Aurora borealis in the Sub-arctic part I: From our backyard (from mid-August)

Of course, as a physicist, the first thing I looked forward to in the North, as soon as the night skies were dark enough was the Aurora borealis. Just because I'm pretty ill all the time does not mean I have lost the ability to feel wonder and joy looking into the skies. It's like a balm for my ailing, frail, corporeal body.

These photos were taken in the backyard sometime in August, about 2am. Because of the urban light pollution, I had to point the camera towards the southern horizon (when usually Northern Lights are supposed to be in the Northern Horizon). This far North, it's practically overhead and all over, really.

15 seconds exposure

30 seconds exposure

15 seconds exposure

Just thought the moon behind the clouds looked heartbreakingly beautiful that night. Normal exposure (1/100 s)

Same moon behind clouds, but with 10 seconds exposure. That is how light it was at night when I took the aurora photos.

I spent about 3 hours in the cold and dark for these photos, and ended up with bronchitis for the next 2 weeks. LOL. Well worth it, though. Need to wear thicker parka for nighttime work next time. Lesson learnt the hard way, but SO WORTH IT!

What is Yellowknife like?

Weird. Extremely weird. Beautiful, but extremely weird.

For a tropical monkey who is used to the sun traversing the skies, East to West, the passage of the summer sun of Yellowknife is enough to make the inner tropical monkey in me gibber in fear.

That high up North (technically we're in the sub-arctic. Taiga area) the sun actually makes a horseshoe around the sky, and juuust barely dips below the horizon around midnight. But it remains light. That you can actually sit outside, and read a book!

These photos were taken on the Longest Day of the Year at midnight.

And trying to find your Cardinal Directions are somewhat impossible; for one thing, you cannot depend on the position of the sun (horseshoe route, remember?) and the fact that being that far North means the magnetic field lines are not really aligned North (as in True North), but also dips into the Earth. This Magnetic Inclination, in addition to the Declination drives all my magnetic compasses absolutely batshit crazy. It would randomly change directions, even when I am holding it still.

The GPS in our car also have a +/- 20 meters error on the display screen due to the position of the satellites in the horizon.

However, on that longest day, we went fishing. It was too hot to stay in the apartment. I caught my first ever fish. Just a Pike but it put up a hell of a fight, and I had a lot of fun landing it. Tastes fantastic, barbecued.

Aaaand I'm back!

Sort of.

Apologies to my readers for the year long silence in the blogosphere. Here's a quick update of what has been happening in my life (Haa! As if you're interested, really! -- Or maybe you are?).

In November 2012, I had to quit my environmental laboratory job due to poor health. Little did I know that this "poor health" flare up is likely to be a permanent thing. Before some people chip in and say "Suck it up, Buttercup!" let me give you a brief overview -- I was feeling SHITTY literally and metaphorically. Yup, my gastrointestinal symptoms just wouldn't go away -- so it was a pretty foecal situation to be in (i.e. I cannot wander far from a functioning bathroom, or at least have a shovel handy when outdoors).

Along with this colicky tummy, comes the incessant fatigue, the fluey all body pain, vomiting, nausea ... the whole works. And weird weird rashes that gets mega-infected, and does not respond to antibiotics.

From a person who is a certified workaholic (I used to clock 40 to 80 hours a week back in the UK, and up to when I quite from my job in Calgary, I clocked a respectable 40 hours a week) to needing maybe 10-14 hours sleep a day, and constant rest, it was (and still is) very very depressing.

In May this year, we (my other 2/3, myself and my cat) uprooted from Calgary to Yellowknife. My other 2/3 had a job offer that he couldn't refuse. Where I got progressively sicker, probably from the stress of the move, and the constant worry of "why can't my doctors fix me?" and wondering if I'll ever get back to my hobbies of tanning deer hides, hunting and identifying wild fungus, photography, incessant babbling on the blog, etc etc, ad infinitum.

In July (by this time I was shitting blood, and intermittently going into shock), finally a doctor decided to test me for parasites, coeliac disease, Crohn's Disease, colon cancer -- and lo and Behold, I have a massive C difficile infection and on my way to develop Toxic Megacolon. Well and truly emergency. No shit, Sherlock!

Now, 4 months later, several emergency admissions, powerful antibiotics, various scans, I am still no closer to what I can normally identify as "normal health for someone with connective tissue disorder". And doctors are still not too sure what is wrong. The C difficile is gone (so far), but my immune system is now attacking me. More doctor trips and feeling like a hot potato being passed from one clueless Medicine Man to another.

So there, I hope this sort of explains why I've disappeared from my page for so long.

I'm still hanging on, though. Friday just past, 25th October, marked my one year anniversary of being really really deathly sick. I've kinda come to terms to my different level of abilities, for now. But for now, I've turned to literature and poetry as means to "vent out".



 
Memento Mori**
===========

The fallen leaves have done their tasks
In summer sun they did all bask
To ground they fall amongst dead grass
Broken down, ground, turned to dust

The trees they kept fed and hale
in turbulent winds, and falling hail
It makes me easy to believe
I will fall one day, like autumn leaves.



** Memento Mori is Latin for "Remember, for one day you will die"

Fever Dreams part one

One thing that really amazes and amuses me is the fact that the human brain has a built in entertainment centre, and more often than not it is triggered when one is *in between states*, i.e. in the act of dozing, day dreaming or when one is having fever.

While I loathe getting ill, the eternal optimist in me sometimes go:


"Oh goody, I wonder what fever dreams my addled brain will give me when I nap this time?"


Last week after a high bout of 37.7 deg C (that's about 99.9 F for non metric friends) I had my first of many Sinusitis induced fever dream.

1) Gollum Dreams

Imagine Gollum/Smeagol, dressed in a Greecian Chiton, in the battlefield of Troy. You can hear the clashes and screams of the warriors in the background; horses pulling chariots, and just loud thunderous sounds of battle, of life and of death. Then it fades slowly as Gollum climbs an overturned chariot, the wheel still spinning brokenly in it's axle.

Everyone stops (including me). Turns to Gollum and listened, as the former hobbit started declaiming Homer's Illiad to the listening crowds.

Now, if you've read Tolkien's and Homer's works, imagine the opening verses being recited in that scratchy, almost maniacal, sneeeeeeky Gollum-like voice and cadence:

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. . . ."

And don't forget to intersperse the stanzas with generous smatterings of "Gollum, Gollum" and the odd "My preciiiouuussses" so it sounded more like:

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus *Gollum*Gollum*
and its devastation, *My PRECIIIOUSSSS* which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,

hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades *sneeky* strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting *yesssssss gollum*

of dogses, of all birdses, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict *my preciouss*

Atreus’ son the lord of men *The SNEEEK! YES, the SNEEEEEEK* and brilliant Achilleus. . . ."

and carry on applying the Gollumisation onto the rest of the Epic verses. It was very amusing. I bet psychoanalysts everywhere would have a field day trying to decode that LOL.


I will try to sketch what it looked like in my fever dream today. But I thought I'd share my LSD-like (I've never tried LSD, I'm just assuming it would be as weird as fever dreams) experience

T'is the season to be sneezy and feeling shitty, and have unusual fever dreams.

Normally I don't indulge in whingeing. To me it just makes me more depressed, so instead I very much rather make fun of my illnesses and pain, and (mentally) de-personalise the failings of my physical body and focus on surviving long enough to become a Cyborg!

And go to Mars! Or even to the nearest Exo-Solar planet in a itty bitty exploration probe. And mess with the Extra-terrestrials. I found this jpeg floating about in Facebook which summarises the Cosmic Joker in me:







I mean, why not? To me, a sense of ironical humour is a telling sign of intelligence.

Back to being a Cyborg, why do I want to be a Cyborg? Simply put, my physical body is failing much much faster than I'd like it to be. Too many soft tissue damages, fractures, aches, pains, infections. The only way I can ignore the Doom of Disability is to make sure I don't rely on the (failing) natural, biological, physical attributes that I have and Imagine a world where I can just upload my personality, memories and humour into a Machine. And leave this world and look for newer ones.

Escapism to the N-th degree. Do you blame me? Then you should blame Stephen Hawking as well. He started it.

The physicist in me is thrilled by his work. The Biologist in me is having paroxysms of philosophical pain, trying to ingest his words. The very ill Ehlers Danlos sufferer in me admires his tenacity. How not? What better way is there in the whole wide world, to ignore pain, disability and incoming death, than to formulate alternate realities? In that way Hawking is my J. M. Barrie; and Multiverse is my Neverland.

In an alternative universe, I am perfectly healthy. In an alternate universe, I do not suffer from infections after infections. In an alternate universe, I am perfectly happy zooming around the universe, making Crop Circles and confounding the other specie!

Yes, that is me. Thank you, Mr Hawking, for giving flesh to my alternate reality, and coming up with the mathematics to prove it!

Gotta Go. I need to make some Crop Circles somewhere....

Summer's coming to an end

Apologies for the very long silence. I've started a new job in June that takes up a lot of my time. Yes it's nice to be able to pay your bills and occasionally splurge on a nice meal, but one's main interests does have to take a back seat until such time when my work hours are less Demonic in nature.