Thought 70: Determinism.

Hold on your butts, this one is a wild ride, and specifically from my point of view. It's more a journey from when I was about 6, until today, and a little bit beyond that, about a week under normal conditions, but that last part flucuates quite a bit. I cannot explain all of it, but I can describe my experiences, and you don't have to believe them, they are merely my observations. I feel I have to start with sleep and dreaming, since so much of the experience is rooted inside dreams and more specfically dejavu. We have to suspend the dejavu for a moment to get through this, but trust me, we'll get back there, it's too important to leave out. I am a lucid dreamer, in full color, full audio, lots of detail, but not sharp details. Note that last one, it's important as well. I have been my whole life or as far back as I can remember, dreamed vividly of all my childhood nightmares and having the ability to conjure heroes to fight them. This battle somewhere in the twilight between being awake and asleep, knowing I was in my bed, but not fully aware of it. As I aged the childhood nightmares became real world problems the solve, the lucid dreaming changed into something I now refer to as 'the construct'. The Construct vaguely mimics the scene in the Matrix where the world is all white and anything be populated into it, in the Matrix it's an endless array of gun. The Construct is a large sphere through which I float, and in comes two colors black and white, of that aspect I cannot control, everything else is fair game, well mostly. Beyond that anything can be summoned, an object, a person, an universe, an idea, a math equation, into The Construct and observed from different angles inside and out, pushed and pulled, ripped apart and put back together. Like the dreams, it's twilight, I'm sort of aware of the bed and room it resides, but fully emersed in the dream space. Time also appears to flow more slowly, similar to Inception where the dream time passes slower the deeper you go. It might just be that there are not really physical limits to this limitless white board. The Construct has proven quite useful for solving hard problems, go to sleep, wake up, and problem solved. Because I'm lucid I remember the solution, in detail. Because I'm not quite awake, it's also quite taxing, and I'm effectively brain-dead the next day. Ok, got it, very cool, maybe not that out of the ordinary, there are historical reports of others dreaming solutions to problems. Here's where we turn back to the clues left behind. Mostly control the space, there are times I cannot alter it and simply allowed to watch like a movie unfolding in front of me. These times of a lack of control almost always turn out to be incredibly realistic dejavu's within a weeks time frame. Sometimes the next day, some the next year, there are still a few I have not reached, including my own death(s). Examples I feel are required here, I am sure we've all had that dejavu where you remember having walked into a room with a group of people, Now add the entire conversation, to the word. A surprise test? every word, every check box, and even more surprizing every incorrect answer. One would think, having seen test in such detail they could correct the mistakes, but no I was destine to get an 84 on that spelling test in 5th grade, to miss that quick hit by Trey in four squares, my parents being 15 minutes late in picking me up, all that was one full day dremt 2 days before. It has so much detail, I knew how every blade of grass would bend in the gentle breeze. This messed with me greatly, it was beyond the random broken glass, the black cat that jumped out of an alley, it was something completely different. It was the first, but not the last. At the time this fueled my foolishness in believing in clarvoyance, ESP, ghosts, aliens, whatever conspiracy you could imagine. The whole day thing was a rarity, most experiences were probably closer to what other people experience, maybe with a little more detail. Well that is until I dremt my best friends death, about a week before, it was little more surreal. I woke up on the morning of his death realizing the that morning was playing out as I had seen it before. I did not know then what I know now or I might have tried to do something. Instead I shook it off as I had planned to meet him later that day and went about the rest of my morning eating the pancakes. Which was normal but almost surreal underwater like I dismissed it all. But the phone call at 10:15 am unlocked a horror, my freshman college self was not prepare for, it matched up with the dream, his parents calling to say they found him unconscience. For a period, I did not dream. Could not dream? Did not want to dream. Supressed my dreams. But time passes, the wounds heal, the gaurds drop. It started slowly a some years later, in grad school, small next day things, like dropping a fork on the floor and it bouncing across the room. The late night bike ride, where the truck nearly swiped me. Everytime like a slow-mo movie playing out without a change of course of action. Until... It was small, but it changed EVERYTHING. A realality altering change, not really for good or bad, many times it feels bad though. I had dreamt of a friend climbing a scamore tree down in the valley of Mount Oread, near the parking lot to the museum, it was a dare, he broke his arm and a branch of the tree. Well.. he would have... I think... Walking down the hill, everything started to slow-down, my mind started playing what could at this point only have been a possible future. Everything felt like treading molasses. It took everything I had, all my muscles, all my will power, but I did it, we took a different path, not past the that ill fated tree, which had a broken branch the next day. At the time the world felt like it broke, a shattering storm of glass, I felt ill the rest of the day, and the day was horrible, I got a flat tire, had a suprize quiz in Dr Tsulas's class. These did not feel real, more like a reprecussions, almost like when Ashton Kutcher returns to the future in Butterfly Effect, and nothing was quite right. I did not have any dreams for a month, no construct, no dejavu's, and my usual hyper awareness while riding my bike through traffic was gone. The world, no all reality had changed to something, I had never observed before, something I could no longer predict. After some time the hyper-awareness returns. I started dreaming again. The construct returned, along with the dejavu's again starting small. I had to try it again, but this time something smaller, less consequential. Like that glass breaking we've had so often. I got my chance. I had dremt about a black stone coffee cup slipping from my hands as I pulled it out of the cabinet and it shattering on the floor. Then next day, I was making coffee in the apartment, and the dejavu feeling struck. I started opening the cabiniet door as I had forseen it. It took, again, a termendous amount of effort, more than you'd think, for simply not opening a cabinet door. Again that feeling of the world shattering, just not quite as loudly. At this point, decided against coffee, or even anything at the apartment. That day everything was mostly ok, things were a bit off breakfast was a little stale. Work was a little bit more hectic, but not out of the ordinary, just annoyingly so. However, when we returned after the long day, the diebetic cat was dead. I mean it was diabetic, but it had been doing well, so I don't know. Today, I try not to dream too much, I still use the construct, and sparingly attempt to alter the dejavu's. Altering them each and every time, not matter how well intensioned, no matter how small, leads to a bad day for me. Like being punished for changing the order of things. Maybe someday, I'll figure out how to not to get punished for changing things? The most recent was altering small details to insure that 4 years ago, that the house in the country would be built. It so far, this has cost almost everything, but I think it was worth it, as it turned out for every other altercation. Oh, back to that dream fuzziness, that lack of sharpness in my dreams, and how it's important? I came to realize that it relates to the further from now, further in the future the fuzzier the dream. Eeriely similar to how memories fade and details are lost. This also fits a little bit with if you ask me to think about a chair, there's not one chair there are all chairs I've ever encountered all overlayed on each other, in a bit of an omni-char, it's fuzzy because it's all of them. And this fits, there is not a single future but a series of probable futures, all overlapping. We CAN make choices, but they have, as what I can only refer to as "consequences". Believe me or not, these are my observations. Everything here I experienced first hand and remember vividly, because they are so very terrifying and awesome at the same time. Other fun time dialation things, sometimes I don't always experience the here and now, I frequently experience about 5 seconds in the future, a traffic light the wrong color, only for it switch in front of me to what I was perceiving, is a pretty typical example, or that car pulling out in suddenly, I see do this twice, but I've already adjust for it the first time. There are sometimes trails in front of people pulling them along like future echoes of themselves, similar to that scene in Donnie Darko. Sometimes this whole world feels like Donnie Darko, just one wierd time looped dream. Oh I had "my own death(s)", yeah so after an altercation, once the dejavus return, I get a new version of how I die sometimes sooner, sometimes much further down the road, and it's always extremely fuzzy and only about 10s long, like the moment of impact of a motorcycle hitting a semi truck, I don't know if it's real or if I can even alter it. Just that one day I'm going to find out.