That Weird Dream I Had

We begin with a strange dream I had recently. I stood in endless dunes. Small amounts of dune grass were at my feet but all I felt was deep fear and terror. This was the end of the world. Somehow Spongbob was also there. All I could do was scream. The first scream I did was not enough. When I went to scream again, the second one was deeper, more emotional, louder, more cathartic. Something about just screaming into the endless expanse of sand felt like it made the pure terror I felt a tiny bit better. I feel like my brother was standing nearby too. I honestly don’t remember how spongebob was involved but that detail was recorded in my note.

Screaming into the void does nothing to effect the void. All it does is effect myself. I am not the void. Screaming into the void was the release of all that terror I felt in that moment. In philosophical terms most will not understand, it was the emptying of Nishitanian nihility into emptiness. It was the letting go of deep terror and grief into an emptiness of living amongst the void. I do not think it is quite acceptance of the apocalypse per se (and definitely not denial either) but rather a reframing of my being-in-the-world in the Heideggerian sense to be within the new world, rather than grasping in fear after the old world. To scream into the abyss and regrasp one’s new situtation is to make the move from fear to anxiety. Heidegger and Nishitani are speaking the same language here though from very different perspectives.

The appropriate response to surviving the end is to scream into the ears of those who should be standing nearby but are no longer. Let yourself be heard, even if you are the only one listening. To live with yourself is better than to live without yourself. And hey, maybe Spongebob will be there too!