In Continuum.

An Old Woman's Memories

Jesse," Are you close to your grandmother?"
Celine," Yeah, I think it's because I always have this strange feeling that I'm this very old woman laying down, about to die. You know, that my life is just her memories or something."

--- "Before Sunrise" (1995)

*

Death fascinates a lot of people, in fact every living person - positively or negatively - simply because it is inevitable and ultimate. And every person who actually knows how death is really like never made it back to the land of the living to tell us about it, to write a book about it or go onto Oprah's show to tell the woman audience about it. Like Time, Death too is everybody's best teacher. But the problem is that it kills all his students, and the knowledge of death can only be learned through time. You can't learn it faster than anybody else because you are a genius, because you are a doctorate degree holder, or because you simply have a higher I.Q. than anybody else. You will learn when it is your time, and because nobody knows about it, like a ship being shrouding in a cloud of mist, it forms a bunch of mysteries around itself, creating a lot of speculations and doubts.

But we are not talking about afterlife today, not about the existence of Heaven or Hell, not speaking of the existence of a human soul with the decrease in our body weight at the exact moment of our death. We are speaking of the transition between life and death today, right before a human body actually shuts down and give in to one's fate, to accept that they are about to die, and that death is absolute, and you are there face to face with it.

It is said that there is six to twelve minutes of brain activity before the whole body shuts down at death. Which means, no matter how you die, your brain will always take six to twelve minutes before it seizes to function. Of course, that is assuming that in the course of your death, your brain was still intact and not smashed into a bunch of tofu-like substance.

A common belief is that within that period of time, a person has one of those so-called flashbacks, looking through his or her life through another perspective altogether. Now, the idea was first introduced to me from Before Sunrise as mentioned above. But that idea never really made an impression because to be honest, i never really got what Julie Delpy's character was trying to say. But recently after watching Waking Life by the same director, her idea was brought up by herself yet again and that made a deeper impression this time around.

*

Jesse," I keep thinking about something you said."
Celine," Something I said?"
Jesse," Yeah, about how you often feel like you're observing your life from the perspective of an old woman about to die. Remember that?"
Celine," Yeah, I still feel that way sometimes. Like I'm looking back on my life, like my waking life is her memories."

--- "Waking Life" (2001)

*

Waking life is a movie about...well, there's not much plot to describe anyway. It really is about different scenes from a person's dreams, as he wanders through different dreams in a subconscious state. Along the way he speaks to people regarding the meaning of life, of philosophy, and other little topics related to life like anger, like love, like social alienation. So the characters Jesse and Celine from Before Sunrise appeared again somehow, and this time round it made a little more sense than the last.

I wonder if i am this old man looking upon my own life right now, and what he is thinking about this younger, more youthful self that is typing about death before the computer at the tender age of twenty one. He's probably thinking "Yes, i am right! I AM looking upon life from a different perspective at that very moment!" But then again, isn't it sad in a way that humans have to simplify things down to the very foundation sometimes. Like, why do we see ourselves as merely the memory of somebody else? Sure, that old man in essentially the same person as me, but i am who i am, not the memory of this dying old man, am i?

It's a little creepy to accept the idea that your brain actually takes that long a time to register that the body is dead, everything is going to seize function and you are about to die, for real. I wonder if the brain actually knows all those, or does it sink into a dream-like state and never to be conscious of the deteriorating state of the body? Does it feel pain as the blood flows away with the life that it once possessed? Or does it flow in and out of consciousness, looking at life from a different perspective, to be judgmental and to be objective, for once. Well, a lot of people through history have experienced that, but none of that can say for sure what actually happened because they are all six feet under.

Whatever that happens within that span of time, only time will tell perhaps. But for now, i don't fully agree with the idea of me being somebody else's memories. Which is to say i do not fully disagree either, and to quote Speed Levitch from "Waking Life", he said," On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion." Things doesn't need to make sense sometimes i guess, but to accept your own confusion might just be the way out. I mean, these are things that people like myself probably can never full grasp, and even if people claim that they can, they are mere theories after theories. Nothing is really solid enough to be educated, to be thought or made known. Before that actually happens, it really depends on one's beliefs. Whether you die and have an afterlife, or simple die and be eaten up by worms and other creepy-crawlies while being buried in six feet of soil and dirt. Let's admit it, as pessimistic as the latter idea might be, it's more probable than imagining a kingdom of Heaven, an afterlife where one can live happily ever after.