My first book – Reality Dreams – written in 1970-75.

Posted on by Opher

I’m writing up my first book – more for my own satisfaction than anything else. I’m quite nostalgic about it as it took me many years to write. I started it in 1970. It is a collage incorporating cartoons, poems, sketches and a surreal story. I thought I was being really revolutionary. It is a thing of the sixties. I do not think it has any commercial promise but I felt I would like to put it in print so I can have a real book copy.

Here’s the start. What do you think?

Part 1

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The Flux

The universe does not exist in space and time. It has no size, shape or form. Time is merely a measure of change; it radiates out from a point at various speeds, dependent on the energy it chooses to hitch a ride on. Usually it is fast.

Any individual appears to live in a moment in time and space and may continue to live their life unaffected by the reality of this phenomenon. Yet, perhaps, one day they may realise that the finite life they live is an illusion. The moment this realisation occurs and is believed their life will cease to exist. For who can connect cause and effect in an infinite system where time and space are interchangeable? The reality is that our lives are held by a tenuous thread. We have no static shape and the sequence of days that make up the course of a life may be nothing more than a chance progression, an anarchy of ideas in a vacuum.

For finity and infinity cannot exist inside each other. The illusion of one or the other is nothing more than the product of a healthy art of deception. The flow is a poet. Life is the metered scrawl on a clean sheet that is the void.

Each individual must make the decision to choose whether it is finity or infinity that is reality. Whatever they select they should be warned that it is likely to be incorrect. The pattern of life and memory may alter unexpectedly.

Geologically the life of the Earth is recent; the passage of a lifetime a fleeting flicker. For the void the whole universe with its stability of matter and orderly course of time is but a brief interlude. Anarchy is the path that nature treads in order to create the flux.

Nothing that exists in the flux is ever organised in finite terms. The laws that seem to govern space and time are ephemeral.

As I write and you read we may even be the same being.

 

 

12 thoughts on “My first book – Reality Dreams – written in 1970-75.”

    2. Most probably not over your head so much as weird. I was grappling with that Zen conundrum of reality and the philosophy of whether a finite system could exist within an infinite system. It vexed me. I spent years obsessed with infinity.
      Doesn’t read so well, huh?

  2. It reads like the complexity that infinity is! A friend told me to leave my book for a year and then come back to it! You’ve left quite a few for this one!

    1. Yes I have but I know it doesn’t really work. People find it too difficult to read. It doesn’t draw them in. The narrative is too obscure and dada. It is a collage rather than a novel. I thought I was creating something totally new. I was merely finding my way into writing. I’m doing it now because it was seminal and I would like to have a proper copy for myself. Besides, it is fun communing with my younger self.
      How far have you got with your book Georgina? Did you complete a first draft or did you get bogged down?
      Sometimes it is best to give it a break but I usually press on and complete it. Every book starts with enthusiasm and ends up as a slog as the energy and creativity is drained out of you. The enthusiasm wanes. The project ceases to be spectacular and the faults show through. Words of mediocrity. But I usually grit my teeth and plough on. When it is complete I leave it and come back to it later. You need distance for objectivity. When I read something I’ve written over someone’s shoulder I am appalled.

      1. Thanks, I have finished and am now slowly editing and revising. It seems a bit like marking students’ work, some bits seem good and sometimes it might drag a bit. I must just be disciplined! It’s an animal saga for the 21st century and I am trying not to have it too anthropomorphic therefore no speech. Hope it works! I think it’s interesting to commune with your younger self. Perhaps you should write a considered response to each section from your view point now. I always remember being so fascinated when I first came across the word paradox! Maybe that’s why we liked teaching and being with young minds.

      2. I find editing my own work impossible. When I read it I hear what I intended to write in my head and don’t see what I actually wrote. It is a totally different skill.
        If I were you I’d leave a bit of time to let it settle. You’d get better objectivity then. It sounds intriguing.
        A response to each section would be interesting.
        I miss all that contact with young minds. They were so stimulating.

  3. The flux … go with the flow, as they say … trying to keep things the same is a recipe for misery, that’s for sure. I rather like your freewheeling style here.

    1. I’m finding it really interesting to rewrite this early work but I can see why the publishers rejected it. Life might have been so different. But would it have been better?

      2. Perhaps there are a trillion universes with different versions of us playing out those roles? I’m probably in one of the better ones!

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