"We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough" (Wittgenstein 1953: 224)

What's it gonna be?

We percieve the world through our senses.
We believe in what they mediate to us.
Perhaps mostly because they are ours...
... and we seem not so prone to question their validity.
(Or at least we are convinced that doing so wouldn't do us any good.)

So we see things - we see the smooth lick of transparent silver "riverrun", the yellow sword of light as the beacon slashes through the night, the worm eaten flesh of a rotten carcass...

We touch things - sometimes we touch orselves when out of sight of others, the soft, the moist 'n hot fire and the cold, hard and sticky ice, the taut and hungry skin of a lover...

We smell things - we smell the garden of Gardenias, the peaty smoke of the highland's well of life, the arrival of the first winter snow, the pungent stench of sewer beneath all future Mother Cities brought together...

We hear things - we hear the ominous sirenes, the harmony of lies carried by the percussion of granates and embriodered with a howl of little bullets, the infant cries in our morning coffee, the gossip of Apocalypse...

We taste things - we taste the blood, the sweet 'n sour Eden apple, the cunning foam of a countryside real brew...

And we see it our way. And we take it for a fact. And why wouldn't we? It was right there, right!? We saw it!

Still, we can always ask ourselves what the difference between seeing and imagining really is, and if that, in turn, makes any difference? Really?

Imagine the dish really ran away withe the spoon! Now if that was to happen and we saw it, we would've most certainly have recognized it since we already have recieved the idea from Mr Waits - he gave us a wayward dreamy preconception so creatively that we now are predisposed with an imagine of a dish running away with the spoon. Furthermore, since "everything you can think of is true" there is no other limit than what we can imagine to what we also can see. Does this render imagination necessary in order for us to notice changes in the ordinary course of life... the disruptions in the order of things? The extraordinary in the ordinary? (And by noticing I mean seeing!)

Of course, even if we never have heard Mr Waits' profetia, once the dish actually ran away with the spoon before our eyes we would unmistakeably know it. And this does not mean that we have ever really imagined it before - in a sense that we have thought of it or pictured it in our thoughts... in our dreams. So, it seems as if imagination is not necessary in order for us to notice things... to see... but the fact that all that is seen could've been imagined first is. So it is all those unimagined images, the "unthought known", which dwell within, and perhaps even more importantly, between us, that make our 'seeing' possible at all. Question follows: if our seeing depends on such a mysterious and puzzling parts of being human, how come we don't find it puzzling?

Sometimes we see things that just don't make sense. In fact, from where I stand, not much of what I see everyday makes sense. Maybe it's not about things in-and-for-themselves - since I am convinced that the most unrealistic and foolish thing to do would be to expect from things in-and-for-themselves to just planely be full of meaning... to make sense... there is a necessity of 'someone' to whom things may or may not make sense in some way or another... so, whatever I am seeing without grasping it: maybe it's more a matter of my seeing than it is of it's being?!

Does this mean that the world as we see it is but a projection of our preconceptions - never real in and for itself but only in our imaginations... or in our "unthought known" - the almost imaginations... that by almost imagining the world we also create it?

I musty admit - I love this idea! However, I don't believe in it. It just sounds too beautiful. It almost gives a promise to erase all injustice, pain and suffering in the world by the time we wake up... and even if we never wake up, since our whole existence is but a part of same dreaming, it doesn't matter... not at all! Because if all these things are just a bad dream then there is no real injustice, no real pain and suffering. So there is nothing to be worried about. But since we still percieve something by seeing things, irrespective of whether they are the sheer projection of our unnoticed imagination material or not - it is real indeed. And percpetion is always real! Even when it is unjustifiable and unexplainable it is nonetheless real since it is percieved. That's it!

So:
1. Unnoticed imagination material is required for our seeing.
2. Seeing is required for our percieving.
3. Percieving is required for our being.
4. Thus, we can be sure that we exist and that reality is as much a dream as the dream is real(ity).

But this means that all the injustice, pain and suffering in the world is real. So how come so many of us just chooses to fucking pretend like it's not real and to ignore it. Could we stand the weight of our conscious if we should allow such an insight to swallow us? Or are we just so fucking ignorant, stupid and inconsiderate?

I don't know man but sometimes I really wish it was all just a dream... just a dream...

"[...] there are human forces stronger than logic" (Pirsig 2006 [1974]: 21)

What is logic? What is logical? Does it mean anything? What? To whom? Why? Is even logic ever logical? It seems as if the more certain the omnipotence of logic, the less human it gets. Does logic mean inference from given premises to either falsehood or truth? If so, how come we grant so much certainty to this 'truth' when it is arrived at by such meager and fragile means - rules of inference? How can they ever guarantee any certainty about anything? Is it because we invest all our trust in certainty and solidity of given premises? As if there ever was any premises that were really given - cemented as a fact. Don't premises, these deceiving little bastards, multiply ad infinitum as soon as they are acknowledged? Isn't it at the very core of the being of premises that they are trying to fool us already from the beginning, to take them for a fact, an a priori truth in itself. Still, "truth belongs to everybody" (RHCP), I've heard. Everytime we stumble upon the facts of life we ad to them our own subjective perspective. And that's it! Some talk about the "eye of the beholder" phenomenon (Metallica). Some about how truth is but a construction, the purpose of which is no more than to alleviate the burden of being ensnared in deep shit of life: "I heard the truth was built to bend, a mechanism to suspend the guilt" (Arctic Monkeys). Then, it logically follows (I beg you all pardon for my inconsistency - but I'm a walking contradiction and I'm fine with it) that there are no premises that can ever be given as true facts - only perhaps as assumptions for the sake of the philosophical argument, but that's it. It stops right there! And that's the only logical truth about true logic because, logically speaking, with no true premises to take into this absurd equation, the only truth we're left with is that the truth is that the truth is not.

"But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it" continues Pirsig (2006 [1974]: 87). The truth is that we kill for our truths. We die for them! No questions asked. We just do it. Because we believe. Perhaps sometimes the belief is logical through and through... other times maybe less so. But it is at all times, in some more or less absurd way, linked to some kind of logic as its defender. Does this mean now that there are as many logics as there are truths - that logic is just as multiple as truth is? Now, what's so logical about that anyway? How can we know anything about anything, really? "This heart inside me I can sense, so I conclude that it exists. This world I can touch, so I conclude that it exists. This is where all my knowledge stops, everything else is a construction" says Camus on the subject adding that "to look for the truth is not the same as to look for what's desirable (1961 [1942]: 27, 44 my translation). Now, how's that for a true fact?

Reason and logic - it seems as if they have been criticized by everybody, forever. A bit of a cliché for a revolt nowadays, really. Let's go reason-bashing - as if no one has ever done that before. And still we kill, lie, cheat, hurt, bleed in vain, cry ourselves to sleep, enjoy the excess of wealth on the others account as if we somehow deserved it, wage wars, propagate hostility and suspicion. And what's worse, we do all these things under the flag of logic and reason - our sacred religion. We refer to them to justify our dirty deeds - for ourselves and for others. What's up with that?

Well, we are human and there ain't nothing logical about that!