Describing Reality

It occurs to me that reality is a concept we struggle with permanently. Like, every year, countless of movies try and tackle the topic. I remember when the Matrix came out and my thirteen year old self had finally seen a realization of some concepts she had been grappling with. Was my reality, I would often ask myself, real? After all, does an insane person know they’re insane? If your mind gets so locked up in its own perception, how could you conceive the existence of anything else? And even if you can imagine that there exists an alternate perception, its influence on you would remain very limited, like wearing a blindfold in a lighted room. Although there is light everywhere and your being remains aware of that, the blindfold keeps your eyes shrouded in darkness.

Over the past few days (or weeks, really), I’ve been combing through my own perception of reality. It’s just fascinating to me that the physical and metaphysical platform existing before us as reality is something we rarely consider. We are so used to it, and to a large degree already know what to expect from it, so that we actually don’t know what it is we are experiencing. That’s why I’m making an extremely unscientific attempt to understand my perception of it. Ha!

From what I can tell, there are several platforms which help us to form our perception. The first is the space being occupied. I mean this as both physical space, the room around you, the width, length depth and appeal of it. But what I mean by space is also meant to include the intangible platform which is created as we interact with others. Think about it like this: When you’re having a particularly fulfilling conversation with a friend, you are following the events they are describing. What they are saying to you appears in the mind, and as you include your own thoughts and ideas to theirs, something between you is being created--a platform or a dimension where understanding can be allowed to flow easily. It’s the space created as you visualize what they are talking about. I think we also create a new space when we encounter any form of art. When a musician plays their instrument, the audience listens and in order to achieve any kind of meaning from the music, they must create a metaphysical space outside of what presently exists. The same happens with art and all forms of theatre.

The next concept which I think effects your perception of reality is what you consider, based on experience and time, to be possible for the space which you created or have encountered. An example of this would be a person who is good at creating artwork, and another person who isn’t. The Artist looks at their medium, or the “space” available and see’s possibilities for that medium that the other person cannot. Looking at their canvass, the artist senses possibilities for a certain mixture of color, the certain bend of a line, the particular stance of a brush which have all been encouraged by past experience (Parents, teachers, friends which have validated the artist’s choices). While the person who is not an artist, doesn’t have the same objects in their toolbox to even perceive how the creation of a masterpiece on their canvass could be possible, regardless of how much they wish to create one. Time makes its way into this idea in that it is so deeply intertwined with experience that they cannot be separated from each other. I’ll define time in this case as being both memory and supposition. Supposition encompassing the future (that is to say the things you suppose will happen next), Memory encompassing the past, and both overlap to create the present. I don’t think they way we charter time, in minutes, seconds, hours really works when talking about reality, because I can never remember those conventions when I remember something that happened in the distant past, and there really isn’t a way to tell If something you plan to do will occur at the exact moment you expect that it will.

Mood is also a layer contributing to how we see our reality. As is clear to all of us when one is feeling particularly low, it is incredibly difficult to see the space being occupied in the same light as others who are occupying it. A sad person may not be able to realize just how beautiful a sunrise is, at that moment, they cannot be aware of the full range of possibilities available in that space. Their choices in how to look upon the sunrise become limited by their mood, and therefore much of the depth of feeling one would get by looking at it is erased. This idea fits being in a very good mood as well. An example of what I am talking about can be found in music. For instance, whenever a single note is played, there are actually a series of overtones which exist and sound simultaneously with it. Those overtones are like the possibilities a person’s mind instantly creates when they enter any kind of space. A computer can recreate every note in an overtone series, take them away and even add them. One tone playing by itself is called a sine wave. Your mood is like a computer, adding and subtracting sine waves whenever you encounter a situation that changes how you feel.

Putting together all the concepts I’ve written about makes me think a lot about solitude. It has always been my guess that the reason why solitude is such an important part of literature, or an important part of the lives of artists, is that it allows us to break free from the imposing reality of others. That way we can create our own reality. Think about it, whenever absolute freedom is depicted in our society, a person is alone. I remember all those car commercials happening in the open desert, a single man in his convertible with the wind whipping back his hair. The sense of freedom is depicted through his loneliness. Because he is alone he doesn’t have to bend to the rules which exist as a result of having to share his reality with others. He can create his own rules, decide for himself what is best to do and what isn’t. Solitude is important for those of us who feel an obligation to create. That time is needed in order to fashion a concept of reality which we hope perhaps others will find themselves capable of relating to.

The best thing about all this is that it leaves me in complete awe of our capabilities as humans. We so automatically create these spaces for ourselves without having to work hard. It’s truly unbelievable that the simplest of our actions is the most mystifying and complex ability if you dedicate any amount of thought to it. Today I am going to look at every single moment that I occupy as having the most vibrant series of overtones, the most inexplicably gorgeous possibilities.

From Blossoms

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.