A variation on Tzuang Tzu

Amlanjyoti Goswami

A narrow bar, by the street corner.
I perch myself on a window seat

Approach the counter for another drink
When K rushes from the other side

Telling me about his dream last night. 
How I brush past him

And here all real, it happens again.
I smile as if I see it too.

I wake up.
Am I brushing past people in my dreams?

Or am I the one still dreaming about it?
I am no butterfly or Tzuang Tzu

But sometimes I see a butterfly dreaming a rainbow
Whirring beyond wings of flight. 

Sometimes I see a misty sky, just after rain.
Sometimes the sky sees me.

The Science

The poem is inspired by a story around the Taoist philosopher Tzuang Tzu (as once vividly described by Jose Luis Borges in his Norton lectures at Harvard). Tzuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly and on waking up, he did not know if he was a man who dreamt of being a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming of being a man. The idea of consciousness goes beyond human beings, and somehow remains a mystery even after many advances in science. 

A sensory project that breaks out of distinctions of spirit – matter, subject – object, nature – culture and human – nonhuman, may involve more relational ways of representation and understanding.  If ‘matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers’, as Karen Barad (2012) mentions in a heroic attempt to bring, among other things, humanities and sciences together, then we may be in a sudden moment of epistemological crisis and awareness. Ideas of inter-being and mind-matter also play a significant role in Lata Mani’s , ‘The Integral Nature of Things’, where the author provokes thoughtful interconnections in the very nature of being, including our existence and everyday life. We ‘inter-are’ in a world where interrelationships are existential as matter. In such worlds, subject and object are constantly changing, eyeing one another, circling each other, in different contemporaneous temporalities. But are we listening?  Is it with awareness of what we might be?

Perhaps the ideas of mind-matter and inter-being are also part of the equation when it comes to consciousness. Dream states are embedded in consciousness. While awake, a reasoned self takes over, and when asleep things are more colourful and porous. The boundaries go beyond human, to the sky, dreaming rainbow and human. Quantum perhaps, but also post human.

The Poet

Amlanjyoti Goswami has written two widely reviewed books of poetry, River Wedding and Vital Signs, published by Poetrywala. River Wedding was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Award. Published in journals and anthologies across the world, including Poetry, The Poetry Review, Penguin Vintage, Rattle, and Sahitya Akademi, he is also a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. He grew up in Guwahati and lives in Delhi.

Next poem: 'Andy' to Its Friends by A J Dalton