We know that color isn’t an attribute of an object, though our senses make it appear so. Color is but one feature our organism has evolved to help us negotiate our way through life. But it’s not color alone that is a deceptive representation. It’s everything. Our senses are useful in helping us survive. We perceive what we need, but it’s all appearance… sound or vision. Even touch. We learn how the physical world is organized, it’s more basic reality, by moving beyond our senses. Those shadowy images of single atoms electron microscopy has given us… are translations. We aren’t seeing actual atoms, which are always in motion, unless… at Kelvin zero. Nothing is as it appears to us.
I guess the Buddhists… and Hindus, are right. It’s all Maya, an illusion, though we are welcome to draw different conclusions about what that means–for our ability to understand reality, about our place in this world. Still… it’s good to remind ourselves: Nothing is what it appears to be. Least of all–those images of our faces and bodies we so love.
What is real… though we have no access to what matters, but through our bodies, our senses… is never reducible to what we know by those senses.
I look at this old cat… 90 in human years… how she looks back at me. And we both know. Beyond words.
She teaches me.
We are so lost in this world of illusions. So lost.
Jacob Russell's Magic Names 