The Return of the Amazing Dr. Funkenstein and his Psychedelic Paraphernalia

Damn Chinamen, shoving scrolls through the slot. (They can't even get off their cell phones to do it.) Scrolls are floating down from the ceiling and I'm supposed to translate them, see? But they're written in Chinese! So now I have to write them in Korean, or something like that. Mostly I just scribble on the back in bright red marker, like a schoolteacher, or make paper airplanes out of them-- either way they all get put in the out slot. I'd be bored if I weren't so wasted.

And then there's a roar, and Thomas Nagel sends bats through the slot. They float around the desk, screeching and diving. I'm not sure what they want. God damn criminal, locking me in here with these flying vermin. This is not pleasant at all. Best not to speak of it. Relax. Clear my head. More rum will relax me.

The Chinamen made the mistake of paying me $300 in advance to do this transmutation job. We spent most of this, before we even got here, on extremely dangerous drugs. The inside of my desk looked like a narcotics lab. Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of acid, a salt shaker full of cocaine, and one whole drawer full of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... not to mention the case of Budweiser, the quart of rum, and the ether. Drove all over LA to find it before locking ourselves into Chinatown.

Searle, my attorney, has taken off his shirt and is pouring beer on himself to help him tan. (Though I'm not sure what he's using for light because there's no windows in here.) Crazy Samoan. No need to point out the bats-- he'll see them soon enough.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There's nothing so bad-- so depraved-- as a man transcribing ideograms (that he doesn't understand) while in the depths of an ether binge. Soon we'll be completely twisted, but we would have to ride it out. There's a story here, after all, and I'm here to get it.

See, this is what I'm talking about! Dat darling Damasio, when he writes:

"such images convey aspects of the physical characteristics of the object and they may also convey the reaction of like or dislike one have for the object, the plans one may formulate for it, or [the web of relationships] of that object among other objects."

Consciousness is a subjective thing-- we all know that. What I'm interested in exploring is how experience is different in different people. We're all here to explore the creative mind in action. What I want to know is why an author changes an experience to his own benefit. What drives him (or her) to do that? I'd think this would be even more interesting with someone more surreal-- like Kafka, Beckett, or Durang-- and see what causes a flight from reality.

(Or maybe this might be hitting too close to home with my own work...)

Something Carter says in Exploring Consciousness reminded me a little bit of Kant (who we aren't covering on the syllabus, but probably should.) Listen to this segment when she's talking about Anton's Delusion. (That's right, put your ear up to the monitor and listen):

"We get an impression of rich, all-round cinemascope not because we have a picture in our brain but because whenever we think about whether we can see something, our attention is drawn to it and information about it therefore immediately becomes available. The sensation of seeing something comes, not from a replica of the thing being created somewhere in the brain, but from the knowledge that information about it is at this moment available."

This stuff about Anton's Delusion and blindsight reminds me so much of Kant's ideas on object schema for that reason. They both depend, not on the actual the real environment around us, but on our ideas of environment.

Kant (and this is a paraphrase of a vague notion of what I may or may not remember from my second semester of undergrad) believes that you cannot trust your vision as a source of empirical knowledge because vision is not always reliable, and therefore cannot be trusted.

How many times have you seen something out of the corner of your eye, just to turn and see that it's not actually there? Once I was walking down the platform of a subway station and I saw one of those Student Metrocards on the ground. So I turned around to get it, thinking I had just gotten a few free rides if I could pass for under eighteen, just to find myself hunched over a green and white business card.

What happened there was a lapse in my levels of recognition of an object. First you see color, then forms, then actual shape. (At least I think that's how it goes.) So when I saw it out of the corner of my eye, because I didn't have all the visual information I would have looking directly at it, my eyes took in the green and white, the basic form-- and the schema in my brain for Student Metrocard activates, and is inserted directly into my visual cortex. It didn't matter that it wasn't actually there, it was as clear as day that I had myself a Student Metrocard. (Damn object schema- I had to keep paying for the train that semester.)

Is an out of body experience possible?

Once, when I was twelve, I was laying in bed in the late afternoon and I closed my eyes-- and all of the sudden I started floating above my bed. My body was being rendered in pixels of color (not unnatural colors to the scene-- everything was still the same colors they were when I went to sleep, but know I could see everything was made of small cubes) and I could feel those cubes tickling my hands.

Then I started rotating in the air, changing from a laying position, but I couldn't control the rotation so I was stuck floating upside-down.

I floated off my bed but couldn't transpose myself through my brother's bed to go explore. I hit my head on his bedframe and fell on the floor.

I instantly awoke and I was laying on the floor next to my bed (and my head hurt).

Is this an actual (aka scientific) cognitive experience? Or is this the product of my imagination?

What shall I writer here? ...Consciousness is subjective, I guess. I mean, what you notice is how you perceive life. Consciousness could be defined as your own individual perception of things. (Unless Professor Tougaw tells us otherwise, the I agree with him.) Like how do I perceive this moment, right here in this class, scratching at this crumpled paper with my jittery hand? Hungry. (Gee I was hoping for something more metaphysical,philosophical, and, you know, cool.) But even in the face of overwhelming demand for something else, I'm hoping one of those books in that stack would turn into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich--grape jelly, the philosopher's choice.