Pure Imagination

Thunderstorms predicted all day, making this sort of a Thor's Day on Hump day, but there was enough of a clearing off for me to get in my morning swim.

No bassoon today,* just the lifeguard's whistle, and, since I came toward the end of lap swim, the first bouncy beats of the music tape for the Aquacize class that starts at 8:00.

*see yesterday

I am, however, still in the bassoonland of random coincidii thanks to finishing Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell. As one of several narrators puts it, "As chess players or writers or mystics know, the pursuit of insight takes you deep in the forest."

Another of the interwoven narrators of Ghostwritten comments on how reality must be packaged by a certain kind of profiteer: "All my ideas are the same old scam: the bigger the fib, the bigger they bite. The first shamans around the fire were in on it--they knew growing maize along the Euphrates was for fools. Tell people that reality is exactly what it appears to be, they'll nail you to a lump of wood. But tell 'em they can go spirit-walking while they commute, tell 'em their best friend is a lump of crystal, tell 'em the government has been negotiating with the little green men for the last fifty years, then every Joe Six-Pack from Brooklyn to Peoria sits up and listens."

Hmm, I'm not so far from Peoria myself.

Dwight Q. Silverwind continues, "Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a license to print your own."

Or to build a chocolate factory. But Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka looks pretty sad to me, drinking tea in "Pure Imagination" here on youtube. I think there are a number of possible reasons for that.