A couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to a definition of a word I had known by a different definition. The definition, new to me, was “of, relating to, or resembling twilight; dim; indistinct.” The definition I had known was for the same term, but with an additional word, “ray,” thrown in. Crepuscular. Crepuscular ray. A crepuscular ray (the term I knew) is “a twilight ray of sunlight shining through breaks in high clouds and illuminating dust particles in the air.” I like the way crepuscular, by itself, is used in one of the example sentences offered by dictionary.com:
It is blended twilight of intellect and sensation; it is the crepuscular of thought.
~ from The Life of Francis Thompson, by Everard Meyne
It occurs to me that the world would be a more comfortable, less scary place if all humans would spend twenty minutes a day learning a new word or becoming more adept at using a word they thought they knew, but didn’t grasp completely. Those twenty minutes would be unavailable for negativity, emotional attacks, and other nasty stuff that word-play won’t allow. Although, I have to say, my sister-in-law gets really competitive when playing Words with Friends with me, sometimes announcing a devastating move that will ruin my chances of winning a game by saying, “I’m gonna fuck you up!” Hearing that makes me want to stage a friendly card game between four sweet, quite elderly, ladies; at some point, the demeanor of one of the gentle old women would change dramatically and she would look at her competitors and make the same statement. For some reason, when I see that scene in my mind’s eye, I find it hilarious.
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Last night, I dreamed I was involved in an affair with a woman I have not seen in at least ten years and probably closer to fifteen years. Actually, that’s not quite right. In the dream, I was attempting to salvage what apparently was an affair that was dissolving. No, that’s not quite right, either. I was attempting to rekindle an affair that had already turned to ashes. At least I think that’s what it was. The verbal interactions between the woman and me were innocuous, but the tension between us was evident to me.
Even though the dream did not reflect reality, it was disturbing. Have I ever actually had an affair with this woman? Have I forgotten it, only to recall it in my dream? Or, if I had never had an affair with her, did the dream reveal that I wanted to? By the time I was sufficiently awake to sort through the dream, parts of it had melted away; I could not remember big chunks of it. What I knew with certainty, though, was that the dream was not a replay of reality; nothing that occurred in the dream has ever happened. But it felt real at the time I was dreaming it. It felt painful that I could not resurrect the dream relationship. I felt rejected and rebuffed by her in the dream in a way I never felt, nor had any reason to feel, in the real world. But only after I awoke and recalled the dream did I feel guilt about the affair and about my efforts to revitalize it. Strange, that. Guilt about an artificial transgression created in my unconscious mind. That’s a little like feeling personal remorse over an action taken by a someone else in a time before one was born.
That dream was the crepuscular of consciousness. I may have a new favorite word. Thanks, Becky, if you’re reading this (or even if you’re not). You’re the one who introduced me to the actual definition of a word I thought I knew. You had nothing to do with the dream.
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We only imagine who we are and what we think. Our existence is merely an illusion. The thoughts we believe we think are just ideas planted by the detritus of exploding stars and dissolving meteorites. We nurture those ideas, but they exist only in the abstract, so they are invisible. As is the real person beneath the imaginary façade. But is “real” actual? Or is it simply an expression of an artificial cage intended to keep our ideas and our selves from escaping into the atmosphere we are told exists, but is not “there,” at least not in the sense that our eyes perceive it. Even our eyes manufacture images; they paint pictures of the way the world might look if we could actually experience it visually. But because the images are simply interpretations of refracted light, we do not see the “things” we look at; we only see how light reflects off of them. It’s all imaginary. It’s all an illusion. Even our thoughts about the illusion are just bits and pieces of atoms and molecules cobbled together in a rigidly random fashion so our archaic and arcane brains can make sense of it all. But how does one make sense of a vast emptiness that we populate with imaginary substance that cannot be seen? How does one believe anything, when the only “thing” to which “any” is attached is pure, unadulterated fantasy? Colorless, odorless, tasteless, and without palpable substance. We dream ourselves into existence out of nothing. A massive collective fantasy has given rise to an entire planet; an entire universe, really. We are ideas still being born. Some still-born. The “known” universe is smaller than tiny. One billion universes of the same size would would fit easily onto the head of a pin with the majority of the pin-head remaining a stretch of vacant space. Because, you see, we take up no space (except as we imagine ourselves to be); take up only tiny elements of perception. And those elements rattle around in a place so big there is no word to describe its size. It’s not hard to imagine that everything we know is pure fantasy. But it’s not easy, either. Nothing is as it seems. But everything is exactly as it is. Unless, of course, it isn’t.
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I’ve never had a horse. I’ve ridden several (but not for years), but I’ve never reached the point of being completely at ease around them. If I had a small farm or ranch, or just a plot of land big enough to sustain a horse, I think I’d want one of the kind with big tufts of hair around their hooves. Not necessarily Clydesdales, but something similar in appearance, perhaps. But smaller. Gentle horses that would pick up on my moods and would behave accordingly. And I would want a horse that would not be spooked by me playing guitar. I’ve never played guitar, but I’m thinking about buying one and learning to play through practice. No reading music for me; I think people who can read music were left on Earth by alien creatures. There is no natural explanation for the transcription of musical sounds; it’s obviously some form of extra-terrestrial communication. I just want to learn by picking and playing. My horses, Insatia and Starvatia, would be happy to listen to me as I learn. I would play folk music and classical Spanish guitar tunes. And, of course, Stairway to Heaven and Layla and Free Fallin’ and Fire and Rain and The Sound of Silence and Pinball Wizard and Fast Car and Wild World and so many more.
I think I’ll need to invite my friend Larry, a guitar aficionado and player extraordinaire, from NYC to come teach me to play. I want to be proficient to the point of expertise in no more than four weeks. This process will require focus, so I may need to move at least temporarily to a desolate ranch about twenty miles outside of Chloride, New Mexico. Isolation and desolation are key elements to learning, extremely quickly, to raise horses and play guitar. So I’ve been led to believe, by my own imagination.
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I once tried writing a story with another writer who lived far away from me (and still does). I would write a paragraph or a page (I don’t remember exactly what), then she would write one. It was all done online, so we could exchange our writing. She was trying to be serious, I think. I was feeling mischievous and contemptible. So her story, which I think began with a train ride that was headed from New York State toward Nova Scotia, turned in my hands into an improbable and very steamy story of sex between strangers on a train. She tried to get me back on the rails, but it was an impossible task. I think she gave up. I think I still have that “story” somewhere. More evidence of me hording stuff I don’t need and probably will never read again. Later, much later, she and my wife and my sister-in-law and I shared a train ride in New York state; I think my writer friend got on or off at Syracuse or Albany-Rensselaer. Memories fail me sometimes. Like a lot, lately.
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A few weeks ago, I began to write email messages to people as I happened to think about them (the people). I did not (except in one case) mention that that’s what I was doing; I just started doing it. Then, I made the transition (actually, the addition) of letters. I’ve only written a few emails and a few letters. I am not sure what I expected out of the practice and I’m not sure what I’ve gotten out of it. I suppose I thought I would become more aware or conscious of thinking about people if I made a point of sending them a message of some kind. I don’t know whether it has worked. I know I have slacked off on the process. Its reduction began even before it got started in earnest. I still like the idea. It has merit, if only I can convince myself to keep doing it.
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I lied. This is another long, convoluted, peppered-with-madness post. I’m going to keep trying. This post feels like a Sunday post, not a Thursday post. I wonder what that’s all about.
Colleen, we share both an interest in painlessly learning to play the guitar and regrets that we’ve never taken steps (at least in my case), painless or not, to learn. I should know better than to try. I’ve had two other string instruments, an Indian sitar and an Arkansas-crafted hammered dulcimer, neither of which I ever learned and both of which I no longer own. Ah, the conceit of youth. 😉
When I went on a week-long Blues Cruise with wonderful blues artists three or four years ago, I came back convinced I wanted to learn to play the guitar. Note: I have no musical experience. But I knew I didn’t want to start with “baby” songs and take years to learn. I too, wanted to be able to whip out songs in no time, or at least in a year and I knew that was foolish. But here I am, years later, and I could have been picking away at my guitar during Covid isolation and it might have given me great pleasure. Ah, regrets.