Philosophical Phil, the groundhog guru, wakes up every day and says “Today is just like every other day there has ever been.” “Today is a good day. Today is my present. I think I will be here now. I think I will design a matrix.” Then he sits up on his hind legs, scratches his little round underbelly, gets out his corncob pipe, pulls a pile of dandelions from the ground, stuffs them in his pipe, and proceeds to smoke them.
After a few dandelion tokes, Phil looks over at me and says “You can guru, you can, just do what you will do, you can guru, you can.” He then hops up and performs a series of gymnastic moves, back flips and such, around the yard in a circular motion hitherto unseen in the history of rodent athletics. I am somewhat dumbfounded by Phil’s excited exercise and display of morning mojo.
“Phil”, I ask, “to what do we owe this morning’s display of excitement?”. Phil looks over to me, rolls his eyes up into his head, and falls down on his back laughing. After a minute or two of laughter, Phil straightens himself up, dusts himself off, and says to me “How do you pay the sun for fun and photons to see the day.” “How do you pay the moon for rays which light up the nighttime way? How much would you pay yourself just to be yourself? How can you be yourself if you think you are somebody else?”
“Phil”, I say, “your philosophy is perplexing, but pleasing to my soul.” “It’s kind of like Fruit Loops so let’s go get a bowl.” “Now you’re talking,” says Phil, “life is a bowl of Fruit Loops!” Phil and I walk to the kitchen and get out a box of the fruity goodness. I pour my bowl full and pass the box to my oversized woodchuck companion. Where upon Phil reaches in the box, grabs a handful of the fruity-licious treat, smashes them to smithereens, stuffs them in his corncob pipe, and proceeds to smoke them. “No Phil, not like that,” I say, somewhat in dismay. Phil gets a smile, a wide eyed smile, a grin from hairy little ear to ear, and then he says, “Um-mmm, fruity!”
I began to wonder, to question my reality a dream. Was I really having breakfast with a groundhog guru who performs a.m. acrobatics and smokes Fruit Loops in the morning? Phil raises an eyebrow and looks at me, “I heard that,” he said. “Now it is time for your early bird puzzle. You exist in three states of being: awake, sleep, and dream. How do you know in which one you really exist? What if your dream world was the real world and the real world but a dream?” Then he says, “You have three states of consciousness: superconscious, conscious, and subconscious. How do you know which one is actually conscious?”
I pause for a moment, blown away by this perplexing enigma offered by my groundhog friend. “I don’t know Phil, how do you know?” I say. Phil hops up from the kitchen chair and goes running for the door. As the door slams open and Phil goes skipping into the sun he shouts back at me, “You choose, it’s your matrix!” I sit there amazed on the back porch, observing my happy guru running into the sun, pondering the questions of my philosophical friend, and I can only think, “Déjà vu, I got to try something new!”
©2016 blindfish butler