Several years ago, I ordered what I expected would be a VHS tape of a television show I had enjoyed a few years earlier. When I got the tape, I discovered that it was formatted for what I learned was the European PAL standard, not for the NTSC standard in use in the USA. The show, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, was a futuristic science fiction television film shown on PBS. I do not recall what happened to the tape, except that I never received an NTSC version. Apparently, I was never able to watch the program—which tarred two now-deceased actors, Raul Julia and Linda Griffiths—again. Am I the only person in my familial or social circle who remembers it? I have no doubt that I’ve written about it before; probably years ago. It pops up in memory occasionally; I have no idea if that’s just random, or whether something specific triggers the recollection.
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Dr. Anna Yusim, an executive coach and psychiatrist, is Clinical Assistant Professor at Yale Medical School (as a volunteer) and author of a book entitled “Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life.” She is quoted in an NPR Life Kit online text adaptation of a podcast, written by Ruth Tam (the title of which is Curious about exploring your spirituality? Ask yourself these 4 questions). When discussing the pursuit of “something greater” than oneself, Yusim said, “For some people, that’s God; for others, it’s collective consciousness or values like faith, love, trust and perseverance.” Tam explains the meaning of Yusim’s comment by saying, “This means that spirituality can be felt by both religious and non-religious people. You might believe in a religion, but not necessarily feel spiritual. Likewise, you could be very spiritual, but not religious.” Hmm. Finally, a reasonable, non-woo-woo way of expressing the legitimacy of the concept of spirituality outside of religious beliefs. The text of the NPR Life Kit was published online in late February 2025. Though I would not call the piece a “must read,” I found it sufficiently interesting to warrant a mention. I may decide to personally explore the 4 questions in more depth, later.
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Peering only at the ground outside, I would have expected to see only denuded branches when I look up into the surrounding trees. But the thick coating on the forest floor represents only the first serious round of Mother Nature’s efforts to strip every twig of its dead and dying leaves. Last night’s howling winds and heavy rain stripped a significant portion—maybe half—of the remaining leaves from the trees, but the storm’s power was not enough to leave the trees bare. I expected the loud cracks of thunder, alone, would have been sufficiently powerful to jar the limbs of the trees; to loosen the grips of the remaining hangers-on from their holds on the. But, no, the trees were not willing to let all the leaves fall; not just yet. Time and additional fierce weather will force the twigs to release most of the rest of the more persistent ones to give up.
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I dreamed I was in Dallas, at my old house, with my two older brothers. The younger of the two had parked his car on the street next to my house. He wanted to drive someplace, but he was worried that the car was nearly out of gas, so the three of us took a gas can from the garage and went in search of a gas station. The neighborhood where I lived had changed; some houses had been torn down and replaced by new, more architecturally pleasing ones and others had been remodeled to look more modern. After we walked through the neighborhood and made our way to retail and commercial areas, it became apparent those areas, too, had changed. I did not recognize them anymore. Once empty fields were now jammed with upscale retail stores. Gas stations I recall from the time I lived there had been transformed; pumps that required us to follow complex instructions to access gasoline had replaced the old ones. A man on a motorcycle helped me insert my credit card properly to start the flow of gas. When we left the station with a full canister of gas in hand, we discovered crossing what had years earlier been a busy street was now almost impossible. The traffic moved much faster than I remembered—at excessive highway-like speeds—and the signals that had helped pedestrians cross were gone. Whether we crossed the street remains an unanswered question; the dream apparently ended before it was answered.
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Well-made AI videos can seem almost (or, to me, entirely) real. That is more than a little concerning, especially in light of the fact that high-quality AI videos are capable of altering our perception of reality. I wonder how many videos I have watched, initially thinking they were real, only to discover they were created with AI? And how many might I have watched, generated by AI, that I still think were real? I wonder how many politicians I might think are human (but act inhuman) were created by devious, behind-the-scenes manipulators of enormous segments of the population? As I travel down this deeply disturbing road, I cannot help but wonder whether humankind long-since became extinct, replaced by AI replicas, including me. Is my confusion about life in general an outgrowth of the fact that I have never known actual life…was my experience as a living, breathing human being artificially created for the entertainment of electro-magnetic sadists with nothing but time, and real people, to kill? Of course I realize the likelihood is small, but…
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The merger of reality with fantasy may yield one of two things: realasy or fantality. Or it may not. The title of this post is neither, nor both; not either, as well.
