Rolling Rock flashbacks

I remember when I first caught sight of a bottle of Rolling Rock beer, imported from the USA, in a Perivale off-licence. It was probably some time in the early 1990s. This was a powerful exomnesia moment, a sense of nostalgia for something I knew I couldn't have normally remembered from this life.

The label was printed in white paint onto the green bottle; the pony's head, the cross-hatched plinth, above all the green, the exact shade of green, contrasting with the white and the blue. The typeface. Everything. An absolute guaranteed purchase.

But the taste? Did the taste summon immediate 'PAFF!' moment qualia flashbacks? Well, nothing memorable. Nothing as memorable as my first swing of Jever Pilsener, Worthington's White Shield (sadly killed off by the corporate bastards that owned it in 2023 after 194 years) or AleBrowar's King of Hop, for example. And yet, look at it. So familiar. Somehow this summer, I have been getting flashbacks to Rolling Rock beer. Yesterday, three. Is it the green of the forest that I see from my kitchen window at this time of year? Is it the green of the landscape through which I stroll?

Rolling Rock (which features in three of my flashback-dream accounts and short stories) was brewed between 1939 and 2006 in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. After that, Anheuser-Busch shifted production to Newark. But before that, in 1987, Canadian brewery, Labatt, bought the Rolling Rock brand from the Sundor Group, which had bought it from the founding family two years earlier. Labatt in turn was swallowed up in several more corporate mergers, each diluting the meaning, the relevance and the uniqueness of what originally made the brand what it once was. It was Labatt which introduced Rolling Rock to the UK market, around the time that it rebranded the Hammersmith Odeon rock venue as Labatt's Apollo.

So by the time I first tasted Rolling Rock, the visual branding might have been familiar, but the taste had drifted. Early postwar Americana was not on the tip of my tongue. Today's Rolling Rock is brewed elsewhere; do the corporate owners even care that the bottled beer is no longer brewed in glass tanks?

But how did it taste? Google Gemini to come up with a recipe prompted to conjure up the precise qualia sensation of sipping a Rolling Rock back in the 1940s. The answer was surprising. Mixing Asahi Super Dry and bottled Heineken. Now, Rolling Rock was unusual in that it was brewed not only from malted barley and hops, but also with adjuncts of maize ('corn') and... rice. Bottled Heineken would offer the "light, fruity, tang of dimethyl sulphide".  Served not too cold, either. So... "Mixing Heineken (bottle) with Asahi Super Dry creates a blend that effectively engineers-out the parts of both beers you don't want, while combining the traits needed to mimic mid-century Rolling Rock". 

ChatGPT is more specific: "I would expect the optimal blend to contain considerably more Asahi than Heineken. Heineken supplies some characteristics that Asahi lacks: a fuller malt centre, light fruity fermentation character and a grassy, slightly herbal bitterness. Asahi supplies the leaner body, pale colour, adjunct character and very dry finish. Heineken is an all-malt lager, while the current European-market Asahi Super Dry uses barley malt and maize starch. Try two parts Asahi to one part Heineken. That should soften Asahi’s rather severe, carbonic dryness, introduce a little rounded malt and herbal hop character and remain lighter and less distinctly European-tasting than a 50:50 blend. There is one important limitation. Neither beer provides the maize-and-rice combination of classic Rolling Rock. Asahi contributes maize starch but not enough rice in the current UK/European formulation; Heineken contributes no adjunct grain at all. The mixture might therefore approximate the weight, attenuation and bitterness, but not precisely the old beer’s faint mixture of corn sweetness and rice-derived lightness."

So there we have it! I shall have to try it out; Heineken is universally available, and Asahi Super Dry can be sourced in Warsaw.

I shall let you know if any metaphysical magic takes me back to Kentucky or Ohio of 1950.

This time four years ago:
Sunset mysticism

This time seven years ago:
You've either got or you haven't got style

This time eight years ago:
Total eclipse of the moon, Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
'Others' vs. 'Our others'

This time 11 year:
Reducing inequality in Polish society

This time 13 years ago:
Llanbedrog beach

This time 15 years ago:
The Accursed Soldiers - a short story

This time 16 years ago:
Driving impressions of the Toyota Yaris
[Son still driving it to this day!]

This time 18 years ago:
Poland's dry summer

This time 19 years ago:
The UK's wettest summer ever

The kittens at two months

Peak kitten cuteness? Between six and ten weeks. They are playful and scamper about, they are now going outside, watched over by their mother and Hipek (who feels that he can play a useful role in his adopted colony). The kittens still breastfeed, though less regularly and have started going over to solids, in particular the paté type. Fresh water is always on hand as is 0.5% ultra-low-fat milk. 

Dorian, the stumpy-tailed wobbly kitten, and his twin Wiktor (who is just slightly wobbly and has a normal tail), are fine, accepted by their  mother and their siblings as part of the group. Dorian will not let his disability hold him back. Is he aware of his difficulties in coordinating the movement of his legs? How does his cerebellar hypoplasia affect his experience of life? Am I just imagining it, projecting it onto him, but is there a stoic, almost cheerful acceptance in his feline mind? He can climb up into the cat tower without difficulty. He plays, play-fights, grooms and chases the others (and they him) without any changes to the rules. I am, however, wary of these Dorian and Wiktor going astray outdoors, especially when I catch sight of a buzzard overhead. Below: Dorian play-fighting with Mars.

The other three are developing ideally. Mars and Kwintesencja, tabby twins, are distinguishable only by sex and tail length (Mars is a stumpy-tailed male, Kwincia is a normal-tailed female); both are explorers eager to push the envelope of how far they can roam. Memphis (Fisia) is a female tabby, and displays white fur on her throat, neck and undersides; she has a mid-length tail with just one kinked bone. 

Below: the five tend to all sleep together. Céleste no longer fits with them all present, so breastfeeding is done on the floor. We see here Kwincia (left) and Wiktor, the rest are all uh, down there somewhere.

Below: time for some fresh air – Mars (centre) leads Dorian (left) and Wiktor (right) towards the open kitchen door. Notice the focused expression on Mars's face. 

Meanwhile, mum Céleste has been losing fur at an alarming rate. Her face is familiar but her head seems to have shrunk (below).

This hair loss is both hormonal and seasonal. During pregnancy, elevated hormone levels hold hair follicles in an extended growth phase. Around six to eight weeks after giving birth, those hormone levels plummet. At the same time, peak milk production has placed immense metabolic demand on her body, which today is as thin as a weasel's. This shift forces a large percentage of her hair follicles into a resting phase simultaneously ('telogen effluvium'). The result is a dramatic, synchronised blow-out of her undercoat and long guard-hairs, making her head look noticeably smaller. [Here she is, La Contessa, in midwinter, coat by Courrèges.] All this was going on during last month's heatwave. Long-haired cats naturally drop their dense thermal undercoat during summer. In temperatures over 25°C, dropping fur is Céleste's body's natural defense against heat-stroke while trapped under a pile of warm kittens.

Lying on her side for hours on end creates warmth, humidity and constant mechanical friction against Céleste's flanks. Combined with loose shedding fur that hasn't been brushed out (frequent brushing was put on hold during the breastfeeding weeks), dense dreadlocks quickly formed. This mass of matted hair had to be removed, gently, with minimal use of scissors, aided by Céleste herself who'd be gnawing on the base of the locks. The whole lot finally came off as one large piece, looking somewhat like a false beard.

The internet assures me that Céleste's fur – the undercoat and long guard-hairs – will all have grown back by the winter. The internet also warns me to arrange an appointment with the vet to sterilise Céleste as soon as possible. Sterilisation will, sadly, be the fate of Fisia and Kwincia; the prospect of looking after 22 cats by the end of 2027 is too much. I'm already close to the point where my monthly cat-food bill is approaching the amount I spend on feeding myself.  Céleste is eating seven or eight times a day; she is stick-thin after two months of nursing the little ones, so whenever she calls for food she gets food.

The two female kittens are destined not to experience the joy and pain of motherhood... unless someone wants to take them as whole females with the intention of letting them breed (an outdoor lifestyle has to be provided for them). The joy of kittens is extraordinarily special.

And let's not forget grandmother, Wenusia. She comes by in the morning for breakfast and pops in a few times during the day. Once fed, she will put her paw on the side of my leg, which means "lift me up and stroke me, don't forget that once I was your one and only cat." I do so, she wanders off, contented, I hope.

This time four years ago:
Automatic writing: to where (and when) will the muse take me?

This time five years ago:
New phone, new laptop, Part II

This time six years ago:
Two images from my early childhood

This time seven years ago:
How PKP PLK's planners should treat pedestrian station users.

This time eight years ago:
Foreign exchange: don't get diddled!
[for the saps who pay £250 for €200 at the airport]

This time ten years ago:
Defining my Sublime Aesthetic

This time 13 years ago:
Porth Ceiriad on the Llyn Peninsula

This time 14 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, late July

This time 15 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, after the storm

This time 18 years ago:
Rural suburbias: the ideal place to live?

Get On Down

"Expect the unexpected". I always taught the children that when they were small. This morning, having fed the cats and partaken of my coffee, I set off for a short pre-breakfast walk, accompanied by Scrapper. It had occurred to me that Pacyfik (Pacio) was missing from the early roll-call, but nothing unusual there – a late return from a long night out, I reckoned.

I got to the end of the drive, turned left, and heard a miaowing. "Who's that?" I thought... "It's most probably Pacio. I looked around, but couldn't see any movement in the undergrowth. Then it occurred to me – the sound is not coming from the depths of the next-door forest, but above me. I moved out onto the lane to scan the treetops. Scrapper joined me. We watched – we listened. We could hear miaowing high up in the branches. Finally, I caught sight of Pacyfik.

He was about ten metres (33 feet) off the ground, high up in the canopy of a tall pine tree (see photo, left. Click on it, then right-click the expanded image to witness it in bigger scale). Pacio was calling down to me, evidently in much distress. Having assessed the situation, I returned home with Scrapper for some breakfast and to consult ChatGPT. Which advised me to clear ground under the tree, and leave out some cat food to lure down the cat. In the worst case, it gave me the phone number for the local volunteer fire brigade and text (in Polish) to explain the situation to the call-handler (useful!).

After a filling my stomach with large bowl of porridge, I returned to the forest with lopper and secateurs and cleared a path from the lane to the base of the tree. Then I removed saplings and dead vegetation from around the area, so should Pacyfik fall, he will not become impaled on anything. Soon I was joined by Czester and Hipek, outside since after breakfast, who had been alerted by Pacyfik's miaowing.

And here's where it gets interesting. At some point, Czester, who had been watching all this keenly, and clearly understood the situation, began to scale the same tree, heading up towards his brother. He climbed about two thirds of the way up then stopped. Pacyfik, seeing this, made his way successfully to the next branch down, and then paused, unsure of what to do next. Czester then started to show Pacyfik how to reverse down the trunk, tail-first. Pacyfik was still scared and unwilling to make the next move. Once again Czester moved up, stopped, and then started to reverse. Once on a lower branch, he descended to ground level without difficulty. Below: ARF (Arboreal Rescue Feline) 1st Class Czester in action. Motto: Firmipes in altis – 'Surefooted at Altitude'. Pacyfik's stumpy tail, a genetic defect, makes it harder for him to balance than regular-tailed cats.

Pacyfik (who has a short, stumpy tail unlike Czester's normal one) finally latched on, and copying Czester's moves, proceeded cautiously along the smooth and branch-free section of the trunk until he got to a branch from another tree. 

He zigged down that, zagged down another, and soon he was about half a metre from my outstretched arms. I was standing short distance off the ground in the fork between two saplings. A bit of movement from either ends and I had Pacyfik safely in my grasp. As I cuddled him, much relieved, I could smell the pine-resin in his fur. And then a triumphant procession home, with Pacio in the company of Czester and Hipek.

A slap-up feast was laid on, rich in fishy goodness, during which Pacyfik somewhat disgraced himself by hissing and growling at Hipek, who had shown such steadfast solidarity with him while he was stuck up the tree. Each cat is as different as we humans are all different.

Soundtrack to the rescue operation: Get Down by Gene Chandler (played by MJDJ on last Friday's Yours Sinsouly show on West Wilts Radio)

This time last year:
Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (VII)

This time last two years ago:
Łódź for the weekend

This time three years ago:
Wes Anderson's Asteroid City

This time four years ago: 
Quarter of a century in Poland

This time seven years ago:
22 years on the 22nd

This time seven years ago:
A tale of two orchards

This time nine years ago:
My 20 years in Poland

This time ten years ago:
PiS, Brexit, Trump and cognitive bias

This time 13 years ago:
Portmeirion, revisited, again
[My last summer holiday - not had one since!]

This time 14 years ago:
Beach day, Llŷn Peninsula

This time 15 years ago:
Down with cars in city centres!

This time 16 years ago:
8am and it's 26C already

Fifty years on

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of my departure on a holiday that would significantly shape my identity, as well as the future course of my life. I wrote about it ten years ago, link here.

My three holidays to Poland organised by the Polish priests in Ealing for their young parishioners took place in the summers of 1976, 1977 and 1979, and proved extremely formative for me. Certainly these visits were a key factor in my moving to Poland.

The 1976 trip occurred just after I had finished grammar school. While on that holiday, I was awaiting a telegram from my parents informing me how my A-level exams had gone – and which university (if any) would accept me. I got that telegram in Poland (Gdańsk, I seem to recall) – the news was good. My grades were sufficient to get me into Warwick, my first choice.

As our coaches crossed the border from East Germany, we were driving into a country that a month earlier had seen significant workers' protests at rising living costs in Radom, Ursus and Płock. No official news, of course, only word-of-mouth rumours. From the windows of the coach, I saw a high-tension pylon lying on its side in a field outside Radom. Had it been brought down by protesters? Or was it waiting to be erected? Who knew? These protests would ultimately lead to the birth of Solidarity four years later.

I wrote ten years ago about the religious nature of the holiday. As well as the daily masses and rosary, there was also plenty of time for philosophical discussions, about religion, ethics, life, the universe and everything. Not to any great degree of sophistication, but enough to engender a lifelong interest in 'small-p' philosophy.

This was also the last summer before the punk-rock revolution – but more about that in a post on this blog this autumn, on the 50th anniversary of me catching a gig by two bands entirely unknown to me at the time – the Sex Pistols, supported by the Clash. That, plus a year of living away from home as a student, completely changed my attitude to church-going and authority in general, so when setting off on Montserrat 1977, it was with a radically different world-view. Yet Poland was still Poland. eternal, drawing me back.

Who'd have thought, fifty years ago, that I'd be sat here on my own little acre, surrounded by 12 cats, living in a free, peaceful and prosperous Poland? 

This time last year:
Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (VI)

This time five years ago:
Memory, collective memory and proof of memory

This time eight years ago:
And did Her feet...?

This time 11 years ago:
Last night's storm

This time 12 years ago:
Drifting south with the sun – bicycle hobo
[On this trip I would first encounter Jakubowizna...]

This time 14 years ago
The Royal Parks in the rain

This time 17 years ago:
Conservatism – Polish or British style?

This time 18 years ago:
Wheat and development

This time 19 years ago:
Waiting for the summer rain

Water Which Does Not Wet Hands revisited (Pt II)

Part I of the review here.

It is the nature of Homo sapiens to be curious – to ask the most fundamental questions regarding the nature of reality. Why is there something rather than nothing? What are we made of? Why do we think and feel? If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there, does it make a sound?

As humanity evolved from hunter-gatherer to settled communities, more time became available for asking those questions and making observations from which hypotheses could be created, putative answers to those questions that have gnawed at us from our birth as a separate species.

Our first attempts at defining the nature of reality were coded as myths and legends; supernatural beings whose actions defined the paths of celestial objects across the sky, good or bad harvests, and phenomena such as volcanoes and thunderstorms. Telling these stories was the job of shamen, not scientists.

Systematic scientific thinking and practice began in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia during the third and second millennia BC. These first steps in what would become mathematics, astronomy and medicine went on to influence Ancient Greek natural philosophy, who attempted to explain physical phenomena by natural, rather than supernatural, causes. Knowledge of these Greek concepts deteriorated in Latin-speaking Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, but lived on in the Byzantine Empire. The Hellenistic worldview was preserved and absorbed into the Arabic-speaking Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived the learning of natural philosophy in the West.

The Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe marked a break with the natural philosophy that had preceded it. The scientific method that emerged departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. It was more mechanistic in its worldview, nudging out the supernatural explanations, it was more integrated with mathematics, and focused on acquiring and interpreting  evidence. Proof became the ultimate goal, proving conjectures, experimentally or mathematically. Science became separate from philosophy; matter… from spirit.

Alchemy served as the bridge between Mediaeval thought and the birth of the scientific method in the Enlightenment. Dr Szydło’s book examines the links between alchemical thinking and practice and the first true scientists. In particular, the author sets out a number of Sendivogius’s accounts of processes, comparing them to modern chemistry. The book follows on with the work of pioneers of today’s scientific method, as they worked on identifying oxygen as an element.

Dr Szydło separates practical alchemy from philosophical alchemy in Sendivogius’s writings. The philosophical includes musings on “the spirit of the Earth”, the practical includes observations made while heating lead oxide, for example. Sendivogius’s central-nitre theory was instrumental in stimulating experimental investigation into the vital constituent of air and influenced Robert Boyle and John Mayow, whose work in isolating oxygen as a constituent of air were crucial in the shift from alchemy to chemistry.

Post-Enlightenment science took the path of reductionism, stripping away all of alchemy’s arcane trappings of mysticism, replacing it with empiricism. Yet four centuries on, scientists acknowledge many more gaps in their knowledge than was the case a hundred years ago. Reductionism is giving way to complexity. The acknowledgement of what we don’t know leads to new ways of thinking about the ultimate nature of reality. Consciousness and the conscious observer take on a new primacy. Thirty years on from when Water Which Does Not Wet Hands was published, new parallels can be sought between how alchemy viewed ultimate reality and how it is seen today.

Rereading the book today through the lens of contemporary consciousness studies reveals new congruences. Sendivogius's universe is alive, filled with purpose and permeated by a principle that appears simultaneously as spirit, matter and life. His worldview contrasted profoundly with the dead, clockwork universe of the materialist reductionism that would follow. 

Whilst Sendivogius's 'central nitre' is not consciousness, it is a vital force with formative causation, a fundamental property of the Universe.

Were Sendivogius to walk out of a time machine into today's world and to have the chance to talk to our leading scientific theoreticians and philosophers, I think he would rather side with Donald Hoffman, Phillip Goff or Rupert Sheldrake than with Richard Dawkins or Sean Carroll. Or, were he still alive, Daniel Dennett.

Is the pendulum of philosophy swinging back, or was materialist reductionism an aberration from more intuitive thinking about the nature of reality? Time will tell, I need more lives to assuage my curiosity.

This time last year:
A better tomorrow – science and technology

This time ten years ago:
Memory, place and experience

This time 11 years ago:
UK Number One in world Soft Power rankings

This time 14 years ago:
First flight from Modlin

This time 15 years ago:
Another cycle route to work

This time 18 years ago:
PZL M-28 and Piaggio Avanti – Okęcie regulars

Water Which Does Not Wet Hands revisited (Pt I)

Zbigniew Szydło's book about the alchemical times of Michał Sędziwoj (1566-1636), known across Europe by his Latinised name, Sendivogius, requires a re-read in light of developments in science and philosophy since its publication, as well as my own evolved understanding of how we describe reality. How is alchemy perceived today? How does it fare when viewed from a perspective of panpsychism, dual-aspect monism and the stagnation in fundamental physics?

Author Zbigniew Szydło is better known to the English-speaking world as Andrew Szydło, famous for his (literally) explosive chemistry demonstrations at numerous Royal Institution lectures. His 1994 book looks at the life and works of one of Europe's greatest alchemists, he asks whether Sendivogius discovered oxygen in the practical sense – the heating of potassium nitrate is thought to have provided the oxygen need to keep rowers alive as they propelled the first documented submarine down the Thames in 1621. The book's main aim is to establish Sendivogius as an important figure in the transition from alchemy to modern chemistry – above all through his ideas about nitre, air, combustion and respiration.

Sendivogius was a Polish nobleman and diplomat; he served in the courts of Polish king Sigismund III Vasa and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II as an advisor on metallurgy and mining, as well as alchemy. He travelled extensively across Poland, Bohemia, Moravia and the German-speaking lands, and authored several significant alchemical works that were widely printed and reprinted in different language-versions across Europe in the 17th century. 

When I first read the book in the mid 1990s, my worldview tended towards the physicalist and the rational; I paid scant regard to the metaphysical. At the time, I read Dr Szydło's book primarily as a narrative intended to overturn the myth that mediaeval alchemists were mere charlatans who claimed that they could turn base metals into gold. Instead, Dr Szydło presents a stage in the history human thought before the development of the scientific method during the Enlightenment. Alchemy was an entire philosophical system attempting to describe reality in a hermetic language known only to adepts. 

It is known that Sendivogius's works were studied by both Antoine Lavoisier and Isaac Newton. "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" – indeed.

Sendivogius recognised that air was not chemically uniform, identifying within it a particular life-giving and combustion-supporting component. His writings influenced later investigators, helping prepare the conceptual ground from which oxygen chemistry eventually emerged. The book does not present Sendivogius as the discoverer of oxygen, but as a remarkable early investigator of the phenomenon later understood as oxygen. 

Today I am re-reading the book in the context of Philosophy of Mind, of the increasingly held view that consciousness is fundamental, and comparing the thoughts of Sendivogius to those of contemporary philosophers and scientists such as David Chalmers, Donald Hoffman, Bernard Carr, Philip Goff, Bernardo Kastrup and Rupert Sheldrake. But more on that in my next post. I am also re-reading the book in the age of AI and Wikipedia, which allow instant dives down rabbit-holes for greater detail and wider context.

The book goes into much detail about the importance of salt to alchemy. Today, every school pupil knows that salt is NaCl; one atom of sodium bonded to one atom of chlorine. A highly reactive metal that burns in air and a poisonous gas; combine the two and you get something that's indispensable to life. To a modern chemist, a salt is something more; it's "an ionic compound formed by neutralising an acid with a base". But to Sendivogius and his contemporaries, salt was one of the three fundamental pillars of reality (tria prima), along with sulphur and mercury. When the alchemists considered salt, they were looking at the processes of fixation and crystallisation – grounding spirit into form.

Another salt is worthy of note in terms of how it was viewed by alchemy: gunpowder. Saltpetre (potassium nitrate or nitre), when mixed with sulphur and charcoal, has explosive properties. The sudden release of violent energy has its analogy in the heavens; thunder and lightning must be caused by similar processes. Hence the concept of 'aerial nitre'; heavenly gunpowder.

Reading about the theories of alchemists as they attempted to define reality in their terms of makes me think that science today is somewhat arrogant, believing that it's so close to grasping reality on one neat theory of everything, an equation you can wear on a t-shirt. 

["Lagrangian of the Standard Model of particle physics – this equation sums up our current understanding of fundamental particles and forces. It represents the Standard Model of particle physics. The top line describes the forces: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. The second line describes how these forces act on the fundamental particles of matter – quarks and leptons. The last two lines describe the Higgs boson and the mechanism by which particles acquire their mass" – from the CERN merch shop.]

As the language of myths and legends gave way to the language of alchemy, which in turn gave way to the language of science as the way humans describe reality, so the language of science will inevitably evolve and move on. Does not string theory and quantum gravity – attempts to frame a theory of everything in a mathematical framework – not hold something of the arcane language of alchemy? I am certain that humans in four centuries' time will look back at the beliefs that science holds true today with the same patronising smirk that is on our faces as we read about the alchemists.

[Co]incidentally, my youngest kitten, fifth-born of the fifth-born, is named Kwintesensja ('Quintessence'). Or Kwincia for short. Dr Szydło points out that "Aristotle introduced the idea of a fifth element – the quinta essentia – from which the heavens were made. The quintessence was linked to ideas of perfection and eternal life. It became the basis of the idea of a universal spirit or ether, or 'world soul', which was to play an important part in alchemical theory."

More in the next post.

This time last year:
Out of the box: exploratory kittens

This time two years ago:
Do you think in a language?

This time three years ago:
Faith, construction, history in Wrocław

This time four years ago:
A better tomorrow – geodiversity

This time five years ago:
Warka – small-town Poland's moving up

This time six years ago:

Summer działka joys

This time seven years ago:

Local round-up

This time eight years ago:
New Nikons on the way!

This time 14 years ago:
Work continues on S2, going under the railway lines

This time 15 years ago:
Stand Easy! – a short story

This time 18 years ago:
God Save The Queen - I mean it, Ma'am

This time 19 years ago:
On the Road Again

Excitement is over-rated

It dawned on me the other day that I no longer get excited, nor do I seek excitement any more. One can be excited by the prospect of travel; I'm not. I've not been on holiday for 12 years, nor do I hanker for a holiday. I'm not excited by watching sport or going fast.

This is a profound difference between me today and the younger, thrill-chasing me.

Am I happier! Of course I'm happier! But why? What is it about an ascetic rural lifestyle that brings happiness? Primarily, peace of mind, agency over my time. Repeatable moments of joy.

One question arises however. I am convinced of the reality of non-local consciousness, of the survival of identity after death – in the form of consciousness and its associated qualia memories – rather than ego. The ego being intrinsically linked with the body, with its appearance and its place in the status hierarchy, dies with it. But consciousness, pure observation, abides. 

Much of the lore surrounding reincarnation features people with memories of dying young, of lives tragically cut short, and of the desire to return again to experience more of human life. 

But what of reincarnation as experienced by people who die in old age? A long life may bring substantial wisdom, along with a sharper perception of how much remains unexplored. I know what I know, my belief system is becoming ever-clearer, but I am also increasingly aware of what I don't know.

I witnessed two great forces driving my father forward in old age, namely observation and curiosity. Not everyone has had the benefits of a great education, but with enough observation and curiosity, aided by access to knowledge unparalleled in human history and more time for self-improvement, the life-long learning potential of an autodidact is vast. 

What's needed is the drive to learn; focus (for those wanting to specialise in any one field), the energy required to keep on with the hard work. And the inspiration to tap into the Flow, frequent moments of deep intuition. Didn't have enough of these qualities this time round? Ask for more next time.

A spiritually mature consciousness is likely to choose a next life that is not high in status or excitement, rather desiring an existence that offers the right conditions for further development.

Here I bow towards Plato and his Myth of Er in Book X of The Republic. For Plato, the purpose of philosophy is partly to prepare one's consciousness for the moment of biological death and the choice that follows. The philosophically educated person learns to distinguish a superficially good life from the genuinely good – wealth from justice, fame from wisdom, power from self-mastery. Once each soul has selected a life, its chosen destiny is confirmed. The souls then forget their old lives, before being reborn.

Much as I admire classic sports cars, ownership of one is not for me. Entropy would soon turn it to rust, I have zero mechanical or engineering skills; in any case I would not seek to wring out every last ounce of power on my local backroads, nor do I feel any compunction to show off a beautiful car in front of people. 

Should I have any curiosity regarding places such as Göbekli Tepe or any number of anomalous prehistoric sites, I can visit them online these days, and watch talks about them from experts. The prospect of flying off anywhere is no long exciting; the prospect of sitting for several hours in an aluminium cylinder at 30,000 feet, between security and passport checks. No thanks.

Excitement – I have have passed onto a higher plane.

A house full of cats and long rural walks.

Happiness is a 1:1 ratio between your expectations and your reality. (J. Koba)

This time last year:
The Aesthetic Attention Span

This time three years ago:
Wałbrzych, Książ and Riese

This time 11 years ago:
Something new in the skies over Okęcie

This time 12 years ago:
How the other half lives – a Radomite's tale

This time 13 years ago:
On guard against complacency

This time 14 years ago:
Ready but not open – footbridge over Puławska

This time 15 years ago:
Dusk along the Vistula

This time 16 years ago:
Mediterranean Kraków

This time 16 years ago:
Around Wisełka, Most Łazienkowski, Wilanowska by night

This time 17 years ago:
Summer storms

This time 19 years ago:
Golden time of day

An Experiment with Time by J. W. Dunne

One of the most fascinating books I have is a present (as with many of the most thought-provoking books in my collection) from my brother. A 1934 third edition of J. W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time, a book which strikes me as being so amazing as to possess otherworldly properties...

Firstly, a word about the author. A British aeronautical pioneer, Dunne designed aircraft with a swept-wing, tailless configuration. Today aircraft with identical configuration fly as the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit and B-21 Raider stealth bombers. [This article from a US Air Force website name-checks Dunne as the designer of the first practical flying-wing.] So in the world of science, engineering and technology, Dunne is acknowledged as a Serious Man, not some proto-New Age purveyor of woo-woo flakiness. 

Below: digitally enhanced photograph of J. W. Dunne at the controls of his D.6 tailless monoplane in 1911, and a Northrop Grumman B-21 stealth bomber, due to enter service with the USAF next year. The similarity in configuration, despite being separated by a century of aerospace evolution, is remarkable.

Dunne catalogues his most noteworthy  precognitive dreams. One that we can easily check today referred to the Burntisland railway accident that happened on 14 April 1914, the fatal derailment of the Flying Scotsman train (contemporary newspaper photo of aftermath, below).

Dunne writes: "The dream occurred in the autumn of 1913... the place was just north of the Firth of Forth Bridge in Scotland. The terrain was open grassland, with people walking in groups thereon. A train going north had just fallen over the embankment. I saw several carriages lying towards the bottom of the slope..." Indeed, just 12 miles north of the bridge. 

The author mentions many other precognitive dreams sufficiently memorable and shocking as to merit inclusion, including one about the naval bombardment of Lowestoft, which went on to happen during World War I – a war which not yet broken out when he had the dream. Spookily, Dunne refers to the 1914-1918 conflict in the book as 'the first world war' 12 years before outbreak of the second one.

The rationally minded reductionist-materialist would dismiss all this as the random firings of random neurons in the random brain of a random human. Given billions of humans each with brains containing billions of possible neuronal connections, yeah, I can see the attractiveness of this argument. Yet reading the book, I sense a consciousness that was unusually open to information from the future, a man who determined to use the scientific method to attempt to explain how this could happen.

An Experiment with Time was written as the final mathematical touches were being applied to the theoretical underpinnings of quantum mechanics were being agreed. Dunne is clearly up to speed with the work of Schrodinger and Heisenberg and the significance of the observer effect. The language he uses is groping towards that used by today's philosophers of mind, but lacking much of their vocabulary.

Dunne was convinced he could see (if only briefly and imperfectly) into the future. I am convinced that indeed he could. But as to how this process works – I have not the slightest clue. Is it something that one day rational science will be able to explain? Or is this phenomenon entirely spiritual in nature?

Dunne considered himself to be a rational man, steeped in the scientific paradigm and its explanatory powers. As such, he sought a scientific explanation to something he clearly felt to be real. His book is an attempt to couch in scientific language results of an experiment framed in the scientific method.

He calls for large cohorts of volunteers to log their dreams as soon as they wake up, with the highest degree of fidelity and detail, and then to see whether any events in the dreams correlate with actual events that happen in future days, weeks, months and years. He presents the results; nothing here that any scientifically trained mind would remotely accept as proof.

Ultimately, I believe that some people, Dunne included, did have the gift of precognition. Other rare cases have other gifts that our materialist-physicalist paradigm is unable to explain. Attempts to use scientific method to quantify such phenomena (the PEAR Lab's Global Consciousness Study) end up proving that there is indeed a statistically significant 'something' going on – but this is roundly ignored by science because there is no scientific framework to suggest why this may be. And so such efforts are sneered at as 'pseudoscience' with efforts made to dismiss the methodology.

Quantum mechanics and consciousness studies may take us further down a road towards an explanation that conforms with the scientific paradigm; on the other hand, it may open the door to an entirely new paradigm. Or it may just turn out that some things are simply meant to remain a mystery.

Precognition – being able to glimpse into the future –

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