Lockdown Diary - Monday 15th June 2020

I awoke in the midst of a crazy dream, not exactly a nightmare but faintly disorienting.  I was in Germany, staying at a hotel there. I don't remember what preceded this but it was time to return home, friends were going to take me to the airport but I had to pick up bags and checkout quickly as we had to leave in 5 minutes. When I went to return to my room, I had great difficulty getting there as all the lifts and escalators had been changed, both in terms of direction but also in terms of the floors they reached. By some circuitous and perilous route I got to my room, or rather where my room had been, only now it was a dining room. People eating, drinking, laughing. I was trying to find someone who could explain what had happened and, more to the point, where my stuff was. That's when I woke up. Strange.

The rest of the morning passed without incident: breakfast, music summary written, yoga, then clearing up what remained from breakfast and last night's dinner.

Had to post a letter and decided to go and give the car a bit of exercise by driving down the dual carriageway to the roundabout at the end and back again.  First time the car's been up to 70 (or thereabouts 😉) since the end of March, I imagine?

Tomorrow is Bloomsday, the worldwide celebration of James Joyce's novel 'Ulysses', which all takes place on the 16th June 1904. The celebrations centre on Dublin, naturally, but this year owing to Coronavirus, much of the goings on are going to be broadcast to the 'net.  I always read the novel on the day, or at least parts of it, at the time of day the action happens, in celebration of the joy of it.  I shall also wear my Bloomsday t-shirt and join in with some of the online activities.  I have decided this year I am going to start re-reading 'Ulysses' a little at a time, every day, hopefully finishing it before the end of the year.  The only difficulty is choosing which version to read - there are 5 main versions (if we exclude the 'Little Review' version) which have varying pros and cons. I need to decide before the end of tomorrow.

After lunch, a joint effort between me and sons #2 and #3, I thought it was time to catch up on my 'Intro to Psychedelics' course: lesson 4 today is titled 'What's it like to trip on a psychedelic?', which is immensely fascinating.  Disappointingly, the presenter opened by saying, of course he's never taken psychedelics, so everything would be second-hand.  He winked at the end of the sentence and I was trying to tell if that was an involuntary tic or something else. Of course, psychedelics are illegal in the UK, currently, so all the recent evidence comes from the controlled clinical research that is being done at the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College.  There are, of course, famous written examples that he referred to such as: Albert Hoffman's 'LSD: My Problem Child'; most famously, Aldous Huxley's 'The Doors of Perception' (which I read many years ago); and most recently, Michael Pollan's 'How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics'. I wonder if, given the opportunity to take different doses of psychedelics under controlled and safe conditions, one might be tempted to explore? Aldous Huxley's wife Laura administered two doses of LSD when he was on his death bed dying of laryngeal cancer. Coincidentally he died on the same day as C.S. Lewis and also John F Kennedy (22nd November 1963). 

As usual, before I know where I am, I'm making dinner with son #3.  During / after dinner we watched another episode of 'Altered Carbon', another episode in which the story arc is only marginally progressed.  It seemed to be an excuse from rather unpleasant violence and torture, the latter being something I really object to seeing, so I shut my eyes through some of it.  Implying it is more than enough, there is no need to spend 1/3 or more of the programme on it. But that's me.

I'm not sure if this is significant but I'd already decided today's track yesterday, as I'd been listening to the Baby Fox album 'A Normal Family' from 1996 when putting together a playlist.  The best track off the album, which is what I planned to select for today's post, is called 'In Your Dreams'. In light of the start to my day, it is the perfect, most fitting, choice.

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