after the weekend
This has been one of those weekends that stretch forever, offering tidbits of real world and how differently people see it.
Also, a small and uncomfortable lesson on how much am I willing to listen to people, accept their views, play along in their worlds, be they carpeted by emerald green fake grass or sickly “they all might be lying to you, using you on their behalf, and your willingness to believe is your weakness”.
I have my own emerald green grass and my own sick suspicions, which is a good enough reason to protect myself from infections of others.
But is it normal that I, a writer, am so immensely surprised every time when I see how differently others perceive this world? How overwhelming their perception is–and how easily I twist myself to my own private nightmare.
Or, to put it in other words, is writer somebody who deciphers dreams and nightmares or somebody who gets carried away by them?
Wow, I’ve been following a similar tangent in my thinking lately as well.
I have a writing buddy – we get together every once in a while (after writing various things and sending them to each other by email) and when we do, we often just sit and talk. We cover the gamut and we both dive deep, no small talk, just very much exploration and offering. And every time, we find we are so incredibly different though obviously similar. I remarked that the notion that we share Reality is probably erroneous – we each experience the world differently, though we hold enough in common that that we conceptualize and talk about ‘reality’ as though it were something solid and unified.
I wrote, later: “Relationships are built around reconciling realities and there are difficulties when realities contradict and the players haven’t agreed that contradiction is acceptable.”
Anyone who attempts to understand the mixed and murky reality-soup in which we’re steeping is bound to get sticky with dreams and nightmares. Artists have this reputation, right? The trick is to maintain equilibrium at the heart, in spite of it all, so you can come back and tell all about it.
Funnily enough, my Trusted Reader is different from me in every aspect imaginable, so we’ve been having fun trying to find some similarities in the way we see the world.
life is just weird, isn’t it? I mean here we are all together, but literally worlds apart. Trippy… and yes, annoying when some folks think they’re version of things is The Version we’re all having.
One of my favorite quotes of all times is from Colin Wilson’s “The Mind Parasites”, quoted freely (from Latvian translation): “A man has more in common with mountains and stars than with other men.” This struck me as true even in the tender age of 12 when I read that book. (As well as the existence of alien mind parasites and the prophetic nature of Lowecraft’s stories…but that’s another topic entirely.)