4 Dec--On Imagination

One thing is for sure, it would make a good riddle--some stone-toothed whisper from the Sphinx; perhaps chanted in the Oracle's low tones--or a crumb of Zen wisdom dizzying in its circular logic. It makes us human and makes us anything.

In literary circles one finds it dressed up in the guise of Personal Narrative: the stories inside which we frame our existence. We imagine ourselves as forgiving, understanding, attractive. pathetic, thin, fat, tough, happy. We go further and weave a glistening web spun from spools of history, religion, and family. We say, "I am Scottish. We're from the highlands" even when home is America's Great Plains. In this case we are imagining our lives in the context of a whole, where the group in question is family as far down the tree as we can climb with certainty. Understandable when familial links are easily found. More difficult for those orphaned at birth, refugees--those for whom even the concept of home is wholly alien.

Everyone uses it but nobody uses it the same.
In his book The Culture of Make Believe, author Derrick Jensen provides a framework for the notion that Society is little more than a collective imagination, and that the current Western ideals of relationships, crime, and salary expectations are desperately reinforced by other elements of the same culture: television, movies, and print media. As participants in the body, we imagine ourselves fleshing out this skeleton. We emulate the actions of actors and aspire to hang on a model's arm. How we fit ourselves in, on the other hand, is unique to the individual. "Hate" and "love" are spoken freely in reference to a person whom we have never met, and probably never will--except in the context of personal imagination. You hate Julia Roberts. You love Penelope Cruz. You (probably) don't know either, but you can see both women's faces when you read their names. But what about Urmila Matondkar or Mallika Sherawat? As far as you're concerned, they don't exist; and as far as they're concerned, neither do you.


We need it to create our world, but the world would be there without it.
In any given day one can expect the existence of one or more of the following: puppy-shaped clouds, a first kiss, you stole the remote, rainbows, reindeer, Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies; you can bet somewhere there is some sex, or at least the thought of it. And then earth moves, I remembered the song she used to sing me to sleep, a dream involving cattle, flying pigs, queueing up for tickets, dragons in the kitchen, a hailstorm of heaven-sent scimitars, I'm sure she'll call, I'll never make it, I was there all along, you lied, you never meant it, what did I say?, what is it we were talking about?

Imagine a world without it--a good riddle.