Believing

Tup. Ttup. Tttup.

There is a woodpecker outside my window. I cannot see it, but its conversation with the birch breaks into my stuporous consciousness like a bomb into silence.

I can't see the birch now. My worktable isn't near the window. It used to be, looking out from that tiny perch onto a world exploding with colour and form.

That was the issue, of course. There is that part of the brain, which has heard it all from them, that tells me all of it - this splash of colour, this multitude of form - is... what is the word? Wrong. No... That's not it.

Unreal. Yeah. That's the word. All of this is unreal, they say. All that is tangible, all that I can see, taste, touch, smell and hear - everything unreal. It doesn't matter that I can see it; I must believe. Thinking is dangerous, you know.

And that is why my table was moved from the window, of course. If I were to see so much colour, I would have trouble believing what I am told. To believe that so much beauty is an illusion, that all of it is like ghosts in the netherworld, would be sacrilege, blasphemy... and well nigh impossible. The wall helps. It's stark white, and rectangular.

There are moments, naturally, when I wonder if this premise of unreality isn't too farfetched. But then, they wouldn't lie to me, would they? They said it's all for Truth - and what would one not give for Truth?

I'm still trying to find it, of course. It is a difficult path - it needs me to forget that I know so much, needs me to be blind to so much. But it'll be worth it, you know, in the end. Truth = happiness and everything you've ever wanted, they said - and how can it not be?

Meanwhile, I believe in what I am told.

The world is full of colour, but my wall is bare.