Morbid Curiosity

So, my girlfriend and I were chatting in our bedroom after both of us had had less than 5 hours of sleep in about a 36-hour span. Not terrible, but hardly preferable.

I recently read a book, The Red Hourglass, by Gordan Grice. It's about the lives of various predatory creatures that exist. The black widow, the mantid, the rattlesnake, and canids, were all discussed. Good reading and plenty of heebie jeebies.

Given that we live in a relatively small house with 5 cats and 1 medium size dog (2 of them were mine pre move-in and 4 were hers), I began to think about the predatory nature of our pets. What spurred this was the fact that my cat likes to lick my face... it's amazing the tangents that our minds can take. What commenced was a rather enjoyable discourse on what would happen if my girlfriend and I just dropped dead, right there, and we presumed nobody would come check on us for quite a long time.

Since dogs have been known to like the taste of human flesh, I initially surmised that the dog would probably be the first to devour us. The GF points out that the dog food and the cat food are in areas they could break into without too much trouble. She figured the dog would probably break into those and survive fairly well before deciding we looked like tasty vittles.

I countered that my younger cat, Theo, would probably have little moral dilemma about taking a bit of his proverbial dad. After all, he likes to lick often enough and, when pushed too it, I can't be all that bad tasting considering his hobby. The GF nods, but mentions that the dog would probably strike at the cats eventually. While it's true that the cats can get to places the dog can't even fathom (the ceiling for one), we knew that the in fighting between the cats would probably be some of their demise. I mean there ARE only so many spots they can hide from the dog.

So, who would last? We guessed that thirst would be the mitigating factor. The dog knows how to lift the toilet, but we have one of those toilet cleaners that make the water blue. Sickness would surely ensue. Still, would it make them too sick? If not, one to three of the cats *might* be able to survive well enough to make stints to the toilet and our corpses.

In the end, that seemed likely. We didn't play it out to the bitter end, but it's clear that eventually our corpses would either be completely devoured, or inedible. The dog would probably catch a desperately hungry cat, and then the dog would probably take weeks to die of hunger (assuming the toilet water didn't poison it to death).

It's wonderful to talk about the future with the girlfriend...

The Cyclical Crazy Train

I'm crazy.

There IS no denying it. Images flash just out of sight - sometimes people, sometimes objects, sometimes just light. I turn to see them and, as you probably predicted, they are gone. Imagination? Sometimes. All the time? No…

"I think, therefore I am."

The ability to recognize your own thoughts and existence does lend itself to self-validation... but in a cyclical way. You are aware of yourself, which means you exist. Since you exist, you are able to be aware of yourself, which further validates said existence. How neat and tidy... we should all be pillars of confidence of self-existence.

So does my perceived existence of the outside world work the same way? As we grow and age, we are first unaware of letters. Eventually, we become aware of them and some base utility. As that validation occurs, we grow to realize even further utility, and so on until we become pillars of confidence of the use of letters, words, sentences, etc. In effect, we have created all this in our universe because of our willingness to acknowledge its existence.

So, when do these things that I keep seeing become real? If I give them enough credence, won't they begin the validation cycle of existence? It could be that peripheral vision is the construct to all we begin to know. All of our life we take on information. We learn, adjust, refine about all the things that are around us so that we, in the most basic sense, have a more comfortable life (whether it be physically, mentally, or some combination). How do we do it? By catching glimpses of the peripherals in our life, drawing them near before they disappear, and validating their existence in the cyclical way that we have validated our own existence.

Insane. By taking a cyclical trip, we can make the unreal become real. The unimagined, become imagined. By using the cyclical process by which we validate ourselves, we also create our universe. Sometimes, I see things and it is nothing. Other times, I see something, and it IS something. Why? Because I make it something. I give the image, people, object, and/or light validation and it enters my world.

But here is the thing - logic and sense are usually based on a start and a beginning. That is, true premises should systematically lead to a true conclusion. In all sorts of practical ways, we operate about the world with this in mind. We have to do "x" and "y" to get "z".

Yet, the critical way in which we acknowledge our own existence and, in many ways, our existence of everything else is a cyclical reasoning that, inherently, can't be proven by any external source. How often do we take someone seriously when they say something is the way it is logically because it is the way it is? It seems inherently flawed to accept everything we come across simply because we came across it. Countless people have been locked up with the crazy key for just these reasons. Multiple personalities, distorted views of the world, "seeing" things - all reasons we try to help people. Yet we take the same cyclical crazy train they do to validate things in our lives and even our lives themselves.

So, we have to ask ourselves, where is the line drawn? I know I am crazy. I ride the crazy train every day. Because, while it's crazy to create and validate in the cyclical way that we do, I feel better for it. Do you?