What really goes on

i'm reclining in this grey mass of bed linens, laptop bent towards me. typing here is such a sensual experience. the heat from my laptop warms my wrists and thighs. the sound of its whirring mechanics have turned from a distraction to a soothing constant. i hate to sleep but i hate not to get enough sleep. i hate to sleep but i love to lie in bed. i love the idea of action, but i hate to act on it. most of all, i hate these contradictions.
this morning i felt both despair and idealism, the usual high and low that comes with social interaction. it stays with me for days. the extremes are even more acute when the interaction is with youth. i can't help but to think they hint at deeper significances. am i too much of a mystic?... i don't know what to think - kids confuse me. sometimes they're so stupid, so beyond repair. and other times, they astonish you with their wit, insight and creativity. all i can do is sigh and shrug. that's my reaction towards most everything these days. yes, i'm still in quiet mode. except with my s.o. he hears too much from me. i need to remind myself that nothing is secure and we are all shallow creatures.
i'm brought back to the sensualities of this bed. at home it's never really quiet. the noise of street traffic, intermittent airplanes, and always the mexican neighbors. this is also emotionally confusing for me. how do i take in the sounds of children and families - chattering mothers and screaming kids, alcoholic fathers and careless sons, hanging out in front of the spanish style house day and night. barbecues weekly...once, a death in the family had one neighbor crying out for 'abuela'. heartwrenching sobs i took in through my gut. i know this scene well. abuela. drunken men. loud scenes. is it silly, racist even, to be frequently reminded of the movie 'la bamba'? i remember it often, actually. the violence of alcoholism had been imprinted on me at an early age. what cruel maker designed thoughts alone to be traumatic, far removed in time and space from the physical event? oh, but what i'd give for the joys and complications of having a large family again...isn't everything complicated?
i think of all the fantasies i create for myself, all the paranoid "what if"s i allow myself to linger on...i ruminate incessantly on metaphysical possibilities, the properties of reality and consciousness. i ask myself, what if i don't exist? what if nobody else exists? what if i dreamed everyone up? what if it's me who's a part of someone else's dream? what if i'm god? what if i'm really dead? what if i'm an unwitting actor in a movie, my life already scripted for me? what if someone can read my thoughts?... i wonder, too, at the feats i could accomplish if i just concentrated hard enough...if i listened real close, could i hear voices in my head? what are they saying to me? if i focused all my energy at someone, could i make them disappear? move a certain way? i follow these trains of thoughts a long way down, only to stop myself when i begin to feel real fear. but the uncertainty and the curiosity are always there, even knowing that these alternate realities are completely illogical. what i'm really wondering, i guess, is if the things we're taught are just cognitive and perceptual errors, the result of faulty or convoluted genetic engineering, are really real. like the baby who won't walk across a glass table for fear he'll fall through. what if the baby is right? what if you can fall through a glass table? and in what kind of universe would this be the case? more importantly, if i am a part of that kind of universe, can i trust my perceptions? what do i really know about anything?


For more on this subject, see: Solipsism