My last girlfriend once asked what it would take for me to accept an apparently religious or supernatural experience as genuine. Being religious herself, she was unimpressed by my answer.
Over the decades, I have been startled and frightened by many strange events, but experience has taught me to consider these in the light of certain basic assumptions.
What I have seen are:
1) Normal events that I have observed poorly, or misinterpreted.
Especially at night in dark and isolated settings, the brain overcompensates for limited information by manufacturing monsters. And so I have watched UFOs that crossed the sky at alarmingly slow speeds become ordinary propeller planes. I have seen tiny bipeds in space helmets, or tall, impossibly thin humanoids, or strangely gliding "cone creatures" become ordinary deer backlit by the rising moon, or silhouetted while standing face to face with me, or cropping the grass in a park by the light of a distant lamppost that I had assumed was full size and far away, but which turned out to be not much taller than I am and very close. The brain's over-interpretation of uncertain events can keep us out of danger, but it can also give us false impressions of what is really going on.
Poor observations can also distort perception. Tricks of light and shadow, failures to gauge speeds or directions accurately, can make people suddenly vanish between one glance and the next, remove airplanes from the sky, or turn bright autumn shrubs on the pathways ahead into looming monsters of the night. The most initially-convincing UFO I have ever seen turned out to be a blimp lit up like a christmas tree, observed over a long period at sunset, when the soft light made everything magical.
2) Optical illusions, visual or auditory hallucinations, hypnopompic or hypnagogic dream states.
Especially when I am hungry, alone and isolated, or coming out of sleep, these imaginary perceptions can seem completely and often terrifyingly real. And so my bedroom has been invaded by strangers. I have heard voices call my name. I have seen statues move with menacing intent, and the planet Venus flutter like an alien spy-ship on the prowl.
3) Pranks and frauds.
What if my observations have been accurate, my perceptions unclouded by fear, fatigue, or unfamiliar circumstances? What if I saw what really seemed like a ghost or a god? Then I would most likely assume that someone was trying to fool people.
In the same way, if I had carefully observed, at length, a bizarre object in the sky, I would be less likely to think of an alien presence than the appearance of a new and perhaps military craft, but something otherwise down to Earth and human. (Unless, of course, that craft was a christmas tree blimp at sunset -- automatically alien!)
Finally, if I had eliminated these three possibilities, what I would I assume next?
4) I have gone completely crackers.
What is more likely: that Earth has been invaded, that the dead have risen from their graves, that the gods have spoken to me in person, or that I have lost my mind?
As I have mentioned, my last girlfriend was unimpressed by my standards for proof, because I seem to have none. But is that really the case?
If I were to be convinced that a religious or supernatural event was real, I would need to witness a spectacular display. After all, even a verified monster might be nothing more than a severely-deformed yet otherwise familiar animal; even a clearly-extraterrestrial ship would be a technological device, and therefore perfectly natural. Gods and ghosts remain stuck in a category of their own, and for me to believe in their existence, I would need Earth-shattering proof.
"So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day." That would be a start. Add a parting of the Red Sea by visible godly fingertips, and I might begin to wonder.
4 comments:
Do you know of any books of poetry by Herbert S. Gorman? You mentioned him before, but I had difficulty in locating anything by him other than this title: The Barcarole of James Smith: A Volume of Poems. I'm not even sure if this is his poetry or not.
Thanks!
That's definitely Gorman's. I love it!
Do you have any advice on learning French? I'm interested to read Ashton Smith's French poems, books in French, etc. I also bought a book of Leconte de Lisle's poems (Antique poems or something like that.) I've done research and there seems to be so many apps and sites out there I'm really not sure where to start.
I'm afraid I have not much advice, because whatever I managed to learn, I was taught in schools here in Québec.
I can say that immersion is the best approach. Watch films in French as often as you can, to gain a feeling for the sounds of the language. Listen to people speak French on Youtube. Read simple books for children. Whenever you find a new word, write it down on a list, along with its gender if the word is a noun. As your list grows and grows, read it out loud every day, without effort, without any straining work to memorize the words; after many repetitions, this vocabulary will stick in your mind automatically.
As a student, I was taught to never translate. That was good advice for someone immersed in a francophone society, someone whose primary goal is to hear and to speak, but I find it less useful as a reader.
Always rely on the translations that you find in dictionaries, not on the translations of writers that you find in books. Translators often sacrifice accuracy for poetic or thematic effect, but right now, as a student, what you need are accurate definitions.
If you search on the Web for the "best books on how to learn French," you might find useful recommendations. If a book has a good reputation, start with it right from the beginning and go right to the end. This might take you six months, or one year. The length of time is unimportant; what matters is the steady exposure that comes from daily study, reading, and hearing. One page a day, every day, is better than ten pages on Tuesday followed by nothing else until Saturday. And as always, when learning a new language, grammar and usage become essential. Native speakers are expected to "absorb" grammar, but this never works for students. Study the grammar!
If the time required seems daunting, it might help you to keep in mind that learning to read French is much more easy, vastly more easy, than learning to speak it. Also, if you want to read a poem or a short story in French, go ahead and start right now! Even if you have to write down and seek out the meaning of every word, you will have learned something while doing what you wanted to do right from the start. Keeping a goal in mind is much easier, and much more fun, if you hit that goal every day.
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