A Terrifying Mental Maneuver

I just experienced a terrifying mental maneuver that some of you might be familiar with.

I was alone in my apartment, the clouded afternoon skies tried to cast light through the windows. I felt tired, I needed a nap. I love short afternoon naps, and don't like the grogginess that comes after thirty minutes. So I set my alarm for a half hour away and lay down. It was as if someone had pulled the blanket up over my eyes and pulled it instantly back down. I was in class. Not any classroom that I had ever seen, but it was Studies in Shakespeare. It was our day to act out King Lear and I didn't know any of my lines. The room was dark but light flooded in through the open door where the rest of the class huddled and watched us, like a shoe box theatre performance of Lear. I froze like a paper cutout forgetting my lines. There was an extra person who wasn't supposed to be there and the anxiety was overwhelming.

Suddenly the scene changed. I was in a crowded bar sitting next to my wife. A young boy was sitting on my lap. I had no idea who he was. There was some type of game that was going on but I couldn't understand what was being said over the loudspeaker. There was a strange remote control on the bar in front of me but I couldn't reach out and grab it. I suddenly realized two things. The first was that I was paralyzed, and the second was that I was dreaming. An image flashed on the bar top that looked quite like this:



Confused I tried again to lift my arm and grab the remote. My chest was getting heavy and breathing became difficult. Again an odd scene was projected on the bar, this time it stayed there.



I realized, and knew. First the waves of intense fear and paranoia began to pulse through my mind and flow over my body. Will I be able to make the leap? How long will it take to bridge the gap? I have gone through sleep paralysis enough times to know that I will come out of it, the question is always simply: how long? The bar scene faded and this image was all that remained:



It was my living room. My laptop lay open softly playing Bon Iver. It was my living room, but from another reality, not the one I was in. The light from the window was now blinding to my unprepared eyes. The perspective was from my own eyes, laying one mostly on top of the other close to the end of the couch. My brain was awake but I could not move anything. Breathing was difficult, nearly impossible. The catch is that the harder I fight the paralysis the longer it lasts. I knew this, I fought back against the clouds of paranoia and gut wrenching fear in order to relax. Nothing in my body was reacting to my mind's signals and I stopped trying to force it. If I could have close my eyes I would have, my mind was calm, my thoughts were calm. The lull was to last until the time came. It is a very small window, the portal hole is small, it's always small. I waited... waited. Relieved, I felt the invisible flap that indicates the bridge between the worlds and I jumped. Straining hard I pulled through suddenly and gasp for breath.

I can now feel my body, my fingers, my toes. They all move at my will. I made the jump, the mysterious yet terrifying mental maneuver. I looked at the clock, it had been only ten minutes since I closed my eyes.


Perhaps some of you know what sleep paralysis is or even have to deal with it yourself. The wikipedia article is here. The condition is when the mind wakes from sleep before de-paralyzing the body (which it does during REM sleep). It is sometimes accompanied by hallucinations and strong senses of danger and fear.

Quite the entrance into another reality. It is interesting, but unpleasant. Quite frankly, I hope death is easier.

Burning The Reel

On Monday, Professor Sexson mentioned a moment of awakening like when the film in a theater gets caught and starts to melt. In the allegory of the cave, this would be the moment in which a prisoner (or all of them) realize that the film is just a veil for "true reality." This would be an epiphanic moment causing the gain of another rung on the ladder. A step in the direction of finding that there actually is no ladder.



We went down to the movie theater at the bottom of the hill on a Wednesday night and bought two tickets to Lucky Number Sleven. The theater at the bottom of the hill was poorly lit and smelled musty. Our shoes stuck slightly to the linoleum of the bathrooms and to the concrete under the seats. I tried not to think about it.

I don't recall most of the film. It is somewhat intricate if I remember correctly, and we were waiting patiently and attentively for the end and the resolution of the different narrative tracks. We were close to the end, immersed, engrossed in the climax which took place in a room that was on fire. The two rivals were tied to chairs that were placed back to back. Everything was becoming clear, the story was coming together. The suspense built rapidly and I didn't blink.

We sat in the middle of a row five eighths of the way back. A dozen other people sat at random around us. The flame on the screen escaped out into the theater and I could see an orange glow on my girlfriend's face. The fire extended and reached out further. It was about to engulf the characters, I couldn't believe that they were about to die like this, were we going to be next?

Suddenly the fire changed from orange and brown to small white spots that spread rapidly across the screen. No! I thought. They can't die like this! I gripped her hand tighter and sat forward. We were blinded by a full white screen and a noise of fluttering quickly became a din of 24 frames per second lost, flapping around somewhere in the magician's machine.

We sat stunned. I was confused. Did they die? My re-entry into "reality" was a harsh one. I have seen a lot of movies and I have been trained to know when to make the switch, but this was different. I sat motionless, staring at the blinding wall in anticipation, not giving up the illusion that had just been before me.

It was minutes before someone left to find an attendant. I just sat there, dumb. I wanted the magician to come and put the moving people back up on the screen. I wanted to know what happened to the guys that were tied to the chairs in the burning room!

We were filed out of the room and taken to the front of the theater lobby. It was late and the theater was deserted except for a young female employee who wore too much makeup, and a lanky kid half heartedly sweeping stray kernels of neon popcorn into a dust pan. They gave us vouchers for another movie and we left into the cold spring night.

As "Reality" Fades Into Another.

We have been exploring, for awhile now, the prospects of "reality" and fiction containing an indeterminate amount of overlap. We have taken a highbrow and lowbrow approach, and have seen how this theme is relayed through different times and mediums.

There are a couple distinctions that I feel should be made regarding this theme. The first only gains one rung on the ladder. This is the realization that the current "reality" is a fiction. This is the movie of the Matrix, and the first part of the Tempest. Neo, after much disbelief and some denial, realizes that the life he had been living was not real, that it was literally a construct in his mind.

After thinking about this I found that this first step is generally associated with a magus or special leader. This is Morpheus for Neo, and Prospero for the characters in the Tesmpest. Sexson mentioned something interesting on Monday which called into question the reliability of these leaders. Something surely seems amiss.

To an extent, it is true that just like Dorothy Neo didn't need the guidance of Morpheus. The realization could have been made, though not without difficulty. And like Dumbo who "needs" the feather to fly, the journey to the knowledge that the current "reality" is actually fiction is a personal journey realized through some form of catalyst.



But let us move on to the next step, because this one may be truly disheartening. In the sequels to the first Matrix film, Neo apparently has the ability (outside of the Matrix construct) to affect the machines of the "real" world. Is this a hole in the narrative? Did the Wachowski Brothers make a mistake? It seems that just as Neo realized his power in the Matrix construct, so to does he realize his power outside of it. Which now begs the question: Is Zion "real"? Well, a lot has been discussed on this, and this site goes into great depth on the issue: http://www.matrix-explained.com/matrix_within_a_matrix.htm



So then, there is the second rung, and the end of the Tempest. The realization that perception is not entirely trustworthy, and it cannot be dismissed that there may be another level above our current "reality." The second is devoid of a Prospero or a magus to show us the way. The second is understood because we learned the first time around. If we are to question "reality" once, then at no point is it possible to stop. "Reality" is itself a construction of the mind and there is an infinite amount of crossover, and repetition, and deja vu, and memory. We search and we search and find it difficult to recall. The words of Prospero echo thus in our minds, indeed... what seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?