A conversation that I may someday have.

A conversation that I may someday have:
by Boats

“Egad! I know you!”
“Uh, did I-”
“You were a professor of mine at Oswego University. I took a world cinema class with you.”
“Oh, ...oooh. Weren’t you the guy who used to sneak beers into all of the screenings?”
“You knew about that?”
“And then we had that awkward moment in the can before a movie, when you were trying to sneak a peak at the film we were going to watch?”
“Yeah, that was me. It was “Amores Peros”. I didn’t talk much, but I loved that class and I really wish that I had had the balls to say a bit more.”
“I think you might have wrote some good essays.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised you remember, that must have been 3 years ago.”
“Yeah well, my memory is anything but selective. But, you must have picked that up from my disjunctive lectures and obscure references during class.”
“You did love that Quizno’s sub commercial with the singing rat things an inordinate amount. So what are you doing in Buffalo?”
“Just visiting some friends really, and taking a break for a bit. Are you onto graduate studies here or something?”
“Actually, I’m taking a bit of a break myself. I’ve kind of been on a leave of absence... for about 2 years.”
“Well, you must be up to something productive, you don’t look disheveled enough to be out on the street. That is, unless you are one of those clean bums, who get free hair cuts and stuff from the beauty schools.”
“Do I look like I’ve had my hair cut recently? No, I’ve got an ok apartment with some friends and I work at Blockbuster and a movie theatre sometimes on the weekends. I do a lot of writing too.”
“I guess all that movie talk was useful after all. Writing huh? Of course, as an English teacher and all, I have to ask ‘have you been published?’”
“Just a few letters and stuff, nothing that I’ve gotten paid for.”
“Well, don’t give up. As long as you have a backup plan there is nothing wrong with trying. It took me years to get published too. As long as you are doing interesting work, you just have to stay motivated.”
“Actually I have written something that you might find interesting.”
“I happen to have some time, so why don’t you tell me about it? I have some friends that are always looking for fresh work.”
“Haha. I don’t think this would go over all that well in a magazine.”
“What’s the subject matter?”
“This conversation.”
“You mean like an interview or something?”
“No. I’ve already written it.”
“So... you wrote about a former student and professor who barely know each other meeting again after a couple years and talking. Well, that’s kind of a-”
“No. I mean this exact conversation. Verbatim.”
“Well now, that is interesting. How’d you manage that one?”
“I don’t really know. I was drunk when I did it, but it made a hell of an impression on me.”
“As prophetic inspiration should. So you have known what I was going to say this whole time that we’ve been talking?”
“Not really. I wrote it a long time ago and haven’t read it since. I don’t have a photographic memory or anything, so it’s not like I’m reciting a script or anything, but some how I’m positive that everything that I’ve said and everything that you’ve said, I’ve already written down.”
”Wow. You’re sure of this?”
“Absolutely.”
“So you have this document somewhere?”
“Actually, I slipped it into this jacket pocket directly after I printed it off and I’ve kept it there ever since. It probably has beer stains and water marks all over it but it’s still there.”
“Um... can I read it?”
“Not yet. I need to ask you what you think about all of this first.”
“What I think of what?”
“Me having fortold the future.”
“Well, I have to admit off the bat that I’m not fully convinced that this letter does exist. It’s much more likely that you are either deceiving me, in a decidedly interesting fashion of course, or you are...”
“I’m what?”
“I hate to be cliché, but I guess if everything I say is already recorded then novelty is kind of out the window... Have you ever had a psychological evaluation?”
“No. But, how would my sanity or lack there of, account for this envelope marked ‘A conversation that I may some day have’.”
“Alright. While that may be very startling and you’ve definitely hooked me, that title could apply to anyone. It would be a lot more convincing if it had my name on it.”
“Oddly enough, even though I thought you were a great teacher, I never remembered your name. Not even while I was attending your class, and I simply never felt like looking it up.”
“Just in case you are unstable, I hope you’ll appreciate my continued anonymity.”
“Of course.”
“Can I see it now?”
“No, sorry. I need to hear what you think about it first and this time try and assume that I’m telling the truth about this. I remember that as being the most important part of why I wrote this thing in the first place, and just in case I am wrong, which I’m not, I’d like to hear what you have to say first. It just seems way too interesting a puzzle for me to allow you to pass up.”
“Agreed. [Sigh] Alright, since you won’t willingly show me the direct evidence, before we move onto suppositions, can we at least shoot around my initial theory first?”
“Which is?”
“My first guess would be that you are just lying, maybe pathologically, but somehow you don’t seem like the lying type and there seems to be little benefit in this kind of prank. I mean, I don’t even see anyone watching you get away with it.”
“Nope, I came here by myself to read and relax after a long day at work.”
“You seem pretty genuine so then maybe you’re just crazy, a-at least in some sense of the word.”
“So you think I might have like prophetic psychosis or something?”
“I’m no psychologist but that sounds about right. Have you ever had this feeling before; like you’ve predicted the future?”
“Actually. I have. I’ve always been kind of a lucky guesser and I predicted a girl getting pregnant before she did, and it’s not like she was a slut or an-“
“See, now we might have a logical, scientific solution. Have you ever had what you would consider a “spiritual experience”?
“Well, yeah but everybody-”
“Again, while I’m no professional it seems maybe you are the kind of person who is psychologically prone to that sort of mystical de ja vu and all that stuff, maybe it’s the drugs I don’t know.”
“Alright. So is that all you’ve got to say about this thing, that I’m crazy?”
“Damn, I would’ve expected more resistance from a truly crazy person. No, I’m not done yet. Now it’s time to consider your supposition; that you really are telling the truth and also not crazy. That’s obviously more interesting anyway.”
“I think so. What would it mean if I am right?”
“Well, it could obviously suggest that events are predetermined and that free will doesn’t exist and that some how the universe has decided that you should be a couple of years ahead of the curve, at least for one conversation. That is all it is right one conversation?”
“Yeah, it’s just one complete conversation. But I really have no idea how long it is. I could always type pretty fast when I was drunk and even though it’s only seems a couple of pages thick it could be any font size.”
“Ok, now can I read it?”
“Not quite yet.”
“Are you going to keep me here all night pandering about something that may or may not exist, because I can do that in the comfort of my classroom?”
“You can leave anytime you’d like.”
“Maybe it’s just a fantastic example of absolute randomness? You know the whole ‘thousand monkeys typing Shakespeare’ thing.”
“So you’re saying that my conceiving of a sizable conversation, word for word, 2 years before it happens is essentially equivalent to flipping a coin (albeit a large number of times)? I think maybe you’re the crazy one.”
“Yeah, that didn’t work for me either.”
“It seems like cinema should provide us with an easy answer. Everything in movies, at least the good ones, has some kind of meaning, some kind of comment on the universe or the things that populate it for the viewer to consider. So what if, in a movie, someone wrote down a conversation two years before it happened? What would that mean to a film buff like yourself?”
“Well, I’ve actually already considered that and I don’t think it’s directly applicable but it’s drawn me in an interesting direction.”
“Why isn’t it directly applicable?”
“If you consider the impending wave of virtual reality to be part of the natural evolution of cinema, then it seems that reality and cinema have a truly tenuous separation. The ability to replicate more and more kinds of sensory impressions has made the barrier between the two ... well merely a film, all pun intended. This is probably why you are so comfortable applying the rules of cinema to life. But what is the difference?”
“Well, it’s the same as it has always been. The viewer is separated from the film. They have no bearing on its outcome. So are you pulling the old “cogito ergo sum” stuff? In other words, while I’m in reality I create thought, which in turn exists as part of reality, while a viewer of a film, or virtual reality or whatever, can’t add thoughts that aren’t already somehow inherent in the film, even if it is interactive.”
“But you know as well as I do that your thoughts, as well as the thoughts of those around you, all of whom are viewers mind you, do shape the forms that cinema takes. That’s what the marketing of movies is all about, searching the collective consciousness for profitable ideas that appeal to as many of those thoughts as possible. So all of your cogito-ing does make an impact on the film. I don’t know maybe there is some fundamental difference, but it seems to me that the impact of your thoughts on reality is at least as distorted as the impact of your thoughts on cinema.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So is there a difference?”
“The difference that I’m thinking of is duration. Films, no matter how long they are will have to end before reality does, because in some way, they exist temporally inside of reality. Even theoretically, at the very most a film could only last for all of reality, maybe it’s God’s cosmic home movies or whatever, but it can’t last past reality.
“But what if time is infinite, then there would be no difference. Reality and sensory experience (i.e. film) would be indescernable.”
“Yes, but luckily for our sakes reality and exposure to reality are not the same thing. We’re all gonna die and since cinema is made to fit into life spans we can, as a species, help each other to distinguish reality for illusion, even the illusions that we create for each other. Remember the Ingmar Bergman film “The Magician”?”
“Yeah, were the contrast science and magic and find that cinema is actually closer to magic?”
“Right, so that sensory experience can last your entire life, while your exposure to reality is equal to your life. But really the point I’m trying to make is that cinema evaluation can’t be applied to this question about the predictablility of this conversation, because there won’t necessarily be any end or resolution. So whatever size font you’ve used, you’ve produced a finite interpretation of a period which is potentially infinite.”
“Well, it’s not really potentially infinite. You said it yourself, “we’re all gonna die”. Any conversation is limited, at least by the life spans of the individuals.”
“One could argue, actually, that conversations endure for generations. Look at the dialectics of Socrates which have been rehashed over and over by people throughout the centuries between then and now. That is, in essense, one long conversation.”
“Well, I don’t think that is the kind of thing I’ve written, but you were going somewhere with this idea of duration?”
“If you do give me that slip of paper, I read it, and we continue our conversation, we will have cheated fate, or at least your prediction of fate, by extending this particular “film” past the credits.”
“Yeah, but haven’t you ever seen that episode of the twilight zone when the lady on the horse continually chases herself?”
“No. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Well. Sometimes even when you know the future, you don’t change it or you can’t change it. I know there have been movies like that. “La Jette” kind of dealt with it. Somebody chases themselves through time trying to write some kind of wrong, only to uncover the reason that they committed the supposed wrong in the first place.”
“I don’t really see how that applies here. This isn’t about time travel. This is about prediction. Questioning divination shouldn’t bring up ideas about time travel.”
“But why not? Aren’t you really just bringing something from the future into the present in this case ideas which form a prediction?”
“Yeah, I see what your saying. Now come on! I think I’ve been very generous here and despite the fact that I am interested in this query, I’m growing unbearably curious. Either admit that this was a clever little trick, or give me that letter.”
“Alright. But before you open it you should know one more thing.”
“What? Am I on candid camera?”
“No. You have the last word of the whole letter. I remember that specifically. ”
“Good. So all I have to do is read this divination-themed diary entry and say something completely different from my “last word” and you’re prediction will be invalid or we will have cheated fate or whatever, right?”
“Right. Go ahead and read it.”
“This really has been in there for a long time. It’s really hard to read. Alright let’s see... ‘Egad, I know you, Uh, did I,’... ‘Oddly enough, even though’. Holy shit you weren’t lying. It’s all fucking here. ‘Cogito ergo sum’ yada yada, ‘lady on the horse’.”
“I told you it was true. So what does it all mean, professor?”
“‘I don’t really see how that applies here.’ ‘you’re prediction will be invalid’. ‘Holy shit you weren’t lying. It’s all fucking here’”
“So are you ready to cheat fate or what? You know, the more I think about it, maybe I do have that “prophetic psychosis” thing. I’ve always thought the world was like some kind of solvable calculus problem ready to be cracked. Everything I’ve ever experienced has seemed predetermined. Come on, say something new for once this entire conversation. Hell this could be the first time I’ve heard something that wasn’t predetermined in my entire life and you’d better make it good and original. Maybe you should just make a noise or something, don’t even use words. What are you waiting for? Lay it on me. Novelty for the first time in my life.”

“Fin”