joy ride
Before I could drive I never understood the concept of the joy ride. It was always a "terror" ride as a passenger, wondering if blaring music and high speed would somehow explode into imminent death.

Now that I can drive, well... I'm just glad I haven't gotten a ticket.

Really, I don't often go more than ten over. But I turn up the music and just glide.

Nothing is more freeing.

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Alex and I just watched Waking Life and spent a good deal of the night talking about it in the context of our life philosophies.

I'm struck suddenly by two things.

First, how blessed I am to connect with someone on this level

and

Secondly, how damn impressed I am with this movie.

I first saw it last year at the Bijou with friends. It was a weeknight and I was tired. I caught a lot of the dialogue but was distracted by the visuals and too tired to really listen to what was being said. Honestly, it came off as pretentious and artsy-fartsy. I was impressed but dubious of its value. I still feel the film is a bit pretentious but it raises some phenomenally important questions.

We were watching it on DVD and it struck me, about halfway through the fourth sketch or so, how convenient it would be to stop the disc to discuss thoughts since there is a break between each segment.

Coincidentally, Alex had the same idea so we spent a few minutes every now and then with the film stopped so we could talk about the philosophies of the speakers. It made the movie a lot more comprehesible than the first time I saw it.

And it seemed to have more of a story to it. The life-cycle of a dream.

I really think they ought to offer a class based around this movie. Like, each class session watch a segment and stop the tape to discuss. Move on. Repeat.

There are just so many amazing segments in the film. Even if they are a bit overdone when all strung together, they stand well by themselves. You can read most of the dialogue here. But I highly recommend seeing the movie because the most stunning aspect of it is the dream-like visuals.

This is one of my favorite clips, the bridge scene with Speed Levitch.

You can watch most of this clip at the movie website-- tho the closing sentences, which are my fave, are cut out.

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Speed:
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? the ongoing *WOW* is happening right now.

We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance, for even our inabilities are having a roast.
We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky 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 others' 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 an exam for our vitality.

Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint - a sudden exhiliration as he realized at last, SOMETHING was happening to him.

An assumption developed 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 forgeting:
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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My other favorite clips:
The Blonde Girl
The Self-Destructive Man
The Old Man
Professor Louis Mackey
The Dream Guy
And the last clip-- wherein Wiley talks with the film's director, Richard Linklater-- really has to be listened to to get the nuances.