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.