mahiwaga

In many ways, I have been adrift for almost 8 years now. I have in fact recently come to grips with the fact that there really is such a thing as land, but I have yet to find a safe harbor. As M has told me (in a slightly different, but applicable context) “So close, yet so very, very far.” Naturally.

I mean, yeah, it’s easy to hope for wild fantasies, especially when considering “almost.” But all I should accept as real is all that I perceive in this moment in time, and as the silence lengthens, the awkwardness takes on massive proportions, and it is guaranteed to never be the same, and one day it may very well seem that none of this ever really happened.

Once again, it is time to let go, to accept only the real (as ambiguous as that word is), and to once more grow accustomed to floating upon the endless sea quite singularly alone.

Fate goes where it will.

Sailing
Takes me away
To where I’ve always heard it could be
Just a dream and the wind to carry me
And soon I will be free
from “Sailing” by Christopher Cross

Three movies stick out in my head as having the same plot: a bunch of actors are mistaken for being heroes, find themselves in a situation where they have to actually be heroes, and hilarity ensues. The first of these is “¡Three Amigos!,” then more recently (within the last decade) “Galaxy Quest” and “ A Bug’s Life.”

(As pointed out to me by my dad, they are all also somewhat parodies of “The Magnificent Seven”, which is in turn the Western remake of Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”.)

But it also makes me think of a story by Jorge Luis Borges whose title I can’t remember. It is about this character who only feels like he is someone when he is acting. He feels as if he has no character of his own. In the end of the story, you find out that the character is supposed to be William Shakespeare.

Juxtaposing these ideas makes me think of those three movies as a way actors try to redeem themselves. But then there’s more.

Since I have been reading about the nature of consciousness (current reading this book called The Mind’s I, a collection of essays and short stories edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennet), it makes me think about the fine line between simulation and the real thing. (All of the sudden, U2’s “Even Better than the Real Thing” echoes in my head.) If the simulation is good enough, how can you tell? (Now, Morpheus from “The Matrix” chimes in: “What is real?”

Lastly, without any articulation, I think of The Velveteen Rabbit.