It began innocently enough. I had eaten a fiesta salad with chicken at the Burrito Shop after a leg workout at Gold’s. (Sorry, folks, but my flirtation with vegetarianism only lasted a little over a month. About a chicken a week is sacrificed on my behalf.) As usual, among the first things I did when I got home was use a little brush to clear the bits of flesh from between the six teeth where it always gets trapped, but as I was taking the brush out of the medicine cabinet, I fumbled it into the sink—another lapse of attention. Somehow the association popped up between fumbling things and being 64 years old, and the fact of my age struck me as incomprehensible.
In some ordinary ways there is nothing perplexing about it: I was born at a certain time, I have memories of doing various things at different ages in different places, some of which is recorded in public documents, and all that is perfectly orderly and describable is words that anyone can understand. But…
Hatcher said once that sometimes he looked in the mirror and asked, “Who is that old man?” He felt in many ways like he was still 16, and yet here was this strange reflection looking back at him. I recognize that reflection as the currently identifiable Norm, and I am totally accepting of the changes time has wrought, but I realize that, out of habit, I continually take for granted the wonder of having any perception of existence at all.
I understand the general mechanisms of perception, and it’s amazing enough that the brain can fabricate a working model of the world and of me, as an organism, fitting into it. There is a tremendous source of awe in the fact that these mechanisms work as they do, but there is an awe beyond the complexities of the brain and its operations. There is an awe that exists in the cracks between our conceptions; something that recognizes that these concepts are only rough approximations of how the brain works; and encompassing the brain and its processes are concepts of the universe itself—including all the furniture of our everyday lives—and between these concepts are still bigger cracks.
We take for granted our descriptions of the world and of ourselves. The model works well enough to get the business of living done, and within that model, there are plenty of things to occupy our attention and keep us busy: pleasures, problems and crises abound. But occasionally, in what I consider to be fortunate moments, we get a glimpse “beyond the veils,” as Rumi would say. We see that our solid-enough seeming house of cards is a fragile shield between us and the infinite possibilities beyond. In those brief moments, soon glossed over by the demands of the common reality, we stand slack-jawed for a moment and think, “What the hell… where are we?”
As Morpheus said in The Matrix, “Welcome to the real world.”
Real Holes