Consciousness is a bizarre thing

I was riding in the bus today, looking out the window into the cool blue October sky, musing once again at the amazingness of conscious thought. I don't really understand how it works, or why it is so individual to one person. 'Why can't I swap realities with the person in front of me,' I wondered. 'Why not with someone across the world? Why do my thoughts stay attached to this mind, to this body?'

And I was tempted to think that it had something to do with a soul, but then I started thinking about lesser animals that supposedly have no soul. I mean, you could reasonably argue the possibility that the consciousness of gnats are free to hop from gnat to gnat, or that maybe they share their consciousness so that they're all really the same conscious being, just in many different places at once. But those arguments would never work for something more complex, like a dog for instance. I mean, there are very clearly good dogs and bad dogs. They don't change from day to day as another dog's consciousness enters and leaves, off to experience life nosing through the garbage of France. And dogs are obviously different enough from each other so that one can tell that each dog's consciousness is personal to itself.

So that means that either, a) personal consciousness is not tied in with a person's soul, or b) animals have souls too, which means that I have been eating something that had a soul before it was slaughtered and packaged and put in my dinner.

Then I got off the bus and my mind moved on to other things, such as...

There is a major restructuring going on at Holy Cross right now. Several of the organizations that had been housed in my building are moving location to Second Chance Alternative High School not too far from here, leaving all these offices open to new mentors and what-not that are being hired. I will not get one of these offices. My office is the computer lab. I will probably still not get a desk. And I will probably still not get a filing cabinet either. I hate having to carry everything I need with me back and forth from home to work everyday. But my desire to have a secure place to leave my things is not on the forefront of the minds of the higher-ups in charge of such things.

So I did the only thing I knew to do: I complained to the receptionists. Now, it is common knowledge of anyone who has ever bothered to pay attention that offices, businesses, even major corporations, are not run by the bosses, the managers, the CEOs. They are run by the secretaries.

I first mentioned to Sr. Angie sometime around January or February that I would like to have a desk with a lock. She said she could probably get me a filing cabinet. I said that would be great. I got nothing.

But last week, I mentioned to the receptionists my dilemma, and voila! Today I came in and Luz told me she had cleaned out a cabinet, previously filled with junk, for me. It has a lock and everything and I need only get "official" permission to use it and it's mine.

I'm telling you-- secretaries and librarians run the world. If only we could get rid of CEOs and politicians, everything would be perfect.

And also, on another unrelated topic, Helen moved out last week. She went home. It was a pretty sudden move, although not entirely unexpected. She was unhappy, and everyone knew it even though she wouldn't admit it to anyone. Last Friday I called home to let Michael know I would be late. One of my roommates told me over the phone that she had heard from another roommate, who had heard from another roommate, who had heard from another roommate, who had heard from another roommate, who had heard from Helen herself that she was going to go home on Sunday. I was the last to know-- but not because of any prejudices along the rumor mill line-- just because I work late on Fridays. But anyway, we weren't supposed to know. It was a secret. But I figured, hey, it had gone this far. So I turned to the receptionist on duty as I hung up the phone and I said, "Maria, one of my housemates is moving out." And then I told my Theatre Group too, and they said, "Oh. What time does the carwash start?" and I told them and half of them said they'd be late.

So Saturday afternoon, Helen told a few others of us that she was going to leave, and Sunday morning she rented a car and was gone. Sunday night at dinner, people were laughing. Open, all-out laughing, and that hadn't happened really yet this year. And everyone started talking and I realized that Helen had been perceived as a bit of a bully by several of my community members, and they had been afraid to really be open while she was around, and it reminded me of my experience with Valerie last year. All the same, I kind of wish things had worked out. But it was not to be. So community has started over, now with six members.

I'm working on three different stories right now that have to do with consciousness, and I suppose that is why I'm contemplating so much the way different people think and react. Plus, when you add in what is going on at work, and what is going on at home, there are all these people's feelings and experiences in flux, trying to get sorted out. And nobody seems to know what they are doing.

I don't know what I'm doing next year. I'm not even sure anymore that I know what I WANT to do next year. I dreamt last night that Michael and I were leaving Chicago, but I hadn't been able to bring myself to say goodbye to all the young adults I've worked with since I've been here. I was on a bus, and they knew that I would be leaving, but they didn't know I had already left. I saw them by the side of the road as we drove away, and I was crying because I hadn't had the nerve to say goodbye.

I woke up and I thought, 'Wow. That means so many things.'