Global Village: my third home

Today marks my second day in a week that I've not been able to sleep at all. It's somewhat horrible, but in some ways marvelous.

Because of not sleeping, I can say I've done a few things that I've never done before:

• Been the second customer of the day at Global Village. I was beat by just a few seconds. I've got first dibs on the corner seat, and now I can look at everything that's going on outside. Some people might call that strange; I prefer the term "involved."
  
• Walked up Hillsborough Street in the very, very early morning. It's strikingly lovely, really, when no one else is around. The campus, I mean -- not the street, though it is strange-looking. 
  
• I was one of the only people in Tompkins this morning. I bet you didn't know it smells like Pine-sol, floor wax and old vacuum cleaners at 7:04 a.m. 
  

A woman just walked in wearing a fedora. North Carolina is wonderful.

YES. They're playing Elvis Costello. I want to break out into song but that would be taking it beyond strange.

What is so funny about peace, love and understanding? Lord, the man can sing.

I'm supposed to be meeting Saja here so we can work on our paper things. However, this was decided at about 2:30 a.m. and I've already finished my paper. When you don't sleep, you have a surprising amount of time to devote to things you should have done earlier. At any rate, I decided I didn't have anything better to do, might as well head to gvill and wake up -- is that the right terminology? Let's go with "stay awake."

I've decided I'm becoming a philosopher. The lists will read like the following:

Aristotle

Rene Descartes 

Thomas Aquinas

Friedrich Nietzsche

Albert Camus

Soren Kierkegaard

Alison Harman

Seems a perfectly logical sequence. I mean, all these guys probably started thinking, writing, because they were freaked out by something. Whatever it was -- religion, economics, existence, thought -- it freaked the hell out of them. They sat down, thought a bit, and started writing. 

Oh!!!!!! A Greyhound bus just passed heading to New York. That is completely amazing. I want to drop everything, buy a ticket and leave right now. Not because I don't like it here... just because I think it would be a wonderful experience. 

This must be a Scottish mix. It's now on that song about Bonnie lass. 

I'm doing this. I've started my rantings. When I talk about my fears to others, most look at me like I'm mad. But hello, I'm sure they looked at Nietzsche like he was a mad man. Hell, he probably was. 

I wonder if blogs will be the post-humus text publishers will print once we're dead. Instead of some hidden manuscript, it'll be online copy.

Earlier this week, I learned I'm not the only one who is perpetually living in fear of an imagined world. The philosophy is actually called true idealism. Just think (for really, isn't that the only thing you know you're doing?): we have no proof we're living, walking, breathing in the world we think we are. I could be {in} a world (not necessarily a world; more like a state of... being?) totally opposite from what someone else is in. I don't know how to aptly explain it.

Imagine you lose all your senses. You've got no physical sense of being. It's just you (though what is that?) and your mind. You're free to imagine the world around you, to create societies and colors and conversations, to conjure up interactions between people. It would be a real world, except it would all be ideal; what you see you're not really seeing, what you're touching is not tangible. You think it is, but what else do you have? You've got a brain and nothing else. It'd be easy to fool yourself into believing you're living in a world you've created.

My biggest fear is that this is true. 

Now all that's left for me to do is come up with proofs that the world we ALL know exists; proofs that we're all living in the same world, that it's not one person 'dreamliving' in a world and another person doing the same in something totally different. I'll work on it.

Although, I have learned one thing from Kierkegaard: truth is subjective (which goes along, scarily, with my theory). It's not what you know, but how you know it -- how you believe, your inward reflection. Not knowing gives us faith, for if we knew everything we wouldn't have to believe; we'd just have to know. And that would suck.

So perhaps I just have to have faith that this world is real, that I'm not living solely in my mind. Maybe that's the answer.

I kind of doubt it's that simple.