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Sitaram
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02-21-2005 11:48 AM
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Parsing Reality
http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=191,209,0,0,1,0
Quote:
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Originally
Posted by Nabokov
"The
Carrick," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and "The
Metamorphosis": all three are commonly called fantasies. From my point
of view, any outstanding work of art is a fantasy insofar as it reflects
the unique world of a unique individual. But when people call these three
stories fantasies, they merely imply that the stories depart in their
subject matter from what is commonly called reality. Let us therefore
examine what reality is, in order to discover in what manner and to what
extent so-called fantasies depart from so-called reality.
Let us take three types of men walking through the same landscape. Number
One is a city man on a well-deserved vacation. Number Two is a professional
botanist. Number Three is a local farmer. Number One, the city man, is what
is called a realistic, commonsensical, matter-of-fact type: he sees trees
as trees and knows from his map that the road he is following is a nice new
road leading to Newton, where there is a nice eating place recommended to
him by a friend in his office. The botanist looks around and sees his
environment in the very exact terms of plant life, precise biological and
classified units such as specific trees and grasses, flowers and ferns, and
for him, this is reality; to him the world of the stolid tourist (who
cannot distinguish an oak from an elm) seems a fantastic, vague, dreamy,
never-never world. Finally the world of the local farmer differs from the
two others in that his world is intensely emotional and personal since he
has been born and bred there, and knows every trail and individual tree,
and every shadow from every tree across every trail, all in warm connection
with his everyday work, and his childhood, and a thousand small things and
patterns which the other two—the humdrum tourist and the botanical
taxonomist—simply cannot know in the given place at the given time.
Our farmer will not know the relation of the surrounding vegetation to a
botanical conception of the world, and the botanist will know nothing of
any importance to him about that barn or that old field or that old house
under its cottonwoods, which are afloat, as it were, in a medium of
personal memories for one who was born there.
So here we have three different worlds—three men, ordinary men who have
different realities—and, of course, we could bring in a number of
other beings: a blind man with a dog, a hunter with a dog, a dog with his
man, a painter cruising in quest of a sunset, a girl out of gas— In
every case it would be a world completely different from the rest since the
most objective words tree, road, flower, sky, barn, thumb, rain have, in
each, totally different subjective connotations. Indeed, this subjective
life is so strong that it makes an empty and broken shell of the so-called
objective existence. The only way back to objective reality is the
following one: we can take these several individual worlds, mix them
thoroughly together, scoop up a drop of that mixture, and call it objective
reality. We may taste in it a particle of madness if a lunatic passed
through that locality, or a particle of complete and beautiful nonsense if
a man has been looking at a lovely field and imagining upon it a lovely
factory producing buttons or bombs; but on the whole these mad particles
would be diluted in the drop of objective reality that we hold up to the
light in our test tube. Moreover, this objective reality will contain
something that transcends optical illusions and laboratory tests. It will
have elements of poetry, of lofty emotion, of energy and endeavor (and even
here the button king may find his rightful place), of pity, pride,
passion—and the craving for a thick steak at the recommended roadside
eating place.
So when we say reality, we are really thinking of all this—in one
drop—an average sample of a mixture of a million individual
realities. And it is in this sense (of human reality) that I use the term
reality when placing it against a backdrop, such as the worlds of "The
Carrick," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and "The
Metamorphosis," which are specific fantasies.
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==============================
Transit - by Richard Wilbur
A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just the crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.
What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blames from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets in his confusion how to run?
Still, nothing changes as her perfect feet
Click down the walk that issues in the street
Leaving the stations of her body there
As a whip maps the countries of the air.
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Parsing Reality for God and Manhole Covers
I will tell you an amusing little story... which relates to the above poem by
Richard Wilbur.
He describes his feelings as he watches a very beautiful young woman leave
the door of her apartment..
He describes her movements as being like someone who CRACKS A WHIP... and
shatters the air around her... (that is how stunningly beautiful he finds
her)...."
It is obvious from reading the poem.... that the poets mind is geared towards
seeing a beautiful woman..
He does not see anything else..... there may be a
beautiful flower... but he does not see
There may be a beautiful moon in the sky.. but he
does not notice
There may be a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk by his feet.. but he is unaware.
Here is my point....
REALITY... is many many many
things, an INFINITUDE of things.
CONSCIOUSNESS, is a process of data reduction.
If we NOTICED EVERYTHING... we would be TOTALLY OVERWHELMED... our senses
would shut down.
Seeing, knowing... involves IGNORING much, and FOCUSING, on what is important
to us.
Just as a grammarian will look at a sentence and PARSE IT, divide it into
nouns, verbs , adjectives, etc... analizing it
EACH of us PARSES reality... divides,... down to what interest us.
Imagine a beautiful young woman in spiked high heels ,
walking in the city.
She is PARSING REALITY, to notice all the drainage gratings.
Why? BECAUSE she has SPIKED high heels... and does not want to break them or
fall.
so... reality for her BECOMES, in a sense, drainage
gratings
but now... along comes a teenager in SNEAKERS...and he only notices her.
The teenager is unaware of the drainage grates, because HE HAS SNEAKERS, NOT
high heels, but....
The teenager is PARSING REALITY for sexy behinds.
So, he is staring at her bottom, and she is staring at sidewalk."
Same reality PARSED DIFFERENTLY.. by
two different people with TWO DIFFERENT THRISTS (DESIRES, INTERESTS)
From the Srimad Bhagavatam:
Uddhava said, "O Lord, you have explained
about all these religious endeavors, they sound so difficult. How will I ever
achieve UNION with you, the Lord?"
God answers "If you can simple SEE ME , in every creature, in every
person, even the most wicked, in every object, then NO OTHER PUJA (sacrifice)
OR PRAYER OR PRACTICE is necessary"
The religious person, does not see drainage grates everywhere, or derriers. No. They parse reality and see GOD everywhere.
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