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Don't Change A Thing
by Lavinia Plonka

Reality is crumbling. It's a little disconcerting. I'll be walking in the woods and see a turtle. But when I approach it, it becomes a gray rock. This morning, as I took the exit off the highway, a charming ginger cat sat by the side of the road. But then it wasn't a cat. It was a large, twisted, manila envelope lodged in the bushes. Even my own home is suspect. I absentmindedly reach on the counter for the coffee carafe only to discover to my horror, as it tumbles to the floor that it has become a vase I had washed yesterday...

If my eyesight was going, I'd see blurs, right? Or maybe shattered pieces of vision, gaps, blobs and the like. But instead I'm turning leaves into rodents, dust bunnies into real bunnies.

Recently, a friend of ours announced that he had purchased a new 3D scanning program for his business of model making. He can put any object on the scanner. It will turn it into a zillion ones and zeroes, which his computer then communicates to his plotters and die cutting machines, exactly replicating the object, in plastic or wood, in his studio. I picture his software replicating trees, squirrels, teddy bears, gourmet meals, small children..And then I imagine what would happen if there was a glitch in the program. Input teddy bear, output corn on the cob. Input squirrel, output panther.

Speaking of panther, remember the first time you saw a really good morph on TV? It was a ground breaking music video by Michael Jackson. One moment, there was Michael Jackson, and suddenly, he was a panther. (Personally, I would have chosen a different animal for him - a peacock maybe, or a shitzu.) Our culture became morph crazy. My family and I would sometimes sit in front of the TV watching the Sci Fi channel rating the quality and number of morphs per episode. Are my distorted perceptions merely the result of too much TV, or an overactive imagination coupled with early macular degeneration?

What if it isn't my eyes? There are certain kinds of brain tumors and neurological diseases that apparently change a person's perspective on reality. In Oliver Sacks' book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, a musician/painter lived in a completely different visual world from our own. As his disease progressed, his paintings went from realism through impressionism, cubism and finally to abstract expressionism. This was first hailed as artistic evolution, but later recognized as pathology.

Scientists as orthodox as Steven Hawking inform us that existence is based on perception. Mr. Hawking has gone as far as saying that the universe exists because we do, in essence calling us the architects of what we experience. So am I seeing a cat that looks like a manila envelope or am I creating a manila envelope? If a manila envelope is lying by the road and no one sees it, is it really there? AARRGH!

This can't be a unique phenomenon. After all, why would software developers even bother with creating morphing programs if it didn't strike a chord in a huge portion of society? Native American myths and legends constantly teach about spirits inhabiting everything around us, of animals turning into rocks, handsome warriors becoming powerful bears. Iktomi, the Navajo trickster spider, is constantly changing shape in his search for satisfaction. Greek myths are full of nymphs trapped in stones, vain young men turned into flowers. Tales abound in every culture of shape shifters, shamans who transform into animals, wizards able to impersonate other people. Let's face it, we've been morphing for millennia. Maybe I'm just an advanced software program, that is currently experiencing glitches. Input ginger cat, output manila envelope. William Blake said, "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." Am I becoming the fool or the wise man?

Some mornings I get up and am absolutely horrified by my vision in the mirror. "Who are you and what have you done with Lavinia?" I query the middle age visage. On other days, the wrinkles seem invisible, I'm thinner, taller, damn sexy. Which one is real?

Hamlet complained, "Oh if this too, too solid flesh could melt.." Just think what would have happened if just at the pivotal moment of the sword fight he could have realized that yes, he could morph..into one of the X Men! Or a couch. It would have changed theater forever. It would have implied that we have control over our destiny. That we can do anything we want. That reality is what we make it. Or would it end up like our dream life? You know that disconcerting feeling when you desperately need to make a phone call and the receiver turns into your neighbor's cat. Or you're racing to the airport and suddenly your car has disappeared and you're desperately pedaling your tricycle on the interstate and then you're walking along a towpath where you had your first kiss.. there seems to be no control at all. It does seem safer to know this flesh is indeed solid, that when I wake up in the morning, my coffee maker will not have morphed into a palomino horse. In the process however, I seem to have lost the ability to shape shift at will. Living in the modern world has locked me out of the realm of the shamans, tricksters and nymphs. I have sacrificed a magic world for a dependable world. Or is it just lurking there out of the corner of my eye?

Essays from Living At The Speed Of Light are available for publication in periodicals. Essays on this page will change periodically. For information email: Lavinia