Explanations are just an art form

It started at around 03:30 this morning. Having finally satisfied my curiosity and finally having settled the debate my body was going through over sleep and hunger, it was time to go to bed.

I'd spent the day at my boyfriend's and we'd watched Stay Alive before dinner. While the acting left something to be desired (although, I find that this is so with nearly every film as most actors can't act all that well outside of who they themselves are as a person), I found the concept really interesting. It's nothing to do with anything (at least, I don't think it is), but we watched teh first 20 minutes of Eleventh Hour before returning to my place, being disappointed that the mystery had been revealed so quickly and before anyone on the show got a clue about it.

At any rate, after he left, I started looking into Elizabeth Báthory again, dipping up facts as well as lore. I also looked up the film to learn more and, I admit, partially to see if there was any talk about fashioning a game after the game in the film. Not that I'd have been able to play it should it exist, but I was disappointed all teh same that there was not. Again, this is neither here nor there to the events that followed. The search sprung up others, like the Loomis Crowley connections mentioned, and which I read up on as I nibbled on some cold turkey left over from Thanksgiving in order to bring my stomach to a point of non-hunger with which I could actually sleep. I was left with an uncertain doubt of any connection other than a blending of the two names and see no reason why it should have been mentioned; neither in relation to the character nor to the story. It did make for some interesting reading.

And so it was that at 03:30 I finally made my way to bed with thoughts of writing about the philosophical question of existance that plagues my mind every now and again. After I'd turned my light off, I realized I'd left my studs in. I didn't want to get teh kittens all excited by turning the light back on so I sat on my bed and began to switch the studs out for hoops. No sooner did I have the studs out did I think that I felt something drop beside me onto the comforter. In the instant replay of my mind, I was pretty sure I'd even seen a dark form about the size of a mouse drop from the corner of my right eye. Looking back again, I can't say if I actually saw something as it happened or if my mind planted that I had seen it. In the very short moments it took my brain to process these thoughts, I swore I felt that something move toward me. Reflexively, I jerked the comforter to displace whatever it was while I jumped from the bed and turned the lights back on. My heart was racing. There was nothing there.

Now, I don't charictaristically scare easily. I'd watch a mouse run across the flood with curiosity back when I had them, before I watched a co-worker's cat. I love to sit down and watch horror movies and, I admit, it's largely in an attempt to find one that will frighten me. I especially love to sit there and watch them in an empty house in the dead of night with no lights on. Child's Play and Dolls remain the only two that I can't watch because I'd seen them as a young child and every time I watch them, I return to the frightened mind of that child even though I know that it is not real. The scariest thing about Dolls had been the fact that I had a similar looking doll made by my grandmother in my likeness sitting in my room. It is like I am trained to be frightened of these things because I was frightened by them as a child. I'd watched Stay Alive twelve hours before going to bed, had not been frightened by it and had found nothing frightening in the reading I'd done following watching the movie. I have no idea why I'd been so open to being spooked.

And yet, despite all this, I felt no choice but to sleep with the light on for fear of more scares of things dropping onto my bed and coming in my direction. Since my lamp was burnt out and the overhead light is impossible to sleep under, I went and grabbed another lamp from elsewhere in the house. As I lay there, I thought about how the mind feeds itself if you don't take control and stop it. So it was that my heart skipped a beat at every little sound.

The lampshade re-adjusting itself since I'd skewed it to divert the light away from me sounded like something brushing up against it. Yet I couldn't bring myself to turn around and look at the lamp because my mind conjured up this image of some creature and then of a nightmarish lamp that was altering shape behind me.

Small noises from outside my window were things out of horror movies. The kittens, now running around and playful since I had the light on, because sounds of a possible intruder ransacking the place. The light reflecting off the zipper of my luggage was suspect enough that I entertained thoughts of covering it, especially when the little black dots that occasionally float through the vision of my left eye gave the illusion of movement from the corner of said eye. And I thought about how the mind plays tricks and how, if you start looking for something, be it fear or coincidence or any such thing, you'll find it in abundance. I'd had a scare and now my mind was conjuring up fear in everything. Just as, when you happen across a coincidence and dwell on the coinsidence, you start to see coinsidence everywhere.

I knew that I'd never get to sleep at that rate and my mind was spinning with writing down this unusual (for me) experience that I figured I might as well give up the fight and write so I could regain control of my mind and eventually get some sleep. It is times like these that I think I could benefit from some strong sleepling aid from a doctor so that I can quiet my sometimes overactive mind.

One hour since the beginning of this and I have halted all the irrational fears running rampant in my mind, but I still don't dare look behind the curtains and out my window. Just the thought of doing so to prove that there is nothing there brings flashes of images in my mind's eye. Sometimes a face which is sometimes a monstrous face from some horror flick and sometimes the face of your average peeping Tom with the latter of the two being the more frightening thought. Sometimes it's some blody tableau, be it on my window, on a face in my window, or a bloodied hand running down and smearing my window. At least I've quelled the rest with the writing of it. I think I'll wait for daylight before looking out my window.

This all begs the question to what extent our own experiences can lie to us? The human mind can deceive itself to an extraordinary degree. It's impossible to draw a clear line between the real thing and a hallucination; both in theory and in practice. Maybe that distinction, between what is illusion and what is reality is really unimportant. But what is reality? We know that there are limits to logic and the things we can prove. We know that there are limits to what can be known simply because it is inherently unknowable. Still, scientists go on probing and discovering new particles and coming up with theories and refining equations in pursiot of one unified theory that explains everything. There are things that defy logic, yet the human mind is wonderful at rationalizing these things. There are things that logic can neither prove nor disprove. Such as our reality.

"But suppose," I said, "just suppose it's a hopeless quest. Suppose the universe isn't made up of any one thing that we can finally put our finger on and say "That's it". Suppose all that ever happens is that when we look at something closely enough, it turns into something else? Mass becomes energy; a wave becomes a particle; a particle becomes a superstring; and so on ad infinitum. In other words, reality is a stack of Russian dolls - open one and there's another one inside. All we're really doing is chasing our own tails. Sure, we're building rockets to Mars and microwave ovens, but those are by-products, not the goal. It's a scary though that maybe there is no goal. Maybe it really is turtles all the way down - turtles or whatever. But no final answers. Because we're looking in the wrong place." (Excerpt from Coincidence by David Ambrose)

People say such things as "I am what I am" or "I think/feel therefor I am." But what are you, really? How do you know, for that matter, that what you take for granted as your reality, as your life, isn't just a dream? Maybe you're dreaming the whole thing. Or maybe someone else is dreaming the whole thing. I think therefor I am. This neither proves nor disproves that what you are is more than a dream. Neither does saying that it's an awfully long dream as time is a subjective concept. Is reality equally subjective? How about truth? Are you lying when you say you didn't do something when you can't prove you didn't do it, but you believe you are telling the truth? Maybe we're even in a string of dreams going on into a possible infinity. Haven't you ever had a dream where "dream you" is dreaming?

A spin on the same question arose from David Ambrose's Coincidence. What if we're all just part of a computer program created in another reality for research purposes? And what if that reality is also just a program that was created and is running on a computer in yet another reality? You can neither prove nor disprove that this is not true.

Reality becomes as subjective as time. All we have; all we logically know is what our experiences tell us via our own mind. But what if that's all a lie? What is the truth? Does it even matter? Does it really make any difference if all reality is is just a dream or a computer program? Would it change anything for you? Would it change your perceptions? your actions? Does the truth, being as subjective as time and reality, matter?

Perhaps it's all just turtles in the end.