Thin crust of reality

[vaneramos]

Immanuel Kant suggested a phenomenon is merely our perception of the real essence of a thing, its noumenon. I have this image of shapeless, indescribable forms shifting through our universe, dark Dr. Seussian blobs. The Glunk That Got Thunk. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. There is something intuitively fierce and evil about things we cannot see, hear or smell. Our reality is only the thin skin of the real reality. Perceptions can be misleading, so most of the universe gets swallowed in unspeakable shadow.

It's like the undertow. Last week Bill and I visited the wide dam at Caledonia, afternoon sun casting blinding glare across the Grand River. In the space below the dam, a bare-footed fisherman sat on a folding chair amongst some rocks, his line cast toward the foot of the cascade. It looked peaceful, gentle shallows absorbing a shining, sliding sheet of water.

The truth is much darker. Children like to walk along the top of the dam, but near the middle the current is unpredictably strong, sucks them feet first down the incline. After that there's nothing beautiful about the pool. A concavity lies under the foot of the wall, and the children get dragged underneath. People drown there every month, or every week depending on who you talk to. The same thing happened in Cambridge a few years ago, and a firefighter drowned trying to rescue the child from those infernal waters. The reailty is always different from what we perceive.

A new study suggests that anxiety does not interfere with a person's ability to enjoy life, but depression does so, radically. Having experienced both, I concur.

It's easy to indulge in a few light thoughts of self-pity, but like the undertow, they pull you underneath. I remember months in 1995 when life seemed only a colourless, vapid plain, cast in shadow. Darkness would erupt like a rose unfolding petal after petal of unbearable beauty. It was a long, dreadful wallow in passion so sharp it verged on deadly.

Last night I ruined my best pot trying to boil some water for the pickles. I left it on the element too long, boiled it dry. I've been living in the kitchen lately, but sometimes I wander away like a spirit in an interminable search for an internet connection. I've been writing at the table because my desk is too piled with clutter. I manage to keep the kitchen bearable for living, but the rest of the apartment is still immersed in the detritus of a long summer when home was only a dropping-off point. I'm having trouble stopping the rest of life long enough to sort through it all, put important things away, throw away whatever I certainly don't need.

Someone is studying the social behaviour of bees with hope of drawing parallels to the way other animals behave. Genes are our inheritance, but they respond to environmental factors. Our lives are a mix of nature and nurture, not one or the other. That biological code is the noumenon, the dark matter we cannot see. Biologist try to catch a glimpse, like astronomers straining through telescopes to see how light disperses through deep space. Behaviour is the thin surface, the crust of inner reality.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I have trouble with the abstractions of philosophy, and yet they fascinate me. Your image sounds like the perfect way to sort them through.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Indeed! We are a complicated lot, although you'll find Danny djjo refreshingly straightforward and polite, absorbed in things like bad movies and good wool. You come visit us all in Toronto, then I'll take you to see the woods.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You know, I became aware of LJ through a community of online writers that included stephe and lisalemonjello. Before I came here, I hardly knew any bears. And I hardly knew any gay people who were seriously involved in artistic or creative endeavours. Now here I am, and hallelujah.

[tbone1961.livejournal.com]

AAHH! Calm, peace, tranquility...etc. That's one thing about upstate NY here. With the Adirondack Mtns here in NY, the Green Mtns of VT, Lake Champlain. It's right here if one really wants to experience it.

Also couldn't help but pick up on the Seuss tidbit. The theatre group I play for is doing Seussical the Musical this coming March. Your post reminds me I need to order a copy of the soundtrack to figure out what this is all about.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I love the mountains, though I've only visited them a few times in my life, mostly the Blue Ridge in Virginia and the Canadian Rockies. We don't have any here in Southern Ontario.

I was thinking of joining one of Guelph's theatre groups, though I would probably get involved in some other way than acting.

[tbone1961.livejournal.com]

Oh hell I don't act. Pit orchestra, although there was this one year I was almost on stage, but that's another post.

And if ya ever get the hankerin to see the mountains, just let me know. You're only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Maybe next summer. :-)

[artricia.livejournal.com]

Ever read John Irving's The World According to Garp? The undertow (which they call the undertoad) figures in a very similar way, becoming a theme of the book.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

No I haven't. Thanks for the tip!

[halation.livejournal.com]

"Last night I ruined my best pot trying to boil some water for the pickles. I left it on the element too long, boiled it dry."

this, to me, sums up what depression is about, in a way. you try so hard to use your best things to keep going, to keep creating in the world, and depression slows you down so you lose track of where you are, what's happening, and by the time you remember, you've ruined something. it isn't always this way, sometimes amazing incredible beautiful art (like your sentence that i quoted above) can come out of depression (though i'm not sure whether you identify as a person with depression currently). but.

maybe i've put my foot in my mouth.

just.

you're onto something, even if you didn't mean to be. :-)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, the ruined pot was a metaphor for how I felt last night, how I'm feeling today.

One of the things that puzzles me is the clinical assessment that if you feel depressed for less than two weeks, it isn't depression, it's just feeling sad. Well I know how sad feels, and this isn't sad. Sad doesn't feel like giving up. So what do I call it when I feel this way today but not tomorrow? What if this feeling prevents me from functioning normally two days out of the week, most weeks, but most of the time I feel okay?

I often feel the difference between anxiety and depression. Depression is the hopeless feeling that what's happening now is terrible. Anxiety is the feeling that although I can live in the moment and even enjoy it, something terrible might happen, is bound to happen if I do the wrong thing. I feel anxious more than I feel depressed, but I experience both.

The relationship with creativity it complicated. Yesterday morning I was in a good mood, but felt like I couldn't write worth shit, and yesterday's post was the one I liked least of all since I started the new format earlier this month. The depressed feeling didn't set in until last night. Today I'm feeling crummy, but writing this post felt good. That's one of the reasons I write so much. Sometimes it gives me a feeling of satisfaction when nothing else can.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. I'd been pondering the very same noumina/phenomena thing recently, albeit from a more theoretical perspective.

I guess it's a matter of expectations - it doesn't seem reasonable to expect that everything can be understood, even in principle. It's fairly easy to construct simple, imaginary worlds where a curious scientist, no matter how smart he is, is incapable of discovering the rules that make that world work. We should consider ourselves lucky to be able to understand anything in the real world.

That the universe should be ruled by unseen forces is, strangely enough, completely comfortable for me.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

To be honest, this is the first time I've read about Kant's philosophy (why oh why did I not generalize more at university?). In hindsight, the dark images I used here are a reflection of my mental state today. This post is more an abstract portrait of anxiety and depression than anything.

it doesn't seem reasonable to expect that everything can be understood, even in principle.

I agree heartily. Whatever we think we understand now must bear constant scrutiny in the light of new evidence.

Your point about the imaginary world sounds like a great thesis for a novel, if in fact it hasn't already been written.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

It's such a chlichee, but to be an artist of any kind you must have some knowledge of those dark flowers. Some people get it imposed from outside, other people go inside to seek it out. You cannot have a realistic impression of what it means to be human if you know only the sunny meadows - you must also see the part of us that is capable of murder, or sex with goats, or whatever "unspeakable" act you care to mention, that humanity regularly engages in (not that you need to kill someone, of course - rahter understand where the impulse comes from).

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Years ago I read a book about how to write a novel. The writer described how one of the great Russian novelists extrapolated on his own feelings of anger toward his wife to write a scene in which the main character murders his wife and her lover. At the time I remember thinking my life was so mundane; I had no interesting experiences to build upon, no passions to explore. Whether or not that belief was accurate in the first place, the past few years of my life have certainly added to the arsenal.

[gr8grizz.livejournal.com]

You used the term NOUMENON to describe something that has no shape or substance but exists. I am no philosopher but could this object be self awareness? Awareness of things that exist but are unseen?

As you said, we know there is DNA but can not see it directly, only its biological result. We know about nurture, but it is an abstract term without a form, but we see its result in peoples attitudes, decisions, and mannerisms.

Similar to the fact that you can't see a color until it is reflected off an object that does not absorb it, maybe we can not see ourselves move forward, change, grow, and learn without this unseen force. What parts of it do we absorb? What parts of it do we reflect? And how does this shape our reality? Why do only a few of us ask these questions?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Some people don't realize they're creating their own unhappiness, and never scrutinize their own thinking. Others ask these questions in order to improve, but the asking would hardly be necessary unless we were happy to begin with. Some people manage to be happy without knowing how, and I'm glad for them.

Kant's philosophy suggests we can never know the full reality of anything. The whole universe, even our minds, posesses an "unknowable, undescribable reality" beyond what we can experience. So we work with what limited understanding we can gain.