Friday, February 18, 2011

From in between.

In American Gods there's a sequence where Wednesday and Shadow step behind the scenes to escape the bad men who pursue them. Behind-the-scenes as in behind the reality in which we play out our lives. Behind the scenes is a barren, alien landscape of smooth stone where rules don't quite apply. Reminds me of a dream I had.

In the dream everyone I knew was on a train, but I had somehow fallen through the space between the cars. Far from being on land, the silvery train in fact rocketed through a howling expanse of empty sky, a sky which was blindingly bright, and pale, and through which only a hint of the world below was visible in bland patches between insubstantial wisps of streaming cloud.

The wind and the sound of the train roared as I floated above, limbs thrown back, lifted and pinned and buffeted in the sky by roiling air, struggling so hard to dive back down again into the train for safety, having slipped out from between the cars.

Now I ask you: which life is real? Is it the train, with the appearance (or the fact) of a bottom, of sides, and of a top, a train traveling on a determined course? Or is it in fact the expanse of directionless, limitless sky howling imperceptibly outside? Hmm?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The real life is that which in perception exists. Without perception, there is no reality.

E.C. Hayward said...

I'm still meditating on this response. A brain kept alive in a tank with no eyes, ears, etc. It's owner can still think and has memories. Are they real...

Not So Simply Single said...

Interesting point of view...

Lisa