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My mother.

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I think my mother wishes I was dead. 

Dear mother, 
Do you wish I was dead? I know we don't have much in common, and therefore we don't have a great deal to talk about. But have I really outlived your expectations of how long I should be alive? 

It's very sad isn't it? But I feel this way, because after our argument in the car that other Sunday, not only did you not talk to me for a week and a half, but you pounced on the opportunity. 

I feel like, perhaps, maybe you think I think I'm better than you. I can't help feeling that you'd be a happier person, in the long run, if I were dead. You're constantly communicating to me that I'm not good enough. You constantly blame me for ridiculous things. You're never happy with me. I always feel like I've done something wrong. 

If you were more that way inclined, then I could talk to you about this. But you don't listen, and you don't talk about these things. I have to stew in my own juices about these issues. 

I love you mum, but you're inscrutable at the best of times. 

Daniel

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A dream of the mothership

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Edited by Daniel Frederick Best, Wednesday, 10 June 2020, 15:47

Hello, and hello, and hello to you, 

 Yesterday was the first day after the completion of my course in physics. Well, completion in the sense that all the work has now been done - I still have to wait for my results, and this happens around the 21st of July, and I anticipate the day eagerly. 

Yesterday, there were two highlights of the day. The first was that I got to see Tamsin. We met in Hendon park, walked to the middle of a field, had a chat and played some rummy whilst listening to Audioslave. We were only there for an hour, and then I caught the 113 back to Mill Hill. The second was that I was able to visit my family home where I saw my mother and father, and my brother, and we had a nice chat, and I was able to have a lovely meal of a salmon pastry and beans with chili sauce. Everybody is most impressed with my exam and course completion. 

Ryan dropped me home, and I then tried to sit at my desk and begin working on my new project, which is to learn computer science. My efforts were to download the Python package and watch a tutorial on YouTube. Python looks to be the easier between that and C++, and I daresay I won't have a great deal of difficulty with it, and hence wish to be versed in the harder of the two, C++, for which I have a book, and for which learning Python will give me a better understanding. It is very early days, and I should be a little more advanced in this area, and wish I had pursued it when I became interested in it aged eight. I will take it as far as I can, in this free four months, and I'm sure it will be a great help to my studies. 

It was not long however, before the day began to drain on me, and I became sleepy, and desired to resume in the morning, and went to lay in bed and read Penrose. I have several of his books, and have been working my way through "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy", but recently bought his "Cycles of Time", with which I chose to make a start. I was asleep by 12:30 am. 

I must just say, to remind myself, that the course content is still readily available to look at on the website (not to mention in print), and it is a half-formed thought and desire that I do review it from time to time, to refresh my knowledge, and also to go a bit more in depth into the topics of which I was only able to get a basic overview: such topics as thermodynamics and entropy, and quantum gases, and nuclear physics and particle physics. The content there is about as comprehensive as one could wish, and it is well worth a further investigation. 

But this morning, having woken up entirely at the relatively late hour of ten thirty, I realised I had had a quite fascinating dream. I wish to relate: 

At one stage I found myself in the Caribbean, specifically St. Lucia, where I have been in reality, and where in dream I was walking around and holidaying with several of my brother'f friends, and including my brother. There must be some hidden neuroses about my psychosis deeply embedded in my unconscious, because they were made manifest in my conduct, in dream, in which I feel I was making  a nuisance of myself, to my brother and his friends, in an antisocial way. I seem to recall the presence of my father in a fleeting representation, but mainly Ryan and his crew. There was a room, a bit like a fale in Samoa, where the was a bed with white sheets, and a television, and bars in the windows beyond which you could see the tropical trees - mainly green and shining. But me, being a perpetual nuisance (somehow or other) to the boys of my brother's friendship, it was the case that soon the St. Lucia mental health services were involved. Now, we are caught up at the latter end of the holiday, and everybody was getting prepared to go back home. Yet now with the services involved, and Ryan seeming to be quite - I don't know the word - acquiesced to my loopy ways and means (which involved nothing more than fevered excitement as to my wanting to stay here), he was like, "Fine! It's up to you! Stay if you like!" And the services were fully involved now, and I was to be sectioned in the Caribbean! And the way they do it here, is by giving you the strongest anti-psychotic pill that you can imagine, and I was given a choice to take the pill, and told them, "I will take it, and take it happily." But I just took a lick of a dab of it, and it had a little effect, and I was still a sprightly nuisance. The services consisted of a black nurse and a chinese nurse, and they took me to a beach, and it was night. And they told me I was to be killed on the beach, by means of a gunshot to the back of the head, and I was fine with this, and distractedly went with them, ahead of them, as they followed me behind, and yet I still had this pill in my hand. I doubted that I was going to be killed, and as soon as the doubt entered my head, so did the bullet, and I died. 

And my spirit went up across the ocean, and I was never happier, and I began to be able to see the situation of what it is like to die. That situation was actually that you can see the mothership. The mothership is  an alien spaceship that is invisible to all those living, but when you die you can see the mothership, and this one was the Deathstar from Star Wars, and everything made sense. My spirit went up into this mothership, and I was back at home, with the aliens, and realised that I was an alien. I was in the mothership, and welcomed back home, and looked in the mirror and could see my true alien form, and there were others, and one of these was Lee Kern. Yet Lee was a representative of the Earth and he knew the alien language and I was able to communicate with him about the situation. Very soon, I was able to have the chance to have sex with a beautiful woman, and was given choices about which way I wanted to have her. It seemed somehow untoward to want her in the vagina, or anus, and I chose to have her without penetration. Such a choice, it seemed, was not in the right mode for me to stay on the mothership, it being the weakest choice, and I think I was sent back. In any case, the dream ended. 

Although, I stayed asleep for some two more hours, and didn't dream anything of note in that time, and I woke and made myself coffee, and smoked a cigarette, and continued to work on my computer coding vocation. 

I also had to pick up some prescribed sleeping pills, and read a little when I was at the Broadway. When I was home, I fell asleep for half and hour, then phoned Tamsin and told her about my dream, and then I came here. Now I wish to work on  my summer vocation a little, and make a prawn curry for dinner. 

And there's the long and short of it, and there it is. And there you have it. 

Best wishes, 

Daniel

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COVID-19:- Developments: personal and social

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Welcome ye, 

Hello there, how are you? How am I? How, indeed, are things going for you right now? Bloody fantastic, I must interject, and there it is and there you have it. Well, and perhaps not so good. Perhaps my mind has deteriorated, from the inundation of surplus hours and hours of studying and working - mainly, in the physics regime. Yes, for I have gone quite, quite insane. And by that I do not mean to say that you yourself have gone insane, but that I myself have gone quite, quite doolally. 

I just spent an hour working on a topic of physics, namely (and what was the topic), the blackbooty spectrum. And it was over an hour, in truth, approximating to approximately two hours, or two and a half hours, and I took down the particulars. And henceforth, when it all culminated in a conclusion, I was dismayed, certainly, to find that the problem was indeed a classically moot concept, which was not in use for the solutions to the problem. And now I find that the problem is indeed a "heads up" in the mode of the quantum solutions, yet imagine my dismay, to have all my good work... thrown down the pan!!! 

I guess I don't mind. I actually performed one of the equations. But I wonder, how can the open university expect us to be able to keep up with this immense workload? Well, I imagine, that that is because I was two weeks behind, for the reasons of the coronavirus. 

Remember the coronavirus? Do you recall that era? That was a strange time indeed, forsooth. We all had to stay in the house and try to keep abreast of things. That reminds me, I must check upon the daily round up of news. But before I do so, I would like to mention that I am not so fascinated by the questions of conspiracies in light of the current situation. 

Now it says here, that the United Kingdom has the greatest number of deaths in Europe. We are second only to the United States. This is certainly a good reason to stay the course inside. So I must be wrong about my considerations of the COVID-19 disease being, in its capacity, a psychological phenomenon. I simply cannot understand how we have had so many deaths? We all locked down, didn't we? We all stayed in quarantine. But the good news is that the NHS is handling the situation. 

The news certainly is a bitch. I feel a little stunned, and now a great deal more worried. Have we reached a peak yet? Why are the elderly dying? They are vulnerable, but where did they pick up the virus? It's a state I'm in that equates to confusion. Why are people in care homes picking up the virus? Is it something to do with the NHS? I am actually in shock. Nearly 30,000 deaths!! I wish I was able to help. I wish I was able to say something comforting. 

And there I was, thinking about suicide. 

What would happen if I were to test positive for Coronavirus??

They are saying we could have done things differently. We're in week seven of lockdown, and they think we could have done things differently. 29,427 people have died, as of the fifth of May. I would like to know if that's exactly related to coronavirus, or there are other factors. Yes, the elderly and vulnerable are dying. Why can't we protect them? 

I haven't been watching much television. In fact, my only source of media has been the open university website, and I think that's as good as any. We do not have to be so morosely attached to the mainstream media, however, perhaps I should be a little more in tune with the feelings of common social discourse, maybe. 

The lockdown is working, they say. So that's good news. 

I should personally be extra careful, because I am a smoker, and a fairly heavy one at that. And they say, that you are four times more likely to catch the disease in that band. 

I still get the sense of a psychological cause... Am I a fool? I should not spread misinformation. Media is just fine, in the sense that we as humans are in fact central to natural existence. In a strange way, the media can help keep you sane - at least, further from real insanity. I don't want to say what I'm thinking. 

But now, I must interject, that it is of utmost importance to treat the coronavirus as a true and real threat, and not to mess around and joke about with claims of conspiracy, to treat the coronavirus for what it is - a virus that is killing people all over the world. 

And there it is again: That thought of psychology... It cannot be put into words. I would like to redeem myself by asking about the science of COVID-19. 

I must say, I feel at odds with my situation, that is, of being on benefits for illness. Yet I am trying my best to keep on with work, and perhaps this is the best I can do. I am doing the best I can to do my bit, which is merely by quarantining and locking down. For the worries are social, economic, scientific, political. 

I'm listening to a science podcast on the topic of the psychology of conspiracies. The points being made are, that conspiracies are a way to help people understand their anxieties, and the world; that social media is spreading misinformation; that people who lack critical thinking abilities are more likely to believe in conspiracies. I conclude that the virus is a real physical threat (if it ever needed to be affirmed). Narcissists are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. When you are in an environment that increases your uncertainty this makes you more susceptible to conspiracies. When you believe in one conspiracy theory, you are more likely to believe in others, for example, if you believe the virus is man-made, then you are more likely to believe in the 5G conspiracy theories. Confirmation bias. Proportionality bias: the coronavirus event is a massive event. Many people are out of their minds with fear. Me? I'm just out of my mind. 

I have problems. I'm glad I'm studying science, for the narcissistic reasons (obviously), and others. But why am I so skeptical about the governmental and scientific evidence about the coronavirus? I must remember that I am in fact a paranoid schizophrenic, which means that I have had experiences, and none more so than in the last few weeks. I have problems, and have had experiences, but I have good reasons to believe the things that go on in my head. I also have good reasons to ignore those things and connect into the mainstream media. It's a strange world outside, I can assure you, and I'm not sure I like it. I miss people, real contact. But now, I am coming to think that the scientific and social view of myself is a far cry, in fact, from the philosophical and spiritual person I was once trying to attain to in life. Some people have called me a plethora of things, from genius, to queer, to dickhead, to paranoid schizophrenic. I feel the medicinal view is the most debilitating, for it is the hardest to accept. Yet, in fact, that is who I am. I am not the Christ, I am not a God, I am not an angel. I am a paranoid schizophrenic. That is how the doctors see things, that is how my mother sees things. That is how I should see myself - even in light of my esoteric views on the topic of what we take to be authority. Because I have been studying science for a very long time, and I wish to pursue science, and gain credence in this subject. I have to relent and even acquiesce to the whims of medicinal, or medical authority. And I had such hopes for the psychological legacy! 

I am not there yet. Perhaps the diligence must be strenuous, and perhaps the work will not be fun. But the fun is over. I want to see this pandemic through and make it over to the other side. You know, I couldn't explain those conspiracies nevertheless! So that is it. 

Now I think of it, I have been lacking a modicum of faith recently. Faith is like a rule of life - it will always rear its head in your moments of despair, and you can fall back on it. But science is truth, and reality. It is really the best way to accept your life. I want to retire from my fears about the way society identifies me. I want to accept myself. I'm a paranoid schizophrenic. 

Best wishes

Daniel. 

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