...In which our heroine most certainly has a purple aura.

The thoughts that come late at night are often the ones I find simultaneously most interesting and most troubling. I've always been one who takes a while to sleep, as it in these times that I think the deepest and thus it takes me a while to fall asleep. These are some of those thoughts.

Lately I've been wondering a lot about my perception skills. As mentioned before, my dreams are definitely on the odd side, but they're only part of the equation. This is going to seem like a weird thing to talk about, but I've been wondering if I have some kind of, for lack of a less cheesy term, sixth sense. Please, let me explain a moment before you go "wow, Katydid needs to get put the pipe down and get out of art school..."

I know things sometimes - what people are going to say before they say it. I have intense instances of deja-vu that come from things previously dreamt. I've dreamt things - like that Princess Diana died the night she did, or that Emily and Lane broke up the night they did - before they happen. I dreamt about someone I hadn't thought about in a long time, and suddenly they were back in my life in a very big, interesting way that the dream foretold. Sometimes, with new experiences, I know what they'll be like, what things will feel like before they happen. I get feelings about people immediately upon meeting them on whether or not they'll be important to me. Not everyone, but sometimes.

This all sounds totally fucking ridiculous, I know. But it's weird as it goes on, and I find myself wondering about it lately. Agnostic as I am, the two concepts I kind of buy into are reincarnation and karma. As I understand it, the Buddhist notion of reincarnation makes sense of ESP and things like deja-vu as moments when a former incarnation of the self brushes up with the present self. Karma ties into the equation in that every thing's present incarnation is directly proportional to the good or bad karma they produced in a former life - if you were an asshole, expect to be a dung beetle.

Reincarnation kind of also ties into the idea for some that time is in a continuous loop and these feelings of clairvoyance/pre-cognition/deja-vu what have you are when these loops of time of the past, present, and future self brush against each other.

I don't know how I feel about reincarnation or karma fully - science tells me, and I wholly believe when we die we're nothing more than worm chow. It's a nice thought that good people get what they deserve as do the bad, but life proves that to be unrealistic. I question myself for even hesitating to think that such concept exist, but then I wonder about why I know things I shouldn't. And the things I do know are tied directly into my dreams.

There's really no point to all of this other then my questioning of the situation. I think it's fascinating how little we know about the human mind - for instance, I was reading today about the pineal gland in the brain which is thought to release DMT, the most powerful psychedelic substance known to man. Some cultures think it to be a literal third eye because of its placement in the brain. DMT replaces the user's entire reality with one dose.  It is released in humans when we're born, when we dream, and when we die. It also occurs in lots of plants and can be smoked for what is apparently the most intense trip that one can take. It's also the most illegal substance on the planet in this form - but yet occurs naturally in the human brain and causes few side effects. Doesn't it seem like we would want to try such a substance and not condemn it? Down, hippie, down.

I have no answers to my questions about such things as a sixth sense or reincarnation. I don't know why I dream the way I do, know the things I do, can guess things before they happen. I should probably read a book on Buddhism or something, but honestly, I don't know that I'd buy it fully. We're not supposed to know the answers to the big questions, so why worry about it? I guess, but I'm still curious as to why I dream crazily and then see things again in deja-vu. If there was a former Katydid, I should certainly thank her for the good karma she's passed along.

These are the thoughts best kept for late nights, sitting up with friends when the conversation unexpectedly turns into the heaviest of the heavy stuff. We won't ever know the answers, at least most of us, to this mortal coil, but half the fun is in the wonder and awe of life that creates.

Unrelated, my love for Jim James and My Morning Jacket continues. This is beautiful -