Yesterday Again

Perhaps, the closest we might come to that perfect historical experience is in our dreams. But dreams are particular to the individual and based on the universe as the way you think it is, not on truly how it is. Based on the limitations of human perceptions makes it sound pathetic. 

Let’s say that you have a dream about you and your mother talking in a small, dark spooky room. She tells you many things, some disturbing things, some joyful things, all which involve you in this or that situation, with this or that person, in sometime in your life. Later you meet all those people discussed at a larger reception. You, standing there in your underwear of course, begin talking to everyone that you seem to know very well. Conversations a blaze before the night is over. And you learn many things that, evidently, you didn't know before.

Seem like a familiar dream? Good.

Now, see here. Let’s go through that dream again. At the beginning, you were sitting in a dark room talking to whom? Who were you sitting next to in the dark spooky room before the party? Was it your mother? Right? Wrong. Later you were walking around in your underwear, conversation to conversation, perhaps holding a cigar in an elegant fashion, mingling with guests and family who you know very well. And who are they? Do certain people come to mind?

Who did you talk to at the party again? Your crazy Uncle Harry with his drunken wife Marge who smokes those brown odd cigarettes. Was it your strange cousin Ashlar? Distinguished by one eye larger than the other?

In the dream everyone you spoke and saw was indeed you.

You were yourself. Your mother was yourself. All people at the reception were, wait for it, were all you. Sort of playing a odd schizophrenic mind fuck on yourself while your body slept. 

After all it is only in your mind, isn’t it? So, in fact, every person you are talking to is you talking to yourself. 

Still with me? 

The brain, as complex as it is, indeed perhaps because of its crazy complexity, doesn’t quite know the difference between reality and a dream. 

Don’t believe me? 

Explain to me the logic of running in a dream and then waking up with your crouch and forehead sweaty? And I'll just wait right here while you explain the term “wet dream” to me. Why is it that if you stick a person in front of a basketball hoop holding a basketball, and, not wearing underwear of course, and tell them to make a few baskets to prove that they are a pathetic basketball player who never even touched a basketball before. So tell that same person to envision or imagine throwing the ball, moving their arms perfectly, in their perfect little world, and sinking the shot. Then smack them in the arm to wake them up and order them to make the shot on this plain of reality. Many studies, in very large groups, have shown that there is a significant improvement on performance. Yes, yes. This gets into positive thinking, so let’s stop on this.

We all experience things differently. Some very different which cause some very interesting and grave consequences. I can see how that adds to our own mistreatment of one another other.

That will never change and that is the problem. 

Experience is not 'universal'. Therefore reality isn’t 'universal'. Experience is unique to the individual. We experience: concepts, colors, emotion, and Monty Python differently. Hell, we’re so complicated with emotions, thoughts, and misconceptions reinforced by semi-facts that we actually re-experience the same thing that happened yesterday! Completely different than say a day ago. A week. A decade. We change. Therefore our experience and therefore our memories change. Memory isn't a constant. It may seem like it is. But if you think about it. You will see I am right. 

That is what best defines us. We change.

            The assumption that history is correct or even partially correct is a danger. 

            Ever notice that authors and experts never start out a book with: “Well, this is what I think, anyways.” You read the book and the words only tell, convince, as though they are pointing to your shoe and saying “Hey, look you idiot. A shoe!” Ever notice that people just believe in practically anything? The more complicated the more it is believed. I suppose it depends on how stupid the listener is. Because lies only come in single sentence form, right? Well, the obvious one’s do.Lies never reveal themselves in imagery, poetry or smells.  Facts lie, just like the internet and television, because in the process of interpreting those facts we end up lying to ourselves.

           

JS 11.7.2011