Dissolved, salt appears inseparable from water.
What is the reality of salt-water to eyes that cannot see or tongue that can’t taste its salt?
Reality is “the quality or state of being actual or true;” “one that exists objectively.” º
Thus a building that you see, touch, walk into is real. But the prior imaginings of that building, what are those? Illusions? What about any plans to alter the building, or host events within it, or thoughts of demolishing it and using the grounds for a garden? These ideas occupying the thoughts of someone, taking time and space in the mind, are they real? What is reality that can easily be displaced by imagination? What has agency in time and space, energy or matter? Thus is it really advisable to live realistically?
The other day, during an art session with a kindergarten class, I asked for the color in the background of an image. The students as well as the teacher saw blue. I saw a tone of purple.
Objectivity is limited where as the subjectivity is cosmic: There is more “something” in “I am in the world + the world is in me”, than “I am distant from the world + the world is alien to me.” The former is likely to practice empathy and allow imaginings of the horrific and the sublime. But can one really realize the former without practicing objectiveness and solitude? Can one really come to the realization that one is one’s brother’s keeper in the noise of destitute, excessiveness, and fear of self?
The sun to blind eyes:
the sun to myopic sight,
the sun to perfect vision,
the sun through some fantastic telescope,
the same sun?
Yes, the same sun.
I have been sleep-walking and forgetting that I am sleep-walking, thus taking the collective illusion of reality to be true and sinking deeply into a coma of delusion. It’s frightening how easy this is. It is really scary how many of us are comatose 24/7 while we keep mute the voice screaming somewhere inside us to wake up and dream with open eyes.
More and more, what we collectively take for reality is just illusions of reality, a shared hallucination. When subjectivity is untrained, unobservant, uninterested, yaying & naying as all yays & nays, is it alive or seemingly so? When subjectivity is too chicken to contemplate its own stream, is it really real?
Imagine the absurd, the horrific, the sublime and you probably know you are hallucinating. Live the absurd, the horrific, the sublime and you forget that much of it is still a hallucination. So what if it is with imagination that reality is shaped and the established, the so called real is mere chaff? I mean if you could imagine a human being walking into a place and killing several people with an automatic gun, your actions might propel you towards creating an environment where such events wouldn’t occur so easily. If you wouldn’t imagine it, but live in a world where human beings walk into places and shoot people dead, you may just throw your hands into the air and say, “This is not real!”
To cherish the mundane, to strive for one’s best, to practice equilibrium, horrific and sublime imaginations are essential. COVID exemplifies this. If you had imagined something like it happening, you weren’t knocked off your wagon completely; if you never imagined anything like it, you either found yourself in denial and or stupefied.
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J. A. Odartey
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º The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition
