Life on earth: suspending disbelief

You have a dream - you are in your own home, or your childhood home and you know that's where you are but it looks completely different. Completely familiar and yet not from your waking memory. Or in the dream, you are with your sister or friend or husband. You know that's who they are, but it isn't the sister, friend or husband from your conscious waking life.

The odd time, it happens to me when I'm not sleeping and it gives me an eerie sense of worlds reversing.

I could be sitting on the couch in my living room. Every object in the room and the history of every piece of furniture, every ornament, every painting and book is familiar. It's all mine, but I have no sense of attachment to the person I think of as "me" who has things which are "mine."

I stay very still when this happens, stretching my mind into other rooms, examining the layouts, the contents. Then I reach farther - into memories, into life experiences. I feel that I am watching an old reel to reel movie. The sound is gone. I can see the dust motes swirling in the beam of projected light. The images flicker and the projector is whirring noisily. I can't suspend disbelief enough to believe that I am anywhere real, looking at anything real, remembering anything real.

I cannot believe the projection but I cannot see what is there when it stops.

Sunday, I took this self-portrait with the camera on automatic timer. The shots were rapid fire and this double-exposure is what made me think about this.