A virtual reality, a time machine, a teleporter. I’ve heard it said that each person’s mind is like the Tardis from Dr. Who – a time traveling ship, bigger on the inside than on the outside, its corridors infinite.
Whenever I read literature written in the 18th and 19th centuries, I think about how much understanding of geography and history had to be gleaned from drawings and books in those days, unless one had the privilege of traveling. Today we have the advantage of cinematography.
I can fly over and through a gorge with a bird’s-eyed view. I can go on YouTube and look at virtual reality photographs and videos of famous landmarks. It’s all so detailed and sophisticated. But I bet the imaginings of those writers a century or two ago were just as vivid without all of that. Here’s why:
I used to play Sierra’s “Space Quest” as a child and to see it now, I’m reminded just how pixelated it was, how blurry and lacking in detail, compared to the games now available to my children. But back when I was immersed in those games, all the pixelation and blurriness vanished as my mind superimposed perfectly clear scenery into the game. I can easily remember the game both ways – how it really looked and how I transformed it. Either way, it was the same story.
Sometimes this happens with people too, especially when memories span across decades. I can easily superimpose their previous figure over their current one. One minute I see my grandpa as he is today. Bent over with a walker, face drawn into permanent lines that give him a look of perpetual sadness, eyes that no longer recognize me; next he’s suddenly standing upright, shoulders back, thirty pounds heavier, white hair now gray with brown weaving through, a wide smile and eyes alight with recognition.
There’s this one driveway we pass by on the way to the family cottage and I always see him standing there on the grass next to a decorative boulder, wearing a caramel leather jacket, strong and self-sufficient. It’s like seeing a ghost, but it’s only a memory from nearly three decades ago, and besides, he’s still alive. But the weird thing is, though I was standing right next to him when I made that memory (we’d taken a walk together), half his height and staring up to see his face, I now see that memory from twenty feet away, as though I had been the same height and was looking at him from across the street.
Continue reading The Mind’s Eye
