"A Vat of Jello"

Last night, after an intellectually-confusing, emotionally-bruising conversation, I craved a lobotomy, I dreamed of an ice pick strike, deep into the center of my cranium, taking out my medulla oblongata. Sometimes it just does not pay to engage, especially when you are locked in a debate about the unknowable. In the old days, with major quantities of cannabis at hand, Led Zep on the phonograph, a deep, existential conversation on the nature of "reality," would have resulted in distant smiles, far away eyes, and statements like: "Wow, man." "Dig it." "Blows my mind." Last night was more of an existential "death dance."

Put two amateur philosophers in a room, with vague notions, and fragmentary lines of reasoning, grappling with "reality," the universe, fundamental "truths," etc. can be a pointless, silly, and sort of ugly exercise. Kind of like wrestling in a vat of jello. It was something about (I'm fuzzy on the details now, as I was then.), is there one fundamental ground (truth, reality, universe), are there multiple "realities," do human beings "make their own reality," is what we call "reality," (you always end up putting quotes around the damn thing!), a dialogue between this fundamental ground and the human perceptor? Plus throw in the "WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE?" subtheme, and you have a big fat stewpot of a conversation, over-spiced and undigestible.

As I laid me down to sleep, just as I closed my eyes, I see a picture of that guy on Monty Python, holding his head in his hands, declaring: "MY HEAD HURTS!"