Dream

Despite the fact that I was able to catch up on some sleep this morning, I still couldn't help but yawn in one of my classes just this afternoon. And it wasn't really because Stefanov was lecturing on energy methods and boundary value problems for the wave equation. A lot of catching up still needs to be done, apparently.

I looked out the window and noticed the window drape and its color (which I can't remember anymore). I remember the color in my mind, but I can't put a name to it. And I thought how amazing, incredible, and scary it is that not all objects can be verbalized (at least that's what I think). It has to be said, however, that I somehow doubt this statement's veracity since the amount you can verbalize is, for a large part, a function of your vocabulary. And I guess, for every object/thing/concept for which there is as yet no existing word (in the current generally accepted lexicon), you could always just make up a new one. This thought sent me back to philosophy classes of some ten years ago, how I wasn't able to appreciate them the way I do now. Was it Heidegger or Marcel? Or somebody else who talked about language and communicating to "the" other? What if we are using words, which we think hold the same meaning for all of us, when in fact, they don't? How have we thus managed as a people to be where we are now? And if we actually did manage to use words to encapsulate precisely the same meanings in everyone's minds, how did we actually do it?

And that's when this veil of haze clouded my thoughts, in the middle of Stefanov's proof that total energy is preserved. Who am I inside this physical shell that is my body? Straight out of old Twilight Zone episodes (the black and white ones are better), what if everything else other than this consciousness, is a fantasy? Everything else is just something concocted by this very same consciousness. And in a sense, everything outside the self, thus, is not real? That I am my own universe. Consequently, what is real?

I am living in this universe of one possibility - are there other universes of possibilities too? If yes, why am I (and by that, I mean my consciousness) here? Admitting with guilt the elation associated with being here in the US, I asked, why am I here, at this point in this physical plane? I remember, like it was all a dream, growing up in this house of stone far away, going to school and one day sleeping till my first grade teacher woke me up because the person fetching me was already looking for me. I remember my parents, brothers, unborn sister, the dog named after Rubeus Hagrid, and the man with Down Syndrome who tended the store where I used to buy Flat Tops. He was a highly unlikeable chap, till one day in high school I realized he wasn't so bad after all. I made sure to buy some Flat Tops from him last summer.

Are they real? Would the world have gone on if they didn't exist? Why are my parents who they are? Why did we actually turn out to be bipeds in our particular evolutionary history? Is everything just a random conglomeration of... something, anything? What will happen to us in the end, and what is "the" end?

And just because it feels cathartic, albeit poser-like to say it, I have to ask too: what the fuck is this all about?

All these brought to mind this "weird" experience I had when I was young. I regret the fact that at that age (I was probably 4 or 5), I didn't have the capacity to remember all the facts yet (was it a vivid dream), and articulate what kind of experience it was - spiritual, supernatural? It was late afternoon to evening, and I was standing in the gap between our house and my friend/neighbor Andrew's house. I looked up at the sky, and saw the moon, and stars, moving before me, aligning in a pattern which screamed evil in my mind's eye. And I felt dizzy, fearing what it meant, or probably fearing the fact that I didn't know what it meant. I wobbled on my way home.

I could have been sleepwalking and dreaming at the same time. Will I ever know what that was about? Will we ever find out the answers to some of our questions? If there are definite answers, why are they hidden from us? Who took the PhP 200,000 that was in my care almost 6 years ago? Who planned the assassination of Ninoy Aquino? How did the universe start? Will I have kids, and in that case, how will I be able to find in me the capacity to love them like they are the only things that are real in this world? Will they then be proof to me, that yes, things in this world are real after all?

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Tell me all your thoughts on God
Coz I'd really like to meet Her
And ask Her why we're who we are

-Counting Blue Cars, Dishwalla-