Afraid of the Dark

June 9 2012

At this stage of life

I’m pretty sure about reality,

what isn’t, what is.

But when I was a kid

the boundaries shifted  —

shadows under the bed,

the primal fear

of darkness.

I devoured science fiction,

which now, couldn’t interest me less.

Believed every prediction

futuristic gadget,

imagined fantastic worlds.

Never noticed

the dark dystopian shadows

of here and now,

the best writers understood. 

There is a vulnerable time

in every young life

when reality gets fixed,

surface unerring

edges sharp.

Which, if missed

could lead to art

or even poetry, God forbid.

To dreamy shiftless kids

whose vision cuts to the heart

looks over, and beyond.

Admits a subversive version of truth

no one wants.

Not a disease of the brain

confabulation

or brazen act of denial,

but the exuberant human mind

in flight.

We construct the known world

from the five senses,

innocent of their flaws  —

filling in what we miss,

ignoring the limits

of magnitude

reflected light,

convinced we have it right.

Reassured

by the consistency of sight,

the predictability

that mostly works.

Because we all live in our heads,

not just the dreamers, and introverts.

So when the unexpected occurs,

dropping down like an asteroid

from the cold black void,

no one was looking up

never saw it coming.

I wrote this poem shortly after reading of Ray Bradbury’s death. Which reminded me how I used to love science fiction, and how it now leaves me cold.

The poem questions our basic assumption  about reality:  the limits of perception, which we vastly over-estimate; the thin plane of magnitude we inhabit, among the vast orders of which we cannot even conceive; the narrow spectrum of visible light, along with the bottleneck of the optic nerve; how much we are convinced we see and hear, but actually confabulate. Not to mention the straightjacket of our values, our parochial world view.

There is something in psychology called The Truman Syndrome.  This is a powerful delusion, similar to the movie The Truman Show, in which the victim is living out his life as the unwitting subject of  “reality TV”. The absolute conviction of this paranoid self-referential delusion is what strikes me. From the outside, it’s ridiculous. But inside, where everything is relative, how do you punch your way out of the box, or prove it doesn’t exist? The schizophrenic’s delusion is as real to him as what we know of as reality is to us, and why he so fiercely clings to it, against all “common sense”.  

And in terms of the fallibility of our senses, just refer to studies of eye-witness accounts. I’m thinking of one particularly notorious study in which observers were asked to count the number of times a basketball is passed. Meanwhile, a man in a gorilla suit saunters across the centre of the court. Few observers ever notice this.

I’ve heard physicists talk about parallel universes. Which may very well overlap, co-exist, materialize in our place; but we are oblivious, unable to penetrate to these other rarefied dimensions.

And when I refer to magnitude, I mean the microscopic world we must almost take on faith; and the macroscopic world of astronomical scale we can’t truly get our heads around.

Like most kids, I was scared of the shadows, what hid behind the closet doors. I imagined fantastic worlds. Which was all very real to me, as was the fright. While now, reality is set, and goes utterly unquestioned. Except, that is, the rare occasion I slip, let my mind wander. Which is exactly where science fiction, and writers like Ray Bradbury, took me. And maybe it’s when I let myself wander, stray outside the lines, that the poetry slips in.  …Or maybe not.