'Waking Life' is an excellent movie to accompany a high fever.
"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 where 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 other's presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into direct experience; 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 100 stories. Giacometti 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!