A crazy stressed out day

I am having a terrible time of it today. I feel as if I've had a drunken binge but over the last few weeks I've cut my alcohol consumption down to less than ten units a week so It isn't that.

My whole body feels ill, I have joint and muscle aches, my sinuses burn, tinnitus which has steadily increased is a load ringing in both ears, but slightly biased to the left side now. I feel bloated and nauseous. My neck and right shoulder is tight, my lower back uncomfortable when I move I have painful twinges which feel light muscles in spasm being wrenched out of position.

Today is IVA hearing day. At the first meeting all of my creditors agreed to the proposals except Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. They managed to inflate my debt to them by almost one hundred percent by applying estimates that are just plainly wrong. I have written to them asking that they reconsider. Even if they do I am extremely concerned now about my ability to pay. I have had no work for two months now and work that I had been promised has been pulled due to lack of funds. What to do, what to do?

I ain’t the type for praying Lord, just a little bit of luck will do.

Uncertainty Principle

I have just been struck by a thought. A thought about uncertainty.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that both definite position and definite momentum do not exist in quantum mechanics [wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle].

Let's try and conduct a thought experiment concerning the definition of the present.

When I try to focus on the passing of time I am making an observation. By attempting to focus on and observe the present, I am trying to focus on increasingly smaller observation times i.e. t'' - t' tends toward zero.

If I define the present as the smallest possible change in time that my mind can observe and assume that this is at the quantum level then at that level of focus the uncertainty in my position must become real.

What happens if I try to 'ride time' in the same way that Einstein imagined riding light?

Swept Aside

The phone or doorbell rings, I walk away
From the debts that call or knock.
In equal measure fortune's whims
Join our unforgiving fiscal sins
To hunt us down.

God only knows how I became so poor
At mortgaging fun's borrowed expectation.
Bad cash decisions sneer costly smiles:
Smile cars, meals and foreign holidays.
Smile and snigger.

I thank the luck of history's draw that
The workhouse is an attraction. But shame
Remains and each domino that tumbles numbs
My family's love I fear. I failed to make a
success of life.

In five tough years half a million
Pounds of tax and wages paid counts
For nothing. Hopeless bitterness and
Anger at those helped are poisonous
Rewards for those

Who are the human costs of greed.
I was greedy and I had hubris too
Qualities that some have put to use.
Their gains and my losses coincide,
Holding you I'm swept aside.

Dimensions

A point has no dimension until it is moved to create a line. so:

1. A point becomes a line if it undergoes a translation into one dimension only;
2. A line becomes a plane if it undergoes a translation in a further new dimension;
3. A plane becomes a space if it undergoes a translation in a further new dimension; and
4. A space becomes a space-time manifold (surely there's a better name?) if it undergoes a translation in a further new dimension.

This appears to be true for the four 'obvious' dimensions. But my limited understanding of relativity is that space-time becomes warped by gravity. Now if we 'warp' a line, we have to move it in a new dimension from the single dimension in which it exists 'unwarped'.

So if space-time becomes warped, is it warped within the existing four dimensions or in a new fifth dimension? As far as I can see if space-time is the whole universe then any warping must be outside of the four dimension space and time dimensions so it must be a new fifth dimension. If the one dimensioal line is distorted outside of its one dimension this must be into a further dimension. Likwise for two, three or four dimensions.

So is gravity a fifth dimension?

The soul of a materialist

Satisfying the soul is a protracted affair whereas material benefits bring immediate joy. Being a man of means implies (and means) that one has material choice. But what happens when one’s means are insufficient to satisfy one’s needs? Either:

• increase the means to feel the joy;
• reduce material needs by enforced or voluntary means;
• lower the material expectation (i.e. work on the soul); or
• maintain the status quo of expectation and see what happens next.

This is not to say that working on the soul is the only way out of the bind, or that by implication pursuing materiality has a negative effect on the soul. But I have my suspicions.

The poem with a few revisions that I couldn't resist.

Godlike Weariness

Falter but don't be flickering marshland boy

You'll have the touch there, you'll have joy.

I hold my thumbs so very tight for you

My nape tucked in my shoulders tensed.

We are both pilgrims with our pilgrim lust,

Our garaged faiths, our loves dispensed.

Your journey's goal has turned to dust,

So slip into the fen. Be brave. The fine

Light that seems to fade will lure you on

Toward a mere forever drained of time.

There you'll not falter nor flick your tongue
At me my boy. I've had enough, all is done.

Why Diary of a Man Without Qualities?

Six months ago I had, together with my wife as a partner, a restaurant. I think I'm correct in saying that I had because she was at best ambivalent about the place and sometimes openly hostile about it.

It failed for many reasons but mostly because of weariness.

We became insolvent and are still in the process of trying to put together a voluntary creditor arrangement. I am lucky enough to have some irregular consultancy work which means that we are getting by with the help of S's part time wage.

The key stages of my life have been dogged by partly missed opportunity. I am reasonably bright but I have never really worked hard at anything that is cerebral or intellectual. As a result at school I did well compared to my brother and one of my sisters but less well than the other. I went to an average university and dropped out after a year. I play guitar reasonably well, I played in bands but never really worked hard enough at it to succeed and ultimately I dropped it other than as a private hobby. Occasionally I will bore friends with some strumming when drunk but in common with many people of my age, my wife included, we have few friends and we all tend to indulge in reciprocal dullery.

After dropping out of university and a job or two I had solid, easy, well paid work as a train driver. I married, started to progress through the ranks, had two daughters now teenagers, became quite a senior manager and then blew it. I had screwed around throughout my marriage and fallen in love only once with an au pair fourteen years my junior. My first wife 'A' - 'found' an email that I had written and confronted me. I have a suspicion that she had known for some time but because in this email I said that I was thinking of leaving her I was unsettling the core of her world: the financial stability that we had. 'A' asked me to stay, I could continue to screw around but I couldn't do it. I couldn't continue to be dishonest, except to myself no doubt.

Now nine years or so later I've been married a year to a woman I've known for seven years. She left me once for a rich older guy who she'd had a relationship with years before. This was when the restaurant's financial and operational difficulties became too much to bear for her. We got back together, I'm not so sure if we love each other any more. I care for her but my life seems devoid of meaning and hers too. We still fall in and out of love from time to time but it's not easy.

So this blog is part of a strategy to put some meaning back into me. And if I have meaning then I'll have qualities. I think that's how it works.

First, I am going to post a poem. I wrote it a few years ago but only found it again a couple of days ago. Comments, feedback and plain old insults are welcome as long as they're not lazy. I've got to stop being lazy and so have you. Poem in next post.

TTFN, Nigel