REALITY?: ?

This is probably going to be the hardest post I’m ever going to have to write. Just got back from the last Contemporary Fiction class of the semester, and in the last ten minutes of class, the question of time, space and reality that was raised by the good Professor in the very first class came to me like ten-thousand Christmas lights going on at once—Rockefeller Center when they pull the switch, or even that horribly gaudy and eye-popping house of seasonal decorations down in Torrington.

I raced home, desperately trying to keep a hold onto one thought as others came flying into my brain. The only one unrelated to the ball of yarn winding larger and larger in my mind that I allowed to entangle itself was my planned plea of Alzheimers’ regarding the three new stop signs they put up last week. I must, must, must either rip out my radio and install a voice-activated computer in my car, or become rich enough to hire a driver.

Unscrambling my scribbling is not easy. My writing is illegible. Even if I could read it, how do I interpret the three-word signal phrases that were supposed to trigger the whole paragraph of thought. And then, how do I string them together into a comprehensible whole?

WARNING: This is not one of my usual sensible, practical posts. Nor is it drug induced. It’s the flash of not the knowledge, but the question, being discovered.

“Does the world continue to exist after you’re gone?” he asked. “Of course,” I answered. Then I knew. One split-second later, my mind said, “No.” Complete with graphic image, I am instead lying in a glass case—not sitting in the classroom—but in a coffin-like glass case, and I am dreaming. My dream consists of sitting in a classroom amongst several students, with the Professor himself up front having moved on to another loaded question. But he doesn’t exist as much as I don’t—not here anyway. He is a figment of my imagination, and for the first time I understand how and why we can question reality. The table is solid and hard, you say? Well yep, that’s how I imagined it to be. I have created all this. My parents did not create me; I created them in my world of existence. They—if they indeed exist on their own—have created something or someone else, perhaps a better child who wouldn’t be me and give them trouble.

So what’s to come of this revelation? I don’t know. Probably much more reading and reflection. Whatever I can imagine the Professor imparting to the rest of the class, I have taken out this: What is reality? What is time? What is space? His first words of the semester were, “Does anybody know what time it is?” and I answered, “Does anybody care?” (Chicago Transit Authority album)

I suppose that until “someone” or “something” puts a new DVD into the slot on my glass case, I will indeed care until I discover I need not. I really needed this mind-boggling information just two weeks before Christmas.