The Thoughts of Things

I've spent quite a bit of time lately contemplating the difference between theory and reality, the man-made world that we think we inhabit and the natural world that we actually do inhabit. Many texts and experiences have informed my thoughts: Italo Clavino's short story, "Love Far From Home," Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination, anything by Daniel Quinn, and so forth....

Calvino elucidates this difference when his young, male character says, "I still live in a castle of meanings, not things" (7). He describes the difference between kissing Mariamirella and kissing the thought of her. I find that I live in this castle of meanings more often than I probably should. Perhaps this is the curse of the educated? Frye refers to this construct as a tower--the Tower of Babel, more specifically. I agree that our literature, our man-made reality, our thoughts, are taking us away from our most basic and natural selves and that we need to find a way to reconnect our myth and our physical reality.

Of course, Daniel Quinn holds nothing back as he questions the "realities" that we, as a culture, have created. Reading his books--especially Ismael--left me questioning the meaning for my existence and whether or not our current view of the world is even feasible.

In "The White Album," Joan Didion says that, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live" (1). Reading her essay reminds me of the many ways that I distance myself from my own particular reality by creating these stories, these explanations that live only in the mind. I take myself away from "the shifting phantasmagoria which is [my] actual experience" (1), because I--quite frankly--do not know how to live in the moment. The theory of a thing always hangs before me like a gauzy curtain, not fully obscuring my view of reality, but most definitely impairing my full attention to it.