Dreams and Afterworlds

As a writer, I am naturally superstitious, and all sorts of prone to extremely strange beliefs. I can only - unfortunately - vibe with Richard Dawkins and his brand of "all out atheism" to such an extent. Ultimately I find him not just boring -- but even a bit ridiculous. Is there a part of me that finds the idea that this life is really all there is relieving? Yes. It is immensely relieving, in some way, to think that this could be it, and that the second death strikes, boom, nothing.

 As a result of my imagination of what could happen in the afterlife -- like going to Hell, for example -- I find the idea of nothingness very relieving. Ultimately however, I just do not believe it. Death will , for so long as I am alive, always terrify me. The mysteries of the universe will always terrify me. And when it comes to men like Richard Dawkins and other atheists, I have never, so much for a second, believed their claim that they do not think there is any afterlife at  all. I do not believe they could one day be lying on their deathbed, knowingly breathing their last breaths, steadily about to go "down into that dark night" , and not have any fears about what may come next. It's impossible. To actually even suggest something like that, that someone could feel that way, that someone could have no fear of the unknown that is death, it is not just arrogant. It is a flat out LIE. To say something like that would essentially be going beyond human. But I have not arrived to this page here tonight, at the witching hour in fact (3 in the morning) to discuss death and what may come beyond it. Instead I have arrived to discuss some other beliefs that I hold dear, specifically when it comes to writing. In a sense ,you could say that the idea I'm about to give to you, my reader, is really the main inspiratio I have always had with writing. Basically it goes like this:

I firmly believe and have for a very long time now that everything I write is either A. coming from "somewhere else" and being sent to me or B. something that I am actually creating somewhere else -- like i'm giving birth to a new planet far out there in the universe-- as I go about writing it. This means to say that , when I write, I do firmly feel an incredible sense of reality within my characters and the storyline. I do not feel like they are fake. I do not feel like it is an unreal world of which I am writing -- no matter how ridiculous it is. Essentially I have this idea that it is all happening, like Star Wars famously said, 'in a galaxy far far away'. It is not at all problematic for me, for example, to believe that something like the story of Middle Earth has, in fact, taken place on some other planet , elsewhere, and we are simply being "transmitted" the ideas to write about them. In fact, this could even possibly be the case with everything in the Bible: So Adam and Eve did not happen here on this planet, and neither did Noah's Ark, or the story of Abraham and Isaac...but who, exactly, is to say that it did not happen on some other planet? Just like I am postulating with the tale of Middle Earth? And who is to say that  the planet upon which the story of Adam and Eve actually happened is not sitting around right now with a book of tales that talks about evolution and monkeys -- monkeys which, of course, do not exist on their planet? Get it?

 I.e. On our planet, we were given the tale of their planet, and on theirs, they have some writer, 10 thousand years ago, who wrote this book  that, yes, he did "imagine", about monkey creatures who eventually became men. Which makes perfect sense here to our "scientists" but , of course, doesn't make any sense to theirs...since on their planet there is no trace of the Ape or the monkey or the neanderthal, et cetera. You see what I mean....? On this other hypothetical planet in a galaxy far away, light years from our own, out past the stars, Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden was actually how it all began; but, for some reason, the myth does not exisr there. The story has been lost. They have this huge religion that is desperately trying to search through old ruins and dig in sand and in jungles to find the bones of monkeys. But they can't find any, because it never happened there. It happened here, but for some reason they caught our story. "The radio signals got switched up and flung out to the wrong part of the universe, kid....."

Of course the way this all extends to my writing is because I feel it gives me a tremendous power that a writer who is not prone to superstition -if you want to call it that - simply has no access to. In fact, I can't even begin to imagine how someone could write truly good fantasy fiction, or maybe even fiction, period, if one did not believe in some way that everything he or she was writing was real. How could one cry over characters that are not real? How could one care about them? How could one want to save them from ruin -- or maybe, if you do not like them, how could one really get passionate about killing them? I honestly cannot fathom how an author could even function if he or she did not truly believe that what they were writing was not at all real anywhere. I suppose many writers who are atheists and believe in nothing might tell me that they feel "the ghosts of other people" (i.e. the people they know in reality) when they write their stories. So,  maybe if they cry about a scene where  a fictional character of theirs is written to die a brutal death, they feel sadness because they imagine this person as someone real they have known. I call hogwash however. I think they  are believing in the reality of the "fictionl" character, existing somewhere (we know not where) just as much as I am. But they do not want to admit it..because it is now unbelievably unfashionable to admit superstition of any kind. The upper classes are very invested now in the idea that this is all there is,and they have good reason for being invested in it: They have quite pleasant lives here on Earth. I would not want to imagine my life, if it were so supremely pleasant as the life of a multi-millionaire must certainly be, as ever possibly "transitioning" into something wildly different, either. Dreams and Gods have always really been for the poor, don't you think? And so it has perhaps now reached a point where these marvelous rich people simply cannot understand -- because the rich man has no need for an alternative.

 I don't care how long this planet goes on really: I do not believe the poor will ever let go of their beliefs. So long as they exist, then so too shall the strange tales exist of these other places where it all might just be better also exist.

The way this applies to fiction tales and fantasy is basically ....well,  if we really were not at all superstitious, or prone to believing in all sorts of things, then essentially fiction, fiction of literally any kind, would have no market place at all. It simply would not sell. No one would care about it. They would not be able to fathom why reading about "fake" characters was so intriguing. It would seem outlandish to even suggest. Why not just exist purely in reality would be the idea.

This is not the case, of course, in our world -- a world filled with mystery and also with many strange beliefs. In our worlds, stories of all kinds are a very big deal, and though it has now become unfashionable to admit, I think most people still pretty much believe, deep down somewhere, just like I do, that all these stories -- even the most fantastical amongst them -- are happening somewhere. They just don't know where. When it comes to atheists and staunch non-believers (not necessarily in an organized religion but the people who don't believe in 'anything at all') my ttypical question often always reverts back to dreams: What on earth does one really make of dreams when one believes in nothing outside of this world? For I do not know about you; but I have always seen dreams as almost a departure of sorts from the reality I am existing in here. I don't see dreams as something existing solely inside my "head". I see it as actively boarding a train of sorts the moment I fall asleep, and leaving to go somewhere. For all of my life I have always had that frightening sensation right before I fall asleep, and I take a brief look around my quarters: "Shall I return again from whatever dream flight it is I am about to embark upon? I suppose I hope so. Tomorrow they said might be some rain. I love rain. I hope I come back. I hope the flight lands me back here again. "

 Dreams are probably the entire reason the first ideas about afterlife and fantasy even came to be. After all --do we not seem to be living another life when we dream? Like I said, I know I certainly do. In my dreams I look into mirrors and I see other faces, I look at my hands...I see the hands of others...I meet friends who seem similar but slightly different...I wander cities and alleyways and get into automobiles (or I ride ferocious looking creatures) that I know do not exist in this world, and that I also have a hard time believing I somehow "created" in my mind. I occasionally come across books that I read in my dreams, in massive cathedrals and bibliotheques, and I know they are books which have never existed in this world. And often ,in fact, I have even been somewhat "locked" in dreams (perhaps this does not happen to everyone?) where I will remember my quarters again here...and I have, in fact, in certain dreams, dropped to my knees and begun begging to be let back into my existence here... i.e. "to wake up ". And when I do wake back up here, and the plane touches down and my eyes open and I see these familiar things around me, I've often had the sensation that this reality here is only like a waystation of sorts. Like this is just a place I stop into--some sort of "center" -- as I go about traveling in all these dreams.....

I don't know. I suppose I'll make another pot of coffee now however and try to get back to work on my latest tale ... of a woman wizard in a world called Melkai.... my hands I'll admit....they are getting a little clammy with fear ...

I think about dreams; I get shook....

because I think they are REAL.