Wiley Wiggins dreams of playing with origami fortune teller ("dream is destiny"), then floats away, touching a car handle.

Bill Wise picks up Wiley in his boat car, telling him to go with the flow. He's in a state of constant departure. Random choices important. Linklater is with them.

Buddhism

Taoism

Philosopher Robert C. Solomon defends existentialism against socially constructed, fragmented self of postmodernism: "it's your life to create."

Kim Krizan tells Wiley that words are inert, dead symbols. At first they were survival tactics. They try to help us transcend our isolation, allow for spiritual communion.

Vedanta

Situationism

Eamonn Healy, a chemistry professor, predicts the evolution of a neohuman manifesting truth, loyalty, justice, freedom.

Journalist J. C. Shakespeare rants about human self-destruction & the media making us passive observers; sets fire to himself like Vietnamese Buddhist monk in 1963.

Situationism

[Buddhism]

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke muse in bed about dream and multiple consciousnesses, death, collective memory, and the simultaneity of scientific discoveries.

Taoism

Tibetan Buddhism

Dreaming

Prisoner swears revenge against his captors. He's trapped in his self-created hell, like Sartre's characters in No Exit.

[Existentialism]

David Sosa, physics professor, discusses free will in Augustine & Aquinas, and how it's compromised by modern physics.

Existentialism

Alex Jones, radical broadcaster, rants over a loudspeaker about how political systems of control turn us into slaves.

Situationism

Otto Hoffman, a Quaker, wants us to be free from nothingness, to say Yes to one instant, and thus to all existence.

Buddhism

Existentialism (Nietzsche's love of fate)

Aklilu Gebrewold, African-American writer, speaks of liminal experiences, radical subjectivity, and the great moment.

Vedanta

Situationism

Carol Dawson, novelist, and Lisa Moore, English professor, speak of feeling freer as they age and the fiction of personal identity.

Buddhism

A chimp speaks of subversive micro-societies and the possibilities of art while screening a rock performance and a showing of Kurosawa's film Dreams.

Situationism

Louis Mackey, a philosophy professor, laments people's fear and laziness, their inability to reach their true potentials.

Existentialism (Nietzsche on the Overman)

Violet Nichols asks Alex Nixon what's the story he's writing; it's just gestures, moments, fleeting emotions, he says.

[Postmodernism]

Steven Prince tells a bartender how he treasures his right to bear arms. He shoots the barkeep, who shoots him in return.

Clips on television: a man talks of flawed reality of the present; Mary McBay of lucid dream state reached by sorcerers, shamans; man talks of narrowness of the single ego.

Dreaming

[Buddhism]

Three men: Jason Hodge identifies waking & dreaming perceptions; Guy Forsyth wants to combine waking & dreaming abilities; John Christensen says fun rules.

Dreaming

Caveh Zahedi talks about film allowing us to see holy moments (Andre Bazin saw God as reality, film as presenting God). He and David Jewell have such a moment.

Bazin

[Vedanta]

[Situationism]

Adam Goldberg, Nicky Katt, two others want to rupture the spell of the consumer society, interrupt continuum of everyday life. "Mr. Debord" discusses not working.

Situationism

A man pops out of a train car, tells Wiley he's a dreamer, and that it's the most exciting time to be alive: don't be bored.

Buddhism

Dreaming

Ryan Power, an autistic kid, tells Wiley that 1000 years is but an instant, to build beautiful artifacts, feel joy, sorrow, etc.

Vedanta

Taoism

[Situationism]

Tiana Hux, performance artist, compels Wiley to communicate with her, rejecting the "ant" autopilot most of us use everyday. In lucid dreams we're in control.

Situationism

Dreaming

Buddhism

Mad poet/tour guide Timothy "Speed" Levitch speaks of the ongoing wow, Lorca's poems, that we're the authors of our lives, that life understood is life lived.

Existentialism

Situationism

Buddhism

Short scene: Steve Brudniak, artist, says person you are in a dream isn't your real self - you haven't yet met yourself.

Dreaming

TV: Catholic puppet speaks of heaven & hell; Steven Soderbergh tells joke about Billy Wilder and Louis Malle; Mary McBay discusses post-death dream body.

Dreaming

Short scene: man on street says that as pattern gets more intricate, being swept along is no longer enough.

Bill Wise returns as convenience store clerk (denies other role) bemoaning customer who explodes burritos in his microwave.

Mona Lee, actress, sees the self as a logical structure. Life was raging all around her, and every moment was magical.

Buddhism

Short scene: an elderly woman draws Wiley's portrait in a garden.

Taoism

Short scene. Passing man: "Kierkegaard's last words were, 'Sweep me up'".

Existentialism

Orchestra from earlier in film plays a tango, dancers dance. Linklater plays pinball, tells Wiley about Philip K. Dick story coming true in his life, dream of Lady Gregory: there's only one instant, it's right now. God invites us into eternity. There's only one story: moving from the No to the Yes.

Dreaming

Vedanta

[Existentialism (Nietzsche)]

Wiley wakes up, walks down street on beautiful day, begins to float again.

Dreaming, Vedanta, Taoism