Shattered Paradigms
A true story
It’s not easy being an empiricist these days. I cannot trust my own senses. I can no longer believe what I see, not since I learned how to use photoshop; not since I went to the movies either. It looks so real but it’s not. Digital effects…. so much for Phenomenalism.
My sense of taste is askew as well; corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes, and peaches do not taste like I remember. They were different, more delicious when I was but a lad.
And my sense of touch? I can’t tell the difference between faux fur and my cat. Is that silk or lycra? The thread count of my sheets remains an elusive, uncountable number.
My hearing seems intact, despite years of headphone use. It’s just that I can’t believe what I hear anymore. Fake news, eh? I hear the truth no longer. Maybe I’ve stopped listening… Only one sense has not changed in all these years. Something still smells fishy…
In my younger days, I was indeed a rational empiricist, straight out of the 19th century. I lay before the shrines of reason and logic. What could not be explained by science? The age of computers only solidified my reductionist tendencies. Cause and effect reigned supreme, Boolean logic could never fail. Wasn’t reality just like the Matrix, all and everything reducible to ones and zeros? I had no patience for the mystic realm… And the fuzziness of the quantum world held little allure.
That all changed in one single moment.
To set the scene: I lived in Boston for a good long while, well, Alston-Brighton, the outlaying districts of Beantown. At the time, I rented a downstairs apartment in a big house, very downstairs; that’s to say, it was a basement. Plenty of windows, plenty of light and not so far underground. I liked it.
But it was a weekend in New York City that began my conversion… My conversion to what? Hmm, I still can’t say exactly… I had a vivid dream during my visit to Manhattan. The next morning I told it to my hosts, a best friend and his wife. A strange dream to be sure, they agreed: I was standing in my apartment and it was raining inside. I could see water streaming down the walls as well…
Three days later, back in Boston, there was an axe at my door, knocking, splintering wood. It was freezing cold, three in the morning, firemen rushed inside. “Get out now,” one of them called out and shook me awake… I was in my skivvies and could grab only a winter coat. The house was on fire. Smoke filled the place.
The damage was done, the second and third floors were all but gone. A bit of the first floor remained intact, as did my basement apartment. The following day I was granted permission to survey the damage. I passed the splintered door to the kitchen and moved to the living room. It was raining, it was raining inside my basement. I held my hand out to catch the drips from the ceiling. I saw the walls with water streaming down. This was my dream, exactly. I expected to turn and find Rod Serling himself standing in the corner, beginning his narration…
None would believe this story, save I had two reliable witnesses in New York. My own world was shattered, my usual view of reality was gone forever. Causality meant nothing, before-and-after was now a mockery. Surely, I had traveled through time.
It’s not easy being an empiricist these days. I cannot trust my own senses. I can no longer believe what I see, not since I learned how to use photoshop; not since I went to the movies either. It looks so real but it’s not. Digital effects…. so much for Phenomenalism.
My sense of taste is askew as well; corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes, and peaches do not taste like I remember. They were different, more delicious when I was but a lad.
And my sense of touch? I can’t tell the difference between faux fur and my cat. Is that silk or lycra? The thread count of my sheets remains an elusive, uncountable number.
My hearing seems intact, despite years of headphone use. It’s just that I can’t believe what I hear anymore. Fake news, eh? I hear the truth no longer. Maybe I’ve stopped listening… Only one sense has not changed in all these years. Something still smells fishy…
In my younger days, I was indeed a rational empiricist, straight out of the 19th century. I lay before the shrines of reason and logic. What could not be explained by science? The age of computers only solidified my reductionist tendencies. Cause and effect reigned supreme, Boolean logic could never fail. Wasn’t reality just like the Matrix, all and everything reducible to ones and zeros? I had no patience for the mystic realm… And the fuzziness of the quantum world held little allure.
That all changed in one single moment.
To set the scene: I lived in Boston for a good long while, well, Alston-Brighton, the outlaying districts of Beantown. At the time, I rented a downstairs apartment in a big house, very downstairs; that’s to say, it was a basement. Plenty of windows, plenty of light and not so far underground. I liked it.
But it was a weekend in New York City that began my conversion… My conversion to what? Hmm, I still can’t say exactly… I had a vivid dream during my visit to Manhattan. The next morning I told it to my hosts, a best friend and his wife. A strange dream to be sure, they agreed: I was standing in my apartment and it was raining inside. I could see water streaming down the walls as well…
Three days later, back in Boston, there was an axe at my door, knocking, splintering wood. It was freezing cold, three in the morning, firemen rushed inside. “Get out now,” one of them called out and shook me awake… I was in my skivvies and could grab only a winter coat. The house was on fire. Smoke filled the place.
The damage was done, the second and third floors were all but gone. A bit of the first floor remained intact, as did my basement apartment. The following day I was granted permission to survey the damage. I passed the splintered door to the kitchen and moved to the living room. It was raining, it was raining inside my basement. I held my hand out to catch the drips from the ceiling. I saw the walls with water streaming down. This was my dream, exactly. I expected to turn and find Rod Serling himself standing in the corner, beginning his narration…
None would believe this story, save I had two reliable witnesses in New York. My own world was shattered, my usual view of reality was gone forever. Causality meant nothing, before-and-after was now a mockery. Surely, I had traveled through time.
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