I just found the lifeboat to the mother ship ...

[johnofgwent]

And if the out of body experience you get with Covid Fever isn't bad enough, by god you should see how it feels when you have a stroke.


You're minding your own business when half your head just empties like it's poured your brain away down the sink.


The wierdest part was the silence - the tinnitus stopped ....

[papasmurf]

It's not the first time a stressful medical issue has invoked whatever this is, and that pictures a really good one to convey it.

There is some medication I won't take if I am driving/riding. (It really should have a health warning write large on the packaging.)  I only made the mistake once.  It was 2 and 1/2 hours before the road returned to the right width.

[johnofgwent]

It wasn't piss take at all, I had some very strange things happen visually when I had heatstroke a long time ago.

I understood from the off.


It's not the first time a stressful medical issue has invoked whatever this is, and that pictures a really good one to convey it.


I think the first time I had this was after a chance insect sting in the neck right next to one of the sensors vital to keeping you "normal" in heat or salt stress. And on that day it's a funny thing but the sky and streets looked a bit like they do in that ..


Fortunately I'm starting to feel a load more in control.

[papasmurf]

I did too. I didn't take it as a piss take at all.

It wasn't piss take at all, I had some very strange things happen visually when I had heatstroke a long time ago.

[johnofgwent]

I thought the Scream apt for John's mood.

I did too. I didn't take it as a piss take at all. If anything it's like I'm coming out of a slightly unsettling acid trip so it's actually quite a good one.


This morning I've been having a chat with a mate whose slightly behind me in the cycle and slightly worse but not much, and a fellow biochemist.


My fellow Covid survivor reports this sense of disconnect as well.


My fellow biochemist reminds me as oxygen levels drop in the blood co2 levels climb, blood acidity increases and this ramps a natural survival trigger in the primitive brain.


It really may be that the monkey brain is jumping up and down and trying to get my attention !!


And cheers, guys !!

[Barry]

I for one, found it an interesting read,
There's examples of derealisation, delirium and if I was a psychologist I might know some more terms. JoG certainly has his own way of getting through the day, or in this case, the night!

Edited a typo

[T00ts]

OK look its half four in the scary ass morning of the second day of the scary ass part of the year when the earth loses her bearings ever so slightly as she banks a hard left round the sun and ever so slightly f**ks up as she does it, and that makes this the perfect time to be writing the sort of prose that starts "i have seen the face of god, and she is a terror both in beauty and awe" usually penned by some half mad poet driven mad by the receding and rapidly failing memories that they will shortly lose of an all too fleeting ecstasy they know they had and they also know they can never have again...........

And if this is starting to sound like the ravings of the sobering up magic mushroom tripper who's trying to get down what he just felt lt before he loses it forever, and if it sounds like the mad ravings of a mind just about holding it together after a fever induced trip out of this world and into another .... well, that's because that's just what it is.

So I'm lying there, on my back, stark bollock naked (ok ok I know too much information)

So I'm lying there, a bath of sweat, COVID fighting to the death with The Rebel Soloship John of Gwent throwing everything it can find to chuck at the invading shit and the nanobots are mano a mano in the corridors and taking no f**king prisoners because this bastard doesn't take f**king prisoners and the only way to beat this invading sonofabitch is a f**king claymore up the arse and a spacing of every last stinking one of them ...

And i start to notice some scary, scary shit.  I'm not the only one in here. Or rather, I'm here, but i'm a battle bridge in something bigger, and the battle bridge sees almost what the mother ship does, but not all, and the battle bridge can do most of what the mother ship can, but not all, and here's the terrible thing, the best of me, the most capable, the bits that have the power of imagination, the bits that make me the genius i am are not in me, they're in this mother ship I'm in......

OK, calm down.


You all know, you've all felt the moment the first time with an intensity that overpowers, that sears itself into the mind, the experience that almost immediately starts to ebb and as it does you are left empty and drained at the loss not because of the loss, but because you know, deep inside, even though you're not remotely in a state to try to find out, you KNOW whatever you just did to feel that way, whatever it was, it does not matter how hard you chase that dragon, how much effort, how much material you expend, you'll never feel it that intensively ever, ever again, and you know it already...


well that's what im trying to explain here.


Now I've known for years I have a place in me from which the control flows and to which the senses come. I have a place to which i can send my mind when i need full emergency override of the master life support and weapon systems. I use it when i do something stupid like grab the hot end of a soldering iron. I fly there and command emergency fluid flood, sensor system shutdown and divert ALL available capillary flow to heat transfer. I see myself doing it, issuing the orders mentally like Clint Eastwood's "you must think in Russian" Firefox pilot. In my minds eye i see it, and it is done, and the bloke standing next to me is like there in a funny dream world mouthing words but i can't hear him ... because the words are silent in my little soundless universe.


But what he's saying is John what the f**k are you doing and how the f**k are you doing that you just  grabbed something so f**king hot you shouldn't have any skin left and all around where you grabbed that your skin is pulsing and there's not a scratch on you ...


And then you're back in the room and actually your hand hurts like hell but there's no damage even if your mate holds the hand under the component board inspection microscope magnifier except perhaps the tiniest bits of blackened powder where the odd bit of skin right where you first touched the hot soldering iron got boiled to char in the first few dozen milliseconds ...


So yeah, I've always had this place, and the knowledge of how to fire it up and use it. But on the what is it two, three, four ? I've lost count now... number of times I've died and been brought back I never had the time to open the door and get in and power up the systems.


So back we come then. For the first few days of this stinking pox i just lay in bed, fevered, unable to eat at all and barely able do drink, getting weaker and weaker, more and more dehydrated, but then I became aware I wasn't running 'me' from 'me'. I was somewhere else, inside that emergency control area I had accessed in the past when I so badly needed it. And now I had to remember to breathe in and out, because well if you don't' you don't keep breathing. as its not an easy thing to hand control back to the autopilot because it does not always take it,


And I'm moving around, but it's not me moving, I'm inside a bigger me doing the moving. And when I'm drinking it's like it's me holding the glass and doing the drinking but something else is taking it on board. But weirdest, weirdest of al its like I'm seeing things through a heads up display, most of which is just a viewscreen, but it's as if there could be more, and there's this word READY at the bottom of the screen, visible but not operative, and it's as if I know i have to think something to activate that, and from time to time think i ought to, but in my mind I don't know what to do, what command to think. almost "what phone app to launch" to power that up.


But the worst, worst bit is I know that while i stay where I am I can never be the best I can be ever again. I know that the mental capacity of whatever I am inside is not powerful enough to set in play the intricate patterns, the predictions, the simulations I use to handle my world. People I work with tell me i work by seeing in my mind's eye what it is I want to do, building it up, designing in interactions as if this area in my mind were some sort of game board, then flying over, viewing, running a simulation at a time pace i choose, backwards and forwards, and then when I am happy with what i can picture, i package it up, come back to reality, and write up or code up what it is I want to do.


Now this is almost like a hypnotic trance. I can put myself into and out of those at will these days, and I go away with a problem and stare into space often for hours and  come back with exactly what to do and how to do it. And yes it scared my boss stupid because he thought I was in a diabetic coma  but when he saw how fast i fixed the problem that had been bugging the system when I came back he and i came to the understanding he had no bloody idea how i did it but it obviously works so carry on ....


I can load that "dream board" with scenarios and step them too, it's how i wake in a cold sweat at 3am with the answer to the bug that's bothered me all week.


But this is something only the full size me can do. Only the full size me seems to have the mental capacity to run that simulator, the lifeboat, or battle bridge, or whatever, does not have it.


and that was the really, really weird thing. time after time after time i would be lying there in bed in a fevered state and thinking it was time to find the way to activate that READY switch, but every time my mind immediately said no, if i did that I'd lose the simulation system of the bigger me, forever, and i came out of whatever mental state i was in, back to an outer one, and always now thirsty ...


Well there you are. The insane rantings of a mad mind driven beyond reason by being at the point of death through plague, or the enlightened understandings of a mind opened beyond the point man was meant to open it.


what have i found ? The inner me ? My astral Travel Capsule ? or the path into summer ? Who knows. ? OK then, from the main bridge, I'm back to work i have a pain in the bum SQL issue to fix.

It would be easy to dismiss this as fevered ranting but actually I almost understand every word. There is a bigger self which can control pretty much everything if we can access it. Most of us don't recognise it and rarely consciously use it. I have had occasions when I definitely go somewhere else and first realised it as a young dancer. I thought at the time that I was a bit crazy, then m any years later I heard an interview with Bjorn Borg where he described the same thing and from then I realised I was not alone. I can now summon it as required and most recently as paramedics arrived that was where I had gone. They thought I was on the way out and were a bit stunned when I walked to the ambulance.

We are all much greater than we perhaps believe. The Spirit that is at our core will never die.

[papasmurf]

That was pretty good, pay no mind to smurf.

I thought the Scream apt for John's mood.

[Borg Refinery]

That was pretty good, pay no mind to smurf.

[papasmurf]

[johnofgwent]

OK look its half four in the scary ass morning of the second day of the scary ass part of the year when the earth loses her bearings ever so slightly as she banks a hard left round the sun and ever so slightly f**ks up as she does it, and that makes this the perfect time to be writing the sort of prose that starts "i have seen the face of god, and she is a terror both in beauty and awe" usually penned by some half mad poet driven mad by the receding and rapidly failing memories that they will shortly lose of an all too fleeting ecstasy they know they had and they also know they can never have again...........

And if this is starting to sound like the ravings of the sobering up magic mushroom tripper who's trying to get down what he just felt lt before he loses it forever, and if it sounds like the mad ravings of a mind just about holding it together after a fever induced trip out of this world and into another .... well, that's because that's just what it is.

So I'm lying there, on my back, stark bollock naked (ok ok I know too much information)

So I'm lying there, a bath of sweat, COVID fighting to the death with The Rebel Soloship John of Gwent throwing everything it can find to chuck at the invading shit and the nanobots are mano a mano in the corridors and taking no f**king prisoners because this bastard doesn't take f**king prisoners and the only way to beat this invading sonofabitch is a f**king claymore up the arse and a spacing of every last stinking one of them ...

And i start to notice some scary, scary shit.  I'm not the only one in here. Or rather, I'm here, but i'm a battle bridge in something bigger, and the battle bridge sees almost what the mother ship does, but not all, and the battle bridge can do most of what the mother ship can, but not all, and here's the terrible thing, the best of me, the most capable, the bits that have the power of imagination, the bits that make me the genius i am are not in me, they're in this mother ship I'm in......

OK, calm down.


You all know, you've all felt the moment the first time with an intensity that overpowers, that sears itself into the mind, the experience that almost immediately starts to ebb and as it does you are left empty and drained at the loss not because of the loss, but because you know, deep inside, even though you're not remotely in a state to try to find out, you KNOW whatever you just did to feel that way, whatever it was, it does not matter how hard you chase that dragon, how much effort, how much material you expend, you'll never feel it that intensively ever, ever again, and you know it already...


well that's what im trying to explain here.


Now I've known for years I have a place in me from which the control flows and to which the senses come. I have a place to which i can send my mind when i need full emergency override of the master life support and weapon systems. I use it when i do something stupid like grab the hot end of a soldering iron. I fly there and command emergency fluid flood, sensor system shutdown and divert ALL available capillary flow to heat transfer. I see myself doing it, issuing the orders mentally like Clint Eastwood's "you must think in Russian" Firefox pilot. In my minds eye i see it, and it is done, and the bloke standing next to me is like there in a funny dream world mouthing words but i cant hear him ... because the words are silent in my little soundless universe.


But what he's saying is John what the F@@@ are you doing and how the F@@@ are you doing that you just  grabbed something so fucking hot you shouldn't have any skin left and all around where you grabbed that your skin is pulsing and there's not a scratch on you ...


And then you're back in the room and actually your hand hurts like hell but there's no damage even if your mate holds the hand under the component board inspection microscope magnifier except perhaps the tiniest bits of blackened powder where the odd bit of skin right where you first touched the hot soldering iron got boiled to char in the first few dozen milliseconds ...


So yeah, I've always had this place, and the knowledge of how to fire it up and use it. But on the what is it two, three, four ? I've lost count now... number of times I've died and been brought back I never had the time to open the door and get in and power up the systems.


So back we come then. For the first few days of this stinking pox i just lay in bed, fevered, unable to eat at all and barely able do drink, getting weaker and weaker, more and more dehydrated, but then I became aware I wasn't running 'me' from 'me'. I was somewhere else, inside that emergency control area I had accessed in the past when I so badly needed it. And now I had to remember to breathe in and out, because well if you don't' you don't keep breathing. as its not an easy thing to hand control back to the autopilot because it does not always take it,


And I'm moving around, but it's not me moving, I'm inside a bigger me doing the moving. And when I'm drinking it's like it's me holding the glass and doing the drinking but something else is taking it on board. But weirdest, weirdest of al its like I'm seeing things through a heads up display, most of which is just a viewscreen, but it's as if there could be more, and there's this word READY at the bottom of the screen, visible but not operative, and it's as if I know i have to think something to activate that, and from time to time think i ought to, but in my mind I don't know what to do, what command to think. almost "what phone app to launch" to power that up.


But the worst, worst bit is I know that while i stay where I am I can never be the best I can be ever again. I know that the mental capacity of whatever I am inside is not powerful enough to set in play the intricate patterns, the predictions, the simulations I use to handle my world. People I work with tell me i work by seeing in my mind's eye what it is I want to do, building it up, designing in interactions as if this area in my mind were some sort of game board, then flying over, viewing, running a simulation at a time pace i choose, backwards and forwards, and then when I am happy with what i can picture, i package it up, come back to reality, and write up or code up what it is I want to do.


Now this is almost like a hypnotic trance. I can put myself into and out of those at will these days, and I go away with a problem and stare into space often for hours and  come back with exactly what to do and how to do it. And yes it scared my boss stupid because he thought I was in a diabetic coma  but when he saw how fast i fixed the problem that had been bugging the system when I came back he and i came to the understanding he had no bloody idea how i did it but it obviously works so carry on ....


I can load that "dream board" with scenarios and step them too, it's how i wake in a cold sweat at 3am with the answer to the bug that's bothered me all week.


But this is something only the full size me can do. Only the full size me seems to have the mental capacity to run that simulator, the lifeboat, or battle bridge, or whatever, does not have it.


and that was the really, really weird thing. time after time after time i would be lying there in bed in a fevered state and thinking it was time to find the way to activate that READY switch, but every time my mind immediately said no, if i did that I'd lose the simulation system of the bigger me, forever, and i came out of whatever mental state i was in, back to an outer one, and always now thirsty ...


Well there you are. The insane rantings of a mad mind driven beyond reason by being at the point of death through plague, or the enlightened understandings of a mind opened beyond the point man was meant to open it.


what have i found ? The inner me ? My astral Travel Capsule ? or the path into summer ? Who knows. ? OK then, from the main bridge, I'm back to work i have a pain in the bum SQL issue to fix.