Wednesday 9 May 2007

Pic of the day: I couldn't understand those kanji if my life depended on them, but I understand why things are meaningless. The meaning has relocated from the outside to the inside.

Projections withdrawn

Yesterday as I made my way home from the supermarket, I looked up at the sky. It was a day of blue sky dotted with clouds in various sizes, shapes and shades. And I remembered that when I was much younger, I would look at such a sky and see things in the clouds. Faces, animals, dragons, cars. Not that I thought the clouds were such things, but I thought they resembled things. Now they only resembled clouds.

It is the natural human condition to project our inner images on the outer world. This is not just true for children and clouds. The common and probably mostly benevolent practice of falling in love depends entirely on our ability to project on others the feelings that exist inside ourselves. More ominously, war depends on projecting our own dark desires on the enemy. Look at Nazi cartoons of Jews or current American cartoons of Arabs and see if they haven't filtered out their own darkness and ugliness and given it to the Semites.

But my ability to project is much reduced, it seems. I guess this will happen to anyone who looks inward in themselves year after year. The images in the clouds have moved back where they came from, inside of me. Lately, even writing fiction is becoming surprisingly hard. Since before I started school I have been telling myself stories, but gradually even those seem to fade now. I doubt I am going to win another NaNoWriMo; I'm not even sure whether I'll take part. But we shall have to wait and see for that one; the weather may still change and new clouds catch my eyes.