Chinese Optimism.

Middle Age expanded my girth, and now I have reached Old Age, the increase has stopped.  Perhaps from now on I shall gradually shrivel, so that by the time I am 120 I shall be the size of a baby, with a head no smaller than it is, but a tiny torso and little, withered limbs.  I guess they might become thin, but not shorter, so I shall be like a baby with spider legs.  Only four spider legs. 

I still feel very optimistic.  This morning in the office, Ellen comments she felt like crying when she saw how much shares had fallen.  I promised her they would go back up, and told her that the Growcon panic was all a beat-up.  I always praise the Chinese Economy, "still growing strongly, they are still buying our iron and pharmaceuticals because our currency is weak and base metal prices are weak.  So is gold, and that astonishes me.  One day gold will go up again, once a speculative bubble starts, perhaps when other commodities are quiet and the big players are looking for the next boom.  Actually, I think the Peking Government is at war with the West, but it is an Economic War, wages subtly so the West does not recognise the tactics.  There must be people laughing in Peking, probably all men, or perhaps men and their concubines, laughing at how easy it is to make the world's share markets tumble, just by spreading rumours that the Chinese Economy is not doing well.  Actually, it is probably doing better than they let on, not worse.  They are not fudging the figures up to make themselves look good against the foreign belief that really they are not doing as well as they pretend, because that view is the result of false rumours started by the Chinese themselves, to cover up their great success and rapid rise to world supremacy.  Now prices are low, who is buying up the ownership of everything?  Properties, shares, everything.  One day we will all wake up and find that the world is owned and controlled by Chinese people, though a totalitarian government, like the ancient Tyrannies that most States were when Rome was experimenting with being a Republic.  Anyway, the point of this paragraph is that my optimist leads me to put aside this projection and openly praise the Chinese Government and foresee a time when Russia is on the rise again, Europe suddenly manages to get its act together, perhaps there is some sort of union in South America and Africa and their combinations become world powers to rival the USofA and China. 

Queen gives Mappin & Webb further royal seal of approval - Telegraph

My cutlery is Mappin & Webb.  It is the one success where I swapped with my Aunt and collected the entire set.  Everything was broken up into halves, so I have four of lots of things.  Cousin Gill promised I would get the crystal, and I was going to swap some things, like the punch glasses that they used for glasses.  I didn't get anything, as I had fallen out with my cousin over shoddy legal work.  I went to her funeral.  My brother and I were speaking then, and stood together at one side.  I should have contacted her and asked for the glasses, but was too nervous etc.





Queen gives Mappin & Webb further royal seal of approval - Telegraph

The best Show day ever.

Feeling totally well today.  Went to the show with Billy and we walked round everywhere and then walked round again, and I was so pain free it was a miracle.  I towed my shopping trolley and it was a breeze.  We ate and bought everything and didn't have one cross or horrible word.  It was totally excellent.  The taxi came quite quickly and he had a turban, but I didn't call him Sadar Ji, and we had a good talk, except that Billy kept prodding me to stop talking from the back.  Anyway, we arrived and first thing we saw was an outback, bush carpenter selling signs, and one said, Billy's Shed, so we bought it, except he wants it hung on the door and I hung it on the wall.  Then we went into a pavilion and the first thing we saw was the lavendar.  We looked everywhere for Phineas and Ferb, but found them except that Perry was sold out!!  But we really only wanted two lilos etc.  We found a Bertie stuffed toy, which delighted us both.  We ate and ate, too, and I found a corn cob on a stick that was yummy and fruit salad.  And the train back to Flinders Street was easy and then the taxi home because there are no trains on our line this week. 

Haggis pakora - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This beats everything.  The synthesis of Indian and Celtic food, who would have thought?
Phineas and Ferb did a thing on Jewish Mexican fusion, but that was a joke.
Yesterday I had lentil and spinach soup at Gopals.  When I was living in Jageshwar, the local people had the surname Bhatt that also meant rice in some places and my name meant spinach, so I wanted to create a dish that combined both, imagining marriage to the lovely Parvati.  [Why didn't I?  Like Monkey, thrown out of Paradise.] 

Haggis pakora - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The new water bath for birds is a feature.

Billy's Pebble Garden is developing.  The new water bath for birds is a feature.  The fake grass for the grain for the birds is there but the birds did not stay for the photograph.

The Socialist Ideal.

John Lennon had a big hit with this idea. It is the Socialist ideal of everyone being - not only equal - but the same. It is the reason 'fashion' now dresses down; poverty is style. It is the reason that positions of power withing government bureaucracies and many corporate structures - not only do not discriminate on the basis of gender or race - but they do not employ on the basis of intelligence either, which is why we have such stupid public decisions and the vast waste of public money. The problem is not religion at all, and abolishing or repressing it would not solve anything. It is the denial by certain religions and sects of others that they are the only, true faith, and their policy of prosteletising. Xians are the worst, especially the Roman variety, and they have been copied by some Moslems.  [Posted to New Whig as a response to a comment to the Plea to Palestinians.]
---------
There is something illogical about a faith that proclames its mono-theism and then postulates deities outside or apart from its own.  Any form of worship of Universal Consciousness worships the same undivided, single Divinity, by what ever name, or how ever imagined or perceived or represented, or lacking name or any form of representation. The totality of everything can only be a single entity.  Arguments about its size or whether it is infinite are irrelevant because it is not necessary to know about it in any detail, only that it is everything, by definition.

The worst are the faiths that postulate a divided divinity or argue that the universal consciousness is not total and universal at all but there is another, countervailing consciousness.  Again the Xians are the worst. 
-----------
The remaining European Monarchies are mostly the Protestant countries.  A visible difference between the Roman and Protestant versions of Western Catholicism is the pomp and ceremony of the former compared to the austire simplicity of the second.  It can be seen in Church Architecture and vestments as well.  In ancient and mediaeval times, Court life contributed to the public expression of religion, that was itself austere at a personal level, with oaths of poverty by clergy.  Eventually there were seperate streams of ceremony and public spectacle, those associated with Royalty and those of the Church.  In the Roman Catholic countries, the popular desire for spectacle and the emotion of participation in a energy-charged communal event continued to be provided by the Church, and the loss of monarchy was not felt in this way, but in Protestant countries, where religion had abandoned all public show of the spectacular, Monarchy has survived because it provides the visual spleandour that represents the whole society as something vastly greater than the individual.

ERST

I have just invented a new acronym, ERST.
It stands for Electronically Recorded, Stored and Transmitted and I used it first when describing my latest version of the Melba Opera House, because it neen not be the biggest, best and most iconic Opera House, but it must ERST ready.
How do people call these things now?  Do we even have a vocabulary specifically for the virtual world that eventually people will inhabit as much or more than the so called "real world". Perhaps I am one of the few who has explored living in our world as if it had another dimension.  Mathematicians must all do it, because so much of mathematics accpet that real numbers are only a subset of numbers.  To calculate electronics that has our of phase oscilating electrical currents, it is necessary to use formulae that include complex numbers but the final result always turns out to be an expression with only real numbers, and this holds, I believe, for many systems, including Economics, so that the Complex world of ours with an extra dimension actually does have some ontological validity because it is necessary to explain or calculate what does exist.
My world is so different from that of most people.  I measure and count exponentially instead of linearly.  How long will it take mankind to catch up with that one?  I live in a world with an extra dimension, which is about a scifi as Dr who's extra heart, though of course physically possible against the biologically impossible Dr Who, the alien who is humanoid apart from his heart and phenominal intelligence.

Global Civil War

Global Civil War is my terrible prediction.  While writing to New Whig, commenting about Peter Dutton, an unabashed racist, I added that: "Politics is too extremely polarised. In Her Majesty's United Kingdom (Aus is a separate realm) the Labour Party (u are in Labor in the UK) has just elected as leader Jeremy Corbin even further to the left than Ed Miliband; many European parliaments have powerful, extreme parties.
If the social fracture persists with a continually widening rift, the only outcome can be an eventual Global Civil War."  I could not add the emphasis on FaceBook.  I then added: "Is this the first place to write this?" or something similar, which I deleted as pretentious but then found there was no such Wikipedia page.  I haven't done a google search yet, but there were Wikipedia references to multiple electronic games.

West Asia is already fighting civil wars, not national wars.  This is partly because national borders mean less within the ummah.  It is easy to see how these issues could spread.  Support for either side in these conflicts has become a political issue in many countries, and combined with other idealistic issues like the supposed plight of the palestinians and alleged global warming.

Civil war in China is more likely than China being at war in a traditional way with the rest of the world or some other countries.  The Chinese are too canny for that; Economic War perhaps, and certainly well played brinkmanship. With a widespread Chinese diaspora, this civil war could easily take root in other countries, where it could inject energy into other social disputes and combine to form new fronts in the Global Civil War.

The United Kingdom is becoming more extremely divided.  Scotland has swung far to the left by almost totally endorsing their Nationalist Party, which on social issues is to the left of Labour.  (It is symbolic that U/you, is/are in UK Labour, but excluded from the Australian Labor Party, but they are both shifting left.)  The Occupy Movement showed how realistic people's action can be.

In Melbourne, regular popular demonstrations block the most visible intersection between the station, the pub and the church, sometimes spontaneously erupting in response to a new issue.  While these are small, they indicate the level of energy in the community and the ease and speed at which people can be mobilised in this electronic age.

Civil Wars are nasty business.  They can cause more deaths that inter-national wars. Britain has a history of civil wars, including the War of the Roses.  The Americas have had civil wars on both continents, and European history is full of revolutions and civil wars.  There is nothing to suggest humanity has changed.  Civil wars are fought on home territory, not distant battlefields, at sea or in space.

The dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is a civil war between two nations trying to share a single land, except that the problem is perpetuated by the international, anti-Semitic Moslem policy of using the un-helped Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, to demonise Israel.  The ancient dispute between branches of Islam is also civil war that could become internationalised due to the minorities in so many countries that only require enemies of their enemies to burst into action.

Tsar Nicholas II's son and daughter will be buried with the rest of the family

 While Russian criminal investigators have
ruled the remains of Alexei and Maria are authentic after DNA testing,
their identity has not been accepted by the Russian Orthodox Church or
by some Romanov descendants.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3231008/Tsar-Nicholas-II-s-son-daughter-finally-buried-rest-family-Saint-Petersburg-eight-years-bodies-discovered.html#ixzz3lUHFPYTf

Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

It used to be one of my megalomaniac fantasies that my Father was actually Alexei, smuggled out by Jewish Refugees, and never himself told.  I always thought one day I would have a dna test and it would be discovered.  Then I heard his body had been found so my fantasy was dashed, but it soars again.

Tsar Nicholas II's son and daughter will be buried with the rest of the family | Daily Mail Online

Sabbath Thoughts,

Sabbath Thoughts,

Billy’s parents are visiting, which is rare on a Saturday.  Usually I go to the IGA and fill my trolly with some things for me and some for Billy.  Then I bring mine home and at noon he texts me and I go round and cook us a mixed grill for lunch.

Cooking is the most forbidden thing to do on a Saturday.  We always think of Shabbat as it is “upstairs” but the downstairs Shabbat must have been much more significant.  It must have been a real rest for servants.  I have never seen “downstairs on Shabbat” ever portrayed.  It would make an excellent new idea for a book.  A totally observant Jewish family who participate in society as my grandparents and great-grandparents did. 

I was brought up in a very wishy-washy Reform sort of tradition, even though we went to an ostensibly Orthodox Shule.  I never experienced the separate, Orthodox, woman’s Shabbat, as I knew happened in the other rooms in the Rabbi’s house when I was invited for the third meal sometimes, and a shiur. I didn’t grow up with it.  My only glimpse was the one year I walked round with my Father on Yom Kippur to the Shule where his Mother still davened, because my Grandfather had died a year or so before I was born.  We went into the adjoining room where the women were sitting in rows, facing the curtain that covered the missing wall that behind which was the Synagogue.  I recall some women hushing and complaining that a man had come in, but when they saw me, they wanted me to stay, but my Father, having been shoed out, took me with him.  It must have been the last Yom Kippur before my Grandmother died, because we never did it again.  Never walked together again on Yom Kippur, I don’t know why.  And then eventually he died the day afte Yom Kippur, when I had missed the answering machine message inviting me to dinner before the fast, except that I was going to a rave before fasting or some such absurd plan, and so I missed the dinner my Step-Mother said later she had made that would have been the last time I saw him alive.

I imagine traditional Jewish Homes, with a Front Room with a table to sit round and a kitchen with a hearth or stove that can be stoked up and closed down to keep hot without being touched for the next day, to be rekindled from the remaining hot coals after Havdalla. All the women must sit around in a world I shall never see.   Little boys must find it familiar until their bar mitzvah, after which they are banned, as was my Father.  It must be in the home as well as in the Synagogues and Prayer and Study Halls.  I do not have those memories.  How wonderful it all must have been when it worked well, as it must have done in so many villiages, stetles and whatever.  Just like Fidler on the Roof, just like life in the middle ages between the writing down of the Talmud and the Haskalah.

I cook because I am wicked.  My great wickedness is that I break the first commandment in the Torah to be fruitful and multiply.  I never married and have not fathered children.  Having committed that first and greatest of sins the rest of the Torah is wide open for transgression.  For a time I started to work my way through all six hundred and thirteen commandments, or those that applied to me, as well as the mitzvoth as determined by the rabbis which is a parallel system, but I might have missed some.  Anyhow, I somehow derive some sort of ego-pleasure from transgressing the Sabbath.  I cannot blame Billy.  Also I cannot blame Billy for deducing I must not only be not-Religious, but also not Spiritual or anything at all.  It is a sad consequence and part of the general lack of understanding between us.

It is important that I am such a sinful, wicket person.  I have for years suffered from megalomania.  I wrote a couple of poems about it decades ago.  Anyhow, I keep having utterly insightful ideas about the world and history and so on and I think I see ways to solve the world’s problems or new ways for people to see the world and understand it and most important, how everyone can live in harmony.  I call it ‘Transcending the Duality’. It is a bit Hegelian.  Then I imagine myself winning the Nobel Peace Prize for it, perhaps the same year I win the Nobel Physics Prize.  Then I imagine a TV inverview where I am asked If I see myself like one of the Prophets, and I laugh, because I am such a wicket person, that it is only coincidence that I have these profound ideas that have changed humanity, and they result from my years of observing the world and introverted thinking, and jut working these things out for myself.  I certainly have not had any divine revelations.  I have not heard Angels telling me these things.  I just think them up myself.  But I do think I am an exceptional person because I do it, or can do it.  I should do it more.  Sometimes I think I should go public and pretend to be like the Prophets, even if I am not, and would certainly be honest about it and not claim any type of special religious experience or knowledge, but the messages I think up are brilliant and someone should tell everyone, and I don’t see anyone else, which does make me curious sometimes.  Anyway, if I was such a “good” person, then my life would have to be balanced with an equal amount of “wickedness”.  Once again, black is white.

It is presumptuous of me

It is presumptuous of me to attribute my ideas to the mind of God, but I am that arrogant, deep within myself, far from the surface of self that fractally separate’s from “out there”, so I do.

After Jews wrote down the six booms of the Mishna that they had kept as oral literature for centuries, necessitated by the destruction of the Temple by Rome, and had collected all the traditional sayings of the Rabbis and written down the two Gmearras, creating the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, then I imagine the Universal Mind observing that Jews still did not understand the purpose of it all.

Certainly some Jews found the true meaning within the performance of all the rituals and within the multiple repetitions of word-embodied ideas.  However most people learnt to perform all these rituals and repeat the formulae of words without losing their inner sense of self.  The “I” that thinks and therefore knows it exists is an illusion.  Hindu and Budhist teaching is that the “ego” is false.  Those who succeed find true bliss, others, like me just wonder at it and wander up dusty lanes.

What was needed was another Prophet who can explain to people that the intent of the complex practices is not the practices themselves, but the act of submission to a higher consciousness and the abandonment of the false sense of “self” that everyone is born with.  “Islam” is “submission”.  It has the practices and the recitations, but the intent is exactly the same for Orthodox Jews.

Twice in the last two decades I have started to become religious.  It came very naturally to me when I was struck with grief at the sudden death of my dearly beloved Father.  I made it through the mandatory year and about another month, before the “all or nothing” requirement got to me.  My sense of me, my ego was too strong.  Perhaps it was because I have always been an extreme introvert, and my “self” is buried deep within me, far from the real world.  No one has ever succeeded in penetrating into my psyche or sense of self or what ever it is called, to really connect with the true me. 

So I know about performing a person in public.  That is where I saw how so many people did everything and survived in the community and were quite happy with their lives, but they had a secret side to them, which wasn’t a “side” but their inner core that like me they kept safe from the full submission that can come from an honest approach and a love of God.  Therefore I could easily see the people that were putting it on, or acting it out.  Some sort of fooled themselves that what they were doing was correct and natural, and of course there were hidden social structures and connections between these secret selves that undermined the otherwise perfect community.  I hate to say, but it seemed to be most people, though some were trying and will get there eventually.

Anyhow, I could not do either, and certainly not keep up a pretence, so better to do nothing, and so I am typing this on Shabbat, and my only concession on the day is that I don’t shave.  It has given me a wonderful insight into how the Universal Mind might think, that mind that I believe exists but to which I have not submitted.

Islam, the Religion, teaches submission to the will of God exactly as Judaism had done.  In ancient religions such as Egypt and the Hellenic and Roman Mystery Cults, a priestly elite passed on the meditative practices that delivered the blissful life.  This was not shared with the bulk of the population.  Judaism was different in that it was to be a “nation of priests” so the techniques were not secretly held by the Cohanim,  though the stream of authentic knowledge was shifting to the Rabbinic, Pharisees.   However, by the time it was redacted and written down it had become the exclusive opportunity for only those prepared to study hard.  However, the promise of eternal bliss may be the reason such a large proportion of the Israeli population devote their lives to study.  Oddly, they do not seem to understand that it can be combined with a life in the wide world, and indeed is better when it is.  The move to make army service combined with Yeshiva study for everyone eqully would have totally transformed Israel into a totally Shomre Mitzvot society.  It was stopped by the religious people who did not see the benefits.  The idea of being soldiers in the cause of spreading the Will of God somehow dies not appeal to many theoretically trained minds. 

This is where the national groups that have adopted Islam as their religion have gone off the rails, too.  They are soldiers, hoping to die as Holy Martyrs.  The God who loved the “Sweet”smell of the animal sacrifices on the altar in Jerusalem, must equally love Sons of Islam, followers of The Prophet (pbuh)  who fight each other in the name of the One True God, and make Holy Martyrs of each other as human sacrifice to the Will of God.  Everyone dies, but only some die nobly for the ultimate cause.

Only a few, largely self-selected, men studied the Talmud, Zohar and other texts  and learnt submission, but they would have achieved a blissful life.  Many communities were lucky enough to have such a person, and it is little wonder that such people are held in awe by their communities, such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe.  Even in a religion called “submission” it is evident that too many people quickly assume that because they have mastered the rituals and memorised everything thy know everything and their ideas are best for everyone, but they do not know their ideas are very limited and do not apply to everyone. 

If the religious authorities in Iraq were to revive the Jewish centre of learning in Babylon, and teach the traditions of Judaism through the filter of Islam, then something truly wonderful would result.  It would be greater that an equivalent Academy in Jerusalem where Islam is taught from a Jewish perspective.  The two religions are so similar.  Living in the world was the way the Saducees lived, in opposition to the cloistered life.  Everything is a duality, but the best solution is a synthesis of the duality, combining the best of both sides.  (See New Whig for a socio-political version of all this.)  One day there will be Peace on Earth.  Suddenly people will see that they have lived in the Garden of Eden all the time.  The expulsion was purely mental, but how many thousands of years will it take for people to return to a State of Nature, being part of the Ecosystems of the Natural World as well as the social systems and other systems of organisation, including in the virtual dimension.  It is only a few decades now to the bimillenial anniversary of the Temple’s destruction.  It is pleasing to think it might be rebuilt, and with the new ground penetrating technology they are sure to find the Arc of the Covenant that was never retrieved for the Second Temple, but will be for the third.

Then again lightning can strike the open iron alter at the top of Mount Zion and kindle the fire for the sacrifices once again.  I am a vegetarian, but I accept that most people are not, and if animals are to be slaughtered for food they should be recognised as sentient beings whose souls are also part of the divine Universal Consciousness.   The ancient temples were butcher shops.  I have been to the Kali Temple above the west bank of the Kali River that borders Nepal, and seen the blood sacrifices in the temple courtyard, seen the vultures circling for abandoned flesh, and seen people of various castes come for the carcases.  It saddens me that I shall not live to see it.  All I can do is imagine it, and write this and post it to a blog that is not read and may never be read. 

Congratulations to Her Majesty

Congratulations to Her Majesty on attaining the history-book-entry milestone of becoming the longest reigning British Monarch.  Probably forever, assuming the Monarchy lasts forever, and presently it looks certain, for the next couple of centuries at least.  It is possible future generations that are born into a constantly changing world of infinite diversity will come to appreciate the long-term stability and certainty of Monarchy. 

There are repeated comparisons to Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria.  We all know The Queen through her lifetime, even more so recently with all the retrospective photographs, including Her Majesty when a very young queen.   Queen Victoria is best remembered as she was in later life and it is only recently that historians and writers have revived the young Queen Victoria.  History’s Queen Victoria was defined by the last decade of her reign.  At a mere ninety, The Queen is very probably going to reign over us for at least another decade, as I am sure that privately our queen will want to outlive her own mother, Her Imperial Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. 

New Dawn, remember this date, 8th September, 2015

Hot the much mail-delayed letter from my Oncologist.  Most amasing, he treats me like someone who will understand, and I do understand.  I think this is what makes me feel better, not just his detailed prognosis which suggests a good chance of success.
They know the probabilities of success but nor clearly the causes.  Perhaps it is a matter of probability like quantum effects.  Perhaps it is the result of genuine quantum effects at a human scale.

Here is my reply:  Which I shall now edit, so it might be different.  Whom am I telling with this blog? No one at present, but if I do live another couple of decades, who knows?

1225 High Street, Armadale Vic 3143                                               8th September 2015

Dear Professor Millar,

Thank you for your very re-assuring letter dated 24th August that arrived today.  Rather pathetically I confess, that you are the first person ever who has taken a letter of complaint of mine seriously and responded in a way I can understand and that actually addresses my concerns and does not patronise me – and I have written hundreds of such letters for many reasons I was distressed, not just medical.  Thank you.

You probably wonder why I have not searched the InterNet myself and found these studies.  Especially considering I have done tertiary studies that were totally On Line, so I am not only proficient but accomplished having gained a High Distinction with Open University.  But I have digressed into a rare moment of personal pride and optimism, brought on no doubt, by the very positive prognosis implied by the many studies you quote.  I could draw a ‘tree’ (I forget the name) that allocates percentages to the quotas from previous percentages, especially if it included margins of errors or standard deviations and so forth.  Again, I digress, but my point is that I am liable to ‘self harm’ as Alexandra (the last Counsellor to quit on me, who promised she never would, though it was arguably a problem of bureaucracy not hers personally,) identified it in my behaviour.  I used to wonder if I was cursed!  This was brought on by child-hood trauma that went un-treated for decades and made worse by me being very introverted.  I think I avoid doing things that I can do and which would benefit myself, like presently avoiding getting a plumber, as I need to every year or two, to clear the street-tree roots from the sewer.  Anyhow, reading your concise digest of the pertinent research provides me in a page what many hours of research might give me, once I had worked out how to filter the relevant from all the other studies that get reported, with or without peer-review.  No wonder Hospital and Medical Departments do not regularly try to impart this sort of information, but I wonder how other people cope.  Oh!  I just remembered, most people are more optimistic than I am.  I think it is a sort of skewed, normal distribution, with people being born optimistic with most people tending towards optimism with the mean far above the mode, and increasing levels of pessimism with no actual upper limit.  I exist in a stratified region in this and many other demographic distributions.  Excuse me for telling you all this, but you can understand me and perhaps will find it interesting. 

All I wanted to do was thank you for your letter.  When the first of the post-operative PSA results came in, I had an appointment on the Friday with Dr Langdon before my scheduled appointment on the following Tuesday with Mr Hanegbi.  The result was tiny.  Point zero Zero three, if I remember correctly or three thousandths of one percent, if my arithmetic is correct.  Dr Langdon seemed very pleased with this infinitesimally tiny result and congratulated me on the success of the operation, which confirmed Mr Hanegbi’s post-operative comment that he had removed more tissue than the minimal and was sure everything had been cleaned.  I felt wonderful, especially as I had been having great success with the Counselling from the other, chronic problem.  I cannot tell you how excellent I felt.  Suddenly I noticed that all sorts of other things, both physical and psycho-social were cleared up.  Then on Tuesday, Mr Hanegby gave me the expert opinion: the result was small but was not zero.  Had I not read in the literature to hope for zero?  Yes I had.  I understand the mathematical difference between something that approaches zero and zero, and that is the greatest ontological difference two entities, states of being or members of a set can have.  Someone later told me that the degree of accuracy of these tests is improving rapidly.  The test a while back might have show zero, but that would have been a false (positive or negative, I am dyslexic and confuse them?) I forget who told me, not yourself, I think, but it does not matter.  The dramatic, earth shattering news was that I was not free and needed more treatment. 

Why does all this treatment take so long to start?  Why wasn’t I given or offered the hormones when I was first diagnosed with even a tiny amount of Cancer?  Then I was told to wait as few men have it progress in their lifetimes.  Why wasn’t I it started as soon as the need for the operation was diagnosed, for the treatments to run together.  There were three weeks between the ghastly, fatal biopsy and the operation itself.  Three weeks of turning my mind off and not thinking about anything except the preparation exercises and work and other important duties.  I did go to the theatre as a kind of last treat, just in case, and luckily they were two of the best and amongst the few memorable theatrical experiences.  Then I waited another three months for another PSA test, which would have been zero in two circumstances: I had been on the hormone androgen deprivation which I was not, or the operation had removed every trace of the cancerous prostate cells. My PSA had risen three-fold, as I recall and I was referred to you.

You are aware of the next blow to my self-esteem when I gained the knowledge that it might have been possible to avoid the operation, and its side-effects, and go straight to the treatment you were offering.  I still do have concerns about that choice having been made for me.  I accept that it may have been the best choice in the circumstances.  I am still not sure why a man such as myself is not put immediately onto the androgen deprivation.  It would seem that the cancer is put on hold for the duration and may be wiped out.  For those men who come off the treatment, surely an operation is then still possible.

On Friday, I am attending your clinic for the scan in preparation for the Ray Treatment (I don’t want to think about it)  but I do not anticipate seeing you, which is why I am writing this letter.   Thank you for reading it if you have gone this far.  If it did nothing more but amuse you with my pretentions of cleverness, then I am still happy, because writing it has given me a chance to work through the delight and existential optimism your mail-delayed letter has given me.  It has tunnelled through my layers of pessimistic introversion to give me hope for the future.  On that point I should add that death in itself holds no fears for me as to me it seem obvious that beyond each end of our temporal existence the same non-existence exists, if “zero” can be said to actually have real, ontological existence, apart from a point on a made-up, heuristic number line.  However, I do enjoy being alive and have today resubscribed to the MTC, surely the act of someone who anticipates survival.  Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Norman F Pollack                                                                   Copy: Mr Hanegbi, Dr Langdon