Waking Life

into their very essence, 450 00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:59,100 tasting and feeling their uniqueness. 451 00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:03,600 One might make a breakthrough to that common something... 452 00:34:03,700 --> 00:34:06,600 that holds them together. 453 00:34:06,700 --> 00:34:12,100 And so the main character is, to this new mind, 454 00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:14,800 greater, greater mind. 455 00:34:14,900 --> 00:34:17,300 A mind that yet is to be. 456 00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:20,700 And when we are obviously entered into that mode, 457 00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:24,500 you can see a radical subjectivity, 458 00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:28,600 radical attunement to individuality, uniqueness to that which the mind is, 459 00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:31,600 opens itself to a vast objectivity. 460 00:34:31,700 --> 00:34:34,200 So the story is the story of the cosmos now. 461 00:34:34,300 --> 00:34:39,200 The moment is not just a passing, empty nothing yet. 462 00:34:39,300 --> 00:34:43,300 And this is in the way in which these secret passages happen. 463 00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:46,700 Yes, it's empty with such fullness... 464 00:34:48,500 --> 00:34:53,076 that the great moment, the great life of the universe... 465 00:34:53,100 --> 00:34:56,300 is pulsating in it. 466 00:34:56,400 --> 00:35:01,300 And each one, each object, each place, each act... 467 00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:03,876 Leaves a mark. 468 00:35:03,900 --> 00:35:05,900 And that story is singular. 469 00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:09,400 But, in fact, it's story after story. 470 00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:19,100 Time just dissolves into quick-moving particles that are swirling away. 471 00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:23,200 Either I'm moving fast or time is. Never both simultaneously. 472 00:35:23,300 --> 00:35:27,100 It's such a strange paradox. I mean, while, technically, 473 00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:30,000 I'm closer to the end of my life than I've ever been, 474 00:35:30,100 --> 00:35:34,000 I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world. 475 00:35:34,100 --> 00:35:37,700 When I was younger, there was a desperation, a desire for certainty, 476 00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:40,400 Like there was an end to the path, and I had to get there. 477 00:35:40,500 --> 00:35:44,276 I know what you mean because I can remember thinking, 478 00:35:44,300 --> 00:35:49,000 "Oh, someday, like in my mid-thirties maybe, 479 00:35:49,100 --> 00:35:53,100 everything's going to just somehow jell and settle, just end." 480 00:35:53,300 --> 00:35:56,476 It was like there was this plateau, and it was waiting for me, 481 00:35:56,500 --> 00:35:59,900 and I was climbing up it, and when I got to the top, 482 00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,476 all growth and change would stop. 483 00:36:02,500 --> 00:36:08,000 Even exhilaration. But that hasn't happened like that, thank goodness. 484 00:36:08,100 --> 00:36:11,700 I think that what we don't take into account when we're young is our endless curiosity. 485 00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:13,700 That's what's so great about being human. 486 00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:17,776 -You know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity? -No. 487 00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:20,576 Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture. 488 00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:25,076 So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, "That's me." 489 00:36:25,100 --> 00:36:28,376 Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image... 490 00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:30,476 with yourself living and breathing in the present, 491 00:36:30,500 --> 00:36:34,500 you have to make up a story like, "This was me when I was a year old, 492 00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:37,400 "and later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, 493 00:36:37,500 --> 00:36:40,200 and now here I am." 494 00:36:40,300 --> 00:36:43,900 So it takes a story that's actually a fiction... 495 00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:48,500 to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity. 496 00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:53,500 And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. 497 00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:56,876 We've already become completely different people several times over, 498 00:36:56,900 --> 00:36:59,800 and yet we always remain quintessentially ourselves. 499 00:36:59,900 --> 00:37:01,800 Hmm. 500 00:37:21,100 --> 00:37:23,700 Our critique began as all critiques begin: 501 00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:25,976 with doubt. 502 00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:28,400 Doubt became our narrative. 503 00:37:28,500 --> 00:37:31,976 Ours was a quest for a new story, our own. 504 00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:34,776 And we grasp toward this new history driven by the suspicion... 505 00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:38,300 that ordinary language couldn't tell it. 506 00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:41,076 Our past appeared fr