Chapter 9a
Saturday, March 20, 2004
There is merit to be had in questioning everything but to earn that merit you must question the same concept. How much questioning is too much? Questions are wonderful when they get answers but all too often all asking questions does is raise more questions.
Questions?
I find it increasingly difficult to gather my thoughts.
Questions.
Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? To what extent?
Who am I asking? What am I asking about? When do I ask? Where is this going to happen? Why am I asking these things? How is anybody going to know the answer? How much of it will be true?
Shit. I ask myself these stupid questions just to keep my mind on the task, I write them out, I put them on paper so that I know definitively that I have asked them and what I have asked, and in doing have forgotten what I was thinking of.
What year is it?
Ah, yes, I know that one.
What was I questioning, though?
Reality. That was it. What is it? I'm going to assume that the things I've experienced have all been real in one way or another (or maybe I shouldn't assume...Descartes says not to but he assumes, too, so who can you really trust?). I will not assume my memories are true, however, so I won't judge reality by them. This journal, like all journals, is written in retrospect so I also cannot trust it. Maybe if I can find the places where memory and documentation coincide I can find a place that offers a higher probability of reality.
I can't hold a thought. I keep trying to imagine why but I can scarcely focus long enough. It's like my thoughts get carted away any time something random flicks through my mind. I have no idea how to explain this sensation but I will. One day I intend to know what has happened to my brain to make it function so unlike any other person's.
That brings me back to the immediate issue (or maybe I'm just finding myself there now because a thought got snagged) of what I keep hearing. I do believe some people hallucinate in a very convincing way. I might even do some of that. But these things I'm hearing, those are voices, real solid voices that crash into the membranes of my ear after hurtling through the air at me.
I know they are real because I have tested them. I recorded them. I set a recorder with a tape, ninety minutes, forty-five minutes on each side and waited. I flipped the tape and waited more. At the end I had only heard speech one time. When I played back the tape I heard it again.
This could well be a trick of the mind. I do know exactly when I heard the voice, I would obviously listen for it at that time, and my crazy brain might project the sensation of having heard that even when I didn't. I' m aware of the possibility. That's not the case though.
When I heard the voice I wrote down the time and tried to write what it had said. I couldn't. It was a jumbled mess of sounds that made no sense. In the playback, though, when I forward to that spot on the tape (eleven minutes and forty-four seconds into the second side) I hear it as plain as day.
"Nascentes morimur."
