This morning on the train I had a conversation with Train Talk about alternate realities. Not surprisingly, he completely disagreed with me and insists that there are no alternate realities, at least not in the way that I explained them.
In general I don't like telling personal stories about my wife, but I think this is pretty important so I will anyways. Also our anniversary is this week, so its nice to mention stories about your wife in honor.
A number of years ago, shortly after we got married, my wife was reading Roots by Alex Haley. Somewhere in the middle of the book, the little girl (I forget her name) was getting raped. My wife couldn't handle the book anymore and put it away to never read it again. I was aghast. What kind of person would let a poor girl be raped for eternity just because she couldn't handle the end of the story. After arguing with my wife about it for a couple days and pleading with her to at least finish the rape part of the book and put an end to her suffering, I finally picked up the book and read it through cover to cover and put an end to the story.
Train Talk, like my wife and a number of other people, feels that the little girl was not actually being raped even while she was in the middle of reading the story. Putting the book away doesn't force a continuum, it is merely stopping reading which is supposed to be an enjoyable or educational pursuit.
These people simply can't see out of the narrow confines of their box and may not even realize that they are in a box to begin with. When you read a book or watch a movie or invest any part of yourself in something, that forms a new reality. That story or action now exists in your sphere of existence and influences you and can even have a strong impact. In each person lies a number of actual realities. This is what forms the uniqueness of an individual. There is no such thing as hot or cold as a global definition, merely as a concept, because your personal reality defines whether something is hot or cold, not an arbitrary temperature.
When you read a book with Ted Nash as the enemy, to take a DeMille book for example, he becomes your personal enemy. He has the ability to harm you in ways that you can't even begin to imagine. It is only a person's reckless irresponsibility to understand the consequences that allows him to accept an occurrence without being able to place the blame on the root cause of the problem. This was one of the purposes of the choose your own adventure books that were popular in the 80s. each person had the power to determine how the book was going to end and therefore be able to actually compete on an even playing field.
The problem is that there really is no reality and everything that surrounds you is an alternate reality. The issue becomes whether you focus on one reality so intently that you not only ignore the other realities surrounding you, but are completely unaware of their existence.
People must open their eyes and accept that life is a prism and not simply a ray of light.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
that would also mean if you began to write a post for your blog and stopped in the middle and never finished the post, the topic is left open for eternity, or at least until you get back to it...
I knew I wasn't the only one who understood
I'd say life can be a prism or a ray of light or it can be just about anything and all at the same time. And at the same time those books could be read or reread indefinately or unread.I'd expect you to say something like nothing new under the sun, same old same old - the blueprint can not be affected. For me what swims around in our minds, consciously, subconsciously or in form or type is basically raw stuff that only rarely makes sense and most of which can be and is misconstrued. And when it isn't it hardly makes any difference. And by the way, everything stays open and unanswered and no weight, no depth and no breadth make any eternal difference although interesting, even valuable or riveting - but not irreplaceable.
Interesting way of looking at things...
happy anniversary!
Post a Comment