Dementia Philosophy Post

Epicurus or Zeno?

I was never interested at all in Biology or Chemistry, but I loved Physics. When I did Julius Caesar for O-Level English Literature I looked into Brutus and Cassius's philosophers of choice: Zeno the stoic for Brutus and Epicurus for Cassius.

In short, stoicism is living a life of virtue accordance with nature, where calm reasoning supersedes emotion.

Epicureanism is about living life to its pleasure without resort to Hedonism. It was a version of  Zen in its own way - you wanted peace, pleasure in small things and no excess in materialism or emotion.

Sound quite similar, but they became opposites.

To me reading up on these guys was a revelation, and much more interesting than the text was then to a 15 year old boy who liked looking out of the window.

Physics and philosophy - the subjects of dreamers. Now that would have been a curriculum I could have got behind.

In the end art and history for A-Levels.

When I retrained I chose stonemasonry but in retrospect I should have been a field archeologist.

Hindsite is a bastard.

Morning Walks

I love walking Tomos. He's such a happy dog. He wants to meet everyone and say hello. 

Today we stopped by the moat and saw the cygnets who are now growing up and are half the size of their parents but still with the grey plumage.

We also saw tiny baby moorhens! 

I love their feet too.

They were the size of a goose egg each, with black fluff and bright red beaks. There must have been 8 of them. They were so tiny they would alternate between paddling and then walking on the pondweed. Like Rallycross, but for wildfowl.

Tomos is always looking to run and play with other dogs. Some dog owners are very nervous, and unsurprisingly their dogs become nervous wrecks too. Dogs are social animals and the majority of the dogs we let off in the field by the moat and they run and play bitey-face for as long as they can. Tomos being of great working stock can go on all day.

Elmer Tomos

I hate getting out of bed but I really enjoy walking Tomos and meeting the other dog walkers. Yin and Yang, eh? 

Or to put it another way, bloody 'dualistic world shit', to quote the great thinkers Derek and Clive.

Gaming Bit

Back playing Baldur's Gate 3 on the computer.

Rosie is my little halfling (Hobbit) bard. She's leading the merry band of misfits through the Sword Coast and into the Underdark. She's 3 foot high with red hair, facial tattoos and piercings. She's already slept with 2 of her party. I think she'll have all of them by the end of this adventure. 

It's good fun running through this again. It beats endlessly pouring over my D&D adventure book waiting for the information to absorb into my brain. 

There are so many variables involved in this game - almost impossible to have the exact same experience twice.

You see I can feel my interest in tabletop D&D waining. I've had this before a few years ago and then it came back with a vengeance, so hopefully that will be the case now.

Maybe I'm no longer able to make new memories, which is why when Dungeon Mastering older adventures I've run before it's easier. I'm hoping that this adventure just happens to be an anomaly and that I'll be back in the thick of things, living and breathing the adventure we're playing at any one time and able to run it like I used to, acting out the characters, doing their voices and describing the story in rich detail with all the atmosphere intended.

If not then there's nothing I can do anyway, and I'll have to move on and find something else. I still enjoy playing, which is much easier to do. 

That's where the stoicism comes in.

Hives

This is a recent thing. I thought they were bedbugs or cat fleas initially, but they're either an allergy or a response to stress. 

Being on Sertraline I'm never that conscious of being stressed, but J and I are going through the divorce proceedings and she's been really good with me. It will all work out for the best. However, the process is not unstressful.

The hives may be an allergic reaction to soft fruit. I'm eating a lot of strawberries at the moment.

In fact, the timing is so apt me being here for my parents as both can't move very far and rely on me to do the shopping, ferry them to and from medical establishments and do other stuff for them. 

Is this part of a cosmic plan? Is everything settling in place as part of the grand narrative?

Bollocks it is.

Anyway, my brain hurts now.