30.EP.27t: October 5, 2002.
Some nights I lie awake in bed, just like I'm doing right now. And I look at the light filtered through the crappy venetian blinds covering the window. And I'm here. I'm totally present to myself. I'm locked in time and time seems to stop. And I wonder what it would have been like to have had different parents and to have grown up in a different country. Would I be the same consciousness I am right now? Or would there even be a consciousness? Would there be an "I" that is still me, but not named Brian Cotts? Would I still see through my eyes, or eyes approximating my eyes, but see and think different things? And then, thinking these things, frozen in time and space, bent back on myself, I start to panic, and sweat, and unable to move I feel like screaming, like I'm trapped, like I'm me and will remain me until I cease, and when I cease I will be gone and there's this old fear coming back again: That all my perceptions, likes and dislikes will all be gone forever. And I won't be able to tell the people I love that I love them and I'll never be able to wreak terrible vengeance on the people I hate and it'll all just be gone forever. No more me, no more nothing. Not even blackness because blackness is the result of perception and consciousness. The switch will be flipped, and poof. And my chest tightness and I-- now back in time-- roll over onto my side, gasping, trying to look at those blinds and the lights coming through. And I try to sleep. But sleep doesn't come.This is your shadow on my wall.
This is my flesh and blood.
This is what I could have been.
-- David Bowie, "I have Not Been To Oxford Town."
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