catching up on blogs and twitter feeds i have the TV on in the background and my attention returns to the movie total recall [1990] starring arnold schwarzenegger, sharon stone and michael ironside, and directed by paul verhoeven.  this flick is the best of the bunch for schwarzenegger.  a serious mind-fuck of an action film we are tasked to ponder the human mind as it perceives time and space.  this movie asks us to wonder what is real, what we remember or what we do.  i think camus would've shit his pants at the thought of this movie.  for schwarzenegger's character, douglas quaid, is asked by the leader of the mars resistance, are we not what we do rather than what we remember?

and as i type there is that scene where quaid uses a hologram to trick the bad guys into thinking they are shooting at the real quaid rather than a reproduction of the character.  the scene is set and we are left without a firm answer.  what defines us, action or memories?

could it be both?  the brilliance of this flick is that we are never given the answer.  played for a roller-coaster ride the action feels oneiric.  we are in the liminal space between waking and dreaming.  what is real?  riddle me that one, batman.

i took a catnap this afternoon.  my dreams were quite vivid, but not interesting enough to record.  indeed, i have long thought that dreams were the fictions created by our mind to work out issues that exist in our waking life.  but the content and substance of the dream is of little consequence.  like this afternoon.  i knew i was dreaming.  i can't tell you how i knew that i was dreaming.  but i was able to step outside of the narrative, as if i could edit a piece of writing.  even if i could not shape the story i knew the story was not my waking life.

but the shape, feel, texture and taste of my dreams did follow my waking life.  much like this flick that i am watching now on TV.  we are the dreamers of the dream.   we can shape our stories as we are shaped by them.  especially at the end of this film where the action concludes with the thud of a fist landing on a chin but is shaped by the cloudiness of the dreamer of the dream.