Monday, March 30, 2009

Rattling

When I was a child, one of my favorite films was The Neverending Story. I could probably have recited the entire film to you at one point in my childhood. One of the things that appealed to me at the time was the fantasy world, escapism, the lack of a need for peers when one has mythologies to play around with.
As I grew older I realized that one of the things that I had not even observed being a huge influence on me was the overlying theme of books that blur reality, change you, change the world around you, leak into your experiences outside of the book. I remember before falling asleep playing out stories in my head of being "saved" from school by Gandalf or Charles Xavier and taken to a place where reality was more mutable.
In my late teens and 20s I started to learn that such books did exist on some level. Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K Dick, H.P. Lovecraft and even to some extent James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon and so forth. The book I am reading right now, House of Leaves, is similar. All of them would kind of creep into reality or destroy how I look at things and rebuild it from the ground up. I imagine this is may have something to do with why I was so deeply into LSD for a time. I knew I was chasing something but I'm not sure I could have articulated what (especially when on acid.) Also I had a dream once or a vision which I don't talk about often but which gave me a glimpse behind the curtain of reality. It has haunted me all of my life. It was horrible to come back. I've told Laurie about it.
But there was always a disappointment that reality didn't really change in a Dali-esque kind of way. Blue giant beetles didn't dance on the walls.
Anyway, my spiritual walk falls under this heading as well. God kind of divinely invades His elect. The conversion of Paul is certainly one of the stories I am talking about.
I wasn't really going anywhere else with this except to explain a little about what goes on in my head, what I hunt for. I have been thinking about it since a meme I completed on my other blog earlier today.
Pardon the interruption. I guess you can set back your "Days Paul Has Gone Without Acting Utterly Berserk" calendars back to zero.

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