One of my favourite parts of Waking Life is Timothy "speed" Levitch's monologue...
On this bridge, Lorca warns, "Life is not a dream…beware…and beware…and beware…" And so many think because then happened, now isn't. But didn't I mention that the ongoing WOW is happening right now? We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves co-authoring a gigantic Dostoyevsky novel starring clowns. This entire thing we're involved with called the world is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be.
Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each other's presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into the direct experiences.
Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as a exam for our vitality...
Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a thousand stories. Giocamettie was once run down by a car and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration as he realized that at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived.
But the paradoxes bug me...and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.
Before you drift off...don't forget, which is to say remember, because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting: Lorca in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream: THAT is self-awareness.
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