Mind over Madness
I just saw Waking Life with Murray and Katie and ... well, I knew about half the people there, probably including the guy smoking weed in the theatre.
How could I come back and not write in the log?
To put it this way, I am and am not profoundly affected. On one hand, a large part of the beginning of the movie was the sort of artsy-fartsy "bad indie film" technique where someone throws their philosophy at you and you just sort of go "okay... hm." It's simply not very involving. On the other hand, most of it was good enough to convince me that I'm unsure whether I'm awake, dreaming, or dead right now.

I dream lucidly. Often. I see clocks whose numerals are distorted [and this bugs me to no end], I can't turn lights on in darkened rooms [usually indicitive of a lucid nightmare] and, when I was younger, I woke up repeatedly in dreams (also usually nightmares) and had to develop a technique as to how to wake for "real."

I have a feeling I'll dream strangely tonight. My reoccuring dreams have left me for the past few weeks... though having said that I may be visited. I look forward to it, I think I can grasp the outcome in my hands.

Waking life, all rotoscoping and imagery aside, was a good existential discussion. I am me. I am also a thousand reflections of me from others' eyes. I am no one. I am alone. I am independent of the universe but utterly dependent on science, god, and destiny. I am one with all things and only one in myself. Many conflicting images, but all essential unity.

I want a life lived of "holy moments." I want to meet people who will show me myself. I have met people who have shown me myself. I want to thank them. Mostly, I want to live unabashedly like I do in dreams. Would you really mind if I told you all my secrets; my hopes and fears, all my little lusts and self-indulgences? Would you like to know what I hate about you?

When I am asleep, none of this matters. I live by instinct. Live memories. Like the movie discusses, memories are dulled in day-to-day "waking life" so that you can function and not shit yourself when you get scared and associate it with something. In dreams, anything is real... but dreams are, fundamentally, real.

I like the guy with the gas can, the couple in bed, the tango dancer on the bridge... the pinball player. Oh, interestingly, one of the main vignette characters was Louis Black, [..wolf pup]... I'm not sure if it is the same guy as the comedian or not though.

I'm glad I didn't see the movie stoned, like most people there. I would've had to have been dragged home... (for the life of me I can't figure out the grammar in this sentence...) As it is, I'm 'spooked' enough, just like I was last night... if I say anything weird to you, please don't disregard it- now is the time when I mean things most wholeheartedly. Unfortunately for me, even when I'm drunk, I have the self restraint to usually not say these things. What's holding me back?

Life is, after all, just a dream....