Mater

I’ve just had another thought - and there’s no need for Anna and her alter ego to act so surprised! Anyway, it was floating around this hospital that did it. What if all this doesn’t really exist?

[More:]

Or else, exists only in the imagination of some greater, unknown power? Anna is groaning. What’s wrong with letting me have a little ponder?

‘I’d rather you didn’t, at five o’clock in the morning.’ Anna rubbed her eyes.

Can’t see the problem myself. And if she’s another fictitious being, she’ll just have to go with the flow; this time anyway. Just like she makes me do, most of the time. Although I have been known to rebel!

Look at that. She’s wangled a cup of coffee from one of the nurses. It makes the paracetamol work better, she says. And she won’t mind putting pen to paper once the tablets work. Don’t tell her, but I wasn’t actually going to give her the choice.

Right, back to whether all that seemingly is in the world, is as it seems - or not. For all I know, all you mere mortals might be just like me. Now that’s a strange thought. Of course, Anna’s alter ego has had problems with this issue before. It’s not that she sees everything in black and white, but (at least in her opinion) she tends to temper everything with common sense. Well, at least she used to. But I can do, or say, or think whatever I like. No limits on us imaginary beings. What? Now she’s being funny - or thinks she is. She reckons I’m limited to her imagination, whatever I might think. She can think what she likes. I know what I know.

Now she’s wondering if I can see the sunrise. Does she think I’m stupid? It’s still dark outside. She’s laughing. What now? Ah, just because I can’t see it, others might. Ha! How can they see it if I can’t, when we are looking at the same sky?
Oh, I’ve got to think outside the box. Which box? If I’m hidden inside a box, I might not exist as far as anyone else is concerned (as we’re on the subject) - so how can I think outside it?

Was that an imaginary kick in my non existent shin? It hurts, you know!

Sunrise? I suppose Anna means that I could have travelled far enough in my imagination to see the sunrise in another country, on another longitude and latitude (come to think of it, those are imaginary lines, aren’t they?) No, that’s not what she meant. Well, I don’t get it. She says it’s a matter of perception. We have to fine-tune our vision to be able to see the tiniest of changes. Just because we can’t immediately see it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening. Right. But I don’t have to imagine the sunrise coming, because I know it is.

‘How do you know?’

‘Everybody knows that day follows night.’

‘Perhaps we’re just imagining it.’

‘All of us, imagining the same, always?’

I tried to imagine every piece of imagination being referenced and cross referenced ad infinitum, so that it would make sense to everyone - so that a tree would be a tree, a flower a flower, a loaf of bread a loaf of bread, always, for everyone. I couldn’t. It was much too complicated to accept, even for me - and I told her so. The world has to be real. It's composed of tangible matter - at least almost, isn't it? But there is something I’m not sure about. Well, lots of things actually. But about the imagination… How imaginary am I, if Anna used an actual person as her inspiration for me? When she chose to write my story, did she imagine everything - or did the person that I was somehow manage to make words flow from her pen? I tell you one thing; I wish I could make her write everything I want to say, but she keeps threatening me with a red pen (aren’t they obsolete?) or with hitting the delete button. There weren’t any delete buttons in my time.

Anyway, I like the imagination. I like to imagine all sorts of things; I like making flights into the unknown, using my imagination to do so. I’m glad I’m fictitious. I’ll always be a part of everything, even when there’s no-one to know. Being part of the imagination is being part of eternity. I like the idea that the imagination goes on an on when everything else has gone.

‘But you can’t know that that’s what will happen.’

‘No, but I can imagine.’ And that’s what I did. As Anna and her alter ego left the room, I pondered on the difference between the real and the imaginary. Is the Theory of Relativity real? Einstein (or my pal Al!) used his imagination to come up with that one, you know. He travelled on a sunbeam - in his imagination - as he lay daydreaming. At least that’s what he told me (anything is possible in the imagination!). I tried following suit, but fell asleep instead. Typical.