the change may be more radical than a cosmetic tinkering.

I’ll wager were I to meet people I was acquainted with two decades ago they would initially interact with me using that out of date context, if they even remembered me at all. There is and was a whole side of me of which most were completely unaware. One student thanked me for my 9 AM winter morning lectures because they gave them a chance to catch up on their sleep in a nice warm lecture theatre. Others have told me that they doubted that boring dead-pan me could be any use to them when they were unwell. After half an hour of quiet chat they were off to see the GP for a mental health consultation and had provisionally booked a session with the on campus councillor.

Few would imagine that I have had dreams of shaman and Jaguars.

Jaguar Dream Link

People struggle to a) notice and b) fully accept change in others, particularly those who they think they know well. Radical change is considered impossible. After all a leopard cannot change its spots.

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Candle Vigil – Koyaanisqatsi – Jaguar Shaman – Strange Group Dream 25-07-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

Here is last night’s dream, strangely out of context with our current life and way of living.

The dream starts in South America on the mainland, perhaps Western Caribbean, on the connective peninsula. I am walking along a path cleared into the jungle at dusk / early night. I come upon a sunken built structure which has downward going stepped stone seating, a bit like a Greek theatre

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The construction is totally circular and the “stage” area is of the same grey stone at the rest of the amphitheatre. The construction is ancient South American, Maya or Aztec or some such. The radius is about 50 metres and there are at least half a dozen seating rows. It seems very familiar to me. On each step / seat is spaced a circle of lit candles in tumbler size glasses of various shapes and colours. There are hundreds of them. On the stage there are concentric circles of similar candles around a central circle empty void. The candles flicker lightly in the wind. I know this place to be a reliquary of living souls, each candle a spark of life. They have gathered to meditate on the state of the world. Against the darkened backdrop of the surrounding noisy night time jungle, here is a sanctuary.

The scene changes and I start to see scenes like from the film Koyaanisqatsi where rushing images of “normal” hectic life with its chaos and destruction are playing out on a “screen” in the mind’s eye. I hear chanting of Koyaanisqatsi over and over in a deep low voice as per the film. I know beyond any doubt that the world is badly out of balance, out of whack and out of kilter. The madness of the human “dream” is in full flow, justified to itself and thoroughly destructive. Unaware and largely uncaring. Caught up in a ceaseless rhythm of hectic.

The scene changes and I am now in a large open native kayak. There are two boats. We are paddling along the shore past jungle and two large settlements. It could be the sea or it could be a wide part of the Amazon River. We are around twenty metres from the “beach” and the jungle behind. I know we are being tracked and I catch sight of a magnificent jaguar easily keeping pace with our boats, jogging slowly in the forest. She is watching and observing. I can feel her muscles and see through her eyes. She is a totem of THE jaguar shaman, a spirit of the jungle, free and untrammelled. I see back through time to a ritual in a clearing of the jungle where I am enacting the convergence of the jaguar shaman. I have a jaguar pelt on my shoulders. As I enact I become and am the jaguar.

The scene changes to an urban setting; there are a group of people seeking to join or affirm their membership in a wider group. People have been accepted but must now make their public telephone call with their “mentor”. The sense of people wanting to be a part of is strong. I see one black man roughly my age make his call which we can all hear. In that the mentor slowly gets him to submit verbally. I think that this is coercive. Others make their call to belong to the “wonderful” organisation. The do decamps to a large pub near Hampstead Heath. People are queuing out of the door to buy their drinks. The black man is there and his mentor is going to buy him a drink, in a wait your turn fashion. I walk straight up to the bar and buy two pints of beer from one of the bar staff who know me well. I usher to the black man to join me in the beer garden. He follows and I explain that this has been cult like behaviour and he had better get the out sharpish.

The scene changes and the images of and sounds of Koyaanisqatsi close out the dream in a repetitive sequence.

The dream ends.