tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post4488034939958449220..comments2024-03-03T13:55:46.243-08:00Comments on Ambling Along the Aqueduct: Surprises, ConnectionsTimmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-70411620081205334592009-11-27T20:54:32.197-08:002009-11-27T20:54:32.197-08:00"Is the natural world a gateway to an imagina..."Is the natural world a gateway to an imaginative space just as fantastic as a wardrobe door in certain fantasies? It sounds a bit too romantic for me to believe, don't you think? But for now at least, I'm thinking that it is."<br /><br />That doesn't sound too romantic, not at all. That wardrobe door image resonates so strongly to so many people that there must be something to it.<br /><br />I have been reading Gloria Anzaldùa's essay “Creativity and Switching Modes of Consciousness” (from <i>The Gloria Anzaldùa Reader</i>, ed. AnaLouise Keating). She talks about the way writers and artists move between "waking conscious reality" and multiple worlds of the imagination, which to her are just as real as "official reality." She writes:<br /><br />“The spirit world, the underworld, and the world of imagination can be experienced as one world or as several. A person in the Santerìa tradition will say that stones talk to her. Somebody in the western mode will disagree and insist that stones can't talk to her, but for the Santerìa both are equally real. Because the various worlds are equally real, we can have the presence of the tree or the rock talking to us. The wind or the whirlwind are bringers of messages, while 'Western man' would call these messages acts of imagination, of fiction.” <br /><br />I personally often experience a weird "doubling," in which part of me is reacting to the external world, but a larger part is living with an image from a book I have read, or a story I am writing - in what I would call the dream world. That's my home. If I spend too much time away, I become an emotional wreck. So, Anzaldùa's writings feel right to me, as does your image.<br /><br />Sounds like you're having a wonderful retreat!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13019264341649539203noreply@blogger.com