Speed and Wiley Wiggins

Currently Listening To :: Not Pretty Enough :: Kasey Chambers

This is an excerpt from Waking Life, one of my favourite movies of all time...thus far. I've been meaning to write something about this for a while, but since it's Christmas (which isn't the same as Xmas), I thought I'd give a little something to everyone to read over the break. Thanks to everyone who I've talked to these past few days, and for giving me a little more perspective on lifes ups and downs.

Despite my apparent happy demeanour, things have been pretty ordinary; I'm surprised I'm not more jaded then I am already. You know things are bad when I can't even string together a thinly veiled metaphor to describe how I'm feeling.

I've declared this time between Christmas and New Years "resolution days", wherein I sit down and think a little (or a lot) about what sort of things I want to change next year, where I want to go, the type of person I would like to be more. Otherwise, come New Year, I'll be playing catch up already.

So without further ado, here are the words of Timothy "Speed" Levitch from the New York Brooklyn Bridge, and a Merry Christmas to all! May all your wishes come true, be they naughty or nice!

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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!