Fiction, Fantasies, Faces, and Facts:
On the never-ending quest for truth, I was reminded how important fiction can be to our "reality."
Inside the synthetic mood of chemical fragrances, LED lighting and stale indoor air, sometimes the scenes set in "real" life are more like a plastic barbie playhouse. From cubicles in corporate offices to rooms-to-go living rooms, the stark difference between the inside and outside has become more extreme.
I recalled last year visiting someone in a hospital, something I avoid at all costs unless I need to be sewn up (even then- reluctant AF), and how the grey sterile coldness fostered anything but care. I was assaulted and escorted out by a security guard for not wearing a mask. The rage staring back at me from all the masked faces witnessing my exit couldn’t see how their lack of breath contributed to it…it was surreal. I ended up sitting outside on a bench next to some flowers (probably sprayed with round-up poison) staring at the sun in hopes of meeting an outer warmth to match what I felt inside…because there was none inside those walls, nor the faces that shuffled around the halls.
The bleached environment of so many modern establishments is a far cry from the blurred line in my own home as I track so much dirt in my old house these days counting my blessings for the gift of grass, dirt, mud, trees…nature…and time with my animals…always a mess, always blessed.
In Feng Shui, it's important to balance the elements as to create spaces that nourish the soil of living well in the same way the soil waits for us to open the door and step on to its carpet. The reason women make a house a home is because this is a representation of our "inner" world. It needs the feminine touch in the same way I need a handyman to help me outside with things like put shingles on the roof that blew off in a mad storm. Obviously there is over-lap between both, but there are also differences that are complimentary.
I plopped down in my office trying to decide which book to read next…I thought to myself how It had been a while since I picked up anything fiction, the last few years have been more focused on topics around truth, spirituality and esoterica. Today I remembered when I read a Raymond Chandler novel in college and how much it impacted me. I recall the ability to weave the natural landscape into the fabricated montage of clues, of mystery, a backdrop within a backdrop. Subtle nuance invited me on a journey, could I guess how the story would unfold? Would I be surprised?
Life is like that, it’s always giving us clues or synchronicities, as well as contrast and opposites. Being able to see the synthetic or chemical tones on display everywhere, from the garden section at Home Depot to the Nordstrom perfume department, reminds me I’m happiest at home, needing to vacuum again, feet planted on the grass again, dirt tracked inside…. again.
Here's an excerpt from The Big Sleep, in case you never read it, so deliciously fun:
"You may smoke, sir. I like the smell of tobacco."
”I lit the cigarette and blew a lungful at him and he sniffed at it like a terrier at a rathole. The faint smile pulled at the shadowed corners of his mouth.”
"A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy," he said dryly. "You are looking at a very dull survival of a rather gaudy life, a cripple paralyzed in both legs and with only half of his lower belly. There's very little that I can eat and my sleep is so close to waking that it is hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider, and the orchids are an excuse for the heat. Do you like orchids?"
"Not particularly," I said.”
I’ve always had a hankering for a good detective story, even in my youth I loved Nancy Drew, probably because I was naturally a problem-solver-figure-it-out kind of persona, or maybe it was the genre that helped me become that way.
I never noticed it until this very moment, but even books I am enveloped by these days, I can fall asleep to or methodically set a timer to finish a chapter, placing it by the bed when it's time to drift off to dream...but a good fiction story can often pull me in and leave me wanting to push the alarm back and stay up all night reading.
I suppose, like many things that fight for our attention, it's the imaginative aspect of it that speaks joy and life into me. The descriptive nature of a setting that tantalizes the giddy part of the mind that watching something on a screen cannot reach. How could I forget how nourishing this can be? A riveting fiction novel is like reading and painting at the same time, everyone's picture displayed a little bit different in the mind depending on the description. I imagine this is a more accurate portrayal of real life...except for so many it feels like the imagination has become inactive, daydreams have been usurped by tik-tok, wondering in possibilities intercepted by propaganda and shiny proposals for data and attention.
The illusion in the "real" world masks, or numbs nature's scent, the true backdrop to even the most synthetic mood. How quickly we forget when the chemical fragrance wears off, the true self waits for re-introduction. The joie de vivre lost inside a ping-pong game of distractions.
Our faces are an information hub, it's where our senses meet in an intricate network of feedback inviting us to move forward or stop, stay curious, while expressions of the mother board communicate a sense of danger or safety. Nuance travels lightning speed through invisible micro-expressions daring us to embark upon a telepathic gaze. Beyond high-speed, genuine connection dangles a carrot behind the black screen.
Inside a good work of fiction, we get to remember what it's like to daydream, to paint a picture in our mind's eye, to leave the cold world behind and look around at the scenes we’ve set for ourselves in our own lives. This is important because if we don't do this for ourselves, then the outer reality will shape our inner world and it won't be our own.
We have to remember to cultivate and use our imagination for it holds the image and magic that give way to outer change rooted in individuality and freedom beyond what we're told should be possible by the masses who have consented to the system’s ideals.
Can we write our own story in the same colorful spectrum and enriching qualities as a good detective novel, life lived beyond a screen, leaving room for mystery, maintaining curiosity and being open to a death of old ways, or an old self, that no longer works? Can each individual be focused enough to imagine-a-nation that invites in joy, play, creativity.... that brings the senses back to life again and removes the mask that was numbing them? Can we, little by little, each day replace the synthetic with something real, an enjoyment of life's bouquet, a remembering of what is natural, known, true...even inside its fictious displays?
We need fiction and fantasy as much as we need truth, not in the narcissistic way of living from the land of make-believe inside a figure head that everyone must appease, but in a way that ignites possibility and critical thinking lost to ChatGPT....we need fiction in order to see truth. Artificial Intelligence can't daydream, it can't create, it's the manifestation of a world that has been programmed to regurgitate, an amalgamation of the unconscious collective fate, it has set the mood, one that has its place, but mostly is incredibly fake.
It's up to each of us to strip off the polyester programming in its highly flammable state, to send out smoke signals that it is time to be here now...to imagine something better, to envision the possibilities and to create with the gift of our hands - our mind - our body- our soul - our life..............and the synthetic will still be there to remind us what to walk away from and what to run to.
Just as mythology and folk tales hold deeper truths to our reality, stories told to help us remember who we are and the mystical nature of our reality, so to can a great modern-day fantasy or fiction weave in aspects of our being that hold clues or ignite something in us waiting for discovery. As light and dark live inside all things, so do both fiction and non-fiction hold truth and deception…. exploring with a curious heart and a keen eye aid both the story teller and the story reader in discerning the clues and subtleties that live beyond the words on the page.
I think I’m going to next read Weyward by Emilia Hart, it’s beautiful cover is speaking to me…and I’m goign to bringn back more fiction into my rotation in order to give my mind a break, time to absorb other things…and daydream…while bringing more imagination into living life my own way.
In this world where Artificial Intelligence paints beautiful pictures, ever detailed and imaginative, they are lacking the life behind them, the imaginative heart from a living being. We must remember to reach into our mind’s eye from the inside out and create something tangible. To go from the imagination to making something beautiful in what we are creating in our every day life, from writing this page to decorating a space, is to show appreciation for the natural, to connect with and honor the supernatural. Sure, something may smell pretty, but if you really take it in you can discern if it’s a synthetic fragrance or from the essence of a blooming flower, these are not the same, no matter how much it may seem so. The energetic signature of real life, even that generated through the imagination (made manifest, or not) holds the potential and connection to Creation in a visceral vessel.
Like the steak scene in the matrix where the synthetic is chosen over the living, the senses can be fooled, which means that now, more than ever, it’s time to sit in the stillness of our own inner knowing fully embodied and alive, because, while some differences may display stark contrast, like the sterile buildings against the backdrop of outer beauty by nature, sometimes it is much more subtle.
Ignorance is not bliss. Fiction has its place in deepening our discernment, imagination, joy and provoking thoughts. Sometimes daydreams are an invitation to expand the colorfulness of our being. Sometimes facts are masked by bleach and contracts, hidden inside words charged with counterfeit blurbs, laced with chemicals declaring a vibe of something good, but really creating a synthetic mood daring you to find the most authentic you!