Imagine if you will, falling asleep one night only to find yourself trapped within a persistent dream.
Through seeming aeons of wandering and after myriad tales and legends have bloomed and then unravelled, perhaps a ‘science’ might spring up.
Of course this would be just another flowering, of similar ‘worth’ to previous avenues and adventures into elaboration; It only appears ubiquitous and obvious now, as the time is ripe for that kind of story.
As with any dream quest into complexity, nothing can be finalised, whichever avenue of enquiry happens to be in vogue.
As more pathways are explored new vistas of study are created. This is an art and interplay between the observer and the observed.
In the dream the observer is not finding what is already there. The observer is creating as he observes; Creating in partnership with the mirroring force. The dream is fractal in nature and the unfolding will only stop when the dialogue ceases.
Philip K Dick thought of this ‘mirroring force’ as a benign organism of high-order mimicry, which he dubbed ‘Zebra’.
Dreams are fragile though. Zebra knows it must work slowly, a natural lulling. The expected must follow on from the expected.
Tear a page out of the book and the spell is broken.
The observers must also be complicit; this is a two-way conversation.
“I am beginning to see in my minds eye, Zebra itself, an actual animal, a striped horse, shy and merry and mischievous, half hiding in the forest at the far edge of the heath, the sun shining and zebra playfully advancing and then just when you think he’s going to emerge fully and seperate himself from the trees — suddenly and unexpectedly he retreats and absolutely vanishes.
You can’t coax him out or lure him. His white is the dazzle of the sun; his dark stripes, the shadows in the glade and forest.
I saw you once but can never — as if you are some fabled deity — Prove to anyone that you exist. I inform them, I try to take them along with me to the special spot from which I saw you — and you’re not there. But I sense the glint in your eye and your smile of understanding amusememnt. Are you the joy god Dionysus of root and star? Of dark forest and melting butter gold of the sun? What a psychological symbol Jung would have known you to be — playful and upredictable, shy, pawing the ground. The sharp hooves; goat hooves — Oh great god Dionysus! I recognise you: You are too wise, too experienced with our dangerous race ever to expose yourself to harm at our hands. We would kill and freeze you into stasis — hypostasis and all your pawing and advancing and disappearing and smile — Light, would become dead glass. Warm butter, only hide — dead and frozen”.
Philip K Dick — Exegesis p- 245
