Tired of Ultimate Realty, On lookout for Something Different
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:55 am
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
---Philip K. Dick
I have been finding this to be true, and I admit it is disconcerting: No matter what I do, no matter how numbed-out I might make myself, and no matter how much I 'tune-in', up to this point the 'nature of reality' that surrounds me, and so terribly drives everything, almost ridiculously senslessly, continues to be precisely the same from day to day. Believing it or not, it doesn't go away.
I am beginning to doubt it will ever change. I am also beginning to doubt I will ever get from it any 'ultimate satisfaction', and therefor have become quite suspicious of any smiling face that emerges from it, always seeming to want to sell me something, in one way or another, some product, some merchandize, to sweep me up in its plan. This dammed 'reality', therefor, comes at me like the ultimate philistine, which philistinism I must reject to maintain my self-esteem, and yet I am constantly on the look-out for bargains, and I still have the sense that there shall emerge from the fog of this world someone with a genuine smile, not an advertising smile, who knows the way through this difficult territory.
So, one day follows another, and in a general sense each day is as drab as the one before it. True, it is altogether possible to focus on almost any phenomenon or any process [of Nature] and become overawed...inspired even. But let's just say that emotionally the flavor of life [sometimes] is like a hot, still, tired afternoon where everything seems too tired to move. A dog barks in the distance. It makes no sense to go anywhere. The rains are months away, the roads are dry and choked with dust.
How is it that, if these are the conditions of 'reality', that the story of the 'exploding metaphor' still captures my thoughts, still hooks my hopes? You move along the roads of life, and can you really say you know where you are? [please explain therefor]. If you are really somewhere, where are you really? You know you are in this place because, no matter what, every day you wake up in it, and every day it is exactly the same. But where are you, I really want to know? I submit that no one, in fact, can actually locate themselves, and that this idea of 'locality' is non-different than the constant questioning as to Who Am I? [Who Am I and Where Am I?] Generally, everone moves around me as if they are in a dream, and no one knows who they are nor where they are. [In a significant sense we are not really 'in reality' we are in our psychology, so that there are nearly as many realities as there are living beings, and is that another story?].
And yet---I think we have to put this on the table---I have this sense that, every once in awhile, I come across an unusual object, an out-of-place person [say, a laughing Black man with a crutch who stands smiling on one leg in the middle of a field] an anomaly, a sign, something like an invisible wind that moves the surface of the water, and if I only look slant-eyed at this 'object', whatever it is, I get an odd tingle in my solar-plexus, the anomaly excites some awareness, some sense that something far beyond 'reality' [the world] is speaking to me, wants to make itself known, or could even guide me along for some space of time, OR if I could get my hands on it, would ExPlodE in an indescribable way, raining down meaning (I don't know how else to describe it).
Maybe its different for you, but for me one of the only things I have to go on is the 'exploding metaphor' and all it connotes, and the promises it sets upon the paths that crisscross 'reality'.
---Philip K. Dick
I have been finding this to be true, and I admit it is disconcerting: No matter what I do, no matter how numbed-out I might make myself, and no matter how much I 'tune-in', up to this point the 'nature of reality' that surrounds me, and so terribly drives everything, almost ridiculously senslessly, continues to be precisely the same from day to day. Believing it or not, it doesn't go away.
I am beginning to doubt it will ever change. I am also beginning to doubt I will ever get from it any 'ultimate satisfaction', and therefor have become quite suspicious of any smiling face that emerges from it, always seeming to want to sell me something, in one way or another, some product, some merchandize, to sweep me up in its plan. This dammed 'reality', therefor, comes at me like the ultimate philistine, which philistinism I must reject to maintain my self-esteem, and yet I am constantly on the look-out for bargains, and I still have the sense that there shall emerge from the fog of this world someone with a genuine smile, not an advertising smile, who knows the way through this difficult territory.
So, one day follows another, and in a general sense each day is as drab as the one before it. True, it is altogether possible to focus on almost any phenomenon or any process [of Nature] and become overawed...inspired even. But let's just say that emotionally the flavor of life [sometimes] is like a hot, still, tired afternoon where everything seems too tired to move. A dog barks in the distance. It makes no sense to go anywhere. The rains are months away, the roads are dry and choked with dust.
How is it that, if these are the conditions of 'reality', that the story of the 'exploding metaphor' still captures my thoughts, still hooks my hopes? You move along the roads of life, and can you really say you know where you are? [please explain therefor]. If you are really somewhere, where are you really? You know you are in this place because, no matter what, every day you wake up in it, and every day it is exactly the same. But where are you, I really want to know? I submit that no one, in fact, can actually locate themselves, and that this idea of 'locality' is non-different than the constant questioning as to Who Am I? [Who Am I and Where Am I?] Generally, everone moves around me as if they are in a dream, and no one knows who they are nor where they are. [In a significant sense we are not really 'in reality' we are in our psychology, so that there are nearly as many realities as there are living beings, and is that another story?].
And yet---I think we have to put this on the table---I have this sense that, every once in awhile, I come across an unusual object, an out-of-place person [say, a laughing Black man with a crutch who stands smiling on one leg in the middle of a field] an anomaly, a sign, something like an invisible wind that moves the surface of the water, and if I only look slant-eyed at this 'object', whatever it is, I get an odd tingle in my solar-plexus, the anomaly excites some awareness, some sense that something far beyond 'reality' [the world] is speaking to me, wants to make itself known, or could even guide me along for some space of time, OR if I could get my hands on it, would ExPlodE in an indescribable way, raining down meaning (I don't know how else to describe it).
Maybe its different for you, but for me one of the only things I have to go on is the 'exploding metaphor' and all it connotes, and the promises it sets upon the paths that crisscross 'reality'.