Reality and Reason

 

 

I've written before about the surreal existence on the haunted farm and during my childhood. Where reality blurs with memories and yet exists as a beacon leading me to my foundation built during cold bitter winter nights and lazy dusty summer days.. I know the things that happened there in the dawn of my life where as real and true as the life I live today. What has always perplexed me was the lack of conversation and questioning that occurred in our house. Yet when I think back....the 60s and 70s weren't really open territory for supernatural discussions and quite frankly we all might have been thought quite mad.

 

I must note that I typically shied away from scary movies and even novels that depicted sagas that took a paranormal twist. As an avid reader, I wonder why. In reflection, I think I was avoiding facing the craziness of the events that unfolded constantly around me. What if in those movies I caught a glimmer of something that existed (for me) in everyday life. Would it make it more real? Somehow more threatening? Would it confirm or deny the reality around me?

 

 

This rings true. There is a reality inside me. Oh its different now than it was 45 or more years ago. I've traveled, I've studied, I've had conversations, I've written and reflected. I've experienced life much more than I had back then. For years I even led an "unreal" life. We all do...trying to impress others, make our way in the world, conform to societal expectations, etc. Yet there is a "world" inside of me and that world includes the experiences of my youth.

 

So when I enter a dwelling, like the Lemp Mansion in St. Louis Missouri where I recently took part in a haunted tour and spent the night....when I enter and it "feels" well strange and familiar at the same time, I know that it is my senses registering something deep inside me. Experiences that have the same quality. Not deja vu...just recognition of a similar sensation.