A question has been asked of science since it first took its steps away from religion. The question has evolved and changed over the years but has never been answered beyond being dismissed as irrelevant or outside the realm of science, suggesting that it's both superstitious and a spurious waste of time. The question has an implied illegitimacy - the question has been variously "Can science prove god?", "Can science prove the soul?", "Can science prove reality is not an illusion?", "Is there a such a thing as empirical?", "Where does the observer end and the observed begin?" and a million other variations.

All of these questions are the same question. They're all asked from a sense that most humans can't seem to shake. That we're not here, or there, distinct or alone. That the universe isn't mechanical. Cause and effect are not random at all. That there is an overwhelming presence or connectedness. Be this expressed as belief in god or gods, a universal consciousness, a mishmash of quantum physics, the paranormal or the supernatural.

These questions are often dismissed as a common human need to believe in purpose as with the belief in destiny or fate, a fear of mortality as with a belief in the afterlife or reincarnation, a need to feel important as with the belief in god, or purely the realm of philosophers as with questions toward the underlying nature of reality and specifically mans place in it.

There is a basic assumption that science needn't be bothered with these questions because science is about mapping what can be tested and proved. It's about setting up experiments and crunching the numbers. That ultimately science is a way toward knowledge but not necessarily answers.

The way I ask this question is "Is there a such thing as empirical?" Is there a point at which you can differentiate between the experimenter and the experiment. Often this question is seen from the perspective of the experiment. It's now known that there is an interaction between the two but it's believed that the effects of the interaction can be minimized by repeating the experiment over time and by different experimenters. This assumes two things. First that the effects the experimenter has on the experiment are limited and second that all experimenters are not themselves connected.

My personal belief is that both of these assumptions are false. That there is a great if not complete link between experimenter and experiment, that there is no distinction there at all and that all experimenters, scientists, all people, all things for that matter, are not just intertwined but the same. I answer the question within that beliefs, of course.

Science is a tool, but not one that simply measures. It's not a microscope, it's a screw driver. Science's ultimate end is it's application.

What we're doing is learning to walk on land again, so to speak. Science is part of our evolution. Except it's not hopping out of the sea on onto the beaches that we're talking about.

Regardless of the merit of the beliefs that bring such a question to bare it is not simply a matter for philosophy or religion. It's a question of what science is, not what it is not.

It's brisk. How often do you notice the temperature when you're dreaming?

Wheat forever. From up here it looks like a carpet, this one burning. High above the world, not flying but tall on legs, spidery thin. High above the world and far below a gray sky. Not blue like you might hope. A gray that says something's a little off, a little dark, about this dream.

The smell of ozone and carpet shampoo. That new car smell, or is it old car smell baked fresh in the sun? Dust mites play in front of me, sunlight reflecting off their backs. They move about in front of me in some microscopic battle I can't quite make out except as tiny points of light. Dreams often take place in cars, this one is in a mini-van, but still it's not uncommon.

I see a corporate office park, it's vastness surrounds me. There's something on the radio about "fail-safes" and I see, heading downward, shallow on the horizon, a nuclear missile. It has a white trail behind it. It's not like it would be in real life. In real life you wouldn't see it or hear it. You'd just see a cloud of debris filling your vision or, if you're close like I am, you'd just be gone. Completely gone. In the dream I see a large missile. Several large missiles actually. All but one veering up and away. Disaster averted but for one. My last thought is a sardonic "of course." The missile disappears behind a glass office building I'm lost in white. I'm not breathing. Not suffocating. I don't need to breath. It's disconcerting. Everything suddenly is nothing save for me in it. This lasts for a moment as I sense time happening all at once and finally the universe collapsing. Waking at the point of death is one thing, but to dream of death is something entirely different. I've had this sort of dream before and, just as I have before, wake feeling a deep loss followed quickly by an indescribable joy at being alive even with death on the horizon.

I dream that I'm having sex with a short hispanic woman. She has a slight pot belly and enormous breast. She's inexperienced and nervous. She's wearing white and silver. A white dress made of a slick and stiff material, and a sequenced silver top with a sports bra underneath it. She's slowly taking them off while she straddles my leg but I stop her and we begin to dry hump. I wake up and remember her name and that she had a small mole beneath her eyebrow. I quickly forget her name as I start to realize it was a dream and not real, though I shouldn't say I realized. It felt more like forgetting that it wasn't real. She smelled like soap. I could smell it long after I woke up.

A journey of many tiny steps

A world of porcelain and relief, I don't know how long I've spent in bathrooms over my life but it's a significant period of time. Not only in the sense of what, I'm sure, is a lot of time outright, but much more significantly in how that time affected me. I think when you go to the bathroom a deep archetype is experienced. It's modern mans last link to the temple. A refuge of meditation lasting against the modern speed tribes relentless destruction of peace and quiet.

While young I could spend an hour at a time in the bathroom. I refined my ability to read there, endlessly pouring over magazines and those large paper back books which seem to serve no room better. I would take the back off the toilet, wrap it in a towel, lying it across my lap, and use it as a set to play out the sorts of fantasies young boys have, with action figures. My parents, I'm sure, were endlessly amused or perhaps frustrated by the hours of sound effects overheard as I forced my G.I. Joes into tragic pitched battles.

As I got older I found I continued to spend a lot of time in the bathroom, exclusively entertaining myself with books, what few action figures I had left, now hidden away. As I began to socialize more on my own, with a car and a license, I became self conscious of how long I spent in the bathroom. Like an isolated tribesmen suddenly clearing the jungle onto a modern highway I found myself looking at my habits as quaint and embarrassing. I tried to go faster, but despite my best efforts I just couldn't get my bathroom visits to less then 15 minutes.

I noticed that my friends would spend between 1 and 3 minutes in the bathroom, hardly long enough for any deep contemplation but it did beg the question - why did I take so long? It occurs to me now that I never noticed how long my parents spent in the bathroom.

At some point I just got into that 1 - 3 minute zone. I do, sometimes, miss the peaceful meditation of a fifteen to thirty minute bathroom stop but more often I'm thankful, like when I use a public bathroom and I don't have to stay in there for too long.

The day I meet God I was standing in line at the DMV. It happens that way sometimes. I wouldn't describe God as a him though. It wasn't like I meet a person. God is like the audience, only you don't know you're on stage and you might be acting your part, drowning in mud after a pitched battle trying to stay alive or fighting cancer in your hospice bed or just standing in line like I was, when all of sudden the theater lights come on and that's God.

I stood there for a while, not sure at all what to make of it. Seeing suddenly how flat the sets were, how phoney the dialog. You can't quite go back to your character at that point. It's not like you lose yourself. It's more like waking up. You suddenly remember the rest of yourself, out of the dream or remember you need to get milk in the real world, even though the part you're playing on stage is in the middle of dying from a stabbing.

When I died I remember thinking it was a little like that, but more. You haven't just broken character for a moment, catching yourself before you laugh off queue. It's like the show's run is over and you're overwhelmed with nostalgia and fond memories but excited to finally be able to leave that character. The rest after that, it's just like when you were alive except you don't take things as seriously because you remember what it was like. So when you die again... well you gain some insight and experience. It's not as exciting.

It'd be nice to die again, for the first time, actually. But what can you do?

It started with tether ball. At least that was the first time I remember that competitive spirit. That feeling of accomplishment you get when you figure out how to beat someone in something. Tag, hide-and-seek, marco polo, lava monster. All those games involved a wide range of skills and talents. But tether ball was just about getting one good rotation, ball low on your end, high on theirs and then you pound away and around it goes. Finally that satisfying clank as the chain between rope and ball reaches the pole that lets you know you've won.

Simple games, but dynamic enough to remain entertaining. Checkers, connect four, uno and tether ball. Those games hold a special place in my memories. The board games I remember playing on rainy days in the auditorium while waiting for the bus. Tether ball, the courts to busy during recesses and lunch, were empty except for the dedicated, after school. I was an off again, on again, latch key kid so I spent plenty of time in after school programs and tether ball was our thunder dome.

By high school it was basket ball or football. But elementary school it was all about that giant cat toy. A metal pole on, in the better schools, a thick rubber mat, the feeling of the old converted volley ball as I hit it and the sound of approaching buses sneaking in after rush hour traffic. That was how the days ended in those after school programs.

The late night checker champ. Eyes locked on the pieces, as they fall aside and double jump. He had all sorts of strategies. Whittle away, double jeopardy, pin and gang bang. He took the whole thing way to seriously. While the hours ticked away he could hear the world go by outside his window. He played internet checkers and never looking up or out the noises his neighbors made might as well have been his cheering section. The baby crying when he loses, the girl down a few doors cackling when he struck deep into his opponents side of the board.

He often wondered what his opponents looked like. Pimply, red eyed teenagers or strange taiwanese guys in their wives panties. He fantasied color commentary as his games were broadcast, perhaps on japanese television. "Oh look at that!" An excited voice would say, "that's double jeopardy right there, red doesn't know what to do!" They would shout as they hung on every move, dissecting the minutia of his strategy for a riveted audience.

God only knows the sort of mascot a sport like this would have but it would scream in excitement at every well placed set of moves. Maybe it would be a leather gimp who would mock the defeated by lightly beating them with a whip and rubbing it's nipples while the audience is worked up in to a frenzy of double jump lust.

He often referred to his opponents by the only two things he had to identify them. Their nation and opening move. Their was polish, who he feared, and spanish who he knew he could take advantage of. There was english middle and israel left side, german protects his pieces and russian sacrifices. If they did the same he would be english left side or english force trades, english wins at the end some how.