OU blog

Personal Blogs

at home

New blog post

Visible to anyone in the world

Hello, hello and hello. 

Yesterday, and from a little, tiny, kind of huge pig out the day before, I woke up and got straight out and went for a long walk around my town, that lasted for over an hour. It felt great, and by the end of it, as I neared my little area, I noticed that I was high as a mother, from the exercise and endorphins I had experienced. Then the day went on, and I was able to take a small rest in the mid-morning, and it was a fine nap from which I was awoken by a knock at the door, which was an Amazon delivery woman whom I mistook for a man, by calling her "Bro!" (this sort of felt good, for some unknown reason), and she had delivered an HDMI cable that I ordered so that I could connect up my SNES mini to the new box that I received from my neighbour. In fact, my neighbour was drunk in the afternoon, and making a nuisance of himself, by his own choice in the forecourt of my (relatively small) estate, and began the endeavour by picking on two council workers with a ladder, and they seemed to take this action with the correct amount of skepticism, and did their best to ignore his drunken japes. John is a great bloke. I have called the police on him twice. Once when he was insulting me in my apartment, the second when I opened my front door and he drunkenly barged in. We've had our ups and downs, but we can see eye to eye on most things and, in fact, despite his misgivings and the fact he has spent time as a prison inmate, John is harmless, and a lovely bloke. I don't even believe he is an alcoholic; he just likes a drink. What's the harm in that? In any case, I have some footage of his conduct, and it gives me a great deal of amusement to watch him in action. We are all slightly bored in this quarantine situation (which might I add is an unbelievable construct in an otherwise relatively boring life, and I think God must be a wonderful story teller to have written all this. Amen. ) 

But today, I went for no long walk around Mill Hill. However, I was awake at an early hour and chose to sign straight in on the PC to check emails and do some preliminary administerial work, and then immediately after got down to study. The day's engagements in this endeavour began with an attempt to compose myself in the manner of finishing off section 4 of Unit 22 - Bose gas and crystal structure. The entire lockdown and quarantine situation has seemed to have given us a chance to organise ourselves (at least it has done for myself) in our daily lives, and also given us a nice break from the rat-race that was becoming a terrible drain, you must surely admit. I found, in my endeavour to study, that I do tend to get distracted quite easily. I have, in this matter, a series of goals such as a long-term goal (attain a professional degree in my best subjects), an even longer-term goal (to gain a masters or yet higher level credential in my best subjects), and these finicky little short-term annoyances, that I find I must immediately attend to the very second they arise. They can become quite bothersome, but in fact they are quite necessary and, in fact, once they are done they are done and out of the way. These are menial tasks such as might be tending to a small piece of litter on the floor, or something similar, or brushing debris off the table, or making roll ups, or a cup of coffee. But once they are done, they are done, and there it is, and there you have it. However, such tasks as these are also invasive in the process of the course of my study. So the short-term goal of finishing to understand a paragraph from the university website, today, was inundated with all manner of distractions, in the manner of turning to Wikipedia to crystallise a concept, and then finding another concept and searching that one, and then another concept and then another. In the end the culmination was a web-browser complimented with a number of Wikipedia tabs connecting to a vast array of subjects and, in short, the endeavour was dappled with an intensity of learning which I found most illuminating and was both surprised and grateful at the things I was discovering. 

At around midday, having recently realised that my local hardware store was remaining open (we all love hardware stores), and wanting to replace a watch battery in my best watch that had recently run down, I chose to go to the local town to amend the situation, and went there, and by walking. I fixed the watch (it cost £6.99), and I went about to different stores -  the local Turkish one (bought vegetables for lunch - genius!) and the local Iceland (for rice and Chinese sauce, and also a box of mini savoury eggs for the local tramps lunch). As I sat waiting for a bus, I met a lovely man, an acquaintance who frequented the once-open coffee shops around Mill Hill reading books, and he sat at my bench and we were able to engage in a polite conversation. I realised afterwards how pleasant it was to finally talk to someone with a human face, which I did with relative alacrity, having not done so for over a month. Yes, I was most surprised to hear myself discussing the topics of my studies in quantum mechanics, and it was a great feeling - one that gave me a great deal of satisfaction and complacence in myself and things I have learned. Sometimes everything comes out. But then I did get a bus and went back hoe, and was pleased to continue the distracted work I was doing. But it was alright. 

I went out later, too. I went up to meet my parents at around six o'clock at their home, and spent some time in the garden talking to each of them. It was very lovely - my mum had borrowed a blood pressure measurement device from her auntie, which I needed to take note of my blood pressure, due to a recent change in medication. I spoke to my dadsie - he was talking about a science show he'd seen on box - and we were having a nice discussion. It's nice when you can get along with your folks. I'm so glad I'm in a continual state of awakening, in which I'm always and every time appreciative of their state of being still alive. They are still relatively young, and you hear of such terrible things when they eventually pass. I feel fortunate to still have them around; to still have the opportunity to get to know them better, and to share everything with them that goes on. So much happens. So much goes on. 

I walked home - it was slightly chilly. I jogged part of the way and, not wearing my glasses for whatever reasons, began to feel self conscious about my beard. When I was arrived back at home I was recipient to a call from Tamsin, the girl I claim is my girlfriend. She likes my beard apparently, but when we got off the line, I shaved it off. 

Anyway, there it is, and there you have it. 

Best wishes all, 

Dan


Permalink
Share post
Attachments:
image/jpegsister and son.jpg
at home

A basic entry about a basic Tuesday

Visible to anyone in the world
Greetings, and welcome all blog lovers. 

Well, what an interesting night last night was! The details of it you can find within the sentences and sentiments of the blog I wrote at that time, but in short, I was halfway through my interjection when I decided to stop and try to sleep, and yet I could not sleep, and had to come back to the work and complete it, all the while under the influence of a full quarter of a sleeping tablet. Such was my motivation, borne out by that unsettled feeling of an incomplete day. 

In the morning, and from the reading of a paragraph from a book about habits and changing them, I tied up my shoelaces and finally went for what happens to be the second of my life's attempt at jogging. And I jogged down what they call Uphill Road, in little bursts, my lungs straining from the previous days smoking tobacco, and it was difficult and tiring. I wish to explain, that my motivation for such conduct is a continuation of the events of the past few weeks during which I seem to have been going through some major changes. I got down, in any case, to the mead at the bottom of the road, and yakked up my coffee into a bush there. I could have decided to take the A41 back up to my home, a direct route, but, by the dint of trying to get in touch with my true whims and feelings, I chose to go down and through the Broadway in Mill Hill, and did so, in little bursts of jogging, and say for a moment at the bench near the Mill Brew coffee shop (closed at the moment that is now), and went up on the Millway route, towards Apex Corner, where my home is. And I saw John, my Romanian acquaintance, who was most impressed with my conduct, and complimented me. (He wore a mask, and was going to work). It was nice to see him. 

Back home now (and I wish not to be crude about the matter), I noticed the bowel loosening effect of half an hour's exercise, and also washed under a temperamentally hot and cold shower, and felt a million times better than the way I did through the night, which was not a nice night, of sleep, or feelings. 

The day continued as like any other day, although decorated with a feeling of healthy design, and I pursued a breakfast of a single slice of toast with hummus, and a glass of water, and I set about, at the desk, by catching up on my social responsibilities, by means of my iPhone. I checked in with an old friend, Oliver, with whom I shared a couple of comments on the topic of family and exercise, and made my regular interactions with my main point of contact in this time of lockdown, a certain Martin Katz. I feel I should illuminate his life in a book. He is a good man, and an old sixty two year Jewish man, and he took a liking to me many years ago when we were in a mental hospital at the same time, and where we met. We've been friends ever since, and had our ups and downs, and what a sweet and spiritual presence he certainly is. He's been an absolute Godsend over the last few weeks, in which time I have needed such a friend to help me through. I would have been at a loss without him. His patience in my failure has brought me to tears in a moment of need. I have often brought him to tears, but he has repaid me tenfold, and I'll never forget it. However, our conversation this morning was a short one, relatively, compared to the hours we spend in facetiming. In fact, there was a hint of testosterone influenced shortness to the correspondence; yet we both seemed to understand one another. I knuckled down and continued on with my work which was to complete Unit 21 of Science module S217 - mathematics and physics, and did this until my eyes bled with tiredness and, in truth, I began to hallucinate I was as sleepy. 

After two and one half hours of study I decided to rest and catch up on the sleep of which I was deprived the previous night, and it was a rest so dotted with the freckles of the effects of medication (amisulpiride), that I spent two hours in it, and once I was awakened by a facetime from Martin, I realised I could remember my dream. 

In dream, as I sat near my mother, on a couch in the sunlight, I became aware that she was sent a letter - in fact, a correspondence from my open university tutor - which was a marked assignment that showed I was not achieving the highest marks of which she thought me capable. Upon her indication to me of this, that many of the equations had come to be wrong, I complained that the course is hard, and that you had to recognise the difficulty of special relativity, and that this equation was my first attempt at solving a calculation in such a topic. And then, still in dream, I left the room and sat to in a car outside to sulk with my sister who was also in the car. When mother came along to inquire about the situation, we complained to her about her, that she always.... she never.... this that and the other.... And the car was in front of a estate agent's office in Mill Hill, and I realise, that that was where the couch in the sunlight must have been. I found myself walking about the town, in dream, and past various happy people, including an Indian woman, and past an ice cream parlour, and this and that, and the other. Then, soon, I was back outside the estate agent's office, where Corina (my sister) still occupied the car, and I noticed a time-travelling man appearing in different positions around the vicinity of the office, and pointed him out to Corina, saying, "Can you see the time-traveller?" Then, in any case, my sister and I had secretly installed an espionage system within the estate agents, which we monitored from the car, and found, explicitly, that we were being grassed up for doing so, by Chris Addison, who appeared in "The Thick Of It", that is a television show written by my man Armando. The phone was ringing, out of dream, and I was glad that I had something for which I should awake, and it was Katzy, facetiming me. 

After I spoke to Martin I phoned my girlfriend, who is called Tamsin, and we spoke, and I found out about her day, and her plans, and her habits of reading (at the moment it is the Harry Potter series), and then, in any case, we ceased communication, and went on with our day. That endeavour, for me, was to continue to catch up with friends, and I spent a good half an hour chatting by Whatsapp video call to another old friend of mine, Adam Young. His diatribe was based on the care which I should take in signing any contracts, with Channel Four, to do with a television series that might be made about my life, and based on the book about that, which I called The Chicken Shop Incident. He is most concerned that I am going to be fucked over, and I settled the discussion by outlining my full awareness that I am most certainly going to be fucked over, and it's a done deal, in short. We ceased communication, and I spent the rest of the day trying to continue my studies, interposed with bouts of communication with Martin, and a meal of fish fingers, chips and beans, and a walk to the convenience shop on Apex Corner, for lemonade and cat food. 

In the evening I spoke to my mother, and also my friend Charlie, and only one other thing of note, was the occurrence of a lengthy conversation with my little brother, Ryan Best. He was carving a spoon down the shed at number five, and I was speaking about the events of the past few weeks, which have been a great experience of illumination, which I must admit were most difficult, but also humorous and interesting, and which I would one day like to write about, if such an endeavour is possible. In any case, I love my little brother; our conversations may improve, now that I am not so completely and utterly stoned off my face on weed twelve or thirteen hours a day, since I quit that drug during a medication change that happened because the supplies of my last one had discontinued. 

This drug is much better. Amisulpiride. 

I was looking forward to this day, and I have gone over my time. But there it is, blog lovers. That's my entry for the day. I will see you in the next day. 

Love Dan


Permalink Add your comment
Share post
at home

The state of progress

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Daniel Frederick Best, Tuesday, 14 Apr 2020, 02:36

Hello all blog men and women,

I begin my entry by putting down the great feeling I have associated with the practice of learning physics. It is one of happiness, and contentment. 

How glad I am to be finally off the marijuana! It makes study so much easier. 

In addition, it is nice to have chosen to pursue this endeavour of study, and I'm sure you will agree, what an endeavour. 

That other old love of mine, music. I'm sure I will come back to you, one fine day. I'm not very good at music anyway. Well... 

This quantum mechanics is mind-blowing. And how practical, and how complacent one can become. How expedient to use the time in lockdown to do something as nice as study, thus. 

The practice of physics, I have yet to consolidate. But by Lord, I'm anticipating the practice to achieve fruition. 

I am feeling mildly confident, however, as to passing this level 2 module, and wish to continue to higher and higher levels, and I put this down in writing with a view to crystallise my whims. This has worked up until now. 

And in other news, the quantum state of my mental health is now reaching a level of boringness that is so dire that I must be cured of it. Yes, sanity is of necessity the most mundane of all positions; to come to learn to love it could be the greatest struggle of all. So we must pass this knowledge on to sufferers of addictions. For at least in normality you can get something done, and I just recently have approached the idea. 

And what is normality for me appears to be a world apart from that of many individuals, in the current age. We should have this down by July, and we will help each of our peers through it. There is more to this quarantine than meets the eye. I must say, tonight we move forward to attack tomorrow, without qualms. I know, it is starting to get boring - all this waiting until the curve is flattened. All we need is a little patience. And perhaps a little altruism, and perhaps a routine. But that is all. We are all a little tired, and we all need a hug. 

As I am able to claim, I have a fine girlfriend now, with a beautiful mind. Yet, it is not possible to hold her. For such a pleasure, one must absolutely be patient. The goal is to forward our notions with a modicum of diligence, and diligence with satisfaction, and it can be done. We must all do this, every single day, and we hope nature will support this goal. In short, we must use this eon to place our house in order. That is the simplest it gets. We will have the assistance of government, but we must assist them to assist us, and without waiting for the gift. We understand the plight, and pray the economy can handle it. Don't be astounded by society's unbelievable grit, especially to a Brit! (but also, all across the plane of the Earth.) And hope is not the only emotion. Everything is going to be alright. 

And so it goes, everything must be got out the way. I have just given myself a half pill of sleeping drugs, which didn't work, and the very blog we currently read was not finished and no matter the pill taken, you must go until satisfaction, and do so like you are on some other drug; it is only right. I do not understand why much of our planning does not go well on the initial run, lads. Okay, I knew the time was to be a whole hour of, and of full complication in the new and good thoughts we learned, somehow, during the course of the day. Why you didn't merely continue like you knew you had planned, I fail to know the existence of a reason. And you know, it makes me so tired, that it is one of the reasons I knacker my life and life's energy. There's the boy. 

What an interesting change of affairs; forgive me my verbosity. For the lessons of the day, have made it so clear in the eye, that there is more to be said, and all changes, and we start to get used to it all, and we try to believe, and it all comes to nothing. There is more, and what a failing day. That started too well, and ended badly as it could, and within the final three seconds. And for an hour's sleep, well how would that be the a thing? I do not know. It makes no sense. I want it to be a thing; I wish it. 

What story I would like to tell is borne out in the events of the day: in short, I awoke, I worked and spoke to my best friend, and I spoke to my girlfriend, and spoke to a receptionist in the NHS surgery at Mill Hill. And she advised me, and provided knowledge, that I have a prescription to collect - of perfect sleeping tablets which have failed me tonight. And it had royally annoyed me. HE really does laugh at our plans. I mean He pisses himself. And all we can do, and all you can do, and all I can do is follow the course, and try to feel the plan that He has. 

It is religious. The whole thing. I need be like you wish me to be surreptitious, for feel my annoyance. It is anger at myself, and I am only ever angry at myself. I fail too much. I had a thread there, and now I cannot feel such a thread, and this will always amount to ushering in the sorrows of youth, whatever those may be, you slaves. COVID-19 is driving us all insane. Some think it's a conspiracy; some think it is God. Others think it is natural psychology, and I have been wondering at the consequences and ways and means of the psychological methods of infection avoidance. I really have, you know. I always say it. It is natural psychology. That is, COVID-19 can be solved through psychosomatic means. Those are all original theories. Allow me to explain. 

Even the common cold is psychosomatic ( I do not know the exact science). Such a conjecture needs to be understood. Psychosomatic phenomena relates to what the nature of the world dictates, and such a point is made. The nature of the world is made of at least a dichotomy: The man made and the structure of what is allowed in the physical universe, which are both (let me assure you, but do not take my word for it) in connection to reality, and this is the pain of punishment. You must be true to yourself, your nature, and the natural world around you. You must try remain in cohabitation with all these effects, and knowing that morality is the connection, is not such a terrible point of view. for morality can tell how phenomena shall pan out, for it is in the world, and in you. I do not know the exact reasons why. But my hunch is that when an action made by a human is made in the name of being good (not necessarily a relativity of morality), you will instantly see that there is a good that comes from it. This is the point. It is simple: be a good person, and refrain from depravity, and refrain from destitution, and refrain from desperation. (Although I have failed in timely fashion at this latter instruction). Keep government as a vessel of human sanctity, borne of what is thought right, within these confines, and constructs. Use the restrictions and recommendations to your advantage; see them as pointers to help us all achieve a cleaner society. For all my own libidinous desecration, life is a learning curve. Perhaps that is why tonight I have failed. And I will fail, and I will continue to fail, and it will be to my own disadvantage. It will hurt. 

I will not achieve what I originally set out to achieve, here in the thread. You know what I mean about this. IT could have gone so well, and I had doubts. I very much certainly doubted myself. And here is my plea, and here is my prayer. Dear Lord. Please forgive me my failings, and know that I will always try to do your will, no matter the scene of connections to my failings, that I cannot understand your ways. I am not a God, I am a human. I have had a routine for three weeks now, and one night you asked me to change such a routine, and I failed to accept the request, and I am sorry, and please forgive me; I take not the living piss. 

We go again, for the hour is nearly up, and I have done the best I can to solve this crisis, as some coronavirus doctors and professors have so diligently done. I know, Lord, that I could have done better in my day - I pursue the next with great anticipation, and forgive me for shagging your leg whenever I see you at my table; you are wise and great, and I would do anything for you. I was confused by your anger, and now my capability to complete the original task is clear. I have said, and it is said, that you laugh at our plans. But tonight I may have possibly laughed at yours. Yet it is a strange and difficult task to be sensitive to your feelings. I thought what I gave was enough, and I am human, and I fail. The thread was lost, but it is still unsalvageable. I hope you will forgive me! Forgive me Lord, and let me not fall into mirth and hilarity, for I have killed a thousand thousand, and I was sorry, and I never knew pain. All those lost, and the science behind the regeneration of their souls.... I am sure everything will be alright in the end. And I know my place; I know my thoughts (some of them fully). And I know that I will cry to be sensitive to the most important things - they are difficult to navigate, all amongst the notions of personal disbelief in your ways. I struggle to come to terms with the extremes of my responsibilities in this life, I am sorry I took your love. I will perform my utmost to understand my position in this critical time of pandemic and pestilence. And I am sorry that I threw burning hot water upon all the thousands of creatures that fell from the garden pot which I lifted. I did it from curiosity, and from that they seemed so ugly. I hear their screams, of these insects, every day, and it crushes, and I know it made your anger over boil. I am sorry Lord. Please forgive me. Hear my screams, as I scream in the night, throughout the night, every night. 

I will not cry tonight, but I know of my failings, and I know your jealous, and merciful ways. I have faith in you, my Lord, please take me back into our arms, tonight. I love you. 

Daniel

x


Permalink
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 60704