Life is a Fiction

What makes a story? One could say it is the unique interaction of people, space and time? If so, then all these elements come together in a story in the same way as reactants come together in a chemical reaction and every chemical reaction needs a catalyst to drive the reactants forward to produce various products. The catalyst of the story is the author’s imagination, which moves characters to act in ways that affect one another as well as distort space and time to the subjective experience of the character the author is embodying at that time. But what happens when one realizes that what one puts into a fiction (the characters, events, times and places) can resonate with what is happening in the “real world”?  In the same way what affects the writer in the real world becomes the raw material for creative projects of poetry, novels, plays and other worthy artistic disciplines.  It was Michelangelo who said “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it” To Michelangelo, the sculpture was embedded in the rock, a living entity waiting to be freed.  Viewed in this light we can say that the fantasy of art is embedded in reality. Reality is the extracellular matrix bathing the cell which is the source of all life.

With all this inflow and outflow of reality and fantasy, the borders between these two fields can become diluted, even saturated. The borders begin to dissolve almost and this is where we have intermingling of the two. This occurs to a stage where what is reality can be viewed with metaphorical lenses and what is in the imagination can be brought to life through the individual’s creative discipline or inevitably within the subconscious ( the subconscious being the ultimate sanctuary where reality and fantasy enter a very intimate and interwoven communion.)  If there are whisperings of fantasy in reality (like a hosepipe being mistaken for a snake in the dead of night) and droppings of reality within our imagination (like the erotic dreams of being intimate with someone that in “real life” will never want or take an interest in you)  then we begin to ask the most fundamental question :  What is real?

 It is at this stage that I begin to take a leap of faith into the abyss by saying that the real world, with all its composite constructions and machinations -composing of billions of combinations of different atomic particles – is a fiction; perhaps even the greatest fiction the world will ever know because we live our lives through it and are governed by the forces of space and time within it. More so, it is so powerful that our senses are filled to the brim with stimuli from this world. I suspect this is what Plato pondered about when he came up with his "Philosophy of the Cave". Plato wanted to know what is behind the veil of perception but I suggest too that the cave is just the extracellular matrix of this world; the cave is just the rock that encases the masterpiece, the tablet on which is written the most eloquent and heart shattering of verses.  It is the job of the individual submersed and entrapped in the cave to chisel away the rock around them to the point where all that exists is creative work and a huge gaping hole where the sunlight from the outside streams in.

 

And what is this sunlight composed of?  As we begin to strip down the objects around us to elements, then atoms, then subatomic particles, we arrive at a location that is both simple and holistic: energy.  It is energy that is the driving impetus that constructs the buildings around us, the flights of stairs we climb and the clothes that we wrap ourselves in.  Energy too is the wand in the hand of the magician which pulls rabbits from hats and sets sails to countless adventures of tragedy, triumph, comedy and romance.  Ultimately, we are fishes in oceans of energy, without it we cannot breath; without it we dry up. So we must learn to feel this wealth of energy surrounding us; be able to channel it , wield it somehow and most importantly be able to view it constantly for what it essentially is. That way nothing that happens to you in this life can really affect you because since the dawn of time constructions have been placed for you to grow into and for you to acknowledge energy incessantly is to break down the constructions and look at life at its very basic. In this light, things that mattered become inconsequential. The question then remains what matters?  Your body, your life, your space, your time is an organic factory meant to churn out creative work.  Creative work can encompass a many great aspects of human civilization from science to architecture, engineering and of course the arts.  It is through creative endeavor that our own built up memories and personally tinged views get transmuted into the collage of what the human race can contribute to this magnanimous expanding beast that is the universe. This life (your life) is a fiction embedded in the nebulous of the universal mind.  You are only an angle in the corner of the universe and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we can accept other people for who they are and also live our lives in full freedom from the societal standards to which we are pressurized to follow.

(Note: I encourage you to look up Plato's Allergory of the Cave )