Delirious Table Talks

By Meredyth Staunch on August 31, 2017

Cup of coffee in hand, the “messy bun” hair taken to a whole new level of messiness with ringlets springing out of place on all sides, and the post-midnight delirium. One would think I’m a graduate student or even pursuing medical school, but no. As a failed-engineer-turned-aspiring-journalist undergraduate student, I like to think of myself becoming accustomed to nocturnality. After all, I am prefacing with a fragment: surely unconventional when wide awake, but almost entirely acceptable as the minutes, hours tick by.

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I sit at my small wooden desk. Books I brought with me even two years ago when I started school at Saint Louis University as a freshman pile the corner along with a marigold-colored binder, assorted folders, and spirals which will probably only last me half of the semester. And yet, despite all the knowledge and memories that surround me, the textbooks, the books for pleasure, the photographs, I get lost within my own words on a dimly-lit computer screen. I am unaware of where it will take me, but I still write. I have no word-count obligation, no mandatory subject, no mandated grammatical rules (to some extent). It’s just me and the words being transferred from my mind and somehow typed.

Isn’t it amazing how we get caught up in the smallest details that we forget to take a step back and truly appreciate certain works of art, like writing? Or rather, we forget to create our own artistic movement because we are fragmented by the hustle and bustle of school, work, parenting, you name it.

There does not always need to be an ending, as indicated by societal tasks. What if we could dance forever, laugh forever, write forever, sing forever? It is theoretically impossible, and my rambling might sound a bit unconventional as we cannot physically do these things on and on till the end of time. But, what if we never looked back and only looked ahead to all the happiness and music brought to us by friends, family, or gatherings? Then we will be laughing and making art forever — it will just have pauses in the interim, so we can truly appreciate them again once they do return.

As I am writing this, I let my scattered mind guide my fingers. Frankly, writers, whether journalists or not, need to have these moments to become aware of all their senses and let them collide with thought on paper. Often, I fall victim to seeing but not truly comprehending. I play the piano and hear the music but never internalize it; I see the floppy navy pillow on my bed but never take the time to analyze its intricate white flower pattern on it. Most scientists say our senses deceive us, which is certainly true. Your eyes can change the way food tastes; M.C. Escher can toy with an alternate form of reality through his optical illusions. What if this was not deception? What if we just haven’t unlocked our brains’ full potential, and these phenomena are normal?

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This brings up another inquiry: What classifies as normal? As I’m writing, I drink coffee; I anticipate the agenda for the following day. This is not only “normal” for an undergraduate college student, but for almost everyone in the U.S. There could be an alternate reality where coffee doesn’t exist, the sky is actually water that we swim through to survive, and we aren’t human. I am not trying to cross over into the brain-draining Inception category, but have you ever thought that the world you live in is actually a figment of your imagination? After all, our senses do lie to us, and they are the preliminary step to perception.

I have heard that lucid dreaming is quite a unique experience. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do it in over 10 years. This method of controlling your dreams can be scary at first, but if you try looking at a clock and see time flying by, you know you are in a different state of mind. Theta waves induce meditation. Delta waves are prevalent while sleeping. The “hours” you think you are dreaming, or in another altered state, translates realistically into only a couple of minutes. What if our sense of real time in the conscious state was quick for an alternate reality — would that mean that we are a figment of another reality’s imagination?

Despite the technology and new scientific discoveries being uncovered, there will always be unanswered questions. The complexity of the being, psyche, and time stretches beyond statistics and analysis through the senses.

Speaking of senses, I press each key, and my eyes get weary with each letter touched. Whether a journalist or engineer, I can only be nocturnal for so long. I have no recollection of when I started writing … all I know now is that it is well past midnight. I climb into my cool sheets, feeling each wrinkle and enjoying each cover closing around me. I gently place my head on the pillow and look at its white flower pattern. Slowly, I will drift to sleep, and it will all be a dream.

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